Search for God Ending in Jesus: The Joy of Living the Gospel

By Mani Augustine Chilampikunnel PH.D

This book is designed to assist those sincerely seeking God in their lives. It is not written for scholars, researchers, or critics but for the common men and women who are yearning to establish an intimate relationship with God while going about their daily lives. In addition, this book is of considerable value to parents who want to live their Christian faith and bring up their children in the practice of faith. It is an invitation to those who have no faith or lost their faith but are seeking to reestablish their relationship in order to experience the loving kindness of the heart of our God.
Search for God Ending in Jesus is based on the authors intense research on various religions and religious practices and years of interactions with people of different faiths. In this book, the author attempted to make accurate use of human language in order to speak about God, providing logical thought to ultimate explanation of all realities leading to the existence of God, who chose to come down to us in the person of Jesus Christ in an actualized, concretized, personalized way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514431665

Mani Augustine Chilampikunnel PH.D

Manuel Augustine is a missionary priest who has worked for several years in the Prefecture Apostolic of Jammu and Kashmir presently known as the Diocese of Jammu-Srinagar. Endowed with the gift of writing, Manuel Augustine is the author of A Manual for Parents, Teachers, and Principals on Early Childhood Education. In addition, Dr. Augustine has published several articles for regional, national, and international journals, magazines, and papers and gave radio and TV talk on national network. Prior to his philosophical and theological studies at St. Joseph’s Seminary at Allahabad, India, Manuel Augustine worked for five years in a business corporation. He was ordained a priest in 1973. Dr. Manuel Augustine received his graduate degrees in English literature from Jammu University and master of science in education from Fordham University, New York. He also holds doctor of philosophy in educational administration from Fordham University and is presently serving as early childhood educational consultant with New York City Department of Health in addition to his pastoral ministry. Dr. Augustine has spent several years of his missionary life as a pastor, teacher, principal, education secretary, military, and hospital chaplain and was actively involved in the settlement of refugees and worked with Mother Teresa of Calcutta and her sisters in housing projects for the lepers. Dr. Augustine presently resides in Long Island, New York.

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* PART I *

GOD’S INITIATIVE

CHAPTER 1

REVELATION OF GOD’S SAVING PLAN

For those who believe, no explanation is needed,

For those who don’t believe, no explanation will suffice (Jm. 1:6).

The eternal Father in his infinite goodness and wisdom created the universe. His plan was to dignify man with a share in his divine riches. With this in mind, he created man in his own image and commanded him to increase and multiply and fill the earth. From time immemorial, billions of people have inhabited the earth and still continue to do so, and yet each one of his creations is unique and distinct, thus revealing God’s infinite wisdom and mastery in the art of creation. He made them in his own image and not in the image and likeness of animals, birds, or reptiles.

God’s love for mankind was so steadfast that even after our first parents have sinned and fell short of his expectation, God did not abandon them but ceaselessly offered them help to salvation by promising them a redeemer. In carefully planning and preparing the salvation of the human race, God chose for himself a people to whom he might entrust his promises.

The history of God’s saving plan began with the call of Abraham, a nomadic chieftain with whom God entered into a covenant. God promised Abraham that he would make him father of a great nation, and through him, all his descendants would be blessed. This covenant was bilateral in nature whereby Abraham and his descendants were to worship Yahweh, and Yahweh, in turn, would bestow upon him and on his descendants blessings both temporal and spiritual. From time to time, God intervened in human history and renewed his covenant through Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and many other prophets. Israel thus came to know the ways of God and gained deeper and clearer understanding of his ways.

God instructed Abraham to leave his country and his father’s household for the land God would show him. By tradition, land and livestock are properties and measures of one’s wealth. The Ur of the Chaldeans where Abraham lived was the fertile Mesopotamic region, the cradle of ancient civilization. It was not an easy task to suddenly leave one’s fertile homeland. Still, Abraham obeyed God’s calling and left his beloved country without regrets.

