(…continued) Was Jesus a LIAR? (see previous meditation) There are several ways to rule out this option.
First of all, let’s go back to the Minnesota State Fair. The strange man does have your interest now, though you still think he is probably a fake. But he is getting a crowd around him, and you want to see more. Someone else comes to him in a wheelchair, and this time you recognize the person. It is someone you know quite well, and you know the story of how his spine was crushed in a car accident. He has not walked for years. You know that if this man would walk, it would really be a miracle. You are paying very close attention. Then, you see the man get healed, and he too is up out of his wheelchair and jumping for joy.
Are you beginning to rethink your earlier position? You may not yet be convinced, but you are certainly interested in seeing more of this man. Next, there is a woman whose family said she was blind from birth. The man, who you first thought was a lunatic, or at least a liar, restores the woman’s sight by simply touching her eyes and saying a brief prayer.
This is what happens all the time in the four Gospels. In John chapter five, there was a crippled man who had been lying by the pool at Bethesda for 38 years. Jesus himself was only thirty years old. It would be impossible to set up that kind of scam. Jesus says, “Rise, take up your mat, and walk;” and the man does. Jesus gave sight to a man who the crowd knew to be blind from birth. People started paying attention to Jesus and whatever he said about himself, no matter how outrageous.
At the state fair, you are thinking about your father who has terminal cancer. You wonder if the strange man could heal him. (People from all over brought their ailing loved ones to Jesus: Matthew 4 and 14, Mark 1, and Luke 4). You are wondering how the man does it. What is his story, where is he from, what is he doing here, and what was it he said about being the Savior of the world? You want to know more. Now you are paying attention to everything he says and does. Soon, you are even hearing accounts of how he has raised people from the dead.
Some critics will argue that long ago when Jesus was here, people were superstitious, gullible, and easily deceived. But people in those days weren’t any dumber than we are now. They didn’t have smart phones and laptop computers and AI, but they knew that blind people didn’t regain their sight just because someone spit in the dirt, made some mud, and rubbed it in their eyes. They knew that deaf people did not regain their hearing just because someone touched their ears and said “Be opened.” They knew that life-long paralytics did not just get up because someone told them to. And they knew that dead people stayed dead. Jesus did not look like a liar, and he could back up his powerful words with astounding miracles.
Not only that, but today Jesus’ words and teachings are considered even by unbelievers to be among the greatest moral teachings in all of history. Even unbelievers have attempted to live their lives on the basis on those words. To think that Jesus would be a liar is inconceivable.
When I taught this to my confirmation classes, I would ask if any of them ever told a lie. Of course, they all said, we have told lies. I would then ask them to think about a lie they told, and to then ask themselves why they told it. There were the usual answers, mostly having something to do with getting out of trouble. Then I asked if any of them ever told a lie to get into trouble. Of course not, they would all say. What a stupid question! Who would tell a lie to get into trouble? No one.
If Jesus was a liar and a deceiver, what did he gain by his deception? Nothing but trouble. He got nailed to a cross. Why would anyone lie in order to get big spikes pounded through his hands and feet? Even at the end, at his arrest and trial, Pilate gave Jesus every opportunity to get out of it. Jesus could have said, “Okay, I was only kidding; I won’t do it again;” and he would have avoided the cross. But Jesus stuck to his story. Jesus was a popular teacher. He could have lived a long and interesting life as a respected rabbi. What would be the motivation to make up a lie about being God and Savior of the world, if all that got him was death on a cross?
Jesus could not have been a liar. He wasn’t the type of person to tell lies, and even if he was a wicked deceiver, he had nothing to gain by it. Wicked deceivers do not tell lies to get themselves killed. (continued…)
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John 5:8-9 — Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.
Matthew 4:23-25 — Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed; and he healed them. Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him.
John 9:32-33 — (The man who just received his sight said) “Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could not do this.”
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Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a poor sinner.
–The ancient Jesus prayer
