For nearly two millennia, Jesus has served as the architectonic symbol of divinity and humanity within Western culture, profoundly shaped by Christianity’s influence.

Interpretations of Jesus have evolved over the centuries—depicted as a shepherd, king, soldier, messiah, sage, prophet, reformer, revolutionary, and friend—each reflecting and shaping the cultural trends of its era, in turn influencing Christian practice.

Yet, Jesus remains a cipher.

A definitive interpretation of his life and meaning eludes us, mediated through story, art, liturgy, and imagination, with direct knowledge impossible.

The historical Jesus fades into the past, with scant sources and records. The Gospels highlight what their authors deemed essential, yet, like all texts, they are limited and demand interpretation.

Over the centuries of interpretation, Jesus emerges as a symbol laden with meaning-rich metaphors—virgin birth, miracle worker, innovative teacher, radical reformer, crucified, resurrected, and Lord.

The historical essence behind these metaphors invites exploration, meditation, and debate. Overly literal interpretations diminish their profound meaning, while diminishing the historical elements weakens their potency.

Diverse images of Jesus have evolved across the ages, shaped by the institutional Church and cultural biases. Figures like Pat Robertson revere a Jesus unrecognizable to Paul of Tarsus, Francis of Assisi, Erasmus, or Aquinas, and vice versa.

Our understanding of Jesus matters greatly, shaping Christian thinking and practice, yet we often overlook the competing visions vying for allegiance. Periodic review of our images and understandings is merited.

Valuable insight emerges from understanding Jesus within his first-century Judean context under Roman rule. Recognizing the empire’s rigidity, abusiveness, intolerance, violence, and oppression illuminates the meaning of his teachings and actions, both historically and today.

Jesus was deliberately contrasted with Augustus Caesar, pitting the Reign of God against Rome’s Imperial Rule, revealing the subversive depth of his message.

In Jesus’ era, emperor worship was a tangible part of religious and cultural motifs. Augustus was hailed as Lord, Son of God, a living deity, a virgin-born miracle worker, a font of wisdom, and a peace bringer—language that mirrored Roman propaganda.

The Roman Empire justified itself by divine sanction, imposed peace through military violence, upheld patronage, elitism, militarism, taxation, slavery, patriarchy, and hierarchy, offering a limited, militaristic logos and salvation.

Christianity boldly proclaimed Jesus as Lord, employing identical terms—virgin-born, Son of God, incarnate, peace-bringer—heralding a new order of love, justice, equality, and freedom, inverting Roman values.

This early Christian assertion was not a theological or emotional claim of divinity but a defiant allegiance to Jesus’ social and cultural vision, perceived as treason by Roman authorities.

As depicted in the Gospels, Jesus’ ministry unfolded in three dimensions: 

(1) Signs and wonders—healings, miracles, and exorcisms;

(2) The hospitality of the open table, fostering subversive new communities through shared meals and celebrations; and

(3) Teaching, conveyed through lessons, parables, and sayings, heralding the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God.

What constitutes the essential message of Jesus? What lies at the heart of his teachings?

His central theme may be aptly framed as a new social vision, termed the Kingdom of God—a way of life and broader social order grounded in kenotic love, compassion, and justice. The Kingdom of God stood in opposition to the Roman Empire. 

“If concerned about sexist implications, use any modern translation of “Kingdom of God,” but remember it should always have overtones of high treason. Similarly, to say Jesus was Lord meant Caesar was not. Translate “Lord” with any contemporary expression you deem appropriate, as long as it can get you killed.”
  – John Dominic Crossan

For Jesus, the reign of God served as a metaphor for a social vision in which peace emerges through justice, rather than military conquest, affirming the dignity of all life, prioritizing compassion, and caring for the needy. 

Freedom replaces slavery and domination, while religion—its underlying foundation—rests on mercy and purity of heart, transcending mere custom or legal adherence, resonating with a theology of participation and meaning.

Jesus proclaimed the “kingdom of God” or “kingdom of heaven” as a counterpoint to Rome’s dominion. While the Roman Empire wielded power through conquest, oppression, and military might, Jesus envisioned God’s kingdom marked by justice, mercy, and peace. His teachings championed humility, service, and love for neighbors, challenging the hierarchical and authoritarian structures of Roman society.

Jesus’ ministry subverted imperial ideology, which glorified power, wealth, and status. He critiqued the idolatry of riches and power, urging followers to forsake worldly ambitions for the kingdom’s values, aligning with a theology of participation and meaning.

