Our contemplation of
Psalm 139 continues with verses 19-20:
O that You would kill the wicked, O
God, and that the bloodthirsty would depart from me—those who speak of You
maliciously, and lift themselves up against You for evil!
The psalmist takes a
radical—truly unsettling—turn as he begins his poem’s closing stanza. After
extolling God’s infinite wisdom and the specificity of his own
making, the poet looks around and sees people who honor neither God nor their
making. He wishes they would go away and leave him to worship and serve his God
without interference. But that’s not going to happen. Despite their
waywardness, they too are fearfully, wonderfully made. God also has a plan for
them. God’s beauty also resides in them. So the psalmist must learn to detach himself from the bad company
that surrounds him. He confides his grief to God. He puts his adversaries in God’s hands,
releasing them and the anxieties they cause to God’s care.
Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” (John 11.35-37)
People of Substance
A lot has changed in the three years or so since Jesus found Peter and Andrew on the seashore and began assembling a core group of followers. For one thing, the need to recruit disciples has long passed. Jesus is an established Rabbi known for His provocative preaching and miracles. There’s always a show when He comes to town. People drop everything and flock to Him. Although it sounds crass, the comparison seems accurate: Jesus is a celebrity activist akin to Bono or Oprah—Someone Who wields His fame to change lives. That broadens His appeal significantly. By the second year, many people of substance actively court Jesus. They invite Him to banquets, prevail on Him to heal their sick, and ask to join His entourage. Since wealth and status don’t impress Him, He rebuffs those whose self-interest is obvious. Yet we’re given more than a few instances when Jesus befriends people who don’t fit the downtrodden mold. Besides, assuming Jesus confines His interest to the outcast and impoverished contradicts His message of radical inclusion in John 6.37: “All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.”
It should be noted, however, the better advantaged of Jesus’s followers are exceptions to their class. Unlike Bono, Oprah, and their ilk, Jesus never obtains the kind of superstar glamour that swings wide the gates to upper crust society. That’s why when we see Him dining in finer homes, clusters of unhappy neighbors gather in protest. It’s why Nicodemus, the highly regarded Pharisee, sneaks off in the night to visit Jesus. It’s also why the disciples balk when He decides to return to Bethany—the Jerusalem suburb where his dear friends Martha, Mary, and Lazarus live—after He learns Lazarus is gravely ill. The last time they visited that part of the country, its residents tried to stone Him.
Completely Out of Character
Although John’s Gospel doesn’t explicitly say so, Jesus appears to share the disciples’ concern. Something’s amiss—that we know. News of Lazarus’s sickness reaches Him and He reacts completely out of character. He’s indecisive and hesitant. It takes two days to make up His mind to go see about His friend. In retrospect, we realize Lazarus couldn’t have got sick at a worse time. Jesus’s arrest and execution will occur in a matter of weeks. Returning to Bethany puts Him within two miles of enemies conspiring against Him. His sense of foreboding must be unbearable, as must knowing His friends need Him desperately. Lazarus, Mary, and Martha never hesitate to welcome Jesus to their home. The sisters lavish Him with care, feeding and housing Him in grand style. On one occasion, Mary empties an expensive box of perfume on Jesus to signify how dearly He’s loved. Yet Jesus waits. He waits so long by the time He tells the disciples they’re going to Bethany He’s confident Lazarus is already dead.
John, whose main purpose for writing his Gospel is deifying Jesus as “the Word made flesh” (1.14), gives the impression Jesus lingers on purpose to set the stage for a final, unprecedented miracle that foreshadows His own death and resurrection. He confides to the disciples, “For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe.” (11.14) But if we accept that, we also accept that Jesus delays coming to His friends’ aid for heartlessly selfish reasons. What could be crueler than ignoring their urgent request for help—to allow Lazarus to die, while his sisters cope with undue stress wondering why Jesus hasn’t shown up? Clearly, Mary and Martha are wounded when Jesus arrives. Mary stays at home and lets Martha go out to greet Him as He nears the town. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died,” she says. (v21) Jesus doesn’t acknowledge her grief, however. He promises Lazarus will be revived, saying, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die.” (v25) When he asks about Mary, Martha brings her to Him and she says exactly what Martha said: “If You had been here…” Again, Jesus overlooks her sorrow, asking, “Where have you laid him?” (v33) Mary leads Him to Lazarus’s grave, with a gaggle of neighbors trailing after them. At the tomb, the weight of the entire ordeal buries Jesus. His disconcerting detachment vanishes. In the presence of beloved friends and cynical onlookers, He weeps.
