On a carpenter.

Sometimes I think we rob ourselves of Jesus. The real Jesus. I know I do.

I am in love with a carpenter. He lived long ago in many places, with many people. Fishermen's villages. Jewish synagogues. Tent-makers. Dry bones and empty vessels. A Roman dictatorship. Legionaries. Lepers. Olive colored skin. Another language. Another time.
A different story.
When I was little, I imagined Jesus as a prophet. You know the one. The teacher on the hill in Jerusalem. With the white skin and the brown hair and the clean beard and the perfect diction. My Jesus when I was little spoke with a smooth, sweet voice that lilted across hills where hundreds of his followers sat. He was worshiped daily. He was loved. Even when we watch him tear the temple apart, there is just something so right and righteous about our Jesus. He was perfect.
Humanity's idea of perfection.
Jesus was not comely though. The Bible says that, very clearly, very obviously. He was nothing special to look at. It never says that he had the gentle voice, or that his hands that barely touched people and they were healed were smooth and unmarked. It never says that it was all wonderful. It never talks of whether he was clean or dirty or what he wore or how he held his back and shoulders. It never says any of those things.
It never says that it was all wonderful.

I am an adult. I grew up with a wrathful God and a sweet Jesus though. Then I started to make discoveries. I discovered that God is gentle and loving too. And that even though Jesus was perfect, it is not necessarily the perfect we all see or want. It is not necessarily wonderful. When I stepped hesitantly from youthfulness into adulthood, I found a lover. A carpenter. A pursuer.
It is hard to explain to people that you are in love with a dead man. A dead man who you never knew. That you write him letters and seal them, but keep them in your journal. In your drawers. Under your bed. Pressed between the lines of your favorite books. That's difficult to explain. Because my fairytale is just that. It seems so unreal that it must be a fairytale. But it's true. It's happening, every day. I am pursued by the perfect man.
I am in love with the perfect man.

I didn't actually know what perfect is until recently though.
I've come to see that I rob myself of Jesus. I romanticize the story. This is the truth.
My carpenter was thought to be a bastard child. His life was unbelievable from the beginning. He told his brothers to worship him, but he was nothing beautiful. He was probably dark-skinned, nothing fair about his appearance. His hair, his eyes, his lips, all were dark. He was dark. He spoke in a language I only know a handful of words in. He was despised. He was loved too, but by few. He learned his trade, and left it. He spoke in stories; he was a storyteller, and who thinks a storyteller wiser than the wisest man? He touched the sick, the poor, the rejected, the shunned, the maimed, the addicted, the helpless. He touched them. And he was hated for it. He had a following, but that soft voice we imagine was probably not how he spoke to them. I imagine the things he used to say, and they are nothing like the way I grew up hearing them said. Inflections mean more than we know. Pauses are part of languages too. My carpenter hid. He lived a Robin Hood life. He wasn't a thief, but he was a wanted man. His own people denied him. No one embraced him in the end. His very own friend betrayed him. And he died. My carpenter died.
He died the death of a murderer.
There's something about the cross that we have made meaningless. We have changed it. We are dead to it, in our souls. But here is the truth.
My carpenter died of a broken heart. The man who pursues me, he already died of a broken heart.
And it's my fault.

Jesus Christ lived a perfect life. But not wrapped in white robes, walking along dusty trails, and with children on his knee.
Jesus Christ lived a perfect life in the world we live in. The one with prostitutes and drug addicts and liars and rebels and lovers and husbands and wives and kings and poor men and abuse and neglect and new mornings and cold nights and dirty faces and olive branches and normal sounds and accents and hunger and convictions, just and unjust, but all in God's will.

I think my carpenter had hard hands. Beaten, weathered by the middle eastern sun, worn by work, blistered and cracked and dry and ugly.
Perfection is not a physical quality. It is not an appearance.
I think this is one of the most important things I have learned in my adult life.

Because I hold the hand of that man.
I am pursued by him with a ferocity unmatched and unequaled.
I am in love with him.

And I killed him.
I killed my savior, my friend, my grace, my perfect man, my lover, my hope. Mine.
I killed mine own.

It's not all wonderful.