The gospel is Epic, don't get me wrong. But not epic like Braveheart. Not epic like Cirque de Soleil.
I read an author recently who said that perhaps Christians have confused their beloved Scriptures with their beloved fairy tales. And after having seen that Passion play, I think it is true. We love to see movies and plays incorporate the familiar epic themes of creation, sin, salvation, redemption, and destiny. But we forget that these themes were God's originally, and ours by inheritance (also God's idea). Some of our minor stories -- our best ones, perhaps -- borrow their grand, epic feel from God's great story. Not the other way around. Therefore, we ought to pay closer attention to how these themes have been embraced by culture and how they have been distorted.
Without a doubt, Jesus framed his entire ministry in terms of a grand, sweeping meta-narrative. He was the "son of Man" predicted in the book of Daniel to come trailing on the clouds of Heaven. But Jesus was also born in Bethlehem. He lived, ate, slept, and walked on the same 200 square miles of arid Palestinian dirt his entire life. He died and was buried in that dirt less than four decades later. Jesus was epic, but he was also historic.
Christ never allegorized all of life in the service of pure spiritual truths. He didn't give preference to grand spiritual ideals over the messiness of human existence. He dealt joyfully with the physical needs of people, while he dwelt with them in their neighborhoods. At the same time, he invited them to share in a Kingdom that was not of this world. Jesus was epic, but he was also domestic.
The Gospel does not blast an epic volume of feel-good theme music to drowns out difficult truths about life. Remember Jesus' harsher sayings? Such as to amputate your sinful members, or to "compel" the poor and the marginalized to come into the Kingdom? Look for those in our latest popular epic stories (Slumdog Millionaire?). The Gospel is also certainly not epic in an attitude that champions worldly archetypes: muscle-strapped masculinity and Helen-of-Troy femininity. Jesus was epic, but also surprisingly realistic.
Finally, nothing in the Gospel is epic on a scale that eclipses seemingly ordinary people and seemingly ordinary events. Even the real William Wallace (not the Mel Gibson incarnation) was a minor landowner and a knight. The disciples? They really were royal rejects.
Jesus was epic, but he was also comic.
To be continued...
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By: Chad
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