So, now that you know what the lectionary is, you’ll be happy to know that today’s passages are:

Isaiah 49:1-7
Psalm 71:1-14
1 Corinthians 1:18-31
John 12:20-36

We’re kind of in the early part of Holy Week, so the story is kind of slow right now—the real action starts on Thursday, when we hit Maundy Thursday (when Jesus and the disciples have the Last Supper). Rather, in this part of the week, Jesus is making a last-ditch effort to explain what he’s all about to his followers and prepare them for his impending death. Not that they’re all that good about picking up the clues, mind you.

Truth be told, though, aren’t we a lot like Jesus’ followers then? In many ways, we still aren’t quite sure what Jesus is all about. I read an article yesterday in you-know-where (the NYT) that decried bringing Jesus into the political realm on either side, as the great moralizer or the great humanitarian. The author, Garry Willis, proclaims, “Jesus should not be recruited as a campaign aide. To trivialize the mystery of Jesus is not to serve the Gospels.”

And that’s the kicker—the mystery of Jesus Christ. Because if you read John 12 today, you’re not going to get the feel-goodies you might get from listening to Joel Osteen. You also don’t see Jesus sitting on high, Zen-like, serenely passing out ethical sayings to the crowd like candy. The Jesus that talks of walking in the light before darkness comes seems edgy, foreboding. Beyond full comprehension.

I’ve been to many churches in my day. I’ve sat in services where the utterances from people’s mouths send shivers down your spine. I’ve likewise been in services where you could drown in the poetry and beauty of the Holy Scripture as it is proclaimed from the pulpit. They’ve ranged the entire theological spectrum, from Pentecostal to evangelical to progressive.

And though my experiences in those churches has given me a framework for understanding the Bible, even a framework for how to live my life as a Christian, they’ve ultimately left me with more questions than answers about Jesus. For as you sink deeper and deeper into any relationship, you discover that the other being is far more complex than you ever would have imagined. There are variegated shades in the character of the other.

We know Jesus through the Gospel accounts of him. But as we delve deeper and deeper into those Gospel, as we hear them year after year at Easter, infinite hues in Jesus’ character emerge. It isn’t that Jesus changes—it is simply that we get more snippets of a Messiah so complex that we will never fully unlock him.

Maybe there really is one church that has “got it” on Jesus, and the rest of us are going straight to hell. Maybe every church has a little piece of Jesus, and together as the body of Christ we make it into one whole tapestry. A good thought, to be sure. But, most frightening of all, what if none of us really have it? What if we’re all going around and proclaiming our version of Jesus to the world, attaching Jesus to our agenda, and totally missing the point? We have the Word before us as a guide, and the Holy Spirit to inspire us, but shoot, the disciples had Jesus there in the flesh and still didn’t quite connect all the dots. How much easier is it for us to set up our own ideologies as idolatries that blaspheme the one true God?

But we travel on through the Gospels with Jesus, like the disciples, vainly grasping to make sense of him. Setting out on that journey with Jesus may never help us fully figure it out. But it causes us to love him, even to the cross.

“The crowd answered him, ‘We have heard from the law that the Messiah remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?’ Jesus said to them, ‘The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, so that they darkness may not overtake you. If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going.’” --John 12:34-35

Kelsey