Jesus was the name on everyone's lips
In my childhood.
The name in the songs.
The name the preachers shouted
about.
The name Sunday School teachers
told with reverence.
Remember how He died.
He loves you so much
He stretched out His arms and
died.
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| Photo: Pixabay, Geralt |
I knew Him in my childhood.
I don’t remember not knowing.
Savior of the world.
King.
God.
One.
I knew when His spirit filled me.
I knew when His name covered me.
I knew the words of eternal life.
I knew so much, but I didn't know
Him well.
Not well enough.
My teens.
Don't just know His name. It's a
whole relationship, the way you want to fall in love.
He already loves you. Just do
your part,
And love Him with your whole
heart.
My heart, skeptical but wanting to
believe, settled into it,
Accepting that questions would be
an ever-living fixture in it.
How unequal is a relationship where
One dies for the other,
And the one receiving the gift says
"Thank you?
I can’t love you back the same way.
I'll try to serve you and make
little sacrifices sometimes.
Does that help?"
That gap felt wide. I knew I was
supposed to do my part, be grateful.
To try and become who He made me to
be.
The facts were strong.
But who was Jesus, really?
Why again did He die, and what did
it have to do with me?
The world needs to know, but do
they care to know?
I know, and I'm not even doing my
part very well.
Shouldn't I be more passionate if I
really know Him?
I kept doing my best, and it was
all very flawed.
Jesus, the familiar stranger on
everyone's lips.
Man without face.
Presence without image.
Words without voice, so I read them
aloud
In my voice.
Memorized them. Quoted them. Dissected
them over coffee.
Black and white words on a page,
and red words.
His words.
Words that would never die coursed
through my veins, my breath,
Alive again.
I tried to imagine Him better so He
would be more real.
Spirit encounters forced me to know
He was real.
I couldn't argue.
I knew Him the way you know the
ocean by walking through the edge of it.
I knew He was real, and I began to see
that depths
I’d never imagined were beyond me
still.
There had to be more.
My college years.
I committed to my direction, dodging the worst vices.
I'd been warned of the red
flags,
Taught how narrow the path is.
Like a goody two-shoes, I tiptoed
through a strange land where Jesus was a foreign figure.
I knew Him. I knew things they
wouldn't admit were real.
I saw the folly of their facades.
I saw the painful end of their rights
and freedoms.
I saw through vain philosophies and
bravado-heavy claims.
What did they know?
Knowing Him was a shame there.
They knew more than God, and I knew
That was a vice of its own, so I
chose to walk by faith.
To be small. An oddball. A
minority.
A stranger dancing to a song no one
else could hear.
To know Him would be listening for His
voice in small-town preaching,
And let it choke out the siren
songs of prestige
And acceptance.
And pride.
To know Him would be letting Him unhook me from the long-toothed trap of consensus.
It meant discovering what His living words meant in my wilderness,
Digging for hours through intellectual
underbrush until I found markers to
Point the way forward.
His words became a weapon against
the lies,
Especially the ones I told myself.
I knew I could find answers to my
questions, because He was the answer,
But the in between,
The marking trails to Him,
It was so much work.
I quested and searched and
answered. But in the noise of my own making,
I felt the weight of what I
couldn’t fully grasp,
And feared I would never:
He talks a lot about love. Am I
missing something?
We did talk about this. We talked
about love so often I forgot.
Love was on everyone's lips from day
one.
We know His name. We know His
power. We know His love.
It's all about love.
Why is my life so full of Jesus and
His love, and so cold and barren too?
Why am I floundering in these
shallows when the depths are singing out to each other?
How is this all supposed to work?
The answers arose again and again in
words, books, songs,
And flowed out of faithful saints working
their fingers to the bone at their humble stations.
Silly girl. God is not a problem
to be solved.
He’s a whole being.
If you keep on, you’ll find Him.
So I did.
And I knew Him, but not well
enough.
How could I?
Mary of Magdala knew this divide
too.
She was healed by a nameless
stranger.
What are the chances?
Surprise fell on her like a strike
of pure lightning: You're whole.
Free.
He knew her name. He loosed her
from demonic terror,
Un-chaining their authority and
shielding her in safety.
He touched her soul before she
could speak.
He knew her before she could know
Him, and He loved her.
It's all so unequal. Unfair to the
point of overwhelm.
Is this what it means to be loved?
To be indebted beyond belief?
To be handed a whole new world? For
free?
Maybe she really did say, "I
will know Him for the rest of my life."
Did I, like her, mistake the relief
of knowing Him for the end of all grief?
