2010 Lenten Study/Discussion & Sermon Series
One thing that’s presupposed when one answers the question “How do the life and teachings of Jesus address the social justice issues of our time?” is one’s answer to the prior question “Who was the historical person Jesus of Nazareth?” We’ll explore this subject throughout the season of Lent 2010.
On the basis of their decades of study of the historical Jesus, Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan have recently collaborated on a DVD summarizing their many books. It was recorded on location in the Holy Land and is filled with classical art.
These two scholars invite us to rethink many of the things we’ve been taught about Jesus. Moving beyond an individualistic, otherworldly view of Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom of God, they fill out a picture of Jesus who is also relevant to the social, political, economic issues of his time and ours.
This all adds up to a study that will stimulate our minds and feelings and lead to lively discussions.
Key resources:
- John Dominic Crossan’s Participant Guide, which he calls the best summary of his lifetime of work on the historical Jesus
- Critiques of Crossan and Borg’s progressive views in The Historical Jesus: Five Views (2009), ranging from the radical idea that Jesus never existed to the conservative view that the real Jesus is found in the four New Testament gospels taken literally.
You can participate in this six-session class:
Feb. 21-March 28 ~ Sun. mornings, 9:00-10:00 am (shorter version)
or Feb. 22-March 29 ~ Monday evenings, 7:00-9:00 pm
or Feb. 25-April 1 ~Thursday afternoons, 1:00-3:00 pm
One of the potentially life transforming insights of our 2010 Lenten study/discussion using the DVD course “First Light: Jesus and the Kingdom of God” by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan is that we are called to be Jesus’ companions, not just followers or disciples (students). I invite you to meditate on the meaning of these words for your Lenten journey this year from pages 11-12 of Crossan’s Participant Reader:
“We summarize this third major difference between John and Jesus like this: John had a monopoly but Jesus had a franchise. John was ‘the Baptist’ or ‘the Baptizer’—that was his nickname in both Josephus and the New Testament. There were not lots of baptizing stations all up and down the Jordan and you simply went to the one nearest your own home. You went to John and to John alone. To stop his movement, therefore, Antipas had only to execute John. It could linger on in memory, nostalgia, denial, and disappointment but, since it depended on John’s life, it ended with John’s death.
On the other hand, Jesus himself does not settle down, for example, in the house of Peter’s wife at Capernaum. Notice Peter’s expectation and Jesus’ withdrawal: ’Let us go on to the neighboring towns,’ Jesus tells Peter, ’so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to’ (Mark 1:38). Jesus does not establish himself in one place and send out disciples to bring people to him there as monopolist of the Kingdom of God. Instead, he tells his companions—not disciples, which mean students—to do exactly what he himself is doing. We will see what that was in the next segment, but for now the point is simply that Jesus empowered rather than dominated others because of God’s Great Divine Cleanup was about empowerment and collaboration, not disempowerment and domination.”