At our Wednesday evening Soup and Study, we have been following the video series "Saving Jesus" and have begun with the most fundamental question: Who was Jesus? After all, in our culture there does not seem to be a consensus. Is Jesus a deity who appears to be human or has just enough traits to be relatable? Maybe Jesus is really a rather traditional go-along-to-get-along kind of rabbi, maybe a member of the Jerusalem Chamber, something of a cheerleader for his world's values like greed, gross maldistribution of wealth, unbridled capitalism and imperialism. Or maybe he's a philosopher making a little money on the side posing with lambs for calendar pictures.
Or maybe he was the man who he clearly was: a social activist who sided with the poor and oppressed, outsiders, marginalized and forgotten people. A loving, non-judgemental, suffering servant of others. In short, a troublemaker. Indeed, the trouble he stirred up led to execution by Rome. In a real sense, we can say Jesus was killed by human sin, in which we all participate.
A few years ago, the Nikos Kazantzakis film, The Last Temptation of Christ, created a big stir among conservative Christians because they said it made Jesus look too human. If Jesus is actually a human person like you and me, that can be a devastating discovery, for it means that we have no excuse for not being who he was and doing what he did. And to deny Jesus the man is heresy. The Council of Chalcedon decided the matter in the year 451, declaring Jesus fully human. They did not deny the presence and work of the Divine in his life but saw it in living tension with his human nature. The Lord we know felt hunger, pain, fear, sadness, grief -- everything we experience. Therefore, we can relate.
A few weeks back our Gospel reading was of the Transfiguration, a collective vision in which Peter, James, and John came to understand the full expression of the Divine in their Lord. In Holy Week they will see another side -- his full humanity -- as he begs God not to have to go to the cross, but defers to its holy purpose. They will prove weak, fall asleep in his hour of need, and they will all run away when staying counts. But we know how the story ends. We know that God will not let the Dark Side have the final word, that Love will triumph eternal. And out of that victory a new covenant will be born, sacramentally mediated in his Catholic Church. In the last book of the Jewish Bible, Malachi, we read that God's Name will be great among the gentiles because from the rising of the sun to its setting, everywhere a perfect offering will be made. That is the Mass in which we offer Christ's forever-sacrifice to the Father and find our new life, our full humanity, in him.
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