Who's In Charge?

While Jesus walked among humans, it is a bit ironic that the most powerful human ever to trod the dusty roads of planet Earth, seemed utterly disinterested in what we humans perceive as power, authority – in general, being “in charge.” His daily behavior shouts that reality at every turn, and He simply refuses to answer loaded questions from His critics about such matters. 

Just before His ascension, in what Matthew portrays as His final words to the disciples, He reminds them that now that He ascends back to heaven – “all authority has been given to me, in heaven and on earth.” Precisely Paul’s model in Philippians 2:5-11 where we are reminded that “He emptied himself of equality with God . . . took on the form of a servant because He was made in human likeness . . . and ultimately was given a name that is above every name.” 

Not only did Jesus tell us that leadership in the kingdom had nothing to do with “power and authority,”   He actually modeled what He taught in ways that are more impressive than any human could hope to achieve. What a novel idea.  Jesus doesn’t ask anything of us that He hasn’t already done. “Even the Son of Man came to wait on tables, not to be waited on at tables.” 

It’s an odd thing when you think about it, that so many people who claim to follow Jesus are so in to achieving power and authority over others. Despite the fact that while on earth Jesus was more interested in serving than ruling, and that as the resurrected Jesus who ascends into heaven, all power was given to Him, we still find ourselves playing the all-too-common power game.

Believers insist on having power over what our culture says is right or wrong, Rather than serving unwed mothers, we prefer to march in protests about abortion laws.  Rather than serving those who no doubt experience great loneliness as celibate gay people, we are determined to prohibit gay marriages. We want to tell people what books to read, what movies to watch, and dozens of other ways to gain power over them.  I’m not sure how the Christian gospel got reduced to a “gain power over people” approach to transforming the world, but it troubles me that it has.

The same sort of ironic reality exists in how some Christians see the role of women, whether it be in the church, in the family, or in the workplace. From limiting the role women can play in ways that would stun Paul himself, there seems to be a lot of male-oriented power playing going on in lots of places called church. How odd that men who are quick to quote “wives submit yourselves to your husbands,” forget that the very verse where the verb “submit” actually occurs (Ephesians 5:21) is used to say that Spirit-filled people “submit to one another out of reverence for the Lord.” The logic of insisting that Paul is being a literalist at the beginning of the Ephesian and Colossian household codes when he talks about wives and husbands, but is simply dealing with what can’t be addressed at the moment because of culture with the master/slave comments at the end of the codes has passed by me.

It can even be more complicated in the workplace, where we establish value based on function more than anything else. The debate about “equal pay for equal work” is but one example. What about promotions? And we can’t forget the even more ironic reality of how women sometimes behave when they are promoted – especially in how they view other women. Our cultural idea that function determines value is so strong that even people who have sometimes been victimized by that fact, turn right around and create more victims. It isn’t an accident that sometimes women in the workplace are quick to say they would rather work for a man than a woman!

“Who’s in charge?” will always be the wrong question. I understand the importance of leading, but today’s AJC will have more than a story or two about “who’s in charge?” and how it went wrong. Leadership is not so much about power and authority as it is about transforming situations – from the simplest decision about who takes out the garbage to the complicated geo-political realities that are on the front burner of our world’s conscious. The issue is not that we don’t need leaders – but rather about what kind of leaders do we need to transform the world. 

I would find it miserable to work in a place where there were no leaders. I don’t do well with confusion and chaos. But I would prefer that people see me as a leader because of who I am and not because I’m in charge. That’s the difference in how the world see things as compared with how the gospel sees things. Real leaders – at least if Jesus is going to be the paradigm – are much less likely to ever need to exert their authority, but lead by the example of who they are. 

Among the many things I like about Jesus is the fact that He never asks of me what He hasn’t already done. If I want to change the world – whether I’m male or female; American or Kenyan; boss or janitor – I would do well to follow His example.

Why?

In his latest book, Phillip Yancey chose as the title, The Question that Never Goes Away. That question – Why? – is one that haunts most of us at times in life, especially those times when evil has raised its ugly head in shocking ways. I remember a sermon Frank Harrington preached while he was the preacher at Peachtree Presbyterian Church in Atlanta where he said something like “you can hardly have Easter in the south without some awful destruction caused by a tornado.” The inevitable question of “why would God allow a tornado to disrupt our celebration of Christ’s resurrection?” was the issue that sermon was addressing – and not unlike the issues Yancey focuses on in The Question that Never Goes Away.

One of the big “Why?” events in our recent past was the shooting that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. Near the end of Yancey’s book, he notes, “Though evil and death still reign on this soiled and violent planet, the event commemorated around the world shortly after the Sandy Hook shootings represents our best, true hope. Jesus entered this world in desperate, calamitous times in order to show a way to the other side.” (page 142)

Sitting here in my comfortable office, surrounded by all kinds of resources, not the least of which would be people who care about me and about whom I care, I can understand exactly what Yancey means and see how what he says reflects the message of Scripture. But that hardly means I will never experience moments where “Why?” is the only question I care about. Because of my “present realities” I am confident that when “Why?” is the question of the day, my faith in the promise of God, revealed in its fullest sense in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, will sustain me. 

