| Letters of Aquila and Priscilla |
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Who do people say that I am? (Mk 8:27) |
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We are again at that time of the year when many have just returned from vacation in Manila or elsewhere. During the past two months, there was a lull in the activities of our community. We only had the weekly household meetings, First Friday Masses, and monthly chapter assemblies. Indeed, for the expatriates in Jakarta, the year begins at this time. The international school starts a new school year and our community begins a new cycle of activities. If you look at our Schedule of Activities, you will see that practically all weekends of the next month are full. Before we become too engrossed in all these activities, let us reflect for a moment on the person we are doing all these for – as a sort of a continuation of the article on the Parable of the Missing Worker in last month’s issue of Aquila and Priscilla. You may recall that the message of that parable is that our life – and everything that we do – become meaningful only if we have Jesus in our midst. A few days ago, our Indonesian brothers invited me to give Talk 2, Who is Jesus Christ?, in the CLP at Klender. I delivered the talk in Indonesian, although as you all know, I cannot carry even a simple conversation in Bahasa Indonesia. Since I speak very little Indonesian, I had to prepare long and hard. First, I had my prepared text translated from English to Indonesian. Next, I had to practice how to read and pronounce the Indonesian words. The most difficult part was to determine where to pause, not knowing the meaning of the words I was reading. But because I had to read the Indonesian text so many times, so that I could deliver the talk by merely glancing at the text, the words Siapakah Yesus Kristus?, Who is Jesus Christ?, kept racing back into my mind. The question, Who is Jesus Christ?, calls to mind the passage in Mark 8:27-30: Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that I am?” And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him. The significance of this passage is reflected in the opening paragraph of An Introduction to New Testament Christology by Fr. Raymond Brown, S.S.: “Who do people say that I am?” is a question associated with Jesus as early as the first Gospel to be written. In that Gospel it produced a variety of answers, including one volunteered but poorly understood by Peter, his best known follower. The question has produced a variety of answers ever since. Fr. Wilfred Harrington, O.P., in his book entitled Mark, agrees: The passage is the hinge of Mark’s work, at once the climax of the first part, the secret of the Messiah (the identity of Jesus), and the transition to the second part, the mystery of the Son of Man (his destiny of death and resurrection). The second half of the gospel provides the answer to the question raised in the first half, who is Jesus? But this answer is not understood by the disciples who cannot grasp his suffering messiahship. The disciples knew Jesus as a miracle-worker, a person capable of healing diseases, restoring sights, calming storms and doing other works of wonder. Like the disciples, many people today often misunderstand or only partially understand Jesus. They often relate to Jesus only in this manner. They ask him to cure their illnesses and calm the “storms” in their lives. And they stop at this level of recognition. Since they “know” Jesus only as a miracle-worker, they come to him only when they are in need, when they want a miracle, when they need healing. At other times, they hardly bother with him. Like the disciples, some also “know” Jesus only as a teacher and prophet. They love reading the Bible and admire the profundity of Jesus’ parables and the wisdom of his teachings. They read books about Jesus, especially about the historical Jesus. But they stop at the level of the intellect. In their search for the real Jesus, their hearts are not involved. We cannot know Jesus by just his miracles and teachings. It is through his suffering and death on the cross (and his resurrection) that we can really know Jesus. For it is through the cross that we can start to understand the magnitude of God’s love for us. While equal in majesty with the Father, Jesus came down to our level, suffered and died on the cross so that we may have eternal life! Only when we start to fully realize the magnitude of this sacrifice, can we begin to truly know Jesus. I agree with Fr. Raymond Brown that the issue of the full identity of Jesus is ultimately a question of the love of God for human beings. Fr. Brown writes: If Jesus is not “true God of true God,” then we do not know God in human terms. Even if Jesus were the most perfect creature far above all others, he could tell us only at second hand about God who really remains almost as distant as the Unmoved Mover of Aristotle. Only if Jesus is truly God do we know what God is like, for in Jesus we see God translated into terms that we can understand. A God who sent a marvelous creature as our Saviour could be described as loving, but that love would have cost God nothing in a personal way. Only if Jesus is truly God do we know that God’s love was so real that it reached the point of personal self-giving. Fr. Brown continues. Unless we understand that Jesus was (also) truly human with no exception but sin, we cannot comprehend the depth of God’s love. If Jesus’ knowledge is limited, as indicated prima facie in the biblical evidence, then one understands that God loved us to the point of self-subjection to our most agonizing infirmities. A Jesus who walked through the world with unlimited knowledge, knowing exactly what the morrow would bring, knowing with certainty that three days after his death his Father would raise him up, would be a Jesus who could arouse our admiration, but a Jesus still far from us. He would be a Jesus far from a humankind that can only hope in the future and believe in God’s goodness, far from a humankind that must face the supreme uncertainty of death with faith but without knowledge of what is beyond. On the other hand, a Jesus for whom the detailed future had elements of mystery, dread, and hope as it has for us and yet, at the same time, a Jesus who would say, “Not my will but yours” – this would be a Jesus who could effectively teach us how to live, for this Jesus would have gone through life’s trials. Then his saying, “No one can have greater love than this: to lay down his life for those he loves” (Jn 15:13), would be truly persuasive, for we would know that he laid down his life with all the agony with which we lay ours down. We would know that for him the loss of life was, as it is for us, the loss of a great possession, a possession that is outranked only by love. My brothers and sisters, starting next week we will again hear the talk on Who is Jesus Christ? during our 8th Christian Life Program for the expatriate community. I urge you to listen to this talk more intently, with the words of Fr. Brown in mind. Let us invite our friends, officemates and neighbors to the CLP so that they too may hear and listen, so that they too may start to understand more fully the true person of Jesus. The “people” in Jesus’ question, Who do people say that I am?, are us. They are also our friends, our officemates, and our neighbors. Jesus continues to ask the same question he asked his disciples. We already know the answer to this question. But if Jesus asks our friends, our officemates and our neighbors the same question, what do you think would their answer be?
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