Jesus
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Cana was six miles north of Nazareth. Jesus’ mother, Mary, seems to be more than a guest in the story. She knew what was happening to the wine before the host, the groom, and the emcee. The servants followed her instructions. Perhaps Mary was related to the bride and groom, lending credence to a tradition that says the groom was John, the writer of the story, one of Jesus’ closest disciples, and that Mary and John’s mother were sisters (making Jesus and John cousins).
It was a serious offense to run out of wine, so much so that some guests sued their hosts when they didn’t receive the hospitality they believed they were due. We are told that Jesus filled six stone jars, each one of which held twenty to thirty gallons.99 That’s enough wine to render more than one thousand guests unfit to drive home.
Over and over again, Jesus connected His kingdom proclamation to eating and drinking. Feasting at the table was both thanksgiving for the past and celebration of the promise of the future. For Jesus, it was truth with teeth that mattered. Eating is a mundane, normal part of life. Yet Jesus talked about it. A lot. Whenever Jesus ate, it was a sign that He desired to invade even the mundane aspects of our lives. Our love for Him—our intimacy with Him—extends to all that we are and all that we do. Even eating can become an act of worship. We glorify God in how we eat and in how we respond to what others cook for us.
What Jesus’ mother said to the servants at Cana may be the best capstone to Jesus’ teaching and preaching: “Whatever He says to you, do it.”100 Mary’s words would later be divinely reinforced and echoed from the heavens as the transfigured Jesus’ true identity was revealed in His face, which “shone” as if on fire, and in the divine voice that spoke from the epiphanic cloud, a cloud long missing from the temple but present with Jesus: “Hear Him!”101
Listening to Jesus is listening to God.
CHAPTER 12
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The Human Jesus
So if I am asked, “Do you believe in the divinity of Christ?”
I answer, “Yes, otherwise how could he have been so
wonderfully human?” And if I am asked, “Do you believe
in the humanity of Christ?” I answer, “Yes, otherwise how
could he have been so profoundly oriented toward God?”
—CANADIAN THEOLOGIAN DOUGLAS JOHN HALL 1
PEOPLE OUTSIDE THE CHRISTIAN TRADITION SPEND THEIR TIME arguing the divinity of Christ. People inside the Christian tradition spend their time arguing the humanity of Christ.
One of the least famous but most revealing thoughts of Albert Einstein is this: the truest sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.2 What was Jesus’ imagination like?
THE IMAGINATION OF JESUS
As far as we have been able to tell, there has been no book written on the imagination of Jesus. Only a few authors have even asked the question of what kind of imaginative life Jesus displayed.3 The most striking and obvious feature of Jesus’ imaginal life is that He did not have the imagination of merely a carpenter or an artisan who worked only with tools. He showed a skill with stone stories and metaphors, which one would expect of a mason or master builder. He used a carpentry metaphor only once, along with a stab at humor: “Don’t criticize the speck of sawdust in someone else’s eye, when their own eye has a plank stuck in it.”4 But even this was a rabbinic saying that circulated widely in rabbinic culture.5
What seemed to really arouse Jesus’ imagination was nature. You might even say He had the imagination of a gardener. He drew many of His stories from the natural world—from the birds in the sky, the flowers in the field, the planting of the soil. Rembrandt made this explicit in his 1638 painting Christ and St. Mary Magdalene at the Tomb, where Jesus is portrayed holding a spade and wearing a gardener’s hat. When Jesus told us to pay attention to the “lilies of the field,”6 He could have been referring to any and all kinds of wildflowers that grow in the meadows of Galilee or in the wheat fields. Or He could have been thinking specifically of the purple anemone, which echoes the royal purple of Solomon. The one thing He definitely was not thinking of was our trumpet-fragrant Easter lilies.
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The Shema means that you have to love God intellectually (“with all thy heart”), emotionally (“with all thy soul”) and practically (“with all thy might”).
