Finding Jesus Irritating in a Surprising Way

Back in January, at the onground intensive for my spiritual direction certificate, one of our leaders suggested that we read a book of the Bible for the next year, a chapter a day, and when we got to the end, we start over again.  He suggested the book of John, the book of Psalms, or a specific Paul letter, but I can't remember which one.

I chose John.

I have now read through the book of John several times.  It takes me about 3 weeks.  After I read through the book of John once, I decided to also add another Gospel.  I've made my way through all 3 gospels, and now I'm back to Mark.

It's been interesting reading the gospels this way.  I've been interested to see how each writer structured the story, interested to see both the similarities and differences, interested to see how the familiar lectionary readings are as we read them in context.

I expected to be interested in those ways.  But here's what I didn't expect.  Lately, I've been battling the feeling that I don't really like this Jesus very much.

The book of John has never been my favorite.  I expected some irritation, and indeed, it's there.  For me, the mystical Jesus in the book of John is speaking in nonsense babble most of the time--I differentiate this Jesus from the Jesus who speaks in parables.

And I find myself getting irritated with Jesus for his habit of going against authorities--I didn't expect that.  The fights he picks seem less consequential to me:  lots of going back and forth about working on the Sabbath for example.

And yes, I understand why he chose these battles.  Taken out of context, it seems brave.  But in context, I'm not seeing lots of other battles, the ones I thought he fought.

He just irritates me somehow.  Yes, I realize that probably means my mindset is closer to those of the Pharisees than Jesus, and yes, that concerns me.  For almost a decade now, I've been aware that I'm more of a Pilate than I am any of the other characters in the Jesus story, and yes, that bothers me.

I really didn't expect to be so irritated by Jesus.  I wanted to record it here, because it's such an unexpected part of reading the gospels over and over again.  I want to remember that I felt this way.

I want to see if my feelings change as this experiment continues.