The Insufficiency of Christ - 3

If our identity is a bit part in the world's play, then what we do may look OK for a while but the plot will fray as time goes on.  It's the wrong script for the stage God made.  Things get broken and we wonder why the life we have been dealt isn't fair, isn't what we expected.  Life doesn't work because it is the wrong life for this world.
Contrary-wise, if your identity really is in Christ's story, then... life still won't work but for an entirely different reason.  Your life as a Christian, "all such good works as Thou hast prepared for us to walk in", your part in the story, works for God's story but not in the world.  The whole world is trying to make a different story, their individual stories, take place on the same stage.  You, like John and Stephen and Mary and Lydia and Peter, gum up the works, finding yourself at odds with every non-Christian and their agendas.
The insufficiency of Christ for the world's story surfaces quickly because He is not interested in another play, a different plot line, someone else's story.  This is why the disciples were so frustrated with Jesus.  This is perhaps, as suggested in Jesus Christ Superstar, why Judas betrayed Jesus - trying to get Him to play His hand, trying to force a different story.  We are all Judas's in that regard.  We have been taught to "invite Jesus into our lives".  Very wrong message.  We must, rather, accept Jesus' invitation for us to join HIS life.  Otherwise, He must, in order to remain true to His agenda, remain insufficient for ours.
Our identity has to be found as a player in His story.  In order for Jesus to make any sense at all in our lives we really do have to die to ourselves and accept another, different, not our, view of who we are.  We are chosen before the foundations of  the world.  We have a different name.  We are God's handiwork with work to do for Him.
But everyone thinks they are someone else than God has intended them to be.  Third Day's "In time will I be what You're thinking of?  Rescue me."  We must change who we think we are.  Accept who God thinks we are...knows who we are.

The Insufficiency of Christ - 2

Imagine you get a backstage pass to a Broadway theater tour.  During the tour you find yourself being hustled along in the midst of a crowd hurrying somewhere and you end up with a crowd on stage in a play you know nothing about.  Imagine further that the crowd turns into a mob and fighting breaks out all around you.  This is our experience, this is our reality in the world today.  We are dropped into the middle of a play that is in full swing.  Most people persist in trying to ignore the play and try to go peacefully about minding their business but nothing makes sense.  Life just doesn't work.  The suffering doesn't make sense.  The fighting doesn't make sense.  The relationships don't make sense.  The activities range from bizarrely amusing to frustrating and infuriating.  Your plans don't make sense and don't work.  Logic and reason are no longer logical or reasonable.  The rules of engagement and expectation and behavior don't seem to apply.  In fact, even your identity is all wrong.  You are not who you thought you are.  Not only does your life not work, everyone around you is frustrated too because your agenda's and efforts make a mess of their life.  It makes a mess of their life because they are in the same boat you are trying to mind their own business and get along and life isn't working for them either.
This metaphor has two threads:
One, there is Christ's story and being dropped in it, you are a part of it or messing it up.
Two, there is the world's story that is bizarre but one which everyone else wants to be in... and you, Christian or not, are messing it up.
Being dropped into Christ's story - the real story - and not realizing it, means you will never make it.  You will never live in the Kingdom of God having the security and rest and freedom you should.
On the other hand, as a Christian, if you are living in Christ's story - the real story and so living correctly - you are dropped onto the world's stage and its story so you will never fit in.  Your life as the world sees it will be anything from a quaint amusement to a radical departure from reality as they know it.  Your life is disruptive and inconvenient and ridiculous though all the while somehow intimately drawing, attractive because the true story resides and is playing out in every heart.  The greatest atheist or pantheist or animist or Hindu or Buddhist hears God's strange dialogue that has a familiar ring.  God's story is not far from any of us.  Our part in the story is not far from us.  But we may, and most do, choose to embrace a different identity from ours in God and remain confused and frustrated and wondering what in the world is going on.

VBS

Back in the saddle next week.  VBS prep and production for this week's run has slayed me....whew.
Great affiliation and association time for kids though.  An accommodation time for many adult and teen helpers and some assimilation into Christ's story as well.  Grace upon grace.

The Insufficiency of Christ -1

Just lost another friend to apathy about Christ and the church.
For all you theological types, take a breath.  I am not saying that Jesus is insufficient.  What this is about is, "Why do people today, even after finding Christ, look for more than Him, look elsewhere for hope and peace and ...something?"  "What about Jesus is not enough?"  "What does a relationship with Jesus not offer?"  "Why is it so hard, even for me, to persevere in the long martyrdom of the Christian life?"
As with many of the answers the Holy Spirit has been pointing me to over the past few years, I believe this answer, too, is about the story.  Our worldly formation ties us so well into the story of the world that our part in God's story quickly becomes muddled, unfocused, uncomfortable, unrecognizable.  So much so that we easily lose sight of the story itself.  A continuing counterformation to the world's story is crucial if we and our children are to not only find our way to Christ but to stay with Him.  Even after all that the disciples went through with Jesus, even after the resurrection, as related in Matthew 28:18, "some doubted."  What is it that they still needed?
First, it is identity.  We must know who we are, whose we are.  And that comes with the constant telling of the story of the community of followers both in the past and now.  Fill your child's head, and yours, with the lives of the prophets and the disciples and the saints.  The disciples knew a story, of a Messiah who would "restore the kingdom of Israel" and their identity was wrapped up in that story.  See Acts 1:6.  They were formed by that ancient but misinterpreted story.  They had their identity in their present struggle.  Jesus did not fit well in that.  He will not fit well into our story.  When Jesus died, they realized that He was insufficient to their struggle.  Their twisted identity even persisted against the three year teaching and extraordinary events of Jesus.  They had lost, were defeated...again.  Misplaced hope.  -----  Because their story was wrong and their identity, based on their story, was wrong.

