Who is the “real” Jesus? How hard is it for us to see Jesus as a real person who felt sadness, happiness, grief, joy, who experienced laughter, who joked with his disciplines, who got angry, who could wrestle with his own pain?

And yet, if we don’t recognize this Jesus, we lose the gift that God gave to us in the reality of the fully human (not just divine) Son.  Watching the way Jesus handles his own struggles, reveals his own humanness, can help us to recognize and accept our own.

Today, nearly every person you know spends some time on some kind of social media. Most of you folks who are older probably lean toward Facebook, Instagram, or maybe Snapchat. You enjoy looking at people laughing, celebrating, posting time with friends and family. For some, it’s pleasurable to connect with others, to learn about people, places, and things, to contribute to conversations, to join in groups with people who like what they like. But some also get a sense of longing, of sadness, feelings of deficiency or inadequacy that somehow their life isn’t like those others they see. While social media sites can be a connective force, they can also remind us of what keeps us apart.

But there’s a different kind of social media phenomenon breaking that pattern. And young people can’t get enough of it.

The Tiktok phenomenon is changing social media in a way that is also changing people, and the way we look at and interact with others.

Tiktok to some may seem like an odd conglomeration of videos based on everyday clips of unimportant things. Most adults wonder why their young people love these seemingly meaningless clips so much. They aren’t Netflix movies with linear stories and plots. They don’t seem to carry deep meaning or teach lasting lessons. Most of them seem designed simply to make kids laugh.

But don’t forget the secret that a great comedian will always tell you: comedians are often the saddest, most insecure, socially awkward people around. But in their comedy, they find acceptance, authenticity, identity, and connection.

Think Tiktok is meaningless? Look again. Tiktok has mastered the art of celebrating and honoring humanness in a world that feels to many kids increasingly intolerant, judgmental, untrustworthy, and alien.

True, some Tiktok videos may be “cringe” as some might say. But even those videos help us to discover and create our own set of “ethics” about what is okay and what is not, not based on a set of preconceived rules but on what touches our souls, and how they make us feel.

If the Enlightenment age was the age of the mind, today’s world is the age of emotion, self-awareness, others-awareness, and connection on a level that says we can be as weird as we like as long as we respect everyone else’s weirdness.

For kids today, disrespect doesn’t come from holding a differing opinion or living a different lifestyle but from judging someone else’s right to be human in their own way.

All you need to do is look at Tiktok’s “What I like about people” trend to see kids celebrating people (each other) in all of their foibles, quirks, and wacky but truly authentic humanity.

Like a gratitude journal in video, Tiktok lets kids laugh at themselves and accept themselves for who they are when the world around them seems embroiled in a tit for tat fight to the death about every possible platform. Kids form political positions but at the base of these lies an immovable, revolutionizing “more” –that acceptance of everything except non-acceptance and a live-and-let-live humanity, must be at the core of it.

Tiktok is a cultural change-agent that not only reflects the mores of a new and for us foreign generation, but one that is changing the way culture views nearly everything. How? Analysts will tell you it’s by way of a very special algorithm, one that “watches” what you watch and then tailors suggestions to uniquely “your” preferences. Tiktok is “made for you.” It’s not simply about watching what other people like. But it’s about what you like, and every time you watch, you build your own identity. You learn more about yourself.

But it’s even more than that.

Tiktok is a “who are you?” app that appreciates the creativity and content of the human spirit through the minute snippets of our lives, manufactured or real. It takes “you do you” to the next level and lets you celebrate you as you celebrate others doing “them.” It’s “connection” on a very different plane.

Tiktok’s popular “I can do it” video for example looks at our human desires and penchant for doing things we don’t want to do but do anyway, the things we want to fix about ourselves and our lives but struggle with, the things about ourselves that we grieve, mask, or make us feel badly and help us to realize that we are not alone in this feeling. We can embrace human emotions and know we all have them. Even if we mess up, even if we feel awful, it’s not who we are. We are still okay.