—MORDECAI KAP LAN, AT AGE NINETY, AFTER A LIFETIME OF STUDYING JUDAISM 7
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We will speak elsewhere in this book of Jesus’ mastery of metaphor, His facility with language, and His ability to reach multiple audiences at the same time. But all of Jesus’ imagination seemed dedicated to one end: bringing the Word of God to people in new and imaginative ways that would connect to their lives and lead them into right relationships with their Creator and creation.
THE EMOTIONS OF JESUS
There is another arena of Jesus’ life in which many Christians have been woefully disinterested—His emotional life. As far as I know, there has been no portrayal of the dynamics of the emotional life of Jesus. We have only presupposed His psychological reality through a cognitive lens. Yet if there is one thing we have learned from thirty years of leadership literature, it is this: a greater predictor of success than IQ (intelligence quotient) is EQ (emotional quotient). Rudolf Bultmann argued that we can know very little about the personality or preferences of Jesus.8 That is true in terms of what was His favorite color, when He felt most rejected and dejected, what was His preferred food, or whether He was enchanted by whimsy, laughed loudly, or pined for moody skies.
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Great faith requires a great sense of humor.
—JOHN H. ARMSTRONG 9
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But we do know more than we think we know about Jesus’ personality—including what landscapes ravished His soul, what emotions nurtured His spirit, and the nature of His prayer life, including His favorite places and ways to pray. Even though the chiaroscuro may be obscure, Jesus often proclaimed emotional truths and bared His primary-color emotions. In contrast to the Stoics, who argued that a true sage and philosopher would not countenance emotions, Jesus was not afraid to bare His.
Jesus expressed human characteristics as widely diverse as exhaustion—so wiped out He slept through a storm10—stress,11 hunger,12 compassion,13 and grief,14 to name an obvious few. He was not afraid to show His feelings, and He painted life with a full palette of emotions.15 Jesus declined anything that would diminish His full experience of human hurt and suffering. Myrrh, a reddish sap harvested from Commiphora bushes, was used medicinally to reduce pain when mixed with wine. Jesus refused it on the cross.16
JESUS’ SENSE OF HUMOR
The only feature of Jesus’ emotional life that has been even slightly studied is His laughter. Even then the discipline of historical context has been largely missing. Some of Jesus’ utterances were obvious guffaws—such as, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”17 People would have snickered when Jesus said, “When you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you.”18 In other words, “Don’t toot your own horn.” His slams on the scribes and Pharisees would have drawn a lot of laughter—except from the scribes and Pharisees!19 It would not surprise us if Jesus laughed by day with His disciples but wept at night with God.
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Humor is not a mood but a way of looking at the world.
—LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN 20
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Most characteristically, however, Jesus’ humor was subtle, sophisticated, and sensitive to His context. “Enter into the joy of your lord” is an invitation to lightness and laughter.21 For laughter to be real, there must be faith in a framework of providence and purpose. The more you trust in God, the more comedy is possible. That’s why
the Great Come-Down (incarnation) birthed the Great Comedian (the Incarnate One). The promises of the Beatitudes, for example, are that those who mourn or weep will be comforted and able to laugh. Nietzsche was right about satan: “serious, thorough, profound, solemn . . . the spirit of gravity—through him all things fall.”22 Jesus was the spirit of lightness through whom all things rise and hold together.
Jesus was criticized for many things. He enjoyed life a little too much—that was one rap on Him. Joy is the hallmark and heart of a Jesus-spirituality. There is the joy that comes from submission to the will of God, a kind of transcendental joy. Then there is the joy of the Lord, which is the strength of everyday life. Jesus and His disciples were not known for fasting, even though they did. They were known for feastings and rejoicings, especially alongside those with whom others refused to eat and rejoice.
The Pharisee school of Shammai, the reigning school of Judaism in Jesus’ day, despised Gentiles and registered disgust even at the sight of one. Gentile converts to Judaism were shunned by the Shammaites, since only Jews could be beloved by God. Part of the “Eighteen Measures,” the eighteen gezerot passed by the Sanhedrin to clarify Jewish-Gentile relationships, was that you couldn’t even enter the house of a Gentile, much less purchase or take food from him or any other of the “ignorant masses.”23 Disgust is arguably the most virulent of human emotions, which is why every warring party plays this emotional card and imputes to the enemy disease, wretchedness, and filth, wreaking havoc on the souls of everyone. Jesus taught His disciples to be disgust-free. Where the religious establishment looked for ways to give the coup de grâce (death blow) to outcasts and sinners, Jesus looked to give the same people the coup de grace (touch and turn of mercy).