A Horrible Situation
What is Jesus feeling? The episode is so fraught with conflicted emotions and behaviors attributing His grief to any of them amounts to speculation. Mourning Lazarus doesn’t prompt His tears; in mere minutes, He will restore His friend’s life. We want to agree with neighbors who say, “See how He loved him!” (v36) Then again, the cynics have a point when they counter, “Could not He Who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” (v37) John’s reason for Jesus’s delay is moot when we observe how it affects Mary and Martha. The purest of intentions don’t change the fact Jesus walks into a horrible situation of His own making. Is that what we’re meant to see? Should we even question why Jesus falters? Perhaps the most obvious answer is the best one.
When Jesus reaches the graveside, regret, confusion, disappointment, and every other feeling we associate with human frailty engulf Him. He weeps because His hesitance incited His friends to doubt Him. His tearstained face conveys love among the ruins. He summons all of His power not only to speak life into Lazarus’s hollow shell, but also to revive the faith and trust of those He loves. What we’re looking at is precisely what Hebrews 4.15 describes: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.”
We all have uncomfortable moments when hesitance, fear, and every other imaginable internal conflict threaten the ruin of relationships with people who dearly love us and we dearly love. We cause grief and confusion about where we are and why we don’t respond sooner. When we realize what we've done, we weep. But there is life in us, because there is love in us—life we can speak that brings lost friends out of their graves and heals the pain of disillusioned loved ones. Accounting for shambles we create is never pleasant. Walking into situations where we’ve let people down is nothing we want to do, even though we know we must. At Lazarus’s graveside Jesus demonstrates the power of love among the ruins.
The humanity we witness in Jesus’s tears expresses the regret, confusion, disappointment, and every other feeling we associate with frailty.
But as for me, I am poor and needy; may the Lord think of me. You are my help and my deliverer; you are my God, do not delay. (Psalm 40.17)
Dee-Dee
City life constantly exposes one to extremes. Walt and I are blessed to live in a fairly upscale neighborhood on the Chicago lakefront. Yet one block from us stands the largest of many transient hotels in our vicinity that, together, house hundreds of people impoverished by mental illness, substance abuse, and other tragedies. They too are members of our community. We meet on the street, recognize each other by sight, and some of us even know one another by name. Take Dee-Dee, for instance, a short, sturdy woman who’s no doubt much younger than she looks. When not in the throes of a schizophrenic episode requiring hospitalization, she holds court, seated cross-legged in front of a small grocery wedged between a theater and Starbuck’s. When she spies me walking her way Dee-Dee calls, “You got my five, Tim?” If I’ve got five dollars in cash, it’s hers, no questions asked. If it’s less, she asks by how much and says, “Catch me later.” I can be gone for hours. But the moment I round the corner, Dee-Dee reminds me of my outstanding balance—to the penny. “I keep you honest,” she’ll say, occasionally adding something like, “A lot of people don’t like to be honest. But I see ‘em.”
In ways she might not understand, Dee-Dee does help with my honesty, though not as something to feel proud or comfortable about. Her face and words always come before me when I think how the first disciples instantly, almost impulsively, walk away from their families, homes, and jobs at Jesus’s call. There are no lengthy negotiations. Jesus doesn’t outline His plan or indicate what it will require of them. He doesn’t offer them anything remotely comparable to incentives that would get our immediate attention—no fame, fortune, or insider perks we’d expect as members of a rising celebrity’s entourage. In Matthew 4’s account of Peter and Andrew’s calling, for instance, Jesus spots them fishing. “Come, follow me and I will send you out to fish for people” is all He says, whereupon we read, “At once they left their nets and followed him.” (v20) The three of them walk farther down the shoreline, where James and John and their father are mending their nets. Without recording the exchange, Matthew writes, “Jesus called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.” (v22)
Nets and Networks
These men aren’t rich by any measure. They’re rough-hewn, working-class, self-sufficient types whose incomes rise and fall on the weather’s kindness and lake’s generosity. That encourages us to imagine it’s easy for them to drop everything and follow Jesus—particularly when we compare them to the rich young man who reneges when he learns discipleship will cost all that he owns, or the eager candidate who doesn’t make the cut after he asks to say farewell to his family before joining Jesus. Yet even if our conclusions about the disciples are accurate and they haven’t much to lose, we still have no good answer for what they hope to gain. They’re savvy to the itinerant preacher gig; the country crawls with bands trailing behind self-proclaimed prophets, healers, and activists. Still, they forsake nets and networks—livelihoods and family and social circles—for street life. They volunteer to live like Dee-Dee, except what they sign up for makes matters ten times worse than hers. It ties them to a controversial Rabbi Who will alienate all but a few of the rich and powerful. They’ll not just be public nuisances; they’ll begin as pariahs and end as associates of a wanted Criminal.
