The Word Became Flesh -- Making It Real (Part 2)

 My ears had heard of you

but now my eyes have seen you (Job 42:5)

The words of Job when he encounters God (has an experience of the Divine) echo those of the Samaritan villagers in John 4: They said to the woman, "We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world."

"Hearing for ourselves," "Seeing for ourselves" is the rock upon which our faith is built.  John's prologue tells us that the Word became flesh and "pitched his tent among us."  It was not enough for God to send prophets with His message; He had to come in the flesh, so that we might experience in person His love, care, concern for us.  The Old and New Testament are a record of God's willingness to be involved in our lives. Jesus addresses people exactly the way the Father addressed people in the Old Testament -- invitingly, angrily, sadly, compassionately.  He calls people by name; he helps them in time of trouble, rescues them from oppression, forgives them, shows them a mother's love.  Jesus weeps for people, struggles to help them understand him, patiently tells them about the Father, warns them, urges them, takes them to task.

Early Christian literature shows that God continued to communicate with people even after Jesus' ascension.  Clement of Alexandria wrote an essay called Christ the Educator.  In it, he described Christian life in terms of the Word (Jesus) acting as the paidagogos (pedagogue) (companion educator) of the Christian.  In Greek culture, the pedagogue was a family servant who took the young child to school through the sometimes perilous city streets, stayed with him in the "classroom," and showed him how to learn through his example, advice, and the decisions he made in his environment.  His job was not academic --to teach the school subjects.  There was a schoolmaster for that.  The pedagogue, however, spent the day with the child, helping him learn through companionship.  The servant and the child formed a relationship of affection.

In Clement's mind, Christ does this for us; a continuous dialog takes place between Christ and the Christian, a dialog that occurs in shifting circumstances and continues through stages of development.  In our own day, the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola are based on the conviction that God can and wants to be met in dialog.  Ignatius had respect for the authority of the Church, but it did not substitute for the communication that God could address to an individual heart and the response that the person could make.

The Church is our schoolmaster; Christ is our Pedagogue.  He "opens our minds to understand the Scriptures;" He shows us their application in our own lives.  He is the rock upon which we ground our search for meaning. Like the Samaritan villagers, we cannot live by someone else's experience. We have to meet Christ "in the flesh" ourselves.  If we reflect on our own experience, we may find God's care and concern for us from the beginning.  Peter came to Andrew and said, "We have found the Messiah, the one written about in the Scriptures."  That "word" got Andrew's attention, but Andrew had to come for himself to "see" and "hear" Jesus in the flesh.  

The law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.  No one has ever seen God, but God the only Son, who is at the Father's side, has made him known (John 1:17).  

Jesus continues today to make the Father known to us, if we but know how to listen.