Jesus, the master Torah teacher and linguist, was also a master punster. Jesus loved to play with words in ways that elude us because of the language barrier. It is virtually impossible to translate into English the Hebrew puns and wordplay that you find in Isaiah 21:2 (a series of puns), or Genesis 3:20 (a simple wordplay that is missed in English): “And Adam called his wife’s name Eve [hawway], because she was the mother of all living [hay].” As we saw in chapter 3, the Bible virtually begins with a pun in some of its earliest words, the micro creation account of Genesis 2:7: “And the LORD God formed man [adam] of the dust of the ground [adamah].”
In talking about hypocrites putting on a sad face, Jesus used a word that means “hide.” Hypocrites hide their real faces behind the mask of sad expressions. In other words, hypocrites “hide to be seen.” When Jesus was accusing the Pharisees of straining out a gnat but swallowing a camel (an impure animal), He was punning on the Aramaic words galma (“gnat”) and gamla (“camel”). Jesus even founded the church on a pun in Matthew 16:18 (NIV): “I tell you that you are Peter [Petras], and on this rock [petra] I will build my church.” For a church founded on a pun, the liturgical celebration of a “Holy Humor Sunday” or “Bright Sunday” seems especially fitting.
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If life is really so formless that you cannot make head or tail of it, you cannot pull its tail; and you certainly cannot make it stand on its head.
—G. K. CHESTERTON 24
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There is an ancient practice for the Sunday after Easter, or “low Sunday,” to be a celebration of the joke God played on sin and death by raising Jesus from the dead. The choirs sing silly songs; the members dress weirdly; the preacher becomes a stand-up comic. There is so much playfulness, levity, and gospel joy in the Jesus movement that it makes it extremely difficult to be a real Jesus follower without a sense of humor.
MORE THAN “MEEK AND MILD”
Someone once said that Christianity is a mild-mannered religion preached by mild-mannered men who are trying to get others to be more mildmannered. But the Gospels give us numerous glimpses into Jesus that cause us to question the portrayal of “gentle Jesus, meek and mild.”25
We are told that Jesus is never harsh, yet consider His scathing rebukes to the Pharisees.26 We are told that Jesus is never angry, let alone violent. Yet He made a whip of cords, overturned tables, and created a small riot in the temple.27 We are told that Jesus is never impatient, and He never gets frustrated. But such a portrait of Christ doesn’t square with the Gospels.28 Yes, Jesus was tolerant to some but not to all.
The Gospels make abundantly clear that there are conflicting yet complementary aspects to His personality. As we have argued, Jesus always comes in surround sound. He is a man of sorrows and joys. He is blunt and strong, uttering stern commands and orders.29 Yet at the same time, He is gracious, meek, and lowly of heart.30 He is famous for eating and drinking,31 especially with sinners.32 Yet He speaks openly about a sin that cannot be forgiven.33 He warns of the unspeakable consequences of misguiding children of faith34 and speaks forthrightly about God’s sobering judgment.35 Yet He is easy to approach.
Jesus expresses anger. He weeps. He rejoices. He experiences sorrow and anguish. He sings. He is passionate. He is quiet. He preached a child-friendly faith. After all, Jesus was once a child, He said that the kingdom of God belongs to children, and children loved to be around Him.
