JESUS WAS NOT A NICE MAN

Nice men do not get themselves crucified. They are not controversial. They are neither jailed nor run out of town. They do not elicit from others the extreme emotions of love and hate. They may not have friends that will sacrifice their lives for them, but neither do they have enemies. Their crowning virtue is prudence. Even though they may have some convictions, they manage to get by without making much sacrifice for them. They live rather safe and easy lives in this difficult world.

Jesus was not such a man. He was not nice nor did he call men to live nice lives. Nice people do not get themselves into trouble like Jesus and his disciples did. He called men to service and the mission he gave them was incendiary rather than tranquil. “I came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled,” he told them. And when they spoke of following him, he warned them, “You will drink my cup.” He even described his mission as one that brings division rather than peace.

“I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how I am constrained until it is accomplished.” (Lk. 12:50)

“They will deliver you up to tribulation, and put you to death; and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake.” (Mt.24:9)

“Faxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head.” (Lk. 9:58)

“If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it.” (Lk. 9:2324)

“Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.” (Lk. 12:51)

This is hardly the language of a man whose mission in life is to get along. Prudent men avoid such offensive expressions. Our Lord’s purpose was not to be nice, but to be redemptive. To save men one must sometime hurt them. To redeem one might have to offend. To make men whole often calls for the surgeon’s scalpel.

Everything today is to make folk nice. At Texas Woman’s University we are expected to turn out “nice girls” with diplomas. We dare not produce even one Carrie Nation, the angry woman who took after saloons with a hatchet. They jailed her 30 times, but back again she would go to wreck another saloon. Actually she was a tender woman, but angered by what alcoholism did to her physician husband.

Oh, but for a few angry women! We have enough nice women. We need some troublemakers who will help to set the world upright once more.

Even politicians these days are nice. Prudence seems to have the edge on principle. I may not vote for the ex-governor of Alabama, but there is something refreshing about him. He isn’t a nice guy like everybody else. He hates in an honest kind of way, and he speaks his mind. Anger flashes from his dark eyes, and rage from his snarling lips. I watch with a measure of satisfaction that we still have some angry people. We have nice folk running out our ears. Give us fired up hearts! Surely there is a way to make all this Christian and to channel it as a blessing to man. To be sure, it has not been nice folk that have blazed the trails to a better world.

Nothing ails the church in our time more than its niceties. We have nice buildings, nice comfortable pews, nice preachers, nice people, and nice times. What congregation is in trouble due to its involvement in the urban crisis? Which one has bucked community tradition by building a truly integrated congregation? Other than an occasional Roman priest or Unitarian minister hardly any clergyman gets into trouble for the cause of social justice. We of the Churches of Christ are nice folk—urbane, middle-class, Caucasian, southern. We have a black church, but it goes its own way, with no encouragement from us to do otherwise. Jesus we know, and Paul we know, and Keeble we know, but who is the black church? We are content to remain strangers. In short, we are a nice, well-behaved denomination. We are not a redemptive society, for our mission is to survive as a people, not to change the world. Ours is a struggle to extend our own borders and strengthen our own institutions, not to alleviate human suffering. We have made peace with the world, not declared war against it.

We may sing about being Christian soldiers and pray about being like Jesus, but most of us would be frightened if such a life confronted us. Our pride makes us nice people when we ought to be reformers. Our wisdom makes us prudent when we ought to be fools for Christ’s sake. Our strength makes us ambitious for the applause of the world when we should rejoice in the power of weakness.

We are reluctant to admit that the very ones among us that we resent and reject are the ones who are most like Jesus. Surely the fanatics and heretics will enter into the kingdom of God before us. We hold the coats of those who stone those preachers who are too outspoken to keep a job with a church. We call for prudence rather than honor; we prefer ambiguity to clarity. Sin no longer has its specifics, and few of us are sinners these days. We concede to sin theoretically, but are hardly prepared to face up to the reality of it in our own hearts. And we have little interest in paying a man a handsome salary for telling us the ugly truth about ourselves.

He who warned us against a life that gains the plaudits of all has not called us to be nice folk, but to be like him. His was no easy conscience. He was a man of sorrows. He teaches us to lose that we might find, to die that we might live. He invites us to an incendiary fellowship and to a war against cosmic forces. It may be nice to be nice, but what does it mean to be like Jesus?