The Renaissance and the Weird

Yesterday, we got the chance to spend time at the Renaissance festival in Muskogee again. Renaissance festivals are curious places where people put on costumes, speak in outlandish accents, and feel like they are finally able to be themselves. And as we see the characters moving about with broad smiles and enormous personalities, it can be easy to imagine that their lives are always joy filled and glamorous. We can see the people for the amazing characters they portray, and miss the depth of who they truly are.

It causes me to ponder on the question…Who is the “real” Jesus? How hard is it for us to see Jesus as a real person who felt sadness, happiness, grief, joy, who experienced laughter, who joked with his disciplines, who got angry, who could wrestle with his own pain?

And yet, if we don’t recognize this Jesus, we lose the gift that God gave to us in the reality of the fully human (not just divine) Son. Watching the way Jesus handles his own struggles, reveals his own humanness, can help us to recognize and accept our own.

Today, nearly every person you know spends some time on some kind of social media. Most folks who are older probably lean toward Facebook, Instagram, or maybe Snapchat. You enjoy looking at people laughing, celebrating, posting time with friends and family. For some, it’s pleasurable to connect with others, to learn about people, places, and things, to contribute to conversations, to join in groups with people who like what they like.

But some also get a sense of longing, of sadness, feelings of deficiency or inadequacy that somehow their life isn’t like those others they see. Those experiences can be true, not just for those who get involved in social media, but for everyone. We can see the success of another person in a particular aspect of their life… and only see that. We can appreciate the joy and dismiss the pain.

But there’s a different kind of social media phenomenon breaking that pattern. And young people can’t get enough of it. You may or may not have heard of it. Primarily its users are in their 30s, 20s, and teens… but that’s not entirely true across the board.

The Tiktok phenomenon is changing social media in a way that is also changing people, and the way we look at and interact with others.

Tiktok to some may seem like an odd group of videos based on everyday clips of unimportant things. Most adults wonder why their young people love these seemingly meaningless clips so much.

Most of the clips seem to have very little substance, at least on the surface. But they are outlets of individual expression and creativity. They are opportunities to allow the creative genius of the every day teenager be put into use. It is an opportunity for the expression of emotion… whether it’s joy or frustration.. and to release that emotion into a public setting.

If the Enlightenment age was the age of the mind, today’s world is the age of emotion, self-awareness, others-awareness, and connection on a level that says we can be as weird as we like as long as we respect everyone else’s weirdness.

In some ways, it is very similar to the renaissance festivals where people of all different sizes and shapes simply rejoice at the fellowship they are able to have together. To celebrate a weirdness and nerdiness without the fear of judgment. One can walk around in faerie wings or a dragon costume and instead of getting weird looks… they are complimented about how good they look.

You see, for kids today, disrespect doesn’t come from holding a differing opinion or living a different lifestyle but from judging someone else’s right to be human in their own way.

While there are certainly aspects of social media… and tiktok in particular… that are, as they say, cringe-worthy… they also speak honestly to the reality of life.

I mean, really… Who doesn’t come from a dysfunctional family? Who doesn’t do stupid things sometimes? Who doesn’t feel alone or want approval or feel criticized or lament life sometimes? What teenagers in our age have discovered is that this online connection to others lets us know that all of the dysfunction in life that we experience is just part of being human. And as we realize that dysfunction is part of the human condition… then we learn to live differently. To see others in a new light. To hesitate on judgment on another because we know dysfunction as well… and we don’t know what kind of dysfunction they have.

Why am I telling you this? Why is it so important to understand as Christians? Because Jesus is the ultimate 1st century Tiktok star. Jesus would have understood Tiktok. In his own way in his own day, he created a Tiktok of his own in the alternative community he created, one in which community and bureaucratic rules did not apply but in which everyone could be exactly who they were, bound by their humanness, accepted in their diversity, freed to be authentically human. In fact, we learn, God loves this kind of authenticity.

This passage in Mark today shows us the defiant, revolutionary, creative, alternative Jesus, the Jesus who appeared to his elders, his peers, his community, his old-school neighbors and family to have gone stark-raving mad, because he did unexpected things, acted in strange ways, made uncomfortable claims, dared to buck the systems, stood up to judgments and societal norms in ways no one had ever seen anyone do before.

When his family, ashamed, came to confront him, he called them out and chose to connect instead with his alternative community, those who followed him, those who supported him, those who were learning something about themselves through who he revealed himself to be.

The authorities around him saw him as out of control. Those who admired him felt seen and heard as human beings, accepted for who they were, taught they were okay, for the very first time no matter they had said or done, no matter how weird or unacceptable they seemed, or were told they were.

For Jesus, living close to God was never about following rules, but about being beautifully and authentically human. Jesus’ ethics were not built on tradition but on love, identity, diversity, and daring to be different.

Jesus says at the close of this scripture, “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” So, what does this passage tell us about the will of God? What do Jesus’ actions, his reactions, his choices, his boldness in the face of tradition tell us about the will of God?

I’m guessing more than we’re willing to accept. And that’s the point of Jesus’ story today.

Those around Jesus do what many of us do in our society today: we label everything and anything we don’t understand, that doesn’t fit into our molds, that sounds outstandish, that seems different, evil. We demonize those who are different, and those who accept those who are different. And we call much of what and whom God has made wrong, sinful, evil, and unacceptable in the name of God.

What does Jesus say is unacceptable to God? Unacceptance. Judgments. Division. Exclusion.

Nadia Boltz Webber wrote in one of her books that the word daemon is an interesting word study unto itself. Dae, literally means, to divide. Thus, the work of a demon is literally to divide. When we society excluding, we see that evil at work. And this is not a one-party issue. This is an issue with ALL of society. This is an issue with ALL people… with all of us… as there are groups that we no doubt exclude and for, at least at times, what might feel like very good reasons.

Jesus calls out every dysfunction in his society, even his own family, in the name of celebrating humanness. After all, what did God do to teach us it’s okay to be human?

Became one. And not one like you or I, but one that would challenge our every assumption and our every ethic, who would confront us in our judgments and push our boundaries.

Jesus’ message? It’s okay to be who you are, as long as you don’t judge who your neighbors are.

Jesus’ message is simple. More simple than we’d like it to be. Love God. Follow Jesus. Be kind and accepting and nonjudgmental to your neighbors. Break your measuring sticks. Love even your enemies.

This was the “real” message of Jesus.

Want your kids to be Christians? They may not follow your rules, or your traditions, or your values, or your ideas if they feel they are “judgy.”

But they will follow Jesus.

Your job, your true calling through this 21st century sea of habit and culture and division and hatred, is find the “real” Jesus. To acknowledge the “real” Jesus. Not the one we invented to fit our own expectations and rules. Not the one that feels appropriate for church. But the one who challenges your expectations. The one who breaks the rules. The one who caused his family to start asking questions.

Jesus lays it all out there. Jesus deals with dysfunction, with pain, with doubt, with fear, with anger… we see a very authentic fully human person in Jesus in our scriptures. And as we look to and acknowledge this truly ‘real’ Jesus… I suspect we find more ability to have grace with the weird humans around us and even the weird human within us. That in the very real presence of God, we might be able to stand our authentic selves who God made us to be… receive the grace and peace of our Lord… and celebrate the diverse flowerbed of creation that God has put around each of us.

And if we do that… I wonder how differently we might understand the world. I wonder how we might embrace a different kind of life… an authentic life. I wonder how we might embrace a different kind of church from what we perhaps grew up with but reflects the authenticity of the people in and around it. And if we did all of that… I wonder what impact it might have not only on our community… but on the world.

Peace be with you.