Was it Abraham and Sarah's choices that made a nation, a people, a world where a poor teenage Judean girl could answer an angel? Yes, I am the Lord's slave. May it be to me according to your word. Or was it all God acting, directing, intervening? Yes. And yes, God has willed and designed his creation to be partnership. That is something we have to reckon with every day. A covenant includes two parties and that's the world you live in. The story you've received that is not yet finished, that has come and is coming. And the fulcrum of righteousness is partnership, and trust, and passivity is never an option.
What is church about? Why does it matter? Does it matter? What are we attempting to communicate? What are we attempting to say to one another? What are we attempting to say to ourselves? And what are we attempting to say and demonstrate to a hurting world?
There is no one like our God!
But when you think about it for a second, you think about what would have to be true about the world for us all to be walking around naked and feel no shame. What would have to be true about the world? What would have to be true about us for us to live unguarded, unshielded, fully transparent lives with each other? Well it would have to be a world where we were not a threat to each other, where we weren't always trying to manipulate and control each other. It would have to be a world of honor. A world of respect. A world of truth and humility. Not to mention, of course, it would have to be a world with really good weather and completely free of mosquitoes. And when you think about it, you realize that it is actually the perfect phrase to encapsulate the storyteller's opening scene of how God created a world that works. A world of harmony. A world of flourishing. A world where everything is as it should be. In short, it is the perfect phrase to describe this state of being that the biblical authors refer to as shalom, peace, universal flourishing, the way things ought to be.
We never outgrow the need for story. Yet we think we do, don't we? Especially when it comes to this book, we call the Bible. We have made it into a book of rules, rights and wrongs, and dos and don'ts. And yes, there are some rules that teach us how life works best, but if that is what the Bible is to us, we have missed the point altogether. We have made it into a book of character studies and history lessons or facts to be clung to and mastered. A book to be analyzed, dissected, and studied, and these have their place, but again, the Bible is not a textbook to be mastered.
“This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true. Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” – John 21:24-25
In the last two verses of John's gospel that I just read, John says in effect, I saw all of what I just wrote happen, and I wrote some of it down, and if every one of the things that Jesus did were written down there would not be enough room for all the books that would be written…Just think about what he's saying, my testimony is true, I saw it, I witnessed a lot of this, and if all that had been witnessed, or all that Jesus has ever done, would have been recorded in a book there aren't enough books in the world to record it all. See, he is pointing to Jesus not only as the rabbi he walked and talked with for three years. As a disciple, he's pointing to the Jesus of John 1:1 who, as it says, “In the beginning, the very beginning, was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He's pointing to Jesus as the One.
Inhale the victory of the cross and exhale the power of the resurrection. Maybe that gives us something in the thick of the suffering, down deep in the valley of suffering. Inhale the victory of the cross. Exhale the power of the resurrection. This is the way of the Christ follower.
And you know what strikes me in all this, as we reflect on this. What strikes me is that this is another one of those occasions where we begin to realize, or we realize again, the business of following Jesus or of living Christian is not some nice idea. It's not a paper transaction to avoid hell. It's not a religious distraction to pretend things are better than they are. Rather, the business of following Jesus and living Christian touches our real lives in every way. It is intensely and immensely practical. It's actually, the center of our lives. It reshapes us. It reorients us and reframes everything around us, including, believe it or not, the valley of suffering.
See, back in the beginning, when this whole thing started, Peter had gotten into this Jesus thing with the idea, with the dream of changing the world. Jesus comes and calls Peter with the promise, “Follow me, I will make you fishers of men.” Jesus had called him to serve, and for a while, Peter had been at the very center of the action. Life change was happening all around him. Miracles were happening. He was right there. Then he screwed up. Then he failed. And it is the question that haunts everyone who has ever failed. Is this the one? Is this the one that gets me benched? Is this the one that takes me out of the game, that relegates me to a spectator in the Kingdom of God, that sends me to the sidelines?
Friendships can be hard; that's just the simple point, they can be hard. We let each other down, we disappoint, we don't come through, we don't show up, we fail as friends, and some of our friends have failed us. And so, friendships in the real world will usually be a mixture of the good and the beautiful and the hard and the painful, but the resurrected Jesus, just by way of vision, models friendship that perseveres through the failure with grace and with the desire to reconcile.
Every person that professes to be a follower of Jesus Christ has a vocation and that vocation is bigger, more important, and more of a priority than our jobs or…
I believe Dallas Willard used to say, “a good practice was to doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs”; doubt your doubts, believe your beliefs. And when we stay immersed in Christian community, even in the midst of our doubts, that's a good way to do that. Because of course, by staying in community, right, the next time Jesus shows up, Thomas was there, and he was able to encounter the risen Christ. And when he did, he was willing to be wrong. When he sees Jesus, he bows at his feet and declares him "My Lord and my God." No doubt about it, I think if we're honest, we'd have to admit that sometimes we get stuck in our doubts because we don't want the humiliation of having to say, "I was wrong." Sometimes it's just safer to say, "I don't believe."