Brent Coffin’s Reflection
Lenten Conversation Week 3
8-14 March 2015
Walking a Tight Rope
However we think of Jesus Christ—and it’s complicated for each of us—the simple fact is that
his life, death and evolving memory continue to have enormous sway over our religious
imaginations.
The Christian tradition has sought to guide the transmission of Jesus’ memory by balancing on
the high wire of a paradox stretched between two poles. One is the insistence that Jesus,
whatever else he may be, was fully human—not just in appearance, not just in theory, but like all
of us—fully human.
The other pole is that Jesus Christ is somehow divine. This, of course, is the more difficult claim.
For 21st century spiritual seekers who must chart the seas of diversity and will never return to old
world of supernaturalism, it is not easy to imagine, must less to articulate, the foundation on
which this pole stands.
But it’s not the pole of divinity that I’d like to comment on. Rather it’s our willingness to step
out onto the high wire of the paradox itself. From 1st century Galilee to 5th century Chalcedon,
from 16th century Geneva to 21st century Cambridge, it’s never been easy to walk the tight rope:
Jesus Christ human and divine.
Even before Mark composed the first gospel around 70 CE, the paradox of faith was firmly
established in the tradition Paul received as he began his mission to the Gentiles around 50 CE,
just two decades after Jesus’ death. Jewish to his core, Paul had no doubt as to vulnerable
humanity of Jesus; and neither did he doubt the power of the Risen Christ. The way he describes
his experience may resonate with our own:
…we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary
power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not
crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down,
but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus
may also be made visible in our bodies.”1
Paul is describing the stuff of real life. And yet, as Jewish-Christian communities became ever
more immersed in Hellenistic culture, the Church adopted Greek philosophy as the medium of
1
II Corinthians 4:7-10.
1
transmission. Whereas the New Testament has many voices interpreting the person and work of
Jesus, the ecumenical council that met at Chalcedon in 451 labored to come up with a single
definition of Jesus Christ. This is the central part:
Therefore, following the Holy Fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge
one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Chris, at once complete in Godhead and complete
in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body; of
one substance (homoousios) with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time
of one substance with us as regards his manhood.2
I suspect I’ve lost you. And that’s the point I want to make. The Chalcedon formula served to
transmit the paradox of faith for a thousand years. But it did so by turning “human” and
“divine” into abstract and unchanging categories far removed from the dynamic reality of Jesus
and his Abba-God who was somehow intimately present in the ever-changing lives of ordinary
people.
To a surprising extent, I think, we are still caught in the old ideas that turned God and humans
into lifeless abstractions. That’s why the bold question we are asking now—Who is Jesus Christ
for us today?—can easily run into a dead end. If it all has to do with lifeless abstractions, then
our question has nothing to do with who we really are and how we live more fully as human
beings.
That’s why something wonderful and liberating may be underway as our First Church
community struggles anew with the ancient paradox. We may be breaking free of the stale
categories that bind us. We’re removing the old cataracts by bringing our modern consciousness
of ourselves as changing, developing human beings to re-viewing the “humanity” and “divinity”
of Jesus.
My own guiding conviction is this. Only as we dare to grasp and imagine Jesus as human in
every sense, will he remain truly important for us. And in grasping the depth of his humanity—
not as a solitary figure, but in his human relations with others—we can be opened more fully to
the God whose divinity was manifest in Jesus’ humanity, and can be in ours as well.
“Beloved, we are children of God now; it does not yet appear what we shall be.”3
2
3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Chalcedon#Confession_of_Chalcedon
I John 3:2.
2