Jesus: The Gift Without the Wrapping

About the Author

Terry O’Brien was born in Mackay, Queensland, and now lives on the Sunshine Coast. Terry has been a teacher in private high schools for over thirty years, being influential in the formation of many young adult lives. He has earned a graduate diploma in religious education, which has led him to a passionate interest in learning how to see beyond human conditioning and prejudice. Terry does not see himself as a philosopher or theologian, rather as a purveyor of ideas. His words merely act as a mirror in which to see yourself, as a guide to personal fulfilment. He is an avid reader, and enjoys walking, playing golf and supporting the local community.

Dedication

To those who made my life full, by their inclusive love.

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Terry O’Brien 2022

The right of Terry O’Brien to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs

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A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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Acknowledgement

This is not my own work. It is called plagiarism when you steal another person’s ideas, but it is called research if you borrow several people’s ideas. This book is my research based on scripture scholars; such as Marcus J Borg, Raymond Brown, John Dominic Crossan, Albert Nolan and Garry Wills.

The middle section of The Gift without the Wrapping is more like an advanced or enlightened second edition of Jesus: Our Story by Frank Andersen, who focused on the humanity of Jesus while affirming his divinity. Also, the emphasis in The Gift without the Wrapping is more upon individual reflection and is meant to be a companion for life.

I must acknowledge the world of the Church in which I grew up and within which I have lived all my life. I am deeply committed to the Christian journey. I have found myself on a roller-coaster journey of personal faith, in which I have confronted radical questions about who and what God is. I have found that God is the Ultimate Mystery and the source of everything that exists.

I would especially like to thank Michael Morwood, who asked me an important question, when he was a guest speaker at St John’s College, in Nambour.

‘Am I on a journey to God?’

This question changed the direction of my life.

I am also grateful for the journey of awareness introduced to me by Anthony de Mello – a prophet for our times. His way of being aware of the ego’s influence on our thoughts, feelings and action is enlightening.

I cannot list all that are to be thanked for showing support in the writing of this book, but the following deserve a special mention – Gloria Bracken and Mal Bray for their manuscript reviews, and finally two great reviewers, Alan Sheldrick and Bevin Wigan.

Introduction

Grasping at the Wrapping

Our minds are always on the move, wandering ceaselessly. No wonder we take notice of only a fraction of this frenzy. The recognition of how out of control our minds are is one of the greatest insights in life (Dalai Lama). We are not the masters of our own mind.

What if we became masters of our mind and we could focus our attention? What if we could focus our attention on love, on compassion? This acquired refined attentiveness would give us the ability to see clearly, penetrating below surface appearances to see things as they really are. We would see things in a new way.

If we could see in a new way, what would we notice when we read the Bible? I assume that we would see as Jesus sees. An underlying hypothesis of this book is what we see, depends in a large measure on what has been our experience of life. We see only what we are capable of noticing. As our human experience deepens, so are we able to increasingly notice the more subtle characteristics of our minds and insights into life (Andersen, 1994, p6). When we are aroused from our psychic sleep, we would discover the cause of any discomfort is our distorted perception of reality. Looking with compassion, we would discover that we are all interconnected, and we would seek justice and peace for all. We would be able to see God is in all things. With awareness, we would discover what is already here, that which has been given to us. This truth sets us free. We would be saved through insight.

A personal note

When I was an adolescent, I received the package of Catholicism from the Christian Brothers, which shaped my identity and provided me with a strong direction and stability for which I am grateful for. However, much of the Catholic package of beliefs, attitudes and practices I inherited was shaped at a time when the church was the centre of western society and its authority was unchallenged. And this tightly wrapped package was shaped within a worldview, which was quite primitive by modern scientific standards.

I started to challenge the wrapping when my understanding of planet Earth’s place in the universe developed and changed. I could not turn a blind eye to this scientific worldview. I had to re-image and re-language the basic truths that were packaged in the old cosmology. As I grew older, I began to think for myself, instead of being told what to think.

