Jesus is Strange…To the Church (or: Jesus is NOT Mr. Rogers...and vice-versa) by Drew Moser

One of my favorite TV shows as a child was Mr. Rogers. The cardigan sweaters, the sneakers, the singing, the array of happy, jubilant characters…Mr. Rogers had it going on. He was gentle, meek, and mild. He was kind. His mailman was prompt, and his friends courteous. He was a positive force for ‘good’ on TV, and he became to me like a favorite uncle, who would teach me, give me 30 minutes of daily attention, and care about my well being.

Now, having said all that, let me now get to the point. Jesus Christ is NOT Mr. Rogers. Good one, Captain Obvious, you may be thinking. But I’m serious. Jesus has become all too comfortable to today’s church. He’s the religious incarnate of Mister Rogers. He’s an emotional hug. He’s also a right wing political cause. He’s also a marketing gimmick, a rock star, a CEO, and a magic potion for health and wealth. Oh, and let’s not forget his movie star looks: tall, muscular, fair and smoothed skinned, flowing straight hair, and blue eyed. He’s the bean bag chair that everyone wants to plop themselves down on, sink into, and then toss around in a pillow fight gone wild at the next youth group lock in.

Given the cultural tendencies to view Jesus in such terms, I’ve been compelled to revisit the Jesus I serve. About a year ago, I had a spiritual crisis of sorts. After over a quarter century in the church, 6 plus years of theological higher education, and years of ministry involvement, I have just recently realized how little I actually know about Jesus Christ. Sure, I know all the common descriptors: messiah, savior, lord, God. But do I really KNOW him?

I’m not talking about ‘knowing’ in the ooey-gooey, fuzzy, emotive sense. There’s a time and a place for such intimate knowing, and my point is not to discredit an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. Rather, I’m talking about actually knowing who Jesus is, the man we read and revere in the New Testament. Who was he?

Ask any Joe or Jane Christian who Jesus is beyond these common labels, and you’ll likely get a reflective pause, a contemplative rubbing of the chin, a profound ‘hmmm’, and then some stammering and mumbling: “well…he’s my friend…the lover of my soul…my hero…my purpose…the wind beneath my wings…umm…that’s about it I guess...praise God!”

Such a response is simply crafting a Jesus in the image of a Mr. Rogers, or a Dr. Phil, or even an Oprah (the list could go on). We’ve made Jesus into who we’ve wanted him to be. Safe, distant, comfortable, and ‘inspiration’ for a catchy, simple, me-focused worship song. It’s a problem that the church, throughout its history, has never been able to shake. We’ve never ceased making Jesus “to the measure of each generation’s desire, dread, indifference—he was a man once, whatever else he may have been. And he had a man’s face, a human face.”1 Buechner’s call to remember Jesus’ face seems initially so trivial, yet eventually so profound and fresh.

Recent quests for the historical Jesus have had mixed results. Many have crusaded such quests simply as a means to discredit the miraculous, strip the gospels of nearly everything He ‘supposedly’ said, and leave us with a hollow remnant of a Jesus that really has no impact or relevance (i.e., the Jesus Seminar). Such extremes have caused the majority of Christ followers to shy away from such historical quests, stamping such endeavors with the label ‘heresy’, or ‘liberal’. As David Bivin writes: “the Herculean efforts of generations of scholars have brought Jesus no nearer to the ordinary believer.”2

It’s easy to understand the hesitancy to go ‘historical’. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. There’s a middle way here that can be enormously helpful. I’ve become increasingly aware of the hermeneutical benefits to studying the Jesus of history, and I don’t have to deny Him as my Lord and Savior.

We must never neglect the simple phrase of Paul, “When the set time had fully come, God sent his Son…” (Gal. 4:4).3 God didn’t just spin the wheels of time and culture, and they just coincidently landed on ‘the first century A.D.’ and ‘in Palestine’. He chose to send his Son, within the 1st century Jewish context, for a reason. The story of creation had reached a purposed climax. Should not that compel us to learn at least a little bit about this context?

Consider a brief example: One of Jesus’ most quoted sayings is found in Matt. 11:28-30:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light" (Matt 11:28-30; NIV).

What a fantastic encouragement! No doubt this passage has helped so many through some difficult trials in life. But if we dig beyond the uplifting, encouraging message of text, and study the relationship between rabbi and disciple in the 1st century Jewish milieu, then we conclude that Jesus is talking about the cost of discipleship. A ‘yoke’ was a metaphor for a rabbi’s teaching, something that was traditionally heavy, burdensome, and sacrificial. To study under a rabbi was a rigorous, life consuming task. But Jesus offers a yoke which gives priceless joy to the disciple; one that far outweighs the cost.4 It costs one’s life, no doubt. But the joy and everlasting peace that’s found in such suffering and sacrifice is found nowhere else...with no other rabbi. This passage transcends the simple encouragement, and reveals the true nature of discipleship: countercultural, transformational, sacrificial, and inestimable.

To some, reintroducing the true historical Jesus to the Church may initially seem like we’re preaching to the choir. To others it may seem like an exercise in heresy. But it’s neither. We must never tire in deconstructing the Jesus that we craft in our own image, allowing His true image to be reflected in our mission and our worship.

Too long the church has had the binoculars of life turned the wrong way. We’ve pressed our eyes to the larger lenses of our present lives and read the gospels through them to see the story of the New Testament unfold. If we instead looked through the narrow lenses of the New Testament historical context, through the cross and resurrection, and into the other side (hat tip: NT Wright), where the story of Jesus unfolds in our lives, then we would be much more effective, faithful interpreters of the Biblical text. We’d stop looking for mere application points to pull out of the text and awkwardly insert into our lives.

Back to the Mr. Rogers Jesus. He’s a good person no doubt. But he reveals the neo-gnostic tendency that pervades the present. As Buechner so eloquently puts it:

"We are Gnostics ourselves when in excessive veneration of the goodness of Jesus we shy away from his humanness, from the fact that like the rest of us he did not just have a body, but was a body, a body that he might never have been able to drab another step further is Simon of Cyrene had not been strong-armed into shouldering the cross for him. "5

The true Jesus has become strange to the church. We’ve strayed too far from the babe born in Bethlehem, wrapped in cloth diapers. We’ve strayed from the Jewish school boy from Nazareth, the working class carpenter who became a rabbi of 12 disciples. We’ve certainly strayed from the champion of the poor. We’ve strayed from his body and the blood, and have pandered them down to a metaphoric mess.

Let’s reclaim the true Jesus. Let’s not be afraid of his humanity. Let’s reclaim Him without tarnishing his deity. Let’s be truly, authentically, devotedly Biblical in our efforts to KNOW Jesus of Nazareth by exploring his humanity, his story, his Jewishness. Then, when Mr. Rogers sings, “Won’t you be my neighbor?”, we’ll have a much better appreciation for his simple question, because Jesus the Jewish Messiah has a lot to say about neighbors, doesn’t he

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1. Frederick Buechner, [The Faces of Jesus], (Paraclete Press: 2005), vii. 

2. David Bivin, “Who was Jesus?”, in [Jerusalem Perspective Online]. www.jerusalemperspective.org

3. This concept comes from an online lecture given by NT Wright on Emergent Village, recorded from the 2004 Emergent Theological Conversation (www.emergentvillage.com). 

4. See Bivin, “Jesus’ Yoke and Burden”, in [Jerusalem Perspective Online]. www.jerusalemperspective.org. 

5. Buechner, [The Faces of Jesus], 72. 

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