A retired Lutheran pastor (who I don’t know) had a letter to the editor in our local paper this past Sunday. It was titled “How Christian nationalism ignores Jesus.” In his view, the tenets of the Christian nationalism that has risen in popularity here in the US clash with many of the teachings of Jesus found in the gospel. The pastor is appropriately passionate, cogent, and reasonable. He describes the understanding of Jesus common to most moderate and liberal churches and the attitudes and behavior such a view supports.

Practices of hospitality, welcoming strangers, feeding the hungry, supporting those in distress, bringing healing to those who suffer, and creating communities of love and understanding — these acts are central not only to Christian teachings and beliefs, but also central to the vast expressions of religion and spirituality. However, they are not part of the Christian nationalist perspectives.

Members of denominations like mine are often astounded at the beliefs and values of conservative Christians. But then the reverse is also true.

The central problem is how these Christians define and understand the values embedded in the Christian tradition.

And “those Christians” are also puzzled and often angered by the values liberals find in their understanding of Jesus. The real “central problem,” however, is that such splits have been true of Christianity throughout its history and there is no way to resolve them.

This problem became baked into the cake with the rise of orthodoxy and the establishment of Christianity as the religion of the Roman empire in the 4^th century. While Jesus-inspired values and right behavior were always taught to folks in the pew, they were not the church’s main concern. Christianity’s core was the salvation that Jesus had procured for believers by dying as the only Son of God and being raised from the dead.

For that reason, both the Apostles’ and the Nicene Creeds can go directly from Jesus’ birth to his crucifixion and say nothing about his adult ministry, nothing about his teachings or his behavior. This, of course, fit very well with the injustice and cruelty of the Roman empire. And it’s fit well with every similarly inclined culture and government since then.

Those believing in a Jesus of compassion and mercy often react by saying, “They just need to read the gospels!” But it isn’t that simple. Orthodox Christianity is a version of Pauline Christianity. Paul never knew Jesus and says nothing about Jesus’ life. For Paul, the gospel is all about believing in the saving death and resurrection of Jesus. As he writes to the Christians in Corinth, “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”

But we shouldn’t be too hard on Paul. We know now that Christianity from the beginning was a diverse, fractious, and divided movement. Paul’s biggest conflict was with the church in Jerusalem, led by Jesus’ brother James. These Christians believed Jesus was a reformer of Judaism and that its rules and traditions remained in effect. In the first few centuries there were also other Christian sects, many of which drew on a variety of spiritual and religious traditions from Greco-Roman culture.

Orthodoxy arose from the desire to corral this motley crew into a centralized belief system and organization. Was it right? Is orthodoxy the rightful successor to Jesus? Or was one of the other groups more like what Jesus intended? No one knows and it’s unlikely anyone ever will know.

Perhaps, even Jesus wouldn’t know. “What was Jesus’ intention?” is the question that hangs over the New Testament and the church. What was Jesus’ goal? What was he trying to do? Consternation over those questions can be found even in the gospels themselves.

The most famous modern person to attempt to answer those questions was Albert Schweitzer. To most people he is the French-German missionary doctor of colonial Africa and Nobel Peace Prize winner. But prior to that, he was an accomplished Lutheran pastor, theologian, and musician.

Dissatisfied with what modern historical critical biblical scholars were saying about Jesus of Nazareth, Schweitzer undertook his own investigation. The result was the bombshell publication in 1906 of The Quest of the Historical Jesus (English title). Schweitzer asserts that the scholars of his time were simply finding the Jesus their prejudices wanted to find, rather than the Jesus who really was and who may have not been all that appealing or relevant to us.

The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah, who preached the ethic of the kingdom of God, who founded the kingdom of heaven upon earth and died to give his work its final consecration never existed. He is a figure designed by rationalism, endowed with life by liberalism, and clothed by modern theology in a historical garb. This image has not been destroyed from outside; it has fallen to pieces….

But Schweitzer was no conservative traditionalist. In his view, Jesus believed his purpose was to be the catalyst for bringing about God’s kingdom on earth. He had an apocalyptic vision of God acting soon to turn the world upside down. But it didn’t happen and he died a humiliating death. Jesus tried to spin the wheel of history but it only ended up crushing him. It is no coincidence that soon after writing his book Schweitzer began medical training and then left for Africa as a missionary doctor.

Then and since, Schweitzer’s book has been both condemned and praised. Over a hundred years later, it is still considered a significant work in theological and biblical circles. Even among those who reject his specific conclusions, Schweitzer is recognized as the one who exposed theology’s inability to say definitively who Jesus really was. Savior? Apocalyptic prophet? Reformer? Revolutionary? Mystic? Wisdom teacher? Religion founder? Religion destroyer?

Support for all of these can be found in the ancient texts, but there is no way to combine them all into one person. As New Testament scholar Robert Price has said, our problem is that we have too many Jesuses. It’s like the old To Tell the Truth TV program. The announcer says, “Will the real Jesus please stand up?” and the guests each pretend to stand up but none of them ever do.

Since Schweitzer, the church has avoided the consequences of this realization by playing its role as a cultural institution, but that’s no longer working. As a result, millions are leaving Christianity. Among those who remain, new groups are re-imagining Christianity as an amazing array of self-help philosophies, social service organizations, nostalgic recreations of the past, and apocalyptic authoritarian political movements. But no one can point and say with authority, “That’s what Jesus intended.”

Can Jesus be saved? Does Christianity have a future? “Maybe” is about the strongest answer I can give. How ever understood, Jesus has inspired millions and remains a powerful symbol. I think he’s worth saving. So, next time, I will give at least a sketch of how this ancient tradition could survive and be of value to our perilous world. And that’s the key point. Perhaps our global crises may be the needed catalyst for the church to pull its feet out the mud of its long-irrelevant doctrines, theologies, and structures. We can only hope.