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I have been guilty at times of misleading the congregations to which I have spoken. Truth be told, every man or woman who has ever preached a sermon or led a church has been guilty of the same.
None of us are perfect, not even “the clergy;” maybe, especially the clergy. We all have blind spots and myopic presuppositions, so “rightly dividing the word of truth,” as the old Apostle put it, is not as easy as it appears.
My mistake, one of many, is that I told the people listening to me to “take Jesus out to the world.” This isn’t completely inaccurate. In a real sense, when followers of Jesus enter their communities they do so as conduits and instruments of the risen Christ.
But this does not mean that Christians “own” God or that he is not already at work out in the world. To think that God or Jesus is the exclusive property of our particular church or that he is held tightly by our often mistaken interpretations isn’t good doctrine; it’s arrogance.
Bono, that musician-poet-theologian-activist said, “Stop asking God to bless what you’re doing. Get involved in what God is doing – because it is already blessed.” See, God is already “out there, somewhere.” We don’t show up with him like a pizza delivery man. We can only point others to where he is. And usually, he is in the poor, downtrodden, the weak and the broken.
Will Campbell, that old Mississippi Baptist preacher, preached a sermon once critiquing the “invitation” as it is given in most revivalistic churches. He said, “Those of us who are acquainted with such invitations know that at the end of a sermon, the preacher invites people who want to commit their lives to Christ to come down the aisle to indicate that desire.
“I hope that someday there will be an evangelistic service in which, when the preacher gives the invitation and people start coming down the aisle, he yells back at them, ‘Don’t come down this aisle! Go to Jesus! Don’t come to me! Go to Jesus!’
“Upon that declaration, the people who were coming down the aisle turn around and exit the auditorium and get in their cars and drive away. He then yells at the rest of the congregation, ‘Why are you hanging around here? Why don’t you go to Jesus too? Why don’t you all go to Jesus?’ The people rise en masse and quickly leave the church, and soon the parking lot is empty.
“What I imagine is that about a half hour later the telephone at the police station starts ringing off the hook, and the voice at the other end says, ‘We’re down here at the old-folks home and there’s some crazy people at the door yelling that they want to come in and visit Jesus, and I keep telling them Jesus isn’t in here! All we have in here is a bunch of old ladies.’ But they keep saying, ‘But we want to visit Jesus! We want to visit Jesus!’
“The next call is from the warden down at the prison. He’s saying, ‘Send some cops down here! There’s a bunch of nuts at the gate and they’re yelling and screaming, “Let us in there! We want to visit Jesus! We want to visit Jesus!” I keep telling them that all we have in this place are murderers, rapists and thieves. But they keep yelling, ‘Let us in! We want to visit Jesus!’
“No sooner does the cop hang up the phone than it rings again. This time it’s the superintendent of the mental hospital calling for help. He’s complaining that there are a bunch of weird people outside begging to be let in. They too want to see Jesus! The superintendent says, ‘I keep telling them that Jesus isn’t here. All we have here are a bunch of patients, but they keep yelling at us ‘we want to see Jesus!’”
God, through his son Jesus, is already out there. Let’s join him in the work he is already doing.
I’m writing this article while sitting in my father’s chair. You know the chair of which I speak. It is that ratty old recliner that occupies the living room, den, or man-cave that no guest or other family member is ever allowed access. It belongs exclusively to my father.
So, how did I plant my butt in such an honored chair? Simple: It’s the best seat in the house, and my father isn’t here right now. While the master is away, I will occupy the throne; it is good to be king, if only for a few hours.
When I was a kid I really thought my father was a king, and not just because of his chair. I looked up to him as if he were a superhero who could leap tall buildings with a single bound, bend steel bars with his bare hands, catch bullets in his teeth, and defeat all of his arch enemies.
With hands the size of pot roasts and the strength of an ox, I was amazed at how he could lift me above his head, how fast he could run, and how there was nothing he could not do. “My daddy can beat up your daddy,” was a routine phrase on my lips.
And smart? Lord, yes, he was smart. He seemed to understand or know everything! He could do pre-algebra in his head and long division without picking up a pencil; he could read the hardest words, fix anything broken, and solve any problem. He might as well have been a king.
