If the Incarnation of Jesus of Nazareth was the perfect metaphor of the Father — God’s own and only pure human rendering of Himself (and I fully believe that this is the case) — then it is not only the person of Jesus that carries the message as depicted in the four Gospels, but everything about those stories as well. The big picture settings of time and place, culture, politics and religion, as well as the minute details of individual thought and behavior revealed therein all have revelatory potential. After all, God — being God — created all of that as well. As the Artist, the Author, the Director — He fashioned the settings and background as well as all the players to send His intended message down through the ages.
However, one of the main messages carried throughout seems to escape most interested parties. If a book of stories could have saved mankind from eternal damnation then why didn’t God just write a book? Instead He sent His Only Begotten Son to become a lowly human being who could do nothing alone — before He set out on his mission He gathered twelve helpers around Himself. This “Emmanuelle” — the Man named by Isaiah “God-With-Us” — never wrote anything down except once writing something on the ground that has never been revealed. It took three years of close contact and then the gift of the Holy Spirit –called the “Paraclete”, or “the one who walks at your side” — after His death at the hands of the Roman occupiers of the Promised Land for the disciples to become Apostles — or “those who carry the message.”
So how is it we think we can get this saving message from reading a book of stories…?
There must be something very special about being human. This is the tale told as to why the devil — who was once the chief of the angels — rebelled. He could not allow himself to look up to humans who were just a little above the beasts of the earth. And this, in fact, is the strange case of why the other Faiths of the earth cannot accept Christianity — “Jesus cannot be God” — they all say in one way or another — “because God cannot be a human.”
This brings me to the reason I am writing this: the beauty — and the problem — of being human is that a human being cannot receive anything of eternal and/or internal significance unless he or she receives it directly from another human being. This is the hidden truth of the Gospel — so simple and all pervasive that it escapes our lofty intellects.
Writings v. Relationships
The letters of Paul the Apostle more than any other writings have set the tone for all the Christian denominations. And yet these were written decades before the first Gospel was in existence. In fact, scholars and historians still marvel and argue as to how and why Paul either willfully ignored the stories contained in the Gospels or was completely ignorant of them all. (Paul, of course, did not know Jesus before His Crucifixion and but claimed a three year post-resurrection solitary desert discipleship in the Spirit.) Either way for this the most successful of all modern religions it was not important for these written renderings of the life of the One who must be believed in and known personally to be read or even that the stories contained therein be told for it to get its all important foundational beginnings. What was important was direct contact with the men and women who had spent years of quality time with Him. It appears that, since the Gospel writers penned their works just before their respective martyrs’ deaths, these writings were left us for posterity — so that the tendency for “word of mouth” communication to become distorted over time and distance could be countered by written first-hand testimony of what Jesus — and, ergo, the Father — are truly like.
The Faith itself, as is reflected in the ancient Creeds recited to this day by Christians all over the world, is “Apostolic” — it is passed down directly person to person from generation to generation. All the rest is in place — the writings, the gifts of the Spirit, etc. — for edification and aid. But the Divine Virtues of Faith, Hope and Love we give to one another. And these Gifts can be — and one day will be – traced for each and every one of the faithful back through the generations to that first human contact with Jesus of Nazareth by one of His earthly contemporaries. For each one of us who have received the Holy Faith there is this long line of faithful ones that can be followed back, from the one person who came to us at the moment we were ready to receive this precious lifesaving Gift, back through the decades and centuries, person to person to the one standing in awe and wonder looking into the face of the Son of Man Jesus — Himself looking off to the Heavens speaking directly to His Father with the eyes and the voice of pure familial Love:
Now, Father, glorify me with that glory I had with you before the world existed. I have revealed your name to those you took from the world to give me. They were yours and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now at last they have recognized that all you have given me comes from you for I have given them the teaching you gave to me, and they have indeed accepted it and know for certain that I came from you, and have believed that it was you that sent me. John 17:5-8
No one would seriously contend that the Father gave Jesus lessons in a heavenly seminary of books and lectures. And there is no evidence that Jesus ever taught His disciples in any but a way of interpersonal example. His relationship and teaching with them was in-kind with that He had and has with the Father. And so it was with all the faithful and so it is with us. It is truly “apostolic.”
But does this passing on of the gospel message have to come within the physical or philosophical walls of a classic Christian Church to be truly “apostolic”? Does it even have to come from someone who calls him or herself a Christian? Can it not be that the attraction of the osmotic love of the Son of God Made Flesh need only the close contact with a human host to be “infectious”?
The fact is that if God really became a human being who sent out into the whole world a whole host of others He directly infected with His Love — and God — being God — cannot fail to complete any task He embarks upon — then this world 2000 years later is already in the throws of a Love epidemic. And any scholarly historical “before and after” comparison will starkly reveal this to be the case.
The problem for the world’s Christian denominations is that none of them can lay exclusive claim to this Human Revolution. And it truly is purely and simply “human”. Jesus did not come as a Catholic, or an Evangelical, or even a Jew as the Jews defined themselves in His time. As the Gospels meticulously spell out in minute detail — Jesus came as the First — the Last — the One and Only — Pure and Perfect Human Being.
But we find this perfect flesh and blood rendition of the Father of us all in the form of the people we have known and loved and have known and loved us. And so when an artist fashions an image of the Son of God it comes as a composite of his or her own contemporaries.
And this is just as it should be ….
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“Can it not be that the attraction of the osmotic love of the Son of God Made Flesh need only the close contact with a human host to be “infectious”?”
Yes , and of course that is already working. You can see it all around us. I just spent a week long spiritual retreat at the center in Virginia Beach where Sleeping Prophet Edgar Cayce’ s nine readings of the entire bible his entire life enabled him to use Godly language when as the “Sleeping Prophet” he diagnosed illnesses in the body, mind, and heart to all who came. His work still lives on in his successors today in the form of love conferences and from the readings of Cayce’s that are stored at his renovated home and conference center. From what I saw at the week-long intensive workshops at the conference, the world definitely is in the throes of a love epidemic. It could use more spreading but we can all help that cause. But we can do it.
Don’t subscribe to Cayce myself.
But you do subscribe to the idea that people who encompass love can pass it on to other people. It is “infectious” as you said above. I experienced that at a conference where a large number of the attendees were people who are heart-centered and caring. I came away with a feeling of having loved my fellow man and being loved for that week. However, it is fading now that I am back home.