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| Jesus Christ -- Eduard Manet (1864) |
Just who was Jesus? This is the question that the disciples
had to grapple with following the Resurrection, and that we too are left to
grapple with on our own account. Up to the first Easter morning they knew him
to be a highly charismatic preacher, a teacher with a radical interpretation of
the Jewish law, and a person possessing remarkable gifts of healing. These
aspects to his personality made him the kind of person who could either attract
intense loyalty, or generate envy and hatred.
If this is what he was, then Jesus’ life repeated a pattern found in the
lives of many other prophets.
When he met a painful and humiliating death, it seemed that
for all his charisma, Jesus had been a failure.
The Resurrection dramatically
altered this estimate. Now he was special to the point of being unique. But how
special, and in what way? John’s Gospel is far more centered on this issue than
the other three. Most especially, it records long speeches where Jesus talks at
length about who he is, and what his relationship to God is. It is plausible to
think that these speeches in the first person – “I am” -- look back on the historical Jesus with the
benefit of Resurrection hindsight. They record the profound theological
insights that a follower of Jesus was compelled to come to in his struggle to
understand the full significance of Christ.
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| Christ Blessing -- Antonello de Messina (1475) |
This week’s readings include two of these ‘first person’
passages, one from John’s Gospel and the other from Revelation, a book that
tradition attributes to the same writer. They record what might be called the
final verdict on the question ‘Who was Jesus?’ and they affirm a truth central
to the Christian faith. Jesus is the
“the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star” who has brought
the faith of David to a perfection in a way that no other human being ever has. To
express this truth, John has Jesus declare “You, Father, are in me and I am in
you’. Christ is fully human and God filled, so that despite all their
imperfections, human beings now have the chance to “become completely one” with
the God who made them, who loves them and who will be their judge.
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