When Jesus Loses It, or, The Gospel Is Not a Brene Brown Book

Go Here First! John 11:1-45

I’ve been trying to shove Jesus into a box all week. I’ve been wrestling with this passage, looking for answers, checking the Facebook, reading the commentaries, asking my Bible scholar husband, checking the Facebook, checking my email, checking my text messages and then checking my Facebook again, as if any of these places will have the answers I’m looking for. But of course they don’t. No matter how many times I refresh Facebook, or read the books, or look up what that famous preacher said, I’m not going to find what I’m looking for. 

I have so many questions. 

I want to know why Jesus waits so long to come to Mary and Martha in their grief. I want to know what was so important that he stayed where he was for two more days instead of going to his friends to comfort and support them? 

And is Jesus really glad that he wasn’t there for Lazarus’s death, just so that people can come to believe? Isn’t there another way that we can come to believe besides waiting around for someone to die? 

And what does Lazarus think about all this? Is he happy to be alive again? Is he bewildered? How will he live his life from now on? Will he dread dying again, or will he be less afraid the next time around? How will the community treat him? Will he be welcomed back, or shunned? 

Will he turn into some magic guru that people will flock to just to touch? Will they make a Hallmark movie about him so everyone can feel good about themselves? 

And what about Mary and Martha?  Mary and Martha are just aching for Jesus’ presence — they call for him when Lazarus gets sick, and then later both of them say, “If you’d have been here, my brother would not have died” and Jesus isn’t there for them. First of all, what a sucky friend. Secondly, what does that mean for us? I mean, are there times when Jesus isn’t present for us? Is Jesus in quarantine? Showing social distance? Like Mary and Martha, I keep asking, “Where is Jesus during all of this mess?” Is he off waiting somewhere just so he can teach us a lesson?!

Jesus doesn’t do what I want him to do in this passage, and it’s maddening. I want Jesus to rush over there. I want him to heal Lazarus. Or at least just sit with Mary and Martha in their grief. I want him to stop being so preachy. I cringe when I read that, during all this confusion and grief and danger, Jesus starts talking about darkness and light and belief and resurrection. I mean, the last thing people want when they’re hurting is to be preached at. 

And most of all, if Jesus is going to go around raising people from the dead, where was he when my loved ones died, and where was he during the tsunamis and the hurricanes and the tornadoes and the viruses? If Jesus can raise Lazarus, why doesn’t he raise everybody else, physically, bodily, in the here and now? 

Jesus isn’t fitting into my paradigm this week. No matter how much I want to shove him in. Dan, my husband says, “Jenn, you’ve been reading this passage like it’s a Brene Brown book. And it’s not a Brene Brown book.” 

Now for those of you who aren’t familiar with her, Brene Brown is this brilliant sociologist, writer, podcaster, and Ted-Talker, who writes about the redeeming act of vulnerability in our lives. She talks about the importance of being with one another during our struggles, and I’m all about her. 

I want Jesus to rush over to the town of Bethany, Brene Brown style, and I want him to sit and cry and be with Mary and Martha in their grief. I want him to be vulnerable and open, I want him to be their friend for goodness sakes, and instead we get Jesus the preacher, talking about daylight and nighttime and sleeping and waking and resurrection, using Lazarus as an object lesson for belief in him as the Son of God. 

He sounds so sure of himself in the beginning of this passage. He sounds like he has everything under control, like he’s got it all together, as if he’s this god hovering above us all, waiting for the opportune moment to teach us the lesson we are to learn from this tragic circumstance. 

Like the well meaning mourners who say that God has a plan for us, it feels like Jesus is rushing through to the lesson before feeling the feelings of the circumstances themselves. 

Like a mom in the midst of a scary pandemic, he’s trying to keep it under control, keep it together, for the sake of the kids. 

And just like that, I get it. 

Here he is, as human as it gets, trying to keep it together, keep control, make this whole situation a learning experience. Find the good in the bad, act like you know what’s going on. This is Jesus, trying to keep his shit together when everything around him is falling apart. 

And he does a really good job at it. He’s the best at it. 

He’s God, after all, so he can hold all this emotion, all this anger and grief, all this doubt and unknowing — he can hold it all, carry it all, endure it all with a stiff upper lip and no complaints. 

Until he can’t anymore. 

