The Challenge of Jesus

Today one could find my body at both of my jobs depending on which hour you looked, but my mind was elsewhere. After my first shift ended, I headed straight to the park to be able to devour a few pages. After my second shift, downtown Franklin was my destination, enjoying the tunes from a street band outside of McCreary's while I focused on the task at hand. And I did it. I finally finished N.T. Wright's The Challenge of Jesus, and all I can say is wow! Anyone unfamiliar with N.T. Wright's should become familiar very fast. He has certainly given me a new picture of Jesus and his mission in relation to the first century. And consequently, my reading of Jesus in the bible has come alive lately. I'm so intrigued by this Jesus. I want to know him. And he is radically more complex than the Jesus I grew up knowing. But the best thing about the book is not the history lesson that Wright gives, but the last two chapters where he applies the first six chapters to today's postmodern world. You really need to read it for yourself, but I will leave you with a poem that Wright leaves his readers with. It was penned after visiting the Louvre and being incredibly disappointed at the Mona Lisa being behind thick glass due to recent security concerns. He was unable to view the intricate eyes of the portrait without seeing the eyes of all the other onlookers -- including his own -- in the glass's reflection. He thought that the scenario could be seen as a great metaphor for postmodernity: "What seems like knowledge is really the reflection of your own ideas, your own predispositions or inner world. You can't trust anything; you have to be suspicious of everything." To this idea, though, he offers a challenge:

A Paris newcomer, I'd never been
Followed by those dark eyes, bewitched by that
Half-smile. Meaning, like beauty, teases, dancing
In the soft spaces between portrait, artist,
And the beholder's eye. But now, twice shy,
She hides behind a veil of wood and glass;
And we who peer and pry into her world
See cameras, schoolchildren, other eyes,
Other disturbing smiles. So, now, we view
The world, each other, God, through prison glass:
Suspicion, fear, mistrust--projections of
Our own anxieties. Is all our knowing
Only reflection? Let me trust, and see,
And let love's eyes pursue, and set me free.