We don't overemphasize the Birth & Death of other Visionary Leaders, so why is this done with Jesus?

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

It occured to me recently that Christmas and Easter are the two primary times of the year our culture engages with Jesus. These holidays of course commemorate his birth and his death. They are both beautiful holidays, but no wonder that with all this focus on Jesus’s birth and death we can sometimes overlook the significance of his actual life.

Let’s place this idea in the context of other great historical figures. We don’t obsess over the birth and death of Abraham Lincoln. Rather we focus on his life and his accomplishments. We study the things he said and did. We commemorate his great speeches and monumental actions.

So why do we do the exact opposite with Jesus?

I certainly love Christmas and Easter as much as anyone, I really do, especially Christmas, which is one of my favorite times of year. But what if we’ve been so preoccupied with tying Jesus’s connection with the Divine to the circumstances of his birth (and death) that we’ve missed the whole point?

Certainly most sermons mention a few snippets of Jesus’s teachings, but they rarely tell us much about Jesus’s operating system. What was the deeper meaning of his parables and sayings? Why was Jesus able to have that level of insight? Who helped him discover his abilities as a teacher and a healer? What did he understand about human nature and the power to live a meaningful life?

Few think to ask these questions of Jesus.

I realize of course that Easter isn’t just about Jesus’s death, but also the Resurrection.

I’m still not completely sure what to think of the Resurrection, although it’s clear from studying the experience of the mystics that a primary message of the Resurrection is that life continues after we die.

I’ve also now heard from two priests, one Catholic, the other Episcopal, that the phenomena of resurrection is not unheard of amongst advanced spiritual practitioners. This seems difficult to believe, but I’ll be exploring this further and will report back on what I learn. What I will say now is that these reports only reinforce my belief that Jesus’s goal for his followers was not so much that they worship him, as much as that they become like him.

It’s my growing experience that our ability to access the Divine is found in our ability and willingness to understand Jesus’s own connection to the Divine. Not through his birth or his death, but through his life and his teachings. Rather than a faraway, someday Heaven, Jesus was largely trying to teach us how to live in this life, right now. When Jesus spoke, the Kingdom of Heaven was always at hand.

It’s available now, in the present moment, not in some distant afterlife.

I believe if we shift our focus, Jesus can teach us the same thing he was trying to teach his followers 2000 years ago: how to live.