The less I ignore my weakness, refusing to hide it, refusing to make up for it, refusing to be strong in some other way....the more clearly I recognize genuine strength. It stands in stark contrast to what I lack, and I hunger for it. Suddenly this strength pops up all over. I see it in the people I bump into and in the characters of the stories I read. Like the following story. Perhaps you've heard it a thousand times or maybe never in its entirety. Either way, please allow me to retell it in the way I imagine it.
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In those days the streets bustled with all the same characters, all the same forces at work, and all the same souls under the chisel's edge.
A group of Pharisees descended upon the home of a commoner. Like the rest, they had heard the rumors; a certain celebrity was expected to visit that night. In fact, that very rumor was the only reason they would endure such company.
The Pharisees were an interesting group of men. They were the respected few. They were able minded, competent, concise, wielding an authority that few resisted. These were the men that could do what the rest couldn't. Strong willed and well practiced in the art of bucking up, they set their minds to a task and accomplished it. They couldn't understand why the rest had such a hard time doing the same. They had standards to uphold. They lived by the law. In this way they didn't finish 2nd; they won. At least that’s how they saw themselves.
In the previous months the Pharisees had rubbed shoulders with him a few times. Having seen his message begin to conflict with their own, they grew weary of his budding popularity. Thus, that night they came to engage him head on. Under the guise of a genuine search for truth and using a little flattery, they planned to trap him in his words. If they challenged him with a question in front of everyone he would have no choice but to oblige them with an answer.
"Teacher," announced the Pharisee's point-man, motioning for the crowds silence. The guests parted to both sides and all heads turned toward a middle aged man in the back of the room. He was talking animatedly with a frail old witch of a woman towards the back wall. A smile brimmed widely across the left side of her wrinkled face revealing a stroke suffered long ago. He continued with his story. He was completely engaged, waving his hands in the air as he described some important detail. She basked in the attention, completely forgetting she was speaking with the very guest of honor himself.
"Teacher" said the Pharisee again, still expectant of the crowds obedience. Being the last to realize the interruption, the man in the back stopped mid sentence and the old woman limped off to the side. As the room finally fell silent, the Pharisee began.
"Teacher, We know you are a man of integrity and that you teach the word of God in accordance with the truth. You aren't swayed by men because you pay no attention to who they are. Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?"
And like so, the trap was set.
Jesus set down his cup, simultaneously crossing his arms and lifting his eyebrows in disbelief of the Pharisee's audacity to uninvitedly interrupt the party.
The crowd leaned in to listen, collectively thinking something like "Wow, this man who somehow understands, better than anyone, my plight in this world.....this man whom I cannot help but hang on his every word..... this man who gives me hope.....is gunna talk politics. Oh, I have got to hear this."
These onlookers represented what was once a proud nation but had since been occupied and oppressed by a brutal empire. Every individual there carried memories about what had happened under Caesar's tyranny. They thought about how their resources were stolen, their women raped, their leaders seduced, their security destroyed and their way of life greatly impoverished.
In that moment he could feel the expectation in their faces. He so badly just wanted to tell them what they wanted to hear.....he wanted to empower them, that they might throw off the oppression from their backs.
Still reeling from the abrupt change of mood, Jeus considered his response. Fully aware that in no way was he obligated to respond to such an evil intentioned question, he chose to answer anyway.
If he were to answer, "It is right to pay taxes to Caesar" he knew the Pharisees and Herodians would have nothing on him and he could go on to teach another day. Yet such a compromise would mean choosing to stop caring for the people that he fought for. He would be telling them that the oppression was acceptable. Then the people might lose their ear for his message and the Pharisees would succeed in toppling his influence.
If he answered, "It's not right to pay taxes to Caesar", then the trap succeeds and the Herodians would have all the witnesses they need to haul him off to the governor and have him hung for preaching against Rome. Plus, leading the oppressed to stick it to the man would go against the message he was already preaching. It would be so much lower than living in the tension, so far below walking that fine line to real freedom. Such a plan would involve bearing the same weapons that the system invented.
On the celebrity's face, the lifted brow of surprise suddenly shifted downward. Determinedly angry now.
"You hypocrites." he blurted out. A moment of sterile silence. A Pharisee pursed his lips to speak, only to be cut short.
"Why are you trying to trap me?" Startled by the volume in his voice, another Pharisee quickly gathered himself to fire back, but Jesus went on, not letting them in.
"Show me the coin used for paying the tax." he demanded, modeling a rare posture of impatience. The Pharisees quickly produced a denarius and sent a boy stumbling over to deliver it to him.
