I loved college and seminary, especially the Bible courses. I learned not to be a biblical literalist. I learned some cool things about words and “The Word.” I loved Greek (Hebrew, not so much), learned that the King James Bible translators were pretty good at getting it right (for the language of their time and the documents they had at their disposal – and I still don’t like to use the KJV!), and learned that people’s names meant something to the Hebrew folks (we learned to curse people and say their name so the curse would “stick:” no name, no curse). Okay, maybe you didn’t need to know that.

The word Christ is from a Greek word christos which can be translated “the annointed,” but, according to my Greek professor (a Southern Baptist scholar, so he should know), there was no word in Greek for “annoint,” so the closest word they could find was a word that meant “to smear;” we all got a giggle out of thinking of Jesus as the “smeared one of God” (although we didn’t giggle too loudly until our prof guffawed loud enough to wake the sleepers in the statistics class next door!).

I find that most of us Christians really like to focus on Christ. Christ-likeness becomes in some traditions becomes a characteristic to be desired. My problem with “Christ,” Paul might call it my stumbling block, is that I have no way of knowing what a christ is or does. Granted, I say the creeds, I claim to think of Jesus as fully human and fully Divine, but I’ll be darned if I know what “fully Divine” ends up being.

Now, don’t go talking homoousia to me: I took Greek AND several brands of theology. I know the lingo. I understand substance. The problem is, I’ve never met a christos. What does a christos do? Can I be christos-like? Is it like when I played football in the 6th grade and got chistos-ed all over the field?

A few years ago, I read a disturbingly wonderful book by Reza Aslan, Zealot. It is not for the faint of faith or heart! It began to change my worry about never having met a christos into being fairly sure I had encountered a Jesus!

Christos gets a cool birth, wise men, shepherds, angels, the whole nine yards. Jesus gets the first chapter of Mark. Jesus was a carpenter. I’ve known lots of carpenters. I tried to be one once, and my wife still insists that that bookcase needs to stay down in the basement. But my grandfather and uncles were carpenters, artisans in wood. My youngest brother still has a beautiful table my granddad made. Doubtful he would do anything but laugh himself to death over my bookcase.

Jesus was a person,  sort of like you and me (maybe a little better). He sweated. He worried. He looked at the people around him and saw the hungry, the homeless, the lepers and other sick ones, the hypocrits, the failures, the crazies. He felt their pain. He fed them. He healed them. He made them see. He spoke to them so they could understand. He told stories, partied with them, loved them, and taught them.

At the end of a week where once again our young people have found one more reason to be afraid of life, I’m thinking that all the christos-like people are saying prayers of sorrow and wishing them well, along with the families of the dead. Maybe that’s nice. Maybe it’s just all we can think of to do.

But Jesus-like people are praying (as Jesus tended to do regularly) and then trying to figure out what to do, how to be the hands and feet not of some Christos, but of the Jesus who got splinters, who taught fishermen how to fish, who took children in his lap and laughed and blessed them.

He did something. He came down from the mountain, out of the garden, out of the synangogue, and he did something for people to set them free to do the same for others. He ticked off the government rather than got  along with it: you didn’t get nailed to a cross for preaching alone, but for showing people that there’s more to life than collecting more and more stuff. He didn’t teach that the person with the most wins, but that the very opposite, those with the least, had a chance, should be given a chance. He lost his life because he practiced the politics of love.

Maybe that’s what we need to do: get our hands dirty, take on the world by saying “NO!” to senseless violence. Yeah, we need to pray: but as the Talmud teaches, “Never pray in a room without windows.” See more than your eyelids; do more than mumble some churchy words. Go and do. Against the grain. For people, for others, for the least of these, for the children who are afraid, for the parents who mourn, for the rest of us who never know what’s going to happen next.

Jesus has no body now but yours.