Thursday, May 6, 2021

Could Jesus Not Cry Out in Despair

There is an important observation to be made if, as I have said, God is the determinative cause of everything.  Inescapably, then, everything is miraculous--although that does not rule out the possibility that any given moment's or situation's miraculousness might reside in it being entirely "normal."  What we must really remember is that nothing that ever happens is separated from the unbounded potentiality of the miraculous.  Only then can we understand or begin to deal with Jesus' maddening, persistent refusal to frame the world as a single, coherent arena with a single timeline.

"Elias truly shall first come...," "Elias is come already...," "this generation will certainly not pass away...."  This incoherence woven through the Gospels reflects, in a way unsurprisingly, the impossibility of anything of divine import being describable in logical terms.

"Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say?  Father save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour.  Father, glorify thy name.  Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again" (John 12:27-28, KJV).

We cannot glorify God's name; we can only try to.  Such we might also say of Jesus, except that our belief tells us otherwise--that Jesus really did glorify God's name.  Yet saddled with human nature, did not Jesus experience hopeless despair at ever having been able to fulfill his mission?  Did Jesus not reckon, as John's gospel portends, that Jesus mission was--incomprehensibly--the omnipotent divine's choice, rather than necessity?  Has not God always been glorified, and able to save?

Can we imagine other than that the crucified Jesus would cry out in hopeless despair?

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