I tried to talk but the intense pain in my jaw allowed only grotesque sounds. The man gently put one hand over my mouth and with the other raised one finger to his lips.
“No need to talk just now.”
His face came into focus, the face I had seen in the light, filled with kindness and compassion. Again, I felt the wholeness, the Presence of God.
Like a physician examining a patient, he touched my body in several places and asked each time.
“Is this painful?”
All I could manage in response were whispered sounds resembling “yes” and “no.” Each time I tried to say more he gently placed one hand on my mouth and raised a finger of the other to his lips.
We soon discovered that the most painful places were my ribs and jaw, both probably broken. The rest of my body was badly bruised, bloodied and sore, with several lacerations, especially around my face. Soon I was sitting up as he soothed my wounds with oil and wine.
“Can you ride?” he asked, pointing to a donkey standing a few feet away.
I nodded, not really knowing whether I could or not.
He helped me to my feet and on to the donkey. Pain filled my body. My head began to spin. Lying across the donkey’s back, blood rushed to my head. Again there was merciful darkness.
The next thing I remember were the voices of the Stranger and another man. They both took me from the donkey and into a house. Inside they lay me on a soft pallet where the Stranger again gently poured water in my clenched mouth and nursed my wounds with oil and wine.
“You are safe now,” he said to me.
I looked into his face filled with light, and I knew I was safe.
In semiconsciousness I heard the Stranger and the other man talking. It soon became clear we were at an inn and the man was the innkeeper.
The Stranger gave him some money and said, “Please care for him and when I return I will repay you whatever you spend.”
“What is his name?” the innkeeper asked.
That’s when I realized that the Stranger had never once asked for my name or where I was from.
“I don’t know,” the Stranger said. “Perhaps you can discover this when he is able to talk.”
The Stranger came to me, looked into my eyes and said softly, “Don’t be afraid. You are safe.” The same words the figure in the light had used. His face then became that now familiar light of love. And then he added, “You were lost but now found, dead but now alive.”
I wanted the Stranger to know who I was. I tried to say my name, but the words stayed in my mind.
As the Stranger turned to leave, I spoke but no one heard me. “I am Jesus. Jesus of Nazareth.”
Then he was gone, but I was not afraid and I knew I was safe for I had been in the Presence of God . . .
Selah
The Backstory
The most enigmatic person in the history of Western civilization was Jesus of Nazareth. The fact that he lived cannot be escaped. Western culture has even arranged time itself according to before or after the time when Jesus lived. The influence of his life has been unavoidable for over two thousand years, yet, little to nothing is known about his actual life. Exactly who was this man?
This observation is nothing new. Quite the contrary, the quest and search for the historical Jesus has been going on for several centuries and in earnest since the eighteenth century. The myriad of writings on the subject is overwhelming. One can discover with a trip to any theological library, or better yet with several clicks of a mouse, a plethora of theories, analyses, and conjectures about the historical Jesus.
Yet among all the scholarship and words, all we really know about the man, Jesus of Nazareth, beyond what is in the Bible and other religious texts, is that he lived, had a brother named James, and was crucified by the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate for insurrection. We know these things primarily from two brief extrabiblical references, one the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus,1 and the other the Roman historian Tacitus.2 All else we know about Jesus comes from people who believed him to be the Messiah to the Jewish people and/or the Christ of Christianity—God in the flesh. In most cases these “believers” are quite up front about making a case for their beliefs.
Conversational Stories
The following pages are not a search for the historical Jesus or a critique of traditional Christian belief, but rather a different perspective on how we may experience both through conversational stories. Conversational stories are the stories we tell as we share experience of our lives within the give and take of conversation. These stories often lie just beneath the surface of crafted stories told about someone rather than by them. As we imaginatively unveil events and personal experiences behind and within the artistically construed stories told by and about Jesus in the Bible, a different perspective on Jesus emerges.
In the South, where I am from, storytelling is as natural as breathing. Having been born into, nurtured by, and participated in a storytelling family and culture, I find my conversations usually center on, or eventually come around to, stories. The majority of these are not made-up tales but recollections of actual life experiences.
Conversational stories are personal. Most stories are about the one telling the story, either directly or indirectly. We have a tendency to tell our own stories.
It is conversational because one story usually leads to another. This may even be the essence of what makes a “good” story, that it elicits a story within the life of the listener.
Now, imagine personal, conversational stories in the life of Jesus, as he walks along a path with his disciples, or shares a meal with them, or as they sit under a night sky wondering, remembering, and telling their own stories. Imagine these stories then becoming what we now know as the parables and teachings of and about Jesus.
By imagining some of Jesus’ parables and teachings as his own stories we open a window that allows a glimpse into what may have been actual experiences in Jesus’ life, telling us more about who he was as a person, giving us more insight into how he became the mysterious, mythical person who changed the world.
As the enigma of a mythical Messiah and Christ fades, we realize we know more than we know we know, and discover a more human Jesus hidden within his own story.
When I was studying biblical Greek in seminary our professor, Wayne Merritt, ended most classes with a phrase of encouragement as he smiled wryly and looked out at confused faces and glazed eyes. “You know more than you know you know.”
I offer these same words of encouragement to you as we look at a few familiar parables, teachings, and stories by and about Jesus. By making a slight shift in perspective and viewing these experiences and events as if they were actually life events of Jesus, a portrait of the man Jesus begins to appear. Then our own stories begin to emerge from Jesus’ story and we really do know more that we know we know.
Primal Story
Regardless of all the things we do not know about the historical Jesus, one thing is certain. Jesus was a storyteller. He told stories in response to questions, stories when teaching, stories about the past, stories about the future, and even stories about other stories. In the gospels his stories were rarely if ever abstract, but rather grounded in human experiences and told with the purpose of communicating some aspect of compassion, love, power, abandonment, greed, generosity, suffering, death, grace, patience, and forgiveness.
There is also a dynamic at work in the gospels in which