Real in an Unreal World

It is the season of Lent, a time when believers of a wide variety of faith backgrounds determine to spend the forty days leading up to Easter  focused a bit more than usual on things spiritual. Obviously the idea of Lent is a human invention – in terms of where it comes from – but I find it difficult to think that spending 40 days with a renewed focus on my relationship to God can be anything but good! If I suggest that God was providentially involved in the shaping of our New Testaments – as I do in my college classroom every fall – then why can’t God be providentially involved in the lives of those who, in ancient times not that different from the process of canon, created some of these “man-made seasons” of the Christian calendar?

Of course I would never suggest not observing Lent, or other seasons of the Christian calendar, is a sin. Neither would I suggest that having church buildings, musical instruments in worship, paid ministry staff, Christian colleges, and a whole host of other “man-made” activities that we have determined can help advance the kingdom are sinful. I’m certainly not a church history expert. But I suspect that the connection between Orthodox and Catholic believers and Lent is roughly the same as the connection between buildings dedicated to the glory of God in which Christians meet to worship  and Orthodox and Catholic Christians. 

In one of the Lectionary texts for the second Sunday in Lent, Paul makes a very plain statement about what it means to be a believer. In Philippians 3:17-4:1, he describes the contrast between those he calls “enemies of the cross” and those to whom he is writing with bold language. None of it is more bold than the contrast between those whose “minds are set on earthly things” and those whose “citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.”

What could be more transformating in my life than spending these days leading up to Easter trying, with the help of God’s Spirit, to not be so focused on earthly things and to live my life as a citizen of heaven? What could happen among believers all over the world if somehow, by Easter Sunday, we were more focused on our real citizenship and not so focused on the earthly, not real in ultimate terms, things we are so easily caught up in?

I remember hearing the late Frank Harrington comment on how tired he became of people using as an excuse for less than their best by saying, “Preacher, you just don’t understand the real world, you work for the church.” Harrington said he always replied, “I am living in the only real world there is, you aren’t!” 

I think Paul might offer a hearty “Amen!” to that. But I think sometimes I’m prone to forget that the “real world” is God’s world where heaven and earth overlap, to use a phrase from N.T. Wright. That’s the world where Jesus taught us we can live out the Sermon on the Mount, the world where our prayer is that “God’s will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” 

I understand that such an attitude should be my focus every day, not just the forty days of Lent. But I’m not sure spending 40 days especially focused can’t be a good thing! And one that could have long-term impact on my life. 

Right now I’m very focused on losing about 15 pounds. I’m counting calories, walking more than I have in quite a while, and avoiding red meat, saturated fats, potato chips, and all that other “good stuff” that is the reason I need to lose 15 pounds. I’m confident I can lose the weight – but keeping it off will depend on how adjusting my eating and exercise habits will continue once the 15 pounds are gone. 

What if I also allow Lent to be a period when I adjust the spiritual bad habits – “the earthly things” that are so often as attractive as a New York Strip Steak at Long Horn Steak House? Even more, what can happen if I allow the better spiritual habits I develop in these 40 days – “the citizenship is in heaven” things that truly are “the real world” – to continue after Easter?

At the Expense of our Needs

One of David Kinnaman’s categories for young adults who are no longer a viable part of the church is nomads. Among the way he defines nomads is the fact that “leaving church was less an intentional choice and more of a ‘slow fade,’ a period of increasing detachment that took many months or years.” (You Lost Me, page 63) Over the years of my own observations about church and its challenges, I’ve often called these people “drifters.” They don’t wake up one day and decide that church is no longer important for them, it just happens – they drift away.

At some level it is tempting to say things like “they never were really committed” or “they will come back one day,” or anything else that makes us think it isn’t our responsibility for the drifters, or in Kinnaman’s language, “the nomads.” But if Kinnaman’s research is reasonably accurate, we’re sitting around watching a lot of great young adults casually drift away, and some of us are thinking it isn’t our responsibility.

In looking through some notes from my theology class where I summarize a number of biblical texts in terms of what they say about the life of the church, the body of Christ, one of the points I make is that “the unity of the body of Christ seems to be most obviously indicated by our willingness to serve others – even at the expense of our own needs.”  That idea, reflective of what I believe to be God’s intentional purpose at creation and one that permeates the testimony of Scripture, won’t allow us the luxury of watching the “drift” and not trying to respond in some kind of fruitful manner.

