Finding Jesus in the First Testament1

By: Lisa W. Davison

President Cueni, Dean Dare, Faculty Colleagues, Trustees, Staff,

Students, Family, and Friends; it is a great honor to be installed as
Professor of Old Testament at Lexington Theological Seminary. As one
whose career goal was to teach at a Disciples of Christ related
seminary, this is an overwhelming day for me. Although I have stood
in this space to preach several times over the past seven years, today
seems quite different. I was always nervous before delivering those
sermons, but today I would say that my nervousness has reached
heights that, up until now, I did not know were physically possible. My
anxiety cannot be attributed solely to the presence of my mother,
sister, home pastor, and the co-chair of the elders of my home church
of 1st Christian in Radford, VA. Rather I am humbled that all of you
gathered here would take time from your busy schedules to be present
on this important day for me, as I seek to follow Gods call in my life
through the ministry of teaching.
For those of you who have been pondering, with great confusion,
the title of my presentation -- a moment of explanation. Some of you
may be concerned that I am recanting everything that I have taught
about how Christians should read the 1st Testament. Others may be
joyful at the thought that I have finally seen the light and repented of
my teaching students to X Jesus out of the First Testament. Calm
your fears and/or excitement, the title is an indication of what I hope to
do with the time I have to speak this morning. I want to share with you
why I am so adamant about the importance of the 1st Testament for
Christians. Despite what many may presume or claim about me, my
studies of the 1st Testament have made me a more committed follower
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Installation Address delivered on May 6, 2003.

of Jesus of Nazareth. For although I do not believe we should look for

evidence of Jesus in these texts, I do believe that, in coming to
understand these materials, Jesus life and message are illumined.
Whats a nice Christian Girl Like You Doing Studying the Old
Testament?
If I have heard this question once, I have heard it a hundred
times over the past 12 years. Often these words have been said with a
tone of judgment, as if I had somehow lost my way, or lost my
Christianity, by choosing this testament for my focus of study. The
implied question was: Why would you want to spend your time on the
OLD way rather than preaching the gospel. The first few times I
encountered this question/accusation, I became defensive and felt
threatened, but then I just was confused. I did not see what was
incongruent with being a Christian and choosing to make the study of
the 1st Testament your lifes work. But this was not the first time I
realized that I did not always think about, nor see, things the way the
dominant voices of Christianity do. How was it that I, raised in the
church, would come to such different conclusions?
The answers had to lie within my upbringing. The more I
experience of life, the more I have come to appreciate the wonderful
blessings of my faith formation. When I was younger, I had no idea the
important influence my church and family had over me. Although I can
not pinpoint specific sermons, church school classes, or life lessons, I
grew up with a faith that did not require me to simply accept whatever
belief was presented to me. Rather I was taught to think about my
faith, dare I say to think theologically about my faith, with an openness
to new ideas and others beliefs. With the nurturing of my church
family, I learned that my intellect was a gift from God and should not
be feared as a threat to faith.
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I did not recognize this gift until the first religion course I took at
Lynchburg College. When the professor announced that the first five
books of the bible were not written by Moses and that Gen 1-11 was a
collection of myths never meant to be a history or science textbook, I
was neither shocked nor dismayed. Unlike many of my classmates, the
knowledge that the bible was a human document did not create a crisis
of faith for me. In fact, I was intrigued by these new ideas and
incorporated them into the ongoing examination of my faith, which had
begun in childhood. As I formulated my theology, my ideas about God,
Jesus, and humanity, I was able to think carefully about what I had
heard and to discern what I truly believed. Isnt it funny that, when I
headed to seminary with the intent of later pursuing a PhD in New
Testament studies, no one questioned my motives or my faith.
It was not until I took Intro to Theology at Brite Divinity School
that I realized that I was a heretic, that many of my beliefs long ago
had been declared unacceptable by the orthodox voices of Christianity.
As a member of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), I had been
taught that the only litmus test for faith was to confess a belief in
Jesus as the Christ. What that confession of faith meant was up to
each individual to work out for her or himself. There were no creeds to
accept, so there was no requirement to believe in the virgin birth, the
trinity, or sacrificial atonement. After struggling through many of the
classic theologians, I wrote a credo on the humanity of Jesus, knowing
full well that what I was writing had been condemned as heresy.
Luckily, though, I had a theology professor who, although he disagreed
with me on this issue, did not condemn my views nor tell me that my
theology was unacceptable and inappropriate for the church. Instead,
Dr. David Gouwens reminded me that I was not alone in my beliefs; I
stood in a long line of liberal Christian voices, and he encouraged my
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independent spirit. Dr. Gouwens and my other seminary professors

