Walking With Jesus Then and Now

The apostles walked with Jesus everywhere. Thirteen big strong men roaming Judea and Galilee along with a large crowd of followers. Some towns just told Jesus to go away. They were afraid of Him.

We were meant to walk with Him and talk with Him, like the Apostles did, just like Adam and Eve walked and talked with God.

Jesus was human and divine. He had to be human or we would never have been able to see and talk to Him, or feel his healing touch. We long for God because we were made for God, but we also fear to know Him to intimately. We are afraid of the fire of God.

This is true for every human being that God created since the sin of Adam and Eve.

When He became Incarnate, His life was meant to recreate the Garden of Eden in a sinful world. We could indeed "walk with Him and talk to Him", and it was sometimes a little scary, just like it is now. But we come to Him anyway.

Written by Laura Weston, widow of Deacon Michael

IF YOU LIKE, READ ALONG AS YOU LISTEN:

You need to use your imagination a little bit today. Imagine that you are living in ancient Judea. You are part of the Roman Empire, but you are a backwater of the Roman Empire. And remember that one of the great things about Rome was its roads. And the reason the roads were so great is that you can get from point A to point B quickly, efficiently, and generally there were troops around so that you wouldn't get robbed.

The little trip to Jericho in the Good Samaritan. When you went out on the road it was dangerous. The world was a dangerous place. And imagine that you are living in a small town, which is quite unusual at that point. Even today around fifty percent of the people in the world don't live in small towns or cities, they lived a rural life, a purely rural life. And you've got 500 people in that town, half of whom are women, and I'd say another quarter, generously, are children, so they're younger. So you're down to about 125 men.

Some of them are old, like us. There are some young men. We're talking people from 13 to probably 27, maybe 30, who are physically fit. So you're probably down to maybe, let's be generous, 70 people. Young men who are working various jobs, various conditions of health. And in walk... using the example of riding the horses in the western movies, or riding the motorcycles... 13 strong young men.

We know that the fishermen were pulling the nets out. They are strong. They are vigorous. They walk all the time.

They walk in, and they could walk in and say, "We're here to take over. We want all your money. We want all your food." And they don't.

They're Jesus and His disciples, His apostles.

But worse than that, not only do you have the thirteen, you've probably got another hundred come along with them.

So your initial reaction to a bunch of young men, who generally tend to be foreigners, is you're a little bit afraid of them.

So when you see Jesus picking the apostles, don't think of them in the abstract, think of them as real. What would it have been like to have that group of men walk in and Jesus start proclaiming the kingdom of God? It would have been quite intimidating.

And we see a situation, and a good example of this is you notice that it is not Jesus and the apostles who are the victim on the road to Jericho. When they went out walking, people left them alone. When they were going between towns, they were a large enough group that the outlaws didn't attack them. And they come in, and not only do they preach, "I've got the kingdom of God for you, but they were always looking to raise money for the poor, because that's part of what they did. They gave things away. You have Judas Iscariot. That was his job. He had the money bags. You notice that when they needed something, they called Judas. "Hey Judas, go out and buy this." They had money.

So what are we dealing with, with Jesus Christ? Let's put it in this context that I’ve just described. He walks in with a group of apostles. He's from Galilee. He walks into another area of Judea and He opens His mouth, and they open their mouths, and the first thing they think is that they're a bunch of hicks from Galilee, because they have a different accent. That's how people work.

The second thing is, you go, “I'm not going to mess with those guys. Those guys are strong.”

And Jesus comes and proclaims the kingdom of God. The coming of the Christ. The miracle of healing. The miracle of our Christ comeing. The transformation of the world. The coming of the kingdom. Loving God; loving neighbor.

And so we see in the reaction to the apostles, and to Jesus, a situation where at the very best, it would just make you a little bit nervous. Just think of those movies, especially those motorcycle movies. We see an old man like John walking around with a golf club, the first reaction is gonna be, "Hey old man, give me that golf club."

That doesn't happen. But instead what comes is the proclamation of the kingdom of God. And people come to believe. So by knowing and understanding human nature, we begin to understand a little bit more of the tremendous appeal of what Christ was saying.

Because He had to overcome that initial burden. And I'm not even going back to the origin of the proclamation of the kingdom of God. When He would stand out on a street corner and there was nobody with Him. But we're talking about when He is a little better organized. He still has to overcome. And he overcomes by being human. By being wholly human and wholly divine.

And this is another example, I think, of the wonder of the humanity of Christ. The wonder of the humanity and the divinity of Christ in one. Because He comes in in this situation with His group of apostles. They are intimidating. They are different. They're new. You wonder what's going to happen.

And He starts to proclaim the kingdom of God and they believe. We know that He has disciples. They described them in this reading today. The disciples came for healing and all of these wonderful things, and to listen to what he was saying. He was speaking with authority.

All of these relate to the same thing that is occurring that is appealing to us in our human nature. We see in our human nature an inherent fear of the unknown.

We have trepidation about people. We look at them. You know, the hoodies that we see young men wearing on the street. We get a little bit trepidatious.

We know that there is a trepidation that is going on with the first encounter of Christ in many of these situations, with the apostles, yet there is conversion. There is metanoia. There is change. They become something different.

And what is the reason? It is because Christ in His humanity and divinity brings the Truth. It can't work any other way. Why would you respond positively in those circumstances? Because the Man comes to you and speaks the Truth. The Truth of God and the Truth of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and in our situation, the Truth of the Holy Catholic Church. Because that is at the very core.

We want to know. As human beings, we have a questing to know, to be, to understand the universe. To come to a greater understanding of what our role is. And we have built within us the image of God.

And that very image of God comes and responds to the Truth. It responds to the Truth of Our Lord Jesus Christ. And so what we see in Jesus is great understanding of humanity is He doesn't come in and say, "Let me do all these wonderful things. I'll do all these miracles. And by the way, follow Me because I'm just a wonderful person." But He says, "Follow Me because I have the Truth." And the people respond to the Truth.

Yes, they have all the miracles. They go, "Wow!" That causes them to listen, but there is also the initial trepidation.

You go out. Five thousand people who are hungry. Why would you do that? Your little child is going to go, "Mommy, I'm hungry." Why are you going to do that?

Because it is the Truth of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The Truth that we has humans respond to. He comes to us in our humanity knowing that we will respond to the truth. And that He, in fact, is the Truth.

And whatever the circumstances we face, before we know Christ, after we know Christ, Christ is always there in His humanity to bring us the Truth, and bring us the means to come closer and closer to God and the promise of eternal life.

September 3, 2019 2