I remember going to mass on a Sunday and
listening to the priest preaching about the gospel story of the Caananite
woman. In this passage, Jesus doesn’t seem willing to heal the woman’s
daughter. She’s a Gentile, and Jesus tells her that he has come “only to the
lost sheep of the house of Israel.” The woman keeps begging him, and at the
sight of her faith Jesus changes his mind. While explaining this gospel story,
the priest used exactly these words: Jesus changed his mind. Then he added:
“He grew in the understanding of his
mission.”
Jesus was fully human. He changed, he grew,
and these are human prerogatives. Theology teaches that he’s God incarnated, yet
this doesn’t mean that he always possessed the infinite wisdom of God. His vocation developed step
by step, until it reached its climax.
Romano Guardini, and C.S. Lewis after him,
wrote that if Jesus wasn’t the Messiah, then he was a lunatic, for only
lunatics call themselves Messiah. Some contemporary atheists love to take
advantage of this paradox to state that Jesus was, in fact, mentally ill.
Luckily, no modern thinker who deserves this qualification holds this opinion.
Wisdom is not a prerogative of a mad man.
So what kind of man was Jesus? He called
himself Son of Man, and only at his trial he admitted his role of Messiah,
knowing that this would have led to his execution. Jesus’ actions were
spiritually subversive but also, indirectly, socially subversive. He healed the
disabled and then sent them to the temple to reclaim their place in Jewish
society. He shared meals with the outcasts. He had women disciples. He extended
his benevolence to the Samaritans, to the Gentiles, he even healed the son of a
Roman soldier. Why? Because he believed that Israel’s God was the one true God,
the God of all people.
Jesus challenged the social structure of Judaism, therefore
he was bound to incur hostility and he knew it. He cast suspicion on
religious wisdom, he subverted the usual way of looking
at the world. When he died, the early Christians behaved in an unprecedented
manner, which can be explained only with the metaphysical event that raised
this crucified Jew to the role of Son of God. They did not adhere to the Mosaic
code, did not circumcise male children or observe the Sabbath, did not defend
their territory or themselves. Jesus changed their culture and their religious
beliefs. In time, the same happened to the Romans, and in their case it meant
the end of the cruel games in the Coliseum and of the prostitution of children.
This is the most beautiful interpretation of Jesus’ death: He chose to die to
show the world the power of goodness and peace. Mahatma Gandhi and Martin
Luther King have won seemingly lost wars following his principle of
non-violence.
I believe that Jesus was struck by his call
to surrender to God. He was scared, but he faced his destiny because he knew he
had to fight evil with self-sacrifice. He was an eschatological prophet, not a
meek moral teacher or a political revolutionary. He fully took up his role when
he found himself capable of healing those who had faith in him, as we can read
in his words:
“If I by the Spirit of God cast out demons, then the Kingdom of God has
come upon you.”
The same message is revealed to John the
Baptist’s disciples when they ask him if he was the one who was awaited:
“Go and tell John what you hear and see: The blind regain their sight,
the lame walk, lepers are healed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised…”.
Jesus preached perfection, the kind of
perfection that men can’t achieve. Yet it’s only aiming at it that we can hope
to raise above our weaknesses. He preached the morality of another world, and
for this reason his teachings are difficult to follow today as they were two
thousand years ago. He did not come to change the rules of first century
Palestine, he came to change the rules everywhere and forever. His wisdom was wide
and eternal. Each and everyone of the one-sided interpretations of Jesus are
inadequate. The gospels offer ground for both revelation and misinterpretation
and there is nothing wrong with this, since Jesus challenged scriptural
authority. A part of me yearns for words written by Jesus’ own hands, but I
know that, being who he was, he couldn’t have left any literature behind.
That’s a human business.
The gospels can be read in the wrong way,
and there are at least two wrong ways to read them, opposite to one another.
Disregard the miraculous aspects of Jesus’ life and you will find nothing but a
prophet, although a very successful one, since Christianity is still the
largest religion in the world. Put too much emphasis on the supernatural and
you will be faced with a fantastic story about a heavenly being who came on earth in some mysterious way only to offer
himself as a sacrificial lamb to a cruel God and then flew back to heaven. But
there is one more way to read the gospels, as naïve as it may sound: Let them
speak to your heart. Little by little, Jesus will become a real presence that
will change you, embrace you, guide you. When that happens, you won’t ask
yourself who he was anymore, because you will know.
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