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Who Is Jesus?

He came from the bosom of the Father to the bosom of a woman. He put on humanity that we might put on divinity. He became Son of man that we might become sons of God. He came from Heaven, where the rivers never freeze, winds never blow, frosts never chill the air, flowers never fade, and one is never sick. No undertakers and no graveyards, for no one ever dies - no one is ever buried.

He was born contrary to the laws of nature, lived in poverty, reared in obscurity; only crossed the boundary of the land once in childhood. He had no wealth nor influence, and had neither training nor formal education. His relatives were inconspicuous and uninfluential.

In infancy He startled a king; in boyhood He puzzled the wise men; in manhood ruled the course of nature. He walked upon the billows and hushed the sea to sleep. He healed the multitudes without medicine, and made no charge for His services. He never wrote a book, yet all the libraries of the country could not hold the books that have been written about Him. He never wrote a song, yet He has furnished the theme of more songs than all the song writers combined. He never founded a college, yet all the schools together cannot boast of as many students as He has. He never practiced psychiatry, and yet He has healed more broken hearts than doctors have healed broken bodies.

He never marshalled an army, drafted a soldier, nor fired a gun, yet no leader ever made more volunteers, who have under His orders made rebels stack arms of surrender without a shot being fired.

He is the Star of Astronomy, the Rock of Geology, the Lion and the Lamb of Zoology, the Harmoniser of all discords, and the Healer of all diseases. Great men have come and gone, yet He lives on. Herod could not kill Him, Satan could not seduce Him, Death could not destroy Him, the grave could not hold Him.

He laid aside the purple robe of royalty for a peasant's gown. He was rich, yet for our sake He became poor. How poor? Ask Mary! Ask the wise men! He slept in another's manger. He cruised the lake in another's boat. He rode on another man's donkey. He was buried in another man's tomb. All failed, but He never. The ever Perfect One - He is the Chief among ten thousand. He is wonderful and merciful, and He is YOUR Saviour!

He Is The Incomparable Christ!

Incomparable in His Humility

He made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Himself the form of a servent; He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of a cross.
Philippians 2

Incomparable in His Love

Christ has also loved us, and has given Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice unto God.
Ephesians 5

Incomparable in His Grace

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for our sakes He became poor, that we through His poverty might be rich.
2 Corinthians 8

Incomparable in His Sacrifice

For even the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.
Mark 10

Incomparable in His Power

All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth.
Matthew 28

...upholding all things by the word of His power.
Hebrews 1

Incomparable in His Salvation

Whosoever lives and believes in Me shall never die.
John 11

As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His Name
John 1

Incomparable In His Glory

The Blessed and only Potentate, the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords.
1 Timothy 6

Have You Accepted Jesus As YOUR Saviour? You can! You Can Accept Him Now! "Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation." 2 Corinthians 6:2 "And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shalt be saved, and your house." Acts 16:31

Friend, I urge you to turn to God right now. Repent, and know His forgiveness. Will you do it right now?

Here is a sample prayer that may help to guide you as you pray

Dear Heavenly Father,
I come to You, confessing that I have sinned and broken Your laws. I am sorry for my sin, and believe that Jesus Christ came to earth to die for me and my sin. Please forgive me. I invite you into my life, and give Jesus Christ the right to control the rest of my life. Please help me to be what You want me to be. Thank you for saving me and accepting me. I pray this in Jesus' Name, Amen.

Please do it now!

When �the fulness of the time� was come, God sent forth his only-begotten Son, �the Desire of all nations,� to redeem the world from the curse of sin, and to establish an everlasting kingdom of truth, love, and peace for all who should believe on his name.

In Jesus Christ a preparatory history both divine and human comes to its close. In him culminate all the previous revelations of God to Jews and Gentiles; and in him are fulfilled the deepest desires and efforts of both Gentiles and Jews for redemption. In his divine nature, as Logos, he is, according to St. John, the eternal Son of the Father, and the agent in the creation and preservation of the world, and in all those preparatory manifestations of God, which were completed in the incarnation. In his human nature, as Jesus of Nazareth, he is the ripe fruit of the religions growth of humanity, with an earthly ancestry, which St. Matthew (the evangelist of Israel) traces to Abraham, the patriarch of the Jews, and St. Luke (the evangelist of the Gentiles), to Adam, the father of all men. In him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily; and in him also is realized the ideal of human virtue and piety. He is the eternal Truth, and the divine Life itself, personally joined with our nature; he is our Lord and our God; yet at the same time flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone. In him is solved the problem of religion, the reconciliation and fellowship of man with God; and we must expect no clearer revelation of God, nor any higher religious attainment of man, than is already guaranteed and actualized in his person.

As Jesus Christ thus closes all previous history, so, on the other hand, he begins an endless future. He is the author of a new creation, the second Adam, the father of regenerate humanity, the head of the church, �which is his body, the fulness of him, that filleth all in all.� He is the pure fountain of that stream of light and life, which has since flowed unbroken through nations and ages, and will continue to flow, till the earth shall be full of his praise, and every tongue shall confess that he is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. The universal diffusion and absolute dominion of the spirit and life of Christ will be also the completion of the human race, the end of history, and the beginning of a glorious eternity.

