A Strange God Indeed

Perhaps one of the reasons that it's so easy for us to sit around and talk about what Jesus might have meant is because God, for much of the Old Testament, did, in fact, often speak in mysteries and codes. He often hid some of what He was doing behind words or signs that were not easily interpreted by all men. For proof of that, look no further than Ezekiel, who was one of the strangest prophets ever to walk the earth.

It is because of stories like these, because of guys like the prophets, that it doesn't seem far-fetched to us at all that God would speak in code or in mysteries, that He would say things that would not mean what they appear to mean or that are difficult to decipher. It makes perfect sense that we would sit around discussing things and trying to figure out what God means. After all, what does God mean?

But that was the God of the Old Testament, not the Christ of the New, and there is a very fundamental difference between the two. 

At the point that God Himself comes to live among the people, to walk in the same flesh in which they walk, to speak in their voice, to wear their tunics, to travel their shores, to eat their fish, to curse their figs, to challenge their traditions, to heal their infirmities, to call them by name...at the point that God dwells among us as Jesus, it is at that point that we can no longer say that God is doing mysterious things that He doesn't expect us to understand.

Fair enough, you might say, but even Jesus said that not everyone would understand what He was doing or saying. Even Jesus said that some of what He said was a mystery. Even Jesus said that some things were still hidden from us, so doesn't that suggest that what God says still requires interpretation? Doesn't that mean we are still charged with figuring out what He means?

Yes and no.

The mysteries of God that remain in the time of Christ are mysteries of a work yet to come. They are wonders of the heavens, signs of the times. They are the things that reveal, though still cloaked, what God is going to do as time marches on into eternity. Not everyone can understand these things, nor are they meant to. 

What you don't see in the Gospels, what you never see in the story of Jesus, is a single cryptic word about what a man should do right now. What you never see is Jesus speaking in code or in mystery about what He expects from someone. What you never see is Jesus trying to tell someone, without actually telling him, what He expects them to do. Jesus's words for man's life are extremely clear - come, go, do, be. 

These aren't mysterious words. Not once in all the Gospels do they mean anything other than what they plainly appear to mean. Not once does "Go, make disciples" mean anything other than go and make disciples. Not once does "turn the other cheek" mean anything but turn the other cheek. When Jesus tells a man how to live, there's no question about what He is saying. Not one. 

Yet, it is precisely that kind of stuff that we're sitting around discussing rather than doing. We're a people who hear Christ say to go and talk to someone, but we don't go because we don't think He really means go and talk. What does He mean by that? And then the moment passes and we've missed it. We hear Christ say to bring someone into our home, but we're not sure what that means, so we don't and they spend another night on the streets. We hear Him call us to pray, and we sit around wondering what it is He wants us to pray about rather than actually praying because, you know, the call to prayer was not entirely clear about.... 

We're ridiculous. We are. We are ridiculous as a people of faith. Our God, the very same God who has revealed Himself in our own flesh and spoken to us with our own voice and walked on our own seashores and healed our infirmities and chosen us out of all of creation to be His own, speaks, and we aren't even filled with awe any more; we just pretend to be confused by it all. 

It's not confusing at all that the God who loves us so much that He came to dwell among us would also speak, and it's not confusing at all what He asks of us. 

The only thing confusing here is us, who claim to be a people of God but are scared to death to move on His account. To live on His account. To love on His account. 

Keeping the Faith

Most Christians spend their time hemming and hawing and debating about what Jesus meant when He said whatever He said because they know that if they admit that they knew what He meant, they'd be held accountable for acting or not acting upon His words. (Not to be a bother here, but they're held accountable anyway, for the Lord knows what they know, even when they pretend not to.)

But the problem that Western Christianity runs up against really is a semantics problem. Not Christ's semantics; ours.

Here's what we've done: in a world that accepts Christianity, as much as it accepts it at all, as just one of a myriad of options of religion for a people who seem predisposed to such a thing, we have come to identify it as "the" Christian faith, the same way that we choose "the cheeseburger" or "the tacos" off of a dinner menu. And this makes it forever something different, something distant, from ourselves, something we can objectively study in the third person or point to in a museum and discuss in some high-brow, removed kind of way. 

