Loving Jesus... Who Loves The Outlier

Long blonde curls. Fingernails painted fuchsia. A lightness of speech, a spring in the step, an elegance in the shifting of the shoulders. His name is David. In his eyes, a fierce and plaintive anxiety, a discomfort that emanates from the deepest level of his self-awareness. As he looks at me the doors of my heart are blown open by a sudden presence... the presence of Jesus. In the man across the table from me.

Because yes, Jesus is there. In that searching, that longing, that wondering and wandering. Some may see a life at odds with life itself, but I see more than that. I see a life that longs for more than what life can normally provide. After all, when life drives us to the edge of its borders, not all of us fight tooth and nail to get back to the middle of the road. No, some of us find in our hearts a cry for another road entirely. That is what I see in this man and that is why right now I am seeing Jesus in him, because Jesus knows. He alone knows the yearning. And he alone can satisfy.

So he hovers around this man, watching, waiting, loving him immensely.

My prayer today is for the outliers. Beyond the rhythms of life and death, courtship and birthdays and traditional dream cycles, there are a brave and burdened few who pursue the unpursuable, believe the unbelievable. We judge them. Some of our judgments may be right. But the one that is always wrong is that the image of God cannot be found in broken faces. The heart of Jesus knows the heart of humanity, and in the hearts of those whose journeys take them far from the center of the circle of life, he is burning fierce and bright, calling out for love.

Loving Jesus Without Words

           

 

  Is it a mistake to try to put words to the wordless love of Jesus?

If I could make one complaint about Christianity this morning, it would be this: You talk too much, Christianity. You talk too much and write too much and sing too many songs. Sounds like an odd complaint. I'm not advocating complete silence on your part, Christendom. Just more silence. Just, please, a few moments of quiet and peace, of saying and doing nothing, producing no models for display, providing no explanations for debate. Just silence. But ah, enough of this taunting of an unseen monolith, conveniently labeled "Christianity." I will speak to myself now.

You talk too much, self. Even when your mouth is closed, even when your tongue is still and your jaw is clenched. You are talking. Talking all the time. Talking about God. Talking at God. Fingers inching up the rosary, talking a blue streak with every bead; all giving and no receiving. Even your prayers, self, your prayers! And you dare to call them prayers. Your prayers are trapped inside your head, going around in circles. Dear Jesus, dear Jesus, dear Jesus. Holy Jesus. Well, Jesus is standing above you while you kneel down there with your skull gripped in your hands. Jesus is looking at you and loving you and wondering what you are doing down there, what you are saying. When, if ever, do you intend to look up?

Anyone would think I was some ascetic, some cloistered monastic, fasting forty days and forty nights, self-flagellating, hating the world, but no, I was just me last night when I shut myself in the dark, cold room and covered my face with my hands. Just me, just one of the ordinaries, the one who talks too much and writes too much and sings too much and never, ever stops to listen to the God who hears. But in that room I was visited by silence. Sweet, sacred, simple silence. And then I heard him say to me, Just be with me. Just be with me. Just rest. Just stay here with me.

I recognized the voice of Jesus. And for five minutes, maybe ten - oh, but it felt like eternity - I stayed. And since he had spoken, I tried to reply, even to simply report that I loved him, but he said, Shh, shh. Just rest for a while. I want you to rest. Such an alarming request when I am supposed to be his disciple. I am supposed to be his agent, right? The one who does things for him. The one who proclaims his teachings. Just rest, he said, and I saw that he was with me, saw that I was in his arms and his hand was holding my head against his heart...

Loving Jesus, the Prince and the Pauper

An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Matthew 1:1

Jesus was one of the poor kids. His immediate family could not have been very high in the socioeconomic hierarchy of their world. For one thing, they lived in a scrappy little backwater village in a scrappy little backwater province of the Roman Empire. For another thing, Jesus' presumed father, Joseph, was a "carpenter" - a word which in the original language could also mean essentially a construction worker, someone who worked with wood and stone and things of that sort. Nothing glamorous. Jesus probably looked like a construction worker's son. Wouldn't have made much of an impression at a cocktail party. His hands were probably calloused. His feet were probably dirty. His clothes were probably rough and plain. But in his veins flowed the blood of kings - and not just any kings. His country's most famous kings. Some of the most powerful, prestigious rulers from ancient Israel's golden days... people like David, and Solomon.

