(Easter Sunday, 1998: This homily was given on April 12, 1998, at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I. by Fr. Raymond Suriani. Read Acts 10: 34, 37-43; John 20: 1-9.)

"Jesus Christ: Who is he?"

The other day I heard about an incredible archaeological discovery: apparently researchers have recently stumbled upon a copy of the Jerusalem Gazette, dated Easter Sunday, 35 AD. And in this particular newspaper (or rather newspapyrus), they’ve been fortunate enough to find the transcript of a series of personal interviews—personal interviews with men and women who actually lived at the time of Jesus! The interviewer was the well-known and highly-respected first-century journalist, Barbara Wawastein. It seems that Peter, John and the other followers of Jesus had been causing quite a stir in Palestine since the year 33—claiming that Jesus was the Son of God, risen from the dead, and equal in power and majesty to God the Father. So the editors of the Jerusalem Gazette decided to send Barbara Wawastein out to research the story. In the course of her investigation, Barbara decided to track down some of the people who had actually known Jesus during his earthly life and ministry, in order to find out what they thought of this man who was being hailed as the Son of God. And--much to her credit—she went right to he heart of the matter: in her interviews with these men and women she only asked one question: "Who was he? In your view, who was this man they called ‘Jesus’?"

The first person she met up with in her travels was Larry Leper. She found him in Jericho. Larry, it must be said, really surprised Barbara. Since he had been completely healed of his leprosy by Jesus five years earlier, Barbara figured that Larry would definitely be on Jesus’ side. But he wasn’t. Here’s what he said:

"Barbara, I must admit—at first I was impressed. The man could definitely hold your attention. When he spoke, people listened—I listened! And he did some pretty spectacular things—no doubt about it! I’m living proof of that! Do you know that half my arm was eaten away before he worked his magic on me five years ago? Because that’s all it was—a bit of magic. At first I thought it was God at work, but later on, when public opinion changed, I realized that it couldn’t have been divine power that made me well. Why would the Son of God allow himself to suffer in that way? If he was really anointed with the power of God, he would have destroyed his enemies and taken control of our nation. Sorry to disappoint you, Barbara, but to me he was just a crazy magician—nothing more."

Barbara left Jericho and journeyed to Nazareth, the town where Jesus had lived the first thirty years of his earthly life. There she ran into Nancy Nazorean, who walked with a limp. Nancy also surprised the reporter. She said, "Barbara, I’m proud to say that I never believed in him. I couldn’t accept the outlandish stories people were telling: how he healed sick people, expelled demons and raised the dead. Why--I knew him from the time he was a kid! He grew up down the street from me. I saw his mother in the market every day; his father was just an ordinary carpenter. And he never did anything miraculous for me or my family! Oh yes, he came to Nazareth once and spoke to us during his so-called ‘ministry’. And I went to see him—hoping I would get my hip healed. But, as you can see, Barbara, I’m still limping! He left town shortly afterward, saying that he couldn’t work many miracles here because we didn’t have any faith in him. Well, what did he expect? To us, he was too ordinary—just another face in the crowd. He certainly was not God’s Son!"

Barbara then took her investigation to Jerusalem. She wanted a slightly different perspective of Jesus, so she decided to try to get an interview with Pontius Pilate—no small task for a Jewish woman in the first century. Pilate finally agreed to see her for a few minutes. He was not very cordial, but he did make this statement: "At first, I thought this Jesus was simply misunderstood--so I tried to help him. But then he said he was a king—at least, I think that’s what he said. Granted, he didn’t look like much of a king to me, but I have a boss in Rome named Caesar who hates competition. If I had let a man go who claimed to be a rival ruler, I would have been in big trouble. So perhaps this Jesus was innocent and a little confused, but I’m a politician, and we politicians have our priorities. Which is why I delivered him up to be crucified."

I won’t go through all the other negative comments Barbara got during her interviews. Most of them could be summarized in a remark made by Phil the Pharisee: "This Jesus broke the Law that God had given to Moses, which means that he could not have been from God. Sure, he may have healed the sick and performed many other spectacular feats, but they were all done by the power of the devil—not by the power of the Lord."

Now I will give Barbara Wawastein credit: unlike many modern journalists, she did a very good job in her article balancing these negative comments with statements of faith: statements by people like Peter, John, Mary Magdalene and dozens of others; people who claimed that they actually saw Jesus with their own eyes after he rose from the dead on Easter Sunday. Some even went so far as to say that they ate and drank with the risen Christ (as Peter does in today’s first reading from Acts 10).

Reading Barbara Wawastein’s article made me think of something that C.S. Lewis once wrote. C.S. Lewis was a professor at Oxford University for many years. He was an unbeliever who eventually opened his heart to the gift of faith. After his conversion, he wrote this in one of his books:

I am trying here to prevent anyone [from] saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon, or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

C.S. Lewis was right! When it comes to Jesus, many people try to straddle the fence. They pick and choose what they want to believe about him. If it makes them feel good, they accept it. If it challenges them, they reject it. That includes what he said in the gospels, and what he continues to say to us in and through his Church. Well, EITHER HE IS GOD OR HE ISN’T! If he isn’t, then Larry Leper and Nancy Nazorean and Pontius Pilate and Phil the Pharisee were right! They were right to reject him totally!

But if he is GOD—and the Church proclaims today with unwavering faith that HE IS—then everything else follows! If he’s God, then his words are GOD’S WORDS, and so they can’t be changed or ignored. We may not like what he says to us in Scripture about avoiding anger--but we have to accept it and obey it. We may not like what he tells us about forgiving others seventy-times-seven times--but we must make the effort to follow that instruction. We may not like what he says to us in his Word about avoiding all sexual activity outside of marriage--but we have to accept it and live it. It may not thrill us when he says that we should be concerned about the poor and the suffering and the sick—we may not like that line from Matthew 25: "Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do to me." But we must accept the truth of it, because if he’s God, then GOD said it!

And if he is God that means that his Church speaks today with HIS authority (for example, when the Church tells us that we need to be at Mass EVERY Sunday and holyday—and not just once or twice a year!) If he’s God it also means that the Holy Father speaks with HIS authority when he speaks officially on matters of faith and morals. How do we know that? Because Jesus, the Son of God, said it in Matthew 16—and the Son of God would not lie!

I suppose you could say that the bottom line is this: when it comes to Jesus, it’s all or nothing! Personally, I’ll take "all", because "all" includes ETERNAL LIFE! Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die."