Simply Himself

playful, cunning, generous, fierce, not one moment of it is contrived.

He never plays to the audience, never cow-tows to the opposition, never takes his cues from

the circus around him, he is simply being himself.

I think this will help us with one of the most confounding experiences we have reading

the Gospels.

The diversity of Jesus' actions, timing, manner, his words, dare we say moods, his sudden

changes of direction and then his stillness.

It's hard to keep up with.

It certainly is colorful, but almost dizzying, like a Byzantine mosaic, alive and shifting,

like the northern lights dazzling, but nearly to the point of leaving us confused.

As soon as we've grabbed onto one dimension of Jesus, his generosity, his compassion,

his honesty, he seems to turn it on its head, or us on ours, perhaps the Gospel's story

seemed dizzying only because we've never seen anyone act like this before.

Maybe what we're witnessing is actually only one single quality, not many.

Maybe Jesus is simply being true.