Those Poor Pharisees

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Sometimes I feel bad for the Pharisees.  Yes, they are the “bad guys” in the Gospels, and they do end up conspiring to kill Jesus, but when I read some of the Old Testament, I can’t help but feel a little sympathetic.  I think if  I had no access to the New Testament and I decided I wanted to obey God fully, I would probably have done it like them.

Take, for example, the Sabbath.  If you are familiar with the Gospel stories, you will know that one of the things that enraged the Pharisees the most was Jesus working on the Sabbath.  There is an often repeated pattern where Jesus heals someone on the Sabbath, the Pharisees confront him for breaking the law, Jesus says something offensive, and the Pharisees plot to kill him.  To our compassionate eyes, we can’t help but wonder what is wrong with them.  Can’t they see that Jesus is healing people?  Why get all anal about the Sabbath when miracles are being done?  But then I read Jeremiah 17.  I’ll spare you the whole chapter, but let’s look at a few verses, starting with 21-23:

Thus says the Lord: Take care for the sake of your lives, and do not bear a burden on the Sabbath day or bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem.  And do not carry a burden out of your houses on the Sabbath or do any work, but keep the Sabbath day holy, as I commanded your fathers.  Yet they did not listen or incline their ear, but stiffened their neck, that they might not hear and receive instruction. 

Ok, well that’s pretty explicit.  But maybe it wasn’t that big of a deal.  I wonder what would happen to people if they didn’t keep the Sabbath?  Let’s check verse 27:

But if you do not listen to me, to keep the Sabbath day holy, and not to bear a burden and enter the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day, then I will kindle a fire in its gates, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem and shall not be quenched.

Yikes!  So scripture VERY CLEARLY tells them to not do any work or carry any burdens on the Sabbath, unless they want their city destroyed by fire.  Do you understand the Pharisees a bit better now?  If I took those passages literally, had no other context of understanding, and saw Jesus doing his thing on the Sabbath, I’m pretty sure I would join with the Pharisees and ask Jesus, “can’t you do these things on another day?”

How did Jesus deal with the contradiction? In Matthew 12:11-12, he says,

Which one of you who has a sheep, if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out?  Of how much more value is a man than a sheep!  So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.

  And in Mark 2:27, Jesus says,

The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.  So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.

This is powerful, and a complete departure from previous interpretations of scripture.  Before, scripture was seen as the value holder, with people deriving their value from their obedience to what it taught.  Jesus flips this concept on its head by restoring value to the person.  If something has to bend, he would rather bend the law in order to love/help/heal a person than try to bend that persons needs around the commandment.  That doesn’t mean that the old commandments are meaningless.  But the reason that the commandments matter and the new lens through which we view them are rooted in the revelation that it is humanity that holds the greatest value in God’s heart.

Jesus never says the Sabbath is bad.  He says that the Sabbath was made for man.  While it was written down in commandment language, what if we revisited it with our new understanding?  I think it would read something like this:

You work very hard, and your work is important.  Especially when you are behind on what needs to be done, it can be easy to put everything aside and just keep working.  But you mean so much more to me than what you do.  I know it can be difficult to slow down, but I want you to make time and space for yourself to breathe.  Rest in me.  Remember my goodness.  Enjoy your family.  Recharge.  Your work will still be there when you are finished, but you will be able to approach it with a new energy that will actually increase your productivity without enslaving you to the rat race.  Trust me, I know what is good for you.

What do you think?  If God’s primary focus is not the Sabbath, or the Law, or Scripture itself…if WE are the value holders that God is willing to bend heaven and earth to reconcile with himself, how does that change how we see ourselves?  How does that change how we treat other people?  How does that change how we read scripture?  I would love to hear your thoughts!

Where Sin Abounds

“but where sin increased, grace was carefully balanced with teachings of God’s judgment and fear of condemnation in order to ensure that repentance was genuine” – Romans 5:20…oh wait, that’s not what it says!

 

Romans 5:20 actually says, “…but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more…”

 

This is confusing to our way of thinking. As humans, most of us have learned to use whatever power we have in order to manipulate other people’s behavior. Parents withhold privileges from children, bosses threaten to fire employees, and friends threaten the relationship itself (“If you don’t _______ I’ll never talk to you again.”) all in the name of changing the other person’s behavior. And since God has all the power, we would assume that he would know how to use it to get what he wants. But that’s not God’s way!

