Sometimes I want to be like Jesus
because I think he had all his stuff together. I think my generation (even more than most generations before) suffers from this deep desire and
temptation to arrive and to have it all together. We long for the fast
track, to be finished and complete – to fill our heads and find the answers –
and to miss out on the struggle and the suffering.
I’m not saying Jesus didn’t have his
stuff together, but I’m realizing more and more these days how much that misses
the point. When I follow that line of thinking it doesn’t take long
before I’ve neutered the gospel in to a self-help plan, or at least a crutch to
make me feel a little better on my weak days – the days when I can’t get past
my own crap or work up enough courage to love myself. And I start sing
that gross little song, “Someday I’ll be past this. Someday I will
be exactly how I should be.”
I mistake this journey of walking
with and being in relationship with Jesus for an ‘unbroken upward spiral
towards holiness.’ I forget that Jesus said, “Follow me.”
I wish that he said, “Come here…. There you go. All finished, rest
easy, now you are on my team!”
I’ve been spending a lot of time in
the gospel of John. The first time I read it through slowly – a piece of
a chapter at a time, hanging on every word – the last few have been speed reads
in one or two sittings, trying to let it all sink in. Still, the one
thing that jumps out at me every time is that chapter after chapter Jesus
defines and defends himself again and again with one fact: that his eyes
are set on his Abba, his Daddy. Jesus does what he sees the Father doing;
and loves those whom the Father loves.
Jesus usually has to give these
explanations after all kinds of prodding from the pharisees (the ones who
thought they had all their stuff together, or at least thought they were on
their way). They try to stump him with twisted questions and they like to
say, “Who are you?” until they are blue in the face. Jesus always,
always, always brings it back to this: I am the Son. I do what I
see my Father doing. He makes it clear that he is not around to give all
the answers, he’s not trying to be the most profound rabbi of his time, he is
not about ideas and theologies and interpretations of the law, he is about his
Father’s business. He fully and perfectly understands what it means to be
a child of God, and he is desperately trying to bring us into that kind of life
– to remind us all of who we are and who we are meant to be: children of
God.
That is good news for this shabby
bunch – all of us who have been living like orphan’s in our Father’s
house. “Follow me,” Jesus says. “Daddy is doing
things all over the place and we get to watch and take part.”
The Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the
Father doing.
For whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise.
For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. – Jesus
john 5.19-20
No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his
master is doing;
but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have
made known to you. – Jesus
john 15.15
