THE REALITY OF HUMAN EXISTENCE.

Byline: Rev Tom Cant

We have meditated on Jesus Christ of Easter.

In Jesus we find the reality of our human existence and God's holy existence, the reality of human nature and divine nature. We can only understand the life and ministry of Jesus in the light of Easter.

The Cross and EmptiedTomb shape Jesus'life.

First, Jesus'birth, next his teaching, and finally Jesus'entire ministry. Only in this way can we understand the significance of Jesus Christ, and articulate the dynamic message of the Christian gospel.

We have allowed the gospel to be emptied of its divine dimension, and its challenge to be blunted.

As PT Forsyth rightly protests, ''Our very Christmas becomes the festival of babyhood, Good Friday the worship of grief, and Easter of (nature's) spring and renewal instead of (God's) regeneration' ('Cruciality of the Cross'p 30-31) Our towns and cities are littered with cardboard boxes.Yet these discarded containers become the shelter for homeless people.The cardboard box is a symbol of homelessness.

We have softened Bethlehem's birth of Jesus Christ. But we need to describe its harsh reality.When God entered into human nature and assumed our nature within himself God dwelt in the cardboard box of human existence.

That does not refer to the wretched surroundings of Bethlehem's stable, rather to the pitiful state of human nature.

God's divine existence in human nature is as low as dwelling in a cardboard box.

Transferred to our modern scene the divine presence of God is born in the STARVEDYEMINI child, the brutalised woman, and the sick-unto-death neglected man.

God in the streets, that is what Jesus means.When Jesus spoke with people they understood his language but they listened to God. When Jesus healed, their bodies were cured by the divine power of God.

When Jesus forgave sins their human sins were erased in heaven.When Jesus taught people understood because he spoke in their language.

When Jesus was born a star appeared in the sky but a Cross appeared on earth.

When Jesus was born, the human family who walked in darkness saw a great light, a light streaming from the Emptied Tomb of death.The shape of Easter was fashioned at Christmas.The promise of Christmas was completed at Easter. Salvation was born at Bethlehem and grew up in Nazareth. This Christian message the church must proclaim and society must believe.

Often, when I care for a family where some terrible event has occurred, the family ask,'Why did God allow this to happen?'God did not'allow'it, illness and sickness are part of our human existence.

Remember the Christmas message about our Emmanuel God. God is in that sick room or funeral parlour.

Remember the deep hymn,'In every pang that rends the heart/ the man of sorrows has a part/ he sympathises with our grief/ and to the sufferer sends relief.

That means God is in the frame of the sickly child, the dying young person and the grieving family.

God is there in their nature, their feelings and grief just as much as the holy God was truly in Jesus. God inspires men and women to share care, show kindness offer support, relieve distress, through their human qualities of character and personality now filled with God's grace.

That is why we are Christians. It is to show that the entire life of Jesus from Bethlehem to Calvary and the EmptiedTomb was the plan and purpose of God for our salvation.

'At the right time God sent his Son, born of woman, born under the law to redeem those under the law that we might receive adoption as children of God' (Galatians 4. 4-5)

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Publication:	Paisley Daily Express (Paisley, Scotland)
Date:	Mar 23, 2019
Words:	609
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