‘Where does he get it from?’ they asked. They were baffled – they being the wiseacres in Jesus’ home town. It was, of course, against the odds that this irregular persuader should prove to be so capable an exponent of novel ideas. How could it be so? He had not been through the usual hoops. He had not come across academic rigour. He was no more than an amateur. But he was a heavyweight amateur. He had the arguments at his finger-tips. Had he just brought it all forth out of his head, rather as – we might say – Coleridge had conjured astonishing works of the imagination with a little help from laudanum?
Scepticism was reasonable. There were quacks and weirdoes enough in the world to make one wary of novelties. Apollonius of Tyana was a good example. A globe-trotter, he had accumulated knowledge from out-of-the-way mystics and speculators in eastern countries and had built up a reputation as a miracle-worker that put him on a level with Jesus in the estimation of many. There was even talk of his resurrection.
We, too, should understand, if we do not share, the presence and esteem in which personalities like Apollonius were held. The throng of religious teachers and demagogues was one of the inescapable features of the ancient world. Jesus warned of this (Mark 13.21-23). It was plainly a threat to his followers in the early Church as the letter of Jude indicates.
This mysterious capacity for insight, for new perspectives on the human scene, is part of the reason why Jesus and the accounts of him have such a hold on one generation after another. There was a light shining out of his life that was beyond human understanding. He was exceptional. He was larger than life. We should beware of expecting a brief word in the creed to explain it all. For our part we have to do justice to this facet of his character and confess our own incapacity. It stretches our faculties to take the measure of the person in ordinary, everyday, human terms.
If he was indeed the Son of God, that is not altogether surprising.
‘BEFORE THE WORLD CHANGED’
‘In early 2020, before the world changed,’ Melanie Rowley became interested in training to be a Reader in the two parish churches of Mountsorrel, Leicestershire. She tells, in the current parish magazine, how she has embarked on a three-term ‘Journey in Faith’ course. The Vicar is Colin Resch.
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