This past summer I started writing a semi-regular piece called Monday with Jesus. This was my attempt to reconsider Jesus and work through some of my preexisting assumptions about him. It’s probably never a good thing when you find that your relationship with someone is built on assumption.
It also seemed logical that as a follower of Jesus, I should try to know the person I am following. Who is he? What does he like? What does he care about? Who does he like to spend his time with? What gives him joy? What makes him sad? What makes him angry?
It could seem strange that I am even asking these kinds of questions, since I went to Christian school for much of my youth and was heavily invested in a Baptist church that took pride in its Biblical Teaching. If I didn’t know Jesus, what exactly was I doing during all of those years in Christian school and church? Was I sleeping? Unconscious? Under hypnosis?
For much of my life, Jesus was the “Lord and Savior” who helped me become more religious “to be a good Christian”, who helped me become a better person and the one who helped me follow the rules. He was the Jesus of the pithy one liner.
He is the “small gate” and the “narrow road”
“Deny yourself”
“Take up your cross”
“Follow me.”
When Jesus did talk about something grace-filled like love for example, it was usually turned on its head. Love wasn’t about compassion, hope, gentleness or kindness. Love was lying to someone if you thought that their faith couldn’t handle it. Love was pushing people against their will into a strict and narrow vision of faith, because you knew what was best for them. Love was being brutally and even cruelly honest with people when you thought that they needed to be humbled.
The spirit of Mondays with Jesus was really about me needing to start over with Jesus. There is so much that I’ve taken for granted about him, and I can’t help but feel as if along the way I’ve misunderstood and mischaracterized him.
During this Lenten Season, and as part of my personal “Jesus Project,” I wanted to continue the process of becoming reacquainted with Jesus.
Of course, one of the hardest things about writing a regular piece like Monday with Jesus, is actually writing it. Monday with Jesus, becomes Tuesday with Jesus and sometimes Wednesdays with Jesus. I was sharing about this dilemma with my wife this morning and my six year old daughter’s response was truly priceless.
She laughed and told me, “Papa, you can be with Jesus anytime you want.”
There is something incredibly insightful about my daughter’s comment. So often, I will try to fit my dialogue and relationship with Jesus into a narrow space, but instead of this limited vision of faith what Jesus most desires is a relationship that comes, “anytime.”
In keeping with this sentiment, I offer you, “Anytime with Jesus.”
When we read the gospels, it is easy to look at the disciples and judge them. They seem so dull and slow. They seem preoccupied by things that don’t matter and yet I cannot help but see myself in them. In Luke 9:44-45 Jesus tells his disciples about his coming death. The disciples’ response?
An argument started among the disciples as to which of them would be the greatest. Jesus, knowing their thoughts, took a little child and had him stand beside him. Then he said to them, “Whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. For it is the one who is least among you all who is the greatest.”
On the many occasions when this passage has been taught to me, it was usually in the context of the disciples who didn’t understand that the way of Jesus was the cross. While this is true, I think it also misses much of what Luke is trying to share with us here in chapter nine.
For the disciples, the coming kingdom and their life with God was just another place where they would be able to live out their rivalries and their ambitions. The disciples are all angling for the parking spot reserved for the employee of the month.
Jesus shares with them that if the disciples truly wanted to love and serve Jesus, that they should welcome “this little child.” In other words, the disciples should be prepared to welcome those who are the very least. While little children may be cute and adorable, people of influence rarely court them. When I last checked the presidential primaries, none of the candidates were particularly interest in the child vote, and yet Jesus takes a little child to stand next to him and tells us that “the one who is least among you. . . is the greatest.”
While it might be helpful to consider the characteristics of little children and what it means to be least in the kingdom, I think that it’s perhaps more instructive to learn from the economy of Jesus. For Jesus, the most important people are those who are overlooked and unnoticed.
In Jesus’ day the most influential and important people in Jewish society were the people in the Sandhedrin, which included people like the Pharisees and Sadducees. These people were important because they were religious and pious. For the disciples arguing about who was going be the greatest, they must have thought that when Jesus set up his kingdom that he would create a new order where they would rule at Jesus’ side displacing the Pharisees and Sadducees.Yet Jesus wasn’t talking about simply modifying the existing religious system.
Jesus wasn’t creating a kingdom of authority and rules, he was creating a kingdom of inclusion, where the unnoticed and unimportant would have access. He was talking about a life with God, where serving and loving God was not about doing things to get conspicuously noticed, but about doing the things that are often unseen and overlooked.
This theme continues in the next couple of passages
“Master,” said John, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we tried to stop him, because he is not one of us.”
“Do not stop him,” Jesus said, “for whoever is not against you is for you.”
It seems remarkable that the disciples would actually think of trying to stop someone from casting out demons. Clearly for the disciples, there were two kinds of people.
1) Jesus and his insiders, “the Twelve”
2) Everyone else
For the disciples, if someone was casting out demons, it didn’t really matter that they were doing it in Jesus name, and it didn’t matter that they were actually casting out demons, it only mattered that these other people were not part of their narrow group.
Later in Luke 9 we see the disciples perspective on those people who did not support Jesus.
As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem. When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” But Jesus turned and rebuked them. Then he and his disciples went to another village.
In each of these stories, we see the disciples preoccupied with who was on their side. Who was in and who was out? Who are the good guys? If someone is a disciple, clearly they have an inside track to a prime spot in the kingdom. If someone is casting out demons in Jesus’ name, is he on our side or on the other side? If someone doesn’t welcome us, then clearly they are on the other side.
In the course of being religious and a good rule follower, I sometimes lost sight of the Jesus I was following. In the end, it wasn’t about crafting a system where I could be “in”, and others could be “out,” instead Jesus was offering me something far greater.
In each of these stories, Jesus holds to an economy that is very different from that of my own or the disciples. Jesus is placing a value on people, He is placing a value on doing good. He is placing a value on innocence and guilelessness. He is placing a value on the people who are often overlooked and minimized. Jesus seems singularly uninterested with the disciples’ concerns, instead he’s looking to create a new kind of kingdom, a kingdom with room for little children, the weak, the uncredentialed and the powerless, a kingdom for everyone. . .anytime.
