I think it means, among other things, to not simply trust the crowd of other followers around you when it comes to the direction you take. Although you appreciate the community and the support, you are determined to catch a glimpse of Jesus through the crowd. Sometimes you think you spot him up ahead; at other times, you catch a glimpse of him moving in a different direction than the crowd. This can be said of a wider range of Christians, of course, but it ought to be particularly true for those who seek to follow the historical figure of Jesus. Because for you, it means that even Mark, Matthew, Luke, John and Paul are part of the crowd.
Following the historical Jesus means engaging in a quest for knowledge that leads not to certainty but to humility. It also means being convinced that Jesus himself would be pleased both with the quest and with the result.
Following the historical Jesus means knowing that, even if you had a time machine, you could not go back in time to measure the extent of Jesus’ halo and assess his “divinity”. From our standpoint in history, how much more then is the life we catch glimpses of emphatically a human one? Following the historical Jesus is not about attempting to define Jesus’ nature – as though we could. It is about investigating a human life, passionately.
Following the historical Jesus involves creatively retelling his story (as Christians have always done), but in doing so seeking to take historical questions, and historians’ answers, seriously. It also means being aware that the ways we arrange those sayings and stories that have a high degree of historical probability is itself a creative act, and not merely an act of discovering the past. And so following the historical Jesus means embracing the tension between the desire to avoid merely making Jesus in our own image, and the knowledge that we are unable to fully avoid imposing either the desires of our hearts or the perspective of our historical and cultural setting upon him.
Perhaps most importantly, following the historical Jesus means making it one’s aim to be so spectacularly good that, even though we will also inevitably be spectacularly wrong about various matters of fact, such things will be overlooked and forgiven, if not be our contemporaries, then by history.
Is the historical figure of Jesus important to your Christian faith? If so, what does it mean to you to be his follower?
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