Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
So Many Questions
I figure if you get scorched for writing about birthmothers, you might as well start talking about Jesus. What’s to lose, right?
So, anyway, I’ve been reading Zealot, The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, by Reza Aslan. Well, actually I finished it last night a few nights ago and, is my increasingly problematic and expensive Kindle wont to do, immediately ordered The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions by Marcus J. Borg and N.T. Write, dimly wondering what it would take to become a biblical scholar at this stage in my life.
These nights in the dark, curled up around my Kindle, reading the story of Jesus told in new ways, has been a form of church-going for me, a way to renew my fascination with Jesus without the omnipresent bafflement at the accoutrements of religion. How does Aslan’s explanation of Jesus jibe with what I heard at the Hastings Methodist Church while transfixed by the fox’s head latched on to the fox’s tail on the fox stole being worn by the tall woman in front of me at the Sunday service?
That I’d be entranced by the chewing fox and miss the message is no surprise. It was rare that I’d be in the sanctuary at my age. It must have been a holiday, an occasion that would convince my parents to come to church. The basement was where I usually belonged, coloring pictures of Jesus with fishes, Jesus walking on water, Jesus passing out loaves and wine. Or getting ready for the Christmas pageant, staying close to my sister to make sure that some bad girl didn’t twist my wings again like last year. My sister was Mary, but only at Christmas. The rest of the time she had a different name and she walked me to Sunday School every week.
I regard with great respect my friends who are believers in Christianity and Judaism and have spent time in both of their worlds. The stories of Moses parting the Red Sea are as fantastic as Jesus walking on water; in both cases, I know how to interpret religious metaphor. Was Abraham really asked by God to sacrifice his son? I don’t know but the point is clear; believing in a higher power is not without risk and cost. That belief, which can be parked in spaces reserved for Christianity or Judaism, can be generic if we let it. There is not much but the holiday schedule separating us if that’s where we stop. But it isn’t.
There is the crucifixion and resurrection. This is what puts Christianity in a reserved parking space. And it’s what’s kept me circling the parking ramp wondering where to go for these many years. I just never understood the crucifixion and resurrection historically, intellectually, and, least of all, emotionally or spiritually. It made no sense to me. It has stayed a story in an eight-year old’s mind. Until I read Zealot.
There is heavy criticism of the Aslan book including a critical review by the New York Times. The worst criticism is probably the book’s most attractive feature, its value as a “popularization of a scholarly subject.” I loved Aslan for this. I wanted to crawl up in his book and live there, my appreciation for his having made the complex simple so great that I wanted to write my first fan letter since Frankie Avalon was on American Bandstand.
It’s the gift of context. That’s what Zealot is – pages of context. What life was like, the politics, the customs, what things are likely to have happen, what not so much, what was probably made up decades or centuries later to reinforce theological or organizational decisions already made, what probably explains the decisions made by the Sanhedrin and Pilate, what Jesus represented to them, what happened after Jesus died, how the resurrection story developed and why, why the early church broke ties with Judaism, how what started in Jerusalem ended up in Rome. All of these things have baffled me since I stopped coloring Jesus walking on water and got moved to the grown-ups’ table.
So has Zealot changed my mind about Christianity or Judaism? No. But then it’s not really about about faith. It’s about thinking about faith, which is, I believe, a good way to spend some time.
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Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
“”…pages of context. What life was like, the politics, the customs, what things are likely to have happen, what not so much, what was probably made up decades or centuries later to reinforce theological or organizational decisions already made,…” Good questions, not only about Jesus, but the whole population–many sects, tribes. What was their daily life like? Clothing, foods, school? did boys and girls learn to read & write?, Shabbat, homes, illnesses, family occasions. I know so little of my great-grandparents’ lives and that’s only 125 years ago. Good topics to think about. Thank you and Reza Aslan.