It is the great and difficult task of the biographer of Jesus to show how he, by external and internal development, under the conditions of a particular people, age, and country, came to be in fact what he was in idea and destination, and what he will continue to be for the faith of Christendom, the God-Man and Saviour of the world. Being divine from eternity, he could not become God; but as man he was subject to the laws of human life and gradual growth. �He advanced in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.� (Luk_2:52) Though he was the Son of God, �yet he learned obedience by the things which he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him.� (Heb_5:8, Heb_5:9) There is no conflict between the historical Jesus of Nazareth and the ideal Christ of faith. The full understanding of his truly human life, by its very perfection and elevation above all other men before and after him, will necessarily lead to an admission of his own testimony concerning his divinity.

�Deep strike thy roots, O heavenly Vine,
Within our earthly sod!
Most human and yet most divine,
The flower of man and God!�

Jesus Christ came into the world under Caesar Augustus, the first Roman emperor, before the death of king Herod the Great, four years before the traditional date of our Dionysian aera. He was born at Bethlehem of Judaea, in the royal line of David, from Mary, �the wedded Maid and Virgin Mother.� The world was at peace, and the gates of Janus were closed for only the second time in the history of Rome. There is a poetic and moral fitness in this coincidence: it secured a hearing for the gentle message of peace which might have been drowned in the passions of war and the clamor of arms. Angels from heaven proclaimed the good tidings of his birth with songs of praise; Jewish shepherds from the neighboring fields, and heathen sages from the far east greeted the newborn king and Saviour with the homage of believing hearts. Heaven and earth gathered in joyful adoration around the Christ-child, and the blessing of this event is renewed from year to year among high and low, rich and poor, old and young, throughout the civilized world.

The idea of a perfect childhood, sinless and holy, yet truly human and natural, had never entered the mind of poet or historian before; and when the legendary fancy of the Apocryphal Gospels attempted to fill out the chaste silence of the Evangelists, it painted an unnatural prodigy of a child to whom wild animals, trees, and dumb idols bowed, and who changed balls of clay into flying birds for the amusement of his playmates.

The youth of Jesus is veiled in mystery. We know only one, but a very significant fact. When a boy of twelve years he astonished the doctors in the temple by his questions and answers, without repelling them by immodesty and premature wisdom, and filled his parents with reverence and awe by his absorption in the things of his heavenly Father, and yet was subject and obedient to them in all things. Here, too, there is a clear line of distinction between the supernatural miracle of history and the unnatural prodigy of apocryphal fiction, which represents Jesus as returning most learned answers to perplexing questions of the doctors about astronomy, medicine, physics, metaphysics, and hyperphysics.

The external condition and surroundings of his youth are in sharp contrast with the amazing result of his public life. He grew up quietly and unnoticed in a retired Galilean mountain village of proverbial insignificance, and in a lowly carpenter-shop, far away from the city of Jerusalem, from schools and libraries, with no means of instruction save those which were open to the humblest Jew � the care of godly parents, the beauties of nature, the services of the synagogue, the secret communion of the soul with God, and the Scriptures of the Old Testament, which recorded in type and prophecy his own character and mission. All attempts to derive his doctrine from any of the existing schools and sects have utterly failed. He never referred to the traditions of the elders except to oppose them. From the Pharisees and Sadducees he differed alike, and provoked their deadly hostility. With the Essenes he never came in contact. He was independent of human learning and literature, of schools and parties. He taught the world as one who owed nothing to the world. He came down from heaven and spoke, out of the fulness of his personal intercourse with the great Jehovah. He was no scholar, no artist, no orator; yet was he wiser than all sages, he spake as never man spake, and made an impression on his age and all ages after him such as no man ever made or can make. Hence the natural surprise of his countrymen as expressed in the question: �From whence hath this men these things?� �How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?� (Mar_6:2, Mar_6:3; Mat_13:54-56; Joh_7:15)

He began his public ministry in the thirtieth year of his age, after the Messianic inauguration by the baptism of John, and after the Messianic probation in the wilderness � the counterpart of the temptation of the first Adam in Paradise. That ministry lasted only three years � and yet in these three years is condensed the deepest meaning of the history of religion. No great life ever passed so swiftly, so quietly, so humbly, so far removed from the noise and commotion of the world; and no great life after its close excited such universal and lasting interest. He was aware of this contrast: he predicted his deepest humiliation even to the death on the cross, and the subsequent irresistible attraction of this cross, which may be witnessed from day to day wherever his name is known. He who could say, �If I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men unto myself,� (Joh_12:32) knew more of the course of history and of the human heart than all the sages and legislators before and after him.

He chose twelve apostles for the Jews and seventy disciples for the Gentiles, not from among the scholars and leaders, but from among the illiterate fishermen of Galilee. He had no home, no earthly possessions, no friends among the mighty and the rich. A few pious women from time to time filled his purse; and this purse was in the bands of a thief and a traitor. He associated with publicans and sinners, to raise them up to a higher and nobler life, and began his reformation among them lower classes, which were despised and neglected by the proud: hierarchy of the day. He never courted the favor of the great, but incurred their hatred and persecution. He never flattered, the prejudices of the age, but rebuked sin and vice among the high and the low, aiming his severest words at the blind leaders of the blind, the self-righteous hypocrites who sat on Moses� seat. He never encouraged the carnal Messianic hopes of the people, but withdrew when they wished to make him a king, and declared before the representative of the Roman empire that his kingdom was not of this world. He announced to his disciples his own martyrdom, and promised to them in this life only the same baptism of blood. He went about in Palestine, often weary of travel, but never weary of his work of love, doing good to the souls and bodies of men, speaking words of spirit and life, and working miracles of power and mercy.

