I locate this question, first, not in poll numbers or philosophical debates, but in a deeply personal problem: Having myself imbued—and learned to take for granted—basic assumptions of the so-called Secular Age, what of my own religious inheritance can I believe without being dishonest? I am no fundamentalist, and the limits of religion, even its perversity, are fully apparent to me. If the faith continues to impose itself as a primal option, it does so in my case despite—or is it because of?—the crises of 1945. What happens when traditional belief falls into the abyss of Hiroshima? Or even more, for a Christian, when it slams into the wall of the Holocaust?... Jesus is elusive. If he were not, he would be useless to us. An ultimate paradox lies at the heart of Christian belief: Jesus is fully human; Jesus is fully divine. Best to say frankly at the outset of a post-Holocaust and—dare I say?—postmodern attempt at retrieval: Jesus-as-God and Jesus-as-man are the brackets within which this inquiry will unfold... Humanity will surpass itself in something more than humanity—a something that goes by the name of God. And this expectation, whether Christians remembered it or not, permanently rooted Christianity within Jewish Messianic hope, where it remains. Recovering that sense of Christian Jewishness, like recovering the permanent Jewishness—not just of Jesus, but also of Christ—defines the essential work that Christians must do after Auschwitz. What does this leave us with? A simple Jesus. An ordinary Christ. One whom the simplest person can imitate, the most ordinary person bringing Christ once more to life—day by day, word by word, bread by bread, cup by cup: what Bonhoeffer called discipleship. Discipleship is a commitment to the memory and presence of Jesus Christ that makes a difference in how a life is lived, driving thought and behavior week in and week out. Thought, yes. As honed, informed, and critical as we can make it. But also behavior, what we call practice, measured against justice, compassion, and love. How do we reclaim Jesus as God? By behaving as if he is. Whatever sort of God Jesus is understood to be, it must be the God who is like humans, not different. If that seems impossible, then what we think of God—and of humans—must change. And the truest argument, finally and again, for the divinity of Jesus—argument, not proof—is in the one undenied fact of this history: that billions upon billions of ordinary human beings, in their thought and their practice, have found in this faith an immediate and saving experience of the real presence of God, partaking of God—becoming God. Even unto here and now, tonight. We come to Jesus, in the end as in the beginning, only through the Jesus people. bulletin.hds.harvard.edu/articles/summerautumn2014/who-jesus-today
Posted on: Tue, 07 Oct 2014 21:01:07 +0000
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