A lot of people grow up learning a lot about the divinity of Jesus. A major crux of the Christian faith is the belief that Jesus is the Son of God, a diving being in human form. He performed miracles, possessed great wisdom, and was resurrected from the dead. I think the emphasis on Jesus' place in the triune Godhead makes it difficult to think of Jesus as a person.
So what? Jesus is God--why does it matter if we see him as human? I think it matters quite a bit. We're told to call on Jesus, to pray in His name, to see him as our friend and intercessor. Many fundamentalists take this a step further and emphasize the importance of having a personal relationship with Jesus. But if we see Jesus as only divine, as only perfect, as only God, then He is distanced from us. That distance makes it difficult to envision a Christ who cares for us personally.
Theology aside, Jesus was a pretty cool dude. For starters, the man liked to party. His first miracle was, of course, turning water into wine at a wedding party (Jn 2:1-11). In Matthew 9:14-15 and Luke 7:34, we see that Jesus was thought by his contemporaries to be "a glutton and a drunkard" and that he and his disciples did not fast on the appropriate days (probably Jewish Holy days). Many of the Gospel stories start by mentioning that Jesus and his disciples were eating at someone's house.
Anger and frustration are emotions a lot of people are made to feel guilty about. I personally have a temper problem and have spent years trying to restrain my tongue. How nice to know that Jesus also had the same issues! The most memorable "Jesus gets pissed off" story is when he kicks out the moneychangers and bird-sellers from the Temple* (Mt 21:12-13, Mk 11:15-19, Lk 19:45-48, Jn 2:13-22). Jesus also tends to get mad when he is asked a "dumb question"--one he thinks the questioner should see the answer to. "How long must I be among this sinful generation!?" is a common question of Jesus, asked most often after he has been talking to the Pharisees. His frustration is not reserved only for his enemies, though--Jesus dishes out plenty of sarcasm to the disciples. Jesus calls Peter "Satan" when Peter does not understand the discussion about his impending death (Mt 16:23, Mk 8:32).
My favorite "Jesus gets pissed off story" is such because I can see myself doing it--and what a joy to feel even a small emotional link to Jesus! In both Matthew 21:18-19 and Mark 11:12-14, 20-21, Jesus is hungry and goes to pluck some figs from a tree he sees along the road. The tree had no figs because it was not fig season. He curses the tree and it withers. Many sources link this story to Jesus' discovery that the Temple in Jerusalem, like the tree, was bereft of any fruit. But I see it as much simpler--the man was hungry. Everyone has been hungry and cranky at some point. He wants some figs and the tree has none. So he pulls out the toddler in all of us and curses the tree.
Jesus wasn't just a partier with an anger control problem. Many of his miracles begin with someone asking Jesus for help and Jesus "taking pity" on them. He also heals people who are not among the Israelites who Jesus was sent to save (Mt 9:18-26, Mk 5:21-43, Lk 8:40-56, Mt 15: 21-28, Mk 7:24-30) because those people begged him for help. Often, Jesus' expressions of frustration with the disciples are followed by him further explaining what he has been telling them. He has a huge heart and cannot bear to see his people suffering in ignorance.
This isn't a comprehensive list; frankly, it's what I came up with on the fly. But it serves my point--Jesus was really and truly human and that side of him is just as important as his divinity. So many churches and lessons are so focused on the miraculous, divine, amazing nature of Jesus that they alienate us less-than-perfect people, us glitches, from feeling near to him. But Jesus isn't some remote holy being floating in the clouds. Jesus knew loss (he mourned the deaths of John the Baptist and Lazarus, his two friends), he knew loneliness, he knew anger, he knew fear (I defy anyone to read his words in Gethsemane and not feel the despair), he knew how to have a good time, and he knows what it's like to be us. And I think he would understand feeling like a glitch.
*An interesting side note is that the money changers and people selling animals were doing business in the Temple in order to facilitate the offering of sacrifices. I often wonder what Jesus would think of churches with gift shops or churches that hold bake sales.
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How about thinking of it this way, we humans cannot identify with the Creator of the Universe, for we as a group (how many billions) have collectively attempted to understand bits and pieces of the creation, from a simply tree leaf to countless galaxies, and we haven't even scratched the surface to understanding any of it. So with human voices how does one talk to something beyond time and space? And I'm sure you can think of countless other examples of how we simply humans cannot look to God as an example of how we go about the simple (simple??) task of living day to day. But as a Christian, I have the very human Jesus as my example for proper living. I can identify with the humanness of Jesus as well as understand the goodness of the goals that he sets for me in my daily living. You could think of it as "if" God were human, how would God live. Christians think that Jesus is the "if" and so we can look to Jesus to understand how God wants us to live. Jesus preaches a tough sermon, and if one is willing to listen, and more than listen, to act, then that is the first step to living as one is created.
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