He taught the purest doctrine, as a direct revelation of his heavenly Father, from his own intuition and experience, and with a power and authority which commanded unconditional trust and obedience. He rose above the prejudices of party and sect, above the superstitions of his age and nation. He addressed the naked heart of man and touched the quick of the conscience. He announced the founding of a spiritual kingdom which should grow from the smallest seed to a mighty tree, and, working like leaven from within, should gradually pervade all nations and countries. This colossal idea, had never entered the imagination of men, the like of which he held fast even in the darkest hour of humiliation, before the tribunal of the Jewish high-priest and the Roman governor, and when suspended as a malefactor on the cross; and the truth of this idea is illustrated by every page of church history and in every mission station on earth.

The miracles or signs which accompanied his teaching are supernatural, but not unnatural, exhibitions of his power over man and nature; no violations of law, but manifestations of a higher law, the superiority of mind over matter, the superiority of spirit over mind, the superiority of divine grace over human nature. They are all of the highest moral and of a profoundly symbolical significance, prompted by pure benevolence, and intended for the good of men; in striking contrast with deceptive juggler works and the useless and absurd miracles of apocryphal fiction. They were performed without any ostentation, with such simplicity and ease as to be called simply his �works.� They were the practical proof of his doctrine and the natural reflex of his wonderful person. The absence of wonderful works in such a wonderful man would be the greatest wonder.

His doctrine and miracles were sealed by the purest and holiest life in private and public. He could challenge his bitterest opponents with the question: �Which of you convinceth me of sin?� well knowing that they could not point to a single spot.

At last he completed his active obedience by the passive obedience of suffering in cheerful resignation to the holy will of God. Hated and persecuted by the Jewish hierarchy, betrayed into their hands by Judas, accused by false witnesses, condemned by the Sanhedrin, rejected by the people denied by Peter, but declared innocent by the representative of the Roman law and justice, surrounded by his weeping mother and faithful disciples, revealing in those dark hours by word and silence the gentleness of a lamb and the dignity of a God, praying for his murderers, dispensing to the penitent thief a place in paradise, committing his soul to his heavenly Father he died, with the exclamation: �It is finished!� He died before he had reached the prime of manhood. The Saviour of the world a youth! He died the shameful death of the cross the just for the unjust, the innocent for the guilty, a free self, sacrifice of infinite love, to reconcile the world unto God. He conquered sin and death on their own ground, and thus redeemed and sanctified all who are willing to accept his benefits and to follow his example. He instituted the Lord�s Supper, to perpetuate the memory of his death and the cleansing and atoning power of his blood till the end of time.

The third day he rose from the grave, the conqueror of death and Hades, the prince of life and resurrection. He repeatedly appeared to his disciples; he commissioned them to preach the gospel of the resurrection to every creature; he took possession of his heavenly throne, and by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit he established the church, which he has ever since protected, nourished, and comforted, and with which he has promised to abide, till he shall come again in glory to judge the quick and the dead.

This is a meager outline of the story which the evangelists tell us with childlike simplicity, and yet with more general and lasting effect than could be produced by the highest art of historical composition. They modestly abstained from adding their own impressions to the record of the words and acts of the Master whose �glory they beheld, the glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.�

Who would not shrink from the attempt to describe the moral character of Jesus, or, having attempted it, be not dissatisfied with the result? Who can empty the ocean into a bucket? Who (we may ask with Lavater) �can paint the glory of the rising sun with a charcoal?� No artist�s ideal comes up to the reality in this case, though his ideals may surpass every other reality. The better and holier a man is, the more he feels his need of pardon, and how far he falls short of his own imperfect standard of excellence. But Jesus, with the same nature as ours and tempted as we are, never yielded to temptation; never had cause for regretting any thought, word, or action; he never needed pardon, or conversion, or reform; he never fell out of harmony with his heavenly Father. His whole life was one unbroken act of self-consecration to the glory of God and the eternal welfare of his fellow-men. A catalogue of virtues and graces, however complete, would give us but a mechanical view. It is the spotless purity and sinlessness of Jesus as acknowledged by friend and foe; it is the even harmony and symmetry of all graces, of love to God and love to man, of dignity and humility of strength and tenderness, of greatness and simplicity, of self-control and submission, of active and passive virtue; it is, in one word, the absolute perfection which raises his character high above the reach of all other men and makes it an exception to a universal rule, a moral miracle in history. It is idle to institute comparisons with saints and sages, ancient or modern. Even the infidel Rousseau was forced to exclaim: �If Socrates lived and died like a sage, Jesus lived and died like a God.� Here is more than the starry heaven above us, and the moral law within us, which filled the soul of Kant with ever-growing reverence and awe. Here is the holy of holies of humanity, here is the very gate of heaven.

Going so far in admitting the human perfection of Christ � and how can the historian do otherwise? � we are driven a step farther, to the acknowledgment of his amazing claims, which must either be true, or else destroy all foundation for admiration and reverence in which he is universally held. It is impossible to construct a life of Christ without admitting its supernatural and miraculous character.