 

John 13:3-5 (ESV) says,

 

“Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him.” (emphasis my own)

 

It is exactly in the place of knowing who he is and how much power he has that Jesus chooses to be a servant. Rather than using his position to control our behavior, he loves us in our frailty. He humbly approaches even our most embarrassing weaknesses, not to condemn, but to wash away our shame.

 

This type of love offends. This type of love confuses. This type of love draws all of God’s children back to their loving Father — a Father who will never leverage their relationship in order to control, but who will always give of himself until you are made whole.

Genuine Love

“Let love be genuine…..” -Romans 12:9a

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The world does not need our best imitation of love.  It really just needs love.  I think most of us read what the bible tells us love looks like, then try our best to live that way.  We think the Christian life is about learning what is right and what is wrong, then trying to do right and avoid wrong.  The problem with all of our effort is that it is not genuine!  Sure, we are genuinely trying to love, but since when have hearts responded to attempted love?  If your dad told you, “I’m trying really hard to love you”, it wouldn’t feel too good.  You wouldn’t be impressed by his obedience.  You would probably wonder, “why is it so difficult to love me?” 

For too long we have been trying so hard to love, and trying so hard to obey while remaining ignorant of where true love comes from.  So what should we do?  How can we learn to love?

This is the mystery. It is why we so desperately need to escape our rational, canned theology — and rediscover Jesus.  We must look deeper than the historical Jesus, because Jesus isn’t trapped in history, and we need to look further than theology because knowing God isn’t a matter of carefully structured definitions and tidy explanations.  We need to open our hearts to discover and encounter the God who was, but also is!  We need to recognize that the Jesus of the past is not dead, but alive and knowable!

In the bible, we can read about how Jesus healed the sick, welcomed the little children, forgave the sinners, and gladly associated with the outcasts.  How loved he must have made people feel!  Can you imagine what it would have felt like to be the object of his affection?  But here is the good news.  You don’t have to limit yourself to imagining what it would have been like.  Because the Jesus who died is also the Jesus who rose, you don’t have to limit yourself to knowing Jesus from a distance.  Jesus still is the God who heals, the God who forgives, and the God who welcomes.  He is that for you right now!  

While fear and guilt may motivate you to try, only experiencing love as the object of affection has the power to awaken true love. Ask Jesus to remind you who he is. Read the Gospels not merely as a historical document but as a revelation of the character of the God who still is.  Soak in how loved and accepted you are.  In this place, you will find love. Then go out and set the world on fire with the same genuine, unadulterated love!

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“This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.” 1 John 4:10 (NLT)

Can The World Be Saved?

Take it from someone who has struggled with depression and anxiety for much of his life: There is SO MUCH HOPE!

The madness of our age is the blindness of our own eyes to see the potential in humanity. It is fashionable in Christian circles to look out on the masses and be overwhelmed by the sin and confusion and pain. Sad headshakes and weary “if only” statements are as commonplace as saying “amen” to end a prayer. Though rarely expressed in words, our pessimism would suggest that the victory of the cross is a loss-reduction strategy at best. As if the cross has no power to redeem and rescue, but merely to forestall the inevitable disappointment and destruction of all but a few. In our neutered gospel it would seem that the first Adam has retained his right to define humanity, while the second Adam has been commissioned to make a big show but little difference. This is a far cry from Romans 5, which portrays the new Adam as being of far greater consequence than the first Adam. In verses 17-18 it proclaims,

“For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, MUCH MORE will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for ALL MEN, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for ALL MEN.” (emphasis my own)

2 Corinthians 5:14-16a says,

“For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for ALL, therefore ALL have died; and he died for ALL, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

From now on, therefore, we regard NO ONE according to the flesh…”

It’s time for us to stop predicting what only our natural eyes can see. Yes, there are dangers and there is darkness, but there is also something greater.

When the Israelites saw only a harsh desert, God saw the place where he would give water, food, provision, and direction to his people. When Jesus’ disciples saw only two small fish and five loaves of bread, God saw a feast that would feed the multitudes.

