Cyrano and Christ

Ever read the story of Cyrano de Bergerac?

           The French poet Edmond Rostand wrote a (fictional) play in 1897 about Cyrano, in which the large-nosed, slightly grotesque, yet brilliant and eloquent and charming Cyrano falls in love with the beautiful Roxane. However, his fears of rejection (for obvious reasons!) lead him to enlist the help of a proxy, in the person of Christian de Neuvillette. Christian is much better looking, but also much less intelligent than the man he’s representing.

            In the critical scene, Cyrano and Christian are outside Roxane’s window (think Romeo and Juliet!), with Cyrano in the foliage hiding and Christian seemingly alone under her balcony. When Roxane comes to see who her suitor is, Cyrano feeds his proxy the words he needs to woo her – romantic and eloquent verses that succeed in winning her heart.

            Unfortunately…that means that Roxane falls in love with Christian, and not Cyrano. The remainder of the story, of course, is how slowly, slowly, Roxane starts to learn who Cyrano really is as a person, and slowly she grows to fall in a deeper love with him (as opposed to the surface affections she had for Christian).

         Ever consider the parallels between that story and the story of Our Lord God Almighty and His beloved Son, Jesus Christ?

        Put God the Father in the role of Cyrano, Jesus Christ (the Son) in the role of Christian (how ironic!), and we the people of the believing body of the church in the role of Roxane.

          God the Father may not be large nosed or slightly grotesque (He certainly qualifies as brilliant and eloquent!), but He has trouble connecting visually with us, His beloved, because He only appears to us as columns of fire, or sentient clouds, or a burning bush, or (more often) simply as disembodied actions and communications from On High. Sometimes, that might be difficult for us to form a loving relationship with! And while the Lord our God has no fear, He certainly had enough rejection from His beloved in the Old Testament to make up for any lack of fear in the equation.

            So, He enlists the help of a proxy – Jesus Christ. Christ is much better looking than His father, in the sense that He exists in a much more accessible form for humans to connect with. All accounts tell us Our Lord Jesus Christ was a very handsome Man, as logic would dictate a perfect man might very well be. And while Jesus was of course intelligent on so many levels, He did give up His divinity and the access to divine knowledge while in human form, so certainly in comparison to His Father, we can make the analogy of being “less intelligent” than God.

            So, Jesus comes to earth, is born fully man and fully God, is baptized by John and blessed by His Father (“This is My Son, in whom I am well pleased”), and He starts His three-plus year “wooing” of His Father’s beloved on His behalf – namely, us. The words He courts us with are His Father’s words (“It is written”), the miraculous power He demonstrates to the flock comes from Above, and He even tells us point blank that all the power He displays comes from God Above, not from Him. So…Jesus is essentially wooing us with His Father’s words, deeds, and powers.

            But we didn’t fall in love with God…we became Christians, not “God-ians”.

            Just like Roxane, we fell in love with the proxy, the One who was slain on the cross just outside the city of Jerusalem. God sent His Only Son to earth for many reasons, one of the most important (to us, certainly!) was as a proxy for our sins. The violent and bloody death of the Perfect, Sinless Man served as the eternal replacement for all the blood sacrifices we were required to make to atone for our many sins. But He also came to replace the old covenants with a New Covenant, a Covenant which came from God but was delivered by Jesus Christ. In the process of our interactions from the balcony with Christ, we chose to worship HIM more than we worship GOD.

        So the question becomes: Is that bad? Should we see Jesus as only the messenger for God, the “Christian” to His “Cyrano”?

      Of course not.

      But it’s important to understand the relationship: Jesus Christ is wholly God, and a complete and honored part of the Trinity – but He is not more important than God the Father, any more than He is more or less important than God the Holy Spirit, or the Father is more important than the Son. They are all God, and while they function in different spheres they are inseparable. “Ranking” the Trinity is a fool’s game; at best, it’s like asking a parent who their favorite child is, although in this case it’s closer to asking the child the reverse question.

            We worship God. We worship Christ. We worship the Holy Spirit.

            We call ourselves “Christians” because the Hebrew nation could have rightly been called “God-ians”. (For some reason, we never think of ourselves as “Holy Spiriters”, although for me, that’s the aspect of the Trinity I’m most often associating with!). But we respect, love, and worship the entire Triune God as our Lord and Master, and that’s where the analogy breaks down.

            (But, just like Cyrano, our story still has a really happy ending!)