The Kitchen Sink
An occasional piece of paper
April 26, 2009
Vol. 12 no. 16

Everything But...
           Almost every day we hear the name Jesus Christ uttered no longer as a name or title, but as a cultural expletive. Not only do we swear by the name, but Jesus Christ is mentioned with no substance behind it, almost like a magical incantation that drives away the bad stuff.
          In other words, Jesus is not a real person, more of a mythological figure who symbolizes some very good ideas. To tell the old, old story about Jesus is received like a fairy-tale, not about the struggles of an extraordinary human being whose conflicts are contemporary with ours.
          The last episode of Luke’s Gospel finds the eleven disciples listening to the two men who had met Jesus walking to Emmaus. The eleven are having trouble processing all of this, for Simon has reported a sighting as well. Then Jesus is just standing there, and no one is particularly glad to see Jesus because they believed they were seeing a ghost. Comprehending their problem, Jesus starts showing them his scarred body. They were slowly warming up when he asked them for something to eat. Broiled fish was the menu and they watched him eat it.
          To say it in an odd way, when Jesus is reduced to being only a divine saviour, a God who comes to miraculously heal the sick and suffering, he has only saved those who lived during that three year ministry. Jesus as saviour is just history, because he is not here right now to save.
          As a full human being, inhabited and possessed by God, Jesus showed us how to live a godly life that is also the fullest possible human life. How he lived didn’t elapse with history, but has changed the way we go about living, now as nothing less than the children of God.