MSC Magazine | Issue 4 | Summer 2020

Page 31| Missionaries of the Sacred Heart MICHAEL FALLON msc Jesus as Portrayed in the New Testament But who do you say that I am? (Matthew 16:15) Jesus' question to Pe- ter and the others is one that every disci- ple needs to consid- er, a question that is as old as the Chris- tian tradition. And behind the question an even deeper and challenging one: Who is God? Michael Fallon ar- gues that the re- sponse to both ques- tions must be in- formed by how we read the New Testa- ment. There, we find the portrait of a man who lived and died in our world, a human being like ourselves, someone recognised by his followers as free from the fear of God or other people - someone who taught us to respond to the divine, some- one in whom they acknowledged the hu- man expression (the incarnation) of God. The author gladly accepts that the histori- cal Jesus has been distorted in many ways through the centuries, with the conse- quence that often the Jesus presented by Christians has failed to connect with peo- ple's life-questions, as if he had lived in a world unlike our own, without doubt or struggle, without insecurity or uncertain- ty. A life so unlike our own as to make him inaccessible and unreal. He argues to the contrary. The Jesus por- trayed in the New Testament lived in a real world. He was concerned with real peo- ple, naming and opposing anything that made it difficult for people to live. In so doing, he incurred opposition and rejec- tion; hence his death. But he also won the confidence of the op- pressed. They trusted him, and so learned to trust God, and to believe in themselves, in their world and their future. This was because Jesus re- vealed the powerful love of the redeemer God. This is the challenge to us, his follow- ers. Our world has so much idolatry, false religion and even false Jesus. If we have the faith enough to present Jesus as the answer to our modern ills, we need to make sure that it is the real Jesus of Nazareth that we present. Such is the purpose of this book. Father Michael Fallon is a Missionary of the Sacred Heart (MSC). Or- dained in 1961, his ministry has been largely devoted to teaching and writing in the discipline of adult biblical literacy, with published intro- ductory commentaries on all the books of the Old and New Testament. Michael is currently with the Retreat Team at Douglas Park NSW.