Conversations with God #2

Conversations with God #2                 07/20/12

This is a summary of the study that took place last Friday

Jesus' Conversation with God

Theresa of Avila said that the only way to discover Jesus’ divinity is through his humanity. Jesus was fully a man. He had to learn the same way as us - went through everything we do. In Mt 11:25-30 we get a glimpse of how Jesus understood himself and his role. This passage has been described as “a thunderbolt from the Johannine heavens” because it seems to fit in more with the Gospel of John than with the Synoptics.

Jesus begins by thanking his Father “Because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.” Jesus, in addressing God as Father, already signals the trustful and intimate relationship he feels between himself and God. God’s Wisdom has been hidden from those who have been trained – from the scribes and those who have received the standard teaching. Instead it has been revealed to the illiterate and unlearned. Those like little children – the unformed. Those with already formed ideas and established ideas are not going to get it.

Jesus continues by saying “All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him”.

When we have a conversation with God – how do we come in to the presence of God? In our study the following responses to this question were given:

• Humble petitioner, a peanut, aware of my own smallness.
• Hopeful
• Trusting in Jesus’ love – that I will not feel put down
• Aware that I am a work in progress

Some of these responses are already conditioned by the positive relationship from Jesus, but we can still see gaps and lack in our communication with God. Jesus feels that everything has been handed over to him by God! None of us thinks anything like this.

The verses in Matthew echo key passages in the Old Testament. In Daniel 7 there is the figure of “One like a son of man” to whom all dominion is given. Jesus often refers to himself as “Son of Man”. Also in this discourse Jesus appears to identify with the person of Wisdom. (c.f Mt 11:18-19). Wisdom was with God in the beginning, before the beginning of creation (Proverbs 8:22-23). Again there is an implied intimate confidence between Jesus and the Father, signaled by the figure of Wisdom. Job 28:12-23 asks where wisdom can be found. “Where then does wisdom come from? And where is the place of understanding? It is hidden from the eyes of all living, and concealed from the birds of the air….God understands the way to it, and he knows its place”. Wisdom extends beyond human competence and knowledge. Only God knows it intimately and completely.

At the baptism of Jesus the Spirit of God descends upon Jesus like a dove and a voice from heaven proclaims “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased” (Mt. 3:17). This brings to mind the Suffering/Nonviolent Servant of Isaiah 42:1, “My servant whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations”. The Greek word pais used in the Greek translation of Isaiah can mean both "servant" and "son. The words of love and pleasure recall the Servant verse and suggest Jesus' baptism experience was one associated with the Nonviolent Servant. (Matthew associates Jesus directly with this Servant passage at 12:18-19.)

Jesus studied the Scriptures which enabled him to appropriate for himself these motifs of Wisdom, Servant and Son of Man and gave him the language to express his relationship with God. The intimate relationship must have already have been present. This relationship represents a categorical human breakthrough. In his spirit and in his mind there is no separation or hostility from the Father. He has a consciousness free from the darkness of God that remains in the rest of us. He is the first person free of violence in his relationship with the father. A relationship totally transformed. It is into this relationship that he invites us in the Spirit.

*Note in the previous weeks to this study we contrasted the conversations with God of Jeremiah and the Suffering/Nonviolent Servant of Isaiah. It is evident that Jesus' conversations lay much closer in character to the latter's. "Morning by morning he wakens--wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. The Lord has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward" (50:4-5).