If you've read the Bible, you've probably noticed Jesus can't stop moving. Well, the adult Jesus, anyway. As a kid, he probably stuck to the task of mastering the building trades at home. Although alternative histories about his so-called “lost years” are quite alluring, the biblical texts are silent about sojourns among the masters of India or Egypt, or a discipleship at the Dead Sea Essene Community. While the image of an adolescent sawing timber and chanting Hebrew prayers with his family lacks the pizzazz of a world-trekking bodhisattva-in-training, nevertheless a homeschooled Jesus should encourage us. Jesus as humble tradesman suggests we humans need no special gurus to find our inner Christ. He worked with his dad, attended synagogue and studied the Torah. He got his spiritual training from the religion of his people. This suggests we can do likewise.

If the young Jesus was a stay-at-home, the full-grown Jesus wandered the dusty roads of Roman Judea, teaching and healing anywhere he could gather a crowd. He even quipped that foxes have holes and birds have their nests but he had nowhere to lay his head (Mt. 8:20). Looking at Jesus historically and theologically, the inescapable conclusion is that his journey continues to this day.

Every generation inherits a Jesus whose image is in motion, evolving through time. Compare the hippie Jesus of the Vietnam era with the more conservative Jesus of today. Neither of these Jesuses was unanimously affirmed, which further demonstrates the point. The man of Nazareth saw his world through lenses particularly suited to his day and time. Everyone afterward who has looked at Jesus has brought different lenses to the process. We have shaped and reshaped Jesus through time, influenced by cultural, linguistic, political and economic issues. The process is both open-ended and unavoidable.

Let's be clear: There has never been consensus on Jesus; there is no secret key to unlock the “real” Jesus. Every self-described Christian group believes it is following the teachings of Jesus. What we are actually doing is interacting with a series of beliefs and practices, handed down through the centuries, reconfigured in successive generations. Christology must be progressive because humanity is always changing. There is nothing particularly innovative about this observation. In 1906, Albert Schweitzer wrote:

Theological dialogue is crucial. We learn and grow by sharing ideas and appreciating differences, united by mutual respect rather than unanimous agreement. Jesus is a work in progress, a highway to the highest and best values that our generation can imagine. Behind the process, somewhere in the dim past, a great soul walked among us, outpicturing the Christ-within. Footprints of that life can still be found along the never-ending freeway construction site by which Jesus moves through time. Rather than lament the lack of a clear-cut, historical-biblical Jesus from whom to receive perfect guidance, Unity Magazine celebrates the ongoing process of Jesus-building. We present these culturally and personally shaped images of Jesus as attempts to peer through our lenses and glimpse the imago Dei, the image of God inscribed within each individual.

On an Evolutionary Path
By Rev. Duke Tufty

My relationship with Jesus Christ has been an evolutionary path with many twists and turns. I grew up in a very fundamental church and upon reaching the third grade I was given a “Book of Prayer” which dogmatically asserted the theology of that religion. From that book I quote:

“O thou great God, who art just and holy, I, thy sinful, unclean creature, come before thee in deep humility, confessing my many sins and my total unworthiness. In the wounds of Jesus Thou has provided cleansing for my uncleanness and pardon for my sinful nature.”

Hearing this as a 7-year-old was quite confusing. I was left with a sense of unworthiness, shame and guilt over the death of Jesus to the point he became the enemy.

As I grew older, I rejected the church I was raised in and divorced myself from all religion. In addition, I rejected Jesus Christ and found no value in anything he said or did, and Jesus became a “nobody.” I held strongly to this view until I was in my early thirties when I went through a two-year period of failures, setbacks and drug addiction. After an overdose, it became apparent to me that I needed a relationship with a higher power, and in my search I found Unity. It was like the dark, morose, heavy “drapery” on the stage of life was pulled back and for the first time I was able to see meaning and purpose to my life. Through Unity I was taught that Jesus was an example to follow and not an exception beyond human potential. Over time he became a role model, mentor and comforter. His message was no longer one of condemnation but of support. Instead of enforcing the self-image of a “sinful, unclean creature” that I once held, he uplifted me to a beautiful new awareness of beholding the Christ in all people. From where I came to where I am is the difference between heaven and hell.

My Journey With Jesus
By Rev. Mark Fuss

Years ago, when I first shared with my family that I was studying to become a Unity minister, my grandmother sat me down and began to quiz me about what Unity taught. Her genuine concern for my soul led her to ask, “Does Unity believe in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?” I answered quickly and firmly, no.

Having been raised in a fundamentalist church, I knew she was asking if Unity believed in salvation through the blood of Jesus. I had left the church decades before because I was unable to accept the idea of a God of judgment and sacrifice. The idea that God would require the death of his son, Jesus, to cover my many sins was the source of much guilt and shame. Even after leaving the church, I carried this guilt deeply embedded in my consciousness.

When I began attending Unity of Panama City, my heart resonated with a new understanding of Jesus. Jesus was way-shower and elder brother. He was a shining example of attaining Christ consciousness, rather than the exception or sacrifice.