What we have here is the Christian faith. If you'll notice, you can see that it....

We become, then, a people who can either talk about the Christian faith or cannot. We become a people who can point out all of its details or cannot. We become a people who know about it or do not. But it's a relic and nothing more in our human story. It is the Christian faith. 

This is the way that outsiders have always talked about the Christian faith - as that thing that other persons do that is so weird and bizarre and beyond them. As that thing that they can only describe "objectively," from the outside looking in. (Objective and subjective are not really the right words, but stick with me here.) Ah yes, they say, the Christians. The Christian faith. 

And our postmodern, relativistic, every-man-to-his-own-truth culture has made us all outsiders to our own faith. Hence, the Christian faith. No wonder we no longer own it; it is a thing to be beheld, but not touched, just as all artifacts in a museum.

Better would be to have a Christian faith. At the very least, if you have a something, you leave open the possibility that you own it. For example, our youth minister asked last summer if anyone had a unicycle he could borrow for a lesson series. I have a unicycle. It is mine. In the same way, I have a refrigerator, a piano, and a dresser. Being a and not the leaves these things open to being owned, to being unique to my possession, rather than being an exhibit of something forever to be preserved in its pristine condition and discussed by intellectuals who happen to have an interest in such things. Having a something, including a Christian faith, creates the possibility that I actually own it, it is mine, and I might even use it. 

Better even still would be to have my Christian faith, but almost no one talks this way any more, except perhaps as a deference to a culture that insists that all faith can only be private once held, and therefore, it would be inaccurate to ever say that there is a Christian faith outside of your own possession of it. But that's not the linguistic context we're talking about here. 

How often any more do you hear someone cite "my" Christian faith as a reason or an example or a meaningful construct of who they are? It just doesn't happen. Not because we don't have a Christian faith, but because we don't own it. We no longer believe that we even can own it. It is the Christian faith, and it exists far beyond our own manifestation of it. In fact, most of us have even come to believe that we somehow pollute or poison the Christian faith by my imperfect living of it, as though our being Christians at all cheapens what being a Christian even means. 

So it's easy to say that we don't understand. It's easy to sit back and debate what Jesus must have meant. After all, it's not about me any more. Whatever He said, it's about the faith, not my faith; my faith requires me to sit here and figure out what Jesus meant for me when He said whatever He said. And thank God (blessed Lord, Amen), that always keeps me one step away from actually owning my own faith and having to do anything about it. After all, He can't hold me accountable for what I haven't interpreted yet....can He?

We have a semantics problem in our faith. Yes, our faith. But it's got nothing to do with what Jesus said. Rather, it's got everything to do with whether our faith is really the faith or if it's my faith. If it's my faith, then I best start living like it is. Oughtn't I?

What He Said

When Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan, those who heard His lesson had to determine what they were going to do with it. Were they going to be offended that He would speak of a Samaritan in the same breath as He spoke of a priest and a Levite? Were they going to be convicted that such a comparison was even possible? Would they continue listening to see what He had to say about it or would they tune out or turn away because of the directness of His words?

A number of questions circulated through the whispers of that crowd, but I guarantee you that among them was not this one: what do you think Jesus meant when He said "Samaritan"?

Nobody was asking that. Nobody had to. Everyone in the crowd that day knew exactly what He meant when He referred to the man as a Samaritan. Everyone in the crowd knew exactly the stark contrast He was drawing. Everyone in the crowd knew exactly the point He was trying to make. There were no semantics at work when Jesus called the man a Samaritan; He meant the man was a Samaritan. 

There are never semantics at work when Jesus speaks.

But we are a people who think that there must be. We are a people who are pretty sure that semantics are everything, and if we aren't so offended by Jesus's semantics that we call Him out on them, we are precisely the kind of people who start the whispers asking the one question we never need to ask: what do you think Jesus meant when He said...?

Story of our lives, right? How many times have we heard this kind of question asked by people of the faith today? We hear someone talk about the very clear vision that God has put on their heart for the kind of ministry they're going to do, and then in the same breath that they tell us about the very clear vision, they confess that they are trying to figure out what it means. What do you mean what does it mean? If it was a very clear vision, it meant what it meant. Didn't it?

