Yesterday was Christmas – the celebration of the birth
of Jesus Christ. I joined my wife and one
of my daughters to go to St. David’s Catholic Church for the Christmas
Mass. The Reverend Fenly Saint-Jean
delivered a very insightful sermon that I found presented a powerful
perspective on the nature of Jesus. He
explained that the reason God had come to Earth as a man, born in a manger of all places, was to truly know the plight of mankind through personal
experience.
Humankind would never again be able to complain to
God that he didn’t understand. "How could
God know what it was like to be hungry or in physical pain?" "How could God know the pain of being turned
on and betrayed by close friends?" God
knew because through the experience of his son, Jesus, he directly experienced
it all. We can thank Jesus for divine
compassion and forgiveness because he lived our lives and experienced our pain
and joy. He was born of the common
people because he did not want to live the Rock Star life, he wanted to know
our trials and struggles. His mission
was to know us and offer some instruction as to how we could make the best of
things regardless of the reality that appeared to be our life. That is the most compelling explanation of
the life of Jesus in religious terms that I have ever heard. The logic is crisp and clear with no sense of
an unknowable mystery that often makes up religious dogma.
I find no conflict with this reasoning but I would
add more to define who Jesus is. Jesus is
God (infinite all knowing non-physical Source energy) experiencing a life experience
adventure in a human body but so are each of us. The
huge difference and the reason Jesus became so closely identified with God –
God’s only begotten Son – was because in terms of consciousness, so little separated
them. The point of consciousness inhabiting
the human form of Jesus was evolved to a point that there were only brief moments
of separation from the awareness of infinite creative power and awareness. Let us not forget that Jesus was very clear
about the fact that we could do everything he did and more if we had the
tiniest bit of faith in that reality. This is the heart of the matter – we each
have access to the same power and level of knowing but we have yet to close the
gap of separation to anywhere near the level of Jesus for more than brief
instants of awareness. We are all on that
path though and that was the message of Jesus to us – he came into our realm to
let us in on the secret. The message of
Jesus is that we are all on a path to realize his life reality.
And so, we send Jesus very joyful and grateful
thanks for deciding to come live among us and shine a bright light of hope and possibility
that has influenced many generations already and will continue to be the catalyst for
positively transforming the Reality we experience in this physical world.
Thank You and Happy Birthday Jesus.