When I began attending Unity Institute, my first class was Jesus' Teachings in the Bible, in which we tried to separate the teachings of Jesus from the teachings about Jesus. Our conclusion was that all of Jesus' teachings have their roots in three things—loving, giving and forgiveness. This was a Jesus I could relate to.

Subsequent classes in Bible history helped me to see the different ways the Gospel writers presented Jesus. How their stories, written generations after his death, presented very different pictures of the man Jesus. The writer of Matthew presented Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, the Gospel of Mark tells the tale of Jesus as suffering servant, and Luke has Jesus as social activist. It is often said that Unity loves the Gospel of John because of the writer of John's portrait of Jesus as Cosmic Christ.

Today I would answer my grandmother's question differently. Unity teaches a deeply personal relationship with Jesus, not born of salvation but emerging from a deeper understanding of the history and teachings of the man Jesus. The Jesus that resonates with my heart is the radical rabbi teaching us to love, give and forgive.

 

Jesus, The Fall Guy
By Rev. Toni Boehm

Have you ever said about someone, “Wow, did he get a bad rap?” We could say that about Jesus Christ. For centuries, people have been abusing and trying to control others through the use of Jesus' words and deeds. The hurt and anger has fallen on the wrong party. The fall guy is in actuality the one who came to show us how to move from third-dimensional thinking steeped in hatred, unkindness and power-seeking into a new dimension of understanding ourselves as the Christ, living life fully through the power of being love and grace in action, and so much more.

In 1974, I had a personal experience with Jesus. Until that time, I had put Jesus behind me, didn't want him, didn't need him. Then he appeared to me in a vision and invited me to step across a threshold. He held out his hand and waited for my acceptance of his invitation.

In my heart of hearts I knew I was being asked to cross over and through a self-imposed limitation in consciousness that I had created. It was my choice to say yes or no.

I took the hand that was extended to me and crossed over the threshold and my life has not been the same.

In 1923 Charles Fillmore gave an address at the first-ever Unity conference. At this groundbreaking event, he told followers “Jesus Christ is the head of the Unity Society—if you remember one thing from this conference, remember that about Unity.” He said that Unity is founded on the primitive, first-century Christian principles, described throughout the Gospels and in Acts. Those principles—the basic teachings of Jesus—need no embellishment: love God and love your neighbor as yourself; the kingdom is within; and the Holy Spirit is the teacher and doer of all things.

Our work on this path of spirituality is to discover and uncover that Christ within us, nurture it and allow it to be the guiding force in our lives. Yes, Jesus Christ has a role in Unity and in each of us—let us not forget that—or we will be forgetting the fundamental and foundational principles upon which Unity was founded.

 

Wisdom Teacher and Spiritual Activist
By Rev. Kelly Isola

When I was little I would sit for hours reading my children's Bible, fascinated by the stories of Jesus helping people and the magical things he did, like walking on water and feeding 5,000 people. What a cool guy! I was also told he had come to “save” me. At six, what atrocities could I possibly have committed that required Jesus to die for me? I also never understood how Jesus was the Son of God, and God himself a deity to be prayed to. Jesus was a one-of-a-kind, human being separate from me.

Today, after years of spiritual seeking and scholastic study of the teachings of Jesus, I relate to Jesus as a wisdom teacher—always reminding me that we are each fully human and fully divine, and the divine is made manifest in how we love and how we serve one another.

In this wisdom teacher I also see a spiritual activist. The stories of Jesus show a desire to shape society for the good of all, and teach us we are all connected—that we belong to each other. The writers of the Gospels remind us that what we do to one human being affects all life and the world in which we live. The “end of times” message in the Gospels revolved around the idea of a new social order based on this interconnectedness, in the same way that Nelson Mandela or Mahatma Gandhi's messages were heard.

I believe Jesus was a mystic healer, with a “knowing” of God. All great mystics and compassionate activists have been deeply entrenched in a spiritual connection with the divine. They use their own experiences of pain and joy to change lives. Again, I turn to the examples of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. They knew the “time had come” for a greater expression of love and service.

While the Jesus I know today is not the Jesus I was raised with, I have discovered a “realness” that I always knew existed. He was just like me, not separate from me. His life of love, service and deep belonging to everyone is a lesson to be drawn on for living my life. Like Jesus, our lives have pain that changes us, and dreams that inspire us—when used in the service of loving each other and a commitment to belonging to each other.

 

From Savior to Way Shower
By Rev. Karen Tudor

Raised a Catholic, I was trained to understand that Jesus was the only Son of God and that his express purpose was to save us from our sins and restore us to God through his death and resurrection. I understood that he was God and fully human and uniquely created. I understood that I was only human and that as I had a sinful nature, thanks to original sin, I could not save myself but had to surrender to Jesus' love and mediatorship. It colored my relationship with God by putting God so far away from me that only Jesus could possibly “relate” to me, as he had lived a human life. In Catholicism, our humility and unworthiness pushed the Virgin Mary and other saints between us and even Jesus, to intercede on our behalf to Jesus, as they were deemed “closer” to Jesus and therefore, to God, who remained somewhere in the unreachable distance.

