January 27

Jesus, the Son of Man

                    “But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’ For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.”

Matthew 11:16-19

             One of the favorite titles that Jesus uses to refer to himself, especially in the book of Matthew, is “The Son of Man.”  For most of us, that strikes us as an odd title…very humble and self-deprecating.  For the Ancient Jews, however, that title carried incredible significance and imagery.  It is straight out of Daniel’s prophetic vision about the end of days and the coming Messiah who is given authority over all by the Ancient of Days.  There is nothing humble about it at all.  Jesus is calling Himself the promised one before whom every knee will submit.  It provoked intense responses.  Some flocked to Jesus and gave him their lives.  Some called Him a lunatic who was likely demon-possessed.  And some saw Him as a political threat and looked for opportunities to discredit and kill Him.

            People see what they want to see.  They see what they are looking for.  If someone assumes that they are going to be insulted, they will find insults.  If someone anticipates that they will be praised, they will often hear what they are expecting.  Have you noticed that when you stay quiet, people assume that you agree with them?

            Jesus was confronting the religious leaders in this passage.  They would not listen to the prophetic voices who had been sent to them, even though the messengers were drastically different in their approaches.  They missed out on the life-giving words of John the Baptist and Jesus because they did not fit into the conventional wisdom of the day.  The Pharisees expected to see heresy from these teachers with dissenting opinions and so they missed the Gospel.  Tragic.

            The world carries preconceived ideas about people with disabilities, sometimes informed…often not.  When I was securing jobs for our program participants, almost everything that was offered in the community was janitorial.  The assumption was that people with special needs, with a job coach, could be trusted to vacuum floors, wash windows, dust, fold sheets and wipe down tables.  It was not that employers were mean or disliked our folks, most of them were eager to help.  But what they usually saw were charity cases, not employees.  They expected to see high-maintenance and low-performance workers and so that is what they saw.  Evaluations tended to go like this: “They are great.  We love having them work here.  Our business is a better place because they work here.  Their job duties and pay rate are going to stay the same because here is the list of the things that they do wrong and what we have to do to make up for them.”  They expected problems so they saw problems.  They expected poor work results so they saw the poorly vacuumed rug but did not see the excellent skills at greeting customers.

            Part of my job then, and part of my parenting now, involves questioning assumptions…raising the idea that maybe the preconceived ideas are incomplete.  Maybe people can do more than we assume and if we change what we are looking for we might change what we see.

            My son wants to sail around the world.  Here are the objections that I automatically raise:

·                                            *He has never been on a sailboat. 

·                                            *He cannot swim.

·                                            *He hates being more than 8 hours away from home.

 Despite that he wants to sail around the world.  I find myself torn between his desire for adventure and my practical nature.  I would be fine with us doing some skill building to equip him in the future for a grand expedition.  Instead, he really wants to do it now.  A couple of summers ago he built himself a boat out of cardboard and duct tape.  We took it down to a local lake and he floated around in it for 5 minutes before it took on water and sank.  He regarded his experience as proof of concept and is now firmly convinced that he can circumnavigate the globe.  I could shut him down and tell him that he will never be able to do that because I see all the obstacles that are in the way.  Or I could help him work on his next test boat and see this as a process that is building skill and confidence and problem-solving. 

               The choice of how I see it is mine.

                                        

A moment to reflect:

What is your child eager to do more of?  Whose preconceived ideas will that challenge?  It might be yours; it might be someone else’s.  How could you take steps to help your child engage in a process to do more of the thing that they want to do?