The Historical Jesus and the Santa Claus Moment: Theology as Parabolic Awakening

Once, in a progressive congregation to which I belonged, I made what I thought would be a provocative comment in a sermon. I stated publicly and affirmatively that believing Jesus was the divine Son of God was akin to believing that Santa Clause existed. The strangest thing happened as a consequence. Everyone told me that of course Jesus was not the divine Son of God, but by mentioning Santa Claus, I had crossed a line.

There is a time in life when it dawns upon a young mind that many things spoken and believed in childhood are not literally true. It might be the Santa Claus moment when a young person understands that this jolly figure does not actually exist. It could be something else, depending upon which tradition and which set of celebrations one grows up with. However, at the same time, we start to realize that there is a spirit that remains for the thing we no longer believe in. Santa Claus does not have to exist literally for there to be a Christmas spirit.

At a certain point in theology, too, a Santa Claus moment occurs. It is a moment when theology takes on a different value, and in the Christian tradition that moment is inevitably the encounter with the historical Jesus. The historical Jesus is neither the divine Son of God nor the third Person of the Trinity but a much humbler, terribly interesting, and sometimes off-beat teller of parables. Equally, parables are not doctrines; they do not require belief; and they certainly do not define Jesus as a member of the Trinity. Parables are literary art forms that reflect the spirit of theology in that they hold the je ne sais quoi element of our wonder and our journey. Directly speaking, a parable is not a theological statement. Literally, a parable has nothing to do with theology, but, if we look beyond literalism, we can see that the spirit of the parable, its open invitation is, or should be, the spirit of theology—theology as poetics, that is, as a non-literal expression of imagination mixed with hope and affirming of philosophy.

A second insight rests on top of the first and most basic insight about art forms: the parables are entirely fictional stories involving human pathos. They engage us not because they are true but because they are emotional. They are doorways into our own psyches, either revealing to ourselves the ugliness of our greed (as in the Hidden Treasure parable, Matt 13:44) or the magnitude of our compassion (as in the Good Samaritan parable, Luke 10:30). These types of insight that can move our souls are only available to us through artistic imagination. The parables of Jesus, like those of other great parablers, ask us to reimagine the world sometimes by way of showing us our conniving stupidity, again like the Hidden Treasure, or showing us our innate capacity to transcend both ethnical and social boundaries, like the Good Samaritan.

At a certain point in the life of a thoughtful theologian, the realization that a faith tradition is largely a myth creates a shift in understanding, and there is no going back. The tradition, when taken literally, is an assault on its mythological integrity, but when an awakening occurs, one crosses over from literalism to art. Now, theology is no longer about telling the literal truth; it is about creating a world that stands before us mythologically as the divine inspiration of our future.

Just because it is myth does not mean it is not true; rather, its truth is of a different sort. It is truth that calls for the work of reimagining the world. And what is the guide for that task? It is certainly not literalism. Rather, it is the human capacity to include and to care for the earth on which we walk and the people with whom we live. To create the capacity to reimagine, and to celebrate it, what better mode of expression do we have other than stories that never happened but still do the difficult work of awakening a new reality?

Theology is an invitation to join the human project in all its mystery and with all its struggles, but its voice is not predetermined, and its content is not doctrine. Its voice is art, and its content is hope.

‍

Thumbnail Image: Photo by Tim Wildsmith on Unsplash

‍