Are You The Christ?

The feast of the Dedication was taking place in Jerusalem. It was winter. And Jesus walked about in the temple area on the Portico of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long are you going to keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” 

Jesus answered them, “I told you and you do not believe. The works I do in my Father’s name testify to me. But you do not believe, because you are not among my sheep. My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one can take them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.” (John 10:22-30)

The feast of Dedication is Hanukkah.  It’s the Jewish festival commemorating the rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem at the time of the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire. It is also known as the Festival of Lights. It occurs this year from Dec 10-18.

Here we are in May, and our Gospel speaks of this winter feast and Festival.   Jesus is celebrating this Feast and is found on the Portico of Solomon where the Jews ask, “Are you the Christ?”  

Father Richard Rohr’s 2019 book “The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe,” is thought-provoking and addresses this question. For example, Rohr wrote:

"...Jesus is a map for the time-bound and personal level of life, and Christ is the blueprint for all time and space and life itself.  Both reveal the universal pattern of self-emptying and infilling (Christ) and death and resurrection (Jesus), which is the process we have called “holiness,” “salvation,” or just “growth,” at different times in our history.  For Christians this universal pattern perfectly mimics the inner life of the Trinity in Christian theology, which is our template for how reality unfolds, since all things are created “in the image and likeness” of God (Genesis 1:26-27)"

Rohr emphasized: “Numerous Scriptures make it very clear that this Christ has existed “from the beginning” (John 1:1-18, Colossians 1:15-20, and Ephesians 1:3-14 being primary sources), so the Christ cannot be coterminous with Jesus.  But by attaching the word “Christ” to Jesus as if it were his last name, instead of a means by which God’s presence has enchanted all matter throughout all of history, Christians got pretty sloppy in their thinking…”

Rohr’s book and his convincing approach and interpretation have been the subject of small-group meetings sponsored and facilitated by Deacon Bob Lemay at CTK.  The book provides an extremely attractive way to answer: “Are you the Christ?”  It’s a question asked of all of us as well.

Deacon David Pierce