The last word? It's never enough.

It's a good campaign: the United Church of Christ's "God is still speaking" campaign, which uses the image of a comma to remind us that whenever we think God has finished, or whenever we give the impression that it's all buttoned up, God surprises us again! This relates to Jesus, too. He's good, for sure, but he's not enough! That may sound controversial, but it's actually very 'orthodox', because God is not exhausted by God's presence in the life of Jesus; God's parenthood of all peoples transcends God's particular presence in Jesus, and God's Spirit within all of creation exceeds even the outer limits of Jesus' unique representation of God's presence. For me, this is very important: if we didn't accept that even Jesus has limits, we would "idealise" him; we would create an image of him which has the answer to everything; whereas the reality is that any such 'answers' are bound to involve some of our own imagination. I find it much more helpful (following the advice of Stephen Pattison in an article on 'The Shadow Side of Jesus', and Werner Ustorf on 'the disestablished Christ') to acknowledge Jesus' genuine humanity, that he therefore made some mistakes, had to learn, and had a rounded personality, because otherwise I'm following an unreal, almost ghostly teacher, someone less able to help me when I too make mistakes and have to learn. So thank God that Jesus isn't the last word; it would never be enough.