THE GREAT REVOLUTIONARY

No, I’m not referring to Marx or Lenin or their ilk.
Referring to next Sunday’s Gospel: was it important, rather was it not natural for Jesus to sit down. Why has Matthew stressed this fact? Is it not natural for a person before speaking to open his mouth? Jesus actually went on top of a hill, why has Matthew written down ‘mountain’? One other curious point; if Jesus was teaching the crowd, it’s useless to say ‘said’.

Very true, but Matthew had very good reasons to write the way he wrote. Jesus was launching His Mission, his programme. He wanted to present His ‘manifesto’ so that His hearers would know what to expect from this Rabbi, still, as yet, unknown.

Here we have this Rabbi, called Jesus, a Law-giver, and Matthew wanted the Jewish converts to whom he was writing, to remember what was written in the Holy Books about another Law-giver: Moses. So as Moses went on a mountain, Sinai, to receive, proclaim, the announce the laws which were to guide the chosen people, NOW, the new law-giver, Jesus, is the new Moses.

For this reason Matthew wanted to create a solemn atmosphere, similar, up to an extent, to that of Moses when he received the Law, though without thunder and lightning.

Jesus did sit down, as was the custom when the Rabbis wanted to proclaim something very important, it was the normal posture. The chapter previous to this tells us what the crowd was composed of: the sick, the widows, the orphans, those who felt offended and misjudged, the hungry, those who craved for justice, the emarginated  etc. So we expect that there were tears in Christ’s eyes. HE was a great  techer and a great psychologists.

Seeing the crowd all hungry for justice, compassion, love and understanding, His first word was “Blessed” , which in the original text is “Rejoice”. This word was repeated over and over again for eight times. Imagine attending a political meeting, a seminar, a lecture and the person starts his talk by saying always: Rejoice, Rejoice, Rejoice, Rejoice ... ad nauseam for eight times.

But Jesus knew what he was doing and saying. He had in front of Him a crowd who did not know what what the word ‘Rejoice’ or ‘Blessed’ meant. According to their culture, only the wealthy, the rich, the priests, the leaders and the rest could ‘rejoice’ could be considered ‘blessed’. Christ’s words were like a warm ray of sun coming up the horizon after years of black, stormy skies.

He made it clear that rejoicing does not depend on material wealth, on the social position, on how important a person is in society, on being healthy. What a revolution by a great revolutionary. No wonder in the Red Square, Moscow, they do have a statue of Jesus as the Great Revolutionary. Rejoicing comes from the inside, from the state of grace and from the total dependence on Jesus ...certainly not from the amount of Stocks and Shares, not from wealth, not from property owning and in being socially important.

This is the manifesto of the Great Revolutionary, Jesus Christ.

JOHN KNEW THAT JESUS WAS HIS COUSIN, BUT HE KNEW HIM NOT

In reading or studying tomorrow’s Gospel, according to St.John, we have one single word, about which volumes can be written. Yes, volumes. That word is “BEHOLD”. Of Saxon origin ‘behold’ means ‘to fix the eyes upon’, or, according to its Saxon roots, ‘to hold, to keep your eyes fixed upon ..’

Imagine I am in the Courtroom, standing on the witness-stand, and as the accused comes in, I shout, I declare: “Hold your gaze (all you present), keep your eyes fixed ..” on that person, whilst pointing with my finger. And that is just what the Baptist has done. On seeing Jesus, he exclaimed: “Behold”.

Now, why on earth has John the Baptist uttered that word? First of all we have to keep in mind that the Baptist’s father was a priest whose duty, amongst others, was to sacrifice the lambs; one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Now, imagine the Baptist seeing a flock of lambs being led by their shepherd, to the Temple, to be prepared for the sacrifice.

The Baptist acted in a most natural way. He knew that the people were conscious of the fact that those lambs were being led to the Temple, to be sacrificed in atonement for their sins. So, was it not natural for him to point at Jesus and declare: “Behold, (this is) the Lamb, who takes away the sins of the world.” And something which the Gospel does not record, is the rest of the statement: “ ... and not those lambs which are being led to the Temple.”

What made the Baptist make such a declaration? The only answer is, Divine Inspiration. There is a reason for saying this. First of all, Jesus and John, were cousins (first, second or relatives is immaterial), so, they must have met some time or other during the 20 years of their manhood. John knew that Jesus was the son of his aunt Elizabeth. So, he must have known Jesus.

What John did not know was the ‘mission’ of Jesus. John was preaching in the desert and calling one and all for repentance (Advent Readings), and baptism, all this for the arrival of the Messiah. May I remind you of the Text wherein John sent his disciples to ask Jesus: “Are you the one to come?” But he did not know so far who that Messiah was, except at the moment of Baptism in the Jordan.

