SAUCIER — “Show us the Father”

Unlike the other three gospels, the Gospel of John has no narrative of the Baptism of Jesus.

In the first scene of the gospel after the prologue, John the Baptist is accosted by an investigative committee from Jerusalem, suspicious of his messiah status.

The Baptist quickly declares, “I am not the Christ.”

The next day, seeing Jesus approaching, John recalls the Baptism and confesses, “Now I have seen and testified that he is the Son of God.”

Everything in the following 20 chapters of John would be an explanation of and a witness to this core belief that Jesus is God.

Christians, by definition, have echoed the Baptist’s words across the centuries. Worship services, from Catholic to Evangelical, proclaim this weekly in sermon and creed.

We who profess to be Christian believe that Jesus is God. The higher hurdle for many, though, is to flip the equation and realize that God is Jesus.

We tend to separate the two. 

Jesus is the good guy, the Savior, the compassionate one, the loving older brother who we want to emulate. 

Jesus is the one with whom we seek a personal relationship.

But in that desire, we forget that as the Son of God, Jesus is the manifestation of the Father, the revelation of who God is.

So, God, as Jesus, is asking us to love our neighbor, to care for strangers, to restore relationships, and to forgive “seventy times seven.”

But this isn’t the God that we often hear invoked in the public square. This is one who takes sides, who uplifts his team and condemns the other. This is a God of righteousness and retribution, who has little regard for the wrong or the wronged. 

We see instances of this God in the Old Testament, a vengeful God calling for an “eye for an eye,” the merciless slaughter of enemies, the burning of Sodom and the flooding of the world.

But would the God who is Jesus do such horrible things?

If God is Jesus, we have to see everything in the Old Testament through the eyes of the New. We must treat it as stories of a people’s faithful struggle to understand the nature of their God.

And as an insight into our own struggles today.

We can’t have a saving, forgiving Jesus for our personal lives and an unrelenting God to control and judge the lives of others.

If Jesus is God and God is Jesus, it can’t work that way.