Jesus, the Grown-Up

Jesus, the Grown-Up—November 13, 2017

“For to this end you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps. ‘He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.’ When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly.” [1 Peter 2:21-23]

Before you get to any of the more exotic and high-fallutin’ titles for Jesus, you could really just spend a lifetime considering the fact that Jesus is the Supreme Grown-Up.  Jesus shows us how to “adult,” in a world full of childishness.

Yes, yes, all of the other things that Christians have classically said about Jesus are vital and essential to our faith.  Yes, Jesus is, as the old words say, “Light from Light, true God from true God, of one Being with the Father.” Yes, the honorific titles like, “Slain but Victorious Lamb” or “Lion of the Tribe of Judah,” like “Daystar” and “Messiah,” or “Prince of Peace” and “Lord of Lords,” are all accurate ways of naming Jesus.  But before we even jump into those deep waters, consider what it means for a moment that Jesus shows us the way mature human beings enter the mess of other people’s abuse and hostility.  Jesus shows us what a real, authentic, grown-up Human Being does and says in the face of suffering, condemnation, and persecution.  He is enough of an adult not to sink to the level of those who attacked him.  Whatever else we may say about the wandering rabbi from Nazareth, we must at least say that. He did not return evil for evil, and he did not respond to childish name-calling or mockery in kind. 

Why? Well, because, despite the fact that we are not great at doing it ourselves, that is what Grown-Ups do.  This isn’t just an attitude reserved for Messiahs.  This isn’t a Jesus-only sort of action.  This is what mature, responsible, grown-up adult humans do.  They don’t let themselves get sucked into resorting to petty insults, blustering threats, or empty outrage.  We may not be able to duplicate the stories of Jesus turning water into wine or silencing a storm, but we can—and are expected to, according to First Peter!—act like grown-ups in the midst of a world of childishness gone to seed.

And this is the real wonder of what Jesus, the Grown-Up, does: he remains gracious, refusing to return evil for evil, insult for insult, or threat for threat, while he is in the midst of the world’s hostility.  It’s easy not to get riled up if you just ignore everybody.  It’s easy to keep cool and have a polite smile plastered to your face if you retreat to your own little echo chamber where you only ever hear things you already agree with and people who already pat you on the back.  That is to say, it’s easy to look mature if you avoid entering the Mess of the real world, which is full of real people, who sometimes are really childish.

But Jesus doesn’t avoid the mess.  Jesus enters into the tangle of humanity in all of its messiness, including the fact that we are often brutal and vicious toward one another.  And yet, Jesus’ way of being in the mess is not to sink to the level of those who hurl insults, bellow threats, or inflict pain on him.  That is how a Grown-Up acts.  That is how the Truly Human One acts.

Somewhere along the way we get this notion that if someone makes a crude remark toward you, you have to zing them back with equally nasty words.  Or that if someone threatens you, it somehow makes you tougher to threaten them back.  Maybe when we are living through it in eighth or ninth grade, we just chalk it up to boys trying to figure out how to be boys.  Maybe we just say it’s a “mean girl phase.” But even then, some part of us realizes that’s not what real maturity looks like.  Some part of us has to know (right? Don’t we?) that real Grown-Ups show their maturity, not by returning a threat for a threat, but by absorbing it, and returning evil with good.  What may be an unavoidable lesson of adolescence is something we all expect eventually to grow out of…

And yet, here we are, living in a world where childishness and angry threats fill the air.  We live in a world full of messiness, full of the mess we immature humans make when we let childishness reign in us.  But Jesus gives us an alternative.  Jesus embodies another way to be human—the way of being a genuine Grown-Up.  Today, the challenge for us, we who cannot help but live in this messy world, is to live in it the way Jesus does—to be present with people, despite the impulse toward childish pettiness, and to respond differently… to respond like mature adults.

Whatever else we Christians have to say about Jesus, and surely there is much more to say, maybe the place to begin is here: with Jesus’ way of being a Grown-Up.

May we have such maturity in this day, as well.

Lord Jesus, grant us the grace to return kindness when we are given insults, to respond to dishonor with honor, and to be the kind of people who do not sink back into petty childishness.