No Middle Ground or The Jesus that I will Worship

Here are a couple quotes from Tom Wright. The Original Jesus. Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1997. (Pages 83-87.)

I believe that the closer we get to the original Jesus-to the storytelling Jesus, the healing Jesus, the welcoming Jesus, the Jesus who declared God's judgment on those who rejected the way of peace and justice-the closer we come to the kingdom-of-God Jesus, the closer we are to recognizing the face of the living God.

For many people today, this more is a bit to radical, a bit threatening; so they prefer to back off, to see Jesus as simply, at best, a signpost to God, the revealer of God, the teacher of timeless truths, someone who provokes us into thinking differently and perhaps even into living differently We can contain that sort of Jesus; he's not particularly disturbing, and the God of whom he speaks is quite far off and doesn't make too many immediate demands on us. We can quite easily make this Jesus, and this God, support our own agendas. That's an old game.

But the real Jesus won't let us get away with that....

He goes on talk about how First-Century Jews had many symbols that would suggest otherwise, especially God's presence in the temple. He then suggests you need to ask the question

Is it true that the living God was uniquely and personally present in Jesus?

Wright gives this conclusion

But the answer to that question can't remain simply an abstract theory, a detached doctrine. If you say'no' to it, you are saying that Jesus was deluded; at best a tragic and noble failure, at worst a great charlatan and deceiver. You aren't neutral' you're looking at Jesus of Nazareth, and saying he was deeply mistaken. But if you say, 'yes' to it, you're committing yourself to a journey: a journey of exploration into God through exploring Jesus-his life, his teaching, his death and his resurrection. And that journey can neither be private nor self-centred.

I find this an awesome declaration of Jesus and a challenge to live in the world like He did. Wright has a way of putting Jesus in his first century context, but not leaving him there. When seeing Jesus in his proper context action is demanded of those that choose to follow.