I have been re-reading the Gospel of John, and it's prompting me to wonder some things about Jesus.
He is not adorable. He is not cute or cuddly. He cuts with his words. He shouts. He cries out with a loud voice. He escapes assassins, skirting the crowds and disappearing through stone-carrying mobs. He lives in the wilderness, on the outskirts, and he mocks the people who come to tempt him.
And yet.
He stoops to scribble in the dust for the sake of a shamed woman. He "must needs" go to Jacob's Well to reach a despised people. He weeps to see the grief of a sister bereaved.
I would have wanted to get to know him, and I would have (knowing me) been awfully insecure about it, always checking to see if he still thought I was cool. Would he have? I don't know--there weren't very many people he was close to. Not everyone was a Mary, Martha, Lazarus, John, Peter, James. He was a man--only so much of his personal resources could be outlet to camaraderie with his fellow individuals. Jesus wasn't everyone's Best Friend.
Man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. Not life of the party. Not all the time, at least. He must have been burdened. He must have known where he was heading. He must have been acutely aware of dwindling time, to which all of humanity is bound. (How bizarre, to be forced to accustom yourself to the strictures of linear existence.)
There are only a few places in the gospels where the narrative says that Jesus--Jesus the man--loved someone. I have come to treasure those statements, and those people. The beloved disciple. The siblings from Bethany. The wealthy young man who came running to find eternal life. There are few mentions of this idea of Jesus having human love for a fellow human, and while I am certain it happened far more than the text specifies, the English major in me protests the importance of this textual evidence. "Then Jesus, beholding him, loved him." Did he know? Do you?
It's good Friday. Long ago and far away, Jesus, beholding us, loved us. On Calvary his humanity was stretched past the limit of what any soul could bear. He remained human, suffering his heart to beat til implosion, his lungs to expand til asphyxiation. Acutely aware of time, of biology, of the processes he had himself ordained.
I have to remind myself of these things when I get caught up in the cyclic and linear strictures of human time. I have to keep returning to the Word (made-flesh-and-dwelt-among-us) to recognize who he is, and the once-for-all of that day. I wonder about his blood type, the erythrocyte-leukocyte-plasma cells of innocence. O positive? That would be most appropriate. But who knows. I wonder about those details you only know about someone after having lived with them for a while. I wonder what his myers-briggs personality would have been. I wonder quotidian and ridiculous and patently human things,
And I wonder how, beholding me, he could love me.