Through acts like washing his disciples’ feet, associating with the poor and marginalized, and confronting religious and political authorities, Jesus modeled a radical alternative to imperial norms.

He practiced nonviolent resistance, rejecting Rome’s oppressive tactics. Instead of violence or rebellion, he advocated love, truth, and moral courage as transformative power.

His teachings on nonviolence, forgiveness, and love for enemies disrupted Rome’s cycle of violence, offering reconciliation and justice as a revolutionary path.

Jesus’ message of universal brotherhood and equality transcended Rome’s ethnic, social, and cultural divisions. Welcoming all into God’s love, regardless of background, he undermined the empire’s exclusivist practices, affirming every human’s inherent dignity.

Contrasting Caesar’s title as “son of God” and bringer of Pax Romana, Jesus presented a messianic hope rooted in liberation from sin, oppression, and death. His crucifixion and resurrection symbolized triumph over imperial powers, ushering in an era of freedom and redemption.

Interpreting Jesus as an alternative to Rome underscores his subversive challenge to dominant ideologies. Embodying love, justice, and peace, he offered a vision of human flourishing that inspired generations toward a more compassionate world.

Central to the new order Jesus proclaimed is a reimagined understanding of religion, rather than the establishment of a church or a new faith—his teachings and example amount to a critique and reform of Judaism. 

During Jesus’ time, Judaism underwent a pivotal transition, driven by Roman occupation and the impending destruction of Jerusalem’s Temple, shifting from a focus on sacrificial rites to a religion centered on personal ethics, ritual, and customs.

The Pharisees embodied the emerging Rabbinic Judaism, emphasizing ethical behavior and Halakhah—Jewish law and custom—which Jesus challenged, rejecting both Temple sacrifices and Pharisaic legalism.

Jesus taught that the Kingdom of God was present and accessible to all who enacted it through actions of compassion, mercy, sharing, hospitality, justice, and kindness, rather than relying on religious ritual or custom or on military or political upheaval.

Entry into the Kingdom depended not on Jewish law, purity, or social rank within the imperial hierarchy.

Jesus’ radicalism lay not in preaching love—his contemporaries valued it within limits—but in asserting a new social-spiritual reality, already emerging, that favored the lowly, outcast, ritually unclean, and unwanted, thereby threatening the prevailing order.

His radical inclusivity transcended ethnicity, religion, and status, welcoming sinners, Samaritans, and Gentiles, breaking down barriers and affirming every human’s dignity as a beloved participant in God’s love.

His engagement with outcasts mirrored divine mercy and forgiveness, offering renewal through parables such as the lost sheep, the prodigal son, and the forgiven adulteress, extending grace to all who followed his way.

The Sermon on the Mount and parables unveil the Kingdom’s vision of holiness—upending conventional morality, exalting the humble over the self-righteous, and replacing imperial violence with gentle self-generosity.

At its core, the Kingdom hinges on kenotic love as essential to wholeness. Jesus taught that goodness alone does not fully “save”; true transformation arises from self-sacrifice and love for others, surpassing ritual purity.

Jesus employed the social act of dining and eating with others as a centerpiece of his ministry and as a powerful symbol of the Kingdom. Jesus practiced an open table, free from the social rules of the day, as a symbolic act to embody his new order.

The following analysis draws on the scholarship of John Dominic Crossan and Stephen J. Patterson, whose work on the historical Jesus and the role of sacrifice in the ancient world informed this approach.

This open table, central to his ministry, scandalously invited and mixed men and women, free and slave, privileged and needy, pure and unclean, challenging first-century social norms.

Seating arrangements, social invites, and eating together had tremendous cultural and social significance and were carried out under strict rules and mores. 

Such inclusivity at the table and while dining posed a cultural and social threat, undermining those benefiting from established hierarchies and conventions.

The open table symbolized a non-discriminatory order of love, posing a visible challenge to both Imperial and Jewish ritual systems.

After Jesus, early Christians continued this practice, evolving it into various Eucharistic forms—meals of thanksgiving—while preserving the inclusive community he had founded and finding meaning in Jesus’ presence in the act.

Today, the open table’s significance persists, critiquing social and religious customs that exclude, alienate, judge, or divide, urging Christians to renew this practice.

It embodies genuine community, oneness, equality, and love—Jesus’ intended message—clashing with the Hellenistic-Roman culture’s elitist values.