With the coin in hand, he continued "Whose portrait is this?".
To which they replied, "Caesar's."
"And whose inscription?" he beckoned.
Again, "Caesar’s".
And in a historically brilliant moment, quite swiftly, and almost effortlessly, He ended it.
'Well then'...... "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's."
And the crowd goes "Ohhhhhhh snap."
While I don't have time to go into all the fascinating ramifications of such an amazing answer, effectively, his enemies laid out only two possible options and he refused them both. He pulled back from the narrow confines of the Pharisees' worldview and dropped a bomb of perspective into the situation, leaving just enough ambiguity in the air to send the enemies to walking and the sheep to thinking.
It reminds me of the same kind of other worldly reasoning seen in another of these old stories. It happens when, something like thousands of years earlier, a man named Joshua, while leading an army, unknowingly stumbles upon an angel and asks "Are you for us or are you against us?" and the angel replies plainly, "No."
Its kind of like when you were seven years old, sitting at the dinner table, and your dad asked you, "For dessert tonight, do you want ice cream or a popsicle?" and confidently you replied, "Yes", completely unaware of your defiance to choose one or the other.
How many times does Jesus say essentially, 'I refuse to play your games'? How many times, by knowing exactly who he is, by being one hundred percent committed to walking the right path inwardly, does he make a bold move outwardly? Perhaps a few other of his punch-lines will prove familiar. For example......
"If your sheep falls into a pit on the Sabbath wouldn't you take hold of it and lift it out?"
And.
"Haven’t you read what David did when his companions were hungry? They entered the house of God and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread."
And.
"You are in error of the scriptures..... at the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage."
So many times his enemies surround him with a question of morality and in a tense and austere silence, with all eyes on him, he refuses the options they give him. He shuns all the assumptions. He denies their attempts to title him, to rename him, to re-identify him. He chooses an original path.
On a side note, I like to think that Jesus would do the same thing with the great "Christian" questions of our time. I hear us asking now, "Pro life or pro choice?", "Is homosexuality right or wrong?", "Saved or unsaved?" and "Creation or evolution?". The list goes on. Still, I crave that explosion of perspective to set some of us to walking and some of us to thinking, as we try to come to grips with the meaning because it is just that revolutionary.
I read the replies of Jesus as much more than answers to specific questions in that time, relevant only to that specific culture. Between the lines, I hear his strength. He speaks the words into the silence, as though it were in slow motion, boldly stating 'No, I walk only the path that my father gives me. Falling into your traps is not yet on that path.' And I can't help but squirm with glee. I can't help but whoop and holler, throwing a solid fist into the air. Oh the brazen defiance. Oh the strength. Oh the cojones. Truly, he feared no man. He resists anyone who would have him hate, have him fear, have him be a victim, have him be a bully, have him take a lesser path, have him do something other than what he sees his father doing. I love the Jesus show.
I rejoice because if Jesus was only doing what he saw his father doing than this is great news. This is great news because I happen to know a lot of those stories that Jesus saw his father in. In those stories I see that father of his consistently choosing the lowest to be his highest. In those stories the characters change immensely. A character like Moses the Coward becomes Moses the Liberator, and Sarah the Barren becomes Sarah the Mother of a Great Nation. And so it goes for countless others.
Or take the story of Peter. This is a great example of Jesus just doing what he did best; humbly repeating what he knows his father had done before him. Peter is this brash loud-mouth of a man. He's obviously all talk, but over the long course of Jesus’ influence upon his life he becomes a doer, a man of action. He was a man who vowed genuinely "I will never fall away from you" and by the next morning, three separate times, he's gone against his word in full betrayal of someone who gave him everything. And Peter wallows in this failure. By the end of his story though, he's changed; he's become a man who practices action, especially action related to following his master. By following he becomes a leader, only he doesn't know it himself. He ends his own story by willingly dying on a cross, just like the man he once denied.
I'm thrilled because if the obvious pattern of these stories is true than heeding their call is something I very much want to do. If these stories are true than I don't need to ignore my own weakness. I don't have to be ashamed of my failure at the fountain (Part 1), or my inability to speak lovingly into my friends life (Part 2), or any other circumstance where I failed to be courageous or oppose the darkness. If these stories are true than I'm free to display these weakness's proudly, all the while noticing the influence of the Jesus story upon my life, and secretly suspecting that maybe, just maybe, a guy like Henry the People Pleaser, or Henry the Non-Confrontational, might someday be remembered as Henry the Bold One, or Henry that Guy You Want in Your Foxhole.
