Blue Collar
(Part 2)
Isn't this the
carpenter? Isn't this Mary's son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and
Simon? Aren't his sisters here with us? (Mark 6:3)
Around the same time that the King James
Version (“KJV”) translators went with “carpenter,” so too did every other major
European language translation. And as translation followed translation, we made
Jesus a carpenter in the European image, and translated him as such to the ends
of the earth. However, where Jesus is concerned, it’s important to draw the
most accurate portrait possible, replacing the notion of a man who merely planed
tables for a living with images of a man who may have actually spent more time
cutting stone with his father from quarries. But if we're only debating the
kinds of materials with which Jesus worked, it probably doesn't make much
difference. So, why quibble?
The answer is that Jesus' knowledge of
building did not seem to stop at the materials themselves. He spoke constantly
of financial practices and the management of both projects and people including
payment, debt, wages, investment, hiring, firing and the relationships between
management and staff. “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won't you
first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to
complete it? For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it,
everyone who sees it will ridicule you, saying, 'This person began to build and
wasn't able to finish.’” (Luke 14:28-30) Stand Jesus' references to masonry
next to his references to the business side of construction work and management
and we begin to fill in some of the gaps of his personal history which then casts
an entirely different light on his entire ministry.
It's an attractive image for many of us, for example,
to envision Jesus working mostly alone as a freelance carpenter in his woodshop.
In such a vision, and before he embarked on his public ministry, Jesus’ days would
have been filled with a dedication to his craft, communing with the Father in a
prayerful, almost monastic setting – like his portrayal in The Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson. But what if, instead of
working in silent reverie, Jesus worked with others? For instance, on some
projects he would have likely worked under another’s authority, under an arch-tektōn for example. And as a more
experienced tektōn, he may have had
authority over others – the day laborers and less-experienced tektōns. If true, then our perception of
Jesus' formative pre-ministry years begins to shift, especially for those of us
where work has an outsized grip on our identities, or where work is our identity.
In all likelihood, Jesus had coworkers –
probably diverse ones by that era's standards. King Herod's first-century
public works projects generated an enormous demand for laborers from all across
the region, and many scholars believe that Joseph and Jesus participated in many
of the King’s building projects. In other words, Jesus worked at job sites with
co-workers of differing worldviews. If true, then we shouldn’t shun workplaces
with co-workers who have different points of view. Rather, we are called to be
salt and light in those very same places. Further, those tradespeople were also
common men – “undesirables,” even. Roman society generally divided artisans, or
craftsmen, into “free,” such as painters and sculptors, and “lowly,” such as
carpenters and metalsmiths. Thus, someone inventing a background for Jesus, one
that elites as well as peasants and artisans would have appreciated, might have
chosen an occupation like a scribe; they certainly would not have chosen a tektōn.
This would then change how we see Jesus'
familiarity with “ruffians.” He didn't just dine with sinners when the
Pharisees were watching, or when the Gospel writers were taking good notes. Jesus
likely spent a good deal of his life among the “lowbrow.” In other words, Jesus
was not an elite; his trade was not respected. In fact, early church leaders of
an aristocratic bent found Jesus' trade to be an embarrassment and wanted desperately
to distance Jesus from it, and for Jesus to find a new agent.
The first substantive polemic against
Christianity attacked the respectability of Jesus on precisely that account. In
the second century, the pagan philosopher, Celsus, disparaged Jesus as "only a tektōn." The late New Testament scholar, William Lane, noted
in his Mark commentary that the question, "Is not this the tektōn?" along with calling Jesus
the son of Mary (instead of the son of Joseph), were meant to disparage within
that cultural setting, i.e., isn't
this the manual laborer whose mother, well ... you know?
And some things, it seems, simply never
change. While 19th-century English critics of John Everett Millais' painting had
come to accept the KJV's assertion that Christ was a carpenter, they were
disturbed by the artist's embrace of the low-class lifestyle that came with it,
i.e., unswept floors and shirtless
houseguests, including Joseph's rough hands and veined muscles that Millais had
modeled after an actual carpenter. But Jesus was a laborer. He would have hammered, chiseled, broken, carried
and laid stone for half his life which may explain, at least in part, his
ability to carry his own cross up Golgotha
after being nearly flogged to death. It’s almost a certainty that Jesus did
not look like the emaciated Jesus of the medieval paintings.
