Unholy Sh+t: Sometimes the line between Jesus the Messiah and Jesus a Gotham villain is a thin one

Growing up, the highlight of my week was going to youth group, but like most teenagers, my destiny was determined not by my wants or desires; adults and their ideas dictated that. Pettiness tore our church in half. One Sunday everything changed, and half the congregation became McCoys, Montagues, and the other half saints, or was it the other way around?

My parents left. And soon, I was shunned, even though I stayed.

One Sunday morning, I decided to walk into a Baptist Church to give it a shot. The structure was massive, and they had more than one class for my grade. So, I walked into one of the classes. They had already started, and the Sunday School teacher was going down a list litany of sins, but he was fixated on one in particular: being queer. So he preached and ranted to the forty or fifty of us sitting in our cushioned metal chairs. One kid across the room looked uneasy, sad, and like he would rather be dead than be sitting in that class at that moment. I bet that's true.

So I raised my hand.

"Yes, the newcomer in the back."

"Do you masturbate?" I asked, not skipping a beat.

"Excuse me?"

"I mean, like, do you jerk off?"

"That is inappropriate. We are not going to discuss that here."

"Well, I mean, we are discussing two guys doing it; I don't see how you are doing it alone is somehow more inappropriate of a subject matter than that, and when my mom asked me that question, and I didn't answer, she took that means yes."

"Is there a point?"

“Yeah, there is a point. I mean, there is a whole list of sins there, not just being gay; adultery is right there, too, right? So if you masturbate, and you think about a girl other than your wife, I mean, you are right up there with the gay guy, right? You are no different. So why are we sitting here, judging, when you are an adultering masturbator. How about you worry about the plank in your eye instead of the speck of sawdust in someone else’s?”

That was the day I learned that Sunday School has a principal’s office.

6th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Today’s reading: Matthew 5:17-37

Sometimes Jesus is all, “If you live by the sword, you die by the sword,” and other times he’s like, “Cut your eyeballs out, you filthy animals.” I’m not sure which direction Jesus is trying to steer this boat. Sometimes, he seems to have zero respect for the rules, and then he goes on about how the law is even more critical than ever. The Sermon on the Mount is a dizzying series of prose by the Prince of Peace, but he suddenly turns into the Clown Prince of Gotham.

Disciple: That chick is hot!

Jesus: How about a magic trick?

Peter: Not again *rolls eyes*

Jesus: I’m going to make this pencil disappear *slams the pervy disciple’s head into the pencil* verily, I say unto thee. If you look at a woman and lust after her, you’ve committed adultery. If your eyes are causing you to sin, gouge them out! *lifts the disciple’s head with the pencil protruding* ta-dah! It’s, it’s gone!

I’ve always found it interesting which things Jesus said that people choose to take as literal and that gets tossed in the old figurative bin. Give all your money to the poor, figurative. Hell, literal. Heal the sick, figurative. Don’t get divorced, literal. Cut off your right hand if you are being lustful or figurative. I can’t keep up! What’s interesting about this particular series of prohibitions is that Jesus is basically just going down the Law of Moses. Instead of saying, “These rules don’t apply anymore,” he’s upping the ante. But I think the point isn’t about whether Jesus is being figurative or literal in his statements; I think it’s actually the subtle art of hyperbole. The point he is trying to make here is that it’s not enough to not follow through with the act of adultery; it’s the intention that matters. We can do the “right thing,” but if what we really want to do, deep down in our heart of hearts, is the wrong thing, that is what counts.

He is making it clear that its not enough to say that you care about the environment but then thrown your trash out the window. It’s not our words that matter but our actions.

More importantly, he is also transferring the guilty party in adultery from the woman to the man. He’s flipping the script to say, “You like big butts, and don’t lie to me about it. My brothers, you can't deny when a girl walks in with an itty bitty waist and a round thing in your face, you get sprung, so go cut your f+cking dick off.”

I’m paraphrasing, of course, but you get the idea.

I think it’s also important to take a minute to pause here and discuss the rampant antisemitism that exists in Christianity. It’s important to remember that Jesus wasn’t attempting to start a new religion, nor were the disciples. They were trying to be good Jews, not to begin a new religious sect. In this verse, Jesus makes that very clear when he says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.” Jesus is trying to be the best Jew possible. He is on a journey, one not that much unlike you or I, where he wants to better understand his ancestors' faith and preserve it for the next generation. However, when you hear most pastors today speak about Jesus, they rarely place him in the context of a Jewish man. They try to make him look like the best Christian, not a person trying to deconstruct his own faith.

I think it’s easy to incorrectly contextualize what is happening here. Jesus is not espousing the tenets of a new faith. He is a rabbi trying desperately to breathe new life into his faith. He is interpreting the law, not erasing it. The white-washing of Jesus is dangerous, and you can not truly understand him outside of his reality as a Jew trying to earnestly follow his faith. I know that will be uncomfortable for a lot of you who grew up in a Protestant context where Jesus was presented more as a Brad Pitt with a British accent than as a Middle Eastern man.

So the question becomes: is Jesus the rabbi actually suggesting that someone should Van Gogh their eyes and hands? No. He is trying to explain the severity of the situation. He is also driving home the point that the responsible party in the act of lust is the person feeling it and not the person being objectified. The question shouldn’t be, “What was she wearing?” but “Why was he looking at someone’s body when he wasn’t invited to? Jesus is trying to move society away from blaming the victim and placing the responsibility onto the perpetrator.

Over the years, I’ve read some stories about dudes sitting in prison for heinous who got religious and took this verse literally. They did not contextualize it. They missed the bit about Jesus using hyperbole. They took a hard right turn into Literal Town when they should have stopped at Figurativeville. And well, I imagine Jesus’ response being a little like this.

Murray Franklin: Let me get this straight, Jesus. You think that those guys gouging out their eyes is funny?

Jesus: I do. And I’m tired of pretending it’s not.