Honestly? If Jesus came to my door and said, “Follow Me,” I can’t conceive abandoning everything I cherish—Walt, our home, family, friends (including you), church, and cats—our dreams—my work, computer, books, this blog, and the precious mementoes gathered through the years—for a life of poverty and need. And on the chance I did walk away with no more than the clothes on my back, how long would I last before I tiptoed back home, ready to face the fall-out for my impetuosity? I’d probably make it through the early phase, when excitement was at its peak. But honestly? Once the tide turned, I’m not sure I’d hang around. This troubles me. If you’ve thought about it, I’m sure it troubles you, too. Yet there’s a piece missing from the scenario—the most vital one, in fact. The call of Christ is like no other. It speaks to the depths of our beings and our inherent longing for God. When Jesus calls us to discipleship, what we hear resonates so powerfully our thoughts shift from what we stand to lose by accepting His invitation to what we’ll never find if we don’t.
Walking Away
Although Psalm 40 doesn’t meet the criteria of Messianic prophecy, in a sense it qualifies by voicing tensions endemic to Christian discipleship. Penned by David, the most famous, talented, and richest man of his time, it begins with a dismal picture of being bogged down. When the offer his soul aches for arrives and Gods lifts him from muck that paralyzes him, his life dramatically changes, for better and worse. He has a new song and revolutionary insights about God’s grace that cause all hell to break loose. Yet despite uncertainty and duress, David answers God’s call, letting all he possesses go, if need be. Unless one is alert to the poem’s discipleship dynamic, its final verse reads like a downer: “But as for me, I am poor and needy; may the Lord think of me. You are my help and my deliverer; you are my God, do not delay.” (v17) If we’re sensitive to what’s really going on, however, we sense triumph in David’s declaration.
David isn’t literally poor and needy. He’s Israel’s greatest king. Yet all he’s achieved and the wealth he’s amassed hinder him from securing his faith in his Creator. Without abdicating his throne or quitting his palace, David walks away from all it represents. Seeing himself unencumbered by status and riches enables him to embrace obedience and sacrifice that answer God’s call.
“Follow Me”—a call unlike any other that opens paths unlike any we’ll ever explore. Some respond like the fishermen. They drop their nets, sever all ties, and adopt monastic lives of poverty and isolation. But most of us respond like David. We shed pride, materialism, and false security that bog us down to follow Jesus freely. We walk away without leaving. Either way, what we stand to lose by answering Christ’s call is miniscule compared to what we’ll never find if we don’t.
We see ourselves as poor and needy to be free of anything that hinders us from following Christ.
In order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. (2 Corinthians 12.7)
In the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. (Matthew 7.2)
“They’re Like Me!”
Bette Midler told a story at a 1976 concert I attended. If I’ve told it here before, I beg your indulgence, since it bears repeating in light of today’s texts. “Walking down the street,” she said, “I met a lady with a fried egg stuck to her forehead. I prayed, ‘Dear God, don’t let me end up like her, wandering around with a fried egg on my forehead.’ I thought some more and prayed, ‘If I do end up like her, please don’t let people notice.’ I walked on and changed my prayer again. 'If they notice, please don’t let them laugh at me.' Finally, I prayed, ‘Dear God, if I do end up with an egg on my head and people do see and laugh, please don’t let me know they’re mocking me.’” After the laughter faded and the room grew still, Bette said, “Because, when you think about it, we all have eggs stuck to our heads.” The audience sat in silence a moment before bursting into applause.
The parable collapses the polite (and convenient) distance we put between people we don’t understand and us by saying, “There but for the grace of God go I.” Such charitable regard implies we’re less troubled or more blessed than they. Either way, we come out ahead, don’t we? Intentionally or not, a strand of pride twists into our gratitude. When we encounter people crippled by addictions and attitudes we’d never tangle with, it’s easy to focus on what torments them, not the frailty spawning their defeat. We forget we’re all weak. We’re all vulnerable. We all wear eggs. The type of egg isn’t the thing. Be it addiction, selfishness, intolerance, and on and on, it’s still an egg.