Abraham himself did not become a permanent settler in the land but wandered about in it, pasturing his flocks, as did his son and grandson after him. Abraham’s great-grandson, Joseph, had been sold into slavery in Egypt by his own brothers. There, through a remarkable series of events, he won the favor of the Pharaoh, reached high position, and, at the time of famine in Israel, brought his father and brothers to Egypt, where they live as honored guests. Later, the situation changed, and they became little better than slaves.

Hundreds of years later, God appeared in a burning bush to Moses, an Israelite who had been given an Egyptian upbringing, and commissioned him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt and into freedom. After escaping from Pharaoh’s forces through the direct intervention of God, Moses and the Israelites wandered in the desert and eventually came to the mountain of Sinai. Here, God appeared again to Moses and, through him, gave the Israelites the Law, the Ten Commandments, a detailed list of the demands that God made on the people (Ex. 12). The principal purpose of the Old Covenant was to prepare for the coming of Christ and the messianic kingdom.

In the course of time, his chosen people abandoned him and went after pagan gods. God raised prophets, kings, and judges to warn them of the impending danger and to bring them back. But they became a stiff-necked people and refused to listen to them. Consequently, he let them wander in the desert and subjected them to slavery, famine, and exile. However, these punishments were not vindictive but medicinal. During their struggles and afflictions, they turned back to God, and God, in turn, sent them prophets and leaders to comfort them and assure them that God is still with them in their sufferings and exile and would not abandon them but deliver them from all their afflictions. However, they are to put their trust in God and not to go after pagan idols.

After further wandering, Moses died, and under Joshua, his successor, the Israelites entered into the Promised Land and, through a series of conquest and infiltration, claimed the land as their own. By the mid-eleventh century BC, they were confronted by the Philistines living on the western coast of Palestine. In order to meet this threat, they united, under a king named Saul, but were defeated. However, in the year 1000 BC, David became king of the united monarchy of Israel in the north and Judah in the south, and he was succeeded by his son, Solomon, who ruled the united monarchy, each for about forty years.

After Solomon’s death, the kingdom started disintegrating, and the next four hundred years were full of internal conflict and strife within the kingdoms in their attempts to retain or regain their independence from foreign powers. Their attempts ultimately proved futile. The northern kingdom lost its independence, and its population was scattered in 721 BC. Judah fell to Babylon in 597 BC, and this marked the end of Israelite independence. However, these developments did not lead to despair but inflamed an intense longing for the restoration of the kingdom of David—a restoration that would be affected by an anointed one (Messiah) called by God and endowed with the power to fulfill God’s will in history (Ellis 1967).

In Israel’s view, God’s plan embraced the entire human race, and Israel was destined to play a special role in asserting God’s lordship over the whole world. This led to the firm belief in a Messiah chosen and commissioned by God to liberate Israel. And when the time had fully come, God, after speaking through various prophets and in varied ways, sent his only son born of a woman to redeem those who were under sin and death (Heb. 1:1; Ga. 4:4).

CHAPTER 2

GOD’S PLAN FULFILLED IN JESUS CHRIST

The Spirit of the Lord has been given to me,

for he has anointed me.

He has sent me to bring the good news to the poor,

to proclaim liberty to captives

and to the blind new sight,

to set the downtrodden free,

to proclaim the Lord’s year of favor …

This text is being fulfilled today even as you listen.

—Lk. 4:18–21

After man had sinned, the bridge leading to God was cut off, and there was no way of reaching him. So God chose to come down to us.

How did it happen? It happened through Jesus Christ.

How do we to know that Jesus came to us from all eternity?

We have three distinct sources of information to confirm that Jesus was sent from all eternity to reestablish the broken relationship.

First is from the Holy Scriptures where it says, At various times in the past and in various different ways, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets; but in our own time, the last days, he has spoken through his Son (Heb. 1:1–2).

Second is from sacred traditions by word of mouth, preaching and instructions, and person-to-person communication right through the apostolic times.

Third is from the teaching of the church relying on the beliefs of the apostles and their successors.

Jesus is the only person ever preannounced. History is replete with men who have claimed that they came from God, or that they were gods, or that they bore messages from God-Buddha, Mohammed, Confucius, Christ, Lao-tzu, and thousands of others.