Until he, too, is faced with his own grief and despair and unknowing. Until he can’t hold it in any longer. Until he is face to face with the brokenness of the world, a brokenness that leads to death, despair, tears, pleading, and bargaining. 

Because as Jesus gets closer to the situation, closer to the grief and death and tears and confusion, the more dismayed he gets. He starts off fine. First, he gets the news that Lazarus is ill, and he can keep it together. He calmly decides to stay put for a few days, and he keeps it together. When he finally decides to leave for Judea, he’s at his best, defying the angry crowds that want to stone him, preaching the good news that he is the light and salvation for us all. He’s strong and he’s tough and he’s the leader we all need during this time of fearful uncertainty.  He keeps it together after he hears that Lazarus has already been in the tomb for four days, and he even keeps it together when Martha rushes out to him in tears, practically blaming him for Lazarus’s death. 

“If you had been here, Lord, my brother would not have died,” she says. And still he keeps it together when she tells him that even now he can do something about this. Even now, God will give whatever Jesus asks. He can do something about this. He can change their situation. 

He holds it all together. He has his eye on the prize, he’s focused on the goal, he’s ready to reveal the greatness and goodness of God through power and control and miraculous deeds. 

He keeps it together, that is, until he sees Mary, who has run to him, until Mary, who is weeping at his feet. He can hold it all in, all his grief about the death of his friend, his fear about what is to come, his frustration at the lack of belief in his followers, all of it, until he sees Mary. Mary, and the other Jews weeping, devastated, angry, mourning. 

And then he loses it. 

Like a parent who can’t keep it together one more minute, who can’t find answers to the questions and comfort for the scared, who can’t build walls high enough to keep the ones he loves safe, Jesus loses it. And Mary doesn’t hold it in. She, too, like Martha, tells Jesus exactly how she feels. “You could have stopped this, Lord. You could have kept Lazarus from dying.” 

And here it is. 

This is the moment. This is the messy moment of raw vulnerability and emotion. Here’s his Brene Brown moment. He can’t hold it in any longer. He loses it. He gets upset. He was “greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.” Other translations say he is deeply moved in spirit and troubled, some say he’s groaning, he’s sighing, he’s angry and blaming, he’s agitated, he’s conflicted. 

And in all that emotion, in all the fear and frustration and hopelessness he feels, he asks a question, “Where have you laid him?” 

Suddenly he’s not preaching, he’s not promoting, he’s not teaching or rebuking, he’s asking about his friend, he needs to see and touch and feel the full pain of this experience. He needs to be there. He needs to weep. He’s kept it all together until now, and now, he falls apart. 

As he gets closer to the tomb, the more agitated and upset he becomes. He needs to see Lazarus for himself, he needs to come to terms with the brokenness of the world and the brokenness of his friend, for himself. He needs to enter in to the questions and the emotions, not just stand outside of it with all the answers. 

“Open the tomb,” he says.  

Open the tomb and let it out. 

Let it all out. The death, the sorrow, the confusion and the frustration. Let it out. Let it all come out. Jesus lets it out. He lets it all out. Even when Martha warns him of the smell, Jesus pushes forward into it, into the pain, into the sorrow.  

“Did I not tell you,” he says, “that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” Is he saying this only to her, or to somehow convince himself, too? 

He’s telling her, and himself, that the only way out is through. 

The only way out of the pain and the heartbreak is to go through. To feel the feelings, to smell the smells, to get close to the sorrow, face to face with the grief. 

So they take away the stone. They take away everything that separates them from the sorrow, and somehow, Jesus gets it together again. Somehow, Jesus remembers who he is and whose he is. He goes to God with thanksgiving. He goes to God for the sake of the crowd. He gets it together enough to go to God. 

Or maybe it’s precisely the opposite. 

Maybe he’s fallen apart enough to go to God. Maybe he gets so close to God’s grief, he gets so close to the brokenness of the world, that he is no longer separated from God or from us. “Lazarus, come out!” he calls. Come out into the world. Come back out into the sorrow and the pain and the frustration, but also come out into the beauty and the light and the hope. Come out. Come back out into the messiness of life. 

Jesus calls us out. Jesus gets so close to our pain, so close to our sorrow and our confusion and our doubt, Jesus experiences it all, so he can call us out, out of our tombs of grief and pain and addiction and anger, into the light, into beauty and community and reconciliation. 