John must have seen the heavens open and a sort of a dove shape was on Jesus head. Now, the dove was considered as a sacred bird in Israel. So much so, it was never captured, or kept in cages... except to be sold for sacrifice ... it was not even killed for consumption. In fact the doves, or pigeans were found in great numbers, and, as Josephus Flavius recalls, they were very tame.

As yet there was no knowledge about the Holy Spirit, so what the Baptist declared must have been Divine Inspiration. There and then, John knew what the ‘mission’ of  Jesus was.  

Let each and every one of us make the Baptist’s same declaration of “Behold” with our works and deeds, the way we speak, the way we behave and live.

THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST

Human nature is always human nature. I can imagine the shores of the River Jordan, lined up with throngs of people, minding ‘other people’s business’: “Look who is being baptized!’; or ‘So, that Greek merchant is a sinner too’; ‘Incredible, look, there is Jesus, the son of Mary and Joseph the carpenter, I never thought …’. Yes these are samples of  the remarks of the gossipers. The reason is simple.

Originally the Jews were never baptised, because they were of the belief that being Jews and having their father Abraham, their salvation was guaranteed. The baptism was only for the neophytes, pagans, that is not Jews, who converted to Judaism. They might have been Greeks, Romans, Ethiopians, Egyptians etc. But the time came when,  after the preaching of John the Baptist, (the Readings we find during Advent), that the Jews started receiving Baptism too.

Jesus, being a Jew realised that this was the moment He had to start on His Mission, so He joined the others and went down to the Jordan to be baptised. But, entering the waters of the Jordan to be baptised had many implications. First of all that would be a declaration by the person being baptised, that he is a sinner, a man who wanted to repent and convert. There’s were the ‘gossip’ comes in.

Let’s refer to what St.Paul said,  that ”Jesus was like us, a human in everything, except in sin.” That means Jesus was sinless, yet He was burdened with sins, yes all the sins of humanity went down into the waters of the Jordan, shouldered by Jesus Himself; those were my sins, yours and of all humanity. So Jesus took upon Himself all the guilt of humanity, He took our place … we should have gone down in the Jordan to be baptised … The rite of baptism was by immersing the whole person into the water and after that the baptised comes out of the water, clean and free from sin.

This is a figure of the ‘Death and Resurrection’ of Jesus himself, He came out of the depths … on Easter Sunday. We realise why there was certain gossip going round, by busy-bodys on that day when  ‘The Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world’ went down to the river to be baptised. But this should not surprise us, because even nowadays, in the year 2014, many are those who argue and say that such a thing cannot be explained; Jesus being baptised to cleanse Himself from guilt and sin. All this is lack of learning and instruction about the Holy Book. Yes, it can be explained.

John the Baptist did realise such an act to be heroic, and yet unworthy of  him to obey: “It is I who who should be baptised by You.”  He even deemed himself unfit, unworthy to touch the lace of His sandals. This IS the stuff great man are made of. We can trace the ‘golden thread’, the ‘mission statement’, ‘the line of action’, the ‘programme’, whch Christ wanted to follow and invite us to follow Him; this was, in word, ‘HUMILITY’ in anything He did.

The Creator was born ‘under the earth … in a cave’. Is not that humility? What woman would ever dream of giving birth to her child, in an unhealthy, unhygenic cave, surrounded by animals? We are all luckier than Jesus, in that regard. To add insult to injury, as we said in the previous posting, He grew up in a village, looked upon as an outlaw, an outcast; in Nazareth.

Now, to top it all, the cherry on the cake, HE had to go down in the Jordan as a sinner to be baptized. We should stop from our daily work, and reserve some time to think about the great significance of next Sunday’s Gospel Text, and not rely only on the Sunday Homily delivered by the priest.

“Thank you, Lord Jesus, for taking my place in the manger; for taking my place to learn what humility is (though You never needed it) by growing up in Nazareth; by going down in the Jordan instead of me to be cleansed from sin; for taking my place on the gibbet on Calvary. How lucky, how fortunate I am, how honoured and loved I am by YOU, my Lord and my God”.

JESUS WAS THE ‘TALIA’ FROM BETLEHEM TO GOLGOTHA

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word…through Him all things came to be, no thing was created without Him … so the Word became flesh, He came to dwell amongst us.” (John, 1:1, 3, 4)

Jesus had both a human intellect and a human will. Without the human intellect He could not have grown in human experimental knowledge; without the human will He could not have been obedient to a higher will. As God, Jesus went beyond human knowledge … and THIS is what John meant when he wrote the “Word” which means the Wisdom or the Thought or the Intelligence of God.

Jesus had intimate relations with His Father. And this relationship was not the fruit, the result that comes from prayer and meditation only, a relationship which you, I and any human may establish; Jesus’ intimate relations came from the identity of nature with the Godhead. We do recall His declaration: “The Father and I are one.”