I love Jesus for choosing to come as pauper to this planet that needs so desperately to learn to value the poor, to elevate humility, to believe in something great beyond the outwardly unimpressive exterior of economic deprivation... because there is always something powerful pulsing through the hearts of the unnoticed, the unwanted, the unloved, the unesteemed.

In this case, for instance, the blood of kings. Jesus was a prince.

Loving Jesus, the Only One Who Truly Understands

Our enemies in the spiritual realm want us to believe that we human beings are on our own with our problems; that God is indifferent to such purely human issues as a heartache or a paper cut, that the monologue of thoughts we call silly and sinful and stupid and strange are better off remaining a monologue, that if we bothered to attempt a two-way conversation God would turn away in embarrassment at our shallowness.

The secret of life is that our Maker understands us more deeply than anyone else ever could, including ourselves.When you think about it, it actually makes sense. Of course we should let God in on our inner world. He's already there anyway. Of course God wants us to talk to him about our troubles. He has to listen to our mumblings minds whether or not we mumble in his direction.

Lately I have been recycling the same set of random sorrows and joys almost compulsively. At prayer time they come swimming into my head in hoardes, and I get so lost in the mess that I end up telling God, "I'll be back once I get this sorted out." The problem is, I can't get it sorted out on my own, so if I intend to avoid God until it's all solved, I'll be avoiding him forever. And that's exactly the point.

Avoiding Jesus, I have to say, is the craziest piece of work you'll ever do. I mean, he's always just around the corner of your soul, so in the end the only way to shake him off is to lose your soul, which is a feasible thing, in fact I do it almost every other day. Now I'm telling myself - no, I'm telling him... I've been talking to myself long enough.

Now I'm telling you, Jesus, that you understand me. Of course you understand me. Of course you want to hear about what's on my mind. It's better than simply overhearing it. Of course you care about my stupid problems. Of course ultimately it's me that thinks they're stupid, not you. You see the whole picture from God's perspective, and you know the old saying: Nothing is stupid with God.

All of that to say this: I love you, Jesus... the only one who truly understands.

Loving Jesus... the Cry of My Heart

Every morning the first sound I hear is my own heart crying for love. In the dead calm its pulses shudder, convulsing the core of my being, desperate, desolate. Then beyond its grieving murmurs a chorus of voices, promising me the love I long for. I feel them pushing needles in the veins of my soul, digging deep but never reaching me, never engaging the depths of my sorrow, never answering the questions I was really asking. Soon I am unable to contact myself, lost in the fog of my hopeless addictions. Before I am out of my bed I am buried alive.

Jesus watches and waits in the cloud with his hand on my wrist to steady me, guiding my footsteps, and never a word demanding attention or anything else for himself; just to be by my side is enough. Sometimes I cough something dismissive at him through the haze, not expecting an answer, so he doesn't give me one... just smiles, often through tears. He is furiously in love with me and he hates this mist, hates the way the pushers zero in on my bed at dawn, hates them hooking me up to their equipment almost before I nod my lethargic consent. He will not let these needles puncture through to my soul.

Every morning Jesus spent on earth the first sound he heard was his own heart roaring for love. Unlike me he would not silence the voice of his longing because the denial of the deepest ache of the soul is sin. A thousand plugs injecting temporary fulfillment for temporary needs, all conveniently invented as distractions from the permanent need, this is idolatry.

Jesus isn't afraid to expose the God-shaped abyss in the human core because he knows God's heart has a similar space inside for every human. While I hasten to stifle the sound of my sobbing and spend my existence in a tedium of hypnotic denial, he lives non-stop in the place of deep desire, because only here can one experience true love. Jesus, I am tired of pretending I don't hear myself crying for you. As the sun sets I step off into the canyon of my neediness and freefall through its infinite depths until I feel your arms around me and then I am flying.