The divinity of Christ, and his whole mission as Redeemer, is an article of faith, and, as such, above logical or mathematical demonstration. The incarnation or the union of the infinite divinity and finite humanity in one person is indeed the mystery of mysteries. �What can be more glorious than God? What more vile than flesh? What more wonderful than God in the flesh?� Yet aside from all dogmatizing which lies outside of the province of the historian, the divinity of Christ has a self-evidencing power which forces itself irresistibly upon the reflecting mind and historical inquirer; while the denial of it makes his person an inexplicable enigma.

It is inseparable from his own express testimony respecting himself, as it appears in every Gospel, with but a slight difference of degree between the Synoptists and St. John. Only ponder over it! He claims to be the long-promised Messiah who fulfilled the law and the prophets, the founder and lawgiver of a new and universal kingdom, the light of the world, the teacher of all nations and ages, from whose authority there is no appeal. He claims to have come into this world for the purpose to save the world from sin � which no merely human being can possibly do. He claims the power to forgive sins on earth; he frequently exercised that power, and it was for the sins of mankind, as he foretold, that he shed his own blood. He invites all men to follow him, and promises peace and life eternal to every one that believes in him. He claims pre-existence before Abraham and the world, divine names, attributes, and worship. He disposes from the cross of places in Paradise. In directing his disciples to baptize all nations, he coordinates himself with the eternal Father and the Divine Spirit, and promises to be with them to the consummation of the world and to come again in glory as the Judge of all men. He, the humblest and meekest of men, makes these astounding pretensions in the most easy and natural way; he never falters, never apologizes, never explains; he proclaims them as self-evident truths. We read them again and again, and never feel any incongruity nor think of arrogance and presumption.

This testimony, if not true, must be downright blasphemy or madness. The former hypothesis cannot stand a moment before the moral purity and dignity of Jesus, revealed in his every word and work, and acknowledged by universal consent. Self-deception in a matter so momentous, and with an intellect in all respects so clear and so sound, is equally out of the question. How could He be an enthusiast or a madman who never lost the even balance of his mind, who sailed serenely over all the troubles and persecutions, as the sun above the clouds, who always returned the wisest answer to tempting questions, who calmly and deliberately predicted his death on the cross, his resurrection on the third day, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the founding of his Church, the destruction of Jerusalem � predictions which have been literally fulfilled? A character so original, so complete, so uniformly consistent, so perfect, so human and yet so high above all human greatness, can be neither a fraud nor a fiction. The poet, as has been well said, would in this case be greater than the hero. It would take more than a Jesus to invent a Jesus.

We are shut up then to the recognition of the divinity of Christ; and reason itself must bow in silent awe before the tremendous word: �I and the Father are one!� and respond with skeptical Thomas: �My Lord and my God!�

This conclusion is confirmed by the effects of the manifestation of Jesus, which far transcend all merely human capacity and power. The history of Christianity, with its countless fruits of a higher and purer life of truth and love than was ever known before or is now known outside of its influence, is a continuous commentary on the life of Christ, and testifies on every page to the inspiration of his holy example. His power is felt on every Lord�s Day from ten thousand pulpits, in the palaces of kings and the huts of beggars, in universities and colleges, in every school where the sermon on the Mount is read, in prisons, in almshouses, in orphan asylums, as well as in happy homes, in learned works and simple tracts in endless succession. If this history of ours has any value at all, it is a new evidence that Christ is the light and life of a fallen world.

There is no sign that his power is waning. His kingdom is more widely spread than ever before, and has the fairest prospect of final triumph in all the earth. Napoleon at St. Helena is reported to have been struck with the reflection that millions are now ready to die for the crucified Nazarene who founded a spiritual empire by love, while no one would die for Alexander, or Caesar, or himself, who founded temporal empires by force. He saw in this contrast a convincing argument for the divinity of Christ, saying: �I know men, and I tell you, Christ was not a man. Everything about Christ astonishes me. His spirit overwhelms and confounds me. There is no comparison between him and any other being. He stands single and alone. And Goethe, another commanding genius, of very different character, but equally above suspicion of partiality for religion, looking in the last years of his life over the vast field of history, was constrained to confess that �if ever the Divine appeared on earth, it was in the Person of Christ,� and that �the human mind, no matter how far it may advance in every other department, will never transcend the height and moral culture of Christianity as it shines and glows in the Gospels.�

The rationalistic, mythical, and legendary attempts to explain the life of Christ on purely human and natural grounds, and to resolve the miraculous elements either into common events, or into innocent fictions, split on the rock of Christ�s character and testimony. The ablest of the infidel biographers of Jesus now profess the profoundest regard for his character, and laud him as the greatest sage and saint that ever appeared on earth. But, by rejecting his testimony concerning his divine origin and mission, they turn him into a liar; and, by rejecting the miracle of the resurrection, they make the great fact of Christianity a stream without a source, a house without a foundation, an effect without a cause. Denying the physical miracles, they expect us to believe even greater psychological miracles; yea, they substitute for the supernatural miracle of history an unnatural prodigy and incredible absurdity of their imagination. They moreover refute and supersede each other. The history of error in the nineteenth century is a history of self-destruction. A hypothesis was scarcely matured before another was invented and substituted, to meet the same fate in its turn; while the old truth and faith of Christendom remains unshaken, and marches on in its peaceful conquest against sin and error

