Imagining ourselves in a gospel story with Jesus is risky. After all, if we stick to the script, we might hear Jesus can say something demanding, harsh or cold.
Before Jesus fed the 5000, he told the disciples, “You give them something to eat.” After he defended the woman caught in adultery, he again commanded the impossible. “Go and sin no more.” When the disciples were caught in a life-threatening storm, Jesus seemed to think it was no big deal and said, “Why are you still afraid? Do you still have no faith?” as if he expected them to be as cool as a cucumber in the face of danger.
Again, after Jesus kept Peter from sinking into the sea, he seemed to reprimand him. “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”
But when I met Jesus in this story, that’s not what he said to me.
He didn’t criticize, correct or expect more of me. He didn’t even pat me on the shoulder and say,” You know, if you’d drowned, you would be with my Father.” Instead, he wept, hugged and confessed his fear. “I thought I’d lost you.”
As I mentioned last week, when Julian of Norwich encountered Christ in her near-death experiences, she learned more about Christ and his love for us. Jesus showed himself to her. In my encounter with Jesus, he showed himself to me, too. As I said last week, I learned how deeply human he was/is. I also learned that he is not stoical at all and that his first instinct is not to change us but to love us and to express that love with passion and vulnerability.
As I receive this love, I am disarmed. I don’t have to fight to be different or earn what I need. I feel accepted and cherished, understood and validated. This love invites me to be kinder to myself and hold others in a similar light.
Jesus, I am so grateful that you are with us always, and that your love is deep, vast, unmeasured and free. Thank you for being mighty and gentle, fierce and vulnerable. Thank you that your love is always underneath us, all around us and ever leading us home to you.
O the deep, deep love of Jesus, vast, unmeasured, boundless, free!
Rolling as a mighty ocean in its fullness over me!
Underneath me, all around me, is the current of Thy love
Leading onward, leading homeward to Thy glorious rest above!
— Samuel T. Francis, 1875
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What would it be like now to go back and read the gospel narratives through the lens that Jesus’ first instinct is to love us and express that love? What if we trusted that there was a lot more going on in these stories than what is recorded in scripture? And what if Jesus is inviting us to use our imaginations contemplatively to experience that? That could change everything! Love mischief, indeed.
What love mischief are you and God doing for the world?
Let me know, and I will include it in an upcoming post.
An Everyday Pilgrim 