Is Jesus Real?

“Is Jesus Real?” … Jake, 5 years old

Not long ago a friend overheard her five-year-old son asking this question of a playmate. It’s the sort of question only a child would dare ask and perhaps only of another child. Growing up in a strict Roman Catholic home, I know I would never have dared to ask such a question, even if it had occurred to me. We adults have Jesus pretty well figured out. He is the Son of God, or he is a famous teacher whose mystical understanding of the Divine still amazes us today, or he is a popular but unsubstantiated legend. In any case, we know what we think about Jesus. No searching questions needed.

I confess, though, that my answer to this question has changed in the past couple of years. Before then, I enjoyed (really truly enjoyed) a very literary view of Jesus. He was symbolic in the Godhead, representing hope and renewal. Ever young, ever forward-looking, Jesus expressed a needed human capacity for spiritual progress and ultimate unity with God. This view was a product of many years of thinking and reading and even regular church going, but, notably, not of praying.

I was proud of my conclusions and quite comfortable with them. I felt warm-hearted kindness toward people who claimed that Jesus saved them. I had only sweet thoughts for people who told me that Jesus died for our sins or that he changed the world. Did he love me? How can a symbol love me? Yes, he loved everyone, but in a sweepingly genera,l glowing way, but not specifically me…or you. If I sound as if I’m making fun of myself, I’m not. I’m trying to be kind to myself. I think many people hold these views of Jesus and they could do a whole lot worse.

But I changed my mind. Call it grace, call it old age, call it what you will, but I decided to revert to my old-time practice of saying my prayers - morning and evening. The Book of Common Prayer has a lovely form (two actually) for Morning and Evening Prayer and Forward Day by Day [forwardmovement.org] publishes a fine resource with reflections on the daily readings. Using all of this, after a few years, I started to think of God, myself and the Universe quite differently. I think it was the Psalms that did it. Lines like “Whom have I in heaven but you, and having you I desire nothing on earth” Ps 73 stunned me into something almost like belief.

Then, floundering around spiritually and on the advice of my priest, I undertook the Ignatian Exercises – about which more in a future blog entry. Thanks to this discipline I took a further mad leap and asked Jesus himself (no longer a symbol, by the way) to help me to know him and to love him.

You’d think that asking someone to help you love him would be insulting, but apparently Jesus expects this and is quite accommodating. In any case, it worked …  is working. I can now say that Jesus is real. Yes, the Son of God. Yes, changed the world. Yes, my savior.

Unlike little Jake and first Century CE followers of Jesus, I have 2,000 years of history, tradition, belief and practice to stand on. Those disciples traveling from town to town with Jesus must have been asking themselves Jake’s question all the time. The Gospel is full of incidents when the disciples doubted Jesus, misunderstood everything he said, erred grossly.

 Recall the raising of Lazarus. Recall how Jesus deliberately delayed going to Bethany. Recall the scene of desolation that he found there. The tears. The recriminations. Recall Martha – even Martha who boldly said “You are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who is to com,” even this tower of faith yielded to a moment of unbelief when Jesus ordered the tomb opened. “Lord,” she says, ”already there is a stench because he has been dead for four days.” In other words “Are you real?”

In raising Lazarus in this way, Jesus lays his cards on the table. He shows his true self once and for all, as he says to the Father “so that they may believe that you sent me”. Martha’s words of belief are, after all, just words. We recite the Nicene Creed every Sunday. More words. All the time, we find our belief changing growing, diminishing, deepening, fading, burning bright.

Faith is a contrary thing, filling us gladly one moment and then, moments later, deserting us when a tomb is about to be opened. It’s a full time job this discipleship business. Believing in the Son of God is not easy in our world. Is Jesus real? Ask him yourself.  God bless.

Coda:  “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”     C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

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