You can tell when someone just gets it. You can tell when someone has seen hard times. There’s something about their demeanor, how they carry themselves, that says, “Yes, I’ve seen it too.” And because they get it, a little bit of grief is lifted, a connection is made, some hope is restored. And with the death of his friend, Jesus gets it. 

He, like most of us humans, tries to keep it all together, he tries to hold on, but the closer he gets to the sorrow, the less control he has, and that is the life-giving redemption in our story. Not that Jesus did some magic trick to raise a man from the dead, but that Jesus connected with us so deeply, united with us so fully, mourned with us so completely, that he became one of us. The division between God and humanity is dissolved, the line between life and death is eroded, and we are raised from death - all the little and big kinds of deaths that we suffer. We are resurrected.

If you’re looking for resurrection, look for it in the tombs. Look for it in the scruff of last year’s yard debris, in the dead trees that have lost their leaves, look for it in the ICUs and the emergency rooms, in the NA meetings and the psych wards. Look for it under the bridges and in the bars, look for it in our own broken hearts. Look for it in the struggle and the sadness, in the broken relationships and the addictions, in the hurt feelings and the loss of hope. If you’re looking for resurrection, look for it in the places you thought were dead. Feel the feelings. Go to the tomb. Move through the hurt. Ask the questions. Get frustrated and angry and try and fail to put Jesus in a box. The only way out is through. But life is on the other side. 

Thanks be to God.

"into the unknnnoooooooooowwwwwwwnnnn!"

Read this first: John 9:1-41

Jesus is breaking all the rules in our reading today. As usual. Of course he is. He’s healing on the Sabbath. He’s interacting with outcasts. He’s upending the Jewish moral code. He’s making a mess. He’s healing on the Sabbath. He’s wreaking havoc on all the purity and moral codes of his time.

Not only all that, though. He’s breaking all of our rules, too. He’s surrounded by crowds. He’s not practicing proper social distancing. He heals with his spit and mud. And he doesn’t just touch his own face, rather, he touches someone else’s face. 

Jesus is not only breaking all the rules for his time, but he’s breaking our rules too. What do we do with that? I mean, I’m used to Jesus breaking everybody else’s rules. What do I do when he’s breaking mine?  

Jesus breaks all of the Covid-19 rules we’ve so diligently and so recently set up for ourselves. He breaks all the rules we’ve been trying to get each other to follow. As we try to keep our parents in the house and our nieces and nephews from going on spring break, Jesus is out there mingling and sharing and getting much closer than the requisite six feet coughing distance. I guess what I mostly want to say about this passage is, “don’t try this at home, kids.” 

This is such a challenge for me because under “normal” circumstances, I’d be preaching on this passage and encouraging us all to lean in, get dirty, become embodied, get closer. I’d want us to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, who goes out, who goes to, who enters in. Go. Feed the people. Visit to the homeless camps. Find community. Seek out the other. This is my theology. This is my faith. This is precisely what our God did and still does. God leans in, God gets dirty. God is embodied. God gets closer. But how do we live in to this in an era of social distancing? How do we incarnate the love of God to and for each other during this time of Facebook Live, Zoom conferencing, elbow bumping, and long distance telephone calls? 

Honestly? I don’t know how to be a Christian during Covid-19. Too much is changing, too fast. I don't know how to keep up, and I don’t know how to adapt. Some pastors are doing brilliantly, video-recording their sermons, mastering YouTube, updating their websites and doing daily Facebook devotionals. Me? I’ve hunkered down, I’ve read a few books, I’ve fretted and prayed. My whole theology, one that I thought was pretty solid, one based upon incarnation and embodiment and dirtiness and vulnerability, has become upended, tossed around, and I’m forced into a new paradigm, one where my passions for feeding, telling stories, and connecting and touching, need to be replaced or adapted or at least put on pause. 

I thought I was done with this deconstructing business, I thought I’d already deconstructed my faith, asked the hard questions, struggled with my doubts and come out the other side. But like a tilt-o-whirl, just when I think the ride is over, I'm whipped back in, back into the questions and the struggle and the doubts all over again. What is my faith if I can’t touch? If I can’t connect? If I can’t feed and hold and sit with those who need to be fed and held and connected with?

I’m suddenly feeling very sorry for the Pharisees in our reading today. And that feels weird. 