In Romans 11:13, Paul reminds us that “we know the age in which we live, it is now the hour for us to arise from our slumber.” The age he has in mind of course is the age of the kingly reign of Christ – it has already begun. The hour suggests the very moment in which his first readers are living. And guess what, they too have multiple reasons to ask “Why?” I’ve come to think that a reasonable understanding  of Paul’s over-arching “age” and his focus on “hour”  suggests that hour means “the tension point” in which we live. Howard Marshall appropriately describes “age” as “the in-between-the-times-time.” That is, we live between what God has already accomplished in Jesus and what has not yet happened for eternity. In these “tension points” that describe our lives, “Why?” will be a regular question.

But rather than getting stuck in the unanswerable question of the day, Yancey suggests that these moments give incredible opportunity for followers of Jesus to respond in kingdom –like ways. Not in the sense that God caused the awful things so we would have something to do, but in the sense that until the not yet is reality, such moments will happen – and our response is to be Jesus to the world.

One of the stories he tells revolves around the horrific tsunami that hit Japan in 2011. Just reading Yancey’s description of the aftermath is shocking. While touring the destruction sometime afterward, Yancey talked with some relief workers with Samaritan’s Purse. “They were living in cramped communal housing and working long hours without pay. ‘We don’t proselytize,’ one told me. ‘We don’t need to – the people know why we’re here. We’re simply followers of Jesus trying to live out his commands. Just before handing owners the key to their new home, we ask if we can pray a blessing on the house. So far no one has turned us down.’” (pages 64, 65)

I remember hearing two of my heroes in the faith talk about a similar experience in a different part of the world, a place where the gospel has yet to make much of an impact. I won’t mention their names because of where they serve. But I can say what they said, “It almost makes you want to pray for another tsunami, because in those kinds of moments, followers of Jesus have untold opportunity to model what it means to be a Christian.” They were adamant that they weren’t asking us to pray for a tsunami, but very clear that when such moments happen, Christians have untold opportunities to model the life of Jesus of Nazareth in ways that are amazing.

Little wonder that Jesus reminded His disciples, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:35, NRSV)

What I do wonder about is how we managed to allow the gospel to be viewed by so many in our own culture as about little more than a list of the sins we can’t do when the One who is the gospel has called us to live as He did.

"Stemming the Tide" v. "Changing the World"

Every spring when melting snow and spring rains cause rivers to flood, there is that inevitable news story about people rushing to place sandbags around houses, stores, barns, and the like – in hopes of “stemming the tide” so to speak of the flooding rivers. Sometimes that works as a temporary solution, but the one thing you know without question is that at some point in the future, the same routine will need to happen again.

In some places, engineers and other very smart people who understand river basins and how they operate, build dams and reservoirs that change how the rivers work – almost always succeeding at preventing the repeated flooding that sandbags can only temporarily address. Changing the nature of the river basin seems to work better than merely “stemming the tide” of one particular incident of flooding. At least that is true if your goal is to prevent the havoc created by flooding rivers.

For longer than I can remember, one of my life principles has been something like this: “rules monitor behavior; principles transform life.” The problem for us humans is that we can learn to obey the rules without ever being transformed into the people God made us to be. At some level, this is the very issue at hand when it comes to understanding law v. gospel. Had “rules” worked in transforming humans, would it have been necessary for Jesus to come and live among us, dying as the ultimate sacrifice for our inability to keep the rules? Is this what John has in mind when he declares, “For the Law came through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” (John 1:17)

In Galatians 2:21 Paul suggests that “if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.” (His words, not mine!) Somehow even though I have no real idea of what happens when this life is over, I am pretty confident that when I arrive at the proverbial pearly gates, I shouldn’t say either that “I’m here, but don’t need Jesus to get in” or “I hope it is ok that I spent my whole life monitoring behavior instead of transforming lives.”

While my life principle noted above has a variety of application points in life, for me, its primary point of application has been to my own journey of faith. In that context, perhaps I should say “the principle transforms life.” Because when it comes to the kind of faith described in Scripture, the one principle that matters is Jesus. Period. 

Of course in order for Jesus to be the principle upon which my life is transformed, I have to know who He is. As Paul suggested to the Philippians, “have this mind in you which also was in Christ Jesus.” (2:5) That has to the best definition to be found when it comes to defining what a disciple of Christ looks like. If I am going to truly follow Christ, I must know how His mind worked and strive to make my own mind work the same way.

It is possible, isn’t it, for me, as a male in our culture to obey all the church rules and end up with the appropriately modest approach to dress, have the right kind of haircut, resist alcohol, tobacco, and illegal substances, avoid tattoos and earrings, not allow my wife to have an abortion, never be tempted to homosexual activity, or look at porn – and not be a transformed person?

When our approach to the very challenging world in which we live is reduced to such approaches, we are programming ourselves to fail. Many reading the previous paragraph will protest – noting that isn’t how we do business as kingdom ambassadors. For that I express gratitude and great thanksgiving. But the simple reality is, assuming people like Dave Kinnamon and Gabe Lyons are accurate in their surveys of how the church is perceived in our culture, that is often how we are viewed. (unChristian, You Lost Me, The Next Christians)

There certainly is a place in life for “stemming the tide.” But as Jesus said to the disciples in Acts 1:8, our mission is to be His witnesses – to the ends of the earth. Most of us are smart enough to learn to get around the rules. But Jesus, well that’s another story – I can’t figure out how to get around Him.

Sandbagging will never change the world.