Mary Luti posted a Daily Devotional to the UCC website recently about the various kinds of Jesuses we may find ourselves wanting and preferring at different moments: “progressive Jesus, finder of parking spaces Jesus, wandering Cynic Jesus, feminist Jesus, apocalyptic Jesus, mystical boyfriend Jesus, ethical teacher Jesus, miracle-working divine Jesus…”
“I have a list of Jesuses I've wanted too,” she goes on to say. “But if I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that you can’t really pick your Jesus. You can’t always have him your way. Because it turns out he’s never just the Jesus you want. Not even the Jesus you need. Not even the Jesus you think you need. He’s always (as someone tartly put it) ‘the Jesus you’re damn well going to get.’”
This came back to me today after I tried engaging a grocery story clerk in light banter about whether packaging preservative-free chicken sausage in pink plastic instead of green was really going to advance the fight against breast cancer. The poor guy really didn’t know what to do with me. As I left with my cart, I thought, “That might not be the Kate you wanted or the Kate you thought you needed, but it was damn well the Kate you got.”
Which of course got me thinking. Because that’s what I wake up to every day. Sluggish or energetic, joyful or discouraged, receptive, resistent, or downright crabby—I don’t seem to be able to choose which Kate I’m going to have the pleasure or burden of keeping company with that day. I can try to reason with crabby Kate—try to get her to tell me what’s wrong, ask her what she thinks would help. I can do my best to keep her from biting postmen in the leg. But trade her in for a different Kate, one I think I’ll like better? Not as straightforward as it sounds. (I should know. I’ve spent a lifetime trying.)
Which brings me back to mystery, again. I can’t help feeling the mystery of God and the mystery of Jesus, the Word made flesh, and the mystery of my untamed self and the mystery of my neighbor’s self are all connected. Not connected like “See? I’m just like Jesus!” But as in: There’s a mystery at the heart of being which won’t be bossed around or reshaped according to my liking. When I practice acceptance and receptivity toward one, it really is quietly, patiently teaching me to honor the same mystery in the others. Holding crabby Kate with compassion really is helping me offer compassion toward the next difficult person who will cross my path.
One compassion. One mystery. One love. One Jesus. “Not [necessarily] the one we want, but the one who wants us. Wants our life. All of it.”
Amen.