I’m probably a latecomer to this novel, but I am, for the first time, reading Nikos Kazantzakis’s novel The Last Temptation of Christ. I’m not sure if it was serendipity or God’s hand (or might those be the same things?!), but this past Sunday, Palm Sunday, I read the chapter about Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on the donkey. I’m anxious to see how the rest of the book plays out because I have found within its pages a paradoxical Jesus who has stretched my imagination.
Kazantzakis describes in this particular chapter how people are responding to the Jesus they have encountered – admittedly, the Jesus Kazantzakis has presented them with. This is a Jesus who is himself uncertain of his mission, a Jesus who fluctuates between comforting messages of love and fiery messages of damnation. So, which is it to be, Jesus? In the book, those who want a loving, gentle God hear only his words of love and comfort. Those who want God to reign down fire and brimstone upon their enemies and oppressors (i.e., the Romans) hear only Jesus’ words of revolution and destruction.
Is that not true of us all? I know I flinch when I read some of Jesus’ harsher words in the Bible and I cling to his words of love. While I believe that Jesus was fully cognizant of his mission (unlike the Jesus of the novel), I have to admit to the both/and of Jesus’ message. Our problem is that, as Westerners fed by strongly dualistic theology, we have trouble accepting this both/and Jesus. We want a clear-cut one-way-or-the-other Jesus whom we can quote as needed – preferably to support our already preconceived ideas of who Jesus should be, of who God should be. However, that is not what we get.
Yet, as hard as it is to accept, this nondualistic both/and Jesus is a great source of grace for us all. We need his gentle love and compassion. We need that side of Jesus because we who are broken and sinful need God to help us to become better human beings in a loving and compassionate manner. Fire and brimstone will only destroy us, not transform us. However, we also need the Jesus who is angry and even savage because he sees what has led to our brokenness and he sees the pain and suffering we, as the human race, have caused and continue to cause. We need a God who despises the oppressive, harmful systems we humans have created and who will, eventually, destroy them so that out of their ashes new, life-giving systems can be birthed. Like it or not, we need the both/and of the Jesus we find in the Gospels.
The trick for those of us who follow him is to distinguish between our feelings and behavior toward the oppressive, harmful systems and those we express toward our fellow broken humanity. Jesus came to destroy the power of death and sin, but he did it by allowing the violent power of evil to engulf him and seemingly destroy him. His death on the cross proved that love is truly the greater power. His resurrection proved that what seems real is in fact a delusion. If we are to be his followers, we need to wrestle with what God’s love looks like in our world today. In doing so, however, we must never give into the delusion that violence will bring about God’s kin-dom. That is the challenge of following our both/and Lord and Savior.
Rev. Joyce Day
If you would like to view past editions of Grace for the Journey, follow this link: https://sounddistrictnc.org/category/grace-for-the-journey/