REFLECTIONS ON CROSSAN'S BOOK
Crossan's book is easy to read, but it is not so easy to digest. I have no problem understanding that the historical Jesus was practicing a form of non-violent resistance against the inroads of the Roman empire in the Jewish homeland. I have no problem understanding that the historical Jesus was an extraordinary person and that people felt like they had come to life through interacting with him. However, in this new book about the Lord's Prayer, Crossan manages to intimate that the messages expressed in this prayer are not just important for our understanding of the historical Jesus in his historical context and time, but also important for our time. Perhaps the Lord's Prayer is important for our time. I am not prepared to argue that it is not.
But will Christians today who read Crossan's book and are enriched by his rich understanding of the Lord's Prayer be transformed by their enriched understanding of it? If they were transformed, would we expect to see them manifest this transformation through their new efforts to promote bottom-up change in our time? I'd like to see more people emerge in our time who could help promote bottom-up change. This would be exciting to see.
There is probably no harm in praying this prayer. The prayer can give us a sense of life about the kingdom of God on this earth. But just how efficacious can praying this prayer be in transforming us today?
For lack of better terminology, I am using the terms "transformation" and "transforming" here to characterize the kind of experience that the historical Jesus and his followers had. I am reasonably certain that I myself have not had a comparable experience. Moreover, their cultural conditions at the time contributed to the kind of transformative experience that they had. Furthermore, my cultural conditions growing up and living in the United States are significantly different from their cultural conditions. Our different cultural conditions mean that it was probably easier for them to have the transformative experiences that they had than it would be for me to have a comparable transformative experience. However, in saying these things, I am not trying to discourage anybody from hoping and praying to have a transformative experience comparable to the kind of transformative experience that the historical Jesus and his followers had. But people today probably should not expect this prayer to be efficacious in bringing about such a transformation in the short-term.
Finally, I should say that it obviously suits Crossan's purpose as a historical Jesus scholar to work with the contrast of distributive-justice/non-violence versus retributive-justice/violence. But how does love fit in? Is love in the sense of agape-love different from distributive justice, or is agape-love a component part of distributive justice? Can we have distributive justice without agape-love, or would such apparent distributive justice just be the outward form without the inherent substance of agape-love? Can we have agape-love without distributive justice? Put differently, how can we experience agape-love without giving something (at least a hug or a pat on the back or a word of encouragement)? Or can the two terms "love" in the sense of agape-love and "distributive justice" perhaps be used interchangeably for one another?
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