Jesus Talks

So this week we were asked to consider communication, the way we communicate and what we learn from the way Jesus communicates. I wasnt so keen on the idea at first because i find the more i think about how im communicating, the more awkward and weird i become. But i was really up for learning about the way Jesus communicates.


I have just started a little "Jesus project" in which I am studying him, the man. I'm not very good at bible studies to be honest but I'm doing it my own way, I'm reading all the gospels and have a big sheet of paper on which i scribble down all my ideas of Jesus, verses and things that stick out. It just dawned on me as I was reading the Irresistible Revolution that when i read the gospels i read what I want to and can manage to skim over the things i dont like or filter out under the over used cliche of cultural relevance. So I am on this Jesus journey (I guess we always are) with a focus on the way in which he communicates.


One thing that has stood out to me already is how expressive he was!!! I always have a "cool Jesus" in my brain, rarely phased, always knowing, always on top of the situation, very set feautres and piercing eyes. But when i read about his adventures, he's nowhere near!!! He is always crying, laughing, smiling, shouting..."And with a LOUD CRY he breathed his last", that doesnt tell of a man he is cool with it all...he cries out to God like any man might in such pain, he is crying, yelling on the cross. And again in the temple he runs around like a madman tipping things up, at other times he shouts at his best friends and then cries at deaths. He didnt save emotions for specific times when he "knew he should", the image i had of him was just all knowing so he would cry right on cue etc. He was actually sad! Very sad! Actually happy! As Philip Yancey in his "The Jesus I never knew" is reminding me, Jews are incredibly expressive people, more so than us today, far more infact. I say bring it on, a weeks wedding?! 120gallons of wine that Jesus made from water in recored breaking time because he wanted the party to carry on...the dancing, the joy. He was an expressive man!!! As Brits, especailly men, we act, or try to, so cool, so unphased, never wanting to make ourselves look silly...when Jesus thrived on it.


Secondly, he was very blunt. He didnt say things FOR a reaction which maybe we need to be careful about but he said things, knowing full well the reaction they would cause. I don't think we would have found him to be very "nice" sometimes. A passage that always astounds me is when his disciples are innocently admiring the temple and he turns round and makes a rather irritating comment, almost retorting that it isn't so impressive. He tells Satan to get behind him when one of his best friends says something that on Peters mind probably seemed supportive of him. Again, not nice, he calls the politicians of the day snakes, the preists frauds, the district ruler "that fox", he was very strongly opiniated. Again, today? He would be a heretic, a troublemaker, a hippy, a mouth that needs to be shut. As Christians we would probably be embarassed at his rantings and try to shut him up as a madman...oh wait...we have!

There's so much I'm learning about him. One of the most important things is that he is HIGHLY unpredictable, I know these days as Christians we are highly predictable, I know I am anyway. Jesus is NOT a formula I can follow, I can't say "in this situation he would do...", the truth is I don't KNOW. However, I am learning his message and his heart, the more my eyes are fixed on him, the more I learn to love him , the further degree to which I believe him, the more I act like him, I have made the decision to "hope against hope" that maybe I CAN change, the more I let go. The amazing ways of communication he developed was from a heart, always of love, never showmanship, which admittedly at the moment is the main source of my communication. The more my heart settles in to his love, the more i will communicate the way i was always supposed to. This is the amazing thing about our Lord, is that he has never asked to us to get it "right", to do the right things at the right times. He has asked us to admit we are sinners, know we are loved by him and then love. "Love and then do as you will".
Anyway, I've deviated slightly but studying any aspect of Jesus opens your world up to new things and he is digging deeper. I'm loving it!