To save man, He became one

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

My friend, a priest, tells this tale at Christmas. It is, after all, set on a December day. But I think it's a Good Friday story, too. It goes like this: A farmer lives with his wife and children somewhere off the beaten path. Picture Robert Frost country, a house, a field, a barn. It is Christmas Eve and the wife and two children are dressed for church. "Come with us," the wife says to her husband as he walks her to the car. He shakes his head. He's not a believer. "I'll see you when you get back," he replies.

The man goes inside, pours some coffee, opens the newspaper. And then it starts to snow.

It's an unexpected storm with wild winds and snow like sleet. The farmer grabs his coat and heads to the barn. He's calming the animals when he first hears it, a thumping that has nothing to do with the howling wind. He looks up and sees a flock of birds flying into the window pane above the loft, trying to get inside. The farmer races outside and calls to the birds. He whistles. He stomps his feet. He shouts. He flaps his arms like a bird and runs around pretending to fly into the barn through the door. But the birds ignore him and keep hurling themselves one by one against the glass.

If only I were one of them, I could lead them inside, the farmer thinks. I could save them. And in thinking this, the farmer understands. This is why God became man.

A simple analogy, but effective. It was a light bulb moment for me. The Jesus of my youth was like the farmer pretending, God playing man, Charlton Heston playing Moses. Like a man with a script, Jesus read the lines and fulfilled prophecy. He was denied, betrayed, scourged and crucified but since Jesus was son of God, not mere man, his suffering seemed more set up than set upon, more insult than hurt, because at any moment he could make the suffering end. He could say: "OK, the gig's up. I'm not doing this any more." And rain disaster upon the people who persecuted him.

I never really got it, that becoming man meant becoming, not pretending to become. That Jesus, unlike Heston, couldn't step out of his role at the end of the day and unlike Superman, couldn't give up his powers one moment, then want them back the next, or we birds would be thrashing against a closed window until kingdom come.

Yet, imagine a man agreeing to live and die as a bird to save a flock of fowl. Would the farmer really have done this? No doubt he wasn't thinking long-term bird status. He was simply wishing he could become a bird for a moment. But that wouldn't have worked. He had to be a bird, to live their lives to know and understand what a bird knows and understands, to suffer as they did, to earn their trust so that not just in the best of times, but in the worst of times, they would follow him.

"Be not afraid. I go before you always, come follow me and I will give you rest." These simple words to a simple hymn just about sum it up. Be not afraid. And yet Jesus was. The most human moments of Jesus' humanity were when he wept in the garden at Gethsemane, when he prayed for a different ending to his life, begging for strength but for an out, too, because that's what human beings do. "Father, my father! All things are possible for you. Take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet not what I want, but what you want" (Mark 14:36). Three separate times he sunk to his knees and implored his father for help. "In great anguish, he prayed even more fervently: His sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground" (Luke 22:44). Being human means to be afraid, to doubt, to lose faith, to ask, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" (Mark 15:34), yet to somehow endure.

As children we learn that Jesus died for us. But that's only part of the story. Equally important, perhaps even more important, is that he lived for us, too.