It's all about the Look

We live in a world that is saturated with selling, buying, creating, and re-creating personal image. Our culture promotes "consuming" products, resources, and people for our self-promotion and our self-actualization. We are bombarded with marketing techniques that attempt to convince us that we are entitled to "what ever makes us happy." Unfortunately this pursuit inevitably starves our soul, bloats our lusts, and desecrates the unique image of God we each possess. The entertainment and advertising industries have convinced us that image is everything. Little do they know they are absolutely correct.

The first chapter of Genesis makes it unmistakably clear that humanity is made in the "image" and "likeness" of God. Put simply, humanity was created with attributes and characteristics that reflect and radiate the nature and the essence of God. The esteem to which God holds his image bearers is evidenced by the invitation the creator of the universe offers humanity. He extends to them the opportunity to populate, oversee, and tend all that God had spoken into existence i.e. Chief Creation Officers (CCOs - not exactly starting in the mail room working our way up the everlasting corporate ladder). The picture portrayed is that of wholeness, peace, and unity between God, humanity, and all creation. God had one simple request of humanity if they were to be his CCOs - faith. God simply wanted humanity to believe that his vision for their life was superior to any they could imagine or put into practice.

But any family reunion or any news outlet attests that humanity chose to believe they were fully capable of handling human existence. Humanity chose to live life on their terms, a decision that would scar, fracture, and disfigure the image in which God made each of us.

God's response to our spiritual disfigurement was to reveal and to embody the true visage of himself and humanity. Within the person of Jesus, God animated the depth and breadth of his love and he displayed the true and original portrait of humanity. Colossians 1:15 states, "He [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation..." Put simply Jesus is at once the image of God and the image of all God's intentions for humanity. What could be more mysterious or more beautiful.

God yearns for each of us to reflect and to radiate his image now and for all of eternity. In order for us to be re-made, re-formed, or re-born into the image that he has always intended for us, we must embrace Jesus -the image of everlasting love, creativity, divinity, and even humanity. It is within the transformational embrace of Christ that we are assured of God's immeasurable love, inspired by his self-sacrifice, and empowered for a complete personal make over. God is all about image. His image is wrapped in humility and his look is crafted with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Whose image are we pursuing?

The Pants Police

On Monday of this past week I was getting my son out of the car in order to take him to preschool when an older church member pulled to a stop behind my car and rolled her window down. She began to inform me that I should not have worn jeans the day before while serving Communion. She let me know that she could not permit such a thing. I truly was speechless, but to her credit she was forthright and appropriate in her tone and demeanor. Needless to say, as the day progressed I became more incensed by her comments regardless of the manner in which they were shared. My frustration was becoming palpable for two specific reasons.

First she neglected to give me the benefit of the doubt. Rather than assuming that maybe there was a reason other than perceived "poor judgment" or "disrespect" that may have necessitated my wearing jeans, this individual failed to engage me as a person who has a family, thirty-six years of life experience, and a profound respect for the membership of our congregation and its leadership. Little did she know that I was wearing jeans because my house had literally flooded a week earlier while I was at our annual men's retreat and I had been living with my pregnant wife and two sons at a family member's home.

Some whom I have shared this story have told me that I could have explained to the member the predicament that necessitated my choice of wardrobe. It was a "teachable moment," but that is not the body of Christ nor the character of our Lord and Savior. As the body of Christ we are a community of sinners being redeemed and transformed by the love, mercy, and grace of the God who willingly became a homeless vagabond for our sake. God has never set before us any standard or criteria that we must meet before he could share with us his everlasting love. In fact the opposite is true. As Romans 5:8 states, "God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us." Or my translation, "While we were broken, battered, and wholly estranged from God, Jesus died for us." Yes while we were tattooed, pierced, cursing, and wearing jeans God came to us so that we could once again go to him.

The work of Christ on our behalf fuels the second aspect of my frustration. At our church we are in the midst of two integrated teaching and preaching series that are focused on the needs of our community and the marks of a missional church. In the latter series we are exploring the traits and characteristics of a church that is attempting to live beyond its walls. Subsequently we are studying in the former series the particular needs that are contronting our community so that our "mission," our "service," our "outreach" will be timely, appropriate, and effectual. You can imagine my sense of frustration when I became the direct recipient of a church member's inabillity to make the connection between our corporate teaching/preaching and her personal preference. We are immersed in probing and discerning the presence of Christ and the work of God in our community, yet within the body of Christ we are unable to demonstrate the foreberance, patience, and mercy that enabled us to become members of Christ's body. It is this inability to transfer the grace we have received that begins to explain in some measure why mainline churches like the United Methodists are hemorraging thousands of members each year.

The Incarnation: Part 2

As I stated in my previous post, the utter beauty and tragedy of the incarnation compels me towards a deeper faith and a messier ministry. To claim "faith" in Christ is to claim that one is willing to abandon all for the one who abandoned all. But what does this mean for daily living in our place and in our time? Does following Christ and patterning our lives after him necessitate universal personal and communal responses to human brokenness and need? Am I to be "nice" because I follow Jesus? Am I to be "passive" and "naive" because I want to live incarnationally? Do I unwittingly condone and enable unhealthy personal and institutional commitments because I want to love my neighbor as myself? These are difficult faith-in-action questions that have no easy answers. To say we live incarnationally is to say we attempt to love both our enemies and our loved ones in a manner that promotes rather than hinders the unique image of God they possess. Am I promoting the image of God in my neighbor who is struggling with substance abuse by providing them with resources that deny personal responsibility and promote dependency? Moreover am I as a church leader instituting systems within my church and my community that foster deeply entrenched patterns of personal and communal oppression in the name of "love," "compassion," or "outreach.?" The incarnation is not a once-for-all moment in time that can be relegated to writing a check, donating clothes, or participating in a short-term mission trip. The incarnation is a life-style modelled after Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit. It is a willful submission to carry another's cross through the mire and complexity of a world that both cries in anguish and rings with beauty. Living incarnationally means that we too place our bodies in a cruciform posture; at once reaching out with one hand towards the death and resurrection of Christ while with the other hand reaching towards the future when there will be no more mourning, death, crying, or pain. Our lives and our service to Christ meet at the intersection of these two realities. We too become broken bread and poured out wine praying, "Father forgive us for we know not what we do."