The Weakness of Jesus
Jesus began his life as a refugee. He was a fugitive from the murder that claimed the lives of so many other infants. The King claimed to want to honor and worship him but planned to snuff out his life. Jesus could not walk or talk before he was already fleeing the powerful who wanted to murder him because his power threatened theirs.
He began his life as a refugee but his troubles didn’t stop there by any means.
His own hometown community rejected him. He was an outcast that wandered the world without a permanent place to call home.
Religious scholars and leaders who had studied, preached, waited for his arrival didn’t recognize him as the fulfillment of their longing. They disregarded, looked past, could not see his glory.
He was dismissed as a Nazarene. Marked as insignificant.
A child bears the image of its father, whether physically or by the ingrained values, characteristics, idiosyncrasies mirrored from life together. How can Jesus recognize us if we have so distorted his image in us, and our lives so fail to bear the characteristics and values of his parentage that nothing and no one would connect us to him?
The strong hated him. The powerful were threatened by him. The rich found their riches more lovable. The influential preferred their status to surrendering to his authority. The “things” they found themselves possessing were worth far more to them than the eternal gifts of the Father—the things that don’t burn up in the end; the things that bring us wholeness and restore us to our original design; the things that bring us victory over death.
Jesus had no power. He barely had a place to lay his head. He did not own property of any kind. He barely knew where he was going to get his next meal. He didn’t have prestige. He touched lepers and spoke to adulteresses about to be stoned to death. It was always the small, dismissed, humble that he touched and elevated. The small town of Bethlehem where he was born. The shepherds who heralded his arrival. The widows who fed him. The children that gathered around him. The divorced Samaritan he spoke to as a familiar friend.
The man was beaten nearly to death and asphyxiated on a symbol of treason and shame. He was humiliated, called names, reviled, spit at, hated, degraded. His body was robbed of life, and he never did receive justice for his murder.
This fugitive, this alienated outcast, this unrecognized, unvalued, rejected, despised, poor, homeless, powerless, possessionless, beaten, murdered, unjustly treated life is the very power source of the Gospel. It was through his life and ministry that connection to God was made possible for all (his followers and murderers alike).
It is through this kind of life that such things as welcome, humility, long-suffering, selflessness, trust, compassion, and hope arise and flourish.
I declare that a follower of Jesus must bear the former to have the latter. And if life has not give those things to you, it isn’t Jesus who must transform to be like you (an insider with power and prestige and privilege and money and pride); it is you who must condescend to be like Jesus, the way Jesus condescended to be like us. We live by his example and bear his image the way a child mirrors their father.
The father is the source of the image—not the other way around. What are the characteristics of “your” Jesus? How do they compare to the one described in scripture by the friends and followers who observed his life, death, and resurrection?
God forgive me for looking nothing like your servant Jesus to the world around me.
Isaiah 53
Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away. And who can speak of his descendants? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was stricken.
He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.
Yet it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.
After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light [of life] and be satisfied ; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