Rather than assuming that the old American ideal of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” ought to work in the kingdom of God, what would happen if we truly adopted the idea that in serving, even at our own expense, we model the unity, the oneness, of the body of Christ? Which would surely imply that rather than saying, “here’s church like it or leave it,” we started saying, “how can we serve you, even if it costs us something?” The cost probably won’t be so much dollars and cents as it will be time and engagement. Most likely it will cost people my age some of our personal preferences, but not core biblical ideas. 

After all, the gospel really is about Jesus. That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less. Jesus. That’s it. The great truth – one that we sometimes overlook – is that Jesus is a very attractive subject. The real Jesus that is. Not the civic Jesus of our own idol making, but the Jesus of Scripture. The one who hangs out with sinners in redemptive manner. The one who believed that if we could find a way to love God and love our neighbors, we would exceed the blessings of the Law. The one who called us all to a redemptive relationship with the God who made the universe and who desires that we partner with Him in redeeming and renewing all of creation through the Kingdom of God. 

At the heart of it all, it simply is the recognition of the fact that the real Jesus calls “un-fixed” people to come to Him to be “fixed.” But sometimes, especially in the minds of the drifters, we preach a gospel that says “get fixed” and then come to Jesus. 

When coming to Jesus for healing becomes the way we think, perhaps the drift can be subsided and the words of Psalm 133 will be true of us: “How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!” (Psalm 133:1, NRSV) 

If we are committed to “living together in unity” we simply can’t keep ignoring the “drift” that is happening right in front of us. For me, that means more than ever I’m going to think about that line from my theology class notes that says, “the unity of the body of Christ seems to be most obviously indicated by our willingness to serve others – even at the expense of our own needs.”

Just the Facts . . .

It sounds like the stump speech a conservative, Tea Party type might give on campaign trail. It would certainly be based upon the kind of “scripture” the “civic Jesus” we have created might bless. It rants and rails about high taxes, lazy people taking our hard earned money through unfair taxes, militant Muslims, drug addiction, redistribution, global warming, and too much tolerance of other cultures.

But, it isn’t a campaign speech or civic Jesus scriptures. It claims to be the rant of a “76 year old and tired” or an “83 year old and tired” Bill Cosby. It first appeared on the internet in September 2011 (according to Urban Legends) when Cosby was 74, not 76 or 83 and he has repeatedly said he had nothing to do with it. Yet, as recently as this past week, I saw it posted on Facebook by people who claim to worship a God who is, in His own Son’s words, “Truth.”

Any of us and probably all of us at some point in life, have been victimized by falling for something that isn’t true. The local weekly newspaper in my county recently had a front page story about a so-called Christian investment advisor who had swindled millions from otherwise trusting believers. Sunday’s AJC had a big story about how Georgia seems to be at the center of the universe when it comes to swindlers and investments – Christian or otherwise. There’s no telling how much money is in the hands of some internet pirate claiming to be the heir of a Nigerian estate who needs help getting millions (some of which can be mine) into the United States if only I give him my account number and PIN.

But those things, as horrible as they are, pale in comparison to the bad rap the body of Christ gets in our culture when people who claim to follow Jesus post vitriol on the internet, claiming it to be from a respected cultural icon, when one simple Google search would have made it clear that it wasn’t. And, quite frankly, even if it was Bill Cosby who said that – it still sounds foreign to the vocabulary of the Jesus revealed in Scripture – who may be the great unknown Person among many believers.

Perhaps it is the result of some sort of reaction formation issue in life, where we rant and rail about the things that frighten us or the things that we are afraid might be true of us. I’m certainly no psychologist, but I’m pretty confident that has to be a part of the answer as to why people put stuff up that not only is clearly not true, but even if it were, clearly not reflective of the kind of life Jesus lived.

But it might also be a somewhat latent form of racism, where we finally have found an African-American cultural icon saying what all the conservatives have been saying for years. Somehow in getting Bill Cosby to say the nasty stuff we’ve been saying – it makes it ok. I don’t know what the psychological term for that might be, but do know that the spiritual vocabulary to describe it would be embarrassing and the stuff from which confession should be born.

I agree the world in general – and our Western culture in particular – is in a mess. The salty language of my saintly grandfather that contained the phrase “hell in a hand basket” comes to mind when I look at the daily paper. And, more than ever, I believe that the only fix to the mess is Jesus. If we believers don’t find a way to get our culture to listen to the Jesus story – there is no fix.

But if the only image of believers that pagans have is the kind of religious, pseud-Christian crap* that gets posted on Facebook so often, I wonder if they will ever listen.

*I realize “crap” is not the politest of terms, but note that Paul used it in Philippians 3:8 and in the spirit of “if it’s good enough for Paul . . .” I chose to use it! In case you're in need of an edgy Greek word to use in moments of frustration - it's skubalon in English.