Behold The Man*

A Beloved Son

I want to tell you a story. Where shall I start? At the beginning? In a way this story has no beginning. Or perhaps with the birth of a baby? A birth so important to those who later wrote about it that they spoke of angels announcing it.

Or should I start with a young peasant girl, who captured in her words so much of what her son would later say about himself - 'I am the Lord's servant. May it be to me as you have said' (Luke 1:38)

And now the boy has grown up and presents himself to the ascetic figure of John the Baptist - how the years have flown! And after his baptism the Holy Spirit descends on him and he hears a voice: "You are my beloved son, in you I am well pleased." (Mat. 12:18)

And now the story moves through the temptation in the desert to his 'manifesto' proclamation in his native synagogue in Nazareth. (Luke 4:18) And in the manifesto it was the poor, the blind, the prisoner and the oppressed that he spoke for. But what portion had these people in the harsh world of first century Palestine - or even perhaps present day Europe or America? Isn't power to the strong and the race to the swift? And this rag-bag of disciples that he had gathered round him. What on earth did he hope to do with them?

And what was this 'Kingdom of God' that he kept going on about? Was it a new age beyond history, a new beginning that God would bring about? A heavenly kingdom beyond time and space? Clearly that was part of it, for there were aspects of what he said about it that pointed that way. But in other ways it was very much about the here and now. He told the Pharisees, who accused him of being under the power of Satan, that if they had eyes to see they would know that the kingdom of God had come among them. (Luke 11:20) God's kingdom was not just something in the future; it was already breaking in around them in the person of himself and the work he was doing. He marvelled at their unbelief and inability or unwillingness to see what was happening.

And he seems to be saying that it is when we seek and do God's will* that the Kingdom breaks in - "Your Kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven". (Mat. 6:10) Or again "I do nothing on my own authority, but speak as the Father taught me." (John 8:28) He does only what he sees the Father doing; he says only what he hears the Father saying. He acts only under the authority of the Father.

Isn't this the explanation of why he marvelled so much at the faith of the Roman centurion who had sent an urgent request to him - the kind of faith he had not yet found in Israel? (Luke 7:6).

"Lord, my servant is ill. But don't bother coming to my house, I'm not worthy of it. Just say the word and he will be well." Because I think I understand you, Lord. I too know what it is to act under authority. When I speak, others obey. Why so? Because when I speak, I speak for Ceasar. And when you speak, you speak for God. You don't need to come. Just say the word.

Note again what this centurion said. Not "I am a man having authority" - although clearly he was. But "I am a man under authority". And don't we present day followers of Jesus need to learn, again and again, that if we are to do anything worthwhile for God in this world, it will not be because we have authority, but because we are men and women who have learnt to live under authority - the authority of God as he is revealed in Jesus?

* A fraught admonition, for any kind of God apart from the kind that Jesus spoke of, a God of love.