Jesus Freak
Feeding Healing Raising the Dead
By Sara Miles
John Wiley & Sons
Copyright © 2010
John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-470-48166-0
Chapter One
come and see
Somebody told me a story. And it turned out to be true.
According to Jewish and Christian tradition, we understand
God through stories. How the stars were set in
the firmament. The time the big brother cheated the little
brother. What happened to the women who went to the
tomb and found it empty. The Bible is stuffed with tales that
jumble together the stuff of spirit-burning bushes, angry
angels, mysterious clouds, and voices from heaven-with
the most prosaic and earthbound details: bread, water, a
coat; bricks, weeds, an argument among siblings, labor
pains. We can barely wrap our minds around it all, but
we keep listening. By the time Jesus appears, he's holding
everything indivisible: body and soul, heaven and earth.
I tasted Jesus before I read about him, and turned
back to Scripture for clues about what I'd already experienced
in my own body. Listening to and reading the
Gospel accounts felt, for me, like the opposite of that old
game of Telephone, where a phrase is passed down a
line, losing its sense as each person attempts to repeat
the words exactly. Instead, the tales about Jesus only
gain significance in repetition, gain depth and breadth as
they resound through different readers, are stuttered or
proclaimed in a million different voices, down the years.
Interpretations multiply, but in place of chaos there's a
glimpse of something that looks like truth: vast as galaxies
flung across a night sky, specific as a puddle by the side
of a road in Galilee or a rutted sidewalk in East Oakland.
Here's what I hear: Jesus is the Word made flesh. While
he lived among us, what he said and what he did were
the same thing. His human body was God's language, as
much as his human speech.
Sometimes, in the Gospels, this language is easy to
read, as when Jesus lifts a hand to rebuke the waves;
pronounces, "Be quiet"; and the tempest is stilled. Sometimes
it's frustratingly mysterious, as when he scribbles in
the dirt with a stick or invites his friends to eat his flesh.
Jesus' dense parables are invitations into more and more
meaning, as are the daily actions he undertakes: walking,
washing, lifting, touching, sleeping, eating a piece of
grilled fish with his bare hands.
But it's all teaching, and it's all driving toward a
point-though it's frequently confusing. "What do you
see?" Jesus asks, as he rubs spit in someone's eyes. Or,
teaching a clueless crowd: "What do you think that landowner
would do?" Then, in a seemingly unconnected
gesture, he takes off his clothes, kneels down, and washes
some man's feet.
But I don't think the words and the actions recorded
in the Gospels are random. Jesus is showing his disciples
some crucial things about the nature of God, so that they
could participate fully in God's work after he was gone. So
that their feeding, healing, and forgiving would take place
on God's terms, and add up to resurrection.
In stories that still have the power to scare us, Jesus tells
his disciples to live by the upside-down values of God's
kingdom, rather than the fear-driven values of human
society. He shows how family, tribe, money, violence, and
religion-the powers of the world-cannot stand against
the love of God. And he tells us that we, too, are called
to follow him in breaking down all worldly divisions that
get in the way of carrying out his instructions. Sure, it's
impossible to feed five thousand people, make a deaf man
hear, bring a dead girl to life, as long as you obey human
rules. So do it God's way instead, Jesus teaches.
Say yes.
Jump right in. Come and see. Embrace the wrong people.
Don't idolize religion. Have mercy. Jesus' tips cast a light
forward, steering us through the dark.
* * *
Say yes. This message is first delivered not by Jesus but
by his mother, following her astonishing encounter with
the angel Gabriel. "OK, God," Mary says to the impossible
proposition, and Jesus comes to live in her.
As an unmarried girl in the ancient agricultural world,
Mary represents the most unlikely spokesperson for a powerful
deity. Yet this unimportant person fearlessly carries
God's good news that the proud will be scattered in their
conceit, the hungry will be filled with good things, the rich
sent away empty, and the lowly lifted up.
It is, of course, profoundly unsettling news: Mary
doesn't need a man to have a baby. She isn't going
to follow worldly norms. In fact, she prophesizes the
overturning of the whole social order. She doesn't ask
permission of kings or family or priests to step off the
precipice into unprecedented experience.
But her choice is also revolutionary because she submits.
Mary sings out her
yes without knowing what will
happen. Trusting God, Mary opens herself to humiliation,
physical pain, dislocation, terror, loss. And yet, just as Jesus
will, she calls herself blessed.
Her courage remains a signpost for all humankind-for
all the unimportant, frightened, powerless people who
doubt that God can work through us. As the fourth-century
bishop Gregory of Nyssa wrote, "What was achieved in
the body of Mary will happen in the soul of everyone who
receives the Word."
