I am attending a church conference this weekend across the United States from Kentucky. I had a window seat on the plane, and much of the time I could see the great panorama of United States geography. From Kentucky green hills and the Ohio River below to the flat rich farmlands of Missouri and Kansas, then the drylands and mountains (some still with snow) of Colorado, Utah, and Nevada.
But, as I watched clouds and lands, I remembered my first flight in 1967 when I was 19. It shook my faith! I had always thought of God being close to me, seeing me, taking an interest in me. Then I saw God’s view from the sky and questioned, “If God was in his heavens, how could he see both me and the rest of the world?”
Coming to terms with that is a part of maturing faith, when a youth moves from faith as taught to faith as experienced and understood. For many years now, my experiences say, “I don’t know HOW God does that, perhaps from living inside me through baptism, but my relationship with God knows that God pays quite a bit of attention to me—and, at the same time, attends to people immersed in war or famine or good times all over the world. God is God, so God can and does do that.
A Core Belief: True God and True Man
This week the musings that began with seeing the glory of God’s geography and remembering my own journey of faith combined with this Sunday’s readings to consider these lines from the Nicene Creed:
I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; through him all things were made. For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man.
The Church wrestled for the first 400 years with the question, “Who is Jesus Christ?” Is he God who appeared as a man? Is he a man who had a special privileged relationship with God? Or what?
The Council of Nicea in 325 debated this question and decided that Jesus is both TRUE GOD, having existed through all time as God, and TRUE MAN, having been born of Mary with the true human flesh and limits of life on earth of the rest of humanity.
Our readings this Sunday can be seen as dealing with these questions and this doctrine. I focus on it this week because, in many ways, it seems to be a fundamental question behind many of the doubts, divisions, and polarities of our 21st century faith. Who is Jesus Christ?
Acts 4:8-12
The healing of the crippled man by the Gate called Beautiful, which was our first reading last Sunday, led to Peter and John appearing before the Sanhedrin (the Council of Jewish leaders). Today’s reading from Acts is a portion of Peter’s speech. It is good to remember that this event took place only a few weeks after Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The people to whom Peter is speaking caused Jesus’ death. Peter, who just weeks before had said, “I do not know the man” to a servant girl now boldly proclaims Christ’s divinity to the people who had him killed. He is saying, in effect, “You thought you were killing a blasphemous man, but, in reality, you were killing the Messiah you have been looking for through centuries.” Peter, who knew Jesus well as a man, is not yet saying, “Jesus was/is God.” That theology was yet to develop. He was tying Jesus to the “suffering servant” of the prophet Isaiah.
This seems like an important logical and theological step for Peter, the Sanhedrin, and for us. It is seeing Jesus as more than a good man, more than a prophet, BECAUSE, when he was made to suffer he rose from the dead. Peter and the Sanhedrin KNEW Jesus was a man. But only God could, of his own power, overcome death.
We, who live in a culture where some sense of eternal life (irrespective of faith or moral life) is part of common belief, have to pause and consider to understand what a jump in thought this was for people in the beginning of Christianity. How could resurrection of Jesus’ body be understood? Peter is explaining it.
1 John 3:1-2
I read an interesting article this week on who the author of the epistles of John was. 1 John was written 30-60 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection. Visiting evangelists (we have them now: they are bloggers like us authors on A Catholic Moment and all over the virtual world) were making the rounds of Christian communities casting doubts about either the divinity or the humanity of Jesus.
Chapter 2 of 1 John, following the selection that was our second reading last week, develops the logic of what John summarizes here: Jesus is God. He saves us from our sins and shows us how to live a whole new way, a way of light, love, and truth. He can do that because he is God…and he is also human, and so he can show us how to follow him, be like him.
What does that mean for us? Here John answers honestly in today’s reading:
Beloved, we are God’s children now;
what we shall be has not yet been revealed.
We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him,
for we shall see him as he is.
Two thousand years later, we, too, must live with some uncertainty about exactly how our own resurrection will develop. Yet, like people of John’s day, we are called to organize our lives around its certainty.
John 10:11-18
The theology of the first two readings can stretch us. The Gospel, however, gives us an image which is clear and reassuring. Jesus IS “the Good Shepherd.” As true man, he lived (and lives) among us. He not only “smells like his sheep,” to use a phrase of Pope Francis. He thinks and feels like us. Because he is true man, he understands and knows what we need.
In my house and your house, in my town and your town, in places of great trouble on the earth and places of ordinary life, Jesus understands us. He can do this because he is BOTH true man AND TRUE GOD. He knows us in every language, every culture, every circumstance BECAUSE HE IS TRUE MAN. He can be with us wherever we are geographically and spiritually BECAUSE HE IS TRUE GOD.
Applications
These struggles of the early church were very important then. They are also important for us today.
If Jesus were just true God and not also true man, the crucifixion and its suffering would not be real. What Jesus taught us would be “ideals” and not his expectations for how we are to live. We would not be called to live the Beatitudes, commit our lives to the Lord, and become Christ’s presence in the world. That Jesus Christ was true man calls us to follow him because we can. He showed us how. That he was true man also gives us the hope that we, too, will be resurrected. “We shall see him as he is.”
If Jesus were just true man and not also true God, the resurrection would not be real. Jesus Christ’s ascension could not be real. If his ascension were not real, it would not be possible for him to be with me in my house and with you in yours. He could not be everywhere. He could not save us from our sins and the sinful, worldly, troubled ways of living. He would not be present to us in every sacrament. We could not receive his Body, become his Body, touch his Body in the suffering around us or revere it in the Blessed Sacrament. His word and call to imitate him would have no authority.
But Jesus Christ WAS AND IS true God and true man.
Prayer
Thanks, o thanks, o thanks be to God!