Truly, Jesus Christ, the Christ of the Gospels, the Christ of history, the crucified and risen Christ, the divine-human Christ, is the most real, the most certain, the most blessed of all facts. This fact is an ever-present and growing power which pervades the church and conquers the world, and is its own best evidence, as the sun shining in the heavens. This fact is the only solution of the terrible mystery of sin and death, the only inspiration to a holy life of love to God and man, and only guide to happiness and peace. Systems of human wisdom will come and go, kingdoms and empires will rise and fall, but for all time to come Christ will remain �the Way, the Truth, and the Life.�

The Challenge Of Jesus by John Shea

John Shea, S.T.D., is a theologian, author, and master storyteller who lectures nationally and internationally on storytelling in world religions, faith-based health care, contemporary spirituality, and the spirit at work movement. Shea (Inst. of Pastoral Studies, Loyola Univ.) began meditating on the gospel stories when he was 14. His long apprenticeship with the gospels is quite evident in the plethora of books he has written.

I have many of Shea�s books in my library and every one of them have left a certain imprint on my life. In this communiqu� I will share a portion from his book, The Challenge of Jesus. I can hear some of you now, "Why do we need another book on Jesus?" The only excuse for another book on Jesus is that we are never quite through with him.

The Challenge of Jesus looks through the life of Jesus into the Mystery we share with him. Shea makes it clear that the words of Jesus (if we allow them to) capture us as they search us. Like so many of us do, we cannot simply have a little chat about Jesus and then go our separate ways. We must allow ourselves to be thoroughly engaged by His life and His words. Few of us ever allow that to happen. We are content to simply read His words without letting His words read us.

Shea attempts to lift Jesus out of the menagerie of Bible stories that have no meaning in our daily lives. Shea makes the effort to allow the �real Jesus� to stand up in the face of all the impostors that have cluttered our minds. This is not the Jesus of the fundamentalists or the liberals. This is the Jesus that cannot be claimed by any religious group. He is the Jesus who bypasses religion in His search for humankind � humankind with all of his marred beauty.

The Challenge to Forgive

Is it not possible that God, even knowing the mean little longings of our mean little hearts, spies a generosity that he is passionately attracted to? Humankind cannot be so undesirable if God has panted after us since the beginning. That humankind is a marred beauty, a wrong-headed energy, and a deceptive truth is not to be argued. But perhaps what urges God on is the beauty, energy, and truth and not the mar, wrong-headedness, and deception. The fact that humankind has positive and attractive qualities does not mean we have a claim on God�s love. God�s love is still a free bestowal of himself which enables humankind to act courageously. But it might be well to shift the emphasis from "in spite of the fact we are sinners" to "because of the fact that we are lovable."

Forgiveness in the context of human sinfulness is a vastly different dynamic than forgiveness in the context of human goodness. Forgiveness, which dotes on human sinfulness, encourages the worst in everybody. The sinful behavior which separates two people becomes a weapon which both wield out of their psychological needs and for their interpersonal advantage. This is far from the forgiveness which Jesus envisioned.

The forgiveness of God which Jesus proclaims and which he urges humankind to imitate does not focus on sin but is a direct appeal to human goodness. There is only one thought in the mind of Jesus, only one feeling in his heart, only one cry in his mouth � the Kingdom of God.

The follower of Jesus lives between the already and not yet of the Kingdom of God. The present experience of the Kingdom is both an anticipation and guarantee of future fulfillment. Jesus does not spell out this future hope in terms of date and hour. In this he seems to have departed radically from his contemporaries and some of ours who revel in setting dates for the end of the world and repairing to the nearest mountaintop. Jesus� idea of time does not emphasize the concept of succeeding moments.

The Kingdom of God which is among us is not manifested in the parting of the sea or the calling down of fire from heaven, but in the forgiveness of sins. To experience the God of Jesus is to experience yourself as forgiven. The forgiveness of God does not dialogue and debate with sin but cuts through it to confront human goodness. Forgiveness is not magnanimously forgetting faults but the uncovering of self-worth when it is crusted over with self-hatred.

A dwarfish but self-important tax collector hanging from the limb of a tree in order to catch a glimpse of a passing prophet is obviously looking for something. Jesus confronts Zacchaeus with neither outrage nor condescension. He does not berate him for living off the blood money of his own people, nor pat him on the head and agree that he is a worthless and pitiful character. Instead, Jesus invites himself to dinner. To modern ears, Jesus� self-invitation is rude and presumptuous. But in the context of Palestinian custom, this gesture is an acceptance of Zacchaeus. For the Hebrew, the meal is a sacred action. To share bread with another is to affirm that person in your sight and in the sight of God. That is why Zacchaeus is startled when it is his despised and much-rejected house that Jesus chooses. Zacchaeus knows that Jesus is not approving his cheating and graft but his fundamental created self-worth. Jesus does not pound home his sin, but calls to his goodness. Zacchaeus responds to who he really is, a created son of the Father, repents, and leads a new life.

This is the socio-political context for the distinctive feature of Jesus� ministry � table fellowship. The ultimate charge of the Pharisees was that Jesus was a "glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners." His enacted parable of table fellowship is more scandalous and dangerous than any of his spoken parables. To the sharp eyes of the Jewish leaders, this symbol of God�s forgiveness goes beyond personal metanoia to threaten the religious, social, and political status quo.

