Dear Luke,
I do not think ill of you for your
thoughts regarding Jesus Christ. You are
not the first to find him mentally unstable.
I know of others who believe him to be insane, and I understand the
conclusion—I agree with others who believe that if you don’t agree with the
declaration that he is God’s Son, then all that is left is for him to be
insane. When you slow down and consider
the claims he made about himself, it’s a reasonable thought if you don’t accept
his divinity. Obviously, I accept his
claims of divinity, and therefore do not find him insane, rather believing that
he sees the world through a different lens.
The death of which others warn him, the threats to him that others pose,
are seen in a different light than if they were directed at you or me. We would be fearful, but he is confident in
his mission and his identity. He is not
going to flee from threats, but will rather stay faithful to his identity and
to his mission.
I’d like to say a thing about this
mission in regards to your letter. You
referenced how you wished that many will be saved and how challenging you find
the call to discipleship. It’s important
to balance this with his statement about wanting to gather Jerusalem like a
mother hen gathers the chicks. Jesus has
a deep longing for humanity and wants us to be saved, gathered under his wings,
accepting his protection. His mission to
come and help us see life as it really is intended to be lived, in communion
with God, rather than caught up in all the other things that we use to define
life. Jesus comes in love, and while not
everyone will accept that love, he doesn’t come in the hopes of excluding or
condemning. The mission of God is to gather
everyone to himself, and Jesus’ eyes are firmly focused on that mission. So the narrow door may not be the easy way,
but Jesus longs for us to choose it.
I think Jesus loves to heal people,
too. Recently I sent you news of a
controversial healing, when Jesus healed a woman in the synagogue on the
Sabbath. Well, Jesus was up to it
again! This time, though, he gave the
Pharisees the chance to object before he healed her. Another Sabbath found him on his way to enjoy
the hospitality of a Pharisee when a man suffering with dropsy appeared before
him. The Pharisees were watching him
closely, and Jesus gave them the opportunity to speak up before he healed the
man. He asked them if it was within the
law to cure the man on the Sabbath.
The Pharisees knew they were
trapped. They knew that if they said no,
then they’d be accused of being hard-hearted and cruel before this suffering
man. They knew that if they said yes,
they’d be setting aside the law out of compassion for another. As a result, no sound escaped their mouths,
though I have little doubt there was much they wanted to say, out of
frustration or anger or admiration for all that Jesus was.
Jesus healed the man and sent him
on his way, an action that has become somewhat of a footnote in a story that is
more about the rather one-sided conversation between Jesus and the Pharisees. For the man, it must have been a
life-changing moment, accompanied by shouts of joy and sheer amazement. I wonder if the Pharisees allowed themselves
to be caught up in the wonder of it all, or they were too busy stewing over
Jesus’ challenging of their legalism.
When Jesus returned his attention
to them, he asked them another question—if
your child or ox falls into a well, will you do whatever it takes to pull them
out, even if it is the Sabbath?
For this, too, they had no answer,
because while their hearts may have known the answer, to speak it aloud might
just change everything.
Picture yourself, Luke, as the
child in the well, or the man with dropsy.
Jesus wants to save. His mission
is to gather people to God. He’s not
eager to condemn or happy for controversy.
He pushes on people and their misunderstandings of God, but he does so
out of a willingness for them to have their eyes opened so that they might
worship God in fullness and freedom. I
know this is a struggle to grasp, but I hope you see the love of God radiating
out of Jesus’ every word and action.
It’s not all easy to understand, and sometimes you have to look a little
harder than others, but I truly believe that Jesus has come to save out of love,
that he longs for us to all enter by that narrow door.
Sincerely,
Theophilus
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