That changes the detached empathy of “but for God’s grace” to an immediately honest—and unsettling—“They’re like me!” I may not be an alcoholic scratching out existence on the street. But he’s like me. I may not be an enraged driver cursing at traffic. Still, she’s like me. I may not be society’s worst—a killer, pedophile, embezzler, et al. But seeing them paraded on TV in jail jumpers and handcuffs, I see they’re like me. Once I get this truth instilled in my heart, then I can say, “But for God’s grace…” My egg is no better or worse than another’s. Nor is my need for grace any less. That’s why knowing God’s grace is so vital to each of us. It’s why extending God’s grace is what we do. Today’s readings—which brilliantly couple Jesus’s edict against judging with Paul’s confession of frailty—make this vividly clear.
The Self-Honesty Filter
Paul’s metaphor is much less benign than an egg signaling his weakness. He speaks of a “thorn in the flesh” as his source of torment. It’s something in him that makes him think, look, sound, and act crazy. Since he doesn’t say what it is, theories abound. Is it an actual physical infirmity? Oblique mentions elsewhere of Paul’s eye problems support this idea. Yet he also discloses other frailties he fights to overcome. Then, we detect a few on our own that emerge inadvertently in his tone and topics. We know Paul battles intellectual pride and impatience with those who dispute him. He’s ferociously protective of churches he leads and unleashes diatribes against anyone who usurps his authority. Whatever the thorn may be, apparently it’s so overt he needn’t spell it out to his readers. His point isn’t focused on what the thorn is, anyway. He’s more interested in why he’s tormented. “To keep me from being conceited,” he writes in 2 Corinthians 12.7, “I was given a thorn in my flesh to torment me.” The weakness Paul aches to be rid of persists to keep him humble. Physical or not, it alerts him to his blind spots. When seeing others battle frailties that make them think, look, sound, and act crazy, it enables him say, “They’re like me!”
Using self-honesty as the filter through which we regard others is the rudiment in Jesus’s command that we judge no one. He couldn’t be more explicit: “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” (Matthew 7.1-2) Jesus’s metaphor of choice is wood. “Why do you look at a speck of sawdust in someone else’s eye and ignore the plank in yours? How can you correct someone else’s vision when you obviously can’t see yourself?” (v3-4) Should I detect blindness in you, before I rush to judge your inability to see, I need to do a quick mirror-check. Hopefully, what’s blinding me isn’t so enormous I won’t see I’ve got sight issues, too. My condemnation of you condemns me. As soon as I see that, my response no longer is “How can you be so blind?” It’s “You’re like me!”
Kept by Grace
Jesus’s metaphor leads to a different result than Bette’s egg and Paul’s thorn, however. He instructs us to “take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” (v5) It’s an invaluable solution to our fondness for knee-jerk opinions and stereotyping. It quickly gets us to admit, “I’m no one to judge”—exactly where Jesus wants us be. The egg and thorn push us to confess some weaknesses vex us for life. We haven’t strength to defeat them. When Paul gets this, he pleads with God to remove his thorn. God refuses. Why would God do that? Doesn’t God know Paul’s thorn impedes his ministry and growth? Isn’t God concerned about Paul’s suffering? Here’s God’s answer: “My grace is sufficient for you, because my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12.9)
Absence of weakness removes our need for grace that loves, forgives, and abides with us unconditionally. Thorn-free life deprives us of awareness we’re kept by grace. Grace is provided before we realize we need it. It remains whether or not we recognize it’s there. It’s given beyond measure, endlessly, repeatedly, extravagantly. Others’ weaknesses cause us to say, “Because of God’s grace go I—just as God’s grace keeps him, her, or them.” We all have thorns. We all rely on God’s grace. Once this reality permeates our beings, compulsions to judge become humbling invitations to witness grace, forgiveness, and tolerance. People we want to judge are like us. They wear eggs like ours. They ache with thorns like ours. But they’ve also been given what we’ve received. Why would we judge them, when we can turn their thorns into reminders of God’s grace for them and us?
Weakness is the great leveler. Our struggles may not look as extreme as another’s, but they’re there. That’s why we judge no one and see everyone as worthy of grace.
