(The Nationalist, 18 June 2004)
Maybe this was the most difficult of the questions Jesus asked. I am sure he does not want a textbook answer taken from a creed or a catechism. That would only evoke from him another of his questions: ‘Do you say this of yourself or have others told you of me?’ Jesus is asking us what we think, and that doesn’t leave any wriggle room. He expects a straight answer to a straight question, and he is entitled to it.
Jesus has probably been different things to us at different stages of our lives. If we had the same idea of him from childhood to old age it would mean that we had failed to explore the infinity that is God’s revelation of himself in Jesus.
I like the gentle humour of Jesus. I like also his emotional warmth, especially his anger at hypocrisy, at institutions placing themselves above people, at people in power hiding behind systems, and his frustration at followers who sometimes refused to think.
I like the way he championed underdogs without sentimentalizing them: ‘Stand up, take your mat and walk’, he said to the man who had a touch of self-pity in his complaint that no one would help him. I like his earthy realism about people: ‘You are looking for me because you ate your fill of the loaves’. I like the way he challenged people, combining mercy and truth: ‘Go your way, and from now on do not sin again’.
I like his ability to break out of the mental limits of the religion, customs and culture of his time and place, reaching beyond the local to the universal: ‘There were many lepers in Israel at the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian’.
I like the priority he gave to the truth, regardless of risk, as when he told his followers things they did not want to hear. I like his ability to unmask the deviousness of the dishonest, dislodging them from their perch.
There is so much that I find in Jesus, and there is always more to discover. May I never sit in comfort with “my” Jesus, my private idol. May he always lead us on, always restless, always questioning, discovering and re-discovering, because all truth is his, and when we search for the truth we search for God. It was Jesus who said, ‘Search and you will find’.