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VIII. Jesus (1954) <<Previous | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | Next>> All of this was made possible by one single man, Jesus of Nazareth. Without Jesus of Nazareth no Christianity, without Christianity no western world, - but with Christianity in the long run no Jesus of Nazareth, and with the western world no Jesus of Nazareth or Socrates or any of the others we have been considering either. He is, so to speak, the flower of them all. It almost seems as if the whole discovery of the human Self which had been made by these philosophers would not have become a tradition without the teachings, ideas, and deeds of Jesus of Nazareth. Perhaps it would never have even come alive, because none of them could have reached the masses in the way that he did. We need only consider Socrates who had said it all before him, Socrates who had taught that every human being should be a philosophical being, that every human being should be free; Socrates could not reach them. Socrates taught the Athenians and they did not understand him. He, who really approached everyone in his daily life, he, who had this tremendous force of philosophy, who could permanently use the most apparently insignificant everyday experiences of human beings in order to show them how miraculous they are, how deep are the indications for the true life in every human person---he failed, in the most highly educated community of Athens. His entire basic approach would have been lost if it could not have been told to the masses, and this would be true despite Plato who came soon after him, and who established the "expert", the "teacher", because he did not believe that any of that was possible, because he thought he knew that it can never be told to the masses. Jesus of Nazareth was the one who told it all to the masses. His capacity to speak in parables, to speak in the terms of everyday life, was even greater than the capacity of Socrates. He did not make even the slightest use of philosophical terminology, even though his thinking contains a very consequent conceptual line. His concepts are as consistent and as related as were Socrates'. He doesn't even need to mention them all. He never speaks philosophically, even in the Socratic sense. He speaks in an everyday language, and he uses metaphors in order to create parables out of them, but more importantly, he does one thing more: He shows to everybody, what everybody can do. He makes out of himself a symbol for everyone, therefore it is said he brings hope into the world. The message of Jesus of Nazareth is the message of the final hope of man, the hope of eternity, of immortality, and of the forgiving of sins. There is a deep philosophical truth to that, (and we are considering here only philosophical truth). Jesus of Nazareth gave hope to man; Namely, the hope that every man could become the Son of God. This hope that nobody is left out, that nobody will ever be left out, is the hope that he brought into the world, and it is the hope by which all free men still live whether they know it or not. Socrates did not have hope. He had a certain certainty about the capabilities of the free and creative human being and this certainty is what he brought to man, but hope he did not bring. It would be easy to dismiss Socrates as an exceptional human being (as Plato did), as someone who is superhuman, as someone who does the kinds of things that happen very rarely, the philosopher king, the born leader of humanity who should be the leader of humanity, because other human beings will never reach that. Jesus of Nazareth said, to one of the men who was crucified with him "Today still, you shall be with me in paradise" (Luke.23:143). To everyone who came to him he said "your sins may be forgiven". He excluded no-one. He expected that everyone could follow him, and he did not mean that it would be extremely hard to follow him, but rather that everyone has within him the capacity to be able to do so if only he makes the decision for it. He can do it. Man is a being that can be: That can be the Son of God. What does the Son of God mean here? One of our main points is to clear this up in a nonreligious sense and to see if it has a philosophical meaning, for if it does then we have made a big step. If it does not, then the whole phenomenon is incomprehensible, yet nevertheless true. It is true, because if we could ask of everybody (Jews, Moslems, etc.) the question: "If anybody could have been the Son of God, who"?, they would have to answer "Jesus of Nazareth", but why? What is the secret of that? Why is this man in one sense, so exceptional, and yet in another sense, so general? Why is it so easy to believe that this man could be at one moment, the Son of God, and yet at another, the Son of Man. For the answer to these questions we must look at the story of his life as it is told to us in the Gospels, but just the story, nothing more, and here another miracle happens. The miracle is that the story convinces us. It is one of the most convincing stories ever told. I said before that no barbarian could ever have been converted to Judiasm, to the Homeric religion, or to the teachings of Socrates, but that he could be converted to Christianity, and this is because the whole of Christianity is really contained in this simple story of the life and deeds of Jesus. This story is not meant to be comprehended. It does not even need to be understood. Rather, it hits everyone right in the center of his own being. We have not even begun to explain the success of those early Christian missionaries of former ages (when they still were more Christian then they are today), when they really did not need to sell rum and whiskey and gunpowder together with Christianity (and the flag) but rather, like the Jesuit Fathers who traveled all over Asia, went into the darkness of Germany to utter the words of the Gospels to barbarians who could not even be subdued by the sword of the Romans. And they convinced them, they converted them to Christianity, and they had basically nothing to tell them at first except a simple story, a story that in