We all know that it was the sin of ‘pride’ that brought down Lucifer and company, it was ‘pride + disobedience’ that caused our first parents to fall from grace. So, it was fitting, right and proper that the second Adam, Jesus Christ, to atone for the pride and disobedience that had enslaved humanity, had to do away with the ‘ego’. The key was ‘obedience’, to the Plan of God.

Jesus was not obedient to save His soul, for the sake of a reward, to gain heaven, it was a total, complete surrender to the Father’s Will. This, He Himself declared it, as we read in John 14:30 -32 … “The world must be shown that I love the Father and do exactly as he commands.” This means total submission.

Have we ever noticed that the only recorded acts of Jesus’ childhood, in the Gospel, are acts of obedience? Obedience to the Law, He submitted Himself to the the rite of ‘Circumcision’; at the age of twelve He submitted Himself to the work of His Father, in the Temple; and His obedience to His parents, as recorded.

As a conclusion it is worth mentioning a Hebrew word, “talia”, which in a nutshell describes Jesus’ commitment to obedience. Because, ‘talia’ means boy; it means ‘suffering servant’; it means’lamb’. You can arrive at your own conclusion that Jesus was a ‘talia’ (boy) in the Temple going about His Father’s business; he was a ‘talia’ (Suffering Servant ... see Isaiah); and He was a’talia’ (lamb), because He was the Sacrificial Lamb.

DO read and study the Bible, every single day; it is a great source of wisdom, and a gold mine of learning and inspiration.

THE UNIVERSITY JESUS ATTENDED

“Then He went back with them  to Nazareth, and continued to be under their authority.” Luke2:51    So, for eighteen years Jesus lived and grew up in Nazareth. These were hidden years … according to the Gospel narrative. But they were not wasteful years. For eighteen years Jesus was following a course in ‘humility’. No, there were no Universities in Nazareth, or elsewhere in Israel for that matter. He did not follow a ‘Correspondence Course’; but, yes, Nazareth tutored Him in ‘humility’.

First of all we have to know from where the word Nazareth got its name.  The name Nazareth is derived from the word ‘netzer’ which means an ‘off-shoot’. All those who like gardening know what an ‘off-shoot’ is, and the reason why all farmers cut it down and burn it. Actually an ‘off-shoot’ is useless in any tree.  It is there simply to sap energy from the tree, but it does not contribute anything; the reason why it is ‘cut off’ and burnt.

In our language, Maltese, it is called ‘bagħal’ (pronounced bal). But the word ‘bagħal’ has got different shades of meaning, numerous definitions. It might mean a lazy, good for nothing fellow; anything or anyone worthless, only fit for the garbage;  a mule; an illegitimate son, a bastard; a hard-hearted person; a hybrid plant or animal; a fruitless sprout or shoot; a sucker, it is referred to an unirrigated field; to grow up without proper education. As a verb it might mean to degenerate. So, it follows that the word ‘netzer’ and the name ‘Nazareth’ seem to have a negative implication, something to be avoided and feared.

But, what have all these definitions to do with Jesus? Nazareth was built in a valley on a ridge, enclosed by hills and mountains. One could say that it was inconspicuous, so much so that not even the Roman soldiers, ever bothered to go down and have a look. It was a forgotten area, with no communication with the rest of the world. Thereby the name, ‘Netzereth’ known as ‘Nazareth’. We do recall that remark we find in the Gospel: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

So anything, anyone coming from Nazareth bore a stigma. Yet, God’s Plans from eternity were that Jesus had to spend a whole eighteen years living and growing up in this place. We also recall that Jesus was addressed as the ‘Man from Nazareth’ or ‘The Nazarene’. A stigma that got stuck to Him even unto His death, included in the declaration: “Jesus of Nazareth …” Yet, Pilate, who gave the order, also made another declaration, the crucified man was not simply : “Jesus of Nazareth” but also “King of the Jews”.

This was the university, the school were Jesus learned what ‘humility’ meant, and He lived it for full eighteen years. He was the only son who could have claimed personal independence, and yet to sanctify and exemplify human obedience, He lived under a humble roof, obedient to His parents, in a humble place … in Nazareth.

During these years he helped His father Joseph to fix the flat roofs of Nazarene houses and mended wagons, chairs, tables, and other lowly tasks. But all this unfolded so  naturally that not even the neighbours noticed anything special about Him. They were not conscious of the greatness, of Him who dwelt in their midst.

That how genuine humility is achieved: you go unnoticed notwithstanding all the good in the world you will be doing. What great lessons Jesus has taught us not by word of mouth or by written record, this time, simply by His behavior.                     “O Lord Jesus, meek and humble, make heart like unto Thine.”