This is an account of the origins of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham... There were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Messiah. (Matthew 1.1,17)
Dynasty
Among all the things the Bible is, it’s the exhaustive record of one family. It covers 62 generations in all, 20 from Adam to Abraham and then, by Matthew’s count, 42 from Abraham to Jesus. Treating the Bible as a dynastic saga leaves us uneasy, though, as if we’re forcing it into a genre beneath its dignity. It feels sacrilegious to imagine Holy Scripture sandwiched between the Caesars, Borgias, Bourbons, and Kennedys. But Old Testament genealogists and Matthew would argue God’s early dealings with humanity are family matters. From Adam to Abraham, the focus is bloodline. Ethnicity doesn’t emerge until God promises Abraham he will father a great nation, Israel, which approaches nationhood as a family matter by taking its name from Abraham's grandson, Jacob, and self-identifies as his “children.” After Abraham, Bible history is consumed by marital and reproductive crises. It’s no stretch to say, when the dynasty teeters, wars, invasions, coups, captivities, famines, and plagues take a back seat. God’s sacred oath to bless Abraham’s offspring is Israel’s raison d’être. Family comes first since its DNA holds the deed to God’s promise.
We resist approaching the Bible as a family saga because dynasties are horribly messy. Heroes are few. Scoundrels run riot. Usually it’s hard to tell one from the other. Titans crumble to lust, greed, and blood-thirst. Conspiracies abound, paranoia thrives, children rebel, parents grieve, tables turn, and heads roll. “Maybe that’s the stuff of opera, tabloids, and TV miniseries," we say, "but surely not the Bible!” Alas—and I’m guessing you’re already way ahead of me—it’s truer than we prefer to believe. To verify this, we need look no further than Matthew’s genealogy, which opens his gospel to establish Jesus’s bona fides as Abraham’s descendant and a rightful heir to David’s throne. In the process, he reveals more about Jesus’s background than he probably wants us to see.
Warts
Matthew lists an illustrious pantheon of patriarchs and kings: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Boaz, David, Solomon, et al. His first challenge is contriving a way to connect Jesus to this lineage, as He isn’t Joseph’s biological heir. The writer fixes this by including five women—Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and, finally, Mary—who give birth to legendary sons. The importance of adding these women to the roster can’t be overstated for its implications to first-century readers and its affront to patriarchal mentality imbedded in Christian traditions to this day. Every one of them is a potential victim of chauvinistic legalism. Yet, while Matthew traces bloodline through the fathers, calling out five mothers allows him to stitch a thread of redemption into Jesus’s story. Like her four predecessors, Mary bears mention because she is God’s vessel of intervention to correct the dynasty’s waywardness and fulfill God’s promise. What Matthew can’t fix are warts on the dynasty’s most prominent men. In some ways, they’re extraordinarily heroic. In others, they’re hopeless scoundrels.
Abraham lets his wife become Pharaoh’s plaything in exchange for favors; then he disowns Hagar and Ishmael to appease Sarah’s envy. After Isaac gets tricked into marrying an ugly sister, he negotiates a new deal to wed the pretty one. Jacob steals his brother’s inheritance and swindles his father-in-law. After Tamar is left childless by two of Judah’s sons, he sends her from his house—a violation of Jewish custom—to spare his youngest boy from marrying her; he later mistakes her for a prostitute and impregnates her. Boaz, as next-of-kin to Ruth’s late husband, is legally bound to marry her. But he settles for letting her work his fields with other women until she sleeps with him. Then he claims her. Where do we start with David? He doesn’t avenge his daughter when her stepbrother rapes her, creating enmity between him and another son, who dies in a freak accident. He has a neighbor killed to marry the man’s widow. He murders anyone who gets in his way, Jew and non-Jew alike. Solomon collects 700 queens, plus 300 concubines, and unwisely turns from God to please his pagan wives. These are just the headliners. If we vetted Matthew’s genealogy line-by-line, few of its entries could boast of lifelong moral and spiritual integrity.
Living Truthfully
Matthew’s reasons for opening with Jesus’s genealogy are legitimate and noble. He’s undertaken the task of reworking Mark’s earlier account of Jesus’s ministry into a full-fledged biography. (Luke will do the same.) Since Mark begins with Jesus’s baptism, His birth is the first omission to be rectified. Matthew gives great consideration to framing his book for readers he hopes to reach. He intends to prove to Jewish converts that Jesus is the Messiah foretold by the prophets. Yet, even in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus distances Himself from the Messianic dynasty. When people call Him “son of David,” He never acknowledges it. In His last week of human life, He severs all ties to His lineage by asking the Pharisees, “Whose son is the Messiah?” They answer, “David’s son.” Jesus challenges them with Psalm 110, where David refers to the Messiah as “Lord.” He asks, “If then David calls him ‘Lord,’ how can he be his son?” (Matthew 22.45) The contradictions bursting through Matthew’s genealogy, combined with Jesus’s apparent disregard for His dynastic background, teach us a powerful lesson.