But as I got older, as a teenager, I discovered my father was growing remarkably stupid. In just a few short years, somehow, he became a backward, bumbling simpleton with not a clue to how the world really worked.
He offered inane advice on everything from money and education to automobiles and the opposite sex. He set ridiculous boundaries in regard to my time, work, school, and friends. A few times he even dared to critique or forbid my well-made decisions. What an idiot.
Then, in my twenties, my father must have returned to school or started taking smart pills. His counsel improved dramatically – almost overnight. His words were far sounder than I could ever remember. It was obvious an old dog could learn new tricks. I was so proud of him.
And now, with growing children of my own, my father practically has a PhD. No, he’s not as big and strong as he once was, but he is absolutely brilliant, even smarter than before. His intellectual turnaround has been miraculous.
But what bothers me is the fact that I am my father’s son. See, I get more like him every day: The cadence of my voice, my mannerisms, the gray in my beard, my dietary habits, my elevated cholesterol. So I fear I too will have a mid-life plunge into idiocy.
I don’t have a “chair” at home, but today my children look upon me with something akin to worship, as I looked upon my father. Tomorrow they will despise my advice, my words, and the limitations I place upon them because my IQ will have shrunk down to nothing as their own rises to near Einstein levels.
I know it is coming. I can feel it. Sometimes, just by the way my children look at me, or how they question my judgment, or when they angrily resist me, I can tell I’m getting dumber. I “just don’t understand.” I don’t “get it.” I’m standing in the way of their good time. It is all sure to get worse before it gets better.
But hopefully, after a decade or so on the dark side, my mental capacities will improve as my own father’s did. Maybe then I won’t be such a bonehead, and my children will find me worth listening to again.
It’s really too bad that we fathers take these short trips into stupidity when our children are at such vulnerable junctions in their lives. They sure could use a little help.
From time to time in Christian history there have been those who claim to have come into possession of relics associated with Jesus. Pilgrims and collectors have gathered together items like the Shroud of Turin, the alleged crown of thorns worn at Christ’s crucifixion, or the Veil of Veronica, used to wipe our Lord’s sweaty, bloody brow.
And since Helena, the Emperor Constantine’s mother, first claimed to have found the true Cross of Jesus more than 1700 years ago, pieces of it have shown up every where. Tongue in check, Erasmus said there were so many fragments of the Cross of Jesus strewn about European cathedrals, that one could actually build a cathedral from the remains.
Granted, if someone claims to possess an authentic relic of Jesus people would line up for miles to see or touch it. And they just might pay a good bit of money to do that. So the motivation behind some of these ventures is plain to see. But for the pilgrims who travel to see these relics or who venture to holy sites, they are not looking to simply part with their time or money.
They are on a journey of faith, to experience something, to see something, to touch something associated with Jesus that is real. For the seeker, his or her desire is real. Their faith is real. Their convictions are real. They are looking for Jesus to be the same.
Whenever I doubt the reality of Jesus, I don’t go relic shopping. I read the gospels again. Jesus was born in poverty. His friends were from the lowest castes of society. He was crushed by the Empire of his day. He wept, laughed, suffered, and went without. He became frustrated and sometimes angry.
No one writing propaganda would ever reveal a character so real, so human, so earthy. The writer of Hebrews is exactly right: “We have a high priest who was tempted and tried in all ways, just like us.” He understands, because he has been there himself. And he is still there, still here.
In reality, Jesus is the condemned person in the courtroom who hears the sentence passed down, and can only hang his head in shame. Jesus is the abused and molested child who falsely feels responsible for the evil that is perpetrated against her. Jesus is the lonely and abandoned soul who hears the iron bars of a prison door slide shut behind him.
Jesus is the three-time divorcee who bears the heavy-heart of betrayal and rejection. Jesus is the young woman who hates herself for the decisions she has made, but did the best she could torn between impossible choices. Jesus is the executive who embezzled money, and is now an embarrassment to his friends, his company, and his family’s name.
