Bairbre Cahill“How do we know if any of this is real, if Jesus ever existed at all?” It is a challenging question but one that shouldn’t surprise us. What do we mean when we talk about Jesus? What are we actually telling our children? What do we believe ourselves?
To some extent I think the problem may lie with Adam and Eve. It is important to realise that the story of Adam and Eve is not intended to be read as a historical document. Children very quickly pick up the flaw in the story. If only Adam and Eve exist and then they have children who do their children meet to have more babies with? Fair point!
Adam and Eve are given to us as myth. Now myth does not mean fairy tale. When a writer uses myth they are using a story to help us understand a deeply important truth. Myths help us to explore the big and complicated questions of our lives – who we are, where we have come from, what our purpose is.
The danger comes if we begin to think that the Gospels and most importantly, the person of Jesus have no more historical reality than Adam and Eve.
When we talk about Jesus are we simply telling stories which we hope will have a positive influence and give our children a sense of direction in life? Do we believe that the person we are talking about actually existed, walked the roads of Palestine, ate, slept, talked to people, challenged people, suffered and died and – most shockingly – rose from the dead? Do we view the historical reality of Jesus in the same way we view the historical reality of Christopher Columbus or Daniel O’Connell. Do we take seriously the historical reality of Jesus and talk to our children in those terms?
Now there is no such thing as objective history. All history is written from some sort of perspective. Equally the Gospels do not simply claim to be historical documents. They each in their own way and from their own perspective try to communicate something about the revelation of who Jesus is. So each of the Gospel authors Matthew, Mark, Luke and John emphasise particular aspects of Jesus, what he did, what he said, what happened around him in order to address the particular audience they were writing for. What all the Gospels do share is confidence in the reality of who Jesus is and conviction about the historical reality of his existence. And it is not just the Gospel writers. Josephus, a Roman historian in the 1st Century, who was not Christian, also mentions Jesus in his writings.
Reality
The historical reality of our Faith came home to me very powerfully recently when I stood at the tomb of St Peter in the vaults under the Basilica in Rome.
The previous day I had spent time looking at Caravaggio’s painting of the crucifixion of St Peter in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo. Here was a man who knew Jesus. He had walked with him, shared bread with him, seen him tired, frightened, courageous, radiant. He knew the reality of the man and believed deeply enough to be prepared to put his own life in mortal danger. He followed a man not a story.
When I tell our children stories about their great-grandmother, whom they never met, I want them to have that sense of her as a real woman whose life and choices shaped me and now shape them.
My granny went to America as a young woman. If she had not returned I would not exist and nor would my children. In the same way I want them to have a sense of the reality of Jesus – whose life, death and resurrection continue to impact upon our living.