How do we imagine Jesus? Many think of him as the platonic ideal of man, but without the burden of being weak like the rest of us — but could such a man be a true incarnation. The Greek ideal, though, seems like it a stretch and it belays the Hebrew understanding of humanity. Without the weakness of men, it would then be divine pretense? God putting a costume of humanity with the ability to ripping it off anytime it was convenient. Yet, Paul says Jesus emptied himself to the weakness of a man and a man on a cross. No platonic pretending for Jesus.
During the Lilac Torchlight Parade, I looked out to so many faces, ones filled with joy, some fill with longing, some stuffed with a hotdog. There within the mass of humanity, I found the eyes of Jesus looking out at us. The God of the cross, who becomes a man so he can be with the people lining the parade route. I walk with my wife along the parade route next to my son who was riding in one smart looking muscle car. God knew hunger as many in the crowd on Saturday night know it, as a deep ache in the belly, even if surrounded by others with their’s stomaches full beyond capacity. Jesus was with them as well. God must empty to the great weakness of his people. He knows thirst, rejection and the touch of friends. He entered into the tribe of man.
So, God took on the weakness of humans. Though it is clear that he took on the weakness of man without taking on sin. Sin makes us inhuman. Examine times of great sin like WWII and we rightly exclaim mans inhumanity to man. Sin robs us of our humanity. Love incarnate reanimates our humanity.
God took on hunger, on being suspicious in the eyes of others (the rumors of being bastard and views of him being weird healer and a charlatan as they very charges the state use to string him up his cross were leveled at him throughout his whole ministry). The temptations to control, to be selfish and to be above the common concerns of man as a spiritual superstar. Yes, Jesus, the incarnate God, emptied himself to being with us, even if that meant dying on a cross as a forgotten man. But he rose from the grave and because of it all man like myself doomed to be forgotten will be remembered by Jesus.
As I walk by kids who love the simple act of giving high five, or the joy those who recognized my son in the car or those in the Parade like me, who waved and hollered and yelled for the moving blood though our veins, God was real in as my feet blister from the walk. In the steps I followed I found prayer.
