“Sometimes people say, “God? Oh, can’t say anything definitive about God. God is large, nebulous, and vague.” We wish. By rendering God into an abstract idea, we can be assured that we’ll always be safe from God. By God raising the crucified Jesus from the dead, it was as if God vindicated Jesus, as if God said, “You want to know what God looks like? You want to know what the Creator really wants from the creature and creation? Look at Jesus! There, that’s who I am.” At a definite point in time, at a particular place, in love, God allowed God’s self to be pinned down by us–on a cross. It’s a curious thing to say about Jesus, the wandering teacher of Galilee, that he is as much of God as we ever hope to see.”
-William Willimon, Why Jesus? (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2010), 8.
