"I don't know any mainstream scholar who doubts the historicity of Jesus," says Eric Meyers, an archaeologist and emeritus professor in Judaic studies at Duke University. "The details have been debated for centuries, but no one who is serious doubts that he's a historical figure." (as quoted in "The Real Jesus," written by Kristin Romey, in the December 2017 issue of "National Geographic." )
Yet the figure of Jesus continues to be enigmatic; each generation interprets Who Jesus was/is, what he taught, what he prioritized. If we look deeply at his words and his actions, revealed in the Four Gospels, we learn much about who Jesus says he is, and what is most important for him to teach his followers in the short thirty-three years he lived among them.
Jesus' words reveal his priorities. Jesus calls God "Father," and says, over and over, "When you see me, you see the Father."
This is the core of Jesus' teaching - to see the Face of Jesus is to see the Face of God. For Jesus, God is not the God of Armies, or the God of Wrath of the Old Testament. God is, simply, "Father." As a child comes face to face with her father as she runs up to him when he opens the door, home from work, so Jesus pictures us running to the open, welcoming arms of our ever-approaching Heavenly Father.
Jesus' actions reveal his priorities. Jesus continually reaches out to touch and heal those whom his society rejects and/or avoids - the leper, the blind man, the mentally ill man, the foreigner, the menstruating woman. He looks into the face of the adulteress and tells her that her sins are forgiven. Jesus acts with a continually loving heart. To understand the Heart of Jesus is to understand the Heart of God.
Fr. Richard Rohr tells us,
"In Jesus, God was given a face and a heart. God became someone we could love. While God can be described as a moral force, as consciousness, and as high vibrational energy, the truth is, we don’t (or can’t?) fall in love with abstractions. So God became a person 'that we could hear, see with our eyes, look at, and touch with our hands.' (1 John 1:1).
"The brilliant Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1905-1995) said the only thing that really converts people is 'an encounter with the face of the other,' [1] and I think he learned that from his own Hebrew Scriptures.When the face of the other (especially the suffering face) is received and empathized with, it leads to transformation of our whole being. It creates a moral demand on our heart that is far more compelling than laws.
"Just giving people commandments on tablets of stone doesn’t change the heart. It may steel the will, but it doesn’t soften the heart like an I-Thou encounter can. Many of the Christian mystics talk about seeing the divine face or falling in love with the face of Jesus. We are mirrored into life, not by concepts, but by faces delighting in us, giving us the beloved self-image we can’t give to ourselves. Love is the gaze that does us in!"
Jesus, now the Risen Christ, still lives with us and among us. Jesus promises to do for us, one to one, exactly what he did for his followers two thousand years ago. To heal us. To forgive us. To guide us. To mirror us into life by delighting in us, as he delighted in the children that gathered around him. Can we picture his Face, full of tender love for us? Can we picture him coming to us in compassion as he came to the weeping, despairing widow or parent? Can we, suffering from bipolar disease or schizophrenia, depression or anxiety, picture him stroking our brow as he held and loved the man suffering from mental illness? Can we, suffering from A.I.D.S., picture him holding our hand as he reached for the lepers? Can we, a refugee or an illegal alien, picture Jesus reaching out to us in acceptance as he reached out to the foreigners like the hated Roman centurion, the Syro-Phoenician woman, or the despised infidel Samaritan woman at the well?
Jesus, once a refugee himself as a child hiding out in Egypt, and later as a homeless wandering preacher, never held himself or his presence back from any segment of society. Neither did his apostles, and later the missionaries, who carried faith in him to numerous cultures and races. Perhaps the most amazing argument for Jesus being more than simply a historical figure, but being truly Jesus the Son of God, is the fact that amazingly, Jesus has two billion Christian disciples of many denominations today throughout the world. Kristin Romey observes,
"The diversity and devotion of his modern disciples are on colorful parade when I arrive in Bethlehem, the ancient city traditionally identified as his birthplace. The tour buses that cross the checkpoint from Jerusalem to the West Bank carry a virtual United Nations of pilgrims. One by one the buses park and discharge their passengers, who emerge blinking in the dazzling sun: Indian women in splashy saris, Spaniards in backpacks emblazoned with the logo of their local parish, Ethiopians in snow-white robes with indigo crucifixes tattooed on their foreheads.
