Jesus The Man

When I was a student in the 1970s there were, at least, three TV programmes which has reached cult status. Programmes which were guaranteed to fill the TV room each week:

Top of the Pops
Mont Python’s Flying Circus
and Star Trek

Star Trek was launched in 1968 in a pilot programme called, “The Cage” but it was dropped because of poor ratings – it was only in the 1970s when it was re-launched that it became so popular and remains so to this very day. It is one of those programmes which appeals to a wide range of people and ages and there are many thousands proud to call themselves "TREKIES"

On of the characters is the first officer of the SS Enterprise, a man called Spock. Most of the time he is articulate, measured and logical in speech and stoic in his character. Within a matter of minutes you realise that he is not like other human beings and the reason is simple- he is not entirely human he is partly Vulcan.

Vulcans hail from a planet where they have no emotional baggage and we find this just that wee bit odd. It’s odd because humans are emotional beings- we cry and laugh, we get angry and we can be happy, we love and are loved in return. Spock looks like another human being but….there is something not quite right.

At Advent we remember the incarnation of Jesus Christ, that God-Man who came from heaven into this world exchanging His divinity for our humanity, yet remaining divine. Confused? That’s understandable. The fact of Jesus dual identity is unquestioned within the faith and no one has doubted his historical humanity outside the faith. In the early days of Christianity some found it difficult to see how this remarkable man could be a human being like us; others defended his divinity at the expense of his humanity. The end result of this was that some thought of him as one who resembled a man, one who looked like a man, just as Spock looked like a man but maybe not completely a man. Maybe, like Spock, he was only 50% man. In the early church the fathers of the faith declared this to be the heresy of docetism. Today we are still struggling with a Jesus who is completely God and completely man.

The Victorian poet A.C. Swinbourne painted a cruel caricature of Jesus when he wrote these words:

“Thou has conquered, thou Pale Galilean,
And the world has grown grey with thy breath;”

Was Jesus a “pale” figure? If that is the image we have of him then we are greatly mistaken, and don’t understand the biblical record. Let me ask you this: do you think He is he like Spock? I don’t think so. The bible tells us that real blood pumped around his body and still does today even though in a spiritual dimension. When He stood at the grave of Lazarus he wept because he was grieving for the life of his good friend. Christians need to learn that there are times when it is ok, more than that, right, to weep. That it is very wrong to pretend that all is well when it is anything but well. So at the funeral of a loved one we expect the family to grieve and weep and that is why Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn”….

When Jesus entered the Temple in Jerusalem and saw what was going on he was very angry and drove out the offenders. Hardly the image of a “Pale Galilean”. Here we have a man of Sorrows” who was acquainted with grief and yet we live in a society which does its best to deny grief, pain and sorrow. Christians are called to be real people just as Jesus was real. On every page of the gospels his heart pumps with emotion. Sometimes Christians do appear to be “pale” two dimensional characters just as Swinborne describes but this is definitely not a fair picture of the Nazarene. He was a working man who knew all about the sweat of work and the frustrations of life

One of our problems today is to locate good role models for us to follow? Since we all have feet of clay and our national and sporting heroes are no different how are we to know how to live? In our human arrogance we sometimes think we have solved problems only to discover that, at best they are no better and at worst we have made them more ingrained, more intractable. I guess Iraq is a current example- some thought that getting rid of Saddem Hussein was the answer and that we could impose democracy only to find that we can’t and the hidden ghost of Viet Nam threatens to be revealed all over again. . Too many on all sides have died in this vane human effort, and we say this in the context of our own shattered society, reaping the results of the sins of the fathers.

To have a better world we need better human beings and to have better human beings we need the perfect one to follow- what is so special about Jesus is that he is completely human and yet he made a success of life. He is neither a Spock-like figure nor a “pale” character. He is one who is worth following because He is the God-Man.

” The Word became flesh and lived among us” as one of us. He is the normal human being and to be normal we need to be more, not less, like him.