Jesus: A Different Kind of Holy

Urban Redemption: Graffiti Art of Jesus on the Crucifix - Thy Art Studios Print

Jesus wasn’t holy the way we were taught to recognize holiness.

He wasn’t loyal to any religious sect. He wasn’t a Pharisee or a Sadducee. He wasn’t a Zealot or a Roman sympathizer. He didn’t play for anyone’s team, and still—everyone had something to say about him. He was too much for the temple and too dangerous for the empire. And he didn’t try to make himself more palatable.

He healed the sick—but also challenged them. He comforted—but he also confronted. He flipped tables. He cursed a fig tree out of season. He called a woman a dog—and then had to listen to her clap back. He adjusted. Course-corrected. Got quiet.

And then there’s Lazarus.

Jesus said Lazarus wasn’t going to die.

But he did.

Jesus had to sit with that. The grief of his friends. The silence of death. His own limitations. He wept—not because he didn’t know resurrection was possible, but because he was in a body. A real one. With feelings. With heartbreak. With the raw ache of not being able to save someone when you thought you could.

That’s the kind of holy I trust.

Not the distant, stainless, empire-sanctioned kind. But the holy that is raw, embodied, and resurrected through rupture. The holy that feels everything and still moves through it. The holy that gets it wrong, owns it, listens, shifts, and keeps healing anyway.

Jesus didn’t come to be perfect.

He came to be real.

And that realness is where the power is.

A holiness that bleeds.

A holiness that breaks.

A holiness that loves anyway.

That’s the kind of holy I follow now.