I was talking with a friend about visualizing Jesus’ experience day-to-day. I asked, “Do you think Jesus would have mowed his own lawn?”

Puzzled, my friend said, “My gut reaction is, ‘No.’ He needed to be out teaching.” Then he added, “But why do I think that way?”

After 2,000 years, one of the most enduring memories of the man Jesus is his teaching – quotable statements, absorbing parable stories, compelling conversations.

It seems, however, that the focus on teaching overshadows other typical activities in Jesus’ experience. Miracles take on this precedence as well. Why do we think this way?

The first-century ebb and flow of daily living necessitated natural down-times for anyone living at that time including Jesus.

(1) Harvest and (2) home maintenance as well as (3) winter rains inevitably interrupted crowd-gathering and hindered travel.** Unless Jesus spontaneously controlled the weather, but is control really the point?

While teaching is a defining activity of Jesus’ life, he was also subject to the constraints of daily living on this planet.

Which means Jesus had to submit his daily activities to earthly constraints.

For more info, see the weather cycle post.

The fifth of the ten commandments states, “Honor your father and mother” (Deut 5:16). Jesus lived under the Torah, so we would expect for him to keep the fifth commandment.

We read about Jesus’ mother, Mary, at various times throughout Jesus’ life. Jesus’ father, Joseph, however, only has an active role in the Gospel birth narratives of Matthew and Luke. Tradition suggests that Joseph died before Jesus started his speaking tours.

At the end of Jesus’ life, he entrusts his mother’s care to one beloved disciple. For the sake of consideration, let us accept the integrity of the event in the story and the integrity of Jesus’ care for his mother.

So how did Jesus honor and care for his mother throughout his adult life? Can we conclude that Jesus left home for the road neglecting his mother during three years of speaking tours?

Then after three years of making James or Jude take care of their mother, Mary, Jesus has a change of heart at the end of his life. He re-asserts his authority as firstborn magnanimously entrusting his mom to a faithful disciple.

So two realities influence Jesus’ experience in the SpendaYearwithJesus storyline. One is time and specifically, when Jesus was with his mom. The other is the integrity of Jesus’ material contribution to her care before he entrusts her to his disciple.

If Jesus did not consistently care for his mother, then how could James or Jude accept his decision to entrust Mary to a disciple?

I passed a sign in front of a church that read, “My lifeguard walks on water.” Have you seen this one?

I’ve seen this phrase in quite a few places — all land-locked. I wonder what a lifeguard sitting on the beach would think of it?

Judging from the way his family and the crowds responded, Jesus’ experience was fairly normal and human. The miracles were amazing but just not amazing enough.

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 and the spectacle.

Come to think of it, I’m sure there are a few lifeguards today who wouldn’t mind being able to walk on water. But we’re stuck with normal. No shortcuts.

If we could follow Jesus’ experience, we would find that he walked through water more than he walked on water. In the long run, that may even be more important for us.

Gospel scholar Vincent Taylor once observed:

As always every attempt to write a Life of Christ will be a failure; but with courage, faith, knowledge, and insight, the succession of failures will less deserve the name; each will point the way to something better.+

Taylor quotes Albert Schweitzer who observed the moral earnestness of those who try:

Though they cannot take Him with them, yet, like men who have seen God face to face and received strength in their souls, they go on their way with renewed courage, ready to do battle with the [evils of the] world.++

_______________

+ Vincent Tayler, “Is It Possible to Write a Life of Christ?” Expository Times (1941): 65.

++ Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, 1911, 311.

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After Jesus feeds and dismisses the crowd of 4,000, he and his disciples board a boat and row west across the lake.

The miraculous meal overwhelms a rather mundane ambiguity. From whence the boat?

Are we to conclude that they stole the boat? Of course not!

If they borrowed the boat they would by necessity have to return it. Alternatively, some of Jesus’ newfound friends might have given him a lift.

The option developed in the SpendaYearwithJesus storyline is that Jesus’ dispatched his married disciples to their homes to meet him later on the other side of the lake.

On the one hand, the married men could spend some time, however brief, with their families. On the other hand, their splitting off and then rejoining the group could account for the boat.

The challenge to this option is a view that Jesus and the twelve were together at all times..24×7 — always teaching and healing except when they were walking from town to town.

The manic teaching and healing schedule, however, does not account for the logistics surrounding those activities.

Jesus did not have a staff to whom he could delegate. If he had anything even close to resembling a travel secretary or a transportation captain, they were probably part of the twelve.

Before Jesus’ last year, Jesus’ cousin John sent messengers to confirm that Jesus was the one for whom the nation was waiting — the Messiah. Jesus replied to them that

• the blind see,
• the lame walk,
• lepers are cleansed,
• the deaf hear,
• the dead are raised,
• and the poor are given the good news (Mt 11:5; Lk 7:22).