"I catch up to a group of Nigerian pilgrims in Manger Square and follow them through the low entrance of the Church of the Nativity."
Can we picture the risen Christ loving, embracing, comforting, healing forgiving, empowering Indians, Spaniards, Ethiopians, Nigerians? Can we picture him lifting up the Indonesian girl, rising from her baptism in the Jordan River? Kneeling beside kerchiefed Russian women kneeling inside the tomb traditionally believed to be his in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem? Or standing in the top-most area of that same church celebrating Easter with a group of Coptic Orthodox believers? Can we hear him still praying for all the fragmented Churches of Christendom "May they be one, Father!"
As Christians, we are now so organically connected that we are Christ's very Body. Yet we are not only fragmented in our beliefs, we are fragmented in how we prioritize Jesus' teachings, so often choosing one over the other as being most important. Jesus spoke simply of feeding, giving drink, clothing the naked; he also taught, healed the sick, comforted the grieving, spoke words of God's forgiveness, was present at the tombs of the dead, knelt to serve by washing his disciples' feet. Simple universal gestures, given to all, without elitism or narrowly judging nationality, religion, worthiness, or the lack thereof. Can we, following him as his disciples throughout the world, mirror his Face of Love and Compassion to others? Can we be the Gaze of Love that helps convince the heart of another that God, Love, is real?
Knowing that all Christians belong to Christ's Body throughout the world, can we recognize that the moral priorities of all nations and the welfare of all peoples should be equally important to us? Can we admit that how we treat the air, water, soil, and species of this planet - especially through our nation's government's attitudes towards the EPA and climate change - has moral repercussions throughout the world that impact on our own souls?Jim Wallis, editor of "Sojourners" magazine, morally critiques the President and his political party when he questions their famous mantra, "America First":
"'America First' is a theological heresy. The body of Christ is the most racially and culturally diverse community on Earth—our connection to brothers and sisters all over the world makes our political convictions global, and not just national. And stewardship of the Earth, its resources and its people, is a priority for people of faith over an administration that shows no concern for God’s creation."
Pope Francis speaks eloquently and simply as he names Jesus' priorities, the priorities which must be those of every disciple:
"There must be no family without a home, no refugee without a welcome, no person without dignity, no wounded person without care, no child without a childhood, no young man or woman without a future, no elderly person without a dignified old age."
Neither Jesus nor the Pope says that we can prioritize segments of our society as being more important than others. For example, we can say that the unborn are the most innocent, the most helpless, and in need of our protection, but we cannot speak or act as if they have more worth than the born. We can praise a government which praises our actions at a March for Life and acts for the unborn by appointing pro-life judges, but we cannot excuse or whitewash its actions against other members of Christ's Body. We must praise the good our government does, but also we must, without fear, publicly hold these politicians to account for the way in which they treat others of the Body of Christ who have equal dignity and worth with the unborn.
Jesus, Son of God and Son of Mary, showed us that God has a Face and a Heart of Love, that God loves each of us and all of us in personal encounters with us. Jesus calls us to be his disciples and to show God's face and heart of Love in our own personal, life-giving encounters with others, regardless of their race, their economic level, their physical or mental health, their freedom or their imprisonment, their religious denomination, their nationality, or, as this generation has wisely deduced, their sexual orientation. Do we hold Jesus at a distance, or do we enter into a life-giving I-Thou encounter with him - not only with himself, but with His suffering Body? Do we hold back from God and the stranger out of fear? Or do we daily step forward to meet God Face to Face in Christ's diverse Body? And in all God's children?
"In the biblical tradition, we only seem to know God by relating to God face to face, almost as if God refuses to be known apart from love. It is all about relationship. As Martin Buber (1878-1965), the Jewish philosopher mystic, put it, “All real living is meeting.” [2] It is the “face to face” religion that began with Moses (see Exodus 33:11). The face of human suffering is the same whether it belongs to a Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Jew, or Christian, to a person who’s gay or straight, who’s a believer or an unbeliever. If we don’t see this, it’s because we haven’t risked looking into the suffering face of another." (Rohr)