Jesus Again...

In regards to a previous post, Conor wrote,

"Is such a "pure" and disincarnate encounter with the historically real person of Jesus really possible?"

Hmm, yes and no. Although I don't know what disincarnate means. Are you saying because we don't have a bodily Jesus here? I assume that's what you mean...

Okay I have been thinking about this a lot this week, but I'm just going to say a few simple things.

I think that God has always been interested in relationship with humanity. That's how it was in the beginning. I think even all the priests and sacrifices and temple were meant to facilitate relationship.

However, with time we always fall into a business type relationship with God that isn't right. And that's what happened with the Old Testament way of relating to God. It became a transaction that was hollow. People weren't interested in God, they were interested in getting their way.

So God put an end to all that with Jesus. When Jesus came he shut down all those things (which was the plan all along). The plan was for the Messiah to come to restore that relationship on a deeper level.

Okay, so how do we have that relationship with a Jesus that is not bodily with us?

Partly it's personal. In that sense I do believe we can have a pure relationship with Jesus. He is alive and his Spirit is present. He speaks truth directly to us and guides us. However, we also are fallible and finite and can confuse those words with our own biases and desires.

We also have that relationship through community and tradition. Jesus left his disciples to pass on this faith and teaching. We need community to discern what is truth. We need time, history, and stories to give our faith weight and meaning. However, if that community and tradition becomes a business transaction, we've fallen into that trap that Jesus came to get us out of.

So basically that's what I'm saying. I do think that we connect with God through ritual, teaching from others, community, service, prayer, Scripture, art, nature, work, rest, etc, etc. However, when we get stuck in the rut of, "Am I doing all the right things to get to heaven???" we miss the whole point. That is what I associate "religion" with. The goal should be relationship with God, rather than selfish pursuits. God made that simpler for us by becoming a human that we can relate to.

What do you think?