For most of my Christian experience, the Cross has been held up as both an instrument of torture and pain and the point of salvation. I have begun to rethink the Cross as something much more positive. Richard Rohr sees it as “God somehow participating in human suffering” instead of just standing by and watching us hurt. That changes everything.
In my church experience, it has always been a challenge to see Jesus as “just a man” because I was taught that he was God and man all at the same time. It is often applied to Jesus that he knew everything before it was going to happen and that there was in every step a specific plan. That makes Jesus impossible for me to relate to. Why even try if I am only human? The Christ of this viewpoint is unapproachable and unattainable.
But there are examples throughout the New Testament where Jesus does change his mind. The first at the wedding in Canaan, when, at the behest of his mother, he changes water to wine. He had told her that it was “not his time”. I believe he was most of all an obedient son who measured the request and chose to make his mom happy by changing the water. He did not do a halfway job either, he made the very best.
I can love and serve a Jesus, the Christ, who is like me. He did not know everything beforehand, he was fully human. And here is another thought to consider, as he was both human and Divine, so are every one of us. We are “little Christs” from the Greek meaning of the word Christian. This means I don’t have to know it all, have my life all together or even have any of the answers. It means that I can, like Jesus, do my best to listen to the Sacred and allow my ego to rest and follow what the Sacred has called me to be.
We are all called to be, not to do. The Sacred is much more interested in who we are, and who we are becoming than what we do or how we might do it. Doing is the way of the world, and being is the way of God.
TMM