In Unity, my understanding of Jesus and my relationship with God both radically changed. I began to embrace a personal relationship with God—going “straight to headquarters” as Charles Fillmore famously said.  As I focused on God, I found that for the first time in my life, I didn't know what to think of Jesus or how to relate to him any more. If he wasn't my savior and wasn't uniquely created, if I, too, shared that divinity and humanity as Unity teaches—then what role did Jesus serve?

I began appreciating him as a wisdom teacher and healer. Perhaps he was just that—someone who had taught about  God from a mystic's understanding and who understood the principles enough to help people heal.

As I continued my exploration of my relationship with Jesus, I read with enthusiasm what Charles Fillmore wrote about the mystical Jesus in Jesus Christ Heals and in Atom-Smashing Power of Mind, and I began to see Jesus' unique role in the evolution of human consciousness. I felt that I shared a kinship with Jesus in a new and exciting way; that he is indeed a “Way Shower” who has permanently lowered the threshold for our ascension into the expression of Christ Consciousness in this plane.

Today I can appreciate and teach freely from Jesus' example as described in the Gospels. He has become the model for me. Instead of seeing him as terminally unique and unattainable from my Catholic days, he is now the accessible, possible example of where I am headed in my own spiritual growth. His words, his actions, his life have become the platforms for steadying me as I grow toward expressing more fully the promise of “Christ enthroned in me.” I truly feel deeply grateful to Jesus and I love and appreciate him in a way that I never could when I thought him to be my savior.

 

A God With Skin On
By Rev. Greg Barrette

I remember being a teenage “Unikid” at a 1969 Youth of Unity Conference and hearing the iconic Unity minister Ernest Wilson say “I understand that God is ultimately Impersonal Principle—but there have been many times in my life when I needed a God with skin on.”

This shocked me—coming from such a pure metaphysician!

Ten years later, having gone through a divorce and the loss of my father in the same month, I sat before the Licensing and Ordination Committee of the Unity ministerial program and was asked to define “Jesus Christ.”

Knowing that my ordination would ride, in part, on my answer, I gave them a “textbook” definition, but I followed it with how visualizing Jesus Christ was a focus of my meditation times.

One minister was disturbed by the personal nature of my answer, to which I blurted out, “When I went through my divorce and my dad died, Impersonal Principle didn't get me through it—Jesus Christ got me through it.”

Afterwards, two elderly committee members approached me in the hall. One said “We were personal students of Charles Fillmore and we wanted you to know that Mr. Fillmore would have been proud of your answer. Don't you ever let anyone take that away from you. And we are not supposed to talk to you after your panel, so don't say who we are!” The other one gave me a conspiratorial wink.

Many years later, I read that Myrtle Fillmore first learned how to meditate by visualizing Jesus seated in the chair next to hers and imagining light streaming from his hand into hers. I feel that I am in very good company when I occasionally need “a God with skin on!”

 

He Showed Us What Is Possible
By Laura Shepard

Growing up in an Evangelical Christian home, I was raised on the story of Jesus, a story so fantastic it felt like a fairy tale. I couldn't relate to him on a personal level, as he was the one and only “son of God” and he produced all of those incredible miracles. I eventually turned my back on traditional Christianity and began the search for something more.

When I found Unity, I was amazed at how different the Bible looked when interpreted metaphysically rather than literally. It all made more sense! Hearing that Jesus was a human with the divine essence within him and that all of us have that same spark within us was stunning to me. To really understand what he meant when he said that we could not only do what he was doing, but even greater things, was life-altering. He then became an important symbol for what was possible through the power of our minds.

I now see Jesus as one of the most profound teachers of what has come to be known as the Law of Attraction. He taught us to pray believing our desires would be met. He taught us to not judge by appearances, but have faith in the process of creation. Jesus showed us what is possible when we are connected to Source. I also believe he taught us what could happen when we are not connected.

He died for our sins, giving up his life to show us what disconnection from our Source (sinning in the form of false beliefs) could cause in our lives. And then while on the cross he showed us that we could reconnect despite the circumstances. I believe he showed us the entire spectrum of possibilities for the human experience. So powerful are his teachings, we are still talking about him today.

 

Miraculous
By Ann McCray

Jesus
our road map and inspiration
a divine projection of all we can be
the way-shower paraclete
but more
and yet mysteriously
he's miraculously everyday
an eternal hope-maker
dream-shaper
the Christed-One
who lives in you
and me
 
he's who we celebrate
and where we rest
he's the one who hears
destitute cries,
    “Brother! Save me!”
and does the work
effortlessly
in this he reminds:
extend yourself
relentlessly
all in the name
and through
the voice
of Love
 
Jesus
empowerment
through service
to the highest and best
of our understanding,
God's channel,
the frequency of
nonself,
our all-one
reality