Holy Wednesday. Our title series continues with ‘Son of Man’. One of the intriguing things is that this phrase is at one and the same time the description most commonly used by Jesus to describe himself and one that disappears quite quickly from usage within the early church. Luke places it on the lips on Stephen as he is martyred and John uses it in The Revelation. There is also the slight conundrum as to what this title or phrase actually means. A variety of solutions have been offered. It is used as the personal pronoun ‘I’. It means a ‘human being’. Or perhaps an identification with the first human ‘Adam’. I am more persuaded by the possibility that Jesus was alluding to the divine figure found in Daniel and Enoch. Thus, when Jesus refers to himself as ‘the one like a son of man’; he is placing himself truly on the side of God.

Within the first decade of the life of the early Church, that is to say within a decade after the resurrection, Jews who followed Jesus as Messiah were worshipping him alongside God. We cannot overestimate the importance of the language and symbolism surrounding the figure of the ‘Son of Man’, in helping them to do this.