This passage is about an entire paradigm shift for the Jews. Much like a virus, Jesus is rocking the boat, rocking their faith, and messing up the status quo. And much like a virus, some things aren’t going to survive this shift. Some ideas and ideals, assumptions and theologies and structures and systems might not make it through the dramatic changes that Jesus brings about.  But unlike Covid-19, Jesus has come to wake us up, to refocus our faith, to pare it down to what really matters, and offer us new life on the other side. Unlike Covid-19, Jesus comes to heal and transform and resurrect.

Let’s watch and see how he does it.

See the disciples think they’re asking a pretty progressive question at the beginning of our drama today. Who sinned? The parents? The blind man? Where did this “disability” come from? They’re asking a question of theodicy. Why is there evil in the world? Why do bad things happen to good people? What’s this Corona Virus and why is it affecting the most vulnerable of us out there? Who sinned? Mom and dad? Or the kid? Someone has to be blamed for this, right? And Jesus answers them, “neither.” Neither mom and dad, nor the child.  And there it is, step one in the paradigm shift. 

Of course his answer is equally problematic. He says that this man was born blind so that God’s words might be revealed through him. As if it’s God’s will that he’s blind just so that God can fix him and make a lesson out of him. And that just makes him sound like a pawn. That just makes him sound like his sole function of being is to be God’s puppet to show how very good God is. It makes it sound like it’s God’s fault.

But maybe Jesus isn’t saying that at all. Maybe there is an alternative interpretation. Maybe Jesus is saying that if you have to blame someone, blame God. If it has to be somebody’s fault, it’s God’s fault. God can handle the blame. God can take the fault. God can even make something good out of it. Another shift in the paradigm.

But because Jesus sees this man as a man, first, because Jesus sees beyond this man’s blindness to the person he is, whole and complete and unique and special just as he is, he heals him. He uses spit and mud and touch to cross all kinds of barriers and quarantines between this man and himself, between his disability and the societal rules set up to keep his sin from “infecting” every body else. Jesus builds a bridge. Jesus breaks the rules. Jesus shifts the paradigm. And then he sneaks off the stage. This formerly blind guy’s world is changed. Upended with a little spit and some dirt. A paradigm shift.

And this throws everyone else into an uproar. 

First they don’t even believe this is the same guy.

Then they want to hear how this all happened.

Then they want to know who to blame. 

And the guy born blind? He calmly tells them what he knows. “The man called Jesus made some mud, put it on my eyes, then told me to go clean up, and I did, and now I can see.”

But his explanation doesn’t make sense. This rocks their worldview. This shakes their foundations. People aren’t just healed of their sins. People born blind aren’t simply made to see again. Mud and saliva aren’t found at the apothecary. God doesn’t honor work on the Sabbath. This goes against the careful constructs they’ve set up for themselves.

So they take him to the Pharisees. The guys in charge. The ones who are supposed to have all the answers. The ones who’ve wrestled with the questions and figured it all out. 

They want to hear the story again. So the guy tells it again. “He put mud on my eyes, I washed, and now I see,” he says. For the formerly blind man, whose world has been changed right before his eyes, he adapts well. He tells the story. He accepts it. He keeps it simple. He can see now. Before he couldn’t. Life is never going to be the same for him again, but how he got there is simple. Mud, Spit, Wash, See.

But the Pharisees are having trouble adapting to this news. They don’t know what to make of it. They can’t fit it into their worldview. On the one hand, this Jesus guy must be a sinner because he didn’t observe the Sabbath in the way that we understand it. But on the other hand, how could he have performed these signs if he is such a sinner? They’re trying to force Jesus into their paradigm, and it’s just not working. Every time they get one part of him to fit, the rest slips out the other side. 

But the man born blind? He adapts. He adjusts. He calls Jesus a prophet. And when he is told that Jesus is the Son of Man, by Jesus himself, no less, he adapts to that too. He accepts. He believes and he worships. Like the layers of an onion, more and more of his blindness is stripped away, and he sees even more clearly with each shift in the paradigm, with each adaptation he has to make to his worldview.

But that doesn’t fit. That doesn’t work for the Pharisees. So they call his parents. They ask them to figure this out. They ask them what’s true. And they can’t fit it into anything they know either, they can’t explain this, so they say, “I don’t know,” and they throw it back on their son. 

So the Pharisees bring him back in and tell him to get this situation to fit in with what they know. “Give glory to God,” they say. “Tell us that Jesus is a sinner.” 

