What Wasn't a Dud

My pastor asked a question in church yesterday, a question that highlighted powerfully the points that he was making in his well-crafted and beautifully challenging sermon but which (as I reflected on it later that day) began to work through my mind in a slightly different context than that which he was emphasizing. I guess people call these "tangents." Anyway, the question he posed was this:

How many of you know that Jesus was a disappointment to his mother?

Almost all of us had raised our hands in affirmation as we remembered, curiously, the moment in Mark 3:31-35, when Jesus is told, "Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you." But look at our Lord's response to the messenger:

"Who are my mother and my brothers?" he asked. Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother." (NIV 1984)

Imagine the absolute confusion—and maybe even the bitter scowls—that would have crossed the faces of those who heard this response. Had He lost His mind??

No. He hadn't. He knew what He was doing, and He was teaching us something extremely important.

My pastor used this passage as one illustration of many that the Gospel is a truth that pulls us out of what he termed "the cult of the nuclear family." In other words, when we are adopted as God's sons and daughters, we are adopted into His family—the church. God's Name becomes the Name to which we acknowledge our allegiance; God's family becomes the family we recognize as our own. And this is an inexplicably beautiful truth!

In addition to this, though, my pastor's question sparked another thought in my mind. Here and elsewhere, Jesus really was a repeated disappointment to His family. Think Luke 2:41-50 and Mark 3:20-21 (which may have been the reason for their appearance in the scene I just described above) for some examples.

But the problem gets even bigger. Jesus was a major disappointment to His whole nation too. The religious leaders thought He was an absolute fool. The disciples were constantly correcting Him. He hung out with all the wrong sorts of people, told confusing stories that didn't match the reigning theology, couldn't seem to perform His miracles on the right day of the week, had a fit of anger in the temple—and then, gosh darn it, He went and died on a cross.

Why was Jesus such a disappointment to these people? He didn't live up to their expectations. The religious leaders wanted Him to affirm their hard-earned righteousness and their long lists of laws. The disciples wanted Him to step up and overthrow Rome like a good Messiah should. The popular people couldn't understand why the prostitutes and tax collectors were the ones whose company He chose. They all wanted Him to tell them how great they were doing and to bring in the Kingdom of God right then and there—just as they thought He should—squashing all the dirty scoundrels who couldn't find it in themselves to keep the six-hundred-something laws to which the Pharisees clung.

But what they didn't realize was that their expectations were the problem. All those people who found Jesus to be a disappointment were those who wanted Jesus to be something He was not. They wanted the God of the universe to fit into their boxes.

And, let me tell you, if Jesus had done that, we'd all have been dead meat.

By anchoring Himself in the identity given Him by His Father, by constantly listening to the Spirit's leading, by tuning His soul toward the perfect plan of His God—even when it hurt!—Jesus became the world's greatest disappointment, but only to those who failed to realize that their lives depended on that very thing.

Jesus didn't affirm the reigning theology because the reigning theology wasn't right. Jesus didn't listen to His disciples' rebukes because they weren't in line with His Father's plan. Jesus hung out with the lowlife people because those were the ones who knew they needed Him. And Jesus died on a cross because He wasn't interested in overthrowing Rome. He was interested in saving the world—and overthrowing death itself.

You see, if Jesus had lived up to the expectations of those around Him—the ones who expected things of Him that fit neither with His identity nor with His Father's plan—He would have never been the Savior that the world needed.

So what does that mean for us? I think it means a lot.

First of all, we've got a lesson to learn from the mistakes of those whose expectations were off the mark. We've got a question to ask ourselves. Is Jesus a disappointment to us? If so, I think we need to rework our understanding of our own position. We are but humans. He is God. Surely, He knows what He is doing. Surely, if He was willing to give up everything to die for us, we can trust Him. If we find that Jesus is a disappointment to us, the problem isn't Jesus. The problem is our own boxes. Far be it from us to expect God to follow us. We're supposed to be following Him.

Secondly, we may need to adjust the way we look at our fellow humans. Do we expect them to be something they're not? Something God never made them to be? The same pastor who inspired this post in the first place once said in a different sermon, "Everybody's a genius, but if you tell a fish to climb a tree, it'll spend the rest of its life thinking that it's stupid."¹ It's possible, of course, to be disappointed in someone for really not doing what they're supposed to be doing. But, I wonder, what would we see if we looked at others from God's eyes? People can be huge successes in the eyes of their Creator even if the rest of creation doesn't see it. What counts for Him is the heart, not the presence of praise from peers.

And, finally, this means a lot for the way we look at ourselves. Reach down. Think deep. Has anyone told you that you were a disappointment? This may have been a legitimate accusation. Perhaps you were living in a way that you weren't supposed to be living. But, even if that was true, it's not too late to turn around. God can change anyone. But I think far too many people are accused of being a disappointment when the only mistake they've made is failing to live up to what somebody else thought they should be.

To those hurting hearts, I offer this comfort: Your Savior faced it too. He knows. He hurts with you. And I think He wants you to remember this: Your identity in Him is secure, and His plan for you is perfect. You will never be a disappointment to Him because He just doesn't look at people that way. Ever. Child, He loves you. He loves you. Believe that, and let the accusations of this world fly off of your soul like drops of water on the wings of a bird. Rest in His love. It's in that rest—in the anchoring of our identities in Him alone—that we become the very people the world didn't know it needed us to be.

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¹ This quote is not original. It’s been mistakenly attributed many times to Albert Einstein, but its real source is unknown (https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/04/06/fish-climb/).