Gentle Jesus

This week we’ll be thinking about gentle Jesus and how he can actually bring us healing and hope, even in the midst of the crazy world we live in: the war in Gaza, the political divide in America, and systematic injustice everywhere.

We need to start by facing the reality that the Jesus that a lot of us are most familiar with comes from the toxic masculinity of White evangelicalism - which is more of a cultural movement than a religion, really. One of the scholars of this movement is Kristn Kobes Du Mez, and in her extensive work (it’s a real tome!) she summarizes decades of evangelical history in the 20th century with this line: Jesus became a “conquering warrior, a man’s man who takes no prisoners and wages holy war” (Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne).

So we come to our scripture for today from Hebrews 5 and it’s an entirely different picture of Jesus: Jesus is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and going astray since he himself is subject to weakness (Hebrews 5:2).

What do we do with this Jesus who was weak, this Jesus who was (and still is) gentle? Perhaps the place to start today is to unpack some of the assumptions we come into this conversation with. What is Jesus like to you? How does Jesus handle conflict? What does Jesus think about violence? How does Jesus draw boundaries and what does he do with those who cross them? Take some time to ponder these things and other ways you’ve imagined Jesus to start off on this week of reconnecting with the Jesus we meet in the book of Hebrews.