taught me that the label heretic had more to do with who had the
most power than it did with who was the most faithful.
As powerful as that theology class was for me, the true lifechanging event in my seminary career was when I began seriously to
read and engage the pages of the 1st Testament. I know that those
texts had been the basis for sermons I had heard growing up, but most
of what I remembered were the so-called fun stories of Daniel in the
Lions Den and of Noahs Ark. Under the guidance of Dr. Toni Craven,
the First Testament was opened to me in a new way, and among them I
found nourishment for my very being. I was comforted by the idea
that God chose the least likely people to do Gods work and by the
knowledge that no one among the stories of Ancient Israel was perfect.
In fact, quite the opposite was true. These were honest
representations of humanity, flaws and all, yet God worked through
them anyway.
Even more, I came to an understanding that, to be a true
follower of Jesus, I needed to study and know the scripture that formed
his theology. As I lived among these texts, my confession of faith in
Jesus did not lessen, but rather deepened and took on a more powerful
meaning in my life. I was able to say with conviction that in the person
of Jesus, his life and teachings and even his death and continuing
influence on his followers beyond the tomb, I found my pathway to live
in covenant relationship with God.
The powerful new insights into the First Testament that shaped
my theology, though, were not the most common or obvious ones.
Certainly, learning that the prophets of Israel were not future tellers
but were forth tellers who gave theological commentary on their world,
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reaffirmed for me that they were indeed speaking a word for their
contemporary audiences. Unlike some of the traditional views of the
Church, they were not predicting an event that would not take place for
800 or so years. Learning that Isaiah, in Ch 7:10-16, was not referring
to a mysterious virgin birth but rather to a young woman already
pregnant in the time of King Ahaz, did call into question some of the
creedal claims of the church but did not detract from my commitment
to following Jesus.
Actually, the greatest influences on my theology came from the
study of the books of the Torah. The prevalent message of Christianity,
as I understand it, has been about death and resurrection. The claim
has been made that death was the punishment human beings received
when Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil. However, when one takes off the glasses of Christian tradition
and reads Gen 2-3 again, everything changes. Human beings,
according to the text, were created as mortal beings, or else the
presence of the tree of life would not have been necessary. Since the
first humans chose knowledge over the ability to live forever without
free will, they and we now live with the awareness of our mistakes as
well as those of others. We have a conscience. In a compassionate
move, God banishes humanity from the garden to protect us from
eating of the tree of life and having to live with this knowledge forever
(Gen 3:22-23). Death is not a punishment; it is a blessing. The
purpose of Jesus life was not to save me from the cruel grip of death
or from some original sin.
Instead, it is in the first creation story of Gen 1 that I find support
for my claim of Jesus as the Christ for my life. In this story, we learn
that humanity was created in the image of God (Gen 1:26-27), male
and female, all of us have a spark of the divine within us. The problem
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is that humans have not allowed this divinity to shine through our lives,
and have not lived up to our God-given potential, but Jesus did. He
lived in such a way that the imago dei within him was allowed to infuse
his life. In doing this, Jesus was one who lived an authentically fully
human life and thus he also lived a life that was fully divine. With
Jesus as my example, I can no longer use the excuse of being only
human for not allowing the imago dei to shine through my life.
With this new understanding of Genesis and Gods intentions for
humanity, I focused my attention on Leviticus, Numbers, and
Deuteronomy. As many Christians, I was intimidated and confused by
the intricate sacrificial system reflected in these books. Many
Christians claim that Jesus death was a sacrifice meant to pay the
price for humanitys sinfulness, and thus appeasing God so God could
forgive us. This claim always had been a great stumbling block for me.
Such a view of God was incongruent with the God I see revealed in the
life and teachings of Jesus, and inconsistent with the portrayal of God
in the First Testament. Among the teachings of Torah, I learned that
the one thing God would never want, nor accept, was a human
sacrifice (e.g., Deut 12:31), a fact confirmed by prophets (e.g., Mic
6:7). In fact, I believe that the system of sacrifices in Ancient Israel
was not about what God demanded or needed. Rather, these rituals
were intended for the people as a way for them to feel as if they had
made-up for their mistakes, so God would be able to forgive them.
For some reason, human beings find it hard to believe that we are
worthy of love, so we need a way to earn forgiveness. This
understanding of the sacrificial system no longer allowed for me to
believe that Jesus death on the cross was so that God could forgive my
sins. Did Jesus have to die? No! But, even in his dying, he continued
to teach about the nature of God. If this human being could love and
forgive even those who tortured him then surely God, in Gods
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immense mercy and compassion, could forgive us without any

sacrifice.
The more I studied the First Testament, I began to realize that
much of what Jesus taught with his words and actions was not new
material, but rather was grounded upon the teachings of the Torah and
the prophets. When asked about the greatest commandment (Matt
22:32-40), Jesus did not make up a new law. He needed only to call his
audiences attention to something they already knew. Deut 6:5
teaches us to Love the Lord you God with all your heart, with all your
strength, and with all your being.2 Likewise, the second
commandment was not a new idea but was Jesus summing up all of
the teachings of the Torah into one found in Lev 19:18: Love your
neighbor as yourself. The writer of the Gospel of Matthew describes
Jesus as claiming that he did not come to abolish the Torah but rather
to give it new meaning and new life (Matt 5:17).
Beyond the basic changes in how I read their words, the
prophetic texts have taken on new meaning for me. Traditional
Christianity has looked to the prophets in order to prove the
significance of Jesus. I, on the other hand, read about Jesus life and
teachings and am reminded of the prophets. In his words and deeds,
Jesus took the messages of these prophets seriously, and I as his
follower am called to do the same thing. Although these words do not
predict Jesus, they do reveal who Jesus was and what he understood
was his mission in life.
Having heard the dominant message of Christianity as the claim
that Jesus was the Messiah, which became the title of Christ in
Greek, I was led to believe that the Jewish people were waiting and
2

