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6

THE HIDDEN THINGS OF GOD

  We have been contemplating Jesus, a man like us in all things. He is not a God dressed up and playing a part. He is truly one of us from the womb to the tomb. He accepts the full consequences of being human, even, as Paul says, to the point of death. He walks through our world as the embodiment of love. He is the man who lives for others. He reaches out in love and compassion to all people. This, he tells us, is what it means to be truly human. He is able to live like this because he is certain that the ultimate reality is love. He is the man of supreme trust. His name for God is Abba, a loving, caring Father. He can walk in love because he walks in trust. The source of his love for people is this God, who, he believes, is love itself. The source of his power to heal people, both their bodies and spirits, is the Father’s love. He walks in unwavering trust in that reality of God’s love even into the valley of death and beyond.

  Let us enter more deeply into the Mystery of Jesus. This same Jesus who is perfect man is also revealing the inner being of God. He can say ‘No one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him’ (Matthew 11:27). One day, Philip, one of the Twelve, asked Jesus to show them the Father. Jesus answered, ‘To have seen me is to have seen the Father’ (John 14:9). If we want to know what God is like, we must look at Jesus. We said earlier in this book that many Christians first meet Jesus in the Creed as true God to be adored. And we noted an inherent difficulty there, namely that we assume that we know what divinity means and we impose these assumptions on Jesus. But Jesus says that no one knows God except his Son. Should we not let Jesus teach us what it means to be divine? Fr. Nolan OP puts it well when he writes ‘Divinity has nothing to teach us about Jesus, but Jesus has much to teach us about divinity.’

   The first followers met Jesus, the man, who led them on to discover God. In the Letter to the Hebrews, Jesus is described thus: ‘He is the radiant light of God’s glory and the perfect copy of his nature’ (Hebrews 1:3). St Paul says, ‘He is the image of the unseen God’ (Colossians 1:15). Today we would say that Jesus is the image of his Father. Parents are pleased and complimented when friends notice and point out resemblances between child and parents. They are happy when someone says about the new baby, ‘She has her mother’s eyes’ or later ‘She has her father’s smile’. They are more pleased if, later on, deeper resemblances are noted; when someone says, ‘He has his father’s love for the truth’ or ‘He has his mother’s compassion for the sick’. Jesus is the perfect image of his heavenly Father. He reflects the Father to us and thus teaches us what divinity means.

  When we say Jesus teaches us about divinity, we are not saying that it is an easy lesson to learn. The first followers were very slow learners, just as we are today. We say Jesus the man led them to know God, but, as we have noted, the road to that discovery led past a hill called Calvary. That’s where the difficulty lay for them, as for us and all believers. God’s revelation of himself in Jesus does not fit our preconceived ideas of God. St. Paul describes the qualities we all expect to find in God. ‘The Jews demand miracles and the Greeks look for wisdom’ (1 Corinthians 1:22). In popular thinking God is power and miracle. This is the language of philosophy. Paul says the God revealed by Jesus cannot be preached in this language. Paul speaks of the ‘foolishness’ and the ‘weakness’ of God and asks, ‘Where are the philosophers now?’ (1 Corinthians 1:20). Surely these words from Paul must be inspired. Otherwise he would have to be accused of blasphemy. No Jew could have dared to apply such words as ‘foolish’ or ‘weak’ to Yahweh.

  We say the road up to the discovery of God in Jesus lay past the hill of Calvary. Up to that point his followers had very unclear ideas about their master. But one thing would have been certain in their thinking, that suffering should not be part of the story. However, this is the lonely and unpopular road Jesus takes and it was only after the trauma of crucifixion, followed by resurrection and the gift of the Holy Spirit, that his followers enter into God’s wisdom and confess that Jesus was truly God’s Son, the perfect image of his Father.

  If we today are slow to recognise God behind the mask of suffering, we can take heart when we remember how slow St. Peter was and how patient Jesus was with him. One day, when Jesus foretold his suffering and death, Peter protested strongly. ‘Taking him aside, Peter started to remonstrate with him. "Heaven preserve you Lord, this must not happen to you"’ (Matthew 16:23). Peter speaks for all of us here. It is good that Jesus should be the Messiah, but unacceptable that the Messiah should suffer. We all want a Messiah, a God of glory, success, miracles. We do not want a Messiah who suffers. Notice the strong word Jesus uses when he corrects Peter; ‘Get behind me Satan! You are an obstacle in my path, because the way you think is not God’s way but man’s’ (Matthew 16:23). Jesus calls Peter Satan because he echoes the desert temptation when Satan tried to persuade Jesus to take an easy road to glory and avoid all suffering.

  Satan’s idea of God is our idea. God can only mean glory, power, success, miracles. Satan, Peter and all of us have to learn that God means love. Peter echoes Satan’s idea and our hearts. Jesus says to us all, ‘The way you think is not God’s way but man’s’.’ Jesus has come to show us God’s way, as far above our way as the heavens are above the earth. God’s wisdom appears like foolishness to us. But it is God’s wisdom and it is love. In some way Satan must have sensed this. Notice what Satan fears in Jesus. He does not fear power or strength or miracles. Indeed he encourages all this. But he deeply fears the weakness of Jesus shown in his suffering, for in there is hiding the only kind of power Satan fears, the power of love. Jesus is revealing God’s wisdom and power. This is what it means to be God, to go the whole way in love, to empty oneself in love. This is not only perfect humanity, but is also what it means to be divine. And we are created in the image and likeness of this God. We are invited to be like our God, to love as Jesus loved, to empty ourselves for each other, even to lose our lives for each other. Something deep inside us tells us this is not impossible. When we try to love, the divine spark within us is kindled. To be his disciples in this way, to learn this lesson, involves long, slow hard study in the school of life. Much of the homework involves suffering! This suffering can be a stumbling-block, but it can also be a doorway into that mysterious place where we touch divinity in Jesus and in our own selves.

  In the desert Satan said that God would not let his Son suffer and he further suggested that if suffering did come, then he was not the beloved son. Those who mocked Christ on Calvary used the same kind of reasoning. ‘He put his trust in God; now let God rescue him if he wants him. For he did say "I am the Son of God."’ (Matthew 27:44). It is the same suggestion. ‘If he is God’s Son as he claims, then this should not be happening to him.’ The conclusion of the crowd in Calvary, whose thoughts were human thoughts, was, ‘God is not his Father.’ The true conclusion should have been, ‘We do not understand God and his mysterious ways.’

In the Book of Wisdom we have another example of human thinking, failing completely to comprehend the wisdom of God. There we read how wicked men plot against God’s holy prophet. They plan to condemn the prophet to a shameful death. They say to each other, ‘Let us see if what he says is true’ (Wisdom 2:17). What had the prophet said? ‘He calls himself a Son of the Lord, and boasts of having God for his father’ (Wisdom 2:13,16). We see their argument: God could not let his beloved messenger suffer. So, if he does suffer, then it means God is not really his father. Here is the same human wisdom which cannot fathom the depths of God’s ways. These men think like Satan, like Peter, like the crowd on Calvary, like me and you. The Book of Wisdom comments thus:

 'This is the way they reason, but they are misled, 
their malice makes them blind.
They do not know the hidden things of God.'

  Let us ask Jesus to touch our eyes, to remove our blindness and to teach us the hidden things of God. Let us ask him to help us to know our heavenly Father so that we can better understand and follow his word to us: ‘You must therefore be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect’ (Matthew 5:48)

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