And the man born blind doesn’t do it. He doesn’t force Jesus into their paradigm. He doesn’t explain this miracle away. He simply tells the story again, again and again, hoping that somehow, the truth will clarify things. But the truth doesn’t fit. It doesn’t fit in to the world the Pharisees have made for themselves, and they can’t adapt. They can’t see. They revile him. His story doesn’t fit in with theirs. They want to know where this Jesus guy comes from and how he fits. 

And the man born blind tries to explain it to them, tries to adjust their paradigm. “Here is an astonishing thing!” he says, surprised, but still willing to go with this crazy change. “You do not know where he comes from and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” The man is trying to speak the language of the Pharisees, to get them to understand, but they can’t. They won’t.

They still can’t see it. They drive him out. They reject his story. They can’t make it fit.

Isn’t that what we do when we can’t make things fit? We throw them out. We drive them out of our heads. We reject the stories that don’t fit into the constructs we’ve so carefully built for ourselves. 

But when Jesus hears that they’ve thrown him out, he goes out to find him. Jesus goes out to those of us who don’t fit. Jesus finds us. Jesus shifts our paradigm, changes our world, and changes us. 

The Pharisees are having a hard time coping with this changing world. It’s a changing paradigm that Jesus brings into being. The whole system of sin and knowledge and church and faith is being turned upside down. 

And that’s where we are today. Church isn’t what it used to be. Community looks different. Sundays aren’t what they used to be. Even before this whole virus business, the Church was in a state of drastic change. 

It’s been said that every 500 years Christianity has a big rummage sale, where it gets rid of all its old stuff to make room for the new. Phylis Tickle writes, “about every 500 years the empowered structures of institutionalized Christianity, whatever they may be at that time, become an intolerable carapace, or hard shell, that must be shattered in order that renewal and new growth may occur.”

It’s been about five hundred years since the Protestant Reformation, and we’re due for a rummage sale. 

That is, Christianity is changing. Christians are changing. We are living in a Post-Christendom world. Lots of people simply don’t go to church anymore. Many people don’t define themselves as religious anymore. Values have shifted. Attitudes have changed. The paradigm has been altered. Tod Bolsinger equates our experience to that of Lewis and Clark’s, who explored the land west of the Mississippi river in search of an easy water-route to the Pacific ocean. They brought with them the things they thought they needed, namely, canoes, only to discover that there was no direct water route to the Pacific, only wilderness, mountains, and uncertainty. 

The question is, how are we, as Christians, going to respond to these changes? Will we dig our heels in and insist that things stay the way they’ve always been? Will we be like the townspeople and the Pharisees, disbelieving in the work that Jesus is doing in our midst just because it doesn’t fit with our preferred paradigms? Or will we adapt? Will we see things anew? Will we open our eyes to the work that Jesus is doing all around us, even though it’s different in form, or function, or language, or expression from anything we’ve ever experienced before? Will we insist on dragging our canoes through the mountains, or will we adjust, gather up some different supplies, and take a step into the unknown? 

I don’t know what is in our future. I just know that Christ is there. Because that’s what Christ does. Christ follows us, finds us, changes us, renews us, transforms us. Christ even does this when we’re binge watching Netflix in our pajamas for the third day in a row. Let’s adjust. Let’s adapt. Let’s see what healing is in store for us.

Thanks be to God.

No to Superman, Yes to Jesus

Matthew 4:1-11 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

The Temptation of Jesus

4 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. 3 The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” 4 But he answered, “It is written,

‘One does not live by bread alone,
    but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, 6 saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written,

‘He will command his angels concerning you,’
    and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”

7 Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; 9 and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” 10 Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,

‘Worship the Lord your God,
    and serve only him.’”

11 Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

Honestly, I don’t know what I think of the devil. I mean, does he even exist? Is he the snake in the garden? The red guy with the horns and the pitchfork? That little demon on our left shoulder, whispering in our ears that we should eat that cake, drink the beer, cut in line, run the light? Or is it not really a being, but rather this thing outside of ourselves that we’ve personified in order to explain why we do things we shouldn’t do? Or is it some part of ourselves, inside of ourselves, that tells us we’re not good enough, we’re not smart enough, we’re not wealthy or pretty or hardworking enough? Or maybe the devil is that evil we can’t explain any other way - the cancer, the war, the child hunger? Maybe it’s the Powers and Principalities — those systems and structures that we feel powerless to, or the -isms of racism and consumerism and ablism and sexism? 