So today when we look at the challenges of our age, let’s see them through the lens of redemption. Let’s look at the world around us not as hopelessly lost, but as already found and included. Let’s learn to declare these unseen realities to our own souls, and let’s learn to declare them to the world. Redemption is not finished with us yet. Not by a long shot!

Heartbreak

Here’s an old journal entry I recently stumbled across.  I don’t remember the specifics of the situation, but obviously I was hurting pretty bad!  I’m sure I was only writing to try and process the pain, but what came out was an anchor for the brokenhearted.  I hope it encourages you!

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Heartbreak. This is the hardest state that I know of. In almost every other state good advice would be to “follow your heart”…but when your heart is torn into multiple pieces, all crying out for some sort of extreme action, what do you do? Do you bury things? Or do you let everything come out and wound the people around you? Do you cry, or find funny things to laugh at? What do you do when it hurts? This has been an enigma for me. My standard reaction to heartbreak is to withdraw and embrace self-destructive behavior. But what am I going to do now? What is the answer for a broken heart?

Acceptance. I accept that what happened, happened. I accept that what happened is not ok. I accept that I don’t know what to do, and I accept that I am perfectly acceptable in this place. This is where religion will destroy you, but God will lift you up…because if there is any distance that needs to be spanned in order to meet God, he might as well be a million miles away. When my heart is broken, I don’t need guilt, shame, or to analyze what portion of the blame I should be assigned. I don’t need to wonder if God is angry at me, or have any insecurity in that relationship. I need the God who is here.

I accept that God is here. In the midst of the chaos and the pain, and the rush of contradictory and violent emotions that flood through my being, I know that He is here, and His heart is big enough to hold me when my own cannot. So it’s not about what I do. It’s not about whether I shout or I cry, isolate myself or find comforters, lash out at others or numb myself and move on. When my heart is broken it is not about what I do, it is the knowledge that who I am is acceptable, that He sees me, He knows me, and He permits no dark cloud to hide me from his affection. Even the darkness is as noon to Him, and it is He that holds my days as well as my nights. I am allowed to feel what I feel without guilt because these feelings are just passing through. They are just temporary sounds that cannot silence the symphony of love that surrounds me.

It is God who gives life to my heart, and when it is healthy, it is my hearts beat that moves me to the rhythms of his grace. But when it is broken and no longer able to lead, I let my heart go on bypass and let his heart fill my veins. His heart is worthy to the task!

God’s Righteousness Revealed

What follows is an entry from my journal.  I delayed sharing it because I thought it might be too controversial.  It is hard enough for us to accept God’s forgiveness, but to accept ourselves as perfect (in biblical language: righteous) feels like dangerous heresy!  But as scandalous as it may appear, by his own actions, God has declared us righteous.

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” -2 Corinthians 5:21

“For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.  Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” -Romans 5:17-19

This is not a polished blog post, just honest thoughts. I hope it inspires your own mediation on your redeemed perfection!

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I am at home with who I am! Matters of the heart can take years to resolve, and the mind can have long since accepted something that the heart continues to ignore. I knew that I was forgiven. I got that. But now to see that I am perfect….wow! I am perfect. And so are you! There is no fatal flaw, no bug, no mistake in our beings. We are as we were meant to be, and we were meant to be godlike! I am safe because I am known and trusted. I’m trusted not based on my past behavior, but based on my true nature. Who I am is trustworthy! Who I am fits into who he is with perfect ease. There is no need to try to shove a square peg in a round hole, and no need for Jesus to pretend he’s us so that the Father can tolerate us. We are not righteous by a shell game, or by some substitutionary trick…we are righteous first by design, and second by redemption.

At creation, God made man and woman, and said that we were “very good”. He said that we were made in His image. We were his children. Yet at the fall we get this sense that there must be some mistake. The fact that Adam and Eve sinned means they must have had some flaw. Then Adam and Eve had children who had children who had children who had children, down through the line this sense of inadequacy continued. We believed ourselves to be inadequate, we acted badly, and then used our bad actions to prove our inadequacy, thus trapping us in the sinner’s catch-22. A good metaphor would be the common racist attitudes that many white people had (and perhaps still have) towards black people. We enslaved them because we decided they were subhuman, didn’t educate them because they weren’t worth it, and didn’t empower them because they were not smart enough. Then when these uneducated, unequipped people acted uneducated and unequipped, we used that as proof of the inferiority of their race. What many whites did to many blacks is what the cycle of sin has done to all of humanity. We sin because we believe we are damaged, imperfect, only human, then use the fact that we sinned as evidence of being damaged, imperfect, and only human. Our belief produces an action that proves the belief…but does that make it true?