Jesus is the person out of work for so long she has given up, even though they have come for everything she owns, and she doesn’t know what to do next. Jesus is the crippled veteran on the street, reduced to panhandling to feed his growling belly, so ashamed he cannot make eye contact with passersby.
For anyone who has ever felt the sting of rejection, the heart-break of disloyalty, the tears of shame and humiliation, for anyone who bears their own disgrace and failure, Jesus says, “I understand. I am with you. You can trust me; you can cast your cares upon me, because I have been there myself.”
Clarence Jordan said: “When God becomes a man, we really don’t know what to do with him. If he will just stay God, like a God ought to be, then we can deal with him. We can sing songs to him. We can handle him. We can build cathedrals to him (or collect relics).
“But by sending Jesus as a man, God is refusing to take humanity’s ‘no’ for an answer, and places Jesus in the here and now – in the midst of this life.” And that is more real and holy to me than all the collected artifacts in the world.
Beware of the multitasker. He or she isn’t being honest., for anyone who claims the ability to talk on the phone, surf the web, cook dinner, send a text message, balance the checkbook, and fly a crop duster all at the same time is terribly misguided. He or she might even be suffering from madness.
Neuroscientist and MIT professor Earl Miller says, “People can’t multitask very well, and when people say they can, they’re deluding themselves.” What we humans can do, according to Miller, is shift our focus from one thing to the next with astonishing speed.
So when we quickly switch from task to task, we think we are simultaneously paying careful and skillful attention to everything around us, but this is a trick of the brain. We are actually hopscotching rapidly between activities.
As a test, try to write an in-depth email and have a detailed conversation on the phone at the same time. Or try to study for an algebra test while playing an Xbox game. It’s almost impossible to mix any of these together. The tasks will compete one against the other until the conflicting impulses produce a sort of numb paralysis within the struggling brain.
Some researchers have even suggested that if one attempted to work while stoned, he or she would be more efficient than when attempting to focus on too many things at once. And while I wouldn’t suggest keeping a dime bag in your office cubicle, the science makes a compelling case for being a “monotasker” rather than a multitasker.
The stupefying effect of multitasking may have been first observed in felines, not humans. Many years ago it was observed that cats could not focus on more than one target at a time. But scientists did not make this breakthrough. Lion tamers did.
Thankfully, the lion taming business has fallen on hard times in recent years. After all, such magnificent creatures were never meant to be caged. But some of us still remember the sensational lion tamers of the great circuses. Men like Clyde Beatty and Gunther Gebel-Williams would strut into the steel cage with little more than a costume, a cracking whip in one hand, and a chair in the other.
Of course, these big cat masters knew that a dining chair wouldn’t keep the lions from devouring them (nor would the whip). What they knew was that the chair would confuse the lion. The four points of the chair’s legs, bobbing about as they were, tangled the lion’s mind just enough so that the animal could not act on his carnivorous intentions.
Lion tamers realized that the big cats could be kept in a catatonic state (no pun intended) by splitting their attention. By focusing on the multiple moving pieces, the lion could never focus solely on the tamer. This multitasking fragmentation kept the lion from being what it really was born to be. It kept the animal, caged.
What an apropos parallel for those of us living in a world gone mad with multifarious activity – so appropriate it barely deserves comment. With our jobs, families, careers, hobbies, sports programs, deadlines, doctor appointments, ringing and dinging reminders, news reports, buzzing cellphones, and screaming calendars it’s a wonder any of us remain functional.
Our energy is so entirely defused and our attention so thoroughly diverted, that we are essentially incapacitated. With our heads turned down, gazing long and deep into our smart screens, we are at risk of being smashed out of our minds by all the static and interference.
We would do well to hear the words of Jesus for ourselves as he gently but categorically rebuked a dear friend by saying, “You are so worried and distracted by many things, when only a few things are needed.”
We aren’t super-sized computers built and equipped with central processing units. We are human beings, born to laugh and to love; born to take life slowly and deeply as it comes to us; and we are born to be uncaged, set free from the madness of multitasking.
New audio from Ronnie entitled “Birthin’ Babies” at
http://ronniemcbrayer.me/audio-and-video/