All biblical quotations are the authors translation.

praying for the Messiah who would come and pay the price for their
forgiveness. It did not take long in my seminary studies before I
realized the error of this idea. Learning that the meaning of the
Hebrew word, messhiach, was someone who was anointed to do
Gods will, began to clarify this area of my theology. While some of the
Jewish people in 1st century Palestine may have believed in the
messiah, one of such cosmic significance, there were many different
views within the Jewish community. In fact, scripture reveals the
possibility of this title, messiach, being used for more than one person.
For example, Isaiah of the Exile proclaimed Cyrus of Persia, a follower
of Zoroastrianism, to be Gods messhiach (Isa 45:1). Such
knowledge did not detract from my confession of faith in Jesus as
messiah, or the Christ, of my life. It only made it stronger and more
meaningful. For just as Cyrus liberated the exiles in Babylon and
allowed them to return home in Jerusalem, so to Jesus liberated people
from the exile of feeling that they were unworthy of love and allowed
them to return home in God, who loved them as they were.
It is no coincidence that Jesus chose a passage from the prophet
Isaiah (61:1-2a) as the basis for what the writer of Luke describes as
his first sermon in his home synagogue (Luke 4:16-21). In choosing
these prophetic words, he was not claiming that this post-exilic prophet
was predicting him, but rather he chose them as a way of affirming
what this text meant in its original historical context as well as claiming
that its message continued to be divinely relevant in his day and
beyond. He just as easily could have chosen other words of the
prophets, like those of Amos or Jeremiah. The words of Micah 6:8
would have been equally appropriate as they declared, in words, the
message of Jesus life. Jesus reminded people that God, long ago, had
told them what was required of them. Jesus believed beyond the
shadow of a doubt that God expected humanity to make justice
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happen, to love with the passion of God, and to remember that,

although we are not God, we are Gods own. His sermons and actions
revealed that Jesus was convinced of Gods faith in humanity that we
could actually do these things.
Although I have discarded, or reinterpreted, much of orthodox
Christianitys teaching about Jesus based on the study of the 1st
Testament, I still proclaim boldly to be a Christian, a follower of Jesus of
Nazareth. I am, however, more concerned with what Jesus taught
about God than I am with what the Church has claimed about Jesus. I
hold passionately to my Christology, despite the fact that it is not the
most dominant voice in Christendom or even in the hallways of LTS. I
know that this understanding of Jesus has sustained generations of
other faithful believers who shared my liberal Christian views. The
label of heretic no longer troubles me when I remember that the
majority of the religious voices in Jesus day called his words and
actions heretical. Besides, I believe that Jesus taught that it was less
important that we believe the right things than that we do what is
right. We must remember that the church chose John 3:16, for God so
loved the world, as the essence of the gospel. My hunch is that, if
asked, Jesus was chosen something more along the lines of feed the
hungry, quench the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked,
care for the sick and visit the imprisoned (Matt 25:36-46) It is much
easier to believe John 3:16 than it is to live Matthew 25:36-46.
So, Who you might ask is Jesus for this wayward Christian
who spends too much time in the Old Testament? Im glad you
asked. For me, Jesus was one who reminded us that we are made in
the image of God and that we can live in a way that our imago dei
infuses our lives, thus allowing us to become fully human and, in
essence, fully divine. Jesus was one who taught people through his
words and deeds about God, not by coming up with a new systematic
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theology but rather by reminding them what they already knew. We

are called to love God with all of our being. More importantly, Jesus
helped people to know that they could not truly love their neighbor
unless they believed themselves to be lovable. Jesus death on the
cross did not pay some cosmic debt or save me from sin and death.
Rather, his death was the natural consequence of how he lived his life,
being authentically who God called him to be. Such a radical way of
life has always made the powers that be uncomfortable. His violent
death was the result of his taking seriously Gods faith in us, and
calling people to a high level of accountability to God and to each
other, no longer allowing the escape route of being only human.
Jesus was one who took to heart the messages of the prophets who
called for justice and mercy. He believed that he was indeed anointed
to proclaim that same message in his life. As his followers, we are also
called to be a messenger of joy to the humble; to bind up the
brokenhearted, to proclaim release to the captives, and liberation to
the imprisoned; to proclaim a year of God's favor, and a day of
vindication by our God; to comfort all who mourn; to provide for those
who mourn in Zion -- to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil
of gladness instead of mourning, a garment of praise instead of a faint
spirit (Isa 61:1-3a). God requires, no God expects us to make
justice happen, to love passionately as God loves, and always
remember that, although we are not God, we have within us
the very breath and imprint of God! To settle for anything less
would betray the one whom I, whom we, call Christ. Today, the spirit
of the Sovereign God is upon all of us, . . . may we speak and act in
ways that all people will see the words of the prophets fulfilled in our
living. May it be so!

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