With Jesus, we finally get some clarity! At the cross we see all of mankind failing Jesus.  In killing Jesus religion sacrificed love to maintain control, politics did the necessary evil to maintain the status quo, the crowds who worshiped a hero gladly crucified a villain, and the radicals — the Jesus lovers, the sold out believers — ran and hid for cover. At the cross is the utter failure of humanity to do anything right! Surely, if nothing else, it once again proves our belief that we are inadequate, imperfect, broken? Surely this proves God made a mistake? And yet in our worst showing of all time, when humanity condemned our hope to death on a cross, the words “forgive them” and “it is finished” preceded a resurrection from the dead! And what did the resurrected hope do? He found his friends, empowered them, and let them loose to declare the forgiveness of sins and redemption of mankind to the ends of the earth! It turns out that even at our worst, God counts us worthy of the precious blood of Jesus! It turns out that while the fall distorted our understanding and distanced us in our hearts from knowing God, sin did not have the same affect on God! Even while our hearts and minds were in hiding because of our guilt and shame, God was ever loving us and valuing us according to the incredible worth he gave us at creation! If we were perfect then, we are perfect now! Sin did not change our nature, it only darkened our understanding!

In beginning to see this and accept this, I am finding freedom from self-suspicion. While religion promotes ruthless self-analysis as a means of rooting out sin, it turns out that finding oneself forgiven and redeemed restores innocence, and innocence is a much stronger power than self-suspicion! Forgiveness frees us from guilt so that we can enjoy God instead of hiding….and this is good! Discovering that there is nothing wrong with you enables you to make no more excuses, and to no longer assume the worst of yourself. Sin is not a fruit of my nature, only a fruit of a darkened mindset! As I feast on my true nature and the perfect fellowship I share with Jesus, I am unwittingly inoculating myself from the dangers of temptation. Childlike innocence is the greatest defense!

Counterintuitive

 

Many important truths are the opposite of what would seem logical. Our logic puts confidence in what it can control and distrusts freedom. Our reasoning finds comfort in what it can understand and avoids the naked wonder of the unknown. Our values see the sacrifice of a few (soldiers, refugees, the generic “others”) as being necessary for the benefit of the many.

Then a child was born. A hope dawned. And our logic was exposed for its folly. When the Son of God laid down his control in order to free those that religion and respectable society oppressed. When Jesus preached in such a way that many left confused and with more questions than they had ever had…but also found their diseases healed and their hearts touched by love. And when the One for whom and through whom all things were made chose to die at the hands of violent men rather than forge a human kingdom in the necessary sacrifice of others. At this time, all that humanity had discarded as too weak, too sentimental, too emotional, too unrealistic turned out to be the very force that overcame the darkness of the human condition.

It turns out that when love is killed, it grows. When grace is given, purity is born. Now those of us who never sought God have been found by him, and those of us who fought against him have been given the place of honor at his victory feast! Only the logic of God would benefit the vanquished as much as the victor!

So cheers to the counterintuitive hope that is ours! Today we celebrate a child that was born. Today we rejoice in the son that was given!

“…and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end.” -Isaiah 9:6b-7

Seeing The Face of God

Jesus is not an anomaly in the nature of God. He is the revelation of who God really is. As John said in his gospel,

“No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he [Jesus] has made him known.” – John 1:18 (ESV)

Keep in mind that John said this after the Old Testament had been completed and accepted as scripture. According to John, in the entire Old Testament era, no one had ever seen God. They may have heard his booming voice or seen miracles that he had accomplished, but the face of God remained veiled. Before Jesus, man inferred who God was from incomplete information. These inferences became doctrines, and these doctrines became the litmus test against which all other ideas about God were compared.