Or we talk about the nudging that we felt on our heart to go up to that person in the grocery store and say or do some specific action, just sensing that it was something that God wanted us to do. Then, we confess that we didn't do it because we weren't sure what it meant that we felt the way that we did. We weren't sure what, exactly, God wanted us to do with the feeling that we should go up to someone and say or do something. Spoiler alert: God wanted us to go up to someone and say or do something. 

Or we suddenly find ourselves with the opportunity to partner with someone who is already doing a good work for God, someone who needs just a little bit of our resources to do something even greater. And we hear God telling us to write the check. We tell others about this awesome work and how we were thinking about joining it, then we confess that we never wrote the check because we weren't sure what God wanted us to give to them for their work. Uhm...money? That's pretty much the only thing you can write a check for. 

Here's what's really happening, and I'm just going to say it: we hem and haw and ponder these questions because as much as we call ourselves a people of faith, we are no such thing, nor are we sure we really want to be. If we take God at His word, then it falls on us to either act or not act, to be a people of faith or to not be a people of faith, and we don't want to have to make that choice.

Rather, we contend that if we never quite figure out what God is trying to say to us, we cannot be held accountable for either acting or failing to act because we lacked the specific information to know what was by faith and what was not. 

In other words, if we pretend not to know what God said, then He can't be mad at us for not doing it. 

The problem is that we know exactly what God said. God said exactly what He said, and there are no semantics at play when God speaks. When Jesus says "Samaritan," He means Samaritan, no matter how unpalatable that may be to the listening crowd. When He says "go," He means go; when He says "do," He means do; when He says "give," He means give. 

The question we have to ask ourselves is not what Jesus means when He speaks - we know what He means - but what are we going to do with it? 

Dirty Words

One of the most well-known stories in all of Scripture, even among those who are not Christians, is Jesus's story of the "good Samaritan." It was a shocking story to the audience of His own day, and it continues to be a great lesson to human beings today about what it means to truly be neighbors with one another.

A number of English translations take a gentler approach with this story, having Jesus identify the third man as "a man from Samaria," which I thought, in the English, was rather nice of Him. See, the Samaritans were detestable to the Jews, absolutely disgusting. Had Jesus actually said the word "Samaritan," He would have drawn attention to that and probably turned much of His audience away. Especially when He contrasts a "Samaritan" with a priest and a Levite! No, no, He must have said it was a man from Samaria, putting the emphasis on the regularness of the man and only including Samaria as a side note. After all, He wanted His audience to keep listening, didn't He?

But this is where Jesus does something that is so Jesus, and it's beautiful. 

He says, "Samaritan."

He didn't have to. There are constructs in any language that would have permitted Him not to; He really could have said, "a man from Samaria." All it would have taken would have been for Him to use the word "man," a preposition "from," and the name of the disgusting region. But He didn't. When Luke records this story for us, he records it as one word - the root of Samaria with the suffix that indicates "a man from." 

A Samaritan.

Yes, Jesus said a "dirty" word.

And at this point, everyone listening to Him had a decision to make. Were they going to stay dialed in, listening to the story that Jesus was telling, taking His point and His instruction to heart? Were they going to feel their own disgust so heavily that they could no longer pay attention, that they'd disengage entirely and come back when He started His next parable? Were they going to be so shocked and shamed by the comparison of the most faithful men of Israel - the priest and the Levites - with a dirty Samaritan that they would be unable to move past their own conviction of heart, forever condemning and judging themselves because even the worst of the worst was better than them? 

The people had to decide what they were going to do with this Samaritan; they had to decide what they were going to do with this Jesus; they had to decide what they were going to do with themselves. 

Jesus doesn't mince words. Read the Scriptures. If you're short on time, read just the red letters. Try to find one place where Jesus doesn't tell it like it is, where He hems and haws, where He softens His message because it might offend someone's ethnic, racial, or religious sensibilities. There's not one. Jesus lays the cards on the table and then tells us it's up to us how to play this hand. He always has; He still does.