Or maybe the devil is just a scapegoat to get us out of feeling responsible for our own actions.

Who made the devil and why does “he” exist?  I have no idea.

I do think, though, that the devil, Satan, the “tempter,” Lucifer, our egos, or the darker sides of ourselves, whatever we want to call him or her or it, reveals to us our true humanity. And maybe that’s not all bad. What if, deep in the wilderness, high on that mountain, Satan was giving Jesus a choice, a choice to be human, and in that choice is revealed our chance to be connected to God and to each other. Maybe the tempter is that bad thing that gives us the opportunity to choose the good.

Let’s just think about it for a minute. Let’s at least entertain the thought.

What if Jesus had said, “yes. Sure, Satan, whoever or whatever you are, I will take that bread”? What if he said, “Yes, Satan, I think I will jump off this building and see if the angels will help me fly”? What if he’d accepted Satan’s offer from atop the highest mountain to rule the world and everything in it?

What if? What if Jesus became that thing that fixes all of our problems for us? 

What if Jesus was our President who could regulate the stock market and negotiate world peace and house the homeless? Or our superhero who could save us from our car wrecks and our runaway trains and our evildoers? 

Wouldn’t it make life so much…easier?

Would it have been so bad for Jesus to have said “yes” to these questions from the devil? 

Where once there were stones, there’s now bread. What’s so bad about that? Bread’s not such a bad thing. 

Where once Jesus was stuck on a high tower, now he can fly, zoom from place to place, defying the laws of gravity and physics and time and place? He could get to everyone in need and save them, like the Flash or Superman.

Where once we had tyrants and homicidal kings and demagogues, we now have Jesus, powerful but benevolent, just, fair ruler of the world. He’d make everyone equal, he’d feed all the hungry, wars would cease and, like Woody Guthrie says, we’d all get a job and a pension. What’s so bad about that? 

What if Jesus had said yes to these things? Would it really have been all that bad?

Why does Jesus reject Satan and his offers, really? 

I mean, I know he’s Satan, and that’s bad. I know he’s the embodiment of all things evil and corrupt and broken. But are the things he’s offering Jesus really all that bad in and of themselves? Don’t we want Jesus to do these things for us? 

When we hear of starving children in Syria, what’s wrong with wanting a little bit of bread?

When we hear of cancer diagnosis, what’s wrong with wanting a little bit of death-defying healing?

When we are subject to tyrants and power-hungry rulers, what’s wrong with wanting Jesus to be in charge for once?

What if Jesus accepted Satan’s offers? Would it have been all that bad? 

These are the temptations of Jesus. And this is our temptation: to turn Jesus into a superhero, a president, or even a defier of all the laws of nature. We want a Jesus who can heal our cancer, stop our car wrecks, give us world peace, and feed all the hungry children. And sometimes, that’s the Jesus we get. Sometimes, Jesus steps in, and somehow, I don’t know how, the hungry are fed and the cancer is cured and the derailed train gets back on the tracks. But what about those times when Jesus doesn’t? What about those times when the cancer comes back and the kids freeze to death and the bombs explode and the stock market falls? What about those times when the virus spreads and the drug cartels win and the fires burn? Where’s Jesus then? Where’s Jesus when we need a superhero? 

Sometimes, I think Jesus is still on that mountain, wrestling with Satan. Sometimes I think that Jesus is still up there, seriously contemplating defying gravity and ruling the world and making bread out of nothing. He could go back anytime. He could become more than human at any point. Jesus is really and truly tempted to be our superhero. Jesus is really and truly tempted to be our president. He’s tempted to turn stones to bread and to feed himself and everybody else that’s hungry. 

But Jesus says, “No.” 

I’m not sure why Jesus heals some and not others. I’m not sure why some people live a life of comfort and privilege while others struggle. 

But I think I know why Jesus said, “No,” on that mountaintop at the end of his forty days and forty nights. 

To say yes would have meant that he denied his own hunger. To say yes to the bread and to the flying and the world domination would have meant that he was different from human, that he wasn’t really tempted, that he could have whatever he wanted without really ever needing it. He’d be the kid who’s supposed to be living on his own but his dad still pays his cell phone bill. He’d be the Son of God who only kind of sort of maybe almost gets what it’s like to be human. He’d be the Savior who’s supposed to know what it’s like to be human without actually having been so. He’d be a demigod, half god and half human, but not fully either.

Let me try to explain.