When the face of God came and revealed himself to those with the purest doctrine, they almost unanimously condemned him. Jesus failure to affirm their religious hierarchy, his insistence on doing good at religiously improper times (the Sabbath), and his willingness to associate with those deemed “unclean” all failed the litmus test of what God was supposed to be like, so those who most diligently looked for God ended up being the ones who most viciously opposed him.

Unfortunately, bad doctrines about God continue to obscure our understanding, even within the Christian faith. The most common failure has been in our attempt to reconcile the pre-Jesus concept of God with what Jesus revealed. Instead of recognizing that who Jesus is both precedes and supersedes all other ideas about God, we turn God into a divided character, with “God” still maintaining his wrathful distance and his inability to exist in the presence of sin. In order to fix God’s problem (This God has a real conundrum. “I love them so I want to rescue them, but I’m holy so I want to destroy them…”), Jesus came to stand in-between man and God, so that God wouldn’t see nasty people he wants to destroy, but Jesus who he loves.

Thank God (the real one!!) that the truth is much, much better than that! Because Jesus didn’t come to fix a confused God’s problem as if God was the one who needed saving!…He came to deal with man’s problem.

God has never had an issue with being around sinful men.  Do you remember in the Garden of Eden how God came out to walk with Adam and Eve, and it was Adam and Eve who hid from him?  It is mankind in our guilt who can’t stand to come before God. We just know that we’ve blown it, that we don’t measure up to all of the perfection that God represents, and the idea of approaching such perfection only reminds us of the areas that we have been imperfect. We are terrified to expose ourselves to the all-powerful God, so running and hiding is our only alternative. Believing that the intimacy we crave is hopelessly out of reach (and yet by design being incapable of being satisfied by anything less) we look for everything and anything else that promises to fulfill us. We are like a starving person who only has toxic garbage at his disposal.  He crams his mouth full with food that will alleviate his hunger for only a moment, but which leaves him vomiting, emaciated and even more desperate for food than he was before. In the self-hatred that we lavish on ourselves for being so weak as to be endlessly seduced by things that demean and never satisfy, we project our feelings onto God, imagining that he views us through the same lens that we view ourselves.

The Good News is that Jesus reveals what God is actually like…and it turns out that God values you entirely apart from your messed up behaviour! When confronted with sickness, old god would have said “you sinned, so you deserve to be sick”, but the God Jesus reveals says, “be healed!”. When a person is caught in adultery, the old god would publicly humiliate you and have you stoned to death, but the God Jesus reveals stands by you and says “I won’t condemn you. Now go and sin no more.”. When judgment time came and it was time to deal with all of the world’s sins, old god would have tortured and destroyed the guilty, but the God Jesus reveals says, “Forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing!”. And when old God would have gladly punished sin from a safe distance, the God Jesus reveals took all of mankind’s sin upon himself and died in our place! That’s what God is actually like! Jesus has shown us! He is not the magical potion that obscures us from God so that we can somehow get close, he is the Message God most urgently wants to communicate to humanity…that all of the wrong we have done has been utterly powerless to remove us from his heart. He loves us as much as he did when he first dreamed us up! While we have grown distant in our hearts and minds, he has never been far from us! We are, in fact, his temple…his favourite place to live! He is pleased to dwell in us!

I pray that your eyes will be opened to see Jesus as he is, and in seeing Jesus that your eyes will recognize the true nature of God himself! Then you will boldy approach him, enjoy him, and receive all the help you need!

Never Less. Always More.

Never less. Always more. That is who Jesus is. That is why I dig deeper. I have seen scripture used to box Jesus within our ability to understand. Jesus becomes limited,”He loves you, but….”, and we become experts at explaining why Jesus would not, instead of discovering what Jesus would. When we first dug into scripture, it was to find more. Now we have made it less.

 I have also seen those who depart from the dogmatism of tightly controlled theology into the open grasslands of a boundless God. This is a great place to be!  But then the revelation of a God of Universal Love degrades into a God of universal definition. Whatever you want Him to be, He is. Jesus becomes just one of many revelations. Our once beautiful recognition that God has broken through every culture to reveal himself (at least a little), has shrunk to a place where all paths are true, and thus all paths lead nowhere. We have forgotten the very reason we journeyed to the open fields.  It was not because every path was the same, but because the One who called us refused to be boxed by our understanding. It was because He was greater, not less.

