Our current problem is that the church jettisoned the revolutionary Jesus of the Gospels in exchange for a Jesus-just-like-me. We have a Jesus who wants us to be safe and our kids nice and our lives comfortable and, if possible, convenient; an English speaking, TNIV Jesus. The only wood this Jesus carries is boards for the white picket fence. Ignoring Jesus’ social history while obsessing over theological verities, we removed all revolutionary aspects from Jesus’ life. We created a comfortable chameleon Jesus who blends in with everything American. We cannot tolerate a Jesus who scares us witless. When we sing “Jesus loves me this I know” we mean “Jesus coddles me this I know.” Like most things American, Jesus is another product to sell or own; another religiously-packaged commodity that we put on the cluttered shelves of our lives.
Jesus is Alka-seltzer for the soul; he’s our pain-reliever Jesus.
We need the radical Jesus; the Jesus of the canonical Gospels. The Man who exploded every category of what it means to be human and who was never, ever for sale. When the traumatized disciples gaped at Jesus in the boat after Jesus simply spoke a fierce hurricane out of existence, they screamed in terror, “What kind of man is this that even the wind and the waves obey him?!”
What kind, indeed. This is the Jesus we must meet. We have so many micro-brewed Jesus’s domesticated for our various tastes: Presbyterian, Pentecostal, Episcopal/Anglican, Wesleyan, Baptist, Evangelical Covenant, Four Square, Lutheran, Reformed and Christian Reformed, the generic, non-denominational Jesus, cathedral Jesus and house church Jesus, Wall Street Jesus and surfer dude Jesus, Catholic Jesus, the Protestant Jesus’s, Orthodox Jesus, tee totaling Jesus and beer-drinking Jesus, institutional Jesus, hipster Jesus, and organic Jesus. No one seems to want the bold, full-bodied Jesus who radically changes everything.