Family background doesn’t define us. Regardless how good or bad our “stock” may be, in the end, we alone are responsible for our identity and character. The best of families are riddled with scoundrels and hypocrites—some of them more twisted than any you’d find in “lesser” families. We shouldn’t accept shame or humiliation for our family’s flaws, nor should we submit to pressures to pretend to be something we’re not. Family façades are seldom accurate or truthful; admiration they generate is illusory. That’s the fallacy in keeping up appearances and worrying what neighbors think. In the end, Matthew’s genealogy does us a much greater service than confirming Jesus’s Messianic credentials. It proves authenticity of self is vital. Following Christ obliterates all stereotypes and false expectations—including those within and about our families. “I am the way and the truth and the life,” Jesus says in John 14.6. Christ comes to show us we can live truthfully as ourselves. Living truthfully is why we come to Christ.
(Next post: Scandals)
All family trees—including Jesus’s—hang heavy with scoundrels and hypocrites. Our origins may shape us, but they don’t define us.
Postscript: A Matter of Choice
Authenticity of self is a matter of choice—following Christ’s example. I recently found this inspiring medley of “I Choose Jesus” (written by an old family friend, Mosie Lister) and “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus,” performed by Fortunato Yabut III and the Centerville Presbyterian Church Chorale (Fremont, California). May this Christmas renew our confidence that following Christ, not family origin or anything else, is what defines us!
A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.” “Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked. (Mark 3.32-33)
Awkward
Few situations are more awkward than getting dragged into another family’s conflicts. When I was in college, a family in my parents’ congregation invited me to Sunday dinner. At church, they were the Waltons—soft-spoken, precious people. At their table, they were closer to the family in Moonstruck. Everybody had issues with everybody else, and no one showed any self-restraint in front of their guest. It was amusing at first, but the novelty thinned as the volatility rose with each spat. It peaked when the entire family turned on the eldest daughter, a young woman my age, who had completed college in three years and was fast-tracking through a prestigious investment house. While I long ago forgot the nub of contention, I’ll never forget my panic when her father said, “Tim, talk to her. See if you can get through her thick skull.” They gave me no chance to decline tactfully or say anything at all. I suddenly became the quarrel’s focus, with everyone insisting I agreed with her or him. I felt like a shuttlecock in the world’s craziest badminton match. Thankfully, I knew not to let their behavior at home alter my respect for their faith’s sincerity. In a way, it verified their earnestness. That said, however, it really wasn’t necessary for me to know just how “earnest” they could be.
I’m reminded of that awkward afternoon whenever I read about Jesus rebuffing Mary and His brothers’ request to speak with Him. It’s a side of their family I’d rather not see. It’s clearly important, although why that is is not so clear. After it’s recorded in Mark, the oldest Gospel, Matthew and Luke also include it. Their discomfort with the episode surfaces when they tuck it much later in the narrative than Mark, who puts it right after Jesus calls the 12 disciples. What’s more, both discreetly skate past His family’s intentions, even though Mark 3.20 explicitly says after they hear Jesus is drawing crowds, “they went to take charge of him, for they said, ‘He is out of his mind.’” Believing Jesus is crazy, they want to keep Him out of trouble! There’s no mistaking the compassion in their motives. Yet their presumption also reveals how meagerly they understand Jesus. His response underscores their estranged awareness of His identity and calling. “Who are my mother and my brothers?” (v33) He asks. What He says next creates a very awkward moment for everyone around Him. Jesus looks at them and declares, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.” (v34-35)
Problem Child
The tense situation likewise underscores a fact about Jesus we seldom consider. He’s a Stepchild. He’s part of Mary and Joseph’s family without fully belonging to it. Naturally, we want to romanticize His upbringing. Once the drama of Jesus’s birth and infancy passes and His earthly parents return to Nazareth to settle down, we imagine He’s just one of the kids, loved and treated like the siblings who follow. We picture His family life as an ancient version of domestic bliss. And, to be fair, Jesus’s family definitely loves Him—especially Mary, who stands by Him to the end and remains faithful to His message after the Ascension. But it’s naïve to discount complications attached to parenting the Christ Child. There are legal matters like birthright and inheritance. There are pressures to provide Him the best education and training possible. There are concerns about guarding His identity to protect Him from political conspiracy and religious outrage. There’s deciding when and how to explain Jesus to His stepbrothers and sisters. Jesus is a special Child, more than any child ever born, and though we’re reluctant to say it, that makes Him a problem Child of a uniquely challenging sort.
