Reflection - What we know about Jesus

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/090617.cfm
COL1:1-8
LK 4:38-44

What I know and believe about Jesus sometimes gets in the way of what I know and believe about Jesus. While that may seem like a strange statement, odds are that a similar condition exists for you though you may not be aware of it. This morning's Gospel text offers two examples of what I am talking about, so let me explain. But I only have time and space to reflect on one.

Early in the passage, Luke describes the events of the evening:  ". . . all who had people sick with various diseases brought them to him. He laid his hands on each of them and cured them." Luke continues his Gospel narrating one situation after another where Jesus heals deformities or cures diseases or banishes evil spirits. Mark's Gospel is even more tightly packed with such incidents. It's easy, therefore, if we read the Gospel accounts as if they were abbreviated biographies or a collection of anecdotes, to start seeing Jesus as some sort of human dynamo. We might mistakenly get the impression that within Jesus himself, there is an apparently unlimited store of healing power which he releases as he chooses and as circumstances arise. This person, whom we have come to know as God-made-man, appears infused with infinite might and authority, such that "even the winds and the seas obey him."

Luke reinforces this image (though I don't believe he does so intentionally) when he tells us that "All the crowd sought to touch him, for power came forth from him and healed them all." (Luke 6:19) and when he describes the scene in which the woman with the hemorrhage surreptitiously makes her way through the crowd to touch the hem of his garment. Jesus immediately stops and says: "Some one touched me; for I perceive that power has gone forth from me." (Luke 8:46)

This representation of Jesus as a singular powerhouse is a caricature of what Luke intends. I say this because Luke, more than any of the other Gospel authors, goes to great pains to assure us that Jesus never acted alone. Jesus always acted in union with the Father and the Spirit. And the evangelists are crystal clear when they describe this fact. Luke particularly emphasizes the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in Jesus' life. 

"Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit." ((Luke 4:1) and

"Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee." (Luke 4:14)

John is most compelling on the relationship of Jesus and the Father.

"Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever he does, that the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son, and shows him all that he himself is doing; and greater works than these will he show him, that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will." (John 5:19-21)

The importance of these relationships in Jesus' life cannot be overestimated. We are regularly confronted in Luke's Gospel by Jesus' own awareness of that importance. We hear an intimation of this truth in the verse which comes toward the end of today's passage --- "Jesus left and went to a deserted place." --- and that verse is itself a shortened version of what we regularly hear from the evangelist: "He withdrew to the wilderness and prayed." (Luke 5:16) Jesus did not act alone. He acted with the guidance of and in the power of the Spirit; and He did only what he saw the Father doing. All this was accomplished within the dynamic of prayer where the divine triune relationship lived. Luke reminds the reader of this fact frequently throughout his Gospel.

"In these days he went out to the hills to pray; and all night he continued in prayer to God." (Luke 6:12)

"As he was praying alone the disciples were with him." (Luke 9:18)

"He took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray." (Luke9:28)

"He was praying in a certain place." (Luke 11:1)

"And he withdrew from them and knelt down and prayed."  (Luke 22:41)

The three Persons of the Trinity are not three Gods acting in synchrony. And though Jesus is the second Person of the Trinity, he did not simply 'check in' with the other two in the triumvirate to determine what should happen next. Nor was his prayer a matter of keeping his cohorts informed. We describe the Father, Son and Spirit as Persons because we have no other meaningful way to describe the truths our God has revealed. What we are confident of is that the Father, Son and Spirit exist in a relationship of divine love, a love presently beyond our comprehension because we see "through a glass darkly." Jesus lived in the power and presence of that relationship; and his human nature found it necessary to regularly focus on that relationship. 

This relational existence is fundamental to his human existence and purpose just as it is integral to the Godhead. He himself tells us so. "To the other towns also I must proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God, because for this purpose I have been sent. His work was one of salvation, but that cannot be narrowly defined as a work of dying and rising. His work was to announce the good news of the coming of the Kingdom, the reign of God in human life, the possibility of individual participation in the very life of the Trinity. 

We, you and I, are invited to enter into the fullness of the divine relationship. The doorway is prayer.