Jesus: What to expect

This Sunday I’ve been invited to speak on the subject of Jesus’ humanity. (someone else covered the subject of his divinity).

So how human was Jesus?

The answer isn’t difficult. In my culture people don’t have trouble believing Jesus was fully human. It’s the bit about him also being fully God  that people outside the church struggle with.

But what does Jesus being fully human mean and why does it matter?

It’s a good question for Advent so I’ll let you wait for a few of my thoughts on that.

As part of my presentation I’ll be asking people to simply reflect on some of the milestones in a child’s life and to discuss what the first year of Jesus life might have been like. After all the events surrounding his birth I wonder what Mary and Joseph were expecting? How ‘normal’ did they think their child would be? How much like their own childhoods did they think his would be?

Later writers came up with some ‘interesting’ stories based on their ideas of what a child who was God must have been like, and there was a recent movie, ‘Young Messiah‘ that weaved some some of those in along with some fresh imagination.

It’s not a film I’ve seen and I’m sure it gets quite a few things wrong. But the trailer helps raise some good question.

The truth is we don’t know a lot about what it was like growing up for Jesus or for his parents. Born under an oppressive regime, in a temporary shelter, Jesus was fairly soon a refugee carried by his parents to a foreign land.

Sadly too many people this year know what that can be like.