Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?

Reflecting on the complexity of her own religious experience and the complex nature of Jesus, who “turns everything upside down—all our normal expectations,” and who is so unlike us in so many ways, Marilyn Sewell contends that we are all too comfortable with limited responses to the Jesus we profess to follow. We fund soup kitchens, but rarely ask uncomfortable questions about structures that sustain poverty. As a “Christian” nation, we are all too comfortable with war. While religious in many ways, we fail too often to recognize the uncomfortable truth that Jesus often associated with the unreligious: with prostitutes and the tax-collector traitors of the nation. As the essay reiterates, what is ultimately lost is the point that Jesus’ radical message focused on others, not on ourselves.