JESUS, IMMANENTLY HUMAN
I find my thoughts drifting toward Jesus again and do not find it surprising. As the year of the Logos continues, I find this occurring more and more. Recently, I've been considering his divinity, of his being The Word. The very first thought in the mind of God was to materialize, to embody, and to reveal himself within what would become creation at the Alpha moment. The universe was spoken into existence, spoken, and this leaves me with the impression that the eternal Christ is its creator. This may be what it means for the Christ to be the Son - from the Father, the seat of existence itself - to exist, create, directly interface within creation, and act as a bridge between creation and the Father.
I also think of his humanity and do so in ways that have escaped me in the past. Were he fully human, then he would be just like any one of us. When he was a baby, he had no idea who he was and had to learn it along the way - most likely from his earthly parents at a young age, but more and more through communion with his Father as he matured. Surely as the sun rises each day, he had his own distinct personality and identity forged by circumstance and his attempts to make his way in the world. Perhaps that identity involved ideas of being a conquering king and liberator of Israel, for that was the universal expectation of the Messiah in the world he knew.
All of this had to be handed over to his Father. He had to lose himself, hand over his will, and trust his Father would lead him where he needed to go. We like to think that Jesus had some sort of special knowledge we don't have access to, some leg up that made his destiny and identity clearer to him than what is possible for the rest of us, but I don't believe this. If he did anything a human cannot do or became anything a human cannot become, then he wasn't fully human. I believe deeply that he became what he was, fully honoring what it means to be human, and this makes the man all that more remarkable.
I do believe he had an unparalleled union with the Father, but not for one second do I think he had access to everything he was - to The Word, the eternal Christ manifesting the man. This is why him learning obedience through his own death actually has teeth - he didn't understand it himself, but trusted his Father's wisdom. Though he agonized over it for an entire night, even unto death, he gave himself to his Father's will and allowed the Romans to hang him on a cross. And as he hung there, he still did not understand, but cried out, "Why have you forsaken me?"
Though some might call me a heretic for casting Jesus as immanently human, I find within myself an inexpressible amount of admiration, adoration, and humility when I regard him as the one who blazed this narrowest way, in the darkness, and found within himself and all his humanity the capacity to surrender completely to God and embody the fundamental paradox undergirding life itself: that in order to find it, you must lose it.