IT'S A TESTAMENT OF SOMETHING - When Christianty Goes Rogue

I'm making progress reading the New Testament. I've now reached Luke, and yet another reiteration of the life and ministry of Jesus. What has Luke to offer, that hasn't already been said twice over?  

In his preface Luke makes it abundantly clear what his sources are, that his gospel has come to him second hand.

' It's has been handed down to us by the original eyewitnesses and stewards of the word'

For reassurance, and because he thought the accounts written so far were perhaps not written clearly enough.

'I thought it a good idea to write an orderly account for you'

So with Mark and Luke we have accounts written by second generation Christian disciples, with no direct experience of Jesus's ministry, documenting the words of first generation Apostles or disciples who we presume were still alive.

With Luke the quality of the storytelling has hugely improved. Prior to becoming a Christian Luke was a physician, so we have someone here who is definitely well educated, and it shows. He is a skilled, very agile writer, with an ability to compose succinct memorable turns of phrase. Again you have brief windows of him capturing an observation from an eye witness. Here in Luke Ch 5 V15, Jesus has been besieged by people wishing to be healed by him. Just one after another, day after day. And one wonders how anyone would cope with that. How do spiritual rock stars recharge themselves? Well in Luke Ch 5 V 15 he tells us;

' The news about Jesus, though, spread all round, and large crowds came to hear and be healed from their disease. He used to slip away to remote places and pray.'

So, like every good introvert, Jesus needed his 'down time', some solitude, in order to cope with it all. And he made sure he could find that space and time. Now, that is a human detail I relate to.

I find these little snippets of interest in the Gospels. Unfamiliar quotations that colourfully cut through the general textually numbing effect of a familiar story being rolled out. Like this enigmatic statement from Mark Ch9 V49, essentially saying we all need some fire in our belly, that just being meek and mild could just make you passive aggressive. You don't live at peace with one another simply by being submissive, you have to engage honestly and sometimes forceful in discussions with one another. As long as that salted fire is informed by your faith.

'You see, everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is great stuff, but if salt becomes unsalty, how can you make it salty again? You need salt amongst yourselves. Live at peace with each other.'

Jesus's ministry seems initially quite parochially focused. The agenda is directed at the Jewish people; the Old Testament references; the prophecies fulfilled; the sense that God's people need to get their shit in order. Jesus saw himself and his teachings as sitting within the legacy of the Jewish faith tradition. But a faith that nonetheless required renewal, and not just ticking all the ethical boxes generally thought to be correct.

Any long lived religion goes through periods of upheaval. A necessary kicking out of detrimental habits, amid a reinvigorating restatement of its purpose. Jesus appears to have loved confounding people's expectations of him, to the point of being deliberately contrary. The symbolism of him overturning the money makers tables in the Temple, is lost on no one.

If anything, there's rather too much counter reframing,- you thought it would be like this, but I say it's another thing entirely. This is a neat trick if you can pull it off so repeatedly. And yet, If you readjust the spiritual optics too often, at some point people might rightly conclude, well, maybe you're not the true Messiah after all?  Could Jesus be just playing them for fools? But then, we cannot know the effect his presence had, the charisma of him, what it was like to be there and part of it all. That sort of thing can make folk push to one side their cynicism and any doubts.

Jesus used prophetic traditions to authenticate who he said he was, only to often upturn or deliberately reconfigure them later. You can tell that there was this unpredictability about him. Something that unnerved even his own disciples at times. Judas decides he had to betray Jesus because he'd wanted the Messiah to be more than just inspiring teachings, but an instigator of revolutionary action, an overthrower of the Roman yoke. He wanted Jesus to literally become the King of Israel, not just dress up as one.

Luke introduces, for the first time the teenage story of Jesus's parents finding him engaging in discourse with the temple priests. In later stories Jesus's parents appear to view him and his ministry as madness. The Pharisees thought him a pernicious evil, his miracles demonicly inspired. No way was he the long wished for Messiah. He was not welcomed with open arms by his home faith, quite the opposite. His acts of healing are what drive his movement, and make him popular. Yet at what point did he or his disciples decide - you know we are just going to have to go it alone here, let's go full rogue?

This question of whether Christianity was a sect of the Jewish faith or saw itself as something else independent of it, is eventually settled by the circumstances of the place and the time. Its unacceptable outsider disrupter status persists, even after the passing of Jesus. The subsequent diaspora of Christians casts his followers out across the Roman Empire. Oppression and persecution dogging them wherever they go. They are known to be a nuisance, self opinionated, perpetually evangelising, individuals, who can really get on people's tits. The Roman historian Tacitus in the 1st century CE describes Christians as 'abominations'. 

It's not until the conversion of Constantine in 312 CE, when Christianity becomes an established state religion, that this outsider disrupter status begins to diminish. But the persecution of Christians is prevalent in some societies to this day. They can still be seen as a dangerous, provocative presence.

The mythmaker and storyteller Martin Shaw recently converted to Orthodox Christianity. He believes Christianity in the West has lost sight of its radical past, the non conformist, counter cultural instincts, its rougher edges too readily smoothed over. There is a need to rediscover the spirit of wild unpredictability of its founder. And as I read the New Testament I can see why he would say that. Jesus in the Gospels is much more complex contrary individual, divisive and forcefully more direct than our contemporary gently beneficent image communicates. Maybe Christianty might benefit from 'Going Rogue' again.