Reports keep showing up over the centuries of Mary
speaking to people in their own languages, appearing to
cripples and prisoners, to refugees and shame-filled pregnant
girls, sharing the message that the angel brought her:
Don't be afraid. She whispers that it doesn't matter how
unqualified we think we are; God can make new life in
us, too.
Because at the annunciation, Mary didn't get safety.
She got a child she couldn't give a place to lay his head, a
child she couldn't save from violence. Mary said yes; she
got Jesus.
* * *
Jump right in. I like to think Jesus learned something
about saying
yes from his mom. In any case, he repeats the
message at his baptism, driving home a few more essential
points about the nature of God's relationship with humans.
The first thing we learn from the story of Jesus' baptism
is that God is probably not planning to reveal anything
particularly important in church, or in any kind of temple
we think is appropriate for the holy, or through anyone
who's an official holy man. It's nice to imagine John the
Baptist as a revered religious leader who led beautiful
spiritual ceremonies outdoors, in the lovely flowing water.
But John the Baptist was, not to put too fine a point on
it, a total nutcase, sort of like the unwashed guy with
the skanky dreadlocks and the plastic bags over his socks
who sleeps in the entryway to the library. John the Baptist
ate bugs. He ranted and raved and spoke sedition. He
railed at decent temple-goers, shouting that their sacred
ceremonies were useless, threatening them with damnation
if they didn't repent. And though he wasn't a priest, he
dared to claim that he could baptize for the forgiveness
of sins.
And the river Jordan was not even slightly picturesque:
it was a muddy stream, right by the side of a public road,
and John told people to walk into it, all kinds of men
and women together, with no respect for order. The contemporary
equivalent would be a homeless schizophrenic
waving his fist at priests and cops, then yelling to a crowd
that they should get down on their knees together on the
filthy floor of the bathroom in the Greyhound bus station
and repent.
In other words, just as the unmarried teenager Mary is
the mother of God, so the madman John is the baptizer of
God: both improper figures, completely unauthorized by
the religious authorities. And just as a mucky feed trough is
where Mary lays the bread of heaven, so the river Jordan
is where John anoints the Son of God: inappropriate
locations for something holy to occur.
This common water is where Jesus chooses to be
baptized. This profane setting, outside the majestic temple
doors, is where God chooses to reveal his love for his
son. Like the table Jesus will share with tax collectors and
sinners, like, in fact, the cross: these scandalous places are
exactly where we will find salvation.
And then Jesus does nothing pious to please God.
Jesus doesn't say the correct prayers first, or do good
deeds, or offer animal sacrifice to win God's favor. He just
is. He jumps into the river, the rushing water of the world,
with his human body, and the Spirit of God comes over
him. Jesus and God and the Spirit know each other, and
God says: this is my son, my beloved, with whom I am
well pleased.
This recognition, this total union among God and
Jesus and the Spirit, tears the heavens. It rips them apart,
just as they will be ripped apart at the crucifixion. The
veil between heaven and earth, the veil constructed by
religion to separate humans from God, is torn asunder
forever by the absolute fact of Jesus. Jesus who is utterly,
dirtily human; Jesus who just wades into the water and
accepts the divine Spirit coming to dwell in his flesh. As it
will, through him, come to dwell in us.
* * *
And how do we know this?
Come and see, says Jesus,
kicking off his public ministry after his baptism. It's a
statement that's got more than a little dare in it; more
than a little edge. This is the Jesus that Paul and I started
referring to as "the Boyfriend." We used it as a colloquial
version of the ancient Christian name of "Bridegroom"
for Jesus, but it felt more personal-and funny, if a little
disturbing, because that's how Jesus is.
In the Gospel story, Jesus asks two of John's disciples
what they're looking for, and Andrew politely says, "Rabbi,
where are you staying?" Then the Boyfriend says, simply,
come and see. In this story we learn what Jesus is like, and
how he sees us, and what he's going to ask of us, the
disciples. How our relationship is going to be.
Right away, the Boyfriend makes clear where he's
staying. He is staying with us. On earth. Period. And
he's inviting us to come and see what it means to abide in
a human body in the world. The Boyfriend is moving in.
So what's he like? One, he's promiscuous. Because
Jesus is the kind of boyfriend who'll go with anyone. He
picks up John's disciples. He chats with strangers. He'll
even flirt with two brothers at the same time-he has
no shame. Jesus talks to anyone: Jews, Gentiles, women,
children, foreigners. He's soft on them. He touches them.
He calls them by name.
Two, the Boyfriend is a bit of a troublemaker. He likes
to stir things up. In the conventional order, only members
of Aaron's royal family get anointed to the priesthood in
an exclusive temple ritual. But Jesus goes to John, the mad
prophet, instead. Jesus wades right in and comes up shining,
and then he starts getting everyone else riled up.