If we always get what we want, we never really experience what it means to really want it. 

My kids always say they’re starving. But they have no idea what that really means. 

Dan and I comment about how broke we are. But we have no idea what poverty is really like.

If Jesus got whatever he commanded, if Jesus could turn stones into bread and fly off of buildings and rule the world, he’d have no real idea of what it’s like to be hungry, what it’s like to be bound by gravity, what it’s like to be subject to Roman rule. 

Jesus was bound by these things. Because Jesus chose to be. 

This temptation in the wilderness is Jesus’ choosing to be human. Choosing to be limited. Choosing to be Emmanuel, “God for us and with us and in us.” 

If Jesus had said yes, he’d be our superhero. Our president. Our czar of the world. But he wouldn’t be our Savior. He’d be something else, something other. Something different. 

And that’s a real temptation for us. So often we want Jesus to be something other than God-with-us. We want Jesus to swoop in and fix our relationship, solve our money problems, cure our diseases and protect our children. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s ok, it’s normal, to want these things. Jesus wanted these things. But Jesus didn’t want them if it meant being something or someone other than who he really was. He didn’t want them if it meant being anything more or less than being human, bound by human frailty and weakness and fragility and brokenness. Jesus chose to be human. 

And I think that’s what Lent is all about. It’s us taking some time to choose to be human. It’s time to recognize that we are bound by time and space and history. We are limited. We are broken. We can’t turn stones into bread and we can’t fly and we can’t rule the world. 

Whether we give things up or do something extra or fast or volunteer or do whatever kind of religious discipline we want during Lent, we’re going to fail, we’re going to be distracted by our own desire to be more than human, to be more than broken, to be more than weak and failing. Lent is an opportunity to set our sights high, and then to watch as we fail. It’s a time to choose our own humanity. 

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. We should absolutely try. And then we should watch as the grace of God catches us when we fail. 

It’s what Jesus did during those forty days and forty nights. The Spirit drove him out into the wilderness and left him alone. After his baptism and hearing the voice of God and this idealistic, amazing, theophany, after this powerful proclamation that he is God’s Son, the beloved, Jesus is dragged into the wilderness in order to test his humanity. He’s left with nothing but his memory of the word of God in his mind to feed and sustain him. He’s left with only the things that we have, our stories, our relationships, our memories, and the word of God. We don’t have super powers. We don’t have unlimited strength or the ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound. We can’t shoot lasers from our eyes or webs from our wrists. We can’t fix the world’s problems with a signature and a promise. We’re just people, doing the best we can with what we have. 

And as Jesus wrestles with the devil in the wilderness, he wrestles with his own humanity, his own limitations, and he chooses them. He didn’t have to. And that makes all the difference. He chooses the stones even though he’s hungry. He chooses to keep his feet planted firmly on the ground, even though he wants to fly. He chooses to be a disruptive peasant insurrectionist even though it is going to get him crucified. He chooses his humanity. 

And in that choice is our freedom. In that choice is our salvation. 

Because God chose to be human, God chose to be with us. God chose to be one of us. And that means that God can fully relate to us, and we can fully relate to God. There is no more division. Now, God knows what it’s like to be hungry. God knows what it’s like to be limited. God knows what it’s like to not be able to fix all of the world’s problems. God knows. 

I know this is small comfort to those of us who are actively suffering right now. That God is with us in our cancer and our car wrecks, our hunger and our divorces, doesn’t make us glad that these things are happening. That God is with us doesn’t make us stop longing for the day when we are fed and cured and renewed and there’s world peace. 

God is with us in the longing, too. 

But this hungry, longing, frustrated, hurting, crucified God is the God we get. The God who crosses the barrier between us and the other, the God who crosses the bridge between us and the sacred, the God who entered in to death so that death doesn’t have the last word is the God that comes to us through Jesus Christ. God says yes to God’s humanity, and this means everything to us. God is finally with us. 

This Lent, let’s practice. Let’s practice our humanity. The parts of ourselves that long to be perfect, that long to fix and to feed. And the parts of ourselves that fail to be perfect, that fail to fix, that fail to feed. 

May this be our time in the wilderness when we say "no" to the thing that wears us down, and “yes” to our humanity, and that includes our failures and our pain and our need for forgiveness. Jesus is with us in the wilderness. Jesus has said yes. 

This Lent, let us also, say yes.

Thanks be to God.