I
became a grandfather during the year; quite a milestone really. When people approach their 60s their friends
of similar ages are generally passing this milestone. I suppose it is an important mark of moving
on to the next generation – wherein our immortality lies in a sense.
One
of the things that I have enjoyed about this experience is that the progress of
my granddaughter through her milestones (she is 7 months old) has reminded me
of experiencing those same milestones when my own children were babies:
·
The first smile
response.
·
Sleeping through
the night.
·
Holding onto
something in the hand.
·
Holding the head
steady.
·
Crawling.
·
Pulling
themselves up on furniture (the scariest bit).
·
The first
clearly enunciated word.
·
Walking. Etc.
etc.
I
think it is fascinating to realise that while these may achieve these
milestones in a slightly different order from each other or over a different
timeline there is sufficient predictability and pattern to make us really take
notice if one is missed out or seems delayed too long; we check to see if there
might be some underlying problem that needs attention.
CHRISTMAS MILESTONES
Because
we compress the Jesus story of 33 years into a single cycle over 12 months,
especially that within 3 months of our celebration of his birth we will be
celebrating his death and resurrection, some of these things get a bit
distorted, or overlooked.
The
readings we are addressing today related to events a week after Jesus’ birth;
the official readings for today relate to events when he was 12; and next week
the readings will relate to events when he was perhaps 3 or 4 years old. And then we have nothing of his story until
he is about 30.
So
the question that comes to my minds is:
“What
does the gospel writer or the Church want us to remember or take not of by
writing this story down?”
I
want to suggest that while some of the supernatural events that surrounded the
birth narrative might want us to know that this little baby was so special he
was perhaps divine, this story wants to make it very clear that he was a little
Jewish boy, like millions of other Jewish boys, who when he was 8 days old was
formally given a name (usually related to his father’s name) and he was
circumcised – scarred for life as one of God’s people, Israel.
In
all the 2000 years of Christian history no theological debate has been more
frequently and fiercely contended than the issue of the humanity and divinity
of Jesus.
What
gets us into trouble most often is when we try to explain the coexistence of
these things using logic and empirical knowledge.
No
wonder, really, too, when you look at the Nicene Creed that we recite each
week. The middle section about Jesus
begins with 11 lines that emphasise his divine origins and leads into a single
line, simple statement that “he became truly human”. His trial and his death are mentioned in two
further lines and these are followed by 7 lines recounting his resurrection and
ascension etc.
Anyone
who tries to have these things coexist by any other means than “MYSTERY” is
headed for tough times, because none of it is self-evident, logical or
provable.
HISTORY AND FAITH
Modern
biblical scholars generally manage this by speaking of Jesus in two ways – the
Jesus of HISTORY and the Jesus of FAITH.
When
you think about the processes by which the stories of Jesus life and teaching
were recorded, I think you can accept that it wasn’t until the end of his life
that people really recognised that there was something special about this
man.
No-one
was keeping a diary of his birth and childhood.
Those stories came into circulation afterwards and so they tell us more
than what actually happened. Embedded in
the narrative of what happened are things about who we believe Jesus is because
we know the end of the story.
Albert
Schweizer was the first modern scholar to try and pare away the Jesus of Faith
bits so that we might begin to see something about the Jesus of History, and
over a hundred years later scholars are still trying to unravel the
puzzle. Marcus Borg’s recent publication
“Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time” sums this work up very succinctly in
the title. We all have well-founded
ideas about the Jesus of Faith, but we know much less about the Jesus of
History.
THE
ESSENTIAL HUMANITY OF JESUS
I think we in the church
live in constant danger of losing the essential humanity of Jesus, and thereby
lose the profound mystery of the incarnation of God, and the wondrous
brotherliness of our Christ.
I have heard people
comment when confronted with some of the tough challenges and complexities of
life: “But of course Jesus had the advantage over us; he was God’s Son.”
Not so! That is heresy.
This story and others
emphasise for us that Christ Jesus was truly human. He lived in the same real world that you and
I live in. He was very poor. He experienced fear and pain and sadness just
like we do, and to me, that makes him far more accessible than if he were
simply a divine in human clothing.
Here is one of the ironies
of my life as a minister of the Gospel:
·
It is very hard to get non-Christians to
confront the fact that Jesus was Divine,
·
yet it is almost as difficult to convince
Christians that he was truly human.
Some of you may be
familiar with the series of novels written by Fr Joseph Girzone called
“Joshua”. One of the attractions of
imaginative books like these about Jesus is that they underline the common
humanity of Jesus. They are read mainly by church goers who have been in
danger of losing the down-to-earth reality of the incarnation. They warm our hearts by depicting a Christ
who was one of us; really one of us.
This year I would
encourage you to explore what you can of the Jesus of History and let his
self-identification with our humanity fill you with hope that your life can be
truly transformed by the grace and love of God.
This is not because I want you to ditch the Jesus of Faith, but because
in him the human and the divine become beautifully and awesomely aligned and we
need to take hold of both dimensions to fully understand him.
SO
TRUST THIS MYSTERY
This is the Mystery! That Jesus is for us both fully human and yet
divine.
·
Hold on to the Mystery.
·
Or better still, let the Mystery hold on to
you.
Throughout all the year,
with the special Christian festivals of Christmas, Epiphany, Transfiguration,
Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension and Pentecost –
·
for goodness sake don’t let go of the hand
of the human Jesus;
·
only in the human hand do we find the
Divine hand;
·
and only in the Divine hand do we find our
own destiny.
AMEN