Reason dictates that if any one of these men actually came from God, the least thing that God could do to support his claim would be to preannounce his coming. If God sent anyone from himself, or if he came himself with a vitally important message for all men, it would seem reasonable that he would first let them know when his messenger was coming, where he would be born, where he would live, the doctrine he would teach, the followers he would gather around him, and the manner of his death. By the extent to which the messenger conformed to these predictions, one could judge the veracity of his claims.

Reason further states that if God did not do this, then there would be nothing to prevent any impostor from appearing in history and saying, I come from God, or An angel appeared to me in the desert and gave me this message. In such cases, there would be no objective historical way of verifying the messenger. We would have only his word for it, and of course, he could be wrong.

To shed further light on the subject, let us take the example of a visitor from a foreign country to Washington and said he was a diplomat. The government would ask him for credentials that he represented a certain government. His documents would have to antedate his arrival and assignment. With such verification, one can evaluate the claimant. If such proofs of identity are asked from delegates of other countries, reason certainly ought to do so with messengers who claim to have come from God. To each claimant reason says, what record was there before you were born that you were coming.

Socrates had no one to foretell of his birth. Buddha had no one to preannounce him and his message. Confucius did not have the name of his mother and his birthplace recorded. But with Christ, it was different. Because of the Old Testament prophecies, his coming was not unexpected. There was no such prediction about Buddha, Confucius, Lao-tzu, Muhammad, or anyone else, but there were ample predictions about Christ. They were therefore only men among men and not the Divine in the human. Christ alone stepped out of the line, saying, Search the writing of the Jewish people and other related history of the Babylonians, Persians, Greeks and Romans (Sheen 1977).

Turning to pagan testimony, Tacitus, speaking for the ancient Romans, said that people were generally persuaded in the faith of the ancient prophecies, that the east was to prevail, and that the master and ruler of the world was to come from Judea.

Another distinguishing fact is that once Jesus appeared, he struck history with such impact that he split it in two periods—one before his coming, the other after it. Buddha nor any of his great Indian philosophers did not do this. Even those who deny God must date their attacks upon him, AD so and so, many years after his coming. Christ’s entry into the world marks the end of the Old Testament period (BC) and the beginning of the New Testament period (AD, Anno Domini).

Yet another fact separating him from all the others is that every other person who ever came into this world came into it to live. Christ came into it to die. Death was a stumbling block to Socrates; it interrupted his teaching. But for Christ, death was the goal and fulfillment of his mission. The story of every human life begins with birth and ends with death. In the person of Christ, however, it was his death that was first and his life that was last.

A salient distinct fact is that he does not fit, as the other world teachers do, into the established category of a good man. He was the son of the living God, the Word of God in the flesh, and not just a good man. By virtue of his death and resurrection, he stepped into the breach of death, crushing sin, gloom, and despair—a God whom we can worship as true God and true man and a leader to whom we can make totalitarian sacrifice without losing but gaining freedom and whom we can love even unto death.

By becoming man, the infinite God, who is beyond time, space, and history, now enters into time, space, and history in the form of a human being. In other words, the all-powerful transcendental God, trailing behind all his splendor and glory, chooses to come onto the world as a child to give history a new form, a new outlook, and a new dimension. Had he chosen to be born in a royal palace in the midst of luxury and opulence, the poor would never be able to gain access to him. So he chose to be born poor.

Jesus came to Nazareth, a tiny town in Southern Galilee, where he had been brought up, and went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day as he usually did. He stood to read, and they handed him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it is written.

The spirit of the Lord has been given to me, for he has anointed me. He has sent me to bring the good news to the poor; to proclaim liberty to captives and to the blind new sight, to set the downtrodden free, to proclaim the Lord’s year of favor (Lk. 4:19).

He then rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the assistant, and sat. And all eyes in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to speak to them. This text is being fulfilled today even as you listen (Lk. 4:16–21). And he won the approval of all, and they were astonished by the gracious words that came from his lips.

Question is asked. Why do we need Jesus Christ?

We need him first for the standard of our ethics. And second, we need him as our role model. We look upon him as the standard and goal of our ethics for he said, Learn of me for I am meek and humble of heart (Mt. 11:29).

