Opening Question:
What does it mean to have a flesh and blood God? You may even wonder at times if you do have a flesh and blood God. Some of the representations of Christ that we see in religious society tend to have the effect, at times, of making Jesus more distant from our present day experience rather than making the Eternal Son of God seem more real.
Relation to today’s audience:
I can name several Jesus pictures in my head that make Jesus less of a real person and more of a cartoon. The shepherd Jesus, the laughing Jesus, the Jesus on the cross with no blood, the Jesus on the cross with way too much blood, the Jesus of society, the Jesus of the 50’s, the cross without Jesus, and on and on...
St. Cyril of Alexandria, who lived around 400 AD, knew a Jesus who was real and was flesh and blood. He knew that the humanity of Jesus, the divinity of His part in the Trinity, and the Love that is expressed by His coming down to us was all very important. He knew that he couldn’t make human sense out of it all the time, but he knew that he had to try.
Relation of God’s Saint: Cyril of Alexandria
One of Cyril’s most contested theological ponderings was called the "theotokos" controversy - the explanation of Cyril that Mary can be truly called "the Mother of God."
Relation to us today:
Now hold on to your hats before you think this is getting too Roman Catholic for your tastes. Cyril knew that his God had to be flesh and blood, and because his God had to be fully human, he had to have something that all of us have, a mother. Cyril didn’t try to explain "how" an infinite God could have a finite mother - he just saw the evidence given him in Scripture and proclaimed it.
Gospel:
This is our job as Christians today. We may not always understand every little theological point and how every little thing works with every other little thing - but the BIG thing that we all know is that Christ loved us so much that He came to be human, be born of a human mother, die a human death on the cross, and experience human and divine hell in our place.
That is what it means to have a flesh and blood God.
