that in the last twelve months my ministry has often missed the grandeur (the size) of this messianic undertaking, wanting to pin Jesus down, selfishly capture him as the “local chaplain” for me and mine.
And each line of this famous passage from John is like that. I speak the verses into the weather and silently wait for images and memories from the past year to surface. And I pray. Or confess. Or give thanks. Or make a vow to start again.
Every year it’s a different line that most grabs my attention. This past year it was verse 11: “He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.”
I cannot imagine what it would be like to be found unacceptable by your own people. But I know it happens. I’ve been told by people that they can never go home again—some because of their sexuality; some from a mistake they’ve made that seems unforgivable; some due to a long-ago argument where reconciliation seems impossible.
“Jesus came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.” There are a variety of instances of Jesus’ unacceptability among his own people in the Gospels. There’s the time his own family thought he’d gone over the deep end psychologically and came to get him, interrupting his teaching. There’s the time he came home and served as lector in worship one Sabbath day. All smiled at his speaking ability until Jesus started preaching on the lesson he’d just read. Then everybody in worship that day tried to toss him off a cliff—these were people he’d known all his life. “His own people.” And there are many other instances of rejection (including the crucifixion) by people who weren’t strangers. These stories come up regularly in the church’s Sunday lectionary cycle. That Jesus was rejected by his own people should not surprise us.
What struck me this time on Table Rock as I spoke this line into the wind at year’s end was that I (by virtue of my baptism) am certainly among “his own people.” I am one of his own people and find so many of his teachings objectionable, unacceptable—maybe not the hearing of the teaching, but living it. It hit me outside in the wind that it was unfair to make the unacceptability of Jesus a reality just from 2,000 years ago alone. So much of what Jesus says is quietly unacceptable to me; unacceptable perhaps to much of his church, his own people.
If you doubt the truth of this, try the following exercise: compare what Jesus says about peace and reconciliation to the vast size of our national military complex, adding in all the other nations across the world and their respective forces. Compare the size of my home or yours and its contents to what Jesus says about possessions and ownership. Compare what Jesus says about forgiveness to our penchant for retaliation and revenge. Compare my set of friends with Jesus’ friends. Compare what Jesus says about wealth and money to what I keep for myself.
None of this is meant to inflict guilt. It’s mostly a confession—a confession that I am often so very far afield from the basic teachings of Jesus. And I’m one of “his own people.” John 1:11 is not just about people from two millennia ago. It’s about me. “He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.” There’s much of my life where I fail to allow Jesus realistic and practical entrance. I confessed this into the wind from the top of Table Rock.
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“And the Word became flesh and lived among us . . . full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Jesus is full of both, we’re told here: grace and truth. Sometimes as a Lutheran I want his grace, but I don’t much care to hear his truth. Keep it! His truth sounds nutty. His truth sounds so out of step. His truth may not please everyone in his church (his own people).
And so we may stop taking Jesus seriously; start reading him selectively. Adopt another story, another narrative, that really (honestly) directs our days and decisions a heck of a lot more than the story of Jesus. It’s easy to worship a little baby on the straw—so cute, so sweet. It’s a lot harder to follow the man when he grows up. “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.”
His own people did not accept him.
So here’s a challenge in the coming year. And you don’t have to climb a mountain or even leave your home to accept the challenge. Here goes: in a land filled with so many desires, so many preferences, and so many opinions about so many things, strive to make decisions and plans based upon the teachings of Jesus, not based upon something easier or more popular. This will mean, of course, that we know the teachings of Jesus, in all their vast strangeness and oddness; his own people consciously choosing to accept him.
Deciding over and again to welcome both his grace and his truth.
For further reflection:
1. What’s the difference between the words “grace” and “truth” in your own life? How do the two words function in the days given to us by God?
2. Has there been an event in your life where you took a courageous (but unpopular) stand that friends or family found unacceptable? If so, describe that event.
Introduction to the Season
Normally associated with divine revelation and manifestation, a quick dictionary check1 of the word epiphany also suggests: “a moment when you suddenly become conscious of something that is very important to you.” This season of the church year is filled with epiphanic stories involving learned men of science bearing gifts and following stars; a heavenly voice at a river; and encounters with long-dead heroes on a mountain peak. We’ll get to those, but first the story of an old and gifted friend who also reveals the meaning and theology of the Epiphany season.
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I picked up the phone one autumn long ago, wet from the shower, and the operator’s voice sounded rightly suspicious, almost disbelieving. “I have a collect call for the Reverend Frank McIntosh from Alvin, Simon, or Theodore.”
I think it was the little word “or” that made me laugh the hardest that afternoon; a choice of chipmunks. Or maybe his playful insistence upon referring to me with the name of his hometown dentist, the “tosh” such a fun-sounding syllable. After my go-ahead to the stunned operator, he chortled with a wonderful South Carolina accent, “Do you know who this eees?”
Who else could it be? Just prior to entering seminary, I met Bobby at Camp Hope near Clemson on Lake Hartwell. He was a member of a cabin group of mentally challenged campers that summer known as “The Fried Pies.” Bobby’s personality includes what textbooks used to call “idiot savant.” He remembers all sorts of lists and numbers: radio call letters in every South Carolina town; names and situations of extended members of any family he’s ever come to know; and detailed information concerning obscure hobbies like sanitation and the accompanying machines required to keep towns tidy. As a boy, Bobby stood silently for hours on the corner near his house and learned the detailed intricacies of his town’s mechanized street sweeper.
Bobby still walks with a gait that appears agitated—hands open and parallel, chest-high and shaking in rapid movement; head bobbing up and down—but is mostly an aid in helping his intricate brain retrieve something witty or astonishingly obscure. I always recall portions of Psalm 139 when I’m around Bobby: “For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Bobby has felt his share of ridicule and stares. But in church every Sunday near his group home, he’s also reminded of his gifts. He helps the men of his congregation prepare breakfast before worship each week; the marvelous leveling effect of food.
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