Humanity cannot claim innocence before divinity. No kings, emperors, or dictators can assert their innocence before the presence of God, as they are all human and have sinned. But Jesus can, for even though he ate with sinners and tax collectors and welcomed them, no one could accuse him of sin.

If Jesus is not a sinner, then he is not a liar. And if he is not a liar, all what he says are truth. Therefore, we believe in him.

And to those who believe in him, he gave them the power to become the children of God (Jn. 1:12).

We turn to him because he does not condemn or sends away anyone but comes to his/her rescue as he did with the woman caught in adultery. He who is without sin, let him be the first to cast stone at her was his response. Then turning to the woman, Jesus asked, Where are they? Has anyone condemned you? No, sir was her reply. Nor do I condemn you; but from now on, avoid this sin (Jn. 8:3–12). This action of Jesus is a clear testimony of his compassionate attitude toward a repentant sinner.

We need him for our eternal salvation. Lord, who shall we go to? You have the message of eternal life (Jn. 6:68). While Jesus has set a standard for us to follow, we repeatedly keep falling. Notwithstanding our failures, we should have the courage and faith to follow him as Peter did. He was the weakest of all the apostles and went to the extent of denying him when Jesus needed him most during his trial and suffering. Yet Jesus did not reprimand him even after Peter did the unthinkable. However, when he realized what he had done to his beloved master and Lord he cried bitterly. Instead of running away from Jesus in despair, he followed him from a distance, trusting in his mercy and forgiveness. Jesus unconditionally received him and later made him the rock foundation of his church!

To have faith in Jesus Christ means the eternal sun has risen for you. I am the light of the world. Anyone who follows me will not be walking in the dark; he will have the light of life (Jn. 8:12).

To believe in Jesus Christ means to make a decision on Jesus Christ. It is extremely important to make such decision; otherwise, there is always the danger to water down our faith.

To demonstrate this, let us take the simple analysis of a young man and woman deeply in love. They do not profess their love for each other by saying I love you and continue to live separately as isolated individuals. There comes a moment when the fiancé makes the first move and proposes to his loved one, and when the deal is agreeable, they decide to marry, live together, and care for each other for the rest of their lives. Their decision is then ratified and sanctified by God through the sacrament of holy matrimony in the presence of God’s people. As the result of their love and commitment to each other, God blessed them with children, who become the source of their joy.

Remember the words of Jesus to the man who put conditions before following him, Once the hand is laid on the plough, no one who looks back is fit for the kingdom of God (Lk.9:62). On the day of our baptism, we have made the decision to follow Jesus, and there should be no turning back. To abandon our commitment would be tantamount to betraying him. We cannot turn back lest we be turned into a pillar of salt like Lot’s wife of the Old Testament.

What guarantee or reward is there for following him?

To illustrate this, let us take the case of a dying person. No doctor, no scientist, no philosopher and not even the best of technology or humanity can save him, whereas Jesus can, for he said, Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise (Lk. 23:43). Who else can give such assurance except Jesus Christ? Jesus continued to assure his followers, saying, There are many rooms in my Father’s house; if there were not, I should have told you. I am going to prepare a place for you, and after I have gone and prepared you a place, I shall return to take you with me; so that where I am you may be too (Jn. 14:2-3).

The existence of God is not to be left to the philosophy of Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle, which, until eleventh century, no one questioned. Philosophy is human and limited. We cannot fathom this profound mystery by human reasoning. The perfect order of things that exist in the universe, the way they move around in perfect harmony, night following day and day following night, the orderly movement of the celestial bodies, the sun, the moon, the stars, the planets, the sequential and orderly change in seasons, the mighty oceans, the lofty mountains, the deep valleys, the winding rivers, the flowing fountains, the green fields, the trees, the plants, and the flowers all point to the existence of a supreme intelligent being or a prime mover we call God. However, to accept Jesus Christ, we need faith. In the realm of religion, the heart has to play more than the mind. We have been endowed with this gratuitous gift, and we have to seek God with the eyes of faith. The Bible says, Blessed are they who have not seen but believe"(Jn.20: 29).

