All of these – mortgage payments, car payments, utility bills, insurance premiums, internet charges, cell phones and their contracts, cable fees, taxes, Credit Card payments – real time evidences we are living in a physical world that demands our timely co-operation via our bank accounts. We are fully immersed in this as our ‘reality’ and in the cold hard truth that our forgetting or refusal to ‘participate’ has cold hard consequences.
Then, into the every-day-ness of our existence, comes Jesus to introduce us to a new reality, a spiritual reality, a no-hidden-fees reality into which we’ve been invited all-expenses-paid, an always-another-forgiveness reality. The sticking point is the stark contrast between the two. The one we know and the one that is totally ‘other’ have no crossover. The familiar one is charismatic, smiling, friendly, gracious – that is, until financial commitments go unmet. That’s when ‘the other shoe’ drops. (The new reality presented by Jesus doesn’t wear shoes).
Jesus speaks of simply trusting and having faith and believing in him. And leaning into him. A lovely, and tempting, picture but it appears necessary to flip the two realities, upending the old and establishing Jesus’ reality as the more real one. In his prayer to the Father, Jesus would agree: “I have given them your Logos and now the world hates them because they have lost their manipulative, performance-based hold over them – these now know that they did not originate in the cosmos but in the logos, even as I did not begin in the cosmos. I do not request that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the evil performance-based system of hardships, labors and annoyances . . . I sanctify myself to be high above the cosmos-system so that their true set apart-ness will be mirrored in me.”John 17:14,15,19, MIRROR.
As good citizens of this world we know things which by (this world’s) definition, gives us power. As citizens of this new world, we know Jesus who centers us, grounds us, in his love. Remember Jesus’ surprise in talking with Nicodemus? This scholar of the Scriptures didn’t understand the difference between physical birth and spiritual birth. In other words, Nicodemus was blind to the truth that he (his soul) didn’t originate in the cosmos but in God (John 3). This, too, is the obstacle we face. We ‘know’ from the world’s system, that we are flawed, broken, shameful, guilty, unworthy. We are called by Jesus to the unveiled truth of his world, that we are redeemed, whole, the righteousness of God, fully adopted, forever forgiven, beautiful heirs of his Kingdom. Whoa!
Let’s join the desperate father in crying out: “[We] do believe. But help [us] overcome [our] unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). Looking forward to seeing all you 21st Century, still learning disciples tomorrow 10 AM, 3 PM UK, 4 PM FR, ES. PD