It's easy to focus entirely on the salvific
meaning of the Incarnation. Or when we read that Jesus took on the "nature
of a servant, being made in human likeness," (See, Phil. 2:7) it's easy to think immediately of him washing the disciples'
feet. But to go before us as high priest, Jesus assumed the place of a servant from
his earliest years of manhood and in every aspect of his life. Thus, he can fully
empathize with human weakness (Heb. 4:15) because he was made "fully human
in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest
in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people."
(Heb. 2:17) In other words, a fully human experience was necessary for Jesus’ atoning
role as our high priest who ever goes before us.
Jesus experienced the full range of human
emotion, and a broad range of human circumstance – including how the fall of man
impacts our workplaces. We cannot be certain, but Jesus surely experienced or
witnessed at least some, if not all of our workplace suffering. At times, he
may have felt exploited. He may have endured drudgery – for days, or perhaps even
years. Despite these difficulties, however, Jesus pleased his Father in all
that he said and did. In a culture that lauds creative-class jobs at the
expense of trades and service workers, we would do well to linger on a deeper
investigation of Jesus' vocation. The idea that Jesus, God incarnate, worked
with his heart, head and hands in an ordinary, blue-collar job illustrates that
there are no degrees of sacredness.
Therefor it's all the more reason for us to
rejoice in the builder-craftsman rabbi. He was neither rich nor important; neither
noble nor Harvard-educated. Like most of us, he was not powerful in the way of
the world; that's not the kind of king he came to earth to be. A culture's
concept of the ideal Messiah shifts over time. Second-century Greeks, like Celsus,
and 19th-century English critics, like Dickens, preferred a Messiah who was
more cultured, i.e., just like them. But
whose image are we to see? If fashioned in our own image, then such a savior
would be no savior at all since we cannot save ourselves.
First-century Jews, like some Americans
today, wanted a savior with political and military influence, e.g., a new King David who would free
them from Rome, even conquer it. Pilate interrogated Jesus with that very concern
in mind, but Jesus told him that his kingdom was not of this world. That
statement cost Jesus innumerable followers but earned at least some favor from
the Roman governor. However, it wouldn’t be the last time Roman officials
evaluated such an other-worldly claim.
The early church historian, Hegesippus, whose
work was preserved through another historian by the name of Eusebius, recorded
that generations later two Christian men were called to appear before the then-emperor,
Domitian. (Circa 81 to 96 AD) These men
were biological descendants of David and local leaders in the Christian church.
The emperor informed the witnesses that he'd heard of the claim that a seed of
David would conquer Rome. Thus, and with that claim as prelude, Domitian’s
inquiry of these two men was understandable, perhaps even justifiable, i.e., what were the aims, or the
intentions of these descendants of David?
Like Jesus, the two men reported that the
kingdom was not of this world, and as proof they extended their hands showing
their permanent, dirtied calluses – the hands of men who'd worked field and
earth since the time they could walk. These were peasants' hands, not soldiers'
hands. As a result, the emperor decided that the men posed no threat. Concluding
that they were just laborers, Domitian
let them go. Of course, these same farmers, fishermen and builders would later conquer
Rome, but just not in the way, or during the time that the emperor had feared.
Rome would become a majority Christian empire within just a few centuries, but
that came later.
Upon returning from their interrogation, the
two men surely must have connected their experience with the story of Jesus
before Pontius Pilate, only half a century earlier. As leaders in their
Christian churches, they would have known at least some of the Scripture. But it’s
entirely possible that they may have heard the story directly from their
grandfather who would have known it very well. His name was Jude. His brother?
Jesus, son of Mary.
A builder by trade and our blue-collar Savior.
Grace,
Randy
No comments:
Post a Comment