“A large nose is in fact the sign of an
affable man, good, courteous, witty, liberal, courageous, such as I am.”
“A kiss,
when all is said, what is it? A rosy dot placed on the “I” in “loving”. ‘Tis a
secret told to the mouth instead of the ear.
- Edmond
Rostand, “Cyrano”
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).
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 tangibly 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. You can see how, 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 tangible, accessible form for
humans to connect with. All accounts tell us that despite the prophesies of
Isaiah, Our Lord Jesus Christ was also fairly handsome, as logic would dictate the
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
justify the analogy of His 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, 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 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. That’s
where the analogy breaks down.
But
it’s important to understand the relationship between the two: Jesus Christ is
wholly God, an integral 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, any more than the Father is more important than the
Son. They are all God, and while they often 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 a 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 Spirit-ians”, although for me,
that’s the aspect of the Trinity I most often associate with!). But we respect,
love, and worship the entire Triune God as our Lord and Master, and that’s
why the analogy breaks down.
(But,
just like Cyrano, our story still has a really happy ending!)
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