Who IS this Jesus?

During the school year I have been teaching a Christian Education class at St. Mary's. My classes have consisted of middle schoolers (most of my 2012-13 class were seventh and eighth graders) and high schoolers (all of my 2013-14 class.) I have no clue who I'll be teaching next year, and I won't know until, probably, the week before class starts. It requires a lot of energy and preparation to teach, and my reading slows during the school year. I use summers to do some intellectual and spiritual restocking. I pray daily all year long. I say a Rosary daily, I say the Liturgy of the Hours, and I pray for the needs of friends and family. I do some reading during the school year, but not as much as I do during the summer.

Last year I frequently asked the class the question that is the title of this post: "Who IS this Jesus Christ?" One of the messages I left my students with was that we should all ask ourselves this question every day, and that we should not settle for the formulaic answers. "Son of God and Son of Man". . ."Truly God, fully human". . .we know all that. What we should ask is, "Who is this Jesus Christ TO ME?"

Just a (not-so-side) note: A faith that cannot withstand, and/or will not tolerate questioning or doubts, is no faith at all. A comprehended God is no God.

That's been the focus of my reading this summer. The book I started with was published this year: Jesus, a Pilgrimage, by James Martin, S.J. The book discusses Martin's thought about Jesus as it developed from his trip to the Holy Land. It's well worth the time it takes to read it. Most of the material in this post is from this book. Martin refers to other works, and I am now reading one of these: A Marginal Jew, by John P. Meier. I am reading Volume 1. Characteristic of literature with this academic orientation, the first part of the work is largely taken up with source material and methodology, and I'm still in that material.

I have purchased two other books: Excavating Jesus by John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed, and The Historical Jesus, by Crossan. I will be reading The New Testament World: Insights From Cultural Anthropology by Bruce Malina. I will also be studying The Gospel According to Mark fairly intensely. When I introduce students to The Bible, Mark is always my starting point, and when we look at pericopes in Mark, it's always with the question, "Who is this Jesus Christ?" in mind.

Who is this Jesus Christ?

Martin has an interest in the part of Jesus' life that is not presented in the Gospels. Luke devotes much space to the birth of Jesus, mostly from Mary's point of view. Matthew gives the birth of Jesus some space, and mostly from Joseph's viewpoint. Mark says nothing about it at all. Luke presents some events that are not mentioned in the other Gospels. One is the presentation of the infant Jesus to the Lord in the temple in Jerusalem. Subsequently it is said that Joseph, Mary and Jesus went to the temple every year. This would mark them as being very observant of their Jewish faith. Nazareth is not particularly close to Jerusalem; there were no highways, both Nazareth and Jerusalem are in hilly country, and much of the journey was on foot. It would not have been by the shortest available route (probably). Between Nazareth and Jerusalem was Samaria, and Jews of the time would travel a considerable distance out of their way to avoid going through Samaria (in later life Jesus showed none of the cultural animus toward Samaritans. Jesus' talking to a Samaritan woman at the well would have been utterly shocking at the time, both because she was a woman, and because she was a Samaritan. But then Jesus spoke to women with respect. Unheard of.)   Not everyone made that trip every year, but Mary and Joseph did.

On one of those journeys, when Jesus was twelve, when Mary and Joseph left Jerusalem to go home, they were a day into their journey when they discovered that they'd forgotten something: Jesus. This was not as shocking as it might seem. The travel would have been in a group, and they may well have thought that their son was with other family members in the caravan. They had to retrace their steps, and found their son in the temple.

All sources are silent about Jesus' life between infancy narratives and the incident at the temple. They are almost completely silent from the incident at age twelve to the beginning of his public ministry at about age thirty. For the interim period, only Luke has anything to say, and it's not much: "And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor."

What would his teenage and early adult years have been like? Nazareth was in Galilee (think of Galilee as the state, Nazareth as the town.) The record indicates that Joseph was a carpenter, but it would not have been a carpenter that builds houses. Wood houses would have been all but nonexistent; there would not have been enough trees, and wood would have been much too expensive for most. The houses were small, built of stone or brick, with thatched roofs and floors of packed earth. Wood would have been used for the beams. The houses would have been organized as pods, a few of the houses arranged around a courtyard that would have been used for common usage - cooking, among other things. The town would consist of a number of these pods. While Galilee wasn't a backwater sort of province - just a few miles from Nazareth was a major city, Sepphoris - Nazareth was certainly a backwater town, with a population of maybe 200. Sepphoris was a major city of, maybe, 30,000. That city, and a lot of the rest of Galilee, had some significant building going on. It's not hard to conclude that Joseph found much of his work in those projects and, society being what it was, soon enough Jesus would have accompanied Joseph, and thus learned the craft.

And then the day came that Jesus, after his baptism, after his temptation, returned to Nazareth He went to the synagogue, and opened the scroll and began to read. There is considerable doubt that Nazareth, a poor town of maybe 200 people, could have afforded a building for their synagogue - very likely, they met in the open air - and it's doubtful that they could have afforded a scroll of the Tanakh. Jesus may have been reading off a piece of paper. His being able to read at all would have been surprising. But, no matter. The text he read was about the deliverance of the Lord, and he then threw a grenade into the assembly: "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

Do what?

Isn't this Joseph's kid? Isn't this the guy we'd see every morning, trudging off with his dad and his tools in a bag, trudging off to wherever? And he'd always come trudging back at night, bone tired? And he's the fulfillment of this scripture? Seriously?

And the question: Who IS this Jesus? This carpenter, son of a carpenter, who claims - THIS?!