Playing it Safe or Taking a Risk

After speaking at a men's retreat in another state several years ago, a very kingdom oriented gentleman came up to me after the sermon and asked if we could talk. Of course I said yes, but my mind quickly rehearsed what I thought I had said in the sermon, hoping that I could figure out what I had said that he wanted to talk about. I guess my therapist would suggest that I had gone into defense mode.

Actually it was a heartbreaking conversation. He told me that the area in which he lived had the highest percentage in his state when it came to the problem of unwed mothers. That reality greatly disturbed him, and he believed that the church should be on the forefront of responding in a Christ-like manner to these single mothers – most without an education, and many without a family structure to help them. 

He was a member of a church with adequate resources to be the church that led the way, and had worked with the leadership of that congregation to lead. He wanted to build a facility that could house these mothers and their newborns, provide some sort of job training opportunity, and help the mothers learn how to adequately take care of their children. He saw the project as an opportunity of ministry and evangelism – in that order. (He evidently took the Epistle of James seriously.)

In the end, after lots of research, dozens of meetings, and all the other planning activities that were required, the church leadership decided that they shouldn’t do the project. Their reasoning, he said, was that if they did that, it might give people the impression that they condoned the activity that led these young girls to become pregnant. 

They chose to play it safe.

As Tim Keller says in his newest book, Center Church, “Both the Bible and church history show us that it is possible to hold all the correct individual biblical doctrines and yet functionally lose our grasp on the gospel.” 

The last thing one could say about Jesus is that He typically chooses to play it safe. The story we are told in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John says nothing if it doesn’t picture Him as always ready to take a risk. Think about it. When he preaches in the synagogues, they want to push Him over a cliff (Luke 4). When He heralds the gospel of the Kingdom, the most religious of the religious reject Him (Luke 16). Even when He heals people, there are those who want to destroy Him (Luke 6). But He doesn’t quite preaching, heralding, and healing!

The truth is that stories from His life like those mentioned above are repeated over and over in all four gospels. And when we read The Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles of the New Testament, we see that His earliest followers apparently took that risk-taking approach to life as a model for their own.

One of the things I like best about working at Point University is that we are willing to take some risks when it comes to the question of admissions.  We could choose to play it safe and only admit Sammy Sunday School and his best friend Betsy Bible Reader. If we did that, life for staff and faculty would probably be easier; and of courses the Sanctimonious Simons who are always quick to point out failings would need to look for new targets in their critiques. 

But if we did that, I wouldn’t have all those stories of kids who came to school here for less than stellar reasons, who somehow ended up deeply committed believers who want to renew and restore the world. Sometimes I go to bed with my head spinning, trying to think how we can help some kid who doesn’t get it yet; and sometimes worried about the kid who left Point without getting it. What slows the spinning is that I can always thank God for the kids who did get it – at least in part because Point doesn’t play it safe when it comes to admissions policies.

Of course I’m aware that some students we admit never get it and that while they are students, they do some things that neither I nor Point approve. That obviously doesn’t mean we condone such behavior and rather than ripping the admissions committee for admitting them, I find my own heart broken that somehow we missed the opportunity. One thing I know without question is that if they don’t get it here, they won’t likely get it where they go back to.

No doubt about the fact that Jesus was a risk taker. If more of us who claim to follow Him would let His life be our model, we might actually change the world – to the ends of the ages (Matthew 28) and the ends of the earth (Acts 1).

Close to the Heart of God

Once you have read the opening paragraph of the Gospel according to John, it is hard to forget the majestic way in which we are introduced to Jesus of Nazareth. Listen with me to what we are told:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. (1:1-4, NRSV)

John then tells us a little about John the baptizer – who saw in the “Word that was in the beginning, and with God and was God” the “true light” that was coming into the world. Later, in this same first chapter, we would hear John the prophet proclaiming a message of repentance throughout Judea declare, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” (1:29)

You see this “Word” would become flesh and live among us for a while – showing us what God is like, what God created humans to be, and offering himself in sacrifice for our sins.

Of this reality, the Gospel of John would remind us “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.” (1:18)

I’m especially drawn to that phrase “who is close to the father’s heart.” A very literal translation would sound something like “who is in the bosom of the Father.” John’s word was used in his world “to denote the closet possible relationship” and was often used in the context of meals. It was also used by Luke to describe the eternal destiny of the poor man in the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, who upon death, went “to the bosom of Abraham.”

Fast forward about three years or so, and Jesus is with His disciples in the upper room in Jerusalem, just hours before His betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion. John begins to tell that story in John 13, but oddly enough doesn’t mention what all three of the Synoptic Gospels mention – the institution of the Lord’s Supper. But there is little doubt that somewhere in the narrative of John 13, the Lord’s Supper was celebrated with His disciples.

The word nerd in me noticed not long ago that in describing the events of that evening, we are told by the narrator that “One of his disciples – the one whom Jesus loved – was reclining next to him.” (13:23) You can’t see this at all in English translations like the NRSV, but the truth is that John uses the very same word to describe this relationship with Jesus, as he uses in chapter one to describe Jesus’ relationship to the Father. This disciple, likely John himself, is “reclining on the bosom of Jesus.”

As Ben Witherington suggests, “the suggestion is that the Beloved Disciple stands in an analogous relationship to Jesus as Jesus has with the Father. In other words, the gospel is the personal and eyewitness testimony of one who was close to the heart of Jesus.” (Making a Meal of It, 84)

What if – just thinking here – that in our moments of “reclining around the Lord’s Table,” we thought more about the idea that in ways not that dissimilar to the Son’s relationship to the Father, in our relationship to God through Jesus, we rest “on the bosom of Jesus.” Just wondering.