Liturgy as Formation - 3

The first formation through liturgical activity is learning - head knowledge and intellectual assent.  The second liturgical formation activity is spending time with Christ and the community.  The last formation "work of the people" is our call in II Corinthians 5:18 to ambassadorship.  Our formation is like a light bulb in a series circuit which also has a motor in the circuit.  If the motor isn't running the electricity can't move through the line and the light can't come on.  In order for transformation to happen in you, you have to be involved in service/ministry.  God's word will never come back ineffectual.  If you sit back and wait to be transformed before you start working in God's story you will wait forever.  To put formation in investment terms, 45% should be invested in time with Jesus and the fellowship, 35% in ministry and 20% in study.  For most Christians today, our Christ-following activities are predominantly: 1) study, 2) a small amount of time spent in prayer and fellowship, and 3) rare ministry/service.  What this does is create people who are philosophy "Christians" who know a lot about God and assent to most of his teachings and ethics and therefore think that they are Christians.  These are those for whom I fear, Jesus will say, "I never knew you."  You really must fall in love with Jesus.  Not the book.  Not the idea.  Not theology.  Not the traditions.  Not the church.  You must fall in love with Him.  Learning is good but the bulk of any relationship is spending time doing stuff together and for others.  Get to work.  We are not saved by works but we will not be saved without them.

Liturgy as Formation - 2

So Liturgy of the Word is easy and the one we love to pursue.  We go to Bible Studies and Sunday School classes but this is qualitatively different than sitting with Jesus.  Now, there are Bible Studies that spend significant time in prayer and relationship with each other and with Christ.  Kudos to them.  The Word informing the relationship.  Perfect.  For most, however, the liturgy of "being with" Christ is so much harder, too hard in fact to press into.  Unfamiliar territory for most of us and uncomfortable.
When Jesus walked with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, He taught them the whole way, and "Did not our hearts burn within us while He talked..."  BUT, when did they know Him?  When did their relationship with their lost Savior and friend come alive?  In the breaking of the bread.  Our second work of liturgy is the breaking of bread.  It is literally that in our sharing with each other in the Eucharist, and almost impossibly, it is more than that as the Bread of Life becomes part of us and we are part of Him.  We end, no, shift, our intellectual relationship from that of figuring it out to engaging with Him.  As I was graining with Mr. Philip under last night's moonless sky, I did learn some more about Mr. Philip, but what I learned was translated in the process of poling along and paying attention into respect and admiration.  I grew to know him.  The Liturgy of the Eucharist is a model for the liturgy of all our engagement with Christ and others.  It is the work of the people in doing stuff with each other in order to translate our learning about them and Christ into knowing them.  "Depart from me you workers of iniquity.  I never knew you."  Harsh words.  Jesus is not talking to the Pharisees here.  Harsh words to people who were doing a lot and thinking a lot but never laughing a lot and crying a lot and eating a lot with Jesus.  So this second part of the Liturgy of Formation, relationship building, is perhaps the most important leg of the three legged stool.  You MUST do things with Christ and others.  You must do things with the "least of your brethren."  "Associate with the lowly."  "Love your enemies."  It is essential to your formation to run counter to the world and even in some regards to our churches by ensuring that the time spent learning about Jesus is in proportion to your spending time with Him and with others in non-learning activities, breaking bread (Eucharist and meals), going for a walk, fishing together, time alone talking to Jesus without your Bible, making sure that the lesson you learned in class is applied and changes who you are, building a boat together.  "And this is how they will know you are my disciples, how you love each other."
 

Liturgy as Formation - 1

Liturgy (literally the "work of the people") is formation.  Most Americans believe that formation is simply the next fad word for religious education.  However, Jesus in John 5:39 states, "You study the Scriptures diligently thinking that by having them you have me but you know me not."  Being a Jesus follower is not a matter of the head except in that our knowledge orients our worship.  Knowledge informs us about Who we are worshiping.  Evangelicals often get lost in the pursuit of knowing about God and forget to say "Hello."
There are three parts to our historical liturgy: 1) learning about Whom we love (the liturgy of the Word);  2) spending time with Him (worship/Eucharist) and; 3) proclaiming reconciliation to Him (evangelism).  The easiest is learning "about".  It requires almost no commitment or sacrifice on our part.  It requires little humility, submission or subjugation. It is also the source of the enormous problem today creating "pick and choose" Christians and the rampant "all roads lead to God" philosophy.  We learn about poverty and about child soldiers and about alcoholic Smith in the last pew and we can simply lament and be filled with pity and sentimentalism.  That is "about-ness".  There are many thousands of people, you may know some, you may be one, who know about Christ but for whom, Jesus' Lordship is despised.  The hallmark of salvation, as we all have heard again and again, is relationship and yet our congregations allow scant relationship building and love learning and teaching.  If you would be formed, if you would form your child, into a persevering Jesus follower you must engage in the liturgy of formation.  It is a dance.  There are rules to be sure, but if you simply obey the rules you will never dance but die alone.