God accomplished his saving mission through Jesus Christ, who came into the world, lived, suffered, died, and rose from the dead and opened for us the way to heaven. In our search for Jesus, who lived two thousand years ago, we notice that the first historical mention of Jesus outside the circle of Christians apparently was by Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian who eventually won the close friendship of Vespasian and other Roman emperors. This historian’s work, especially The Antiquities of the Jews, completed about the year 94, were highly prized resources by St. Jerome and other early church fathers.

Toward the end of the book, Josephus describes how under the procurator Albinus, there was brought before a group of judges the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James (Book XX: 9.1). This would have been James the Apostle, one of the three disciples closest to Jesus, who died as a martyr in the year 44.

The first mention of Jesus by a pagan writer seems to be by the Roman historian Gaius Suetonius. In his Life of Claudius (perhaps about 120), he writes, Since the Jews made continual disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he (Claudius) expelled them from Rome.

This is generally accepted as referring to the early Christians and to Christ though the timing is rather confusing.

We have no detailed chronology of Jesus’s life. However, apart from detailed chorology, we know a great deal about Jesus. About the year 29, he appeared among those who were being baptized by John the Baptist. John was preaching about the imminent end of the world and the coming wrath of God, and he demanded of his hearers as radical change in their lives. He was in many ways the last of the prophets and a successor of those great prophetic voices of Israel who called for unswerving loyalty to Yahweh and demanded justice toward one’s fellow human beings.

Shortly after the encounter with John, Jesus appeared in Galilee. The message that he preached was very different from that of John, and the radical newness of his preaching set him apart from the entire prophetic tradition of Israel. He asserted that God is present, with all his power, in the ordinary and secular events of life. When the world fails us, God will not, and he is especially near to those who are oppressed, neglected, and downtrodden. God is with us as a loving father, and all we are called upon to do is to accept his love. Jesus insisted that there are no preconditions. God’s presence among us is not limited to the religious realm, and he has gone out of his way to show that God is with those who have no religious credentials and who are rather careless about their observance of the Law of Moses. He taught them that the Law of Moses could not set them free from all their sins. But everyone who has faith in Jesus would be set free. He affirmed that the man or woman who accepts this unmerited love of God would be totally transformed by it.

Jesus cannot be separated from the call of God. His preaching was not really about God; rather, Jesus spoke and acted in God’s name, and with God’s own power, he brought people into the presence of God and made God real for them in a wholly new way. He himself called God Father in a unique sense, and through him, people encountered God in such a way that they were healed in mind and body.

Jesus told his disciple that he is the way to the Father when he said, Don’t be worried. Have faith in God and have faith in me. There are many rooms in my Father’s house. I wouldn’t tell you this, unless it was true. I am going there to prepare a place for each of you. After I have done this, I will come back and take you with me. Then we will be together. I am the way, the truth and the life. Without me no one can go to the Father. If you have known me, you would have known the Father. But from now on, you do know him, and you have seen him. I am one with the Father and the Father is one with me. I tell you for certain that if you have faith in me, you will do the same things that I am doing. You will do even greater things, now that I am going back to the Father. Ask me and I will do whatever you ask of the Father. This way the Son will bring honor to the Father. By saying these words, Jesus identifies himself with the Father and fulfills whatever his Father asks of him (Jn. 14:1–11).

In our search for a role model, there is a tendency to bring down God to our thinking and liking. We have to accept God as he has revealed to us. Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, deeply admired Jesus the man but disdained the doctrine and mysticism in which he’d be draped. So on January 20, 1804, Jefferson bought two copies of the Kings version of the New Testament and, over several evenings, excised with a razor all those passages that are related to the virgin birth, the resurrection, and anything else that was related to the supernatural. Only one in ten verses survived. Published as The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth, this truncated gospel portrayed Jesus as a good man, a storyteller who spent his time wandering around Galilee, delivering parables and aphorisms. Thus, Jefferson became America’s first real bible scholar, and his cut-and-paste gospel marked the birth of an American Jesus, a malleable and multiform figure whose story over the next two centuries would be constantly remolded and reimagined to fit the needs of succeeding generations.

