John Dominic Crossan is a biblical scholar who has written 20 books and has lectured widely on Jesus and his times. In delivering three talks last week to an alumni group at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, he proved to be a crowd-pleasing speaker with a creative message. How that message squares with the mainline Christian understanding of Jesus’ mission is a basic question that remains after the lectures are over.

Crossan, for 19 years a Catholic monk and then a professor at De Paul University, used his first lecture to present Jesus as a resident of an Israel dominated by the Roman Empire. This situation gives a sharp edge to Jesus’ teaching about the Kingdom of God. The Romans regarded their empire as supreme, and their emperor as a god. In proclaiming another kingdom, Jesus put himself in mortal danger.

In a view diametrically opposed to the Roman one, Jesus points to “what things are like when God rules the world.” Beyond that, using terms that Crossan finds “stunningly original and creative,” Jesus proclaims that the kingdom of God has already begun. Those who accept this reality adopt a new set of values, and place themselves in opposition to the power-holders of this world. For Jesus and his followers, the world of the power-holders is patently unjust.

This injustice is to be remedied, not by armed struggle, but rather by conversion to the God of justice. The world of restored justice and order is symbolized in Jesus’ image of a banquet at which all sorts and conditions of people will come together and share food.

This vision implies that God has come to “clean up the mess” caused by the injustice of the world, and has put his creation back in order.

This restoration is a process that Jesus shares with his followers. Jesus intends for those who accept the Kingdom to take an active part in sharing food and other gifts with others. The story of the loaves and fishes, in which Jesus miraculously feeds five thousand people, offers a powerful example. Jesus’ followers take an active part in helping to feed those who want to eat; for Jesus, this participation is vital.

However important this task, Crossan claims that the Church wants nothing to do with it. For him, this refusal means that the Church fails in the basic mission that Jesus expects it to fulfill.

In his second lecture, Crossan focused on the passion and death of Jesus. Almost inevitably, the speaker devoted considerable time to Mel Gibson’s film “The Passion of the Christ.” He has many criticisms to make of the film, the most important of them bearing on Gibson’s theology.

In theological terms, the main problem of the film, for Crossan, is its vision of God — a view that suggests that God wants to punish Jesus as severely as possible in order to make up for the sins of human beings.

Gibson has bought into what Crossan calls the “substitutionary atonement” explanation of the passion that focuses on suffering rather than sacrifice. But Crossan asks: Do we have to accept this as the best theological position? The speaker’s answer is no because, for him, this view implies a monstrous idea of God.

In his final lecture, Crossan directed his attention to the Resurrection of Jesus. In focusing on the scriptural accounts, he emphasized that they should be read in a pre-Enlightenment perspective, before that 18th century change of outlook brought us the scientific way of looking at things.

Crossan does not attempt to define what the Resurrection of Jesus is; but he suggests that its significance lies in the Kingdom. The Easter events show God becoming the power that cleans up the injustices of this world. Crossan sees the appearances of the risen Christ as parables about God’s power.

For me, Crossan’s presentation, though filled with the sparkle of a master speaker, failed to satisfy theological curiosity. His treatment of the Resurrection, especially, fell flat, detailing all the things it is not while offering little of what it is.

To call this central tenet of Christian faith “a metaphor that God has become the clean up of the world” seems to me flat and banal. It makes me long for a definition of Easter that comes closer to those that have excited Christians through the ages.

Richard Griffin