It's amazing how many of us think God's message to us today is cryptic, that we have to spend a lot of our time "discerning" what Jesus is trying to say to us. Is it this? Is it that? Well, it certainly couldn't be...? But that's not the Jesus style. That's not the testimony we see about Him in the Scriptures. It's simply not the way that He speaks. 

Which means that the only thing we have to figure out is the same thing the crowds that day had to decide: what are we going to do with it? 

Right Where You Are

Perhaps what seems so difficult to us in terms of what God requires is that these stories we're looking at are far beyond our understanding. It doesn't seem reasonable that God would ask us to dress for battle and go out to a field somewhere to see a war. It doesn't seem reasonable that we would have to sojourn into the land of Israel to visit one specific river. Actually, it's exactly the kind of thing most of us are afraid God will ask of us, to go well beyond our own borders just to find Him.

But that's not the case at all.

The battle for which Israel dressed was a battle in their own territory; the hill to which they were called was their own hill. It wasn't a journey away. It wasn't some distant place. And even the whole idea of battle was not so far-fetched; at the time, Israel was a people at war. Battle was just part of their daily existence. So when God asks them to dress for battle, it's not so strange a command. He's merely asking them to do something they've done on countless other occasions, something that is very close at hand for them. There was not a man in Israel who did not have his battle attire close. 

And when He asks them to go out to the hill, neither is this so unreasonable, for it was, after all, their hill. Not only was it their hill, but it was a hill where their enemy armies were camping against them. The most natural thing in all the world for a people at war to do is to dress for battle and go out to where their enemies are staking them out. This is all that God asks them to do. It's not such a big thing as it seems to us who know neither wars nor hills.

When Naaman comes to the prophet Elisha in Israel and is told to go wash himself in the Jordan, we get this image in our head of a long journey to a foreign land to a specific place of water. Naaman helps to create this impression by talking about all of the different waters that already flow where he lives and the waters that he passed to get to the prophet in the first place. And it makes the Jordan seem so very far away. 

But Naaman was already in Israel. He's already come this far to seek out the prophet of the Lord, who he had heard could heal him. God is not asking him to go somewhere further away; He is asking the man to go all in on the distance he has already traveled. You're already here, Naaman - wash in this river? It's just another mile or two down the road, which in essence means, it's right here.

The truth is that as much as we fear that God is going to require some incredible feat or some amazing distance from us for us to see His glory, the very best place for us to see it is right where we are. 

All we have to do are the things we ought to be doing anyway, going all in on the distances we've already traveled.

It takes almost nothing at all to carve out ten minutes of your day, right where you are, to read the Scriptures. God doesn't ask you to go back to school, to become a scholar, to learn all of the original languages and begin translating the Scriptures for yourself. He just asks you to read them the same way you read the TV guide and your Facebook feed and a thousand texts a day. 

It's simple to begin to pray, right where you are, the way that God commands of you. You don't have to be eloquent. You don't have to be authoritatively religious. You don't need a booming voice or a perfect heart; you just need yourself. You're already talking all day, already loving the sound of your own voice and the image that your project. Just look at your social media. God just asks you to take some of your talking and do it with Him. 

It's not hard at all to find a church and start attending, right where you are. You probably drove or walked past at least a dozen just yesterday. You don't have to have all the doctrine right. You don't have to know all the words to all the songs. You don't have to dress up or dress down or whatever. You just have to go, the same way that you make time each week to go to the grocery store or to have dinner with family or friends or to sit out on the patio and soak in the last of the day's warm glow. 

God's not asking us to do anything crazy, and He's not asking us to go somewhere far away. He's asking us to be faithful right where we are with the resources that we already have in our lives. Yet somehow, we, as a people, are so scared of the big things that God might ask of us that we don't even try to do the little things, which is really all that He requires. 

It was a little thing for Israel to dress for and go to the battle they were already engaged in. It was a little thing for Naaman, who had already come to the land of Israel, to wash in the river that was right there. It's such a little thing for you to pick up your Bible, fall to your knees, and find a community right where you are. Especially when what's at stake is your chance to see the glory of God. 

So...why aren't you doing it?