“Gentle Jesus, meek and mild.” 

That is the Jesus I was taught about in Sunday school as a very young boy. I think I might have even learned a song with that phrase as the title. He was the Jesus who bounced children on his knee, washed people’s feet, herded sheep, handed out free food, made blind people see again, and hosted a book club every Tuesday afternoon at his house in Capernaum.

Just kidding. I made that last part up. But it would certainly be in character with the other meek and mild things I pictured Jesus doing when I was young.

It was not until much later that I learned about the Jesus who put his body between religious leaders ready to hurl stones and a woman accused of adultery (John 8:3-11). Or the Jesus who enraged people in the synagogue by reminding them about times in the Bible when God worked miracles among non-Jews, too (Luke 4:24-30). Heck, that one almost got him thrown off a cliff.

As a pipsqueak Christian no one told me the story about Jesus’ blistering tongue-lashing of the religious leaders of his time, using 23 verses of the book of Matthew to find as many ways as possible of calling them all hypocrites (Matthew 23:13-36). It was not until much later in life that I learned about his rampage among the dove-sellers and moneychangers in the Jerusalem Temple, throwing over tables and using a whip on people as they ran for their lives. Or the Jesus who – facing certain torture and death –stood silently and stoically before the Roman official who held the legal power to commute his sentence.

So which one is the real Jesus? The meek, mild, two-dimensional, felt board Jesus? Or the Jesus inflamed with passion, hurling insults, flipping tables, taunting religious leaders, willing to risk death to confront the System?

Yes. You’re way ahead of me. It’s both. 

And yet it is not some mysterious, undiagnosed, ancient mental illness that accounts for these wild extremes of behavior. Jesus did not occasionally “go off his meds” and start smashing things. 

Believe it or not, EVERY manifestation of Jesus of Nazareth we see depicted in scripture stems from ONE source and ONE motivating question. Whatever he did and whatever he said, all sprung from the question: WHAT DOES LOVE REQUIRE HERE?

In certain settings, love required a gentle, understanding touch. In other settings, love required bold, unsettling words and swift, decisive actions. 

If the goal was to persuade a lost, outcast, diseased, depressed, addicted, or mentally ill person that they are LOVED unconditionally, tenderness and gentleness would have been the preferred approach.

If, on the other hand, the goal was to dissolve the systems that oppress and abuse God’s beloved children, Jesus knew LOVE cannot do its best work by pussyfooting around. He embraced the fact that sometimes LOVE has to get LOUD, abrasive, and unabashedly BOLD!

The question was never, “What will help increase my popularity?” Or “How will this help me gain or lose followers?” Or “What will people think if I do THIS?” The question was always and unequivocally, “What does LOVE require here?”

I wonder… how willing are we today to be guided by that same question? And how willing are we to move in that direction… regardless of the cost?

Abundant blessings;