As some of you know, I’m an occasional contributor to the monthly devotional magazine Give Us This Day, published by Liturgical Press. With their kind permission, here’s my reflection for today, September 6:

Today’s Gospel might make you wonder: “What kind of a god would do something like this?”

What sort of deity would found a church with ordinary, unremarkable men—including, significantly, one who would become a “traitor”?

What kind of god would choose to come down from his mountaintop and mingle with people afflicted with diseases or “unclean spirits”?

What god would begin his public work standing “on a stretch of level ground,” seeing the world from the same vantage point as everyone else?

Well, the answer, of course, is our kind of God.

This passage from Luke’s Gospel reminds us, again, of the extravagant humility of the second person of the Trinity. Here is, truly, Emmanuel, “God With Us,” the Christ who not only came to dwell with us and see the world through human eyes but also came to suffer with us, struggle with us, rejoice with us—and die with us.

Here is a God at once mysterious and accessible—the one who works miracles, heals the sick, and eases the torment of the human heart but can be recognized, reached, touched by all.

A familiar song some years ago asked, “What if God was one of us?” As this Gospel reminds us, he was—and is. Do we understand that? Do we seek Christ in those among us? Luke assures us we don’t have to look far. God is not necessarily above us or beyond us. We just might find him with us, seeing what we see—and, just possibly, enjoying the view.

Check out more of Give Us This Day at their website.

‘What kind of god would do something like this?’