its most simple form is told in the Gospel of Saint Matthew. It is the story of a child being born and of a great hope being brought into the world. Of a young boy growing up and of a man creating a life all of his own and dying for that life on the cross. There is no more to the story. It contains birth, life, and death ... nothing else, but it contains those three fundamental and eternal facts of every human being's existence in such a way that it gives a meaning to them that has never been excelled and cannot be excelled. It is the story of the essence of man himself. It applies to everybody and is told in a form so simple that the utmost meaning is given to it. It also has an historical indication. Every nation has its stories, and the Roman world at that time was full of stories. We have the rich mythological stories of India and we have the Mediterranean world which is full of the most amazing and meaningful stories, all of which deal with birth, life, and death. Yet this simple story has been victorious over then all, this story which, if it is concerned with an illegitimate child, then it is a very special kind of child. Once again, we have been told many stories of children like that, for instance there is the story of Theseus. Here, a great Athenian king goes to a foreign Greek province, and the daughter of the man who rules this province suddenly realizes that this man, this Athenian king, will engender a child that shall be born to rule, and so both father and daughter decide they will seduce this man so that his daughter might have this child. This child is Theseus, but he is a king. Abraham is the leader of a tribe, Moses is the creator of a nation, Buddha is a king who leaves his kingdom. Here, a nothing is born, a naked babe in misery with no social standing. For the first time the story is told of an absolutely naked infant which we all are essentially in such a way that the entire thing is boiled down to its essentials. Let us see what the inherent value of every human being can be if we deprive that human being of everything that makes him valid and give him only himself. This child is the symbol of everybody being nothing but himself. There it is given to us, and it disillusions the whole world at first. This fantastic being surprises everyone. We have the kings of the East, the wise kings (The Magi) who see a star, and as if by a miracle, they know that someone absolutely significant has been born. What do they expect? They expect to come into the great palace of a great king (for where else could such a miracle take place, where else would the most significant human being be born), and they find instead, a naked infant in a manger under circumstances that are almost unbelievable for a significant birth. The significance is the birth itself, nothing else. The birth of a human being is the most significant fact in man's world ... that is what the story is trying to tell us. It gives hope by itself, because with this child only the grace of God has provided. Everybody can identify himself. The hope that is in man and in every man's birth is discovered here. Every child born into the world is an infinite hope for mankind. It can be born under the most insignificant of circumstances, however just by being born as a human being it has infinite value, that is what the story tells us, and it continues and proceeds along the same lines. Everything that happens gets its tremendous significance out of its very insignificance. There we see Jerusalem where Jesus is finally coming to meet his end and almost the whole of the Jewish people believe that this is the Messiah, this is the king of the Jews who has come to deliver them from the Romans and erect a Jewish kingdom again. And finally, as the whole crowd waits to welcome him, the king finally comes on a donkey with a branch of palms in his hand. It has been said frivolously,and unfortunately by an American, that Jesus of Nazareth was the greatest salesman that ever lived, because he sold his goods to almost everybody. In a not so frivolous way we might say that he was the greatest human relations agent that has ever lived, if we only take human relations in the real sense of the word. He certainly knew how to signify an idea, to nail an idea down by a gesture or by a deed. It is one of the greatest things ever staged, so to speak, this entrance into Jerusalem with a whole people waiting for the unusual, the exceptional, the great king who shall deliver them, and there he comes as unusual as no one would ever expect. So unusual that you almost cannot recognize how unusual it is. It is, so to speak, too damned unusual for the crowd that see him. Again, the insignificance that is of the greatest significance. So it is with his death as the Gospels relate it. He seems to have said only a few words: Namely, "My Lord, my Lord, why has't thou forsaken me"? (4) Others relate that he also said "forgive them Father, for they know not what they do" (Luke. 23:34). These words are certainly spoken in his meaning. Perhaps he spoke them too, and then the other words were added. I, for my own part, think that he did not speak so many words, only those first few. It is again the significance of insignificance. With those few words he confesses to suffer like every human being suffers who in the hour of death will always think that God has forsaken him, when He has not. He has to die on the cross as everyone had to die who opposed the Romans, or who was opposed to the violence of their times. A most insignificant death which seems only singular to us, but it was the common death of everyone who did not conform to the power of that time, and we often forget that he died with two others who die the same death as he, and who also say how insignificant it is. Again, there is the greatest significance possible, because here it is shown that the cross is the thing we are all nailed on. That every human being who has his validity only in himself might in the end have to take his cross upon himself, because he dared to go a way that leads to real human life, and so this has to be paid for by death. A simple story. Now, the teacher comes in. |
