Jesus, Our Eldest Brother

A great deal of responsibility is always placed on older brothers and sisters when looking after younger siblings.  They are older, stronger, and wiser and many girls will model themselves on their older sisters and boys likewise.   Although Jesus did not have brothers or sisters when he grew up he would have spent time with children of his own age and played their sports and laughed with them.   We have no record of Jesus as a child but when he visited his own town during his ministry they remembered him as the little boy growing up there who did not seem to be different from anyone else and no doubt thought that the was full of nonsense and this idea that Jesus was the Messiah, the boy who ran messages for his parents, and worked in the Carpentry business was just too much for them.   They only saw the very ordinary Jesus they had always known.    So Jesus our brother was just like everyone else as a boy and in his early manhood, so what happened.    People have scratched their heads for two thousand years over this mystery of how an ordinary boy became an extraordinary person.  What did he know about himself?  Did he know he was the Son of God?  We are still scratching our heads despite utterances from many scholars who claim to know.

The main thing is that Jesus is someone of flesh and blood, who was born like us and lived like us.   But as our eldest brother he is someone we look to for wisdom,  and Jesus our brother was Wisdom itself.   Perhaps that is why Jesus said"A prophet is never recognised in his own country".   But is this not still a problem in so far as we still see the human being in Jesus and prefer the humanism in him to the doctrines he taught.   Goodness, kindness, love for the poor and distressed are all part of our human nature.  We all want to be good like Jesus.  But Jesus was more than that he was the God who knew what was good for us and what was bad for us.  And that is the problem all through the history of the Church there were always those who preferred the human message to the divine.   They saw no wrong in adultery, divorce, and interpreted his Gospel to suit themselves.   Jesus was human, he would understand.  So after two thousand years the Kingdom he wanted is still missing.