“The name Jesus underlines the real humanity of our Lord.” — William Barclay, Scottish Theologian

Just for a moment (or a year), I encourage you to hold the theological question and take up Jesus’ story as he lived it.

Along these lines, William Barclay spotted something noteworthy in the Gospels concerning how the writers remembered their subject.

In the Gospels [Jesus] is by far the commonest name of our Lord, for in them he is called by this simple name almost six hundred times. It is at first sight an astonishing fact that in the four Gospels the expression Jesus Christ occurs only four times, in Mark 1.1; Matt. 1.1; John 1.17; 17.3; and the expression Lord Jesus occurs only twice, and in both cases there is doubt about it. Luke 24:3 and Mark 16:19.

The Gospel writers appear to recognize and preserve by his name that humanity that qualifies Jesus’ experience.

I invite you to approach the human Jesus afresh, to visit Jesus’ experience as definitively human.

Speaking of travel routines, petty frustrations, and no shortcuts…

I was listening to the Gospel of Matthew as I was driving downtown on my commute. With cars all around me on the crowded six-lane street, I was constrained to the speed and flow of traffic. Stuck in traffic, I felt tense. It seemed like every red light was strategically positioned to stop our progress.

At any rate, inside my car, I listened carefully to the reader and the words of the Sermon on the Mount hoping my ears would spot some significant pattern that my eyes had failed to see. Heard something, I did, but it was not what I expected. There was a soft, subtle, pious-sounding music track playing in the background. And that was not all. I noticed a reverb, a slight echo, in the speaker’s voice.

Please allow me to clarify, Jesus’ life did not have a soundtrack as he lived it. His voice did not have a reverb effect when he spoke. Unlike Hollywood action heroes, he did not move in slow motion as he walked into town.

Jesus’ life did not have a soundtrack . . . then. NOW, we hear the music of his life! The music of Jesus’ life is that epic and melodic soundtrack of faithfulness that resonates through history.

Our lives make music too. As we see his melody of faithfulness played out in Jesus’ experience, may it inspire us to compose our own music of a well-lived life.

I love the authenticity and sincerity of the scene in the “The Bible” mini-series when Jesus meets Peter. First, Jesus walks in water to the boat. Then Jesus reaches out his hand for Peter’s help to climb aboard.

“The Bible” mini-series: Jesus Meets Peter

With so much said and sung about Jesus walking on water, what a great reminder of the fact that Jesus normally walked in water.++

Jesus walked in water with every brief trip to the shores of Lake Galilee, and with every lengthy trip to Jerusalem he walked through the water of the Jordan River.

A trip to Jerusalem with holiday crowds would have been a great venue for walking on water or parting a river. I’m sure that the crowds would have appreciated the shortcut.

Judging from the reaction of his family and the crowds, Jesus’ experience at least when it came to traveling was fairly normal, like ours. No shortcuts.

As we follow Jesus’ experience, we will walk through a lot of water with him. In the long run, that may even be more significant for us.

++ Jesus would have been awfully difficult to baptize if he didn’t sink occasionally. 🙂

SpendaYearwithJesus tells the story of Jesus’ last year day-by-day.

The biblical record provides rich primary source material. With some study of first-century time and space, a natural sequence of events emerges from the details to yield a cohesive account of Jesus’ human experience.

As in any ancient history, there are gaps in the record of Jesus’ last year. We can conclude logically that the Jesus’ experience in the gaps connects to the patterns recorded in the Gospels, to human experience in general, and to those unique experiences in Jesus’ first-century time and space.

In terms of human experience in general, we know he ate and slept, for example. In terms of specifics, we can refer to ancient sources such as the writings of Josephus, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Mishnah as well as archeological studies.

In addition, climate, demographics, topography, as well as agricultural cycles provide a rich context in themselves for deducing events and movements. For example, traveling in the rain or gathering a crowd at the peak of harvest season are both quite unlikely.

Filling in the gaps from the available archeological, historical, and geographical data allows us to meet Jesus in his space and time.

Filling in the gaps also exposes the assumptions that we continuously project onto the past from our own imaginations (such as science-fiction devices to leap through time or space from big event to big event).

I invite you to spend a year with Jesus day-by-day in the hill country of Israel. He was human like us, and like us his context was critically important to his activity and message.

Life stories are made up of big events, but living is day-to-day.

Late writer David Foster Wallace captures this idea in his 2005 college commencement speech. He observed, “The most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.”

I am intrigued by Wallace’s observation. I agree.

In the speech, he refers to the day-to-day trenches of adult existence and unpacks the reality of the “day in and day out.” At one point, he says,

There happens to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I’m talking about.

If I may repeat/adapt that observation, when it comes to Jesus’ experience, there happens to be whole, large parts of his adult life that nobody talks about. Boredom, routine and petty frustration are imperceptibly obvious in Jesus’ story as well as our own.

Implicit in this observation is a small, quiet encouragement. It echoes through David Foster Wallace’s speech. Pay attention . . . choose to pay attention.

Give attention to those imperceptibly obvious parts of our days that make up a significant portion of adult life. As Wallace observes, the tedium of adult living will drive us senseless, unless we engage our senses to that routine and petty frustration as a meaningful part of life.

In fact, when we pay attention to Jesus and to one another through that tedium–when we engage-to-listen–it is one of the most costly, loving acts we can perform in our brief existence.

It happens all the time: friendships forged through shared experiences. . . teammates who compete together, colleagues who work together, classmates who study together, combatants who endure hardship together. We could go on and on.

SpendaYearwithJesus attempts to create a shared experience with someone who walked the earth a long time ago. Our tag-line is Connect with Jesus’ experience.

As we start our year withJesus, let us receive some encouragement from theologian Raymond Brown who invited his readers to enter into the world of the Gospel of John.

Brown offers three exhortations for those who wish to communicate Jesus’ experience.

1. Do not be afraid to use ingenuity in rendering Jesus’ story dramatically.
2. Do not domesticate … Jesus.
3. Do not be too sophisticated or abstract.**

Inspired by Brown’s recommendations, my desire is to communicate Jesus’ story experientially, dramatically, humanly, and concretely. I invite you to “Connect with Jesus’ experience” to enhance your relationship with Him, and in doing so affirm and strengthen experiences which build healthy relationships among all people of the world!

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**R. E. Brown, “The Johannine World for Preachers,” Interpretation 43, no. 1 (1989): 64.

We measure our speed on the highway in miles per hour. Jesus and his followers measured their speed in miles per day.

When we say, life moved more slowly, we mean that people and their stuff literally moved more slowly.

So how much more slowly? Best guess is about 12-15 miles walking per day. (A Roman courier on a horse was faster, of course.)

We get an idea of travel speed in Acts 10. The distance between Joppa and Caesarea was about thirty miles. Couriers left Caesarea and returned in a period of four days (Acts 10:30).

Time references are found in 10:33 (“immediately”) for the speed of the journey, and 10:23 for the halfway point. The couriers stayed overnight and then returned.

Two days there and two days back to cover a round trip of 60 miles. That’s 15 miles a day moving at a good pace.