Today’s Jesus
is the fierce Jesus most of us don’t like to think about. Jesus in this
scripture is what one of my former bishops used to call “cranky Jesus.” Jesus is
fiercely uncompromising with the three people with whom he has encounters.
Whether they approach him or Jesus calls them, he puts up with no nonsense and
surrenders no prisoners. Jesus is being fierce, or cranky, if you prefer, with
people who fit their faith to their lives rather than fit their life to their
faith.
Jesus isn’t having any of convenient
faith. He wants us to consider how our faith leads our life rather than our
life leading our faith. “We must be willing to let go of the life we have
planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”[1]
And we must be willing to let go of the things others expect of us to lead a
life that is God-centered rather than self-centered.
It’s easy to have the life we want
rather than the life God wants us to have. There are countless ways we can
rationalize giving up on the things calling us to respond with our faith. Most
of this has to do with our desire for control. We want to be in control of our
lives, our time, and our relationships. For most of us, it takes a significant
crisis to realize we are not and never were in control of our lives, our time,
and our relationships. Control is a kind of blindness and a significant crisis
is something we often call an “eye-opening” experience for a reason. We may
have thought we were in control, but now we know we are not in control at all.
Control is an illusion we have allowed ourselves to believe.
Jesus’ desire is for each of the
people he encounters is to awaken them to the illusion of control. Following Him
without reserve, flinging oneself into life, as a follower of Jesus, is what Jesus
asks. It means to live fully out-of-control by putting God in control. It means
putting God first in all things and with all things. It means an inconvenient
faith.
People talk about putting God in
control. There was even a bumper strip some years ago that said, “God is my
copilot.” I wondered about that, and then a few months later I saw a bumper
strip that said, “If God is your copilot, move over.” But I’m not so sure
that’s even what Jesus had in mind. I think Jesus launched himself into life
and death. He became fully human – and in his case – fully divine, and experienced
life and death in all the ways we do. He lived his life and death as we do to show us how to live and how to die.
Jesus didn’t “set his face to go to
Jerusalem”[2]
to be in control of what would happen. Instead, he went to Jerusalem to give up control, to let the mob and the
authorities have their way with him. Jesus joined fully in the
out-of-controlness of the people to become who he was called to be. And that
involved not Jesus meek and mild, or tender and touching, but Jesus fierce and
cranky, determined to go through with being the target of all things evil.
It may not seem like it, but that’s an
enormous promise from God. Not that we are in control, and not even that God is
in control, but that God in the form of our Lord Jesus Christ joins us fully
and unreservedly in our out-of-control spaces and our beyond-control lives.
That’s a promise that means something
to people who have lost control, whose eyes have been opened by tragedy,
illness, addiction, or any other experience that strips us of the illusion of control.
And it’s that promise that we are joined in our out-of-controlness and given the
great gift of Jesus to join us because he knows just what out-of-control is
like.
So maybe after all, faith is not
letting God be in control so much as it is launching ourselves into life knowing
we have a companion in our out-of-control world. Knowing that this companion
knows how much God loves us and loves the world God created. Knowing that this
companion knows that nothing, nothing whatsoever, can separate us from the love
of God in Christ Jesus. When Jesus “set his face to go to Jerusalem,”[3]
he did it not to gain control of us, but to be with us in this out of control
world. Knowing this gives us the faith and the strength to launch ourselves right along with Jesus into
God’s beloved world. Knowing this makes us a companion with Jesus to join others
in this out of control world. AMEN.
The Rev Nicolette
Papanek
©2016
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