Thought for the Week: Inspired by Jesus
John Lampen considers how Jesus can be an inspiration
I notice Jesus is seldom mentioned in current Quaker discussions about what we believe. This is a pity and perhaps comes from a false picture we have been given of him. I have some sympathy with the view that Paul of Tarsus and John of Ephesus hijacked the religion of Jesus and replaced it with a religion about Jesus. Jesus would have been shocked and mystified by some of the things said about him in the Fourth Gospel and the Pauline letters. Some may well find this traditional ‘Christ’ of theology irrelevant to their exploring.
But whether we are theists or not, we can still be inspired by Jesus as he appears in the very first records. To test this, try reading Mark’s gospel in a single sitting without prejudice, and see what impression you get of the man. This doesn’t take long; the book can be read aloud in not much over an hour.
I find there someone who loved his religion and tradition but was not afraid to challenge it. Against the expectations of his culture he treated women as equals (this comes out more clearly in Luke’s gospel) and had high regard for children. He reached out to the stranger, the disabled and the enemy, the Roman invader. Unemployed, a vagrant, possibly an asylum seeker (in Egypt and Lebanon) he attacked the tyranny of wealth, religion and government. He encouraged his followers to copy him: ‘Trust me for the sake of the work’, he is reported as saying. ‘The things I do you will do, and bigger things too…’ He spoke his truth fearlessly to the highest authorities in the country. He knew he was running risks and accepted them. He was sometimes afraid, but he didn’t turn back.
What was his message? ‘Review your values; are they compassionate? Live adventurously; don’t let yourself be governed by anxieties and ambitions. Treat everyone as you hope they will treat you – even when they don’t. Become a community of equals. Serve others; this is the essence of leadership. Build a community of equals. Act nonviolently. Love your enemies. Forgiveness is always on offer. The power that fills the universe is generous to you; become aware of it.’
For Quakers he is a supreme example of our claim that action springs from faith and faith is nourished by action. The early Quakers believed that ‘Christ is come to teach his people himself’ and spoke of the Light of Christ in our hearts. We don’t need to think of this as some supernatural operation, any more than when someone invokes ‘the spirit of Gandhi’. It refers to our search for our own deepest truth. Paul’s injunction ‘Let the same spirit be in you which was also in Christ Jesus’ is not about beliefs, it is about the power to discern and act.
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