We can also be sure that Jesus laughed—and contrary to the way most Hollywood films have depicted Him, Jesus had a sense of humor and razor-sharp wit. Because we don’t understand ancient Hebrew culture, this is often missed. For instance, as we have seen, His remark that the Pharisees swallow camels but strain at gnats is a classic example of ancient wit and irony.36 His remarks about casting pearls before swine, wiping the dust off your feet, and harlots entering the kingdom before the religious were jokes that jabbed.37
Irony, which Jesus often employed, is not sarcasm. Sarcasm, which means “to tear flesh,” is designed to harm. Jesus’ irony is marked by subtle insight and paradox, leading to comic self-discovery. His discourse in Matthew 6 about those who start a parade when they give alms and looking dismal when they fast—and His comical punch line in verses 2 and 5, “They have their reward”—is an example of such irony.
Jesus’ conversation regarding John the Baptist in Luke 7:24–35 is full of irony and light teasing. Other examples of His humor abound.38 When Jesus compared Herod to a fox,39 He was not indicating a dislike of vulpines: “fox” is feminine in Greek. As we discussed in chapter 8, in His dialogue with the Canaanite woman, He even responded positively to her wit.40
The Gospels are clear that Jesus called forth the fury and bitter opposition of the religious authorities of His day. This was because He was perceived as a threat to the old order. But in the midst of such opposition, Jesus was a master at turning the tables on His opponents by using humor and paradox. Their reaction to this tactic is interesting. They marveled. They were silent. They dared not ask Him any more questions.41 In all things, Jesus shows us what God is like, for He is the human face of God. Thus, humor and wit, as well as sorrow and agony, are in the heart of the Creator.
One of Jesus’ greatest excitements in life was worship. He Himself admitted that He couldn’t wait to worship with His disciples: “I have been very eager to eat this Passover meal with you.”42 Passover was a festive celebration. There was the singing of the four psalms called the “Great Hallel,” which was supposed to “raise the roof ” at the Passover feast.43 It is hard to imagine Jesus and His disciples celebrating this freedom festival without singing and dancing, especially since dancing was a regular part of worship in ancient Israel.44
Jesus was no dry-eyed, “no-crying-He-makes” Messiah. Two times in the Bible, we are told that Jesus cried: once over a person, the other over a place.45 The person was Lazarus, whom some believe was Jesus’ best friend and one of three people He raised from the dead. The place was Jerusalem, a zip code Jesus knew well and loved enough to cry over it.
Lazarus was from Bethany. The small town of Bethany, nestled in the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives and two miles away from Jerusalem,46 was a hideaway and h
aven for Jesus. It’s where His best friend, Lazarus, lived along with Mary and Martha, and where Jesus was always welcome. It is probably where Jesus stayed when He went to Jerusalem at least three times a year for the pilgrimage feasts of Passover, Pentecost (the Feast of Weeks), and the Feast of Tabernacles. And it is where He spent the last week of His life. Bethany was supremely dear to the heart of Jesus.47
Jerusalem is where Jesus experienced His greatest rejection. Jesus gave us a sacrament of failure.48 When people fail to receive you or take you seriously, Jesus said, shake the dust off your feet and move on. Jesus Himself had to take this sacrament in the towns of Chorazin and Bethsaida,49 not to mention His hometown of Nazareth.
Then there was Jerusalem, the city Jesus loved enough to cry over but the city celebrated for being a “prophet killer.” In one of the most memorable phrases of the Bible, Jesus “set His face to go to Jerusalem”50 as He prepared to take the sacrament He could not escape. The people of Nineveh allegedly listened to the prophet Jonah, but that was unusual. Most cities didn’t listen to their prophets, as Jesus must have pondered when He wept over the city.51
WHAT MAKES JESUS ANGRY?
Since Jesus was human “in every way that we are, except without sin,”52 it is not surprising that He showed anger.53 His anger never ran wild, however; and anger danger was never an issue with Him. But Jesus often got angry at His disciples, especially Peter. He got angry with the Pharisees. Jesus got angry with the priests and publicans of the temple. It is very revealing what ticked Jesus off. Of course, we are encoded beings, and human nature is not the same in all ages. If Jesus exhibited the seven basic facial expressions that correspond to seven basic emotions recognized by people from all cultures,54 the emotion ascribed to that face would depend on the broader context in which it occurred. What sparks anger in particular can differ radically from one age to another.