“What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us…”
When I was a teenager there was a fairly popular pop song, written and performed by Joan Osborne called “One of Us”. It had a nice sort of beat and a nice sort of message and I used to listen to it quite a lot on the radio as I did my homework back in the good old days.
I found the song recently on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USR3bX_PtU4.
The song asks what we would do if we saw God face to face in our everyday lives, if we saw him as “one of us”…
It started me thinking about Christ – for God the Son really did walk the earth, and we saw His Holy Face when He was here. And when He was here, He walked the earth and lived and died like “one of us”…
In the Bible – which is Sacred Scripture – we hear many many stories of Christ during His public ministry, and we even hear stories told after His resurrection. We know His lineage, His parentage and His background. We know how He spoke and who He spoke to. We hear about His miracles and His faith and His praying. We hear about His suffering and His sorrows. We hear about His resurrection and NEW LIFE.
But though Sacred Scripture informs us of many things about Our Blessed Lord, there are some things that we shall never know…
We shall never know from Sacred Scripture what it was to have God live like “one of us”…
Now, I wonder what it was like to be the neighbour of the Son of God…
I imagine Him playing with the other children in His village as He was growing up. Can you imagine the mothers in the neighbourhood? What a blessing to have the Christ child playing with their children… I imagine myself as one of those blessed mothers, encouraging my children to play with Christ – “Play with Mary’s Boy darling. He is a good Boy. Go and play with Him, then I know you won’t get into mischief. Nobody gets into mischief when they are playing with Mary’s Boy.”
I recently finished reading the psychologist Jordan Peterson’s “12 Rules for Life” and his rule number 3 is that you should “make friends with people who want the best of you.” It is no secret that birds of a feather flock together as the old saying goes. Imagine the chicks that were lucky enough to grow up with Christ… How many little saints were formed through the example of Christ’s youth…
I often wonder how many lives touched the life of Christ. After all, with literal scores of billions of Catholics (and Christians) in the last twenty centuries, it is obvious that Christ had an impact on many many people. But His impact is more than that… Because while He lived, He changed countless lives too. After all, though He was born in Bethlehem, He travelled to Egypt and then He went to Nazareth – and all of that happened in the years of His childhood.
Just within the first few years of His life, Christ interacted with people in three different places, during a time when travel was dangerous and inconvenient – and I am not considering His interactions on the road while He journeyed between one place and another…
I wonder if people turned their heads and noticed Him on the road as He walked by them. I wonder if His little friends remembered Him when they grew up and thought of the example He had set…
When Christ called Saint Matthew to follow Him, Matthew writes, “As Jesus went on from there, He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. ‘Follow me,’ He told him, and Matthew got up and followed Him.” (Matthew 9:9).
Matthew noticed Christ. When he heard Christ’s Holy Voice he recognised the power within it... Why else would he simply get up and follow Him?
The other day one of my children threw a toy at their sibling and so I asked that child, “If that were Jesus, would you throw the toy at them?” They replied, “Of course not Mum.”
And yet Christ was there in that child who threw and the one who was thrown at…
For Christ is in all of us…
No wonder I like that song so much... “What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us Just a stranger on the bus Tryin' to make his way home?”
Please God, help me to notice your Holy Face, for You are in all of us – even the slobs…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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