LENT IV

George Stefasnescu: 'Jesus' (1999)

• Joshua 5:9-12  • 
• Psalm 32  • 
• 2 Corinthians 5:16-21  • 
• Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

‘From now on’ St Paul tells the Corinthians in this week's Epistle, ‘we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way’. What does he mean that we no longer know Christ from a human point of view?
    Prominent among the many ways that people have seen Jesus, are these three -- as an inspiring example of service to others, as a great moral teacher who exposed the hypocrisy of his times, and as a social revolutionary who fought for the poor and oppressed.
    Though there is not much Biblical warrant for the third of these suggestions, over the centuries all three images of Jesus have proved attractive to very different audiences.  In writing to the Corinthians, however, Paul offers us a corrective. He rightly sees that thinking of Jesus in any of these ways is theologically limited.  Whether we regard him as an ethical model, a moral teacher, or a political visionary, we are looking at him from a strictly human point of view. To see him as he is, is to hail him as ‘the Christ’ - which is to say, God Incarnate. Jesus was indeed an exemplary human being, but the Cross and Resurrection show him to be far more than that – uniquely ‘At One’ with God the Creator, Redeemer and Judge Eternal. Some of the parables have a moral message, certainly, but the real force of all of them lies in this. In them, we now know, God is talking to us.

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Rembrandt: 'Return of the Prodigal'

The Gospel for this week is possibly the most famous of those parables -- the story of the Prodigal Son. Interestingly, although it is a story of sin, repentance and forgiveness, it does not end with the prodigal's embrace, but with his brother’s resentment. What is the significance of this little tailpiece? Is the elder brother at fault, because he goes on thinking badly of the prodigal's behavior? That cannot be quite right. As Jesus tells the story, the father who has welcomed the prodigal son does not rebuke the resentful one. On the contrary, the elder son’s contrasting honesty and decency is powerfully affirmed when, confronted by his anger, his father tells him: ‘You are always with me, and all that is mine is yours’. Even true repentance like the Prodigal’s, it seems, cannot wipe out the past, and it does not put everything to right. His inheritance has still been squandered.
    Nevertheless, this understandable reaction is made from a human point of view. Yet 'from now on', Paul has told us, 'we regard no one from a human point of view'. That is because 'if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation . . . everything has become new'. The story of the Prodigal Son shows how hard it is to move beyond regarding others from a human point of view. Yet, at the heart of the Gospel is the belief that Christ's redeeming love has the power to make the image of God evident again, in the the reprobate as well as the respectable, in the resentful as much as the penitent.

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