Who Is Jesus?

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.