Abstract
What might happen if Christians paid as much attention to Jesus’s life as his death? Correspondingly, what might happen if we showed as much interest in our quality of life before death as our quality of life after death? What guidance might Jesus’s life, teaching, feeding, and healing offer us? Mike Graves entertains these questions in Jesus’ Vision for Your One Wild and Precious Life. He draws inspiration and the book’s title from renowned writer Mary Oliver, who asks, in her poem “The Summer Day,” “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” (p. 7).
To answer the book’s central question, Graves takes the classic idea of Jesus’s seven last words on the cross and flips the idea on its head. After a careful study of the Gospels, he settles on seven “first words” or “essential sayings” (p. 13) of Jesus for the flourishing of our lives on this side of the grave. He devotes a chapter to each selection, shifting between the original message in its historical context and its meaning for us today:
“Follow me”: Jesus accepts us as we are while beckoning us into a life-transformative apprenticeship. We “take on what Jesus was up to, namely: healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and caring for the poor” (p. 31).
“Good news to the poor”: Jesus’s first sermon (Luke 4:18–21) establishes his agenda and ours. A life worth living is devoted to justice for the most vulnerable.
“Blessed are the . . .”: The eight beatitudes of Matt 5:3–10 express God’s favor toward the marginalized and hurting. The first four offer them comfort; the latter four establish aspirational possibilities for us all.
“You give them something to eat”: All four Gospels include at least one account of Jesus feeding the multitudes. Jesus invites us to enjoy God’s bounty while extending this same generosity to the poor.
“Your faith has made you well”: “God’s vision for us,” Graves writes, “is to be well, not just physically but emotionally and spiritually too” (p. 99). Jesus’s healing activity aims not just at cures, but at wholeness, and he intends that we be both beneficiaries and agents of this renewal.
“The kingdom is like . . .”: Jesus’s parables offer glimpses into the countercultural nature of God’s loving rule, as inaugurated in Jesus. He intends us to live into and extend this vision of compassion and its challenge to the status quo.
“Love of God and neighbor”: What has come to be known as “the Great Commandment” looms large in the teaching of Jesus, despite its not being mentioned early or often. Graves focuses on how “loving God is best demonstrated in loving neighbor” (p. 142).
As a gifted homiletician with deep roots in mainline Christianity, Graves combines scholarly attentiveness with a clear, conversational tone. He writes for everyday followers of Christ, moving effortlessly between the original world of Jesus and our world today. His illustrations and applications flow naturally from the biblical texts, giving fresh vitality to Jesus’s words and way. Rather than relegate faith to the realm of personal, private spirituality, he points persistently to the public dimensions of Jesus’s interests. Anticipating the book’s use by groups and individuals, he includes questions for reflection and discussion at the end of each chapter.
While benefiting from the book’s rich insights, readers may want to supplement those insights with added attention to the spirituality of Jesus. Perhaps out of his concern about the privatizing of religion in some Christian circles, Graves concentrates almost all of his attention on the social-actional features of Jesus’s sayings. This quirk of his presentation is surprising, given the prominence of interiority in the life and teaching of Jesus. Even some of the sayings featured in the book lend themselves to consideration of the contemplative side of faith. For instance, Jesus’s invitation to “follow me” (chapter 1) involves a closer walk with God as well as with others. Likewise, the centrality of love in Jesus’s life and teaching begins with wholeheartedly loving God (chapter 7). It is no exaggeration to say that Jesus’s culture-transforming purpose and passion were rooted in his intimate relationship with the one he called “Abba.” From this loving oneness flowed Jesus’s revolutionary way of seeing the world, his compassion for vulnerable people, his zeal for justice, and his capacity for grace and forgiveness.
Far from proving a distraction from healing involvement in the world, a Christ-like turn toward oneness with God aligns us mind, heart, and impulse with “the Lord of all consolation” (2 Cor 1:3). Absent this centering in relationship with God, our distinctive way in the world comes untethered. We become disoriented. Anxiety and ego rather than love fuels us. Finally, our efforts exhaust us. No wonder, then, Jesus presses beyond outward performance standards, pointing to the reality that “what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart” (Matt 15:18). We find him praying, “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:21).
Notwithstanding Grave’s limited attention to inward dimensions of faith, those who study this book will profit from its course-correcting insights into holistic discipleship. Graves reasserts a pattern of faith sharply in contrast with today’s civil religion and its flag-waving, privilege-protecting, minority-marginalizing ways. Those wanting to promote a realignment of Christianity with the values of its founder will find this book to be a most useful guide for such a project.