And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee.
Dear friends and members of the Body
of Christ , those few words contain the whole of the Gospel after His baptism by
John the Baptist and His heavenly manifestation by the Most Holy Trinity
Itself:
Jesus
returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee.
He returned to that part of the
country where, we are told, men wanted
to know above all ‘what a chap was like’, ‘what sort of a fellow’ he was; not,
first and foremost, what he thought about the current crop of spiritual ideas, or
the social reaction to the most recent exercise of political authority.
Pharisees and Sadducees, Temple High
Priests and their enforcers, Herodians, Romans and their collaborators, and
revolutionaries of all sorts …. All of these were powerful, prominent, or
important in Jerusalem because of their religious words and spiritual ambitions,
such as the Pharisees; because of the
traditional authority they so proudly represented and clung-to so tenaciously,
such as the High Priests; or because of their potential threat to the current ‘establishment’, by all who lusted for a greater
share in Roman power by collaboration or by violence and uprisings.
How far apart were such Jerusalemites
from the men of Galilee who looked at a man first of all to get to know something
about who he was; which was in full accord with God’s plan for
our salvation whereby He sent One, whose Person He called us to
believe in. Yes, indeed, dear People of
God, we believe in Jesus’ teaching because it is His teaching – His
words and His actions -- not because of some particular conformity with our
thoughts or aspirations.
Modern people have so many points of
difference with the historical Jesus … but, ignoring the blatant contradictions,
let us just look at one of the more insidious points of difference they have with
Jesus’ actions rather than with His words.
Jesus did not apologize to
Mary and Joseph who had left the caravan returning from Jerusalem to Nazareth in order to find
Him, after three-days searching and worrying, talking with the doctors in the
Temple precincts. There are some,
moralizers, who say He should have done so. But that means they are saying Jesus did
something morally wrong, and they would then be left facing Mary Immaculate and
a Jesus … at least mixed-up. And of
course they would also be then putting their moral judgements above Jesus’ own
moral awareness. Altogether unacceptable, because they are not keeping their
eyes on the Person of Jesus. If they
are to be allowed to overlook the Person of Jesus in that way, they can have no
authentic idea nor appreciation of the Most Holy Trinity. Moralizers thus down-grade Jesus, and lose
for themselves the ‘outlandishly’ authentic beauty of Jesus’ teaching on the
majesty of deep, self-less, exclusive and authentic, love of God.
Dear People of God. No one can love an idea sufficiently for God; that is why He ultimately transcended Israel’s lovely prophet-teachers by sending --- in our flesh --- His only-begotten Son, to be one of us, in Mary’s human flesh and blood. You true disciples of Jesus … KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE PERSON OF HIM you want to love more. If you at times will, need to, study the ‘morality’ of His actions or words, do it humbly, not always chipping-away at the magnificent edifice He has left us, but always and only trying to understand it by eyes lit-up and enlightened by love.
