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Father Paul Drakos
"We Never Saw Anything Like This!"
Second Sunday of Lent.
(Mark 2:1-J2.)
When the poor Philippine peasants walked through Marcos' palace after his downfall and saw the 5,400 pairs of shoes his wife had left behind, they said, "We never saw anything like this!"
When the people in today's Gospel lesson witnessed the miracle of Jesus healing the paralytic, they were amazed and said, "We never saw anything like this!"
When the officers whom the Pharisees had sent to arrest Jesus came back empty-handed, they were asked why they had not arrested the Nazarene. They replied, "No man ever spoke like this man"
Never before had the world seen anyone like Christ. Never before had the world heard anyone like Christ.
What is it that is so unique about Christ that people said of Him, "We never saw anything like this.?"
First, there is Jesus' conception of God. It is far above the conception of God that any other religion has ever held. According to the ancient Greeks, man was not the child of the gods; he was rather a victim of the gods.
Jesus, on the other hand, taught us to pray "Our Father . .
Through Jesus, God the law-giver became God the Father; God the judge became God the lover of the souls of men; God the unapproachable deity became Emmanuel, God with us.
When we set this idea of God as the Father, to Whom we may go with the same confidence and trust as a child goes to his earthly father, beside the Jewish idea of the unapproachable God of the Holy of Holies, and beside the Greek idea of the grudging gods, we see that what Jesus had to say about God as Father was unique. Truly, "We never saw anything like this."
The second distinctive fact of Christianity is Christ Himself. In Jesus we see God. "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself," said Paul. "He who sees me sees the Father," said Jesus. If we want to know the nature of God, we turn to the Person of Jesus. The message of Christianity is not a formula, not a code, not a set of rules, not a principle; it is a Person: Jesus. He is our moral authority, our standard, our principle, our Lord, our Master. Jesus never said, "I'll show you the way," as Confucius did. He said, "Jam the way." Jesus never said, "I'll teach you the truth," as Buddha did. He said, "I am the truth." Jesus never said, "I'll give you the life," as Mohammed did. He said, "I am the life."
Paul says in Col. 2:9 that the "pleroma" of God dwelt in Christ bodily. The Greek word "pleroma" here means the sum total of all that is in God. Paul meant that in Christ there dwelt the totality of the wisdom, the power and the love of God. And because of that, Jesus is inexhaustible. We may go to Him with any need and find that need supplied. We may go to Him with any ideal and find that ideal realized.
In one of Lewis Carroll's fantasies, a Lock ran around con-tinually, feverishly hunting for something. Someone asked, "What is the matter? ""I'm seeking," said the Lock, "for someone to unlock me." This is every person's need: someone to unlock us, to release the power of love, to open the prison doors of sin, to reach up and become "partakers of divine nature." Christ is the key to all of this.
In Christ, the person in love with beauty will find the key to supreme beauty. In Christ, the person for whom life is the search for knowledge will find the key to supreme knowledge. In Christ, the person who feels that he cannot cope with life will find the key to life. In Christ, the person who is tormented by sin will find the key to forgiveness. "In Him (Jesus) dwelleth the whole fulness of the God-head bodily." This is what is truly unique about Christ. This is why the people in today's Gospel, who witnessed His miracle of healing the paralytic, were moved to say, "We never saw anything like this!"
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