Fr. Shay Cullen » Who Is Jesus of Nazareth?

By Fr. Shay Cullen

It is time to see how Jesus of Nazareth, the greatest Jew ever, the prophet, leader, champion of the poor and the outcast, was a messiah for all of us. He gave us the values that can change the world and turn it away from selfishness, sin, brutality, and evil and transform it to a world of justice, respect and love. If only we could understand him and his mission, accept it wholeheartedly and do all to make it a reality what a different world we would have. Did Jesus preach a Utopia? An impossible dream? Is Christmas just a fairly tale?

He was born into poverty, grew up surrounded by it and later proclaimed that the new world order would be according to the plan of God and not by the plan of an elite that rule by the perverted and unjust rule of a greedy powerful minority. Jesus said that all who would repent would be forgiven and brought into the embrace of God the Father, like in the story of the prodigal son in the Gospel of St. Luke. Like the repentant man Zachaeous who promised Jesus he would repay four times what he stole. So too the corrupt traders and politicians would be inspired to change and make restitution of what they stole from the poor of the world. The good and holiest would be advised to share their wealth, because all goods of this world belong to God and thus to all.

The dream of Gods kingdom ruling on earth would have the rule of just laws that share the wealth of society equally, all would be as brother and sister. We would be one with God through friendship with Jesus. That is the path to salvation. Blessed are the poor, he said, for them is the kingdom. Blessed are those who hunger for justice they shall have their fill. He said. The captives were to be set free, compassion was to be rule of the land and debts were to be forgiven. It was revolutionary, the poor, the sick and outcast were delighted. Everyone with two sets of clothes, with surplus goods with more than they needed, we’re going to share with their hungry and threadbare neighbour. The deprived neighbours were delighted too to hear this Good News.

The employers were going to change and give fair wages. They were going to pay according to the needs of the workers not what the rich employer decided he was going to give. The rich rulers and landowners among the ruling elite in Jerusalem had many fine cloaks and vast lands were not amused, in fact they were terrified at these revolutionary ideas and teaching. All this coming from the son of an uneducated carpenter, conceived to an unmarried mother, then born in a cave and grew up with the audacity to claim he walked with God whom he called his loving papa. Such nonsense, they said. It’s heresy and his claims of intimacy with God bordered on blasphemy.

They being the rulers and teachers in Israel knew that God was a fearful and vengeful God who punished the sinners with disease, sickness and suffering. The sinners were inevitably - the poor. If the poor man was known to have lived an exemplary life and was disabled and then blame it on his parents they said. The religious rulers in the high temple in the city of God had no theology of forgiveness, compassion and spiritual transformation. Better to gather the stones and inflict the death penalty.

This Jesus of Nazareth was to them an itinerant preacher, born in poverty and having no connections, property, or illustrious family, was not even qualified to preach and teach. He held dangerous views and teachings, they said. He was a threat to their way of life… “What is this Kingdom of God?” They asked… didn’t they have one already in the temple, and they were the rulers in God’s name, no need for a kingdom of God. No need for him to be born, no need for Christmas…and that is how it seems these days… We have to help them see that the world very much needs the answers given by Jesus from the day he was born.