OH SAY, CAN YOU SEE?

It is an old, a classic, and indeed even on occasion a Biblical saying that God is invisible. But maybe He fixed all that.

First of all, He sent His only-begotten Son among us in the form – indeed in the fleshly reality – of an ordinary bloke, Josh the carpenter from Slough. Who gradually became known to more an more people as Josh the Preacher, as Josh the Healer, as Josh the Holy Man, and finally as the Son of God. So in him, God had made Himself visible, touchable, talkable-to. (As a fine Canadian Jewish poet once said to me over dinner, “Come on, Roger, Jesus is my brother. But God??? My brother farts. Does God fart?” And I said, “Yup.”)

But then, He went a stage further. This same Jesus said, on several occasions, “Whatever you do to, or for, any of these people, you do to, or for, me.” The Samaritan did it for the traveller: he did it for Jesus. And Jesus is (the Son of) God. The second Person of the Trinity. So here is the new syllogism: Premise 1 – Whatever you do for a person in need, you do for Jesus. Premise 2 – Jesus is God. Conclusion – every human being, at least in the mode of need, is Jesus, i.e. (the Son of) God.

The mode of need is the key. On the lowest level, it means that those in the greatest need, those suffering most, have priority. The stockbroker down the street doesn’t need my fifty Euros: the old woman who can’t pay her electricity bill and shivers, does.

But there are other levels, and simultaneously. The stockbroker may be well off financially, but he may have just learned that he, or his beloved wife, has cancer. As he drives distractedly to work, in a dense fog of misery, he too is in the mode of need; he too, for you or me, is Jesus, i.e. (the Son of) God.

There are harder levels still. The stockbroker may be a shit. He may behave vilely to others, he may be odious politically, he may be a homophobic anti-Semite who insults Africans (or a gay African Jew who defends ISIS), he may beat his wife and cheat his clients. What made him that way? Is he beyond hope? Perhaps he is; perhaps he has built for his own soul the Hell it will spend eternity in. God (as we say) knows. But do we? Do we know for certain that there is not a corner of his miserable being that is in raging need-mode? If there is, that tiny corner of him is Jesus, i.e. (the Son of) God.

These are extrapolations, of course. But Jesus started it: he it was who originally made the equivalence. And in doing so, he invited us to make it also.

And he didn’t tell us at what level, if any, to stop. Look at his own behaviour. The look of infinite sadness he gave Judas as Judas got up from the dinner table and made for the door. The look of profound, if ironic, sympathy he gave Pontius Pilate, standing before him in a ridiculous bloodstained cape with a circle of thorns on his head. And the prayer he made for the bored, tired and depressed soldiers hammering nails through his hands and feet. (“Another day, another cross. Get me out of this horrible country. Get me out of the army.”) He doesn’t seem to have acknowledged limits.

An Internet meme I’ve shared says, “Every stranger you meet is going through a terrible battle you know nothing about.” That seems to sum it up. Paradoxically, the mode of need is what makes God visible. Every day. On the bus. In the shop. Waiting to be clothed, fed, helped, respected, loved. What a curious faith we Christians have.