My God Wouldn’t Say That!

“ Jesus is dead. Everyone saw it!” Everyone knows about doubting Thomas. Jesus couldn’t be alive because He died in public— on the cross.

God isn't like us, even though we are like God. And we definitely think that it's a shame. We would like to be our own god, but Jesus gets in the way.

We want God to understand us. And He does. We want God to love us. And He does. We want God to think like us, and He doesn't.

Man keeps wanting God to be just like he wants God to be. If we can't have God be what we want God to be, then we will rejoice in a God that is just like us. That would be nice and easy.

But God isn’t like us. God is only like God. "I am God. There is no other."

By Laura Weston, widow of Deacon Michael

IF YOU LIKE, READ ALONG AS YOU LISTEN:

There's a very old joke and it probably goes back thousands of years, of, a friend comes up to a man and says, "Who was that lady I saw you with last night?" And the response is, "That was no lady, that was my wife."

Laughter.

But let's look at that in the context of what St. Eusebius faced. That is, if Jesus is God, wholly human, wholly divine, or if Jesus is merely human, how do you handle… "My wife. I want to get rid of her. Take her. There's got to be something [I can do]."

If Jesus is God, when He says you don't get a divorce, you look at it and go, "Oh, this is something really serious going on.”

If Jesus is an absolutely wonderful man, graced by God, most favored man ever, and He says, "Don't get a divorce," it's really easy when you're sitting in Rome to say, "Look, I understand that He is just wonderful. I believe in Him. I believe in all the wonderful things he says, but in Palestine he just doesn't understand what it's like in third century Rome. He doesn't understand. He couldn't have meant what He said. Therefore, take her. Let me divorce her. Let me remarry because He couldn't have meant it.”

We hear it today. "My God wouldn't say that!” My God. And if your God really isn't a god, he's just human even though he’s a really special human, it's very easy to tailor your Christianity, your belief in anything, saying, "Okay, I am a devout Christian but here are certain things where God, if He had know me two thousand years ago and understood my circumstances never would have made that rule. Or He would have made it so that there is an out. And that out obviously applies to me.”

One of my least favorite ones to me at this point in my life, is the admonitions of loving thy neighbor. Blessed are the poor. If you are not having a different view of Christ as wholly human, wholly divine and you say, "blessed are the poor" and place upon someone the obligation to take care of those in need… the victim that was taken care of by the Samaritan man… then you can change the teaching.

And you can say, as Joel Olsteen does… you know, I have a thing about Joel Olsteen… you can say, "Look. If you are a really good follower of Christ, you're going to be healthy, wealthy, and wise. And look at me. Give me a whole bunch of money because this shows that you are holy by taking care of a holy man, and I'm a holy man because I've got a lot of money.
You can't do that if you have a perception of Jesus being wholly human, wholly divine, because you have to look at what He said and take it differently. This is an issue, like I have said before, you can see it in the New Testament in the letters of St. Paul, I suspect that the letter of John that we have, that we are were reading today was, to a degree, a reaction to a similar thing, that Jesus is the Christ, He is begotten by God.

"In this way we know that we love the children of God. For the love of God is this: that we keep his commandments."

All of a sudden, John is addressing a specific issue. Early in the Church's history, especially by the time Constantine comes along, there is a struggle going on of "Who is Jesus?".

I ask you this question many times in the context of Marian celebrations. The answer of who Mary is is the answer to the question that Jesus asks of each one of us, "Who do you say I am?" In the Catholic tradition, Eastern Orthodox tradition, "Who do you say I am?"…"You are the Son of God."

What does that make Mary?

If you are looking at Jesus as being somewhat less than God, as being human, who is Mary?

Well, I've been saying, I’ve read things saying she was a teenager in ancient Israel who got "knocked up" and wouldn't admit who the father was. Or she was just human and Jesus was one of twenty children between her and Joseph. She was just a woman because it was Jesus who was special and He was special as a man.

And we see this and we hear this every Sunday because what did the Church do? St. Eusebius was involved in it and Athanasius. Arius was involved in it. They would hold councils.

One council would come in, the Arian council, and they were powerful. At points they were probably in the majority. They had taken over churches. They had emperors. In fact, Eusebius was sent into exile by the emperor who was an Arian. But they would have councils. They would sit down and discuss these exact issues. What is the answer to the question when Jesus says, "Who do you say I am?"

And they would look to Scripture. They looked to what does it mean? And the ultimate one that really seemed to end the discussions or at least clarify the discussions as to define what it meant to be Catholic, is the Nicene Creed. And you will notice in the Nicene Creed there is a very lengthy part of the Nicene Creed, and we will recite it at the appropriate time, where they talk about the nature of Christ, because that was the big issue. And you will notice that we bow at the part where we recognize the humanity of Christ.

We have previously talked about Jesus being God. We bow at the humanity of Christ because Jesus is wholly human and wholly divine which has a profound effect on how you view His teachings. Because, and I talk about this, and this is exactly the issue that I'm talking about. That is, if Jesus is only divine, He is all-seeing, then it is a situation like Zeus. He could go ZAP and He takes care of it. He loves Robert. He will do whatever He can do for Robert from the perspective of the divine. When he was crucified it was a game. Because He was divine, he couldn't die.

But if He is wholly human and wholly divine, He dies on the cross. And I've found, at least a way for me to articulate it is, the humanity of Christ combined with his divinity gives Him something very, very special and it is in the word empathy.

He can sympathize for us in the divine, but he can empathize with us in His humanity. And it is those two things combined, the humanity and the divinity of Christ, right there, in the humanity and divinity of Christ that gives the nature of Catholicism particularly, the wonder of what it is.

It is why, when we had... this has been an interesting week of saints... but when we had St. Martha on Monday with the raising of Lazarus… remember my homily related to this exact issue… we have gone full circle in this whole thing. It goes back to the same issue.

This is if Jesus is human, okay he is human. He comes in and He raises Lazarus because God helped him. He didn't do it Himself. And He's acting on a human level.

If He is God, He's just playing games.

But if He is wholly human and wholly divine, and He raises him, and combines with that, His relationship with Robert such that He wept, it changes the vary nature of Christianity. It changes the very nature of our relationship with God.

That's why it's so important that somebody like Eusebius would be tortured and put into exile, almost killed, because it is central. Christianity without the humanity and the divinity of Christ is basically an empty shell.

It's a game if you can make it into whatever you want. And again, that's what I feel like Joel Osteen does.

It becomes something that is malleable. It is something where you can say as a proper argument, "Well, my God wouldn't do that." Or, "If Jesus had lived now and known me, He wouldn't have made that requirement. He would have given me the ability to look at my wife"... and I don't understand this... a lot of us are getting old... "…What happened? When I got married she was a young, beautiful woman. Now she's getting old. I don't understand. I should have a young wife." Well, if I could change the rules because Jesus was only human, and He would understand, I can change the rules and it's all right to get a divorce.

So we are going to the very core of what it means to be a follower of Christ. And that comes down, ultimately, as it always does, to how do we answer the question that Jesus asks of each one of us, "Who do you say I am?"

August 2, 2019