Seeing Jesus with Paul Miller

Paul, Jon and Liz continue their conversation about Jesus’ honesty. “People cancel one another very easily and shut down with the other person. But Jesus says we can’t do that. We need to move towards our enemies, and you need to do it thoughtfully thinking, 'How can I care for them? What needs does this enemy have?'” “You cannot be passive with evil is another way of saying it. Evil is far too pervasive. It’s far too intrusive. It’s far too aggressive for you to have a neutral stance with it.” “‘Loving your enemy’ is almost like you’re in a fight, backed into an alley and you have one last big swing. You can either use that opportunity for a ‘Hail Mary’ of a swing against the enemy, or follow Jesus and get down on the floor and wash their feet.”

Paul, Jon and Liz continue their conversation about Jesus’ honesty. “Jesus is actually being a little on the funny side when he says, ‘First take the plank out of your own eye and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.’ There’s this trace kind of light humor through the Sermon on the Mount. You know, ‘if your eye offends you pluck it out.’ But it’s striking that when someone frustrates you or there’s a broken relationship, Jesus begins with how do we see that person.” “There is a pain to meekness—you can feel like you’re disappearing, because you are—but then we’ve got this promise that the meek will inherit the earth!” "Judging tends to be quick. It’s this immediate analysis of someone else or a situation. Jesus isn’t saying it might not be accurate. But Jesus is just saying that you don’t have to have an opinion. And if you do have an opinion, you don’t have to share it, and if you are going to share it, then first stop and look at yourself for a little bit. It slows human relationships down."

“Peter is insisting that he's not going to betray Jesus. We know from the parallel passages that Peter keeps on insisting. The next thing Jesus says, after ‘Will you really lay down your life for me?’, is, ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, trust also in me.’ We have a chapter break there, and we often assume that that chapter break is in the original, but it's not. It's seamless. Jesus is actually dealing with Peter trying to create an earthly home for himself. That’s where Peter is going with his insistence. It's a perfect example of Jesus not trying to win in his honesty.” “Jesus is so thoughtful in his love.” "A lifestyle of forgiveness functions like a check on the amount of honesty that comes out of us. Probably the biggest face of that is forbearance. Peter is almost certainly about to blast someone. He’s forgiven and forgiven and forgiven and he's reached his limit. Jesus is saying there is no limit. There's no point at which you ever stop forgiving and then he goes ahead and tells the parable of the man who owes 10,000 talents."

Paul, Jon and Liz continue their conversation about Jesus’ honesty. "The phrase 'speaking truth to power' is often shared as kind of almost glib kind of thing. But speaking truth to power is really at the heart of the prophetic tradition that we see in the hebrew prophets, and all through Scripture. It's permeated civilizations that have really embraced Christianity. It’s really neat to look back at Jesus and watch him do it. “What you're seeing here in Jesus is the beauty of jealousy.” "Jealousy, like anger or sexual desire, is a neutral quality. When we hear jealousy we often think negatively just like when we hear anger but Jesus is jealous for his Father's house. He's jealous for the Gentiles. Anyone who's a lover is protective of the object of their love. They are jealous for that person and so he is consumed by his Father's loves and to not be jealous is to not care, to be indifferent."

"Sometimes we’re strangely surprised when we've given someone an honest word and they don’t say ‘Oh, thank you for that rebuke.  I have felt pride welling up in my heart all morning and I've just been waiting to be humbled. Thank you, you've really blessed me.’” “Peter keeps on insisting, but Jesus is quiet. What you're looking at there is Jesus’ dependence on his heavenly Father.” "One of the features of modern culture is a tendency for people, when they’ve been sinned against, to demand that that the other person have a full and complete confession. It can lead to small wounds becoming big wounds. It’s a demand that the other person have a complete understanding of everything evil they’ve done to you. But here, Jesus actually kind of crafts a poem."

"In almost every case, Jesus’ anger is focused on 1 or 2 things – a blocking of love or a blocking of faith. It's striking. And these two are Paul's primary criteria metrics for every church. Almost all of the epistles begin with Paul’s mentioning ‘I've heard of your faith’ or ‘I've heard of your love.’” “It's just lovely to see Jesus irritated.” "There are at least three ways his irritation is different from our typical irritations. First, his focus is on others, and in our irritations, we tend to think about ourselves. Second, he takes positive action. He says something about it. He’s dealing with stuff openly in the community. Third, while we tend to hold on to our irritation and nurse it, he lets go of it. He moves on."

Paul, Jon and Liz continue their conversation about Jesus’ honesty. “The fully human Jesus was in step with the Spirit and the Spirit can lead you in these really complex situations. He’s loving people who see themselves above Jesus and those who are below in the same story. It’s neat to see that high bar for love. When you get in these overwhelming situations where you don't know how to love, you can pray your way through and ask he Spirit to lead.” “The gospels are really odd for a stoic.” “For the Greek stoics everything was about emotion management. The beauty of Jesus is he's fully alive—he’s alive to what's good and he's not trying to suppress who he is to manage life. The consequences of his good anger will be his own death. He's the true warrior, the true hero who goes into the face of evil.”

Paul, Jon and Liz continue their conversation about Jesus’ honesty, looking in particular at what we can learn about Jesus and honesty from the disciples he chooses. “Jesus is savoring that right about Nathaniel when he could have bristled at it or reacted in some other way, but instead he’s savoring the honesty of it.” “Judging is honesty twisted – where you’ve not really taken the time to discern what’s going on in the situation.” “The worst kind of judgment is hidden judgment. When you begin to put judgment out in a community, it’s actually helpful. I’m not saying that you go around judging people. But if you’ve been stuffing something, it’s really good for you to get that out. Sin always grows in the dark. Ideally, you’re sharing it with a friend and saying, 'am I off here?' ”

“How do you balance care for a person and care for truth? It is extraordinarily complex. In any relationship where you hit some speed bumps, you immediately encounter that complexity. I am not a neutral truth speaker. I am a sinner saved by grace, who is a saint at my core, but I’ve got my flesh to deal with…” “It’s not like you graduate out of prayer and get good at honesty. What happens is you get quicker to go to prayer, so that your honesty can be shaped with gentleness and wisdom.” “What Jesus is getting at in the Sermon on the Mount about judging is honesty that’s been unreflective. You need to do 'beam research' in your own eye, you need to slow down, apply the Golden Rule, be reflective before you speak. Think about your heart, your motivation, your behavior. The Golden Rule slows you down. That self-reflection frames your honesty.”

We’re at the start of a new podcast series called “Jesus & Honesty.” In these episodes, we’ll be focusing on Jesus’ stunning, others-centered honesty. In today’s conversation, we start by looking at this strange “Gift of Honesty.” “What Jesus says here in Luke 7 is actually really very kind. That kindness is a characteristic of his honesty. He will often deal with obvious things in front of him that the rest of us will just be quiet about and have sideways conversations about later on.” “Jesus’ honesty enlarges the world of these dinner guests. It is good advice, and it invites them to live in light of eternity.” “Sometimes in stories like these, we assume that Jesus just showed up and decided in the moment what he was going to do. We can miss his dependent prayer life on the Father before, during, and even after these moments. That is where he gets the wisdom to know what to do.”