These indicators echo phrases from the Hebrew Scriptures including Isaiah 35:5-6, Isaiah 61:1, and Psalm 146:8 — with the exception of the dead raised.

Among the Dead Sea Scrolls, the fragment entitled the Messianic Apocalypse (4Q521) reflects the same indicator-understanding of the Messiah’s activity including the phrase, “the dead are raised.” Jesus wasn’t the only one thinking and talking this way.

Though the application of the statements diverge between the Scrolls and the Gospels, they share the reversal of fortune for the down-and-out as a key indicator of the Messiah’s identity.

For the Scrolls community the apocalypse was a future event, but for the Gospel writers, they describe Jesus’ experience.

During the summer of Jesus’ last year, subscribers receive text messages relating how people, among the hills east of Lake Galilee, marveled because they witnessed the mute speaking, the lame walking, and the blind seeing (Mt 15:30).

James Tissot (French, 1836-1902). “Jesus Sits by the Seashore and Preaches,” 1886-1894. Oil on board. Brooklyn Museum.

It feels natural to imagine Jesus sitting on a large, elevated rock speaking to  quiet, riveted crowds.

This elevated image makes sense given the typical church experience like a wedding or a funeral. You sit quietly. An eloquent speaker stands on an elevated platform. (In what time was the average church experience outside; if it ever was?)

Many people have pointed out that the first-century experience is remote from our own. While some of the experiences are very different, we do not want to miss the similarities. The core of human experience persists.

For example, Jesus observed the hunger of the members of more than one listening crowd. How attentive are people in your crowd when the speaker continues into the lunch or dinner hour?

Among a crowd of thousands, a man yelled at Jesus to settle his inheritance dispute. Jesus responded with a general rebuke of greed. I can’t imagine that man or his party were very attentive after that response. And surely the man’s comment was one of many outdoor interruptions.

At the temple, Jesus joined in alongside other Rabbis offering commentary on the Law. While Jesus spoke with authority, he was competing with other lecturers among the alcoves, perhaps more eloquent orators.

In addition, the noise of the temple courts and the surrounding city reduced earshot, limiting the crowd size even if there were ready listeners.

In making the leap from our experience to Jesus’ experience, we need to introduce appropriate amounts of friction. Perpetually-attentive crowds are just not realistic, even for Jesus. (That’s why I love the looks on the people’s faces in the Tissot painting above.)

Mark, Luke, and Matthew tell a story of events that seem rather random. While the sensationalism of the events arrests our attention, I wonder what happened to the participants.

Here’s a summary: Spontaneously, Jesus tells his disciples, “Let’s go to the other side of the lake” (Mk 4:35). When they arrive on the other side (after an episode amazing in its own right), they are greeted by a hostile, raging, tormented man.** Jesus heals the man and sends him back home to the astonishment of his community. #irony Naturally, the townspeople ask Jesus to leave.

Where are they now?

The human question arises, what happened to the guy? The Gospels don’t say…

Was the world of Jesus’ experience so large that people randomly appeared and then disappeared never to be heard from again? Like the people you sit near on an airplane going overseas.

Or was his a world where interaction led to more interaction? Similar to meeting a like-minded colleague at a conference and exchanging business cards.

I conclude from research and personal experience that it was the latter – that contact generally resulted in more contact. Jesus probably saw the man during his second longer stay on the other side of Lake Galilee.

** Two men according to Matthew 8:28.

We must not neglect the wives of Jesus’ disciples. Neglect, you ask? Those men are on the road with Jesus!

In Jesus’ experience, loyalty to the Torah was authoritative. And the Torah warned against neglecting one’s wife.

If a man [who is already married] marries another woman, he may not neglect [his first wife’s] food, her clothing, or her conjugal rights. (Exodus 21.10)

This particular regulation seems obscure within the larger body of Law, but it apparently caught the attention of the Rabbis and is therefore worthy of our notice.

In the Mishnah, the discussion concerning conjugal rights prohibits lengthy absences by the husband as follows:

Disciples may go to Torah study without their wife’s consent for thirty days.Workers go out for one week. . . . Sailors for six months. . . (Ketuboth 5.6)

Paul echoes the Torah’s concern for conjugal integrity in his letter to the Corinthians.

The husband should fulfill his wife’s conjugal needs and the wife her husband’s. (1 Corinthians 7.3)

It would seem lawful of Jesus to respect the schedules of the disciples who were married (see Mark 1:30; 1 Corinthians 9:5). And that affects how we schedule Jesus’ experience.

Jesus was not under the Mishnah. The Mishnah simply gives us a context in which to form our own assumptions.

In other words, expect during the SpendaYearwithJesus story for the married disciples to break off from the group to visit their families. And don’t be surprised if Jesus stops praying, teaching, and healing to honor his mother every once in a while.