Juxtapose

I sat in Religious Themes class the other day was thinking a lot. Normally, I don't put much thought into the lectures. I listen with one ear to the teacher, but the other ear is always inward, hearing my own thoughts on the sadness of being in such a class. This past class, though, was on Jesus. Finally, we were in the New Testament. I love the Tanach, the Hebrew Scriptures, and I love reading about God in relation to the Jews. The Old Testament is so beautiful and truly shows God's character, his faithfulness and justice and grief for the people. But then, when we spend so much time reading of the Jews (and we seemed to talk more about how wonderful Jewish culture is than how wonderful God is) and hearing the stories of their failing and getting up... their falling and lifting up... their failing and failing, and failing.. by the time the Messiah comes into the picture, it's like everything comes together and the Tanach is finally gaining more overall meaning binding it together. To hear the word "Messiah" said by my teacher sounded like music to me. But then she wouldn't say it with the name "Jesus." The two were always separate. She talked through the meanings of the words "Messiah" and "Christos." The Anointed One. Still, she wouldn't say Jesus the CHRIST, or Jesus the MESSIAH. Because it would offend someone (don't ask me who), she said, it would be only "Jesus," a man who she called "one among many," and a man who she said was not as unique as we all thought. She was sorry for us, she said, because she remembered being so deeply in faith as a college student. She remembered being in that "deep faith" and hearing in a class just like ours, she said, about how Jesus wasn't the only prophet or the only miracle-worker, and how the Red Sea was really the Reed Sea, and how all those Old Testament stories were just oral traditions, nothing more than common folklore passed from generation to generation. She said she was sorry, because she remembered sitting where we were and being genuinely saddened to hear these things. The sadness was so profound in her voice that I couldn't think anything but to truly believe her.

Then she asked, "So, after these Jews started following Jesus, and after He died, what were they supposed to do? What were they supposed to do with the Law?" The classroom was silent for maybe thirty seconds (she doesn't like to answer questions for the classroom), and I raised my hand through the awkward silence wafting about the room. She smiled at me and said, "Cassie?" She likes me a lot, actually, despite knowing that I was a 3rd year Theology student who wasn't studying her sort of 'theology.' I don't know what came over me, because the words literally cartwheeled out of my mouth, something that doesn't usually happen when I talk in front of a group of people. I usually speak in a measured manner in order to keep my composure and keep myself from talking too quickly. But the words plopped right out.

"Jesus said that He came to fulfill the law, not abolish it. He was the only one who was perfect enough to fulfill it. The Law was there to show us that we couldn't keep it and all it's fifty bajillion little items of adherence. The whole Old Testament is full of the failures of the Jews, falling over and over again. The Law was to show that God's faithfulness stood the test of time even when the Jews' didn't. Christ came to save the Jews and everyone else from themselves and to show them that He, God, was the one and only personified Faithfulness and Righteousness. God incarnate and holy came in a form that we, the humans, could understand and see."

I don't know where they came from, or how I fit all that into intelligible sentences stuffed into that little paragraph, but somehow (THANKYOULORDFORTHREEYEARSOFTHEOLOGY!!!111!!!), I did. Of course, that's a paraphrase right there, but all in all it took me roughly half a minute, it seemed, and somehow it all came out with all those points included and without an "um" that I am able to recall. It was like God spoke through me. Maybe that's arrogant to say.. At least it sounds arrogant of me to say. God? Speak through me? God spoke through Moses, through Isaiah, through Hosea.. not through me. But He did, or I said what He wanted me to say. Something like that. He is so good, so righteous. I am presently overwhelmed by Him, in the midst of my current struggles to devote my time to Him. My time is measured every day and I overlook conscious time with Him so often. I think of Him, pray to Him throughout the day, but I so often don't get a chance to sit and read His Word. How could He speak through me?

My prof looked at me, surprised, perhaps by the fact that I'm not usually so verbose in class as she knows me to be when I talk to her after class, and she smiled again. She said she agreed with me, expanded on what I had said, briefly, and then plunged onward -

"So, we now can see, obviously, that Jesus wasn't a Christian. He was a Jew and what He really wanted was for the people to work harder at following the Law."

In some things, it seems, it is all too obvious to see the blindness of the eyes of those who are lost. And there is a blessedness in knowing that salvation is not through my hand of power... because I don't even have one.