Who Are You? - August 30 2010

Daily Lectionary Readings for August 30 2010
Psalm 15
Job 12:1-4, 13-25
Acts 11:19-30
John 8:21-32

John 8:21-32
Jesus is speaking about himself and about his death in this passage.  Jesus is saying things like, "You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world.  I told you that you would die in your sins, for you will die in your sins unless you believe in me."(vs23,24)  The peoples response is, "Who are you?"(v.25)  The passage is an extended version of this frustrating interaction.  Jesus says things about himself.  The people struggle mightily to get any kind of grip on what he is saying.  They see a person before them who looks much like any other person; when he speaks of his relationshp with "the Father" he speaks in a way that makes sense to Christians reading his words two thousand years later, but which virtually all of us would have been hard pressed to understand if were standing in his presence in the moment when the words were spoken.  I wonder today if we are so accustomed to the divine Jesus that the part of him we struggle more with is the real man standing in front of all those folks debating.  We, I think, picture him standing in the midst of the crowds preaching, healing, carrying a lamb on his shoulder and with a lovely golden halo visible for all to see.  It baffles us how folks could have misunderstood so regularly who they were dealing with.  It is a good thing to be thankful for the power and majesty of the Son of God's life and message, it is maybe not such a good thing to so easily embrace the walking, talking divinity of Jesus that we lost track of the awesome wondrous reality of the flesh and blood person.  Christ's divinity carries with it the accomplishment and the message of our salvation.  Christ's humanity carries with it the possibilities for human life that are ever before us.  Fully human and fully divine is more than a dry theological calculation, it was a walking, talking, living, breathing, loving, compassionate, demanding, hard-to-follow once in a creation happening.  The folks in Jesus time struggled with understanding Jesus.  If we begin to feel a bit sorry for them and imagine that we understand Jesus, it might be good to take another look at Jesus.  I believe we can know something of Jesus, but I also believe that there is always going to be something of my encounter with Jesus that will have me coming back to the same question the people asked - "who are you?" - not out of disbelief, but simply out of my limited ability to understand the totality of who Christ is and what God, through Christ, has done and is doing.