Making sense of Jesus

Jesus says in Matthew 13:14-17;

"In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:
'You will be ever hearing but never understanding;
you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.
For this people's heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.'

But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it."

Jesus' life and teaching was an assault on the senses. The senses needed to be assaulted before they could be healed and renewed. And this is just what Jesus came to do, to make new that which had become old and to uncover that which had been covered. Jesus came to give us new eyes and ears. Physical eyes, yes, but way more than just physical eyes. Jesus came that we might see the world in a completely different way. The physical healings always pointed to something greater, that the Kingdom of God had come near in Jesus. In other words, God's reality was 'here and now'.

He came carrying this message;

"'The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.'" (Mark 4.18-19)

Jesus identifies the core of his life and work to be the bringing of freedom to people in captivity and the recovery of sight to those who are blind. But we're all blind until someone shows us how to see. The real meaning of the fall story in Genesis is that there is a blindness at the core of who we are as humans which has been there from the beginning (Dawkins take note -it's not a science textbook!). Something fundamental has gone wrong with humanity and it is this that Jesus comes to restore. He comes to mend this dislocation between us and God, by being both us and God.

When we enter into a relationship with him we find that our sight begins to come back to us. We should find that we have love and compassion for others, the like of which we could never have previously imagined. We should love nature and art more than ever too, as we find God in and through his creation. The idea is that we then are drawn into the kind of life that Jesus lived. We take on his mantle and spend ourselves in releasing the prisoners and bringing recovery of sight to the blind.

Now that's what I call good news!