"The gospels," observes one of the characters in Carlene Bauer's Frances and Bernard, represent "God's faith in our imagination."  If I understand this remark correctly, I note that it says much about God's belief in our human capacities.  As you probably know, the gospels contain a number of first hand and eyewitness accounts of Jesus' short public life on this planet.  These accounts include birth and death and resurrection narratives, various signs and miracles, many sermons and teaching vignettes, and ordinary conversations.  As we read them, we are constantly being invited to ask ourselves one fundamental question:  who is this man Jesus?  In recounting these episodes and pictures of Jesus' life, the gospel writers are asking readers to look not just at the fact of what Jesus said and did, but at their significance and import as well.  Imagine, we are asked, if these stories are true?  Imagine, we are urged, if everything that Jesus said really is the truth, and that everything he did really did happen?  What we would then do?
     We have two choices.  We can reject, categorically, any thought that Jesus' words and deeds are in any way connected to a larger reality or purpose, and come away thinking that he was an extraordinary human being, but nothing more.  He was simply a person who had some good thoughts and stories.  Or we can stretch ourselves; we can reach outside the boundaries of our everyday form and imagination and ask, if Jesus is really who he said he was (that is, God), what does this mean?  What does this mean for how we see ourselves and our world?  What does it mean when everything we think we could have imagined is confronted by something we could never imagine we could have imagined?