Would Jesus be more interested in your questions or your goose bumps?

In Matthew 5:1-2 we read:

Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His talmidim came to him, and he began to teach them.

To be a member of the original Jesus Movement was first and foremost a commitment to being a learner. Jesus’ followers were called “disciples,” which in ancient Israel would have been talmidim. A rabbi would teach his talmidim by his words and conduct.

The primary focus of the teachings of the rabbis was the words of the Torah – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Lessons from the Torah would be linked to the writings of the Prophets and the Ketuvim (third section of Hebrew Scriptures). It is essential for one to understand that no books of the New Testament existed during the time of the Jewish Jesus. If you had been sitting on the side of the hill the day the “Sermon on the Mount” was given you would have heard Jesus teaching about sections of the Torah and Prophets.

The fact is that this was the model -- an education-based model -- that Jesus established for his movement. It has been lost as the original exclusively Jewish Jesus Movement morphed into a universal Gentile religion as it was filtered through the cultures of the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, Germany, Spain, England and America.

The Jewish Jesus would have been much more interested in what you knew than what you believed – especially if you really didn’t know why you believed what you believed. Many times I have heard people say – “You just have to believe it by faith and not question what the ministers say.” In the world of the Jewish Jesus, the greatest students were recognized by the quality of their questions -- not just their answers.

America added a new dimension to its forms of religion – emotionalism. Evangelists became skilled craftsmen of emotionally charged messages and meetings. The higher the emotional impact -- the more successful the revival. I have no doubt that the Jewish Jesus would be more interested in what one learned at a meeting that was held in his name -- than how many goose bumps one had.

Look through the messages you receive in your emails, tweets, facebook, etc. and see how many are designed to teach you something and how many are designed to pull emotional strings. If the Jewish Jesus had sent emails, tweets or posted on facebook – what do you think his messages would be about?

Blind submission to authority was not the message of the Jewish Jesus or the founding patriarch of the Abrahamic faith. Abraham didn’t blindly submit when God announced that He was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah – he questioned God. Remember what happened when Jesus was a boy and his parents discovered that he wasn’t with them on their journey home from the Temple?

After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.[i]

Who would value blind submission to authority the most?  In the early centuries of Christianity it would have been all of the Roman Emperors. Today, we can add a long list of kings, dictators -- and many business, political and religious leaders. We all know WWJD means "What would Jesus do?" Maybe we need to add an update to that well known meme --WWJA -- What would Jesus ask?

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[i] Luke 2:46