Jesus was as hidden to his contemporaries as he seems to us today. Many Christians and others of good will, regardless of their faith or lack of it, feel that if they had been able to walk the hills of Galilee with Jesus, to see and hear him, they would be able to decide for themselves.
I doubt it. Being there might not have made a difference at all.
Look at that motley crew of disciples, a not very impressive lot who walked, talked, ate and lived with Jesus of Nazareth. They trudged around those rough hills and scorching deserts with him for the best part of two years and yet, as late as the time of his death, they failed to grasp the greatness. One of the most poignant aspects of Jesus’ final hours is the complete abandonment he suffered: he was truly alone at the end.
The realization of Jesus’ significance began to dawn on his friends only gradually, after the first Easter. By virtue of a series of remarkable experiences, they came to see that the fullest truth about the man had been hidden during his life. And they were convinced that he was not bound by death—instead, they proclaimed that he had entered into a completely different mode of existence, a totally new life despite the fact that he was now invisible.
Jesus, for the first Christians, was still hidden, but paradoxically he had become more present and more accessible than ever.
The original witnesses to Jesus and the writers about him did not set out to provide; a historical biography. For them, he was not a figure of history but a living one, very much present and real. However invisibly and mysteriously, he was approaching them and they were meeting him in the specificity of their lives and situations.
The Gospels, therefore, although completed a half-century after the original events, were not documents of the past, for the past. They were written for people in critical new situations, people trying to find the meaning of faith, coping with pain and with political and social ostracism, striving despite their own foolishness and lack of clarity, grappling with their divisions and self-interests.
The Gospels responded to community needs and corresponded to their experiences of the Risen Jesus—the one believed and preached, the same person who had once lived and died in the flesh and was now alive forever.
God still remains, it so often seems, the hidden one; and Jesus, whatever one thinks of him, also was and remains the hidden one. But it is in his new life—and in the new life he imparts—that he is alive and present, and that he offers meaning where there is only muddle.
I would simply like to propose that the humility and hiddenness of Jesus, then as now, may be the key to understanding the deepest meaning of his new life. And mine, and yours.
~Adapted from Donald Spoto, The Hidden Jesus: A New Life