Thomas Jefferson went so far as to create his own gospel by focusing on the ethical teachings of Jesus and literally scissoring out the miracles and other indications of his divinity. He preferred his own version of Jesus, not the one he found in the Gospels. Like many of his followers, he wanted a Jesus who didn’t threaten or made anyone uncomfortable. After studying Jefferson’s edited version of the New Testament, the New Testament scholar, E. P. Sanders, concluded that the Sage of Monticello created a Jesus who was, in the end, very much like Jefferson.

After the civil war, the task of humanizing Jesus fell to liberal Protestant ministers, who, seeking to better society, cast Jesus as a moralist who walked on earth to reveal to human beings the loving character of God and to prompt them to develop the same character in themselves.

In 1925, before a crowd of three thousand gathered in New York, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise described how Jews had traditionally been led to believe that Jesus had never existed. In fact, he declared Jesus was a Jew, and Jews should accept him as one of their own. Wise was fiercely attacked by the Orthodox-run Yiddish newspapers, which claimed he was flirting with Christian God, but the Jewish establishment rallied around, and the modern idea of Jesus as one of the greatest rabbis of all time took hold. Today Jewish scholars are in the forefront of the movement to recover the historical Jesus, and even Christian researchers have come to see him as more and more Jewish. Jewish acceptance of Jesus is cited as evidence that one doesn’t have to be a Christian to love Jesus. Mormons, Hindus, Buddhists, and other groups not in the mainstream have all sought to remake Jesus in their own image.

But humanity and divinity are both part of Jesus. Omit one or the other, scissor out the uncomfortable parts, and it’s not the Jesus we’re talking about any longer. It’s our own creation.

Jesus is fully human and fully divine. This means Jesus of Nazareth wasn’t just a great man, an inspiring teacher, and a holy person. The charismatic carpenter wasn’t merely a clever storyteller, a compassionate healer, or a courageous prophet.

In response to the question who Jesus is, Peter answered, You are the Messiah (Mk. 8: 29).The Gospels report that followers of Jesus no matter how long they have been with him, are amazed and astonished by what he does. We have never seen anything like this! says the crowd after Jesus healed a paralyzed man in Mark’s Gospel. After he stills a storm on the Sea of Galilee, the disciples were amazed at the power and authority Jesus had over the turbulent sea and the tempest, saying, What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him? (Mk.4: 41). The miracles Jesus performed proved the authenticity of the prophecies made about the messiah in the Old Testament.

We have to accept Jesus as the Son of God sent by the Father to redeem a fallen race, and Jesus accomplished this mission by his death and resurrection. It is in view of redemption that incarnation and everything else have meaning. We hear in the Easter proclamation What good would life have been to us had Christ not come as our Redeemer? Were it not for the purpose of his redemptive mission, there was no need for him to be born in this world.

Christian faith is Christ-centered. It is the confession that Jesus is Lord and that God has raised him from the dead (Rm. 10:9). The history of Jesus is the complete manifestation of God’s reliability. It is in the love of God revealed in Jesus that faith becomes the foundation on which all reality and its final destiny rest.

As the risen one, Christ is the trustworthy witness deserving of faith and a solid support for our faith. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, says Paul to the Corinthians (1 Cor.15: 17). Had the Father’s love not caused Jesus to rise from the dead, had it not been able to restore his body to life, then it would not be a completely reliable love, capable of illuminating also the gloom of death.

Our present culture has lost its sense of God’s tangible presence and activity in our world. We think that God is to be found in the beyond, on another level of reality, far removed from our everyday relationship. But if this were the case, if God could not act in the world, his love would not be truly powerful, truly real, and thus not even true—a love capable of delivering the bliss that it promises. It would make no difference at all if we believed in him. Christians, on the contrary, profess their faith in God’s tangible and powerful love that really does act in history and determines its final destiny—a love that can be encountered and a love fully revealed in Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection (Pope Benedict XVI).

