Chapter 5: starting with Jesus the man, not Jesus the son of God

Well, in chapter 5 (yes, you did read that correctly--this is about ALL of chapter 5 in one go! of course there was a nap in the middle and i don't want to go into the stack of oreos that contributed to this effort but i did manage an entire chapter in one sitting!). Anyway, before we begin, a few caveats:

1. I'm still confused
2. I'm going to jump right to the heart of the matter and skip Wright's sometimes compelling and sometimes confusing exposition. Just wanted to warn you, some of it might feel like it's coming out of nowhere. Read the book yourself if you care.
3. This seems like a long entry, but I promise it's worth a skim! 
   

The basic difference between Wright and 5th grade Sunday School is that at church we always started out with Jesus = God (oh, this chapter is called "Jesus and God," by the way. we're addressing the question, Did Jesus realize he was God? Did he claim to be God? etc."). Wright starts from the Jesus was a man position: Jesus was, first and foremost, a Jewish man growing up in 1st century Galilee.

And where do you go, if you start with Jesus is a man instead of Jesus was God? First, an interesting point: the "Son of God" was a way to refer to the Messiah and (as mentioned before), the Messiah was not necessarily expected to be divine. 

Now, (this is when i skip all the explanation--and some of it is very interesting--and go right to the crux, which is a bit confusing): Wright talks about Jesus knowing his vocation in the way that I might know I am 'called' to love my roommates and live in community, and that Jesus probably didn't say to himself, "I am God in the body of a man," he said instead, "I am here to do God's work, work that can only be done by God and not by a man."

This is actually how he says it:

I do not think Jesus "knew he was God" in the same sense that one knows one is hungry or thirsty, tall or short. It was not a mathematical knowledge, like knowing that two and two make four; nor was it straightforwardly observational knowledge, like knowing that there is a bird on the fence outside my room because I can see and hear it. It was more like the knowledge that I have that I am loved by my family and closest friends; like the knowledge that I have that sunrise over the sea is awesome and beautiful; like that knowledge of the musician not only of what the composer intended but of how precisely to perform the piece in exactly that way--a knowledge most securely possessed, of course, when the performer is also the composer. It was, in short, the knowledge that characterizes vocation. As I have put it elsewhere, "As part of his human vocation, grasped in faith, sustained in prayer, tested in confrontation, agonized over in further prayer and doubt and implemented in action, he believed he had to do and be, for Israel and the world, that which according to Scripture only YHWH himself could do and be." (122, emphasis mine)

Clearer? Foggier? Wright doesn't even obliquely address the question of the virgin birth, so I can't tell you what he thinks about that, and I don't know how concrete this sense of vocation would be. Wright confirms that Jesus having a sense of vocation is "by no means the same thing as Jesus having the sort of 'supernatural' awareness of himself... that is often envisaged.." (122). It looks like Wright thinks Jesus communicated with God in much the same ways we can communicate with him--not with the simplicity of conversation that permeates the language we sometimes use to describe prayer, but with the same struggle and uncertainty and surprising, secret knowing that characterizes my Christian experience. Jesus definitely demonstrated a greater sense of purpose that I have found in my own life--then again, I'm only 26! By Jesus's timetable, I've still got 4 years for my "sense of vocation" to blossom!


Not sure what I think about this--it seems to run counter to all I've been told about who Jesus was/is--but then, very little of what I've heard about Jesus speaks to his experience as a person; he is always a superhuman character.
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On a different note, what do you think about this way of knowing one's vocation? What do you know of your vocation in this sense--not in terms of what to do with your life, but more on the how to live side of things?