Jesus Was New

By SUSY FLORY

Not long ago I finished a project for work, and after hundreds of hours of staring at my computer screen, I decided to do something different and work with my hands. I brought home two small metal cans from the hardware store and spent the next week brushing thick creamy white paint over my old golden oak kitchen cabinets—what a transformation from dark and dingy to bright, white, and new. I can’t get over how different the cabinets look, and how my eyes keep picking out new details. I can’t stop staring.

When something is new, it’s beautiful, fresh, and clean, leaving what is old behind and

offering promise and hope for the future. In many ways Jesus was new. To start with, never before had God put on a human body—a brand new human baby’s skin and frame at that—to live among humanity on the earth he had created. This was completely new. It had never happened before, and we’re still not quite sure exactly how it worked. But it did, and God took on flesh. God as a human baby? What a novel idea!

Strange and unusual events surrounded his birth. An angel named Gabriel, who stood in the presence of God, visited his mother to let her know what was about to happen (Luke 1:26–28). This was news to Mary, who had never been with a man. Yet, faced with this very unexpected situation, she responded with great faith and accepted the message and her mission—to birth, nurture, and raise the Son of God. When Jesus was born, odd visitors came to see him, including local shepherds summoned by heralding angels and wise men summoned by a star. This was followed by a flight to Egypt to escape death at the hands of a bloodthirsty ruler.

After that, his life went quiet for a couple of decades with nothing much to report. Jesus went about his business, making things with his hands, going to synagogue with his family, and being part of his village, and it wasn’t until he was around thirty years old that the newness circled back around. At a village wedding, he gave a command (at his mother’s urging) and great stone jars of water suddenly overflowed with sumptuous wine (John 2:1–12). Then the healings started, the lame stood and walked, the blind opened their eyes, and the sick woke up and left their diseases and dysfunctions behind. Even the dead arose, and while the people had seen magic tricks before, this was something different that couldn’t be explained away or debunked.

Jesus Becomes the News

As we see in the Gospels, the newness of what Jesus said and did became very big news, and bunches of people began to follow him. He listened to these new friends, told them stories, taught them, and prayed for them. He ate and drank with them, opened up the Scriptures and read to them in the synagogues, and cared for them. He sparred with the skeptics and accusers, and when they threw out snares and judgments, he went silent and walked away to new places.

Those in the establishment grew angry at this new kind of man. He wasn’t the flavor of Messiah they were hoping for—a king with a royal bloodline, a strongman leader who would remove the yoke of the Roman Empire, or a mystical rabbi who would turn his miraculous powers toward building up the kingdom of Israel. “My kingdom is not of this world,” Jesus once said (John 18:36), pushing back against these other messianic conceptions.

It turned out his stories, sermons, and prayers all pointed to a new way of life, an upside-down life where the first would be last and the last would be first. Empire and riches and military might were not his way or the way of his followers. Instead, justice and healing for the lowly and oppressed were what he cared about. Widows and orphans were more important than kings and religious leaders. Children made him smile. He noticed the misfits and the beggars, and he was drawn to these lowly ones.

Jesus’s stories, sermons, and prayers

all pointed to a new way of life,

an upside-down life.

Finally, he’d offended and irritated so many that the Romans and the religious leaders in

Jerusalem had enough, and they killed him. Crucifixion wasn’t new at all, but he died quickly, surprising the Romans, and he was taken down on a Friday and put into a new stone tomb provided by a follower. On Sunday, the tomb was empty and angels were sitting nearby.

Where is his body? What have they done with him? Nothing like this has ever happened before, they must have been saying.

A New Kind of Human

Following his death and resurrection, Jesus showed up in a body made new again to a number of his disciples. He appeared to Mary Magdalene, two of his followers on the road to Emmaus, and a group of friends behind closed doors. He cooked and ate breakfast with fishermen on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, and he asked Thomas to touch his scarred hands. And he appeared to many others according to the Gospels. His last appearance on earth, which took place after he’d ascended to the heavens, was to Saul (also known as Paul). It was all new. There was no precedent for any of it.

Jesus was fully human and fully God, a new kind of being, but he didn’t want to keep that sort of newness to himself. He wanted to share it, and he called it being born again. This was a radical kind of newness, and he didn’t completely explain how it happened. “Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life,” he said. “So don’t be surprised when I say, ‘You must be born again’” (John 3:6–7 NLT). Not only was Jesus new, but he offered to make others new too.

From this new life Jesus took on when he started breathing again, and from the regeneration and renewal experienced by his followers, came a new and invisible kingdom. The new kingdom was populated by a new family of believers called the church, accompanied by the promise of a new world and a new creation to come. There was to be a re-new-al of all things.

This was all new, and yet it wasn’t. The promise of a new order, a new creation, a new king, a new kingdom, a new way of living and breathing and moving—well, it was all throughout the Old (or First) Testament. There were hints and teasers and prophecies foreshadowing the newness

Jesus would bring to earth. It’s just that we didn’t understand it. We couldn’t imagine it. It wasn’t what we thought would happen or who we thought would bring this. It was all too new, like it is for visually or aurally impaired people who have corrective surgery and suddenly can see or hear, but their brains aren’t used to processing this information. Although they have remade senses, they don’t quite know yet how to process what they are taking in.

These remade people will “shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matthew 13:43), and this shining like the sun is a “new newness,” artist Makoto Fujimura says. The Greek word Paul uses for this state of newness is kainos, which is more than transformation—it’s transfiguration. The way Paul uses the term is “not just a new species, but a new concept of what a species is,” says Fujimura. “Paul is describing how we are a ‘new [kainos] creation’ as the resurrected Christ enters our lives.” 2 This new state is so much more than a whitewash of fresh creamy paint. We are new creations, following Jesus who makes all things new.

Jesus brought a new way of living and relating to God, and we have to grapple with that, try to process it, and figure out who we are now that we are new too. We are new people together in a new kingdom, looking forward to a new world to come. And when I think about that, I feel something like I do when I look at those freshly painted kitchen cabinets—full of light and hope, seeing details I never noticed before, feeling a sense of joy and wonder. And I can’t stop staring.

1. Do you have any skills or hobbies that can transform something old into

something new? Have you ever worked on a cleanup crew after an event? How do your

body and emotions respond to seeing something renewed?

2. How do you understand the phrase “my kingdom is not of this world”? What

aspects of “kingdom” and “world” do you see in your local community? Where do you see Jesus’s newness breaking in?

3. How have you experienced the newness of Jesus in your own life? Are there

aspects of who you are that have changed over time? What aspects have stayed the

same? How are you helping to renew your community?

Explore: Visit a local art museum or gallery or take in a live music performance. Reflect on how raw materials (wood, canvas, string, metal, etc.) can become creative works. Share your appreciation for the work with the artist or composer.