To enable us to know, accept, and follow him, the Son of God took on our flesh. In this way, we also saw the Father’s humanity within the setting of a journey unfolding in time. Christian faith is faith in the incarnation of the Word and his bodily resurrection; it is the faith in a God who is so close to us that he entered our human history. Far from divorcing us from reality, our faith in the Son of God made man in Jesus of Nazareth enables us to grasp reality’s deeper meaning and see how much God loves this world and is constantly guiding it toward him. This leads us as Christians to live our lives in this world with ever-greater commitment. By his incarnation and resurrection, the Son of God embraced the whole of human life and history and now dwells in our hearts.

Jesus had a low-class upbringing as a cabinetmaker’s son. That was a trade usually marginal and itinerant in his time. He chose his followers from the lower class, from fishermen dependent on the season’s catch, or from a despised trade (tax collection for the Romans). There were no scholars of the Law in his followers. Jesus not only favored the homeless but was also born homeless and living homeless during his public life. Foxes have lairs, and birds have nests in air, but the Son of Man has nowhere to put down his head (Mt. 8:20). He depended on others to shelter him. He relied on women who were second-class citizens in his culture. He wrote nothing for his followers. He depended on the uneducated followers to express what he meant. He knew that the Spirit moving them had no need of men with PhDs or with grants from foundations (1 Cor. 19–22). He was born on the run, fleeing Herod. He came into the world with a death sentence already hanging over him as the paranoid tyrant up the road got wind of a young royal pretender. Jesus would later move through teams of men setting traps for him, trying to assassinate him, to crush his following and to give him the same treatment awarded to the beheaded John the Baptist.

A man hospitalized with a serious illness recently spoke about his suffering. He didn’t speak about his incurable disease; rather, he spoke about the sadness in his heart over being unvisited and indeed deserted by many friends and beneficiaries of his own generosity.

Jesus frequently experienced this kind of sadness in his heart. In Nazareth, some relatives and neighbors rejected him; religious authorities in Jerusalem fought against him, and some of his disciples deserted him. However, his greatest sadness was when he was betrayed by Judas, one of his own disciples; denied by Peter, his most trusted disciple; false accusations by chief priests; and jeering crowds, many of who were healed by him crying for his crucifixion.

Yet the love Jesus had for his people was stronger than his sadness and suffering. The love for his Father and for the human race urged him on to complete his mission of reparation and redemption. The same unfailing love for us urged him to come to us as our Risen Lord.

God took the initiative in human liberation. Jesus as liberator confronted the oppressors of his day. In consequence, he was martyred as a subversive who had attacked the political and social status quo. God was not liberating men from heaven; he lived with the oppressed and liberated them.

Apostle Paul wrote to the Philippians that his union with Jesus Christ infused him with the power or the ability to handle anything that came up in his life. The secret of his contentment was to depend on God. For I can do everything through Christ who gives me strength. For me to live is Christ and to die is gain (Phil. 1:21). His faith in Jesus was so strong that he declared: now it is no longer I that live but Christ lives in me (Gal. 2:19).

Jesus did not come to establish a church. He brought us heaven’s reign, that is, reign of God in the hearts of men. God’s reign though present when Jesus arrived had not completed its triumph. There are stages to be reached—first his death, resurrection, and exaltation, followed by his final return to bring the new order to its consummation. Then the whole universe will be fully united with the Father. That is why Jesus speaks of the reign as already among his followers yet eschatological.

The characteristic of God’s kingdom is emphasized by the parables that being the reign of God is like seed sown without result until it lands on fertile ground (Mt. 13:18–23). It is like a seed sown without notice, one that springs a surprise (Mt. 4:26–29), or like a mustard seed, deceptively tiny but growing to great height in time (Mt. 4:31–32, Lk. 13:19). It is like wheat growing but with weeds in it to be separated only at harvest time (Mt. 13:25–30). It is like yeast slowly working in the dough (Mt. 13:33, Lk. 13:20–21). It is like treasure buried in a field to be taken out only after a man has bought the field (Mt. 13:44). It is like a rich pearl to be purchased only after a man has raised the money for it (Mt. 13:45). It is like a king who calls in his debts, taking gradual payments, forgiving those who spare their own debtors (Mt. 18:23–35). It is like a landholder who pays at the end of the day even to latecomers (Mt. 20:1–6). It is like a man who invites some to his son’s wedding but brings in others when those invited do not come (Mt. 22:1–14). It is like the wedding for which some maidens prepare their lamps, and some do not (Mt. 25:1–13). It is like a man who gives his property in his care to others while he travels, with the result that some use the property wisely, and some do not (Mt. 25:14–30).

