John Vincent is reviewing his life's writings and this year a few of us are meeting with him to review his books. Last Saturday, we were looking at Secular Christ . This book was one of those I chose for this year's Lent sequence.
On page 70, Vincent writes:
The theology of Christ is thus unashamedly discriminatory. By choosing to come as a man, Jesus excluded womanhood (hence, of course, the divinization of Mary). By coming as a Galilean, Jesus excluded the Torah-obedient traditionalism of the rabbis. By belonging to the "pious poor" of the land, Jesus excluded the middle class and the beggars. By being a carpenter, Jesus excludes the rich and wise. By preaching in Galilee, Jesus excluded the Judeans, let alone the Samaritans. By being a bachelor, Jesus excluded the insights of love and family. And so on.
This Saturday, I questioned the premise that this was discrimination. It seems to me we can argue discrimination was deliberate (I don't think this is what Vincent meant), or unconscious - the accidental consequences of a certain strategy. A third possibility is that Jesus accepted all whom he met but chose to take paths that meant he encountered only certain people. The exceptions, such as the Centurion with a sick slave or the Syro-Phoenician woman, are instructive. Jesus insists he is there for Israel only and then helps them anyway.
In Secular Christ, Vincent makes the point that these instances of discrimination are accidentals. I argued from Matthew's account of the temptations in the wilderness , which shows us Jesus abandoning all expectations of what it means to be a Messiah. So, the image we get is one of stepping out without a clear goal. Jesus was a man with a mission but no idea where his mission was leading.
We live in a society that favours targets. Jesus had a vision but no targets. His approach was to put people at the centre of his ministry and the way he dealt with them set his feet upon the road to Jerusalem. Would he have been able to achieve what he did had he been a woman? Possibly not. Does this mean he is no example to women? Probably not.
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