Modern cosmology

So, a major turning point came when I changed my understanding of the universe. The universe is about 15 billion years old. There are 200 billion stars in our galaxy and there are 200 billion galaxies. 65 million years ago, dinosaurs became extinct. 30 thousand years ago, homo sapiens appeared. If we imagine that our 15-billion-year history was compressed into a single day, human beings appeared in the last few seconds to midnight. In the contemporary worldview, we are late comers to this planet.

However, according to conservative Christian theology, human beings came into paradise and things went wrong. This perspective is nonsense. Human beings did not come into a harmonious world. It’s no wonder I had to change my literal understanding of a God who lived elsewhere. It is no wonder I had to express my faith in the language and images of the contemporary world view, which was quite different from that in which traditional faith was shaped. What I found was that the new cosmology unfolded the deeper meaning and truth of Christianity.

My understanding of God changed

As an adolescent, I was told, and I believed, the story about God driving Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden because of their disobedience and that we now had to endure death. We lost God’s friendship and we could not automatically go to Heaven. We failed! We blew it! We deserved punishment! Whether the Genesis story of Adam and Eve is literally true or not is not the issue here. The focus is on the way the story contributed to my understanding of God.

The image I had of God was of a localised Supreme Person existing somewhere up there, who overseers and takes offence at human wrongdoing. I believed in a transcendent God able to exist somewhere else and without any creative reality. My image of God was a strict judge ready to punish. A God who is distant from us and who sits back and watches everything unfold, which contributed to the tremendous guilt I felt when I made mistakes. Salvation from my understanding was being primarily concerned with getting to heaven. I could save my soul by being perfect. Much later, I realised that Jesus didn’t come to change God’s attitude towards us, but to change our attitude towards God.

I changed my concept of God. As a mature Christian, I believe in a God who is everywhere and who can be seen and known in the beauty and wonder of creation. A God who is compassionate, merciful and forgiving, and who is intimately connected with human experience. The God who emerges is a God who is more life-giving and more infinitely loving than we have ever imagined.

My understanding of Jesus also changed

My faith-life began with a childlike belief in Jesus, who was my Lord and he was somehow different. He proved he was divine because he did wonderful magical things called miracles. He was The One because he had, from the moment he was born, full consciousness of God. I believed every word and event that happened, exactly as recorded.

A new doorway was opened with the outpouring of biblical scholarship that I received in the seminary, and I began to question the old familiar world that I inherited. I came to understand God as an incarnational presence, who was with us from the beginning of creation, rather than an external manipulator who punishes us when bad things happen.

Also, and most importantly, nowhere in the Gospels could I find that Jesus said that sinners had lost God’s friendship. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Jesus wanted to rid the Jews of any belief, attitude or religious practices that suggested that God was not close to them in an unconditional loving way. He was clearly focused on people changing their incorrect images of God (Morwood, 1997, p15).

From my studies, I learned that our divine saviour, who offered his life for the sins of the world, was a theological interpretation, which was developed decades after his death on the cross. I eventually realised that many stories in the Bible were not to be taken literally. The story of the fall is a myth, which is not to be confused with fairy tales. Myths plumb into the depths of mystery to help us find insights into the deepest questions of life and life’s meaning and purpose. One insight is, we are created in God’s image and likeness. We are made to live in friendship with God. This gives meaning to who we are.

Personal perspective distorts

What I have found from all this was that we must be careful so that our approach to reading about Jesus is not coloured by our own history. If we cannot move beyond the literal sense, then that is all we will find in The Bible. We will find passages to support our exclusive ways of seeing reality. To stay with the literalist, fundamentalist understanding of scripture is to have no understanding of the way thought patterns of particular cultures influenced what was written and how authors along with the Christian communities shaped and packaged doctrine (Morwood, 1997, p35).

What I found was that we are less likely to distort the historical Jesus if we try to see him as human like us. What changed me was not meeting the divine Jesus, but rather meeting the human Jesus. God worked through the human Jesus, and he did marvellous deeds. I began to notice words actually written into the Gospels that clearly indicated a novel discovery of the ‘human’ side of Jesus. I would like to present to you, for you to grasp in the reading of scripture, a wonderful vision of Jesus that he is like us. This is simply a sharing of my personal story about The Story.

