The Historical Jesus

One compelling point that MacCulloch brings up is recent research into what scholars refer to as "the historical Jesus" - in other words, what Jesus was really like and what he actually said. For the most part it's impossible to know with absolute certainty which of the sayings attributed to Jesus in the Gospels were actually spoken by him (though some have greater or lesser degrees of probability) but what we can say with confidence is things like this:

"There is much punishing fire flickering round the preacher's [Jesus'] words. There is nothing gentle, meek or mild about the driving force behind these stabbing inversions of normal expectations [the Beatitudes]. They form a code of life which is a chorus of love directed to the loveless or unlovable, of painful honesty expressing itself with embarrassing directness, of joyful rejection of any counsel suggesting careful self-regard or prudence. That, apparently, is what the Kingdom of God is like" (88).

This rings true. Above all else, Jesus' message must have been deeply arresting in its directness and urgency. God's reign - the vision of a world in which things on earth would be as they are in heaven - was startling in the radicalness of its inclusivity and the challenge it directed to the assumptions and priorities of the age. This was a message that would prove a stumbling block and an obstacle for many - especially the religious and political authorities of the time - but would also open up the possibility of a kind of love that can transform lives irrevocably.

Jesus' message, this robust "chorus of love," remains compelling and fresh in its immediacy and vehemence. The challenge, in his time as in our own, is to allow ourselves to move past the comforting dominance of institutions and practices that can obscure that central message. Then as now our task is to step with trust and confidence into the unknown, ostensibly foolhardy territory of a life lived with the kind of love Jesus knew and embodied so extraordinarily.