Sweet or Transformational?

"Jesus is the sweetest name I know," goes the hymn. Unfortunately, the sentimentality of the lyrics is a little too commonplace in our perceptions of Jesus. We rarely really take a deeper look at who Jesus actually was, what his attitudes were toward others, and how that should impact our lives. We picture him according to our images of a gentle lamb sleeping next to a lion, even while we know that lambs are much more likely to run, jump, and play instead of sitting still for us to pet or contemplate.

C. S. Lewis famously wrote in his Chronicles of Narnia that Aslan, the lion who was a figure of Jesus, was, "after all, not a tame lion." He hit on something there that we all too often choose to ignore in our sentimental ponderings about Jesus. There is something energetic about Jesus in the gospel presentations, yet that energetic quality is neither violent, nor merely playful. The Jesus presented in the gospels had not been tamed by the structures and patterns of social propriety. He would not be tamed by our own social structures and norms, either. Rather than fit in with established, polite society, Jesus brought a consistent critique to the social, political, and economic order around him.

When we take a hard look at the implications of his words, attitudes, and actions, they all too often fly in the face of what we consider acceptable practices, without regard to the specific culture in which we live. In our preaching and Bible study, we quite readily deal with the issues Jesus confronted in his own Jewish setting. On the other hand, we too often fail to trace the connections to our own misapplications of Jesus' principles in our own contexts.

Jesus was an abject failure by the standards of most societies around the world. He did not live up to our ideals. He was not a financial success. He had no life insurance policy to care for his burial upon his death. He had no mansion in which to reside in comfort. He built no business enterprise. He had no servants on whom to call to meet his physical needs. He did not order people around, preach at people from a bully pulpit, condemn certain classes of people to the discard pile of humanity.

Jesus did not promote war, according or not to our theories of "just war." Jesus did not promote free market capitalism, socialism, fascism, or communism. Jesus did not promote any specific theory of government and politics. Jesus did not promote state religion or any religious system at all. Jesus did not address issues of abortion, homosexuality, slavery, abstinence from alcohol, narcotics, incarceration, capital punishment, or many other issues that have been lauded as inextricably tied to Christianity and evangelical culture.

For Jesus, the important issues of life were different than these. The real issues were about how we treat one another, how we trust God's provision, how we share love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness with one and all. These issues he promoted went and go much further than our limited concepts of politics, economics, and polite society. He spoke of service, humility, and giving of ourselves as the more important issues of life. Character was for Jesus much more important than the social concerns of our day or of his own day.

He was not interested in protecting the status quo of his society. He is not interested in our own status quo. Rather, he was and is interested in transforming the status quo from a system of power over the marginalized into a society that welcomes one and all with the grace of equality and acceptance for reconciliation. We will never achieve the purposes of Jesus through a system that protects the powerful at the expense of the marginalized.

Jesus was so much more than simply sweet. He was revolutionary in his teaching and principles for living. He wanted us to depend upon God, not our social and institutional apparatuses. He wanted that confidence in God to be sufficient to enable us to care for those we would otherwise ignore. His words to the disciples were more often confrontational with regard to their religious and cultural heritage than sweet and comforting. He called them consistently to be more than their heritage would allow.

If we are to follow Jesus, it will require much more than propping up traditions, structures, and heritage. It will require allowing his words to transform our traditions, structures, institutions, and heritage into vessels of grace, mercy, acceptance, and reconciliation. It's not a sweet journey, but is is a path of transformation that would take us to a much higher plane of existence.

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© Copyright 2015 Christopher B. Harbin http://www.sermonsearch.com/contributors/104427/