Herbert ODriscoll - God With Us: The Companionship of Jesus in the Challenges of Life

GOD WITH US

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THE COMPANIONSHIP OF JESUS
IN THE CHALLENGES OF LIFE

Herbert ODriscoll

2002 Herbert ODriscoll

All rights reserved.

Published in the United Sates of America by Cowley Publications, a division of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any meansincluding photocopyingwithout the prior written permission of Cowley Publications, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

ODriscoll, Herbert.

God with us : the companionship of Jesus in the challenges of life / Herbert ODriscoll.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN: 978-1-56101-208-4

I. Christian life. II. Title.

Scripture quotations are taken from The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission.

Cover photograph: The cover image is Mystic Christ courtesy of and 1999 Fr. John Giuliani. Color reproductions of this image are available from Bridge Building Images: www.BridgeBuilding.com

Cover design: Jennifer Hopcroft

This book was printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper.

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If there is one thing that Christians can say with confidence in todays world, it is the age old statement: Jesus lives.

The evidence for this is remarkable, and all the more so for the number of people unaware of it. Books of every kind are being published about Jesus, by no means all of them in the world of religious publishing. Many people outside the church are fascinated by his life and teaching. The number of those who acknowledge him as Lord of their lives is exploding, especially outside Western culture in the worlds of Asia, Africa, and South America.

In Western culture itself, wary as it may be about any institutional form of Christian faith, there is a longing that is almost palpable. Where Jesus of Nazareth can be found to be addressing the realities of contemporary life, there is a wish to know more of him.

At the heart of Christian faith is the claim that, in Jesus of Nazareth, God lived a fully human life among us. In that human life he encountered the full spectrum of experience that each one of us experiences. There were those whom he loved and those who loved him. There was all the stress of a very public life. There were in abundance hopes and disappointments, moments of a sense of achievement and moments of a sense of failure. These things, and much more that we know from our own human journey, were known and felt in our Lords life. To know that we have Jesus as companion in our daily living can be immensely strengthening, especially in times of challenge and stress. My hope is that these pages will help to forge that companionship.

Speaking of companions makes me realize how much I owe to Robert Maclennan for his continued guidance and assistance through many manuscripts. He has for long helped to shape my hastily written prose, adding a trifle here, excising a little there. My manuscripts have been the better for his years of experience as an editor, and I thank him.

Since these reflections may sometimes be useful to those of us, clergy and lay, who speak to others in his name, scriptural references are provided in an Index at the back of the book.

HERBERT ODRISCOLL
Pentecost 2002

How do we identify the moment when something begins? When did we begin to know what we wanted to become in life? When did we begin to fall in love with someone? When did a certain movement in national life begin? When did the modern world begin?

When did Christianity begin? In one sense we can be very precise: it began when a child was born in Bethlehem. But did it? Or did it begin when a young woman said yes to a divine messenger who spoke to her deepest being? Did it begin outside time and history entirely, in the realm from which the messenger was sent? Each of the four gospel writers makes a different choice of what they consider the beginning. Mark opens with the appearance of John the Baptizer in the Judean wilderness. Matthew traces the line of a family back through no less than forty-two generations, before letting us meet the young virgin Mary in Nazareth. Luke starts by introducing us to the aging parents of John the Baptizer before the birth of their child. John the Evangelist begins by taking us on a journey to the heart of the universe and the beginning of time, where we see Jesus as the companion of the Creator, involved in the process of the creation of the universe.

This small book attempts to link events in the gospels with events in our daily lives, to find points of similarity and messages of hope. Those gospel events are far larger than our daily lives and are capable of endless meanings not plumbed in these few pages. But we who read the gospels are entitled to ask that they speak to the joys and sorrows and challenges of our human experience.

There was a prelude to the beginning of the life of Jesus, just as there was to our own lives. His mother became conscious of the visitation of a messenger. She went through the experience of giving birth in difficult circumstances. She experienced not only the crises of bringing up a child but also fear and danger from a tyrannical regime. Those circumstances formed Jesus, as our parents and our childhood formed us. They were a prelude to the kind of human being he became and the choices he eventually made in his lifechoices that were made at dreadful cost, but that have glorified and inspired our humanity for ever.

1

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgins name was Mary. And he came to her and said, Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you. But she was much perplexed by his words, and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, Do not be afraid Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.