When I met Jesus, he was different than I expected. He was different from what I had been taught as a kid or in graduate school and different from the many books about him.
When I
came to the end of myself, Jesus was the one who stayed. He was the one who
didn’t shake his head in disappointment, didn’t turn away in disgust. He is the
one who knelt down, picked me up, dusted me off. He is the one who embraced me.
It was then I realized that the Jesus I had first embraced was different from
the one who was embracing me now.
And I
realized something else.
That Jesus I could follow.
That Jesus I wanted to follow, needed
to follow, couldn’t help but to follow.
Not the
Jesus who is wrapped up in a religious system of do’s and don’ts. Not the Jesus
who is used to raise money to build more and more buildings or fill the
religious treasuries. Not the Jesus who was high jacked for the violent
Crusades… persecuting, killing, even mass murdering Jews, Muslims, all non-Christians,
and even other Christians who disagreed with them. Not the Jesus who is
embraced by a political candidate or party to impress the people. Not the Jesus
who wants you to join his club. Not the Jesus who puts a heavy guilt trip on
you for not performing. Not the hell-fire-and-damnation Jesus. Nor the
meek-and-mild Jesus.
This
Jesus is the one I never really knew. The one without Christian verbiage. The
one without religious baggage. The one without self-righteous garbage.
This is
Jesus plus nothing.
This
Jesus is the Jesus that the early followers, called disciples, got to know. For
three-and-a-half years they were in an apprentice relationship with Jesus. In
their system of education they never made the grade of being chosen by a rabbi
to follow in his steps, so they had returned home to work the family business.
But this rabbi, this Jesus, this new guy in town, he chooses them to follow
him. He picked uneducated, untrained, ordinary men to come along with him and
learn from him. In a sense, Jesus chose those who hadn’t made the cut,
walk-ons, as the team he wanted on the field in the most important game in the
history of the world.
From
those early beginnings, the Jesus movement continues to be the largest in the
world today. This all-encompassing movement consists of people from every
culture and religion on the earth—Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Jews, Hindus,
Sikhs, Pantheists, Agnostics. When Jesus is not boxed into any religious system
or wrapped up in a package marked “exclusive,” he has proven to be universally
attractive throughout the world. People from every culture embrace Jesus,
simply Jesus, whether religious or not.
In the
Upper Room, shortly before Jesus was captured, interrogated, and tortured to
death, one of his followers asked where he was going. Show us the way, he said,
so we can follow you.
Jesus
responded by saying, “I am the way.”
He didn’t
say a religion was the way. Or a certain sect within that religion. He didn’t
say a creed was the way. Or a set of spiritual exercises. He said he was
the way. He is the road less-traveled. An uncertain road to follow at
times, I’ll give you that, even a perilous road. But it is a true road, he told
his disciples, and a road brimming with life.
As Jesus
walked the fragrant shores of Galilee, people came and saw, came and listened,
came and followed. There were no conditions to follow him. No doctrinal
statement you had to sign off on. No pledge you had to commit to. You weren’t
flagged for your ethnicity or refused for your morality. Your sex didn’t
qualify you or disqualify you; neither did your standing in the community. His
appeal was simple.
To those
hunched over their nets or their accounting tables, to those who were worn out
and burned out on religion, Jesus said “Come.” To those of us who are hunched
over our desks or our computer tables, those of us who are worn out and burned
out, he says, “Come.”
He
doesn’t say come to Christianity. He doesn’t say come to Church. He says come to
me.
What he
offers when we come is recovery.
Recovery
of the life we have lost along the way . . . the rhythms we have lost along the
way . . . the freedom and the lightness we have lost along the way.
He calls
us not to a guilt trip but to a get-a-way.
This is his
way, a way largely without words and certainly without swords.
When I
came off the withdrawal from my addiction to religion, I looked at this Jesus,
this one who for so long had been unknown to me. And I listened to him, this
one who for so long I had turned a deaf ear to.
“Come to
me,” he said, smiling. And I came.
As I
followed him, I came to know him. As I came to know him, I came to love him. In
loving him I realized he was enough, realized I was enough. Just as I
am. Without one plea. And without one performance.
It is this
Jesus I want you to come and see . . . the one I have followed along the
shores of the past several years . . . and from whom I have learned the
unforced rhythms of grace.
He was my
rest and my recovery.
Come and
see.
Perhaps
he will be yours.
HANG OUT WITH JESUS WITHOUT RELIGIOUS BAGGAGE. CLICK HERE!
