Today is Good Friday and as I sit in backyard and let the California sun warm my face I reflect on the cross and the Christ that was nailed to it. I realize that I look at this cross in a completely new way because of one teacher who handed me a new truth...
About three weeks into my Christology class I began to suspect that I wasn't smart enough to be sitting in the room, on the other hand all my peers looked equally lost- so maybe I was in good company. I remember this night in particular because I had walked into class feeling totally overwhelmed. I wasn't sure I understood my own existence anymore, let alone Christ's. I sat in my seat, took out my notebook, and decided that I would just pretend to know what was going on.
My professor came in and began his lecture. He began to speak about Jesus. This wasn't new or unexpected- it was a Christology class after all, the point was to learn about who Christ was and is and what that identity means for the Church. But when he described Jesus- this man, this God I had heard about my whole life, Dr. Bantum handed me something new and something very unexpected. He began to speak about the human things Christ did while on earth. He said that Jesus didn't eat simply to provide an example that eating is good. He didn't pray so that Christians would know prayer is important. He wasn't baptized so that we would have precedence for the act. Christ embodied divinity and humanity. He was a man- Jewish, born into a carpenter's home, grown in a woman's womb. And he was God- holy, sacred, unknowable. When that divine human stepped into the baptismal waters, he changed the waters themselves. When the bread of supper touched his lips, the act of eating was shifted. When he sent whispered prayers to the Father, the routine of communication was transformed. Christ's body changed everything. A moment before the lecture I had been sitting in a classroom, confused and frustrated. Suddenly I was holding new truth and turning it over and over.
This morning I am turning an idea over in my mind again. I am thinking about Christ's death on a cross and wondering what kind of punctuation that cross was. I realize that his death wasn't simply a coma before the resurrection- it was a period. That divine man bled on wood and changed death forever. As he hung there, he shifted the cosmic understanding of finality. He breathlessly said, "It is finished." And yet, in some ways it had just begun.
This morning I sit with grief that is hard to explain and darkness that settles on my shoulders. I won't move too quickly to thoughts of Sunday with it's light and celebration because of a professor who showed me that the darkness has things to teach us as well. I leave you all with his words about Christ and encourage you to let yourself be overwhelmed by this act that we can't quite understand...
"In Jesus we are confronted with God enfleshed who encounters us with a humanity we can neither classify nor ignore. In this encounter we can no longer grasp Jesus as a means of enclosing ourselves against the possibilities of entrapment, but we begin to see the radical transformation Jesus' presence gives birth to. The mystery of Jesus' incarnation must consume us." Dr. Brian Bantum, Redeeming Mulatto
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