Loving Jesus, Son of Abraham

 

An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Matthew 1:1

I love how Jesus is immediately identified with Abraham. To reach back into the ages and touch the weathered hand of Abraham is to contact the heartbeat of humanity. It could have been any old man in any desert who heard what Abraham heard that night. Through you all nations will be blessed. Why Abraham? Why anyone? We are all part of Abraham’s story, for in Abraham, the story of God intersects the story of us. Eternity steps into time, into the flapping tents of a homeless nomad on a lonely desert night, one of those nights when the stars are spilled like sand across the vastness of the firmament and as he stares, he hears the whisper, So shall your descendants be.

The brightest star, the Morning Star, in that overwhelming sky, must have been Jesus. Looking down into the wondering eyes of the man outside the tent in the middle of the wasteland, he must have smiled. Hi, Father Abraham.

But oh, the years between the dreaming and the coming true… the tragedies, the children dying in the wilderness.

 

Today the sons of Abraham are at war.

Eyes that gazed in wonder at God’s promises now glare hatefully at the fulfillment in each other.

And in our midst stands Jesus, son of Abraham, saying, Before Abraham was, I AM. Before you would even recognize the story, I was telling it. How many lonely nights had I stood alone weeping in that desert before you shuffled over the horizon and chanced to hear my voice?

Jesus, I hear you. May all of us hear you, beyond the gunfire, beyond the rhetoric. May all of us see you, still weeping in the desert, still staring through the eyes of your heartbroken brothers, the sons of Abraham.

REMEMBER TO PRAY FOR THE MODERN-DAY DESCENDANTS OF ABRAHAM,

THE PEOPLES OF THE MIDDLES EAST,

THAT THEY MAY RECOGNIZE JESUS IN THEIR MIDST.

 
 

Loving Jesus within the Great Story

An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
Matthew 1:1

So for some reason this intractable fellow named Matthew decided it would be best to kick off his written account of the life of Jesus with a highly exciting list of unpronounceable names. "...and Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asaph, and Asaph the father of Jehoshaphat..." I used to hate him for it, to be honest. A genealogy seemed to me to be a pretty faulty method for capturing an audience's attention at the top end of a narrative. Nowadays, though, I know better than to yawn.

Matthew, the author traditionally linked to the first book in the Christian Scriptures and also a disciple of Jesus, understood that before he could dive into the action of this story he had to establish the identity of his main character. His audience, incidentally, was primarily Jewish, and at that time in history a person's lineage was of supreme interest to the Jewish community. More than anything, your ancestry defined who you were and determined who you could be. Matthew's goal was to make sure that his readers knew that Jesus' family tree more than qualified him to be exactly who his followers claimed he was: no less than the promised Messiah, a prophesied deliverer of the people, who was expected to abolish oppression and ungodliness while permanently establishing righteousness, justice, and peace.

This is why my opinion of Matthew's wordy prologue to the story of Jesus has changed for the better. The point he's making essentially is that Jesus hasn't just dropped out of nowhere, another faddish miracle man with a cult following among the peasants. No, says Matthew, the man I shadowed at close range for a period of three years is part of a much bigger story, one that began long before any of us were born and that is also destined to outlive every one of us. See, in the eyes of Matthew and his readership, the names in this list were anything but ordinary. They represented people whose identities were charged with significance for the entire human race. Their lives, like most human lives, were full of imperfections and disappointments, but running through them all a powerful thread of divine presence linked them to a transcendent saga that had been going since before the dawn of time. The power behind all existence had touched down in these particular lives in a big way, Matthew believed; and I believe it, too.

This breathtaking legacy of encounters with ultimate truth culminates gloriously in Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Watching him stand there on the threshold of time with the eternal story burning brightly in his being, I experience the thrill of the endless ages crashing down around me when I realize: I know him personally.

And he loves me.

I love you, too, Jesus, choosing to enter humanity's story and intertwine our life with God's. I love how you came not to nullify all that came before you, but to complete it, to make sense of it. And I love the fact that because of you my story no longer has to be limited to the confines of my fragile, fleeting little lifespan in this fragile, fleeting age, but instead I can enter the Great Story - your story. Our story.