For Jews, dining with public sinners, Roman collaborators, gentiles, and the ritually unclean was seen as religiously improper and scandalous. Thus, there are many gospel references to Jesus eating with sinners and tax collectors. 

New Testament scholar Hal Taussig highlights that ritual sacrifice, ubiquitous in Christian origins, organized the ancient Mediterranean world around state power, economic patronage, and cultic religion, with communal meals at its center.

Stephen Patterson notes that sacrifices were public events, core to Greek and Roman culture, which ritualized imperial power and thereby reinforced oppressive structures through feasting.

Sacrifice, from the Greek meaning "to feast, butcher, and slaughter," held deep economic and class significance in a peasant economy, where meat was a luxury, financed by elites who supported temples, priests, and elaborate public festivals.

The manner of participating and feasting was determined by social rank—elites sat together in the best seats and received prime cuts of meat. In contrast, widows, orphans, slaves, and outcasts were seated on the periphery, if at all, and received scant leftovers, mapping community hierarchies.

Sacrificial meals visually and practically delineated social boundaries, reinforcing the status quo—class, race, gender, slave, citizen—sustaining the empire’s order. To participate in the sacrifice was to reaffirm the social order and the powers that be. 

Paul’s admonition against eating meat sacrificed to idols reflects this context.

Jesus’ open table ministry also contrasted this cultural practice, creating an alternative, non-sacrificial, food sharing ritual favoring the needy, outcasts, and marginalized—those excluded from the Pagan-Imperial sacrificial order—thereby posing a threat to imperial and religious norms.

Jesus’ meals, freely offered without ritual slaughter, nourished and welcomed all, rejecting participation in oppressive hierarchies. As a result, they were seen as subversive, threatening, and rebellious. 

Christians opted out of Roman sacrificial systems, refusing to uphold imperial structures, and instead chose their Eucharistic meals, which embodied the values and meanings of the Kingdom of God.

The open table, a ritual realization of this Kingdom, remains a central creative act of the new order of love.

This analysis should prompt us to ask: To what extent do we participate in modern imperial sacrifices? Do churches embody openness and hospitality, particularly in their Eucharistic practices? Do our homes reflect an open table of welcome?

The Gospels portray Jesus as a healer and miracle worker, with numerous narratives involving miracles and healings. There are also references in early Christian texts underscoring their centrality to his ministry.

We cannot return to the past to examine what specifically occurred and how these miraculous and healing events played out. Did the lame get up and walk, and the blind suddenly see? Perhaps, but we weren’t present, and we do not find such events in our world today, at least as described in the gospels. 

What we do know is this: These acts of healing and miracles serve theological purposes, illustrating Jesus’ divine authority, compassion for the suffering, and the advent of God’s kingdom. Each event is rich in symbolism, information, and meaning. 

Traditional interpretations often frame miracles as direct divine interventions, while non-supernatural perspectives attribute them to natural laws, psychological effects, or symbolic intent.

Unlike traditional emphases on supernatural elements, metaphorical readings highlight the symbolic richness and theological depth, inviting exploration of enduring meanings and spiritual insights.

While not dismissing historical possibilities, these interpretations prioritize the universal relevance and timeless truths of acceptance, inclusion, and compassion that underlie these accounts. 

Throughout his ministry, Jesus never endorsed violence, a stance reinforced in the Sermon on the Mount’s call for nonviolence and love of enemies, culminating in his non-resistant arrest. Early Christian communities echoed this rejection of violence.

His execution by Roman authorities, likely with Jewish leaders’ complicity, stemmed from Pilate’s perception of insurrection and treason. However, his nonviolent challenge to Rome and Temple authorities made this outcome somewhat foreseeable.

Followers grappled with the meaning of his violent death. How could one who was so aligned with God, advocating for justice and nonviolence, face such an ignoble end? Did his execution hold a higher purpose?

Early communities turned to the Hebrew scriptures for insight, with some linking Jesus’ death to Jewish sacrificial concepts, laying the groundwork for atonement theories.

Paul framed the Garden of Eden events of Genesis as a rupture in divine-human relations, viewing the Jewish Covenant as a partial remedy. He connected Jesus’ death and resurrection to a deeper atonement, contrasting Adam’s flaws with Jesus’ perfection.

