Others should look at us and see Christ
Pope Francis leads the Easter Sunday mass on April 16, 2017 at St Peter's square in Vatican. PHOTO | AFP
What you need to know:
- It was at Antioch that the disciples were first called ‘Christians’.” Notice that the word Christian did not come from the disciples of Jesus. It came from pagans observing these disciples and giving them a name.
- It’s interesting, because Jesus never once called himself ‘Christ’. If for no other reason, he would not have used that word because, when speaking to Jews, he used his mother tongue, Aramaic.
- Christ is a Greek word, meaning the “Anointed One”. The Aramaic word is Messiah. So, as fate would have it, the disciples of Jesus will always be associated with the world of Greek culture because the name ‘Christian’ is a Greek word. Besides, the New Testament was written in Greek.
PERHAPS IN SECONDARY school you read the play Merchant of Venice as a set book for your English exam, and you’ve probably heard the famous quote from Hamlet: “To be or not to be? / That is the question”. What most people don’t know is that the writer Shakespeare invented many words. Among hundreds of examples, my favourites are dwindle, leapfrog and castigate.
The New Testament tells us about the invention of a new word. In the Acts of the Apostles, it says: “Barnabas then left for Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he found him he brought him to Antioch. And it happened that they stayed together in that church a whole year, instructing a large number of people. It was at Antioch that the disciples were first called ‘Christians’.”
THE ANOINTED ONE
Notice that the word Christian did not come from the disciples of Jesus. It came from pagans observing these disciples and giving them a name. It’s interesting, because Jesus never once called himself ‘Christ’.
If for no other reason, he would not have used that word because, when speaking to Jews, he used his mother tongue, Aramaic. Christ is a Greek word, meaning the “Anointed One”. The Aramaic word is Messiah. So, as fate would have it, the disciples of Jesus will always be associated with the world of Greek culture because the name ‘Christian’ is a Greek word. Besides, the New Testament was written in Greek.
Of all the Greek words that the evangelists used to write the four gospels, perhaps the most important is Logos. It is a complicated term, which is usually translated into English as ‘word’. So the first verse in St John’s gospel reads this way: “In the beginning was the Logos // In the beginning was the Word.”
Besides meaning “word,” logos could also be translated as ‘concept’. Think of a tree. The concept of a tree is the inner knowledge you have about a tree before you say: “I like trees”. By telling us that Jesus is the Logos of God, St John is telling us something mysterious about this carpenter who proclaimed himself Son of God. Because Jesus is the Logos, he is that person who existed from the beginning in the mind of God and came forth from the mind of God to be the perfect image of the Father. This is why Jesus insisted: “To see me is to see the Father.”
We can take this a step further. Others are supposed to look at us and be able to say: “When I see him, when I see her, I see Christ.” That is what it means to be truly Christian, truly like Christ.
