John 12: 27; Hebrews 5: 5-8

Jesus at His second most vulnerable

In today’s verse in John, Jesus is at His second most vulnerable. As a baby with no place to go, on the run with his parents from King Herod, He was more vulnerable than even here?  Vulnerability in our culture is kind of a less than acceptable word, although it is gaining ground.  Self-sufficient people don’t use that word.  Yet it is what this verse is all about.  Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane.  The author of Hebrews reminds us of it.  As last week we focused on the most famous and pivotal verse in the history of world religion, John 3:16; today we have before us the verse we’d rather not share with people until they are well entrenched in Christian faith.  As last week we concluded that we should relax and focus in the game of life and the life of faith, today we are asked to follow Jesus into the garden and face our weaknesses.  There’s nothing  relaxing about that. 

Brene Brown, a researcher and story teller presented a TED talk on the internet a number of years back.  She set out to research what it is that makes people able thrive and after doing survey after survey when she had peeled back all the layers she found something stunning.  It was not stunning that it was human connection that people needed to thrive. That one is not rocket science. No what was stunning was that what people need to thrive is vulnerability.  If you watch her video you see her struggling with this finding, because she likes to be in control and have everything all lined up.  She is a researcher after all.  She found that among her research subjects the ones that were most in touch with their vulnerability were the happiest. They were people who were very aware of their own flaws, who knew they could get it wrong and lose.  Knowing full well their limitations they went ahead.  It is the people who are always guarding themselves against pain in relationships, seeking certainty and acceptance rather than being authentic, who were more isolated and unhappier.

Fiends, we don’t think of God as vulnerable, but in fact it is the only way to learn to understand the God of the Bible and the Christian faith:  imagine Jesus sitting on his knees and throwing up in the toilet bowl in sheer terror.  Not a pretty picture is it, but in a way that’s what ‘s going on over here. We’ve all been there, but none of us like to talk about that; because that’s vulnerability.

Friends, by playing it safe, by being committed to self-protection and not being authentic, we actually close ourselves of from ways of feeling comfort, happiness and belonging.  So Brown’s conclusion is that although vulnerability opens us up to pain, shame and rejection, it also leaves us open to love, acceptance and belonging.  You see, I think another way to approach this is to think about posturing.  A lot of life is about posturing.  And posturing is about covering up our weaknesses and identifying the weaknesses of others.  When we do that, we will never say:” oh, I messed up and I am bad at that etc.”  Sure we can get a lot of what we want that way, but ultimately it will erode our sense of self-worth.   Brown found that the people who come to terms with their weaknesses actually wind up with more self-worth.  Strangely I think agents of celebrities and politicians have gotten that figured out. Whenever a famous person acts embarrassingly or awfully, he or she may appear on an evening talk show (and there are almost ten of them) and make fun of him or herself for that one thing they did wrong.  So if John Travolta has completely mispronounced someone’s name n television, he will go on a talk show and be told to read a whole bunch of difficult names and purposely mispronounces a bunch of that.  Brett Favre, the NFL quarterback who was infamously indecisive about whether to quit or not, knows makes a living doing commercials where he cannot make up his mind.  The problem is that is not real vulnerability and authenticity. It is another form of posturing.

Friends, when we listen to sports commentators we hear a lot about match-ups and finding space, but in the end it is about exploiting the vulnerabilities of others and guarding against the vulnerabilities of the home team.  The idea is that if you can control the vulnerabilities on both sides, then you will be free to play the way you want.  You keep making adjustments until you succeed in doing that.   But that is sports.  Sports is life regulated and controlled and manufactured.  But  we all know sports is a distraction from life. You can’t play it everyday.

This is why it is so great we have our faith, friends. We have a relationship with God Who is willing to be vulnerable.  Having a God both frantically at work in our lives and vulnerable opens us up to going through life with unclenched hands and taking the risks and making the mistakes in connecting with people which will make us better and more mature people of faith. Thanks be to God.