The nature of atonement has long been a subject of debate. Violent interpretations—Jesus as a penal substitute—pose issues often overlooked in popular Christian rhetoric, conflicting with fundamental justice.

Modern understanding rejects punishing an innocent person for another’s guilt, even if the substitute volunteers, deeming it unjust. Such views also suggest a father orchestrating a child’s death, hinting at divine limitation or abuse, incompatible with forgiveness sans bloodshed.

Jesus’ death should have a meaning that transcends satisfaction, justice, or punishment. Focusing on his nonviolent response reveals the cross as a symbol of integrity and self-giving love. We must uncomfortably recognize that much of Christian theology has reduced Jesus to a human sacrifice. 

Early Christians, per their writings, saw the resurrection as vindication of Jesus’ teachings and life, despite his death, intertwining their meaning with the cross and empty tomb, affirming dignity and resistance to imperial dehumanization.

The cross, an emblem of this new order, embodies the transformative potential of kenotic love. The passion narratives blend allegory, spiritual fiction, and fact, highlighting Jesus’ integrity and willingness to die for his convictions.  

The resurrection, inseparable from the cross, proclaims love and dignity’s victory over death. As the logical outcome of kenotic power, it calls for a life of radical self-giving to worthy values, resulting in a restored and transformed life.

The four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—narrate Jesus’ resurrection with varied details, sharing only the empty tomb and the women as the first witnesses.

The Emmaus story (Luke 24:13-35) offers a somewhat different interpretation: the disciples, initially unaware of the risen Jesus, recognize him through the study of scripture and the sharing of bread, emphasizing an understanding of Jesus’ death and resurrection as part of the overall Jewish scriptural narrative and the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.

Jesus’ resurrection was a statement of vindication, a denial of Roman triumph. It inspired early Christians to live as Jesus did, resisting imperial dehumanization and finding meaning in the enduring power of love.

Discussions about Jesus pivot on questions of his status and nature, culminating in the query: Is Jesus God?

Answering this demands grappling with divinity’s meaning and essence—an inexhaustible endeavor where incomplete metaphysics and language fall short.

Many who encounter Jesus discover meaning, power, purpose, and love, unveiling divine realities. Is Jesus God? The boundaries blur, and metaphysics embraces mystery.

In Jesus, we perceive divine traits—forgiveness, love, mercy, compassion—qualities we deem profound and worthy, resonating with a theology of participation and meaning.

He also embodies humanity’s finest attributes—those we deem godly—echoing Genesis’ assertion that we are made in God’s image. Thus, Jesus emerges as the unitive sacrament of God and humanity, a distinctive Western insight.

“Who do you say I am?” Jesus’ pivotal question remains essential for revitalizing Christianity across the ages.

Responding with complex metaphysical claims about Jesus’ nature today lacks wisdom and appeal.

Treating Jesus as a child’s imaginary friend—a comforting, ghostly presence—diminishes his radical significance.

Worse, viewing him as a divine human sacrifice to appease a demanding God, a blood payment for salvation, reduces his meaning to a heavenly ticket.

Meaning and transformation hinge on a personal response—calling Jesus Lord and recognizing Him as the trustworthy source of meaning amid cultural power structures. This allegiance, a bold stance of values and life, transcends abstract Greek ontology.

The Prologue to John's Gospel and his reference to Jesus as "the Word" in his First Epistle offer profound insights into Jesus Christ's nature and significance for human meaning. These texts present Jesus as the Incarnated Logos, the embodiment of divine reason, truth, and meaning, who reveals the ultimate meaning of human existence.

The Prologue to John's Gospel begins with the enigmatic statement, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." 

This "Word" is identified with Jesus Christ, who is described as the "light of men" and the "true light for every man that comes into the world." This image of Jesus as the Word suggests that he is the ultimate source of truth and understanding.

In his First Epistle, John refers to Jesus as "the Word of life, which was with the Father, and which we have seen and touched." 

“From the beginning, we have heard, seen with our eyes, looked at, and our hands have touched what we have heard and seen—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.”

  - 1 John 1

This phrase reinforces the idea of Jesus as the Incarnated Logos, the divine Word made flesh. By touching Jesus, John suggests a physical and sensory experience of the sacred, a direct encounter with the source of all truth and meaning.

The concept of the Incarnated Logos is central to the Christian understanding of Jesus. As the Word is made flesh, Jesus reveals God's true nature and the ultimate purpose of human existence.

“The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.”

  - 1 John 1:2