Identifying Jesus

Still thinking about getting to know my heart, cultivating it, keeping tabs on the issues of my soul. It’s not easy for me. My heart seems a fickle, inscrutable thing that may lead me down a risky path only to stop at its precipitous end, peel off a mask and declare, “I was only joking. You are not who you thought you were!”

Jesus must not have been like that. He must have been as confident in the mettle of his heart as he was in the Father’s. I’ve often wondered how he gained such confidence. Just from the still, small voice in his private prayer?

Brennan Manning wondered the same thing…

“I believe that at some point in his human journey Jesus was seized by the power of a great affection and experienced the love of his Father in a way that burst all previous boundaries of understanding. It may have happened during his hidden years in Nazareth (sometime between the ages of twenty and thirty before he began his public ministry). Throughout the equivalent of his high school and college and post-graduate years, Jesus prayerfully ponders his relationship with his Father. Finally the day arrives when Jesus announces to his mother that he has to leave Nazareth. The intimacy of trust and love for God has become decisive enough to call Jesus away from home. He must follow his own inner light and be where the Father is for him.”

I don’t know if I agree entirely. If Brennan is postulating that Jesus experienced some extraordinary measure of grace or an avenue or experience with the Father that defined his person and heart and mission with some extra measure of certainty, I don’t want to buy it. After all, isn’t Jesus even more impressive if he went on with such great courage and faith as to give his life in torture without an iron-clad, etched-in-stone, videotaped-for-replay-and-reassurance declaration that he was a member of the Trinity?

But I guess he did have those kinds of experiences – his transfiguration and baptism. Brennan continues:

“At about age thirty Jesus sets out for the River Jordan to meet with the Baptist. John is bluntly calling the Jewish community to repentance and arousing the first stirrings of conversion. Jesus gets in line. His behavior reveals the sense of identity and mission that has been growing within him. John reluctantly confers baptism and Jesus identifies with the brotherhood of sin. ‘He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf’ (2 Cor. 5:21)

“Then it happens! Whatever the external manifestations were, the baptism of Jesus Christ in the River Jordan was an awesome personal experience. The heavens are split, the Spirit descends in the form of a dove, and Jesus hears the words, ‘You are my Son, my Beloved, on you my favor rests.’ What an earthquake in the human soul of Jesus! The heavenly voice confirms and fulfils thirty years of search and growth in Nazareth. It ratifies his reply to his mother in the temple at age twelve: ‘Don’t you know I must always be where my Father is?’ In this decisive experience at the Jordan Jesus learns that he is Son-Servant-Beloved of his Father. The Father speaks the word that confirms Jesus as the Christ: ‘You are my dear, beloved Son,’ a clear, core identity experience filling Jesus with a profound sense of his person and his mission.”

Is the Jordan where Jesus “learned” those things about himself? Was he going on hunches before then? Can I go on hunches? Has God given me such defining experiences (sans the dove and voice) but I have been too dull to notice? And even if I had such an experience, would I etch it in my heart forever? Would it fade over time or would it take deep root and direct my paths every day until I met a glorious, sacrificial end? Would it take daily or weekly or monthly attention – revisiting the identity God gave me – in order to stay pole-straight?

Just wondering…