So dig in scripture, not to find the laws by which we can find God or the rigid lines with which to define Him, but to see the God who constantly challenges our judgments and traditions…a God who is more interested in loving the normal person in obscurity than putting on a show for the masses. A God who has exploded our tiny, conditional understanding of mercy with rivers of blood that give innocence to even the most guilty. Dig in the scriptures, and discover the Jesus who is more, never less! And don’t stop there! Journey into the uncharted territory and untraveled paths that the religious box has prevented others from visiting. See the beauty in creation, and see the beauty in all people. Allow yourself to value the Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Athiest alike. Open your heart to the rich and the poor, the educated and simple, the weak and the strong. Learn from them, recognizing that God deposits wisdom in unlikely places. See them all as God’s beloved children because that is what they are, whether they know it or not! And in this place, allow Jesus to grow far beyond your greatest imagination as the God who isn’t helping us to build a better box of understanding so that we can be at peace, but as a God who gives us peace in the midst of the unknown. Discover the Jesus who is not the means to a greater end, but who is the Means and the End all wrapped up in One.  Discover the Way the Truth and the Life in His infinite shades and textures!

Never allow your frame of understanding to diminish who He is, but dig deeper and scale higher. He is always greater than your most profound revelation. Discover the Jesus who is always more, never less.

Politics, Religion and the Kingdom of the Heart

The time of Jesus (as well as the next 40 years or so after his death and resurrection) was very tumultuous and confusing for Israel. Foreign occupiers who didn’t believe in God and at times committed sacrilege according to the Jewish faith were the ruling power. The “king” of Israel (actually the tetrarch of Galilee and Perea to be specific!) was only partly Jewish and spent much of his childhood being educated in Rome. He was Jewish for political purposes, but really nothing more than a Roman puppet. Judea (which includes Jerusalem) wasn’t even under the Jewish leader’s rule but fell to a Roman governor.

The religious authorities walked a tightrope, attempting to preserve religious traditions and maintain control of the Jewish people while being careful not to challenge Roman rule in the fear that Rome would take away the special religious rights that it had given to the Jewish people. In this time of compromise and political intrigue, there were the teachers of the Jewish law who lamented Israel’s compromised position and who taught the law especially strictly in order that the Jewish people would maintain their faith and identity in the midst of the corrupting influence of Roman culture. At this same time, there were the zealots, who saw absolute freedom from the Roman occupiers as the most important concern. These men would often mount guerrilla attacks and stir up mobs against the Romans.

In this tense environment, it was impossible to not be caught up in the chaos of the day. Rumours of the Romans desecrating the temple or of the cultural corruption of the nation were all over Facebook (or whatever 1st-century website people used for gossip), and opinions were split on what should be done. Should the people join fighting units to drive out the occupiers? Should they be grateful for the partial religious freedom they still enjoyed and find a way to coexist? Should they follow a certain preacher who teaches about strict religious observances over politics, or should they listen to the preachers who remind them of the gallant battles of past days when Israel triumphed over her enemies? Should they wait for the prophesied messiah who would deliver them from oppression? If so, which of the many voices speaking might prove to be him? Or should they once and for all delete their Facebook accounts and ignore it all? Maybe they should just make a living and support their families?

Is it any wonder that people didn’t get Jesus? With so many serious problems that needed resolution, he seemed hopelessly out of touch.

When the Jewish faith needed teachers who would rigorously uphold the law, Jesus at times seemed like he would fit. Certainly he didn’t preach against the law, and his sermon on the mount clearly calls for a purity not only of the body but even of the heart. But then he goes and eats and drinks with sinners. And talks alone with a foreign woman who a proper Israelite wouldn’t even say “hello” to. Then he allows a morally bankrupt woman to clean his feet with her hair, and touches lepers and other people the law declare “unclean”. Jesus seemed to not understand the pressing need Israel had for a return to pure religion. To those looking for religious salvation, he was far too friendly with outcasts to be considered.

