What's the Problem?

MEETING JESUS AGAIN FOR THE FIRST TIME, Chapter 6 ~ Marcus Borg 
   
Starter Questions For a Study Group

1. Share the best thing that happened to you this week.
2. Share the worst thing that happened to you this week.  
3. Share a time last week when you saw God at work in your community or in another person.   

Questions for the Passage Below

1. Which of the marco-stories below are most central to your experience of Christianity? 
2. Which of the macro-stories below have been most helpful to you at different times in your life?  Which have been the most irrelevant or troublesome?  
3. Which of the marco-stories, or combination of macro-stories, below are most helpful for painting a meaningful portrait of Jesus? 

Take Time to Pray Together and Bless One Another
    

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Is the human problem bondage, exile, or sin?  Is Jesus a Deliverer, a Home-Bringer, or an Atonement for Sin?  In Chapter 6, Marcus Borg outlines three "marco-stories" of scripture that are the most central for shaping the Bible as a whole.  Here is a summary quote.  
   
The Exodus Story
As an epiphany of the human condition and the solution, the story of the exodus images the religious life as a journey from the life of bondage to life in the presence of God.  Though we find ourselves in bondage to Pharaoh, it proclaims, there is a way out.  Through signs and wonders, through the great and mighty hand of God, God can liberate us, indeed wills our liberation and yearns for our liberation, from life in bondage to culture to life a a journeying with God. 
   
The Story of Exile and Return 
The feeling of being separated from home and longing for home runs deeply within us... Like the exile story, the story of exile and return is a journey story.  It images life as a journey to the place where God is present, a homecoming, a journey of return. And like the exodus story, this story speaks of God aiding and assisting those who undertake the journey. 
   
The Priestly Story 
The priestly story is not primarily a story of bondage, exile, and a journey, but a story of sin, guilt, sacrifice, and forgiveness... Within this story, we are primarily sinners who have broken God's laws, and who therefore stand guilty before God, the lawgiver and judge.  Seen through the lens of this story, the religious life becomes a story of sin, guilt, and forgiveness. 
   
Marcus Borg ~ "Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time" 

Will the Real Jesus Please Please Stand Up?

"MEETING JESUS AGAIN FOR THE FIRST TIME" Marcus Borg
CHAPTER 6
 
Starter Questions For a Study Group

1. Share the best thing that happened to you this week.
2. Share the worst thing that happened to you this week.  
3. Share a time last week when you saw God at work in your community or in another person.   

Questions for the Passage Below

1. How much is your image of Jesus like the popular one described below?  
2. What difference does it make for you to understand the Jesus of history (the "pre-Easter" Jesus) as we now know him through recent centuries of biblical scholarship (described by Marcus Borg below)? 
3. How is your experience of the living Jesus who is present with us now effected by your portrait of the Jesus of history? 

Take Time to Pray Together and Bless One Another
    

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[The Jesus of history] is quite different from the popular image of Jesus, the Jesus many of us have met before. His own self-understanding did not include thinking and speaking of himself as the Son of God whose historical intention or purpose was to die for the sins of the world, and his message was not about believing in him. Rather, he was a spirit person, subversive sage, social prophet, and movement founder who invited his followers and hearers into a transforming relationship with the same Spirit that he himself knew, and into a community whose social vision was shaped by the core value of compassion. ~ Marcus Borg, "Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time"

And the Sophia Became Flesh

"MEETING JESUS AGAIN FOR THE FIRST TIME" Marcus Borg
CHAPTER 5


Starter Questions For a Study Group

1. Share the best thing that happened to you this week.
2. Share the worst thing that happened to you this week.  
3. Share a time last week when you saw God at work in your community or in another person. 

 
Questions for the Passage Below

1. How does the metaphor "Son of God" help you to understand and relate to Christ?  
2. How could literalizing this metaphor (ie, we must believe that Jesus is literally a/the Son of God) be limiting for us in understanding or relating to Christ? 
3. How does the female metaphor "Sophia (Wisdom) of God" help you to understand and relate to Christ?  

 
Take Time to Pray Together and Bless One Another
    

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[Our exploration of the role of Sophia as wisdom in the Jewish tradition and in the New Testament] enables us to glimpse what may be the earliest Christology of the Christian movement.  The use of Sophia language ("Sophia", a feminine noun meaning "wisdom") to speak of Jesus goes back to the earliest layers of the developing tradition.  It is also, as we have seen, widespread across the tradition.  According to the synoptics, Paul, and John, that which was present in Jesus was the Sophia of God... 
   
This points to the impossibility of literalizing Christological language.  The multiplicity of images for speaking of Jesus' relationship to God (as Logos, Sophia, Son - to name but a few) should make it clear that none of them is to be taken literally.  They are metaphorical... 
   
The issue is no longer believing that Jesus was literally the Son of God, but appreciating the richness of meaning suggested by the multiplicity of Christological images.  He was "the Son," yes, but also the incarnation of the Word, which was also the Wisdom of God.
     

~ Marcus Borg 
    
CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY: WISDOM AND PRACTICE: CHURCH OF RECONCILIATION  

Jesus, Son of God... Really?

"MEETING JESUS AGAIN FOR THE FIRST TIME" Marcus Borg
CHAPTER 5


Starter Questions For a Study Group
   

1. Share the best thing that happened to you this week.
2. Share the worst thing that happened to you this week.  
3. Share a time last week when you saw God at work in your community or in another person. 

   
Questions for the Passage Below

1. How does it affect you to hear that there was no official Christology in the New Testament period? 
2. What difference does it make to think of the son/father Christology as literal or as metaphorical? 
3. How many other images of Jesus are you aware of other than the son/father Christology? 

   
Take Time to Pray Together and Bless One Another
    

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The most familiar Christology (the branch of Christian theology that deals with the nature of Christ) to people within and outside the church is one that images Jesus' relationship with God as Son of the Father... So familiar is it that it is easy to think of it as the normative or definitive Christology. 

But this had not yet happened in the New Testament period. There was as yet no official Christology.  Rather, the New Testament contains a variety of Christological images, which function as metaphors for imaging the significance of Jesus and his relationship with God...  Developing alongside the early Christian movement's embryonic image son/father Christology was an embryonic wisdom Christology that ultimately saw Jesus as the embodiment or incarnation of "the wisdom of God."  
  
~ Marcus Borg 
  
CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY: WISDOM AND PRACTICE: CHURCH OF RECONCILIATION