"The accessible God"

I was recently reading excerpts from Jane Fonda’s new book, “The Private Life of a Public Woman.”I also watched with interest, an interview she gave on Charlie Rose.She is an amazing person no matter what you think of her politics.Indecently, she claims over and over again, to be sorry and apologizes for ever bringing shame to herself and all of America as she sat on military equipment in Hanoi.Without a doubt, it was a major blunder.But that is not what interests me about her.It’s not her movies either, but it is her reflection upon her husbands and especially her father, Henry Fonda.I really liked Henry Fonda in so many movies.Of course my favorite is “The Grapes of Wrath.”But, actors are actors and some of us who have never been on the Silver Screen; continue to act like we care about other people.We also act as if we were Christians.Unfortunately, not much comes from the heart.

Interestingly enough, Jane Fonda claimed she married three men and all of them resembled in one way or another her father.Far from the characters that her father has played which were often sensitive heroes, Henry Fonda was a perfectionist and was very remote from his children, let alone his wives – one of which was Jane’s mother who committed suicide.

Jane Fonda spoke of always trying to win her father’s approval, affection and appreciation.She spoke in a recent interview, “my dad shadows me and I wonder if he approves of what I am doing now?”I have a feeling this is the case with many children as they seek approval from their parents.

Henry Fonda was not accessible as a father and probably not as a person.He looked accessible and played people on the screen that were accessible to others.In the end, he was remote and inaccessible.The more I thought about this, the more I think that people’s vision of God is really a vision of Greek mythology where the God Zeus lives in the clouds far away from human existence.All of this is just a misreading of the Christian faith and couldn’t be farther from the truth that radiates through the pages of the New Testament.

“What if God was One of Us?” as that popular song goes written by Eric Bazillian and sung by Alanis Morissette.

When we talk of incarnation, we are speaking of a God who is very accessible in Jesus Christ.The Christian proposal for the whole world is that God is very near and is embodied in the human race in the name of Jesus, our Lord.In his life, Jesus always made himself accessible to hungry people on a hillside, to widows who cried for help, to the sick and informed and to his disciples in a storm on the sea.So accessible that he was captured, put on the cross and dies for us!

The question is, “How accessible are we to his ministry?” Or do we simply remain remote and inaccessible to his call to follow me.