The immediate and almost unthinkable implication of Jesus� table fellowship is that the Jews have been wrong about God. God does not reject the sinner and pull the righteous to his bosom. He is not a Lord of sharp delineations, but of open, ever-welcoming embrace. Jesus� answer to those respectable people who ask why he associates with riffraff and scum is paraphrased by Joachim Jeremias:

"Because they are sick, and need me, because they are truly repentant, and because they feel the gratitude of children forgiven by God; and because you, with your loveless, self-righteous, disobedient hearts, reject the gospel. But above all, because God is like that � so kind to the poor, so glad when the lost are found, so full of a father�s love for the child who has gone wrong, so merciful to the despairing, the helpless and the needy. That is why!"

The party which Jesus throws has a very selective guest list but the basis of the selection is not the traditional one. Only creatures are invited. To all those who insist on being god, who will not abandon their manufactured superiority, the door is closed. The only "Open Sesame" is the experience of the forgiveness of sin which is the experience of the freedom and goodness of human creaturehood. Then the door is opened, not begrudgingly but joyfully, for God is the Father of all creatures and you were truly missed at his Feast of Life.

This style of forgiving in both God and Jesus is what Richard Ray calls "appreciative grace." Sheer grace is an indiscriminate dumping of mercy on everything in sight. The graciousness of God focuses exclusively on the fact that although nobody deserves it, everybody gets it. Sin does not destroy the relationship between God and humankind. Alienation presupposes that the relationship endures but in a distorted form. This is the thrust of the classic distinction between human nature as deprived or depraved. Deprived human nature is good but fallen; depraved human nature is fallen. In the context of appreciative grace the deprived human nature, forgiveness reclaims the essential worth of the person.

Ray says it well:

"Forgiveness can be described in interpersonal terms as the reaffirmation of the essential worth of one who has become blind to, and insensitive of, his own sense of worth. It includes the experience of being embraced for who one really is. Forgiveness is thus an experience of insight, which comes with the aid of another whose vision has not been distorted to such a degree. Thus, forgiveness is not so much an act of mercy as it is an act of loyalty of truth. Truth, not mercy, is the source from which one�s self-respect is renewed and confidence and hope restored. Forgiveness can also be described as a celebration of the worth of one or more persons in particular, and of human nature in general. It is a celebration in which the transgressor and the transgressed share in a new recognition of the worth of each."

The Church has always had to struggle to keep forgiveness of sin and the later coordinate, the baptismal experience of dying and rising with Christ, the only criterion for membership in the Christian community. The whole background of the odious phrase "Christian colonialism" is that the Church demanded more than creaturehood and imposed more than the free invitation of Jesus.

Human limitation is a brute fact. As the existentialists say, we are thrown into existence without consultation and in most cases we shall be thrown out just as abruptly. Jesus� revelation of a forgiving Father urges us to accept this birth-death bound existence not as absurdity but as creaturehood. We are sons and daughters of the Father and we can live rightly and well within his creation. Limitation is a given; creaturehood is the free response and interpretation of that given. But the appropriation of our creaturehood, like trusting in God, does not happen with a single insight and a single decision. As the early Church diminished, it quickly understood the process character of Christian life. The conversion to the life of Christ which baptism symbolized was not a once-and-for-all event. Under both external and internal pressure, people did not allow the Fatherhood of God to operate influentially in their lives. They fell from grace, sometimes dramatically, but mostly out of negligence and forgetfulness. Heidigger talks about inauthenticity as the forgetfulness of Being. Sin is the forgetfulness of creaturehood. Part of the reason for the development of the sacrament of Penance was that people needed to be reminded of their true calling. Because humankind is free and time wears down our firmest resolutions, growth in creaturehood means not one experience of conversion, but continual struggling responses to the Father of Jesus.

This growth process, how a person continues to experience divine forgiveness which calls him to full creaturehood, is the key to the spirituality of Jesus. The Gospel writers portray Peter as Jesus� best foil.

Since he never quite understood, his questions always penetrated to the heart of the matter. "Master, how many times should I forgive my brother? Seven times?" Jesus� response is, "I tell you, not seven times but seventy times seven." The evidence is overwhelming that we are enthusiastic and repeating violators of our own and each other�s humanity. But we are more than that. If we are to live together, we must develop a style of forgiveness which can entice that more. We need a forgiveness which stares through the center of our sins and affirms the goodness we are capable of. Not to persist in forgiveness is quite clearly to give up, to wallow in the luxury of condemnation, to judge humankind to be stuck too deeply in the mire, and cry solemnly in our beer. But the Christian community, which is faithful to the God who forgives, knows that beer is for drinking, not crying into. The community which is true to Jesus will always hear and dance to the music of The Good Creation which rises above the cacophony of The Fall

MR. ZUSS: God never laughs! In the whole Bible! -- J. B.

