The Psychology of Jesus

Part 6, "Father, Into Your Hands I Commit My Spirit"

I have been arguing that Jesus' eccentric, baptismal identity allows him to be radically non-anxious. Jesus is free from the felt scarcities we experience in life and that gives him capacities of love which we struggle to actualize in our own lives.

In regards to basic anxiety, we can trace examples of Jesus trusting in the Father's care over worrying about securing and grasping material goods:

After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”

Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” (Mt. 4.2-4)

”I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”

“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.” (Mt. 6.25-34)

Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.”

Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” (Mt. 8.19-20)

This display of radical non-anxiousness, best captured in the "do not worry" passages from the Sermon on the Mount, illustrates the point about Jesus' relationship to basic anxiety. Namely, Jesus didn't seem to have much basic anxiety at all. In regards to material possessions, Jesus lived without worry like the birds of the air and the flowers in the field. This is what I meant in the last post that because Jesus possesses nothing, materially speaking, he cannot be dispossessed. Receiving all things as gifts from the Father, Jesus cannot be taken or stolen from. Jesus is clear on this exact point: 

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal." 

Most worryingly for us, Jesus expects us to step into his eccentric, baptismal identity characterized by non-anxious, radical trust in the Father. In receiving our lives from the Father, we imitate Jesus' non-anxiousness in the face of "never enough" material concerns. 

The one place where we see Jesus tempted by basic anxiety in the gospels is in Gethsemane as he faces torture and death. This is the devil's high water mark, the closest Satan came to using basic death anxiety to get Jesus to chose self-preservation over love. But Jesus overcomes his fear of death by, once again, placing radical trust in the Father:

Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.” Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” (Mt. 26.38-39)

When Pilate heard this, he was even more afraid, and he went back inside the palace. “Where do you come from?” he asked Jesus, but Jesus gave him no answer. “Do you refuse to speak to me?” Pilate said. “Don’t you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?” Jesus answered, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above." (Jn. 19.10-11)

Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last. (Lk. 23.46)

In many ways, the final words of his life--"Father, into your hands I commit my spirit"--perfectly capture Jesus' baptismal identity. Jesus' life was a gift from the Father and in the end he returns that gift back to the Father. Again, because Jesus doesn't own his life, he doesn't need to fight to preserve it. Rather, Jesus has the non-anxious capacity in the face of death to give his life away as a sacrifice of love. And not just at the end of his life. From first to last, Jesus gave his life away in love for others. 

In short, to go back to the last post, where we struggle to acquire and possess against the claims, encroachments, and threats of others, Jesus' radical non-anxiousness in regards to basic death anxiety gives him psychological capacities for radical self-offering and self-giving. Because his life is a gift, Jesus can give it away.