11.12.05 - Jesus - the one.

I was reading the other day about the Cao Dai religion which has some two million followers in Vietnam. It was a religion created in Vietnam in the early twentieth century, and is described by someone as drawing on the best of Catholicism and of the great religions of Asia with an added dash of Hollywood. A visit to the Cao Dai cathedral near Ho Chi Minh City is, I believe, well worth while to see the spectacle of midday worship in this religion which has canonised such people as Victor Hugo and Winston Churchill.

I was intrigued by these Cao Dai saints, and I want to explore more, out of curiosity to see who else they have canonised. Churchill is an interesting choice. There is much that has been written about Churchill, and the further away from him in time that we get, the more critical some of it seems to be, especially some of his disastrous military decisions such as Gallipoli. But despite the critiques of him, he is frequently portrayed and regarded as someone who was or became the right person at a particular time ?± the leadership he gave Britain and her allies in World War Two is claimed by some to be pivotal in the final outcome of the war. He seemed to embody the spirit of the defiant British bulldog.

In the histories of all cultures there are people like Churchill ?± significant figures who emerged at a particular time and offered leadership or inspiration that changed the course of events or made a significant contribution to wider humankind. In western culture, at random, one can think of not just military or political leaders like Churchill, or Alexander the Great, but also of other figures such as philosophers like Socrates or Voltaire, scientists like Galileo or Einstein, or explorers like Columbus or Cook ?± people whose thinking or actions have changed the course of history.

Then, there is a handful of other figures, people so extraordinary, so remarkable, it almost becomes difficult to include them in any list of brilliant human figures. Lao-Tze, Moses, the Buddha, Jesus, Guru Nanak, Mohammed ?± these are people whose lives and whose connection with the Divine is so profound, people out of whose depths has emerged great religious movements which have shaped humankind, seem beyond ordinary humanity as we know it. There is something about them which puts them on another level and in touch with something that is so much more than Socrates and Galileo and the rest, let alone the movers and shakers in the histories of various nations.

For we Christians, nearly two thousand years of teaching have said that Jesus was beyond ordinary humanity. The tradition we have inherited speaks of Jesus in terms of divinity and uses "came from above" kind of language, and of coming "from God" as a way to express his uniqueness.

We heard in the gospel reading this morning John the Baptist saying, "The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thongs of his sandals." It may well be, scholars tell us, that although John the Baptist ?± like so many others in ancient Israel with an apocalyptic outlook ?± was looking for the coming of a Messianic figure in an act of divine intervention, he was not actually referring to Jesus. John may have said something like those words, but expected someone else. It well may be that the early church twisted these words to apply to Jesus.

But at the same time, there is a sense also in which, applied to Jesus, the statement attributed to John the Baptist is profoundly true. Jesus, at least for us as Christians, is the one. There is none other. Without Jesus, we Christians would not and could not have the picture and understanding of, and the relationship with God that we do have. It is as basic as that.

This is not to diminish the central figures of other faith traditions for those who follow those traditions and for whom that person is "there is none other". Douglas John Hall, a Canadian theologian, writes, "Jesus, if he is for us what he can be and should be, does not cut us off from others but, precisely by being there at the centre of our confession of faith in God, opens our minds and hearts to others ?± including ?ñ those others who do not name him, Jesus, as ?ñ their doorway to the eternal." (1)

But, where do Jesus and those others in that handful of truly great transforming spiritual figures come from, if it is not "from above", from "out there"? For many of these figures there is something ?± if I may use the term ?± miraculous about their appearance at a particular time in human history; "when the time was right you came among us" is the language used of Jesus in one Christmas prayer.

I think of an image used by William James in his groundbreaking study of religious experience (we would probably call it spiritual experience today), published in 1901. There he wrote of some people being much more open and receptive to mystical or spiritual experiences than others. He described such people as beginning life with a couple of bottles of champagne to their credit. To pursue the analogy, we might say of an even smaller number of people, a mere handful, that they seem to begin life with a couple of crates to their credit, as it were. Jesus was one such.

This is divine intervention in human history. Not from "out there", but found within those men and women who from time to time emerge with a greater giftedness, and greater awareness of the presence and purpose of the divine, than most human beings have. Whether that is a particular focusing of what Jung called the ?´collective unconscious?? in certain people, or whether it is the inexplicable natural phenomenon of some people being innately much more gifted than all others, or whether it is anything else, is a matter of interpretation. The reality is that it happened, and happens.

One thing it is not ?± it is not ?´supernatural??. It is not from ?´outside?? this natural world of our everyday living and relating. The Divinity disclosed in Jesus, as also in different ways for other people through Lao-Tze, the Buddha, Guru Nanak, or Mohammed, and in other figures like Francis of Assisi, the current Dalai Lama, and Mother Teresa, is disclosed through their experience of the Divine in this world. It is out of and into this world of time and history that disclosers of the Divine emerge. The one whom John the Baptist is reported as having said was coming after him, and who Christian tradition identifies as Jesus, did not suddenly appear like some superhero from another place or dimension. He emerged out of ordinary human circumstances, but developed with a level of awareness of God and with an ability to live that out, that surpassed the mundane spiritualities of his contemporaries, and enriched and transformed them and subsequently human history and thought.

While it is not supernatural, "from out there", there is also a level at which we can only speak of it as ?´miraculous??, meaning amazing, astonishing, inexplicable. It goes along with realities like serious sicknesses that do disappear, terminal illnesses that fail to be terminal; the things people call miraculous healings because there is no other rational explanation. It goes along with miracles of grace and love that do occur, in big ways and small ways as people ?± often they know not how ?± surpass (and surprise) themselves in what they can do for other persons.

The wonder and awe we express in music and prayer at this season, is not wonder and awe at God "sending" Jesus, or Jesus "coming down from heaven", or any other of the metaphors that are employed to express wonder and awe. It is not about intervention from God "out there".

Rather, it is wonder and awe that the Divine, that God, is such a part of us, such a part of our world of experience, such a part of our sheer humanity, that someone like Jesus did emerge from amongst us. It is wonder and awe that there was found in another human being such depths of the divine, such depths of spirit, such awesome wisdom and compassion and humanity at its deepest and highest, that the course of human history and human thought, and the courses of countless of millions of human lives, have been transformed.

Wonder and awe ?± "Let all mortal flesh keep silence" in the face of it. For it is in the midst of our humanity, through one who is flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone and life of our life, that the Divine and the purposes of the Divine are disclosed to us.

(1) Why Christian? Fortress Press, Minneapolis