MacLeish's Zuss is patently wrong. The Hebrew scriptures record the laughter of God no fewer than seven times on at least six occasions. Consistently it is indignant laughter ("laughed them to scorn") at those who are evil -- at Sennacherib of Assyria (2 Kings 19:21; Isaiah 37:22), at unrepentant sinners (Proverbs 1: 26), at those plotting against the just (Psalms 37:13), or at the vain kings of the earth (Psalm 2:4). Admittedly, the spectacle of the Almighty laughing at lesser creations hardly strikes some of us mortals as comic. Like Job, we cynically see ourselves as righteous victims of a supernatural joke, believing that God "mocks at the calamity of the innocent" (Job 9:23). Yet in the divine comedy it is our own posturing of innocence and righteousness that is ludicrous.

Zuss's error is but a symptom of a widespread theological aberration: he misconceives God as a humorless taskmaster out of touch with the wells of good nature and animal spirits. It is perverse to receive the Gospel as bad news, as a revelation of man's evil rather than a celebration of God's good. Those who search to support this misconception have little trouble finding support, particularly in the Hebrew scriptures. "Even in laughter the heart is sad, and the end of joy is grief" (Proverbs 14:13). "I said of laughter, "It is mad," and of pleasure, "What use is it?'" (Ecclesiastes 2:2). "Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of countenance the heart is made glad." (Ecclesiastes 7:3). In the Christian scriptures they have to dig harder, but anyone can find a sad-faced Jesus if the mind is set to do so. After all, every schoolboy knows the shortest verse of the Bible; and with it, the hard of heart, as if by some form of hocus pocus, can nullify or diminish Jesus' overarching mission of grace, joy and redemption.

Some modern Christians have trouble hearing the laughter of Jesus because the religious Establishment frequently portrays Jesus in the service of stern authoritarianism. An authoritarian Jesus constrasts starkly and ironically with the Jesus of scriputure. In the bible Jesus treats authoritarians as enemies. Legalist Christians today are out of touch with Jesus the boisterous rule-breaker. Jesus storms the temple (John 2:13-17), turning over the tables of the money-changers. We are meant to delight in the sound of the money "poured out" and in the sound of the "whip of chords" Jesus used to drive the vendors away.

To enjoy the Jesus of scripture, we need to appreciate sarcasm, puns, enigmas and paradoxes -- all part of Jesus' arsenal, coming as he did from the doubly persecuted minority of Jew an independent prophet. Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, visited Jesus, "by night," as if to avoid embarrassment. Jesus embarrassed another prominent person by indulging a vagrant prostitute and allowing her to bathe his feet with precious oils bought with her earnings. From a Third World point of view, such scenes are richly humorous, full of high spirits, acceptance, and welcome. They show Jesus as warm, personal, and sensual.

When the Establishment criticized Jesus for breaking the Sabbath rules, he affirmed that rules should serve people, not people the rules. Note the muffled laughter implicit when Jesus answers his accusers, especially as he cuts through their intellectual pretension to know all scripture: "Have you not read what David did, when he was hungry?" (Matthew 12:3). Jesus jokes about the rich: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" (Matthew 19:23). If we identify with the rich man, the remark is splenetic. Yet the original audience were mainly poor, and they had just witnessed a young man with "great possessions" exposed for not really being so perfect as he wanted to think himself. The poor in every age are used to the rich who withdraw when they realize that to gain life they will have to lose it.

Jesus is the original jive artists, the crafty maker of small talk to keep those in power structure at bay. Even when brought in as a prophet on display at the homes of the powerful, he does not cut himself off from his kind of people, the poor. He talks to both groups at once. At times this rhetorical gymnastic renders symptoms of paranoia. Paranoia is sometimes the healthy response of a rebel who is in the presence of real enemies. Jesus' humor becomes private, in-group, especially when he is aware that spies are trying to trick him:

"Is it lawful for us to give tribute to Caesar, or not?" But he perceived their craftiness, and said to them, "Show me a coin. Whose likeness and inscription has it?" They said, "Caesar's." He said to them, "Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." And they were not able in the presence of the people to catch him by what he said, but marveling at his answer they were silent." (Luke 20:22-26)

Jesus' answer is really a non-answer: the new terms are ambiguous. He has not really identified "the things that are Caesar's." The spies (and we) still have no way of knowing whether tribute to Caesar is right or wrong. If they think that it is right to pay taxes, that is only their interpretation. Although for centuries preachers have used this episode to justify the Church's historical deference to the State, the passage remains equivocal. Jesus has possibly referred only to this one coin. We, like his original hearers, cannot be sure. Such are the games jive artists place when they are threatened. One thing we can be sure of, however: Jesus has confounded his enemies. "And they were not able in the presence of the people to catch him by what he said." He has won a respite by the wit of obfuscation. Those who have watched Mister Charlie try to get unequivocal answers out of debtor Blacks talking on stoops in the ghetto are familiar with skillful equivocation as an important verbal ruse of the oppressed.

Jesus times some of his most startling theological insights to detonate after a delay. Witness the episode when the Sadducees tried to trip up Jesus in a tedious argument about the resurrection, in which they did not believer (Matthew 22). Jesus goes along with the terms of the question initially: "You are wrong because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God" (verse 29). Yet his follow-up is fresh theological matter not in the Hebrew scriptures: "For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven" (verse 30). While the Sadducees sweat out their failing memories to discover the allusion, which is really a smoke-screen, Jesus shifts ground, seeming to leave the terms of the question altogether: "And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God, `I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? " (verses 31 and 32). Jesus seems to digress. What have Abraham, Jacob and Isaac to do with the resurrection? Then comes the punch line: "God is not God of the dead, but of the living" (verse 32). Quibbling about the resurrection (future) or the past misses the essence of religious revelation, namely, God reveals God's self always in the now. Jesus uses a verbal trap to expose the verbal trap of his enemies, uses a reference to a Biblical rhetorical mode to reveal God's means of relation to all people in any time. The wit and the dodginess is incisive and subtly comic.

