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18 Jesus Loving Neighbors Mary Hulst To write about Jesus is to invite critique. Those who believe he is the Son of God will take issue with the recitation of cold facts, as if he were simply someone who lived long ago and whose teachings remain influential even to this day. To those who believe that he was simply someone who lived long ago and whose teachings remain influential to this day, any nod toward his life as salvific or his death as a sacrificial necessity will raise eyebrows if not hackles. So this piece will attempt to walk between these perspectives. It offers the facts and reviews the teaching while noting that understanding Jesus’ teachings differs for those who believe that he was the Son of God. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, a small village just south of Jerusalem , in the year 4 BCE. (An error in a monk’s calendar has his actual birth off by four years; because of this most scholars do not believe that Jesus was born in the year 0.) His parents fled from Bethlehem to Egypt to avoid the wrath of King Herod, a Roman underling who, having heard from astrologers that a new king had been born, threatened death to all boys in Bethlehem who were two years of age or younger. Jesus’ parents, Mary and Joseph, returned to the region after Herod’s death and eventually settled in Nazareth, a village west of the Sea of Galilee. It was here that Jesus was trained in the Jewish faith, though little is known about the years of his childhood. It is apparent from his later teaching that he was trained to be a rabbi, and the trajectory hinted at in the Gospels follows the normal route prescribed for rabbis: learn a trade from one’s father while also being 2 .   19 Jesus trained in the Jewish scriptures, become apprenticed to a rabbi, and then launch into a teaching career in one’s early thirties. In the Gospels that tell of his life (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), Jesus begins his teaching ministry around the age of thirty-three. But he not only teaches, he also heals people from their diseases and in a few cases raises them from the dead. This draws many people to him, as the Jews of that era were eager for any leader who gave hope of releasing them from the oppression of Rome. Jesus’ skills as a master teacher and miracle worker made many wonder if he was going to be their new king. Jesus, however, did not seem in any way drawn to political leadership , and this was disappointing to many. Jesus instead seemed most concerned with inviting them into “the kingdom of heaven,” and declared that in his presence “the kingdom of heaven [had] come near.” For three years he traveled throughout the land of Israel, teaching and preaching his ideas about the kingdom of heaven. People flocked to his ministry. This riled some of the other Jewish religious leaders, who (according to the Gospels) were both envious of his ministry and concerned that he would stir up a revolution that would bring the wrath of Rome upon them. In the end, Jesus did nothing of the sort. During the week of Passover, a Jewish feast commemorating the liberation from Egypt centuries before, Jesus was crucified at the age of thirty-six. He died, and was buried in a tomb outside Jerusalem. For some, the story ends here. For others, this is when the story really begins. Christians believe that Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples. The Gospels, in fact, record that Jesus was with his followers for forty days after his resurrection. Then, after commissioning them to go and make more disciples, he ascended into heaven, promising that he would come back someday. Some may think that Jesus’ teachings are helpful and intriguing regardless of what one believes about his death and resurrection. When he teaches people not to worry, for example, or calls them to care for the needy members of society, it is easy to see how those instructions are beneficial regardless of what one may believe about Jesus’ divinity. But the core of Jesus’ teaching is a message about love, and that love is defined as sacrificial and other-focused, and here is where the death and resurrection of Jesus matter a great deal. The word translated as “love” in Jesus’ teachings is the Greek word agape...

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