Think about it: Mary and Joseph are charged with the Incarnate God’s nurture and survival! Can we reasonably assume they aren’t riddled with uncertainty and trepidation? The mere prospect paralyzes us, let alone actually doing it while we run a household and business, bring other children into the world, and navigate a maze of social and religious obligations. Does idealized hindsight deprive Mary and Joseph's freedom to fail, as all parents do? Is it really conceivable that Jesus’s family is so healthy and harmonious He escapes alienation and confusion that haunt the most emotionally secure of adolescents? The family’s attempt to save Jesus and His shockingly curt reaction suggests unresolved issues on both sides. They want to ensure His safety because they love Him. He knows what they’ve not learned: His safety can only be secured by doing God’s will. They don’t get it—not yet, at least—and that frustrates Him.
Our Reason for the Season
Jesus is a Stepchild, a special Child, a problem Child. That’s the ugly truth of it—and its amazing beauty as well, because each of us is also a stepchild, a special child, a problem child. With Jesus as our unabridged example, His life serves as our template. He’s born for a very unique purpose. So are we. God shapes Him by hand and designs His circumstances to do God’s will. God does the same for us. God places us in families and communities that take on the staggering duty to care for us and cope with our complexities. Like Mary and Joseph, even the finest of them sometimes fail. We must grant them that freedom—in hindsight, if necessary—realizing the healthiest home can’t shield us from alienation and confusion. When we embrace our God-given identity, placing God’s will above our family’s wishes, they may think we’ve lost our minds. They may try to save us from ourselves because they love us. We’ll miss that and wonder why they don’t get it. Perhaps, like Jesus’s family, they eventually will. Perhaps not.
These awkward moments are really about our nativity. Every one of us is born by design. Our presence in the world is a miracle all its own. God’s purpose is our reason for the season. Yes, Advent is about expectancy and desire for Christ’s birth. But it's also about expectancy and desire for our birth, our need to fulfill God’s purpose for us, as God wills, according to God’s plan. We have to get that, whether or not our families ever do.
Jesus is a special Child, which makes Him a problem Child. As Christ’s followers, Advent is also about our birth as special, problem children. God’s purpose is our reason for the season. (Tema Stauffer: “Teenage Boy.” All rights reserved.)
Postscript: “Ooh Child”
For all of us coming into the world to fulfill God’s purpose in our making, an unconventional Advent anthem: a masterfully optimistic remix of “Ooh Child” by Nina Simone. Some day, we’ll walk together in a beautiful sun…
Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him away. (Genesis 5.24)
A Mismatched Set
Genesis gives us two men named Enoch, making it easy to confuse them and possibly even conflate them into a single person. It’s important to keep them separate, though, by getting to know both. They’re a mismatched set and distinguishing between them uncovers nuances we’d otherwise miss. The first Enoch is only remarkable for his background, while the second one definitely qualifies as a “seminal figure”—the academician’s pet name for someone who instinctively revolutionizes how future generations think and live.
Enoch 1: Never to Be Mentioned Again
Enoch 1 shows up in Genesis 4.17-18 and vanishes, never to be mentioned again: “Cain lay with his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his son Enoch. To Enoch was born Irad,” after which three subsequent father-son pairs are listed.
Mining this information yields much gold. 1.) He’s Adam’s first grandson, the earliest offspring of a mortally conceived man, and thus the primary link in humanity’s self-perpetuating chain. 2.) He comes from bad stock. His father’s an exiled murderer. To say his mother’s background is sketchy amounts to gross understatement; we have no idea where she and everyone else in Nod, Cain’s chosen abode, come from. 3.) In keeping with Jewish tradition, she’s a “foreigner,” making Enoch 1 a half-breed. Then, since Judaism defines ethnicity by maternal origins, Enoch 1 effectively is a “nobody” without any claim as Adam and Eve’s heir. 4.) The text hints that Cain names a city for his son to compensate for deficits passed down to him. Alas, Enoch 1 doesn’t accomplish anything worthy of a namesake city. Notable achievements don’t surface on this branch of Adam’s family until five generations later, when the first farmer appears, followed by his son’s musical talent, and the next son’s invention of metalworking. By then, nine generations down the line, Enoch 1 is a faded entry in the record.