Jesus does not take just occasional pot shots: insider-humor is part of the comprehensive strategy of the parables:

Then the disciples came and said to him, "Why do you speak to them in parables?" And he answered them, "To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. . . . This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand." (Matthew 13:10-11, 13)

Jesus' verbal pyrotechniques are of many sorts. He relishes farce, as in his extended metaphor: "Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but you do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, "Let me take the speck out of your eye," when there is the log in your own eye?" (Matthew 7:3-5. He wields sarcasm, as in "And when you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have their reward" (Matthew 6:16). His final slice suggests that the only reward they will get is their current reputation, that they pray not to God but for the observers. Obscured in the English version is the added humor of the pun on "disfigure" in the Greek, "disfiguring" oneself to make a "figure" or grand appearance.

Jesus exploits hyperbole and name-calling, as in "You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!" (Matthew 23:24) and in "you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness" (Matthew 23:27). This color contrast appeals to darker Semitic folks; Pharisaic cleanliness takes on a vicious reassociation, from `white as pure' to `white a ghostly, deadly.'

Jesus is good company among friends as well, as was vividly brought home to me in a Greek class in the 1950s when a fellow student, a puritanical preacher, struggled to translate the story of the first miracle, that great practical joke Jesus pulled by making super-strong wine from water at the wedding feast in Cana (John 2).

"Water to grape juice," offered the student, eyeing the professor. There was silence. All stared at an RSV crib of verse 10, in which the ruler of the feast complains: "Everyone serves the good wine first; and when they people have drunk freely, then the poor wine; but you have kept the good wine until now."

"Does grape juice get rated `good' and `poor'?" the professor teased. "Is not this word oinos (`wine') the same Xenophon uses when noting how the men of Cyrus get delayed every time they overindulge?"

"B.B.But...." the student stuttered.

"I think I get your point," the professor interrupted. "You would like to think that the God of the universe would not spike the punch."

"Right!" the student replied.

"There is only one thing wrong with your position," the professor said, "namely you are putting yourself in a position to tell God what God can and cannot do."

Somber expectations of holy writ take much way from the good fun in the Gospels. Read with dullness, the story of the calming of the storm is frightening: "`Save, Lord; we are perishing.' And he said to them, `Why are you afraid, you of little faith?'" (Matthew 8:25-26). An authoritarian sees this text much as one might view a parent coming to the bedroom to rebuke a frightened child for his belief in goblins. But the authoritarian fails to see another kind of parent, one who is not annoyed but lovingly blows away the goblins, acting out the child's need for a hero, respecting the childness of the child. The text says that Jesus "rebuked the winds and the sea," not the disciples.

Even on solemn occasions, Jesus jests. He institutes the Church with a pun: "And I tell you, you are Peter [Greek Petros] and on this rock [Greek petra] I will build my Church" (Matthew 16:18). Note the inuendo that many intend when they nickname a friend "Rock" or "Rockie." Similarly, when Jesus calls fishermen as disciples he does so with word play: "I will make you become fishers of men" (Mark 1:17). Before revealing to the woman at the well the place where really God dwells, Jesus teases her. He knows all about her promiscuity, but he provokes her to talk about herself openly, warmly.

Fine mixtures of humor and seriousness are integral to the Good News.

At the heart of Jesus' humor is paradox. Nowhere is paradox more explicit than in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5), which celebrate a happiness (blessedness) begot of poverty of spirit, mourning, meekness, etc. Happiness in a sick society is enjoyed not by espousing the values of that society, but by countering those values and moving into a new, strange dimension. Our culture does not educate us to see the humor, even the laughter in paradox. A Zen master would understand. Perhaps the greatest laugh of all is the confident, joyful laugh in the face of adversity.

The resurrection presents sublimist laughter, laughter at death itself. As St. Paul interpreted it: "O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? (I Corinthians 15:55). The Passion, as rich as it is, is not Jesus' final statement. Even the angel at the tomb is part of the conspiracy of surprise and joy: "Woman, why are you weeping?" (John 20:15). The angel knows the answer to the question but teases dramatically. (Indeed all modern European secular drama stems directly from this scene, the Quem quaeritis.)

Later Jesus withholds his identity from those who walked to Emmaus after the resurrection until "he was at table with them. And heir eyes were opened and they recognized him; and he vanished out of their sight" (Luke 24:30-31). Jesus humorously indulges Thomas the doubter: "Put your finger here and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side" (John 20:27). Thomas does not have to touch, but believes on the evidence of the familiar jesting Jesus.

The angels announced to the shepherds: "I bring you good news of great joy which will come to all the people" (Luke 2:10). Again and again the Gospels are punctuated with the crowds' amazement, with rejoicing. It is difficult to imagine a healing or a feeding of the multitude without good spirits and laughter. Such events are not dreary, but exciting. Jesus is not lugubrious, but joyful, and joy-making. He purges the world of grim sickness, poverty and wickedness. He makes all things new.