If He was God, shouldn't the
meaning of one encounter last forever?
Why are we so bruised and fragile,
always needing?
I could feel her devastation when
He didn't erase her brain with amnesia.
He didn't transplant her into
someone else's life, void of her identity.
The rest of her life would be
knowing Him and healing from the scars.
Insecurities and bouts of shame
would buck their backs like wild horses.
He didn't pave her a road free of
disruption.
Temptation would sing its song.
These habits are harmless.
They are part of you.
They'll comfort you.
She would fall. She would forget,
not the knowledge of what He did, but the feeling.
She would forget the lightning, and
the relief, and the joy.
She knew Him, but not well enough.
How could she?
She had to learn not just who He
was, but how prone she was to forget what she'd been given.
She couldn’t hear the cry of truth
when despair shouted again
Into the serenity of her healing,
And she ran away.
She had to endure the pain of the
inequality between them stretching impossibly again.
He couldn't be more holy, and she
couldn't be more guilty.
She had to learn how Jesus forgives
when we forget Him.
No literary master could contrive a
juxtaposition this unbalanced.
The gap gets wider the more you
know Him.
He is greater than you thought.
You are less than you thought.
You thought you were low before,
but now look how much lower you feel
When you’ve known His voice, and
you still forgot the lightning.
His Kingdom became familiar, and
God forbid, you let His face become
mundane.
The cycle continues... she had to
be found again, and find Him again
And let Him embrace her again in
the depth of her shame,
Wrapping His own righteousness
around her like a cosmic hug
That makes no sense.
How could He possibly invite her
into His story, when He is so pure and she is so broken?
Mary M.
She learned it from Him. And I
learned it from her, and the others like her.
You can enter into that embrace, not because you can fulfill your part of a relationship,
But because He will
make up the difference.
He will stand in the gap.
He will make you holy.
He will make you worthy,
He will answer your pitiful efforts
With ridiculous overabundance.
You’ll never know Him well enough.
The ocean of the I AM is too deep
and too wide.
You can know Him
And be consumed by Him.
She would invite us, wouldn't she?
She'd say, Stay with Him. Just stay
and absorb as much as you can.
It takes time.
Listen through the teaching and the
preaching.
Watch for the miracles.
Endure the soul-deep crisis of not comprehending
his ways.
Witness the cross.
Wait for the resurrection.
Wait for the wind and the fire.
Wait for the Spirit.
Suffer with Him,
And let Him into your suffering
And surrender
With all your heart, soul, mind,
and strength,
Until the power of His resurrection
Animates you and flows out of you
like a river of life.
Be the disciple who never stops
asking for more.
You'll never grasp a shred of understanding how He could do it.
How He could stand on two hairy,
dusty feet like any other man and
Embody all the power of the only
throne in Heaven.
You’ll never master the mystery of
how He got here.
But you’ll know Him for the rest of
your life:
Lord and Sovereign, Priest and King.
You'll begin to entertain what infinity means,
The way nothing about Him has edges or endings.
The waves will swell until you
can’t imagine any more of Him,
And you’ll shrivel, until you can
no longer evaluate the divide between you.
You’ll nurture His words in the
soft soil of your heart.
Roots and tender sprouts will press
out from the seed
Birthing new desires, new decisions,
new habits...
An entire new person,
Transformed.
So different than before.
So full of life.
When the voices tell you you're a dirty, broken little sinner,
You can answer as a saint,
Because now He stands in between.
He'll bathe you in His own
goodness.
His Spirit will tutor you.
He'll spark life-giving truths on
your very lips
Spreading stranger to stranger,
bones to bones,
So the fire never dies.
But if it starts to dissolve in you,
Remember the way you were,
And the way He intervened.
Remember what He rescued you from, and
The way he winked at your unease.
Remember His laugh at your relief.
Remember how you were never a stranger
to Him.
And remember the trouble you wanted
to make
The moment you realized who He was.
God forbid you forget,
But if it all disintegrates,
And it breaks your heart to think
of His face,
As long as you live
Remember how He’s standing there
still
In the in between,
Ready in mercy to hold you again.
“I am
the good shepherd.
I know
my own and my own know me…”
(John
10:14 ESV)
The beginning of this piece was hearing the finale song of The Chosen’s Season 2: Trouble, by Matthew Nelson and Dan Haseltine. My view of Mary Magdalene is now shaped by The Chosen's fictional interpretation of her story, written beautifully by Dallas Jenkins, Ryan Swanson, and Tyler Thompson. Thank you all for helping me understand that she and I are soul sisters, no matter how different our stories.
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