I like to think of Jesus as a man so I can marvel at his God-like brilliance and ability to see and express truth.
If you think of him as God, then his acts and works would not necessarily be worthy of attention. Pavarotti, after all, received no praise for humming a pop tune, nor Einstein for giving correct change to the paperboy.
A god can easily transform water to wine; it is much more difficult for a man.
For me, one of Jesus’ greatest moments was when he was approached by spies trying to trick him into sedition. They coyly ask if it was acceptable to pay tribute to Caesar. Jesus, quick on his feet, asked them to produce a coin, which carried Caesar’s image.
Then came the unforgettable, genius response: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
In my last post I mentioned a rabbi named Joseph Krauskopf and his visit to Tolstoy in 1894. Today I’d like to discuss Krauskopf and his response when Tolstoy asked him about Jesus.
The intelligence and poetry of the answer brought to mind the “render” response.
In Russia at that time, Jews knew little of Jesus and those familiar with him cared not much for him. But Krauskopf struck Tolstoy as a different breed. The American rabbi from Philadelphia was an early member of the reformed movement and, among other things, advocated moving the Jewish Sabbath to Sunday as a way to bring Christians and Jews together. He believed that all religions – including his own — contained good and bad, and that the good should be practiced and the bad eradicated.
Some Jews, I’m sure, refused to consider Krauskopf a Jew.
“What is your belief respecting Jesus?” Tolstoy asked.
Krauskopf told the writer, “I regard the Rabbi of Nazareth as one of the greatest of Israel’s teachers and leaders and reformers, not as a divine being who lived and taught humanly but as a human being who lived and taught divinely.”
Can we safely say that he who lives divinely is divine?
Sometimes we allow words and their interpretation to muddle or even destroy something that in its raw form and on its own is simply and clearly exceptional.
I would love to hear from others, Christians and Jews, on Krauskopf’s statement about Jesus.
NotebookM 
Leave a Reply