Telling the Story of Jesus: a Historical-Metaphorical Lens
Rev. Lee Ann Bryce
Community Christian Church
March 20, 2011
Text: Matthew 14:28-30
Last week we began the Lenten sermon series, Telling the Story of Jesus. We acknowledged that how we tell the story of Jesus matters greatly. We explored the primary ways that the story of Jesus is told in our culture. Today we continue by considering the value of using a historical metaphorical lens through which to understand the story of Jesus. I’m going to break those two (boring-sounding) words down to make clear what I mean. Let’s start with “historical.”
How do we know what we think we know about Jesus? Where does our information come from? A primary source (and some would say virtually the only source outside of an obscure reference to Jesus by a Jewish historian) is through the gospels included in our Bible, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These are called canonical gospels because they are a part of the Christian canon, the Bible. Additional gospels exist, such as the Gospel of Thomas, that are not a part of the Bible. Some draw information from these gospels , but I won’t include them right now, merely because there is not universal agreement between Christians about the extra-canonical gospels. I will also mention that some people are informed about Jesus by what they consider to be direct, mystical experiences with Jesus. I certainly don’t rule out that possibility, but since the information gained is so subjective, I won’t spend much time there either. So, for mainstream Christians, the primary source of information about Jesus comes from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
It’s important to consider what the gospels really are. Are they historical documents? Are they written by divine hand? Are they factual? Let me sum it up with a statement by Marcus Borg to clarify what it means to say we tell the story of Jesus through a historical lens: The gospels, (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) are understood as representing a developing tradition of early Christian communities, written in the last third of the first century. Remember Jesus’ crucifixion is set around the year 33 and there is wide agreement that the gospels are all dated between 70 and 100.
To say that the gospels are products of early Christian communities in the last third of the first century has some implications that I’ll start with specifying. First, if you use a historical lens to consider Jesus that means that the gospels are not a direct divine product. Rather, they are documents written within early Christian communities. They reflect the developing Christian traditions from which they sprung. They tell us how our spiritual ancestors in these communities saw Jesus and his significance.
During the decades between Jesus’ historical life and the writing of the gospels, the traditions about Jesus developed. They changed. They evolved. This is not a supposition, but can be clearly demonstrated from the gospels themselves. (In past sermons I have shown how a story that is included in several gospels revealed an evolution of how Jesus is viewed and what is most important to those communities. If you want to know more about the specifics, come see me.) For now I’ll just state: the gospels do not provide historical accounts of Jesus’ life. They tell us how his followers told the story of Jesus several decades after his death.
The gospels were the product of Christian communities but they were not written by individual authors, as we understand an author writing a book today. Today, we think of an author writing a book, most often for people they don’t know. (Kathryn Shay has never met most of the readers of her books.) Authors hope to see a billion copies sold on Amazon. Each gospel, in contrast, was written by an individual, yes, however the gospel author wrote in order to preserve in writing the tradition of his community. This was his motivation. And so, each gospel proclaimed the significance Jesus had come to have in each community as the 1st century came to an end.
If you consider the gospels to represent the evolving beliefs and practices of their developing traditions about Jesus in the years after his death, then you read and interpret them differently. The stories are not eye-witness accounts of Jesus, told for the purpose of providing factually accurate reports of his life and message. The gospel authors are not crack reporters depending on scrupulous research or the guidance of the Spirit for that matter to produce a text of unvarnished history. That is not their perspective. Rather, the gospels are not primarily concerned with historical reporting. They combine memory and testimony. They are attempts to proclaim the story of Jesus in and for their time and place. They built on the memories of Jesus, even as they went further to include fuller understandings that had developed in the decades since Jesus’ death. They take these familiar stories of Jesus and they tell them in such a way as to be pertinent to their community. IN short, it’s sort of like we do today. That is what I mean by considering Jesus’ story through a historical lens.
And so we come to the second word I’m using to describe the lens through which we can tell Jesus’ story. The first is historical and the second, metaphorical. As the gospels are snapshots that describe a particular communities evolving understand of Jesus and as they seek to appropriate the memory of Jesus to a new time and reality, much of the language of the gospels is metaphorical. Metaphor refers to the more-than-literal, more-than-factual meaning of language. I describe it as more-than-literal because of the bias in our culture that metaphor is inferior to factuality. Metaphor opens up a much wider message than a literal story, limited to one time and place long ago. I’m talking about the surplus of meaning that language can carry. Indeed, that’s likely why gospel stories survived because Jesus’ followers understood them as more than literal.
Let me offer an illustration from the gospel of Matthew. I won’t read the entire passage so let me review the story. The disciples are in a boat on the Sea of Galilee. It is night, there is a storm, their boat is “battered by the waves,” and they are “far from land.” They are in danger and they are afraid. In the darkness, Jesus comes toward them, walking on the sea. Terrified, they think he’s a ghost and they cry out in fear. But Jesus says, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” (Matthew 14:27)
Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.” -Matthew 14:28-30
Let’s contrast a literal reading with a factual reading of this text. A literal reading emphasizes that this event really happened. Jesus really walked on the sea, and so did Peter, until he became afraid, and then he sank. Read literally, what does this story mean? Is it simply a report of a remarkable and unrepeatable incident that happened a long time ago? Or does it also mean that we can literally walk on water if only we’re not afraid and have enough faith in Jesus? Is this the point of the story? That we can walk on water?
Let’s turn to this story as metaphor. This is a story about fear and faith. When Peter became afraid, he sank, and his fear is named by Jesus as “little faith.” And so it is. With little faith, we flounder around, we sink. But with faith, we stay afloat, even in the midst of darkness, storm, and peril. Which reading adds more depth to your spiritual walk? Yes! I can walk on water like Peter! or Faith helps me stay afloat when I am afraid. Which truth means more to you?
I want to add that hearing the metaphorical meaning of these stories does not preclude the possibility of their factuality. You may choose to believe that Jesus really did walk on water and that Peter did too. Believe whatever you want about whether the gospel stories happened the way they did or not. I’m suggesting the more fruitful conversation will come from the question, “What do these stories about Jesus mean?” and that the power of the message, indeed the truth of the message does not depend on the factuality of the stories.
When you begin to understand the story of Jesus in this way; when you consider the value of a historical metaphorical way of telling his story, then you begin to see an important distinction that emerges between the pre-Easter Jesus and the post-Easter Jesus. These are terms Borg and others use to describe the distinction between who Jesus was before his death (rather how Jesus was understood before his death) and the significance that Jesus took on after his death. Next week, we continue with telling the story of Jesus by examining this distinction.
I am indebted to Marcus Borg for his lectures at the Canandaigua UCC church I attended last September, as well as Borg’s book, Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary, (HarperSanFrancisco, 2006) as a resource for this Lenten sermon series, Telling the Story of Jesus.
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