Tiktok allows us to see people dare to do the outlandish, the funny, the authentic, to exercise their own brand of creativity and me-ness to an audience of peers. It’s not about judgment or critique. It’s about learning to laugh at ourselves, accept each other and like each other no matter how far we push the envelope. In fact, Tiktok celebrates pushing the envelope.

Tiktok is a reactive media that celebrates a different kind of diversity –one that educates us in who we want to be. Tiktok creates connections that feed our sense of self and make us essentially feel good about who we are in a world that seems to criticize us at every turn.

Now that’s catnip.

Who doesn’t come from a dysfunctional family? Who doesn’t do stupid things sometimes? Who doesn’t feel alone or want approval or feel criticized or lament life sometimes? For kids, this online connection to others lets us know that this is just part of being human. And as we watch others in their mundanity, we learn who we are, we mold ourselves. We come of age, even as we invent a new age.

Why am I telling you this? Why is it so important to understand as Christians? Because Jesus is the ultimate 1^st century Tiktok star. Jesus would have understood Tiktok. In his own way in his own day, he created a Tiktok of his own in the alternative community he created, one in which community and bureaucratic rules did not apply but in which everyone could be exactly who they were, bound by their humanness, accepted in their diversity, freed to be authentically human. In fact, we learn, God loves this kind of authenticity.

This passage in Mark today shows us the defiant, revolutionary, creative, alternative Jesus, the Jesus who appeared to his elders, his peers, his community, his old-school neighbors and family to have gone stark-raving mad, because he did unexpected things, acted in strange ways, made uncomfortable claims, dared to buck the systems, stood up to judgments and societal mores in ways no one had ever seen anyone do before.

When his family, ashamed, came to confront him, he called them out and chose to connect instead with his alternative community, those who followed him, those who supported him, those who were learning something about themselves through who he revealed himself to be.

The authorities around him saw him as out of control. Those who admired him felt seen and heard as human beings, accepted for who they were, taught they were okay, for the very first time no matter they had said or done, no matter how weird or unacceptable they seemed, or were told they were.

For Jesus, living close to God was never about following rules, but about being beautifully and authentically human. Jesus’ ethics were not built on tradition but on love, identity, diversity, and daring to be different.

Jesus says at the close of this scripture, “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” So, what does this passage tell us about the will of God? What do Jesus’ actions, his reactions, his choices, his boldness in the face of tradition tell us about the will of God?

I’m guessing more than we’re willing to accept. And that’s the point of Jesus’ story today.

Those around Jesus do what many of us do in our society today: we label everything and anything we don’t understand, that doesn’t fit into our molds, that sounds outstandish, that seems different, evil. We demonize those who are different, and those who accept those who are different. And we call much of what and whom God has made wrong, sinful, evil, and unacceptable in the name of God.

What does Jesus say is unacceptable to God?  Unacceptance. Judgments. Division. Exclusion.

Jesus calls out every dysfunction in his society, even his own family, in the name of celebrating humanness. After all, what did God do to teach us it’s okay to be human?

Became one. And not one like you or I, but one that would challenge our every assumption and our every ethic, who would confront us in our judgments and push our boundaries.

Jesus’ message? It’s okay to be who you are, as long as you don’t judge who your neighbors are.

Jesus’ message is simple. More simple than we’d like it to be. Love God. Follow Jesus. Be kind and accepting and nonjudgmental to your neighbors. Break your measuring sticks. Love even your enemies.

This was the “real” message of Jesus.

Want your kids to be Christians? They may not follow your rules, or your traditions, or your values, or your ideas if they feel they are “judgy.”

But they will follow Jesus.

Your job, your true calling through this 21^st century sea of habit and culture and division and hatred, is find the “real” Jesus. To acknowledge the “real” Jesus. Not the one you invented to fit your own expectations and rules. But the one who challenges your expectations. The one who breaks the rules.

When you acknowledge the “real Jesus,”you’ll find not only real connection, but you’ll find your authentic self.Embrace a different kind of life. A different kind of church. A different kind of world.