In our college gathering last night, a brand new theological concept was uncovered for me by an 18 year old young man. We're at the point in our evolution (didn't mean to use evolution in a church context) where we're hammering out the ideas and values that will hopefully give structure and direction to where God is leading us. I've been amazed at the process, and I really believe that God's doing a cool thing. See my 1st blog for all the specifics of that...
So last night we're going through the first part of Acts 2. The one where the apostles speak in tongues. It was fun to watch the 4 baptist kids squirm when I told them we were going to talk about the gift of tongues. They were soon off the hook. But the conversation turned to how God used these apostles to speak in the tongues of the listeners. God is a God who wants to be heard, and He doesn't make it difficult... even to the point of miraculously giving your language to someone else if needs be. We used that as a jumping off point to go to 1 Corinthians 9, "I have become all things to all people so that I may by all means save some." We wrestled with that a great deal. College students who grew up deep in the teeth of churches and have seen a great many things, heard a great many things, and in many ways been absolutely steeped in the traditions, beliefs, and practices of the church truly wrestled.
Their fears were well grounded... do we compromise? Do we become like people so that we can turn them into us? Doesn't that make the one's we're emulating like little projects? Who wants to be a project? The conversation was beautiful. Then, this young man in the corner spoke up, "I don't think it means I have to be a crack addict or a prostitute, but I think it means that I need to be accessible to those people."
It's such a simple word, but it's rich with implication. The concept weighed on me all night and even into this morning. Above all things, Jesus was accessible. Above all things, Jesus (the accessible one) made God accessible. That is what made the Pharisees so infuriated, a man who claimed to be holy and righteous... accessible to prostitutes, thieves, the dregs of society. Not only accessible, but available as well. The God who Isaiah saw as High and Exalted made Himself accessible to every man in Jerusalem during Pentecost. They didn't have to find their way to Him, He made His story accessible to them. Beautiful.
In my quieter moments, I wrestle with this. I don't have a hard time believing Christ's divinity. That's the kind of God I want. It's His humanness that shakes me up. It's His accessibility. His flesh means that I can't explain away my faults and foibles. If Jesus had stayed in heaven and shouted through a megaphone, "clean up your act bubba!!" I could have cried "UNFAIR!!" Instead, He came and said, "Come to me if your weary and burdened. I'll give you rest."
The rub of it all, is that those moments of realization are when I need His accessibility the most. When I see Him as most holy, most perfect, most different from me in every way, that's when He comes and seems closest. It's a paradox that I don't understand. It's a mystery that my brain doesn't wrap around, but it's just like my humble God to reveal Himself to an 18 year old kid who tries his hardest to know and understand Him. And it's just like His grace, to use that young man to make Himself further accessible to me.
May today be a day for you, of unhindered accessibility with the Almighty.
About Me
- Jason Powers
- As the self-proclaimed and happy-to-meet-you Small Group zealot at River City Community Church, my hope is that this page will make you laugh, learn, grow, smile, and most of all cherish the role you’ve been given to play in the Family. I believe Small Group leadership is the most strategic role in the local Church.
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3 comments:
Sorry, the above comment was error-prone... it is duplicated here in a much more premium form.
Yes! That's it! Our struggle is figuring out how to become an active, engaged, and open part of the world, without becoming a product of it. It's a tough one. There are those who withdraw themselves completely for "the secular" or "culture." We look at Jesus and his model and we can see the obvious flaw to that. Then you have those, that in their passion for the world around them, become just like them; hopeless, bitter, and self-absorbed. We are called to Walk the Line (thanks Johnny). We are called to live as a part of the place and world we are in (no matter how much we wish to argue, we are as much a part of the shaping of the world and culture in the here and now as MTV). We are called to do this subversively. Not treating people as projects, but treating people as human beings permeated with our God and creator, with rich spiritual histories (or non-spiritual histories) waiting to be told the story, infused with hope, turned inside-out with love. THAT is different from the world around us. THAT is the kind of underground, subversive revolution and Kingdom of love and selflessness that Chrsit talked about. Can I make a recommendation based on some of the tangents it sounds like you hit on? At the UBC website, there are sermons available for download. Kyle did a series called "revangelism" that really articulated a lot of what this might look like. Hit it up if you get a chance.
I'll be there faster than you can say antidisestablishmentarianisnm.
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