Reimagining the Ministry of Jesus

by The Rev. W. Rian Adams 

I’m going to be direct here, as long as there has been religion there have been people using it to create rules. These rules often damage others psychologically and spiritually. I propose a reimagining of the ministry of Jesus in light of the suffering around us and thereby offering the love that has so popularized the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, Michael Curry.

In this lectionary reading, Mark teaches a valuable lesson: it’s healthy to go against the grain of religion in order to heal humanity. In the Gospel lesson Jesus heals a man with a lame hand.

To me the hand is a symbol of our creative power. Some mythology suggests the right hand as the creative and the left as destructive. No matter, it seems the man’s ability to create, hold, caress, and express was restored to him. Rather than be happy, the religious leaders were upset that Jesus healed him on the sabbath. In essence, Jesus broke the rules.

As you read these two stories note: They are about the mentality of the Pharisees contrasted with the driving force behind the ministry of Jesus.

Look for it in the text, you’ll see it.

Lectionary Gospel: Mark 2:23-3:6. Proper 4, Year B.

One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?” He answered, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.”

Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”

Another time Jesus went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there.  Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Stand up in front of everyone.” Then Jesus asked them, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they remained silent.

He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.

Pharisees and persona

The Gospel writer makes it clear that the Pharisees are the main opposition to Jesus. They were a first century conservative sect of Jews. The Pharisees were popular on a grass roots level (although the religious power of the day rested with the progressive sect, called Sadducees). Jesus encountered Pharisees often because his ministry occurred among the people.

The Pharisees present a contrast to the ministry of Jesus in the Gospels. They keep the rules, while Jesus discards rules in favor of humanity.

Honestly, the Pharisees are low hanging fruit. They are easy to critique. I’ve beat up on them quite often in sermons over the years and used them for straw man arguments to make good points. The main point is that we shouldn’t try so hard to serve God that we can’t see our neighbor starving to death.

Yet the truth, as John Sanford points out, is that “there is a Pharisee in all of us.” Sanford went on to connect the religious persona of the pharisees to an “outer mask that inflates the ego.”

It’s easy to see others as Pharisees and hypocrites but the raw truth is that the Gospel calls us to see ourselves in the archetype.

I know American Christians who think Jesus is a Republican. I know American Christians who genuinely believe in Democrat Jesus. Both opinions are absurd.

Any and all attempts to see the Pharisee as “other” misses the point of internal spirituality. We become Pharisees when we fail to own the shadow side of the self that’s a judgmental rule keeper. 

The human question vs. the institutional question

In his book Falling Upward (shameless plug for a very influential book in my life), Father Richard Rohr explores some of Carl Jung’s spirituality on the two halves of life. To boil it down, Fr. Rohr says that the first part of life is lived where structure and rules provide safety and sanctuary for development.

When we apply this first half of life spiritually, it means that spirituality begins with learning moral rules and ecclesiastical structure. The problem is when someone assumes that the institution of the church equals a spiritual arrival.

As we have seen, the Pharisees were a religious sect whose confidence in their rightness was only eclipsed by their disdain of differing opinions. This is what Jung and Rohr would consider a “first half of life” problem. We all know these people – they worry themselves over perception and are to claim moral high ground.

If we are brave enough to admit it, we not only know Pharisees but we can often be Pharisees. We can parrot creeds or political passions as if they are Good News. This misses the mark.

The second half of life is quite different. Jung would say it’s more of a deconstruction that pulls us away from our need for institutional validation. Instead, we fall into a difficult transition where compassion and mercy are hallmarks of faith. Spiritual growth in the second half of life occurs in letting go, not in validation. Love and mercy were the hallmarks of Jesus’s ministry to those in need, never rules or accountability. 

A reimagining of Jesus’s ministry for today’s church implies an honest look into the way of mercy, healing, hope, and compassion.

Rules and wounds

This does beg a question… how should we care for those wounded by the Pharisee? I’m not sure there is an easy answer but it must begin with restoring the lame hands of creativity and expression.

A friend recently confided me that she was completely finished with Church. I asked why because I’m the curious type. “Because baby boomers control most churches.” she said. “And that generation, more than any other, cares about how they look. My parents didn’t care how they looked at home in front of their children, but they gave a sickening amount of energy to their public face, especially in church.”

Obviously she made some valid points about generation gaps in our churches. She also pointed out some of the challenges facing millennials who seek integration into church that expresses values of previous generations. But what she really said is, “I’d really love some second half of life spirituality, but the churches I visit seem hung up on first half of life issues.”

People ask me all the time how to get Millennials in church. Millennials are very spiritual. As such we do not want to be part of something that has even the faintest stench of inauthenticity. So, the fact is that we will come to church when the church tends wounds instead of creating rules.

The message of light

However, I do not propose to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The ministry of Jesus can and should grow into maturity in local parishes through spirituality that embraces the second half of life.

The wound is where the light enters you. – Rumi 

The ministry of Jesus is a ministry of light entering our human brokenness. His ministry was not about Phariseeism and rule keeping.

The challenge is incarnating, with our active imaginations, a model of ministry that shines light onto pain. However, we do not simply expose it, we heal the hands and liberate their creativity and passion.

That is Good news. Or, as the Archbishop of Canterbury recently said in an interview with Presiding Bishop Curry, “There is nothing conventional about Christianity.” The ministry of Jesus is Good News… the ministry of Jesus is Mercy! That’s an unconventional message from a Pharisee.

Additionally, if my poetry can be of any use, please click here.

Pax,

Rian+