The Real Jesus?

     
Dear Fellow Travelers,
     For some reason, I have believed most of my life that these days would be the best days of my life; after all, I am 64 years old and have had plenty of time to rehearse the final act of my life’s drama. However, I have the feeling that my vision of these Golden Years was, indeed, seen through a dark and clouded glass.
     Without going through all the various details, let me cut to the chase and get to the point: I am more convinced than ever that those of us who call ourselves Christians have been deceived (really, seriously deceived) concerning Jesus, and I am just as convinced that the deception is intertwined in the fence we call “Christianity” (the fence that keeps all the Christian denominations corralled) much like the branches of a trumpet vine intertwine one’s backyard fence. Sure, the blossoms on the trumpet vine are very beautiful but removing the branches from the fence is very difficult—almost impossible—which is why I believe these Golden Years might not be quite what I have imagined.
     Anyway, I never dreamed that I would be in such a determined search to discover and to know the real Jesus, not the Jesus that Christian theologians have contrived, in order to make Him fit into their varying belief systems, but the Jesus of the Bible—the One who grew up like a tender shoot out of parched ground; the One who loved the poor, the lame, the blind, the crippled but shunned the religious; the One who spoke in parables, not to be understood but to bring even more confusion; the One who dared to refuse the mirrors of a thousand opinions and, instead, to choose to do only that which He saw His Father doing and to say only that which His Father told Him to say; the One who refused to get caught up in the religion of His day and, instead, to usher into His day His Father’s Kingdom (Empire); the One who dared to live outside the religious fences of His day and socialize with prostitutes and drunks; the One who had no reputation to uphold, no theological paradigm to defend—the Jesus who is the Son of God, the Jewish Messiah, and the Gentile’s Redeemer!
     I really do want to discover Him and get to know Him not only for me, but also for you because I really do believe that we are missing something—something incredibly good; however, the journey will be very difficult. Breaking up reinforced concrete always is, you know.
     Just thought I would tell you what is going on in me!