The Ordinary Christ

Isaac Hung

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” John 1:14

Israel is a beautiful, surreal, strange land. The bustling cities are modern – Wi-Fi, smart phones, credit cards, skyscrapers and hip condos, American pop music on the radio. The Mediterranean countryside is familiar – rolling hills covered in beige grass, rocky desert expanses, flat plains covered with farmland, towering mountain ranges.

Yet whispers of a deep, ancient past echo throughout this land. Mysterious caves hidden in the mountains. Ruins and tunnels buried beneath layers of centuries-long construction, destruction, and reconstruction. Basilicas memorializing monumental gospel events incorporated in plain sight into the bustling cityscape. Familiar place names from the scriptures – Dan, Beersheba, Mount Carmel, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Capernaum, the Sea of Galilee, Jordan River, Caesarea Philippi, Temple Mount, Mount of Olives, Gethsemane, Calvary.

As I followed the two-thousand-year-old footsteps of Jesus Christ, my heart was gripped with a wistful longing to experience the life of Christ himself as he lived on earth. I longed to know what sights, smells, and sounds he must have come across in these same locations. I was so close to him, yet so far, removed from by an impassable distance of time. The icons and rocks are silent and nearly mythical in quality, making for an insufficient substitute for the presence of the man of God himself.

Israel showed me the ordinary Christ. I was reminded that Christ’s footsteps on earth were not filled with awesome splendor and unapproachable light. His life on earth was humble, plain, lowly, painful. Before his ministry started, he spent many mundane years living out the unbearable ordinariness of our lives – the oppressive heat of summer, tired and hurting feet, sleepless nights, sickness, worries about the future, complicated socio-cultural dynamics, the cyclical routine of daily life, the joy of exploration and learning, the difficulty of conflict and chaos. All so that he could redeem us to himself.

Hence it is only suitable that two thousand years later, the places where he walked, hallowed as they may be, are ultimately ordinary, partially consumed by modernity, partially lost to time, partially enshrined in beautiful yet insufficient expressions of the glory of the Father. Non-exempt from the passage of history. Impermanent and never again to be what it once was. If even places such as these holy sites are still evidently human, how much more so does the eternal kingdom of heaven feel weighty and glorious.

Christ, the King of the universe, came to Israel to live an ordinary, simple, fleeting life, which stands in unspeakable opposition to his magnificent, omniscient, timeless nature, because He loved us. This is the true glory of God. Yes, Christ is truly better than anything in this world. I am encouraged to continue pursuing Christ to know him, both the ordinariness of his life on earth as well as the glory of his resurrection.

“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” 1 Corinthians 13:12