Lord, Liar, or Lunatic?

"The Father and I are one."

Again the Jews picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus said to them, " I have shown you many great mircales from the Father.  For which of these do you stone me?"

"We are not stoning you for any of these," replied the Jews, "but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God" (Jn. 10:30-33).

The Jews of his day heard and realized Christ's claim to be God.  It is harder for us to hear and recognize what He was saying.  But C.S. Lewis makes us hear the message of Jesus in his classic radio message, Lord, Liar, or Lunatic?

If Jesus was so clear as to shock his listeners about who He is, what are we to make of this?  According to Flannery O'Conner, "If Jesus was not divine, then the crucifixion was justified."  (She is nothing if not straightforward!) 

Lewis says that either Jesus was speaking the truth, or He was deluded in the worst way, or He was lying, and He knew He was lying, in which case we should believe nothing He said.

Why is it so important that God became flesh and dwells among us---not dwelt, but dwells?  It is because that even though every ancient and major religion and great teacher re-presents to us the great universal law handed down to men of good will, none of us is capable of keeping the Tao, (a Buddhist word for what the Jews called "Divine Instruction, or Law").  It is not that we are ignorant of the "Law," however it is called or framed by great teachers and religions; we know the law, but we are all "sinners," that is, incapable of embodying the Law in our own flesh.  We are led astray by weakness, or pride, or confusion, or lust, or fear, or the damage done to us by others, or ......  

In Chapter 7 of Romans, Paul says, "I do not understand myself at all....even though in my mind I know and agree with the Law of God, there is something in my flesh that is stronger than I am.  The very thing I say I will not do, I end up doing, and the thing I say I will do, I do not do....so I discover in my flesh another law---the law of sin and death....unhappy man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?"

In Chapter 8, Paul rejoices that the Spirit of God has replaced the "law of sin and death at work in [his] flesh" with a "new law:" the law of the Spirit of life.....the mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace (Romans 8: 6).

As a priest once told me in confession:  what we do for God is interesting, but what God does for us---that's the whole story!  That sort of puts everything in perspective for me.  What God did once in history in the womb of the virgin, He continues to do now on a daily basis:  He sends His Spirit to incarnate in our own flesh His very Son, His image, His breath, His truth to dwell among us, if we can but receive the Word made flesh in us.