"He Gets Us"
Salvator Mundi, Flemmish Unknown
I’m used to commercials for beer and pickup trucks during football games. This year another product entered the advertising lineup: Jesus. The tagline is, “He gets us.” Jesus invited everyone to his table, we are told. Jesus was misunderstood. Jesus could handle disagreement. Jesus was a refugee. None of these claims is untrue on its face. The problem here is what these commercials leave out.
I was particularly struck by a commercial called “Family Matters.” It depicts the sad scenario of a once-close family gradually torn apart by political disagreements. Eventually, the family members became estranged from one another. The problem was, “each had to be right.” We then read two subsequent sentences of white lettering on black screens: “Jesus disagreed with loved ones. But didn’t disown them.”
What came to mind when I saw this commercial was a story in the third chapter of the Gospel of Mark. Jesus’ family came out to restrain him because people were saying that he had lost his mind (Mark 3:21). After a confrontation with teachers of the law who accused Jesus of casting out demons by the power of Satan (3:22-30), Jesus is told that his mother and brothers are outside looking for him (2:32). “‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ he asked. Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother’” (3:33-35).
In a culture in which the ties of kinship and blood were much stronger than in the Western world today, Jesus redefined the family. If you do the will of God, you are part of his family, and Jesus is the primary interpreter of the will of God. He will teach you how to be a part of his family, but make no mistake, there are insiders and outsiders, good soil and bad, those with ears to hear and those without. Jesus did love those with whom he disagreed, and he called them to a better life. Jesus invited all to his table, and he also prophesied, “Everyone will be salted with fire” (9:49). The Christian life is one of love—and yet we will all be judged.
Among Jesus’ disciples were varied characters, including Matthew the tax collector and Simon the Zealot. Tax collectors were Roman collaborators. Zealots were violent opponents of Roman rule over the people of Israel. Amid such vast difference, his teaching was not, “Hang on to your old beliefs and patterns of life. Just be nice to each other.” It was “Come, follow me” (1:17). It was “Repent and believe in the Good News!” (1:15). Jesus replaced their priorities, plans, beliefs, desires with his. He offered them new life, and they accepted it.
Most of them accepted it, anyway. One did not: Judas Iscariot. The name “Iscariot” may mean “man from Kerioth,” but it could be related to the Sicarii, a group of assassins (“dagger men”) who, like the Zealots, opposed Roman rule. Perhaps Judas simply could not let go of his politics, his hatred of the Romans, his desire to see the Messiah usher in a new government in Israel. We don’t know. Whatever it was that separated him from full commitment to Jesus, Satan used it to drive a wedge that eventually made him history’s most notorious betrayer.
Misunderstood by his family, accused of demonic sorcery, betrayed by one of his closest followers, hung upon a Roman cross…. Yes, Jesus gets us all right. He gets that we are sinful, willful creatures bent on our own destruction. He gets that, left to our own devices, we will rebel against our created nature and, hence, against God. He gets us, and he loves us anyway. That is why he came to save us.
I am told again and again that the reason for church decline, particularly among the young, is that conservative Christians—evangelicals, traditional Roman Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox—are judgmental, mean-spirited bigots. And yet those denominations that have embraced the progressive vision of “inclusiveness,” that have compromised most readily on the church’s historic doctrines, that have acquiesced most fully to the demands of left-wing secular culture, are the ones dying most quickly. My former denomination, the United Methodist Church, tied itself years ago to an “Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors” advertising campaign. Its decline continues unabated. I think often of H. Richard Niebuhr’s description of liberal theology: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.” The theology Niebuhr describes was not compelling in his day, nor is it compelling in ours.
Perhaps the answer to church decline is not to become more like the world, but to challenge its assumptions and offer a different narrative of what life should be like. At least one part of the answer should be to preach what Jesus preached: “Repent and believe in the Good News!” I suspect that most people know there is something wrong with their lives, something that needs to change. Jesus knew it too. He gets us. He did not say, “Follow your heart,” but, “Come, follow me.” Until we do, the fullness of life will evade us. It is not mercy to preach Jesus without repentance and new life. It is cruelty.
To reach people for Christ is a noble task, but who is this Christ? Most will agree that he was a wise teacher, a friend to sinners, a misunderstood prophet, a refugee. But he is also God-made-flesh, the embodiment of perfect humanity, the bearer of new life, and, yes, a judge. He gets us. After all, he became one of us, though not for free hugs and vague sentimentality, but to save us. Sin and death abound. The devil is loose in the land. What Western culture needs is not another bearer of its common values with a bit of religious window dressing, but a savior.
David F. Watson is Lead Editor of Firebrand. He serves as Academic Dean and Professor of New Testament at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio.