IT’S AN OMNIPOTENTBLOG CHRISTMAS!

Before there was the tour de force/world power that is Omnipotentblog, there was an obnoxious teenager that pondered questions like, “Why pray to Jesus? Isn’t he the #2? Isn’t he, like, God Jr.?” Then I matured (sort of) and kind of figured it out. But then I came across this:

What is your level of spiritual understanding?

A. What’s the Trinity?

B. I know a little bit about the Trinity.

C. I think I understand the Trinity.

D. I don’t understand the Trinity at all.

A friend cautioned once that if you think about the incarnation too much, you become Catholic. I’m not worried. But long ago I came to believe Catholics have it right in one respect: The crucifix is way better than the Protestants’ barren cross. Aesthetically, it’s macabre and artistic. That’s enough. But I also never understood the big deal about the resurrection. Jesus was God. God cannot die. It wasn’t a miracle; it was a foregone conclusion. But the thought that God, or a piece of God or God’s co-equal partner or….something, would leave Heaven where the temperature is always perfect and where, presumably, his favorite snacks were always on hand to become a dirty human, is unimaginable.

 

We’re comfortable thinking about Christ’s divinity, but what about his humanity? In an era with no showers and a dearth of hygiene products, the Lord of heaven and earth would come out of a woman’s body covered in the usual stuff and land in Joseph’s unwashed hands in a barn filled with the sounds and smells of animals pooping. The God of creation became a helpless baby who needed to suckle at his mother’s breast. God….GOD…couldn’t walk. He needed his bum wiped. Did he potty train early? Did he have childhood friends? And when they played kickball, did they complain of his being a stickler for the rules? Challenging authority and testing limits are natural parts of child development. Did Jesus go through the Terrible Two’s? Did Jesus ever need discipline at all? He was without sin. But Isaiah 7 says there will be a time when the boy messiah does not yet know “…to reject the wrong and choose the right.” This suggests an age of moral accountability. Jews now mark it with a Barmitzvah.

There is often an image of Jesus that runs through Christians’ minds, something like this:

 

 
Or maybe this:

 

But what about these?

 

 

"Buddy Christ"

 

The first is from a miniseries that showed Jesus running and laughing and splashing water on Peter. The second is sacrilege, of course, but was Jesus a good buddy? Probably. Did Jesus have a sense of humor? Why not? There’s been a lot of funny Jews. Why wouldn’t the best Jew ever be funny? If so, what kind of jokes would Jesus tell? Nothing racist or dirty, of course. Knock-knock jokes? But what about his looks? Was he good looking? Messianic prophecy Isaiah 53:2 says, “…He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.”

Some scholars say he probably looked like this. (Notice the confused look they gave him.)

 

Jesus healed others. What about Himself? Did he ever catch a cold? Did he have bad breath? Cavities? Did he ever hit his thumb with a hammer or get calluses? We know he rested and fled the crowds so he wasn’t super human. Did he ever get food poisoning or have bad gas and then when Andrew said, “Jesus! Was that you?” Jesus said, “He who smelleth it first…” Or maybe He laughed and blamed it on Judas.

The moment of Jesus’ baptism when the Holy Spirit descends on him like a dove is interesting. Why then? Did he not have the Spirit before? Was that the moment of his spiritual maturation, the fullness of his divinity? Was it just symbolic? If so, why have Jesus go through a maturation process at all?

Martin Scorsese underscored Jesus’ humanity in “The Last Temptation of Christ”. The controversy was that Jesus, suffering on the cross, wondered what it would be like to reject His role as suffering savior and live as a man, marrying a woman and having relations with her. Christians went berserk. Jesus’ fantasy sex scene, mild as it was, was certainly shocking. But the idea itself is only blasphemous if all sexual thought is lust. Is it? Isn’t the sex drive a natural, God-given desire that, like all desires, can be perverted? Now, the line where Jesus mentions John’s tongue being in his mouth, that was ridiculous. But we know Jesus was so terrified of crucifixion, he sweat blood. Is it so inconceivable he didn’t have thoughts of rejecting it all and living a normal life? “Take this cup…Yet, not my will, but Yours be done.”

Christmas should make us ponder the whole glorious and mysterious nature of God. In C.S. Lewis’ “Miracles”, (which, admittedly, Omnipotentblog was too dumb to fully digest) he brings up some interesting questions. After the resurrection, what was Jesus’ actual “substance”? That he could eat fish yet disappear and walk through walls suggests a state other than purely physical or spiritual. Was the Transfiguration a preview of this state, of the new bodies we will have in heaven? Also, if God exists outside of time, which itself is a creation of God, what was Jesus’ reason for existence any time other than the incarnation? What do the Son and the Father “do” if it is the Holy Spirit that interacts with humans now?

Also, as we celebrate the birth of Immanuel-God with us, maybe we should consider not just his death as a sacrifice, but really his whole life. To be human is to be in pain. When life seems nothing but drudgery or intolerable grief and loneliness, Jesus went through worse. Yes, others were crucified. But none experienced the world’s sin on their shoulders and, after having had perfect communion with the Father, was then abandoned. “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” he shouted.

Ben Franklin, in his old age, once said he didn’t bother trying to figure out whether Jesus was divine anymore. He would see God very soon and he was excited to find out. But what was Jesus like when he was 16? And why the incarnation at all? And the whole Triune nature of God? What’s up with that? Presumably, Omnipotentblog has a ways to go. But I can’t wait to ask Him.