Adam Gopnik, in a recent issue of The New Yorker (May 24, 2010, pp72-77) reviews no less than 6 new books about Jesus in a piece entitled “What Did Jesus Do.” The authors of these six new books represent a range of theological perspectives and scholarly backgrounds. Among them are the conservative scholar, Paul Johnson, and Paul Verhoeven (yes, that Paul Verhoeven, director of erotic films). He reports that each man finds a different Jesus in his reading of the Gospels, and that each man is thoroughly smitten with, and fascinated by Jesus. So is Adam Gopnik. He is attracted by the “social radicalism” that is “not a programmatic radicalism of national revolution,” but is “highly social.” He is drawn to the “relaxed egalitarianism of the open road.” He compares the Gospels to Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, and sees Jesus’ charismatic, double-edged persona – shepherd and judge – reflected in the career of Malcolm X.

Of course, the observation that writers about Jesus tend to find the Jesus they are looking for, and ultimately find a Jesus like themselves was made more than a century ago by Albert Schweitzer in his seminal study Quest for the Historical Jesus, which came out in English in 1910. Analyzing centuries’ worth of Jesus scholarship, Schweitzer finds that when scholars go looking for the historical Jesus they end up finding someone who looks like them.

This has always been the case. Peter could preach Jesus from Joel and the Psalms on Pentecost, and Paul could preach him from Meander and Epimenedes on the Aeropagus. Jews were drawn to the man who fulfilled prophecy and demonstrated prophetic power. Greeks were drawn to the universality of the teaching, and the defiance of corrupt authority. The Germanic tribes were drawn to the hero who denied the pain of the cross and sacrificed himself for his people. I keep in my Bible a post-card print of a Matthias Grunewald painting, The Small Crucifixion. In it every bruise, wound, splinter and laceration is emphasized on the skin of Jesus, as he hangs on the cross. Grunewald painted it to hang in a leper’s hospital.

And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself. John 12.32 Paul, in I Corinthians 1.18-31, writes about the scandal of the Jesus on the cross. Jesus, in the passage above, describes the phenomenon borne out by history – that he will be irresistible because of the scandal, because of the cross. The reason for this is simple – each of us can say, “He is on the cross for me.”

If Jesus was tempted in every way experienced by humanity (Hebrews 4.15), his experience as a human is more expansive and inclusive than any one of us can claim. And so it is only natural that a diverse group of people can look at Jesus and each see their face in his. How can he be the substitute sacrifice of each individual person (Hebrews 2.17) and not embody the whole range of human experience? It is not surprising then that everyone who studies Jesus ends up identifying with him – it is inevitable – a further and convincing proof that Jesus is the One.

The problem arises when we limit – Jesus isn’t limited by one person’s experience - and when we don’t listen. Jesus is no less specific than he is challenging when he teaches. “Love your enemies” (Matthew 5.44) is simply stated and unequivocal. “He that believes and is baptized will be saved,” (Mark 16.15) permits only one interpretation. “Let your ‘yes’ be yes and your ‘no’ be no,” (Matthew 5.37) is straightforward enough, isn’t it?

“He who has an ear to hear, let him hear” is a phrase Jesus often repeats in the gospels. “He who hears these words of mine and does them…” Jesus says (Matthew 7.24) will be the builder whose house is on the rock. Anything else is partial, limited, and ultimately doomed to fail.

The beauty of this is that when I love the Jesus who is, not just the Jesus who is like me, so also will I love everyone, for he is every one of us “even the least” (Matthew 25.40). It is a good thing that Jesus is irresistible - a great, divine, blessing-of-a-thing – if we will let it be, if we will listen to Jesus, and not limit him.