My point is, in our reading of Scripture, let’s not neglect the human reality of Jesus. Let’s remember that after his death, layer upon layer of interpretation and understanding was put on his life and ministry so it has become extremely difficult to get to know the flesh and blood reality of Jesus (Morwood, 1997, p74).

If so, many questions arise! Who did this man really believe he was? What did he believe he was doing? What did he hope to achieve? Jesus spent most of his life in Nazareth in Galilee. Who most influenced his outlook? Who shaped his thinking? His parents! The Pharisees! We need to see that this man wrestled with the conditions of his time, trying to decide what his response would be.

Who is this book for?

This book is focused on the great question of Jesus’ identity. Mark presents us with this very important question, to which no dogmatic answer will suffice, and which he puts on Jesus’ lips the words, ‘Who do you say that I am?’ (Mark 8: 29). Jesus never answers this question. However, it is used as a catalyst whereby you are invited to question yourself.

Therefore, this book is for those who question the neat wrapping that has been handed down to Christians over the centuries. Those who are suspicious that the churches have not done enough to unwrap it, nor live it out, in a creative and liberating way. However, I cannot imagine many nonreligious or those disenchanted with religion reading this book, so my niche market is those openminded Christians who want to develop a Christ-like maturity. This book has been written at a level suitable for seminary students, priests, pastors and other serious readers.

While I don’t want to pre-empt what this book is about, my intention in writing is to challenge any imprisonment of Jesus, so as to release the human Jesus from the cultural package that has accumulated around the gospel stories. The neat wrapping I received is preoccupied with the divinity of Jesus, the divine superiority we attribute to Jesus, and this can be a gross distraction from really knowing the humanity of Jesus and can be a major obstacle to following him. So, what I am saying is that the humanity of Jesus has been put in jeopardy and seriously compromised by putting him on a divine pedestal and thus avoiding the challenge of a radical new way of being human. So, in reading the stories of Jesus, see with new eyes, the human Jesus. Listen with your heart and let the stories slip into your soul.

Both/and rather than either/or

As you read, the impression might be gained that I stress the allegorical at the expense of the literal. It is a case of both/and rather than either/or. While much of what has been written about Jesus is historical, the Gospel writers also present their information in symbolic form or allegorically. This editing process has to be taken into account if we are to release the human Jesus from the post-Easter Jesus.

Also, the impression might be gained, especially if you take isolated passages from what I have written, that I stress the humanity of Jesus over the divinity of Jesus. It is a case of both/and rather than either/or. While the humanity of Jesus is emphasised in this book, the divinity of Jesus forms the core of my faith. It is through the human heart of this extraordinary person, Jesus, that a window to God is opened (Andersen, 1994, p1).

Therefore, the wrapping that has encased the human Jesus is important. To experience the post-Easter Jesus, we need the wrapping that has been used over the centuries. However, I believe that the wrapping needs to be changed since it is based on the notion of an elsewhere God and does not emphasis the everywhere nature of God. In section three a radical different interpretation of the wrapping is offered by presenting Jesus as the one who revealed an everywhere God.

A personal reflection

Are there areas of the church’s teaching at which you are at odds? What immediately comes to mind?

Have you been conditioned to believe that human beings live in a state of exile from God, that all babies in the world are not born with God’s Spirit in them, that certain people are chosen by God, and that Jesus was the final and definite revelation of God? What do you think?

Part One

Releasing the Package

Chapter 1

The World of the Gospel Texts

Jesus of Nazareth remains the most important individual who has ever lived. No one else can match his record in the healing, education and liberation of humanity. Many have written about Jesus, but we have nothing from him: No documents written by him, no building in which he lived, not even a coin with his image on it.

The four gospel texts provide information about the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Initially the gospels were based on the interpretation of the believing Jewish community. So as an individual wanting to read a gospel, biblical scholarship is necessary for understanding. The gospels are divinely inspired, but they are human documents emanating from human history. They deserve critical study as well as reverence.

There are plenty of people who will tell you what the texts mean. But what angle are these people coming from? Therefore, read with suspicion about what you are told, watch out for your own pre-suppositions, and try to decipher the meaning of the text while taking note of the research concerning the two layers of gospel formation: the oral tradition and the historical setting.