Enoch 2: Mentioned Repeatedly and Often
While Cain struggles to establish his family, Adam and Eve have a new son, Seth, who becomes the de facto patriarch of the Jewish race. Ironically, Genesis 5 documents his lineage with no mention of anything inventive or productive. For six generations, all we’re told of each is: “He lived so long. He fathered an heir and other children. And then he died.” Then Enoch 2 appears seventh in line on Seth’s side and does something too spectacular to be ignored. He walks with God.
Like Enoch 1, his story briefly unfolds (four sentences) and then he vanishes. But he’s mentioned repeatedly and often because he vanishes. Genesis 5.24 reports, “Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.” He disappears never to return. While Enoch 1 and the city named for him turn to dust, Enoch 2 is forever remembered because not a speck of him exists on the planet. He breaks the then-he-died mold. He defies convention with something so simple it’s impossible to fathom: He walks with God and is no more. And in doing that, he radically alters humankind’s understanding of how it relates to God and what happens when He’s pleased. To this day, his instinctive drive to build a relationship with his Maker—not a city or a name for himself—influences all we believe God to be and all we hope to gain from Him.
Detachment
As with much in Genesis, the writer drops this bombshell about Enoch without answering many questions. Here’s all we know. When he’s 65, Enoch has his first son, Methuselah. (Yes, that Methuselah—the oldest human on record.) After his son’s birth, Enoch starts to walk with God. We’re not told what prompts his decision. But it's plainly suggested it's somehow tied to fatherhood. We do know engaging a close relationship with God doesn’t disrupt his life, because the writer tells us he continues to father children during the 300 years they walk together. So Enoch isn’t an ascetic who abandons his family to commune only with God in a cave or under a tree. Walking with God implies he moves in constant awareness he’s not alone. He remains present in God’s presence. He welcomes Him into every area of his life. This pleases God so much, when the time’s right, He skips the death process and assumes Enoch directly into His keeping.
Of course, we want to know how it works, particularly since the Bible’s other two assumptions—Elijah’s and Christ’s—include logistical details that go missing with Enoch. (A heavenly chariot whisks Elijah away, while Christ bodily ascends into Heaven.) The walking aspect invites us to imagine the day comes when Enoch defies gravity and climbs into eternal bliss. However we envision his transition, we don’t see him looking back, deeply conflicted about leaving. The devotion captured in three centuries of divine fellowship infers supreme detachment from relationships and possessions. Long before Enoch’s physical transformation, an inner change overtakes his heart and alters his views. He measures life in moments, not popularity and wealth (though we’re wise to suspect he’s well loved and well off, as that’s often typical of those who walk with God.) For Enoch, being lifted into God’s presence is simply the next step. He has no qualms about letting go. The letting-go happened so long ago, it’s possible he’s forgot how to hold on.
The Enoch Principle
What we might call “The Enoch Principle” permeates Christ’s ministry. Nearly everything He says in some shape or form points back to forging a constant, present relationship with God and detaching from people and possessions that hinder our walk with Him. It’s in the stories about risking great loss to achieve greater gain. It underpins the parables that warn against compromising our commitment out of fear of failure, as well as those about overvaluing what we own. Again and again, Jesus calls us to walk with God, from the tender beckoning of “Follow Me,” to the harsh demands we forsake family and fields for Him. And when we take to His road, He’s emphatically clear it doesn’t end. We turn a soft corner and, like Enoch, we are no more, because God takes us away. Walking with God leads to life.
We have a choice, it seems. Are we Enoch 1’s, daunted by circumstances beyond our control—misguided families, social stigmas, and anomalies no one can explain? Are we content to be associated with institutions constructed for our benefit without accomplishing anything of eternal value on our own? Are we OK with showing up, hanging around, and vanishing, never to be mentioned again? Or are we Enoch 2’s? Do we answer life’s challenges by seeking inner change? Do we walk with God? Are we present in His presence? Have we learned to honor our responsibilities without being hostages to them? Can we do the letting-go and train ourselves to forget how to hold on? Will it also be said of us, “They walked with God; then they were no more, because God took them away?”
What we do with what we've been given will determine whether we vanish, never be mentioned again, or vanish, never to return, always to be remembered. It’s our choice.