When the zealots needed a popular leader who could unite their nation and take it back from Roman oppressors, Jesus again seemed like a possibility. He had a large following among the common people, and rumours were spreading that he was indeed the messiah. He performed countless miracles that seemed to show he had favour with God (either that or he had a demon, as some said), and if God would favour him to heal, surely He would also favour him to fight and win like He had with other leaders in the past. But then this Jesus seemed to be completely inept at leading people. A good leader knows how to direct his popularity towards achieving a common goal, but Jesus just allowed all of his influence to be wasted, even working against his own popularity by teaching strange things (like something about eating his flesh??) and allowing even tax collectors, who collaborated with the Romans to extort money from the Jews, to be part of his inner circle. To the zealot looking for political salvation, Jesus was just too impractical and poor at leadership to lead a movement.

Even after his resurrection and appearance before his disciples, proving his identity as the Son of God, he acted so strangely. With an imperishable body, why didn’t he just claim authority? Why didn’t he march back into Jerusalem and declare himself king? No one could have stopped him, and seeing the man who was killed before such an audience back among the living surely would have encouraged belief! But instead, he disappears again, leaving only the promise of the “Holy Spirit” to help the flesh and blood that are left to pick up the pieces.

While we now have the hindsight of history to shed some light on what Jesus was (and perhaps still is?) up to, at the time it seemed that he made a complete waste of his influence, authority and position. The corrupt religious institutions of his day WERE a big problem…why didn’t he sort that out? Why not sit as high priest in Jerusalem? The oppressive and often murderous regime that ruled Israel was a huge problem! Why not fix things by taking charge himself?

But you see, in Jesus mind, it has never been about politics. Or religious purity. No, Jesus is the King of another world. He is King of the heart. This is no secondary kingdom…it is the only kingdom that really matters! Because whatever puppet is sitting on whatever political throne and writing whatever clever law, it is in the heart of each person that love, hope and the promise of change can be awakened. A politician can make it illegal to use certain drugs, and people will adjust and find secret ways of using said drugs, but it is in the kingdom of the heart that Jesus gives us an identity as sons and daughters of God. It is in the heart that he awakens our union with Christ! This produces a deep and often euphoric peace that is far superior to the best drugs. A politician can tell us not to murder, but it is in the heart that we become recipients of an unquenchable love that births in us a love of the same kind; a love that gives and forgives. Such a heart cannot murder! A politician may tell us that we can kill our unborn children, but it is in the heart that God’s sacrificial love for us enables and impassions us to lay down our lives for our children, however inconvenient and difficult it may be! Likewise, a preacher or pastor can tell us to pray more, but it is in the heart that desire and love for God are awakened, and a heart that has been awakened needs no other compulsion to pray! Another religious leader may teach permissive sexuality to better match the prevailing culture, but it is in the heart that sexual desire is reunited with restored identity and selfless love, and it is to such a heart that committed love no longer restricts sexuality, but perfectly partners with and enhances it!

Jesus is everything he says he is. Don’t be fooled by his apparent silence and don’t be distracted by the pressing issues of today. If he is quiet, it is because he is calling you to be quiet with him. Maybe it is in the midst of the political or religious “valley of the shadow of death” through which you are now passing that he is calling you to walk “beside still waters and restore your soul”. Maybe he is awakening something in the depth of your heart that will banish fear and heal wounds. Maybe he is restoring your heart to a place where your inner life is no longer at the mercy of external events. Maybe he is birthing in you a kingdom. It may appear out of touch or insignificant when compared to the much louder worlds that surround you…but it is in the kingdom of the heart that you will find the life and purpose and love that you are afraid to even hope for. It is in the kingdom of the heart that you will learn what love is, and begin to receive and give it freely. It is in this kingdom that you will begin to change the world around you…not because you have found a way to harness your influence or attract a following, but because one who has been awakened cannot help but awaken others.

Let us join Jesus in becoming out of touch, impractical and confusing. Let us waste our influence, lose our moral superiority and throw away our standing or appearance of purity that “good people” so value. Let us love and embrace people of questionable morals. Let us be counted as drunkards and gluttons because of it! Let us gain popularity only to lose it by our strange behaviour. Let us leave those who don’t understand us utterly bewildered! Let us welcome the King of our hearts to awaken whatever beautiful madness he wants to! Whatever dignity we lose in this world will be worth it. Who needs respect when you have joy? Who needs reputation when you are beloved children of God? Who needs politics and religion when you have a kingdom of the heart?