From my brother’s blog
Dear Jesus,
There is very little about you that we know with absolute certainty. One of those few things we can be fairly certain about is that you were executed by the Roman Empire via crucifixion.
There are a lot of different theories about why you were executed, when you were executed, exactly how your execution was carried out, who really wanted you executed, etc. Regardless of those theories, the fact consistently remains that you died after being nailed to a cross.
I imagine it hurt like hell.
There are many in this world who believe that your suffering and death was a symbolic sacrifice that atoned for the sins of the world past, present, and future. Believe it or not, the cross, the Roman execution device on which you agonized, is now a symbol of belief in a complex faith system related to your death.
There are others who believe that you were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, saying and doing seemingly incendiary things in a powder keg of rebellious Jewish energy, and the Romans were quickly extinguishing anything that remotely resembled a match. Your powerful ministry was ended early by grave misfortune and misundertanding.
There are still others who cannot figure out why you died the way you did. If your movement was politically or religiously dangerous, why did they allow your disciples to survive? Why would a popular, devout Jew be suddenly hated by his people? Why would a non-violent rabbi who encouraged the paying of Roman taxes be a threat to the Empire? These are difficult questions that people struggle to answer definitively.
I’m sorry to say, Jesus, that people seem to be a lot more concerned with your death than your life. For a great multitude, your death offers an avenue to heaven; eternal salvation for all who believe in this meaning. In your earthly life you taught others how to live their earthly lives. However, since life on earth would be but a flicker of eternity in heaven, those teachings are nice, but not necessary.
Others want to understand your life and teachings, but most accounts of your existence are unreliable at best, shaped by the interests and contexts of the authors who wrote them. The only thing that seems to be universally corroborated is your death, so historians must rely on it to piece together what was true of your life.
I imagine you said and did a lot of interesting things; I wish we could be sure what they were. People these days reflect their own psyches off of you. They see the Jesus that fits them best.
We all do.
The problem is that not everyone’s Jesus can co-exist. People have argued since before they cut you down from the cross about who you were, what you are, and what that says about God. People have fought bloody wars over you. Relationships have shattered over you.
Your passion turned into a passion for all of us. Maybe that’s what you intended. Maybe you would be saddened to hear it. I won’t ever know for sure.
I know you supposedly said otherwise, but nothing really ended when you died. You turned into the Western world’s most familiar icon, and they are still waiting for your Kingdom of God to be realized.
It is never finished.
-Brady