In his very punchy book (which I thoroughly enjoyed), Dirty Glory, pp. 54-57, Pete Greig wrote about the tendency to stray from the central truth of Christianity and in his inimitable style, he expressed it like this:
The vision is Jesus. Dangerously, obsessively, undeniably Jesus. The point of prayer is not the power it releases but the person it reveals… I don’t pray because I’m into prayer. I pray because I’m into Jesus, so we talk. I don’t believe in the power of prayer. I believe in the power of Jesus, so I ask for his help. A lot. The vision is Jesus. Everything else is secondary… I’m not into worship, I’m into Jesus. So when I see him I smile, I bow and, OK I admit it, I sing a lot too. The vision is Jesus. Not Christianity… It might be healthier if we all just stopped being Christians for a bit – a week, a month, or even a year. We’re just too good at it. It has become habitual. Urgent voices are calling us to abandon the familiar comforts of Christendom, to strike out into the unknown and rediscover the Nazarene. We need a theophany, a rediscovery of the terror of his proximity. We are overfamiliar with holy things.
That quote re-appeared this week in the online Lectio 365 prayer devotional that he writes. I was convicted, again, of the oh so seductive power of our culture and Western creature comforts. You know, that old hankering to return to Egypt for onions and garlic (and brutal slavery). Especially at Easter time, dark chocolate bunnies and chocolate-covered buttercream eggs and those yummy hot cross buns and . . . But are these Easter?
This is Holy Week, the last seven days of this season of Lent and the final hours leading to Jesus’ crucifixion. It is also every believer’s celebration of the ultimate week of the ages-long domination of sin and death. There is no other week on our calendars more poignant, no other week that better defines the bedrock of our faith. The simple sentence, ‘Jesus died for our sins,’ is like a divine PDF file, holding tons of compressed, non-editable truth, permanent, legal documentation of our new freedom, needed forgivenesses, and next-to-Jesus-forever life; all provisions that are ‘more precious than silver . . . more costly than gold . . . more beautiful than diamonds.’ (from More Precious than Silver, worship song by Lynn De Shazo).
This is a week that provides an opportunity for us to dwell on the unspeakably glorious gift of forgiveness and freedom and life offered us by the crucified and resurrected Messiah, Jesus, our Savior. Let’s turn down the noise, take a few things off the daily must-do list, create some breathing space, and allow our hearts to revel in him, our Gift. The vision is Jesus. PD
Don graduated from Regent University in 1988 and moved to France for seven years, coming back to the US briefly to marry Sue in 1990. The work in France included working in a Christian School and helping plant a church before returning in 1995. He’s been pastor of Peninsula Vineyard since 1999. He enjoys counseling, especially married couples, traveling back to France (with Sue), reading, doing Sudoku puzzles and sleuthing out good, dark chocolate. Don serves as the senior pastor of the Vineyard Church Peninsula, in Newport News, Virginia.