S is for Square one

Jesus Christ does have a beginning, a rather recent one at that. As Jesus Christ he does. There was a time when Jesus Christ was not -- a time B.C., "Before Christ." But then that means he had to start at some Year One, like us -- square one. That is definitely ungodlike and, when you think of it, humiliating.

It is true, indispensably true, that before he ever was Jesus Christ, he had already been the divine Word from all eternity. What does it do to his reputation as God, that after all this time, after so much history had flowed over the dam, he decides now first to start this way, suddenly become one of us as well -- which the day before, he had not been? A God who is just starting out? An entry-level God? That makes him not like God but like this little girl. And that makes her uneasy. Worse yet, not only does this incarnate God get a late start, but just think what a headstart that gave to all those who had gone before him. All those people, those nations, those generations -- all of them his mere creatures -- now had the jump on him.

Still worse, all that pre-history that had predated Jesus, all that BC, not only was something he had missed out on but also was something he now had to run to catch up with. How much he had to learn, and always at second hand, from those who already had been there and done that. Not only did he get a late start and the others a headstart, but his was not a fresh start. No baby's is. We all had to begin not just where the world once began but where it already was by the time we arrived. The Son of God not only entered history, he became a product of history. That dependent he was upon his forebears B.C. And that makes the little girl uneasy.

Worst of all, notice, this incarnate God has to do this. He has no choice. He has to accept the past which preceded him and, like all the rest of us, he has to let that past set the agenda for who he now is and what he now does. That's the way it is with our kind of time. Once we're born into it, much of what we do from then on -- maybe most of what we do -- has been decided for us before we get here. Just by living out our lives we are keeping all sorts of prior commitments, but commitments which we had little to do with making. We are complying with a past which antedated us. Yet don't we have some choice in the matter? Some, yes. Our biggest choice, I suppose, is to reaffirm the choices which have already been made for us, and then to make the most of them: for example, that we were born in the twentieth century, white or black or brown, female or male, gifted in this way or that. But even the new choices we make along the way do in turn control our future. The wedding vows we once made, the calls we once accepted or declined -- all past tense -- are the ties that most bind us today. We are governed by what happened beforehand. Look at your pocket Appointment Book. What is that but page after page of IOUs, all incurred previously. Here you've inked in next Tuesday, "7:00 pm, Meet with Caleb's teacher." Not only is there a person to be met but a debt to be met, a debt you incurred beforehand. It must be paid.

So it is with Jesus Christ. He too incurred a beforehand, a B.C., which even before he arrived had already mortgaged his future but which he had to pay. As God, he doesn't have to do anything, I suppose, not even become incarnate. But once he made that choice, he was obligated to "fulfill" dozens of previous promises. Scripture reads like his appointment book, and he had to keep moving to meet those appointments on time. He sounds like you and me, with our "have to's," our "must do's." "The Son of Man must (dei) undergo great suffering, and [must] be rejected by the elders . . . , and [must] be killed, and after three days [must] rise again." (Mk. 8:31) So let's get going, he says to his disciples, it's time to head for Jerusalem, because of previous commitments B.C.

What makes our past so binding is just that, it is past. It is done and cannot be undone. You promised Caleb and your spouse that together you would go to his parent-teacher interview. True, that is still a few days off. It hasn't happened yet. That is what we mean by future: what hasn't happened yet. So, conceivably, you could still bow out -- as you did last year. (Caleb has not forgotten that.) But what has happened -- and that's what we mean by past -- is that you did in fact promise. That you cannot undo.

That is exactly the problem with Christ's "B.C." When the Son of God became a human creature, he became a creature also of time. He had to do what his prehistory made him do. Else, like a parent who breaks a promise to a child, he welshes on a debt. And The Past is a very fastidious book-keeper, moreso by far than Caleb, with an infallible memory for deadlines -- and deadbeats. For "The Past" read "the Law."