JESUS, MAN OR SUPERMAN?
From certain parts of the biblical Gospels right up to our own contemporary Fundamentalism, Jesus has frequently been portrayed as a kind of Clark Kent who could turn on his special supernatural powers whenever he felt like it. Indeed, according to the conservative Christian perspective, in which Clark had to jump into a phone booth to shed his human clothing before performing one of his amazing deeds, Jesus only had to activate his supernatural divine powers when he wished to display his divinity. Unfortunately, this desire to claim and maintain the divinity of Jesus not only overlooks many aspects of the Gospel stories but also seriously distorts the core of the Christian message.
The main problem with this traditional interpretation of Jesus is that it not only overlooks the plain, earthy facts of the Gospel story but also transforms Jesus into a wonder-working superhero who comes from a distant heavenly world into the human world and then flies away to a heavenly realm, awaiting the time when his followers can join him in the sky. This view of Jesus turns him into a mythic figure, not unlike those in ancient Greek and Egyptian legends. As a result, millions of believers have been waiting for Jesus’ return from the sky for over 2,000 years. This view of Jesus is pure mythology, and very dangerous stuff at that.
First, the term “Incarnation” is Latin in origin and differs markedly from the Greek term used for “flesh” in the New Testament, namely “Sarx”. This extended passage identifies Jesus as “The Christ”, the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew term for “Messiah”. Nevertheless, the main concern of this opening passage of John’s Gospel is to make it clear that, whoever and whatever Jesus was, he was NOT a heavenly creature visiting earth. He was, rather, a special human person sent from God and embodying God’s character. As verse 14 of Chapter One puts it: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.”
He did not appear to be “of flesh” but was actually “in the flesh” as a fully human being. Whatever else Jesus was, or in what peculiar way he was “human,” John does not say. He does not try to explain what we call the “Incarnation,” but he does insist that Jesus was fully human, fully “sarx.” I am not trying to say that Jesus was “only” human, but that he was “fully” human. However, we may want to describe what sort of human he was, we must be careful not to turn him into some sort of “magician” or “ghostly” supernatural being who only “appeared” to be human. That was the early church heresy known as “Gnosticism,” which denied Jesus’ full humanity in order to stress his divinity.
The stories John tells about Jesus’ encounters with various people, such as the guests at the wedding in Cana, the dialogue with Nicodemus the enquiring Pharisee, and the Samaritan woman at the well, all focus on Jesus’ unique humanity, not his “divinity”. This theme of Jesus as the “puzzling one” continues throughout John’s Gospel, focusing on Jesus’ uniqueness as a special one who has “come from God”. The emphasis is not, in any sense, on Jesus’ divinity but on his unique “strangeness” as he encounters and interacts with everyday people. The strangeness is unique and “special”, but is not easily seen or identifiable as Divine.
As John puts it in verse 14 of his first chapter, “He dwelt among us, full of grace and truth, and we have beheld his glory, full of grace and truth.” Notice that John does not say Jesus’ glory was “full of power and majesty,” but simply “full of grace and truth.” These very human qualities mediated Jesus’ glory to those around him. They did not “prove” that he was divine or the Messiah, but the flesh provided a prism through which they could see and know that he was God’s person in that time and place. It remains, or perhaps should have remained, an open question as to exactly what Jesus’ relationship to divinity was and is.
Throughout John’s Gospel, we repeatedly see Jesus interacting with his fellow humans, not in some “magical” or “supernatural” way, but in a straightforward manner that focuses on people and the issues in the specific context. As Paul puts it in his letter to the Corinthians, “Now we see through/in a glass darkly, but later we shall see him face to face.” (I Corinthians 13:12). One word that carries this point in a helpful way is “mediation.” Jesus’ human acts and speech “mediate” his divinity to us in and through his humanity; it is not forced upon us as an undeniable fact that requires no interaction of faith on our part. As Paul put it, “Now we see through a glass, darkly.” God does not simply dump spiritual truth on humanity, thereby leaving no room for our discernment and faithful response in belief.
By and large the synoptic Gospels of Mathew, Mark, and Luke seek to skip over this mediational character of Jesus’ nature and incarnation. They badly wish to make various aspects of Jesus’ divinity abundantly clear, but in so doing, they miss and/or confuse the key issue involved, namely that “God sent his Son into the world to redeem them from their own confusion and waywardness. It is this message and hope of redemption that John captures with his careful presentation of how God’s greatness and grace are best understood as mediated in and through Jesus’ teachings and actions, not directly but indirectly, leaving room for our human response of faith. Jesus was not Clark Kent.
And yet, perhaps the vast majority of Christians either believe that Jesus was flat-out “God himself” and in complete control of all that was going on, or they simply do not think about such theological matters. It seems that this view of Jesus’ incarnation would amount to a flat-out rejection of the possibility of anything negative ever happening to him. However, the Gospels tell us that he was arrested, tortured, and crucified for his teachings and behavior. The idea that Jesus was “fully God Himself” in the traditional sense of the term and yet allowed himself to be treated as he was at the end of his life seems to make no sense and reduces the whole crucifixion story to a trite charade. The traditional interpretation of Jesus’ death makes no sense.
Finally, the post-resurrection passages in the Gospels are also instructive for reading Jesus’ life among the people of Palestine. He is said to have intimate yet puzzling encounters and dialogues with various of his followers. John concludes with an early-morning fish breakfast for his disciples at the end of the Gospel of John. He asks Thomas to put his hand in his wound and even promises one of his fellow victims on the cross that they shall go to “paradise” together. He promises that his Spirit will come to comfort and protect his disciples after he is “gone.”
And yet, the events among his followers after his departure, as presented in the Book of Acts, show clearly that they were, in a deep sense, empowered by his Spirit to spread the message about him. His teachings have been spread around the world for over two thousand years, influencing many millions of people and nations, mostly for peace and brotherhood. At one point in the play “Godspell,” Jesus sought to redirect his followers’ attention away from discussing how he would die by shuffling his feet and asking: “Hey, did I ever show how I can do the soft-shoe dance?” Then, in his Superman T-shirt, he proceeded to break into a soft-shoe dance. It is this same self-deprecating side of Jesus that I find so very characteristic of him in the Gospels. He is far more mysterious than our traditional interpretations allow. The most important thing, in my view, is that he was “Full of grace and truth.”