Question 2: While no interpretation can capture Jesus' full identity, which one of the portrayals of Jesus described in (Roger) Haight's chapter (prophet, teacher, healer, or liberator) seems most credible to you and most relevant to the American context today? Why?

Thesis: It seems to me that the most relevant portrayal of Jesus today remains one of the earliest used of Jesus in the identity of the earliest Christians- “soteros”/savior.

I would have to say that I was a bit disappointed by Haight’s portrayals of Jesus and found them to be lacking.  This was good because, in my own bias of being a teacher, I was ready to select Jesus as teacher.  What I found, however, was a description of Jesus as more a member of the “Tea Party” movement, especially given the description of the “Cynic,” which I admit this was a novel description for me.  Perhaps given the context in which we find ourselves as a nation today this may be the most apt and relevant portrayal.

The portrayal, however that I find most relevant is that of Jesus as Savior or Liberator.  At a person’s most fundamental level, I believe there is a need for salvation or even better stated- liberation.  Currently the human person is tethered to so many things and to so many activities, counter to those of faith that s/he is barely able to concentrate on that which is essential for salvation, namely (as stated in the Rite of Baptism) living the practice of the faith by loving God and neighbor.  In discussing the portrayal of Jesus as Savior or Liberator I realize that Haight is presenting an eschatological model.  In the end that is what is most relevant, that the human person is concerned with her/his salvation and liberation from that which is of this world.  Unless there is an understanding by the person of being so dependent and attached to the things of this world there may be little hope for a true recognition of he who is integral to our salvation, the God who is revealed as Jesus.  Even in the earliest identification of one Christian to another in using the symbol of the fish, or icqus, the sigma stood for “soteros” or savior, as in Jesus Christ, God, Son, Savior.  It would seem that from the earliest this was an integral identity of Christ.  Although the liberation which is described is at a more structural level, I think one needs to be liberated internally first to then be able to be a true disciple and cooperate in the saving ministry of liberating others, especially those oppressed by the current situation of our nation.