Wednesday, January 13, 2021

The Divinity of Christ

I keep an eye on just a handful of blogs. One of them I really value is the work of Canon John Twisleton.

Appropriately, for St Hilary’s day, he put on his blog this talk on the divinity of Christ from today’s Eucharist at St Wilfrid, Haywards Heath. It is such an inspiring message for these times.  So, I have decided to share the post with you in its entirety, and encourage you to check Fr Twisleton’s blog from thime to time.


I want to share something about the divinity of Christ picking up on our readings and our saint for today, St Hilary of Poitier who lived in the 4th century. 


In his day there was widespread denial of the divinity of Christ. Bishop Hilary’s contending with great grace against this error is celebrated in the collect or prayer for today: ‘Everlasting God, whose servant Hilary steadfastly confessed your Son Jesus Christ to be both human and divine: grant us his gentle courtesy to bring to all the message of redemption in the incarnate Christ’.


HOW DO PEOPLE SEE JESUS? 


In today’s Gospel from Mark 1:29-39 we heard of Our Lord preaching and healing in Galilee. The healings and miracles are seen as pointers to his divinity. We also heard from the letter to the Hebrews of his humanity, of how ‘he [became] completely like (us) so that he could… atone for human sins…’ (Hebrews 2:17)


How do we see Jesus? The Church sees him as truly God and truly human. Without his divinity the Cross would be emptied of power to save. Without his humanity, Our Lord’s becoming like us, the saving work of his dying and rising would not reach into our lives as it has into the lives of half the world’s population today.


How do people see Jesus? Muslims have their answer - Jesus, Isa, peace be upon him, is the human prophet waiting with Allah to judge the world on the last day. Hindus see Jesus as a god among the many gods they honour. Buddhists honour Jesus as a teacher. The question ‘who do you think Jesus is?’ has many answers but it’s worth encouraging people to ask it and helping them attain the full picture.


‘The name of Jesus is not so much written as ploughed into the history of the world’ wrote philosopher Ralph Emerson.


William Lecky the Irish historian of rationalism wrote: ‘Christ has exerted so deep an influence that it may be truly said that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists’


To get a perspective on the universality of Jesus we can follow endless tributes from people far from the Christian fold who cannot begrudge the universal significance of Jesus. Napoleon Bonaparte in Elba, after much study of the life and character of Jesus, wrote ‘From first to last, Jesus is the same; always the same - majestic and simple, infinitely severe and infinitely gentle..... I know men; and I tell you that Jesus is not a man. Everything in Him amazes me… He is truly a being by Himself...great with a greatness that crushes me. I defy you to cite another life like that of Christ’.


In the words of Victor Hugo ‘Pythagoras, Epicurus, Socrates, Plato, these are the torches of the world; Christ is the light of day.’ With the coming of Jesus the world has experienced something unique that twenty centuries have yet to plumb the depths of.


‘It would take a Jesus to forge a Jesus’ as someone put it, reflecting that in measuring this Man we find ourselves lost for a standard in human terms.


The atheist Rousseau admitted that ‘It would have been a greater miracle to invent such a life as Christ’s than to be it’.


‘Christ is not valued at all unless he is valued above all’ wrote St. Augustine of Hippo echoing his 4th century contemporary, today’s Saint Hilary of Poitiers, who reflecting on the person of Christ wrote: ‘The One who comes from the perfect, is perfect because he has all, he has given all’.


The novelist Dostoyevsky wrote ‘there has never been anyone lovelier, deeper or more sympathetic than Jesus’. The unique warmth, simplicity and humanity of Jesus challenge anyone who picks up a Bible. Is there any figure in history to rival Jesus?  Even the atheist Rousseau said: ‘it would have been a greater miracle to invent such a life as Christ’s than to be it’.


In his book ‘What the Bible teaches’ R.A.Torrey gives this summary: ‘Jesus Christ is all-powerful, all-knowing and all-present. He is from all eternity, always the same, in the form of God. In Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead in a bodily way. Jesus is linked to our creation, preservation, the forgiveness of sin, the raising of the dead, judgement and the bestowal of eternal life. Jesus Christ is a person to be worshipped by angels and mortals, even as God the Father is worshipped.’


As we offer the eucharist on this feast of St Hilary we pray for the Holy Spirit to confirm this faith in Our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true man in us and use us as the collect prayed ‘to bring to all the message of redemption in the incarnate Christ’.


‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.’ John 3:16


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