“Come and you will see,” is what Yeshu said, when they asked him where he was staying. They wanted to know what John the Baptist saw in him. And what Andrew and Simon saw and heard made a deep impression on them. It kindled their hope. But when their friend, Nathanael asked mockingly about this Yeshu, they could not say much more than repeat it: “Come and you will see.” But what could they see? How was Jesus like as a person?

What's to see if Jesus was fully human?

Growing up in a Christian family, going to church each week and daily praying to the ‘Lord,’ I did not really differentiate between God and Jesus. After all, we believe in one God. But what does that make the Jesus of history, who walked the roads of the Galilee and went up to the city of Jerusalem? It was only later in life that I realized that Jesus had truly been a child, a teenager, and a man like me. He cried as a baby, had diarrhoea when he was sick, went through puberty and so forth. He had to learn to walk and speak. He had to be taught the stories of Thora and he had to discover who or what God was to him. Meditating on this Jesus is trying to sympathize with a first century Jew in the Galilee, when and where his name was still Yeshu, and not yet the Greek Iesous or the Roman Jesus. It is a beautiful but challenging task. It requires us to cross centuries, cultures, and continents. It leads us to a man who changed the course of history without ever fighting a battle; to a Jew who changed the way we look at God, without publishing a single letter. The only way to get there is to read between the lines of the stories passed on by his friends and followers to see who it was that they originally met. So let’s look again: what did they see?
At first, not so much. Yeshu was a young man with no miracles or famous teachings to his name. Like his deceased father, he was a carpenter and construction worker, helping his widowed mother Miryam to raise his younger brothers Yaakov, Shimon, Yehuda, and Yossi. His sisters, who had been given in marriage when they were in their teens, lived in Nazareth where the family came from. There will have been more children, for child mortality was high. His father must have died before it was his turn to marry. In short, Yeshu had no position of power, no social standing, and no theological training to impress Andrew and Simon.

What's it that He can share with us if he was fully human?

But Yeshu did have an experience to share. When so many people were baptized by John the Baptist, confessing their sins and turning to God for forgiveness and renewal, Yeshu too went down to the water. There is an ancient story that imagines his reluctance to do so: what had he done wrong in his life that would require forgiveness? What could possibly change in his life, with his responsibility for his family tying him down? I don’t know what Yeshu confessed to, if anything. But I can imagine that he remembered how he felt powerless when his father died, or inadequate when he had to take over Joseph’s role in the family towards his mother Mary and his siblings, or angry because his father had died before arranging a marriage – meaning that Yeshu would never have a family of his own.
But whatever it was, when he went down into the water, it was as if all of it was washed off. As John’s strong hands brought him back up from the deep, saying “God forgives you, God sets you free,” he heard the voice of God saying: “You are my son, I love you. I see you, and you make me happy.” And, as he opened his mouth to draw breath, it was the breath of God that filled his lungs and mind. It was as if holy spirit from God, hovering over the waters as once over the chaos of Genesis 1:2, called him forward as the firstborn of creation, and rested upon him like Noah’s dove searching the waters for a solid place to nest.
John the Baptist sensed it as well. He looked Yeshu in the eye and felt how Yeshu was full of the same holy spirit that had driven him to his mission of baptism. John was moved by this experience himself, for this was the hope of his life’s work: that he would prepare the way so that God would send someone full of spirit to inaugurate the kingdom of God. “I should be baptized by you,” he said.
Whatever the nature of this experience, Yeshu withdrew into the desert where he stayed for days without food, perhaps finding shelter and water in the shadows of a wadi where he could watch the larks high up in the sky and perhaps hear the wild animals howl at night. He was full of his experience and the words he had heard: “You are my son.” But he was also full of confusion. What does it mean to be God’s son? What does it mean to make your heavenly Father happy? As his mind was racing, he felt torn between the wild animals (perhaps a reference to serpents and scorpions as metaphoric demons) and the protection of Gods ‘angels’ (Greek for ‘messengers’). As we read in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, Satan addressed Yeshu with thoughts that would separate him from other people and nature: “If you are God’s son, then you can…” That is what ‘devil’ means: the one who throws us apart, or the act or thought that does that. Elevating yourself over others is devil worship. But how can you accept to be God’s beloved son and at the same time know that you are just like any other human? Yeshu felt grounded in the world his Father had created, he felt secure in the words of scripture, the voices of Gods messengers, that he had memorized as a child, that made him part of his people and religion, worshiping the God of Israel. These are the two things that helped him defeat the devil: faith in God and an intimate knowledge of the stories of the children of God before him. From now on, Yeshu embarked on a journey of discovery to find out where the spirit within him would drive him to go.
This is how Yeshu returned to John the Baptist, as a man, as a Jew, and as one of John’s disciples. But John had not forgotten what had happened when Yeshu was baptized. John encouraged Andrew, who had recently moved from Bethsaida (the capital of the Golan region) to Capernaum, to join Yeshu who was also from that town. Andrew was captivated by Yeshu’s story and brought his brother Simon who would later become known as Peter. That is the third thing that would help Yeshu: he would not make his journey alone; he had friends who went with him, eager to see what it was that the spirit of God was doing among them.

Would you follow Him?

Initially, this Galilean group of disciples of John the Baptist continued their work and business at home, but travelled together to Jerusalem for the religious feasts, visiting John the Baptist on their way. Yeshu’s friends even baptised in John’s way, although Yeshu himself was careful not to take the place of his mentor.
All of that changed, however, when John the Baptist was arrested for criticising Herod Antipas, the prince who ruled the Galilee: “God is our king.” But if Herod thought he could stop the preaching of God’s kingdom, he was wrong. Despite the obvious risk of arrest, Yeshu did not hesitate; he knew his time had come. He stood up and preached the good news of the kingdom of God. He went to the waterfront and called his friends and cousins to become fishers of people. They too were not stopped by the risk of arrest. They followed Yeshu all the way to his crucifixion and death. And even after his death, when they too were branded as blasphemers and insurrectionists, they continued to follow him and proclaim the kingdom of God.
Why?
“Come, and you will see.”

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Suggestions for dialogue

A moderator can explain the dialogue steps and invite people to contribute:

• Check in with yourself. Share with each other how you are in this moment. Then take a moment again to seek stillness, humility and openness. 
• First round: Share something from the text or image(s) that stood out to you and that you would like to explore with the group, briefly indicating the thoughts and feelings that it evoked within you. Listen to the others do the same: what resonates with you? Responses in this round should be limited to questions for clarification.
• Second round: Name one or two things that resonated with you from the things that others just shared. 
• Third round: Having heard the group, the moderator names the main topics for exploration. The moderator may also propose a common thread that emerged in several topics. The exploration normally starts with asking the person(s) who brought up the topic to expand on it.
• Leave room for silence and contemplation. 
• Check out by sharing what you take home from this dialogue.

These suggestions are an adaptation of the Estuary protocol. Look for more at https://www.estuaryhub.com