+Today’s Gospel isn’t light reading is it? There’s a lot of violent and disturbing imagery in it. At this stage of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is pretty riled up—he seems fed up with his disciples, disgusted with his followers and ready to chuck it all.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus seems really human. And that, to me, is wonderful.
The fact that Jesus is God incarnate---God in the flesh---is an absolute cornerstone of our faith. We embrace Jesus the man, born of Mary AND Christ the Son of God as two sides of the same being. While this seeming contradiction----being fully human and fully divine----is fundamental to our faith… have you ever stopped to think about how it must have been for Jesus?
How did he balance being fully of God and fully of Mary----how did he balance what he knew as divine and what he felt as human? If Jesus was fully human---and he was---then he went through the same developmental milestones we all do. He learned to recognize his parents, his siblings, other close relatives, he probably even developed separation anxiety when Mary first needed to leave him….he learned to crawl and to talk and to walk….he grew up like we all do….through trial and error…. fits and starts.
While we know very little about Jesus’ childhood and adolescence we get a couple of glimpses ----his being left behind in the temple when he was 12 and the wedding at Cana--- which show that Jesus was, as far as we know, a fairly normal boy---who, as he grew, began to test the limits of his parents. At times he drove them nuts and at times he was positive they didn’t understand him. Yes, my guess is Jesus went through the same growing pains we all do…but…….
how much did he know about who he really was?
Many suggest that Jesus came to terms with his identity as the Son of God and the son of Mary slowly over time, with full comprehension of just who he was and what would happen to him occurring at the Transfiguration---that time when along with Peter John and James, Jesus encountered Moses and Elijah on the mountaintop. Recent scholarship makes a very strong argument that Jesus, when he Elijah and Moses are enveloped in the cloud, grasps the full magnitude of his mission. That it’s on the mountaintop when Jesus realizes that his message of peace and love was going to be met with fierce and violent opposition and that he would need to fall victim to that violence to fully complete his earthly task…..
Such a realization would make anyone a little on edge….
And Jesus, increasingly throughout Luke’s Gospel, becomes a little more edgy. Jesus’ intensity increases following the transfiguration---he appears much more intent on getting to Jerusalem, he seems much less patient with his followers, he seems much more urgent and harsh in his movements and his message.
So today we encounter a Jesus who realizes that his time is short and that his task is immense. Today we encounter a Jesus who has finally come to grips with his identity and doesn’t understand why his followers don’t get it---today we encounter a man who is having a bit of an identity crisis.
He was anxious, he was stressed …..he was being very human…and if we really believe what we say we believe---that Jesus is the Son of God, born of a human woman, fully human and fully divine…. then we should embrace this Gospel, difficult as it is to hear---not because we want families to be torn apart, not because we support some reign of terror to accompany the end times---but because God so loved us, he came to walk among us, to grow among us and to dies among so that, once and for all we’d know---really know—that we’re never alone.
That’s the purpose of the gospels---this collection of stories, parables and teachings--- proof that we are loved beyond all reason. And that’s good, because being a Christian, as outlined by these same Gospels, isn’t easy.
Discomfort is a big part of Christianity….it is uncomfortable to stand up for what is right when it isn’t popular, it is uncomfortable to raise your pledge when the economy is so volatile it’s uncomfortable to pray for the people you don’t like, the people who wish us harm, the people it would be so much easier to hate.
Christianity, with it’s clear and non negotiable message of peace and justice for all, demands that we challenge the status quo when that status quo impedes any human being from living life on an equal footing with everyone else, it demands that when we know of injustice we do something to stop it, it demands that when everyone shrugs their shoulders and says, “that’s the way it has always been” we say, “no no that’s not acceptable, there’s another way.” Christianity demands that we be the pain in the patoot to the world. Christianity demands that we make ourselves and other people uncomfortable as long as inequality and injustice exists on earth.
It isn’t easy. And in today’s Gospel Jesus is telling us that being faithful can be very messy, very frustrating, very infuriating and at times pretty darn hard.
But, because ours is an incarnational faith, because we know that God came to live among us, as one of us in the person of Jesus Christ, we also know that, as we stand up for what is right and just, as we fight the good fight against violence and evil, degradation and despair, we are not alone…
…no matter who might abandon us along the way, no matter who may disagree with what we believe, we are never alone. We never have been and we never will be.
Because God has been where we are, and then some. Because God, given to us in the person of Jesus Christ knows how hard it is, because he has felt the anger the loneliness and the terror which is part of our human condition this Gospel today offers us Good News. Good News that although being a Christian may not be easy, and it may not be popular and it may not always feel good, it’s never ever lonely. And for that we can all say, Amen.
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