Peasant nuisance nobody

It hits me about a week before Christmas... I listen not only to my wonderful CDs (cathedral choirs, classical gems, renaissance and mediaeval) for my daily dose of Christmas music, but to the 'popular' genre as well. It must be some seasonal sentimentality, but today I nearly wept at "Baby Jesu, pa-rum-pa-pum-pum - I am a poor boy too... I have no gift to bring that's fit to give a king..." (Musician that I am, it did sadden me that the cat broke the little drummer boy my mother made at ceramics.)

I suppose it has something to do with being a Christmas baby (born the feast of John the Evangelist), and with hovering at the half-century mark, but, now and then, I feel as if my life has been a failure. I was a very gifted young woman, with a number of pronounced talents, and enough diplomae to paper a wall. Had I ever known that I would never sing later, that I'd spend twenty-one miserable years in business management, that my writing talent would never be used... well, let us just say that I would have fizzled out thirty years ago.

I had many advantages for one from a working class family, largely because of my dad's dedication, responsibility and industry. But the scholarship girl's luck sometimes runs out once the well-loved diplomae are accumulated. The well is dry - one must find work wherever it is available. Luckily, at 25 one thinks this must be temporary...

No, this is not a post to indulge pure self-pity, though I know I've done quite a job of that today. Francis of Assisi often spoke of Jesus' poverty - and spun vivid pictures of a poor family with multiple woes. In recent years, since I have been studying the scriptures in ever more depth, I smile at how very unrealistic many mental pictures of Jesus of Nazareth were.

John Dominic Crossan is no favourite of mine, to be sure, and I disagree with nearly everything he says. (I have to admit I rather enjoy him - he reminds me of a sly rogue, and the man does have quite a mind... that does not mean I recommend his works.) Yet I must admit that he was spot on, in discussing Jesus' trial and death, in commenting that this Galilean was a 'peasant, nuisance nobody.' By wordly standards, that is quite true.

I'm thinking of the stories we heard in school - and even of the 'scriptural epic' films produced in my youth, which Monty Python later would spoof so brilliantly. One would have received the impression that Jesus walked the earth surrounded by people who resembled the pictures on soppy greeting cards, the lot of them in awe of his every word. (I've said it before, but it merits repetition. We seemed to think that holiness would leave everyone loving the holy, yet forgot that perfectly natural circumstances were the cause of Jesus' crucifixion. I suppose we thought that he'd only gone to the cross because God willed this.) I'm the more impressed, today, that the Church ever began - and know (and this with full acknowledgement of Jesus' divinity!) it only could have been because of the resurrection and Holy Spirit.

There were many miracle workers, itinerant preachers, and undoubtedly quite remarkable, devout Jews in first century Palestine. Jesus was distinguished mainly for applying words about God to himself. His followers were few enough, and he was not a man of great learning (though indeed of brilliance) or achievement. Perhaps he was a good carpenter, but it appears he spent his adult life, or at least the time of his ministry, dependent on the good will of others.

I believe it was scripture scholar Raymond E. Brown who commented, again aptly, that most of us accept only as much of Jesus' humanity as we wish. Somehow, we seem to think we are insulting his divinity if we admit just how very human he was. I sometimes can all but feel the sense of futility he must have endured at times. ( Howard Marshall notes how Luke’s narrative of the Last Supper is “impregnated with apostasy, self-seeking, denial, and betrayal – attendance does not transport the disciples to Paradise or lift them out of trial and temptation. The grim narrative heightens Jesus’ self-giving, and the promise that, through his death, salvation and the heavenly banquet are offered to weak, fickle disciples.” And what followed that night is not anything upon which I'm sure the apostles later cared to dwell.)

To speak of myself and Jesus in the same breath seems close to blasphemous - but "I am a poor boy, too. I have no gift to bring." Perhaps I can lift myself out of my sense of failure a bit if I remember that this 'peasant, nuisance nobody' not only was the Son of God but accepted the lot of his life on earth in all particulars.

Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another obscure village. He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty, and then for three years He was an itinerant preacher.

He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never owned a home. He never set foot inside a big city. He never travelled two hundred miles from the place where He was born. He had no credentials but Himself.

While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against Him. His friends ran away. One of them denied Him. He was turned over to His enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed upon a cross between two thieves.

His executioners gambled for the only piece of property He had on earth while He was dying -- and that was His coat. When He was dead, He was taken down and laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.

Nineteen wide centuries have come and gone and today He is the centerpiece of the human race and the leader of progress. I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, and all the navies that ever were built, and all the parliaments that ever sat, and all the kings that ever reigned, put together have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as that One Solitary Life.

by James A. Francis