Why It's Good News that Jesus Ticks Us Off

In the previous post, I suggested that if Jesus isn't ticking is off, we're picking and choosing the parts we like about Jesus in order to justify ourselves.

When we do this, we're making ourselves Jesus--making him into our own image. This would seem to suit us very well, except it doesn't.

If we're making ourselves the measure of Jesus, then our redemption, our healing, our transformation, our completion can only be made reality in ourselves, by our own strength. Because we've made ourselves the healer, it's up to us to "fix" all our troubles and brokenness.

In this case, our abilities (or lack thereof) become the limiting factors in our lives. And there's a whole lot of pressure to make something happen.

But what if there's a story that's much bigger than our own stories? What if our lives apart from that story are like notes wrenched from a symphony--still making noise but without the purpose originally intended?

And what if that story, that symphony, took on flesh and entered into the cacophony of random, listless, wandering notes and offered purpose? What if there's more to life than our small islands, our small stories?

What if there's power outside of us that invites us to live a life gifted into significance rather than scrapping and clawing our way into trying to prove our significance to ourselves and everyone around us before we die?

What if Jesus ticking us off is not just off-putting? What if Jesus ticking us off is, at the heart, an invitation? What if it's about an invitation into a bigger, broader, bolder, more humble, more free, more joyful life experience? Finally! There's something that's not me yet comes to me and offers to lead me into a more expansive place! The fact that Jesus is both God's "Yes" and "No" to me leads me finally and fully into that perfect "YES!" which is always God's last word to me.

What if the fact that there's parts about God that we don't like is an invitation to take first, small, faltering steps into an experience of a story that is one of infinite beauty?

When we make Jesus into our own image we are stuck imprisoned in our own stories. There is no genuine redemption because the redeemer is basically ourselves. And the problem with that is that our individual stories are too small a thing to spend our whole lives on.