What is a Gospel?

A common feature of each gospel is the announcement that everything will turn out well. Mark begins his work by saying this is the good news of Jesus, the Son of God. The gospels are good stories of one person’s life.

What is a Gospel? It’s not easy to describe the genre, the type of literature which can be labelled as ‘gospel’, because they are part narrative and part teaching. The Gospels are not eyewitness accounts, as every event recorded, and every word spoken happened because they were written many years after Jesus’ death. It is difficult to know the monthly, let alone daily pattern of Jesus’ public life. It is extremely difficult to discover the underlying chronology because the gospels are not newspapers or books that tell his life’s story in any detail. If we were to put all the information together from the four Gospels, they account for less than thirty days of Jesus’ life (Price, 2005, p7). There is very little information about his boyhood, or any information about his teenage years, his friends, his schooling and his early adult years. As the accumulated record of Jesus’ activity amounts to around one month’s worth, we are left with little of his story. The gospels are memories of the sort of person he was, not detailed accounts of his everyday activities (Andersen, 1994, p78).

About Mark in context

Why did I predominantly choose Mark as the gospel to read? Mark’s Gospel contains the briefest details of Jesus’ life. Mark’s introduction of him is being baptised by John in the Jordan, when he was about thirty (Luke 3: 23) ready to begin his public ministry. Mark is the most studied and scrutinised Gospel. I find it captivating and I have read it many times. Everything seems to happen in the space of a few months at the most. Mark’s Jesus is on an unstoppable course towards Jerusalem and the cross.

The authorship of Mark has been attributed to the disciple of Peter, called Mark. Mark’s Gospel was written in Rome, around 70 CE, and it is a product of and for a persecuted community who believed Jesus was the Messiah. It was the time of the severe persecutions of Christians by Nero in Rome. After the death of Peter and Paul, Mark an interpreter of Peter, transmitted his preaching to us in written form.

Mark’s Gospel was the first to be written, and both Luke and Matthew used Mark to write their gospels. While none of the synoptics use a highly polished Greek, Mark is something like a business letter and the other two are more like competent writers in a local newspaper. They improved the style of Mark. The rough diction of Mark suggests that it was meant to be heard, rather than read privately, as ancient drama rather than as a modern novel.

Also, Mark’s theology is not as developed as that of the other Synoptics. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is called divine only twice, whereas Matthew and Luke use frequently ‘Lord’ as a term implying divine power. Mark carefully calls Jesus ‘Son of Man’, a phrase that can be translated as the ‘Human One’, which is a major point of Mark’s Gospel. In this human person is found the likeness and energy of God.

In Mark there are no final words or answers, no neat conclusions, but a challenge and an invitation, They ran away, for they were afraid. And, what about you! Will you also run away?

The editing processes

A strong oral tradition existed in the early communities for about forty years before the Gospels were written, and the life and events in these communities shaped the content.

Each writer of the Gospels gives a different account of Jesus’s greatness that reflects the special memories of the Christian communities for which they were writing.

It is enormously important to understand how and when the Gospels were formed and how this influenced what was written. Without this realisation, the Gospels will be quoted in a literalist fashion to prove that Jesus knew all along that he was the Son of God. What can easily happen, and has happened, is that those who do not take into account the development of the Gospel tradition, naively confuse the final stage of what the evangelist have written with the initial stage – the words and deeds of the historical Jesus (Morwood, 1997, p57).

Scripture scholars try to strip away the early church’s influence or the influence of Mark’s community on the Gospel. Biblical scholars would say that Mark’s account of Jesus’ life and mission is highly theological. The so-called messianic secret tells us more about the early Christian community seeking to find answers for Jesus’ rejection. Mark’s Jesus consistently tells his disciples not to tell anyone he is the messiah. Therefore, the ‘messianic secret’ is more a literacy device invented by the author, Mark.

Also, a significant point, if we are to ascertain the truth of what happens, is to understand that the resurrection was like a filter through which the writers looked back on Jesus’ life. The post-resurrection perspective of Jesus’ divinity is written into the Gospels as if that understanding were there in his lifetime. We need to know it was not there, in his lifetime (Morwood, 1997,