Okay, ready or not, he says, let's go:
come and see.
Jesus isn't the kind of boyfriend, in my experience,
who's just going to smile and be agreeable. He's the
thrilling, scary Boyfriend who's going to dare you to
do things you'd never dreamed of, shower you with
unreasonable presents, and show up uninvited at the
most embarrassing times. Then he's going to stick with
you, refusing to take the hint when you don't answer
his calls.
In the story of Andrew, Jesus is just beginning his love
affair with all humankind. That first baptism in the Jordan
will lead to baptisms of fire, tears, the cup, and the cross;
Jesus will submit and go under it all, falling and coming
up, dying and rising, and he will never, ever, let his
lovers go.
But to start, Jesus simply looks at us. He sees us, face to
face. And what he sees about us-his confused, doubting,
selfish followers-is that we, too, are beloved children of
God. That we, dumb and dim as Andrew, as Peter, as any
crushed-out ninth-grade girl or sulky teenage boy, are part
of the Boyfriend's body: one flesh with him, and with all
humankind.
Oh, my dears, says the Boyfriend. This is how it's
going to be from now on. All those other discipleships are
over, because I'm here now, for good. This is what our
relationship is going to be like: I love you, and you love
me and each other.
Come and see.
Jesus doesn't make us obey by claiming the mantle
of religious authority or worldly power: he meets us at
someone's ordinary house, at four in the afternoon. He
doesn't ask us to prepare and purify ourselves: he takes
us as we are. This Boyfriend is not a big talker. He just
invites us, without exception, into experience. It's a dare,
and it's a promise.
Come and see, he says. Our Boyfriend
insists on staying with people. He abides with us in the
lowliest places, kisses the most despised sinners, sticks
around for the worst messes humans can make. And even
when we doubt the love, even when we wreak jealous
violence on his other beloveds, even when we try to break
up, the Boyfriend is still there. He still wants us to touch
him, eat him, become him.
Because the thing about Jesus, the story turns out, is
that he believes in
us, the people who betray his love,
just as he believed in Andrew and poor frightened Peter.
Jesus trusts that humans have the power to truly see
him ourselves. He believes that our mortal bodies, our
experiences here on earth, are enough to bear and hold
God. He knows we can find him in our own flesh, and in
the flesh of others.
* * *
Embrace the wrong people. In the public works that
follow his baptism and call to those first followers, the
itinerant teacher and healer Jesus keeps making the point
that salvation doesn't depend on worldly status, or even
on religious observance. In a whole series of stories, Jesus
demonstrates that God deliberately chooses the stranger,
the outcast, the foreigner, the sick and unclean-in
short, the wrong people-to show the scope of
his love.
The story of Jesus and the man blind from birth begins
with the assumption-common to all cultures-that we
can exclude people from the ranks of God's beloved. In
this example, the blind man is assumed to be guilty: either
he or his parents must have sinned to cause his defect.
In other stories and other times, we see slaves, foreigners,
cripples, the sick, sexual deviants, and beggars excluded,
forced to fill the role of the sacrificial victim.
These victims are key to every human story, because
outcasts define the center. It works the same way in our
own time: you hear what you call an accent, and you know
by this that you aren't a foreigner. You see a guy who acts
like a fag, and you know you're a real man. You see the
slow kids sitting by themselves in the junior high school
lunchroom, and you know you're normal. And the church,
of course, needs heretics in order to establish orthodoxy.
So outcasts are essential, because they define the norm for
the rest of the community.
And the laws of religion, then and now, thrive on
our need for outcasts. They codify who's in and who's out,
what's a right day for healing and what's a wrong one,
who's pure and who deserves to be struck down with a
disease that makes them untouchable. Then the priests,
as Jesus knew well, become the only ones allowed to
pronounce someone healed or contaminated, the only
ones who can establish who's inside and outside. It's a
system that the world-and religion-run well on.
But when Jesus restores the blind man's sight, he offers
us a way to let God's radical grace disrupt this system. To
live in faith. To see as God does.
It's a frightening offer, because accepting it means
accepting that healing may not always come the way we
wish it to. That the strange or the sick may, in fact, hold
the key to the healing of the "normal" ones. That priests
can't decide whom God loves.
None of us can control what God does. But we can
open our eyes and see what God is doing. Jesus says that
in order to see the glory of God revealed, we have to look
at the whole of creation: God is always among us, making
us whole even as we try to divide ourselves, loving us
even as we hate each other.
Look at the lame, he says, at the plagued, the poor:
those you've cast out, those whose suffering you misinterpret
as a sign of their own sinfulness. Don't call unclean
anything God has created; do not exclude anything or
anyone from your vision. It is all God's work.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Jesus Freak
by Sara Miles
Copyright © 2010 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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