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Parenting is hard. And one of the ways I struggled as a parent involved gentleness. Often when it came to disciplining the kids I could be overly harsh, angry, and exacting. I’ve had to work hard to repair that damage recognizing that my lack of gentleness, no matter how right or loving, made the children flee rather than come. It made them hide rather than heed. Of course, gentleness wasn’t simply missing in my life it was also something that I didn’t associate with God. No, God was harsh like me except bigger, stronger, crazier. But later in life I have learned to cling to gentleness - this virtue and desire of God to heal without harming and to love without manipulating. Let me be clear, that’s not to say that “gentleness” is a push-over strategy.
Gentleness can be direct, demand responsibility, and make decisive critiques. It might even hurt but gentleness will always result in greater connection and love even when we’re told something difficult. Gentleness begins with the God-created reality that we are all quite frail and fragile. There is a reason that the first promise a doctor makes in the Hippocratic oath is “First do no harm.”
We’ve been learning that every fruit of the Spirit begins as a virtue of God, gifted to us through the Holy Spirit, in order to make us more like Jesus. And Jesus reveals to us 1) a God who is gentle and 2) teaches us a gentle way to read Scripture and live the gospel - gently.
Jesus reveals a gentle God.
The writer Seth Godin says “The best way to learn a
complex idea is to find it living inside something else you already
understand.” In other words, “this” is
like “that.”
Jesus used exactly that strategy when talking about God. He offered parables,
told stories, or provided metaphors that challenged his hearers to see “this”
is like “that” truth about God. And one of those truths was that God is gentle.
Let’s do a quick rundown:
According to Jesus, God is a farmer gently and generously sowing seed. God is a woman carefully searching the house for a lost coin. God is a kind father waiting for a rebellious son - welcoming him back without punishment but with a party. God is a generous vineyard owner who pays everyone equally, a humble creator who feed birds, an attentive florist who tends to wildflowers, even a generous sun in the sky that shines on both good and bad alike. God is a tender king who cares for his subjects and a party thrower who offers a banquet to the downtrodden.
Many of these gentle metaphors and images come from the Old Testament but Jesus studiously seems to avoid the violent descriptors that are also a large part of the Hebrew Bible. This doesn’t mean that the Old Testament doesn’t reveal critically important revelation about who God is and what God wants. This same God is the One whom Jesus spoke about. We noted last week how Jesus took Hosea 11 and turned it into the story of the prodigal son. Today we heard the prophet Isaiah invoke another gentle metaphor that Jesus used often, God the attentive shepherd (Is. 40:11). In fact, Jesus will describe God as a shepherd who will leave 99 sheep to tenderly look for one that is lost until he finds it, joyfully carrying it home, and partying with friends because it was found.
So Jesus specifically focuses on images and metaphors that are gentle and life-giving rather than harsh or death dealing. In fact, Jesus will acknowledge that it is Satan, not God, who embodies practices of killing, and destroying and, in opposition, defines his own God-given mission as bringing life “to the full” (John 10:10). And never forget that Jesus, Paul teaches in Colossians 1:15, is the very icon of the invisible God.
I’m not suggesting that God evolved over time but that through Jesus our conception of him does. And that happened because Jesus in his sonship came to tell and show us exactly who God is in ways no prophet had the capacity to anticipate – not Moses, not David, not even Isaiah. And our goal is to be Christlike and not merely biblical. That is to say, there are plenty of things that one could argue using Scripture that are not in the end Christlike. And Jesus doesn’t rumble around in the Gospels with threats of violence but rather reveals a God who on the cross gives his life without defense, without violence, without harm, for people enemies who wished him harm.
Now, in the Spirit of Jesus, I’d like to say something gentle but strong: If your God doesn’t sound like Jesus and who he revealed God to be, gently ditch that god. If your God would rather make sinners suffer than suffer on behalf of sinners, gently ditch that god. Let me take this one gentle step further: If your Christian friend makes you feel awful or ashamed, if in their hands Scripture becomes a hacksaw or baseball bat, to supposedly address your problems, gently run for your life. Not because our friends must be perfect, but because Jesus reveals that God is gentle and you aren’t meant to be maimed or mauled.
How do we discover a gentle God? Look and listen to Jesus. Sometimes other Christians argue with me that I’m just projecting the God I want back into the Bible. Actually, when I’m perfectly honest, I’m okay with a violent God. I want a God who kills my enemies. I want a God who will destroy people who harm others. I’m fine with a Rambo-God on my side. So I want a violent God but it’s Jesus who taught me something else. And that’s my second point.
Jesus teaches us a gentle way to read the Bible and live the gospel.
In Matthew 11, Jesus will tell his disciples to take his yoke upon them and learn from him because he is gentle and humble in heart and will bring them rest. In early Judaism, there was an expression: “Take upon yourself the yoke of the law.” It meant that the faithful Israelite should bend his neck and submit to the law of the Lord, as an ox does to the yoke the farmer puts on him. But the religious authorities show us where that leads - a harsh and exacting god. Now, it’s easy to transition this idea to Jesus’ statement and imagine that he sits in the wagon, whip in hand, yelling at us to move forward but that’s neither gentle nor humble nor restful either. If Jesus is the yoke – then it’s a gentle yoke of friendship and relationship. The yoke is a person. Once in prayer I saw the yoke of Jesus as an arm over my shoulder in a loving and guiding embrace. Jesus doesn’t sit in some privileged place. He stands with us to help us. Gentle, for Jesus, always requires a “with.” Gentle, for Jesus, always means, “O I know. I’ve experienced that as well.” Gentle, for Jesus, is, “Hey, hold on, I’ll pull with you.”
And friends, that gentleness and humility both inform what God wants from us and how we are to read Scripture. So let’s listen gently to Jesus as he describes how we are to live and how we are to read.
25 He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” 27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. ~ Luke 24:25-27
Jesus teaches us that he is the true subject of the Hebrew Bible and that both the law and the prophets are to teach us about God’s willingness to suffer on our behalf NOT make us suffer.
12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. ~ Matthew 7:21
Jesus explains to us that the “golden rule” to treat others the way that we would wish to be treated represents the Cliff Notes.
36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” 37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” ~ Matthew 22:36-40
Jesus teaches us that “all the Law and the Prophets hang” on merely two commands that are intimately connected and incapable of being severed: love God with everything you have and love others as you do yourself.
Notice how Jesus’ gentleness is both a way to live and a reading strategy for Scripture. Jesus reveres Scripture but understands that it doesn’t all hold the same weight. He gentles us into a new understanding that any reading of Scripture that doesn’t help us live the golden rule, or love God, or love others, or understand better God’s own cross-shaped love, must simply and gently be let go.
Worship a God as gentle as the God whom Jesus describes and the God who Jesus is the very image of.
Read your Bible as gentle as Jesus who says treating others as you wish to be treated sums up the whole Old Testament.
Talk about sin as gentle as Jesus.
Converse with enemies as gentle as Jesus.
Put down your hacksaw Bible. Drop your Lopper-god. Receive healing without harm, love without manipulation.
Be fruitful. Be as gentle as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