Nowhere in this process of growth and revelation of the reign of God is an earthly realm claimed or accepted. In fact, when some try to proclaim Jesus as king, he escapes into the hills (Jn. 6:15). When Pilate asks if he is king, he answers, My reign is not of this present order. If my reign were of this order my subjects would be fighting for me, to keep me from arrest by the Jews, but for now my reign is not here (Jn. 18:36).

Jesus, in clear terms, tells Pilate that he is not a Jewish revolutionary trying to end Rome’s domination when he said his kingdom is not of this world. Pilate nonetheless treats him as a political figure, nailing the name of his crime on the cross—Jesus from Nazareth, King of the Jews. From the time of Herod’s panicky response to the birth of Jesus, worldly power has had to fear Jesus, not because he will challenge it for control of a throne or a realm but because he undercuts its claim to supremacy. The occupiers of Jesus’ country claimed the authority stamped on the denarius. The inscription said, Tiberius Caesar Augustus, son of the Divine Augustus. Jesus’ dry remarks to those asking whether they should traffic in such blasphemous coin was give to Caesar what he has a right to, but to God what He has a right to (Mk. 12:17). That is the challenge the earthly powers cannot abide (Wills 2006).

The nature of Jesus’ reign can be seen as a systematic antipolitics. What politician could be elected on the following platform?

I say to all you who can hear me. Love your foes, help those who hate you, praise those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To the one who punches your cheek, offer the other cheek. To the one seizing your cloak, do not refuse your tunic under it. Whoever asks, give to him. Exactly how you wish to be treated, in that way treat others. If you love those who love you what mark of virtue have you? Even sinners love those who love them. Love your foes and treat them well and lend without any calculation of return. Your great reward will be that you are children of the Highest One. Do not judge and you will not be judged; pardon and you will be pardoned. If you give others you will be given a full amount in return. The way you treat others is the way you will be treated (Lk. 6:27–38).

To Thomas who asked, How should we find the way? Jesus answers, I am the way, and the truth and the life. None arrives at the Father but through me (Jn. 14:6).

In giving life to others, he gives his own life to and for them. The expectation created by the prophecies was a military Messiah who would extrude the Roman rulers, but Jesus undercuts all political contexts. While others were carried away on Palm Sunday by the excitement of the sign worked for Lazarus, Jesus knew that the plaudits would turn into shock and disappointment. The triumph and the defeat are indeed linked since both are messianic.

Beneath all the horrors of a Roman execution, there is a deeper question more than a legal one, a theological puzzle. Why did Jesus die?

Ansalem, one of the ancient theologians, argued that Jesus had to become a man in order to pay God a debt that man could not pay on his own. The offense of original and all subsequent sins was of an infinite nature because the offended party is infinite. The gravity of infinite offense demands infinite satisfaction. Only an infinite spokesperson for man could pay the debt with his life.

Others question the idea that there would have been no incarnation without the fall of man. Some theologians argue that the incarnation is the culmination of God’s plan from the outset, whereby he raises man to himself in the person of his incarnate Son. Creation without that deeper union between man and God would have been incomplete. Jesus himself speaks of his mission as lifting humankind up into his own intimacy with the Father.

Just as you have shed your splendor on me, so I shed it on them, so they may be at one with us, just as we are one, I in them and you in me, so they be fulfilled in that oneness. That all creation may recognize that you have sent me, and that you have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, you have given them to me, and I wish that they should be where I am, so that they may see the splendor you have given me out of the love you had for me before laying the foundations of creation (Jn. 17:22–24).

So mysterious are the whole matter of incarnation and passion. Perhaps a simple thing can help us think of them. Once, a child woke up with a violent nightmare in the middle of the night. When the father asked what was troubling him, he said that the nun in his school had told the children they would end up in hell if they sinned. The child asked his dad. "Am