"YOU COMIN'?"
Jesus
is to blame. The Christ of the cross is to blame. If it weren't for him
I might be able to find some peace but he and his cross disturb me and
won't let me be content with what I see when I look within and around
me. If your loved one is quadriplegic you know that in many ways he or
she isn't physically able to help you care for them and in some sense
you adjust to the situation—you expect nothing and in that respect
you aren't disappointed. If you truly believe there's nothing better to
be hoped for in this world I suppose you might rage in your
hopelessness or eat, drink (or starve) and die tomorrow; but if hope
were dead would there not be some kind of resignation, a reluctant,
numbed acceptance of things as they are? Maybe, but would that not be
better than vainly hoping? Is that not what the old Greek story means to
say in the story of Pandora's "box"—when she opened the forbidden box
everything in it escaped except...hope. And it became the source of
torment to all because they could never be content with things as they
are.
In an early essay Bertrand Russell said that because we know the truth of human existence—that it's a pointless accident—we must face it and build a future on "unyielding despair." Well,
it's into this world, with all its pain, loss, disappointment,
loneliness, cruelty, entrenched evils and invincible selfishness that
Jesus came, making claims and promising much.
In
the first century he offended the Romans and their view of power and
empire. He offended the Greeks and their view of God and wisdom. He
offended the Jews and their view of God's faithfulness and their place
in his purposes. And he continues to scandalize us all to this day.
Don't you know I'm talking about the real Christ and not the one we hear about in so much preaching. Or the real one we don't hear
about in so much preaching. The one who's hidden under ceaseless
explanations of what this or that verse means, who's hidden behind the
patter of the wise who handle all the "difficult questions" people ask,
the one who's buried under the same unending calls for us all to be
morally better—as if we hadn't heard this call ten-thousand times. Christless moralizing with
the usual Bible verses thrown in to prove we're different from the
secularists who preach the same Christless moralizing—and who now and
then use Bible verses.
There
are people who care nothing for him—and never did—they're not affected
by him. The crass hedonists who think life's a one way ticket so, to the
degree that they can manage it, they party the nights away. Maybe
towards the end they think of "fire insurance" (though even that's not
of great concern now). The world can't be made better—certainly not in
their lifetimes—so why worry about it? Get what you can as quick as you
can, throw a handful of coins in the direction of the world's needy
during a big public musical concert and get back to the usual partying.
They
ignore the churches with their inner squabbles. [That might be a smart
thing!] Or, they listen for a while to their squabbles and discover how
pathetic they are in the face of the world's great needs and
wrongs—before they go back to the partying. Not a bad philosophy that; a
happy life and an endless sleep at the end.
The Jesus of the cross disturbs those who hear him. Here are three general areas. There's the state of the world and the church and our own personal situations.
If you hear
him, Jesus is too stubbornly real and we can't get away from him. Not
that we're trying to, you understand. We neither try to nor want to get
away from him but being in his presence and listening to his kingly
promises that are written in blood can make us impatient with the
chaotic, oppressive, confused, rebellious and cruel world. Why hasn't
his sovereignty transformed the world already? As sad-spoken Matthew
Arnold said, in the beginning, the tide of faith was fully in and
covered the earth like a garment. But now, he said,—it would appear—all
we hear is the faint sound of its "melancholy long withdrawing roar" as
it retreats and leaves bare the naked shingled shores of the world.
Sometimes we sorely want the present King of Kings to show himself more
powerfully—more powerfully, that is, in the more common understanding of
power. We'd like him to obliterate all the oppressive structures of the
world—structures that we have neither the desire to destroy nor the
strength to do it, supposing we had the desire. And why would we desire
it, aren't we the ones that build them? The state of the world seems to "prove" that the Christian's claim that Jesus is Lord of Lords is sheer nonsense.
And
when we look at the church as a whole and consider how pathetic and
weak it is, how self-serving, as it fine-tunes its theology and gorges
on rich truth and wants more to gorge on while a world of
Lazaruses starves. Not content to draw lines of fellowship in places
where the heart of the gospel is attacked, many church leaders insist on
keeping us all in separate pens based on the flimsiest differences and
they call it "defending the faith." We pay our ministers to "stand for
the truth" if they're willing to stand for the truth that we pay them to
stand for. In a world of tortured and tormented, sick and oppressed,
humiliated, blind and despairing fellow-humans in their thousands of
millions and our latest inner-church crusade is what? IS WHAT?
It's
much easier to believe the too-rich-to-be-fully-grasped doctrines of
the person and work of Jesus Christ in and as whom God revealed himself
than it is to believe in the church as it church-shops its way from one
assembly to another. And as we shop our first question is not, "What is
your gospel here?" it's, "What programs do you have to suit me here?"
"What are my rights here?" "Does this church know we're living in
the 21st century?" At one end of the spectrum we have these primetime
hucksters that ceaselessly beg for money to fund their programs (or
other hidden things) and on the other there are churches that are
offended if there's talk about sharing our wealth. Time and money is
spent on leadership agendas that usually have to do with "making our
church grow." Then there's the "preaching" [?].
And then there's the personal, bitter disappointment with oneself. There are times when you think you see real progress
and then like a bolt of lightning and a thunderclap events expose your
heart—it's seems as shrivelled as ever it was even after years of
longing for better. Just when you think you've experienced significant
growth you're brought face to face with outrageous meanness or
corruption or bitterness that pours out of you. Those who know nothing
of such experiences often find themselves with a smug smile of
self-congratulation at their moral maturity and consistency. When our
eyes focus on all this and more Jesus seems more and more distant and
beyond us. And in our worst moments, Pack it in—walk away, comes to mind. Then you understand what Dorothy Sayers was getting at when she wrote:
I am battered and broken and weary and out of heart,
I will not listen to talk of heroic things,
But be content to play some simple part,
Freed from preposterous, wild imaginings...
Men were not made to walk as priests and kings.
I will not listen to talk of heroic things,
But be content to play some simple part,
Freed from preposterous, wild imaginings...
Men were not made to walk as priests and kings.
Thou liest, Christ, Thou liest; take it hence,
That mirror of strange glories; I am I;
What wouldst Thou make of me? O cruel pretense,
Drive me not mad so with the mockery
Of that most lovely, unattainable lie!
That mirror of strange glories; I am I;
What wouldst Thou make of me? O cruel pretense,
Drive me not mad so with the mockery
Of that most lovely, unattainable lie!
And
for a while—a day, a week, a month, a year—you sulk and snarl and
prowl. Then you see him! He's always been there; you just didn't notice
during that wretched period. You see him looking at you with those big
eyes of his, calm and compelling, and as he moves away he looks back and
motions with his head, "You comin'?" and…
Why can't he leave us alone? Why can't we who have met him leave him alone?
