Within Christianity, there exists a stigma that believers have it all together. Like a responsive reading, the stock answer from the lips of churchgoers when asked, “How are you doing?” is ‘good,’ ‘well’ (the snobbish grammarian’s answer) or some variation thereof. Showing up in our button down’s and slacks, dresses and high heels, we show up for worship on Sunday sitting among a score of the like-minded “fine”, “blessed,” and “great.”
Now don’t read me saying that dressing up for church is wrong or being pleasant and friendly to those with whom you worship is not a good thing. Being hospitable is very much at the heart of Christianity But it is to misunderstand gathering as a people and uniting heart and voice in worship if all we know about the people to our right and left is that they are fundamentally “good.” Indeed, it is to misunderstand more than that, even the nature of humanity itself.
However, as fake as we might feel giving highlights of our week to an interested friend it doesn’t compare to the fear of having our deepest sins revealed to those around us. We don’t mention the fear gripping us since our husband lost his job three months previous. We don’t let on that our children are infuriating us. No matter the guilt we experience from acting like a hypocrite, the look on our friends’ face when we open up about how lonely we feel because our boyfriend/girlfriend broke up with us and we are developing a dangerous addiction is far worse.
As big a barrier as this antiseptic version of Christianity is to community among believers, the greater issue is that it has colored the way we view Jesus himself. Could you imagine the man in these pictures in over-100 degree heat and no showers?
In the mind’s eye of too many Christians, our savior looks like a composed, unaffected Harlequin novel character. Indeed, greatest among Jesus’ miracles must have been that in the midst of dusty roads and pressing crowds, walking miles daily with indoor plumbing about a millennium and a half years from being invented that not a hair of his head ever appears out of place. Seriously, he is a walking Pantene Pro-V commercial. Attended by bright faced children and innocent white lambs, this is a nice Jesus, a fine Jesus, a great Jesus.
When did the doctrine of Jesus’ impeccability mutate into this caricature only worthy of posing for Polo? I don’t know, but it could not be further from the biblical picture. Jesus is not a keep your distance kind of guy. He is not a check my hair kind of guy. He’s not a shower in the morning and evening kind of guy. Jesus does not remain impervious to spiritual ugliness by keeping it at arm’s length. His message and the express intent of his incarnation is to confront sin. Confront sin in the leaders of the day. Expose sin in his own disciples. Embrace the sinners around him in very uncomfortable ways.
In Luke 9 when a sick woman is healed by touching Jesus’ garment, our Master’s response shows his complete disregard for the fact that if he deals with messy people, he is going to get a little messy himself. The poor woman suffers from a discharge of blood that in addition to being terribly embarrassing trapped her in a perpetual state of uncleanliness. According to Jewish law, a woman suffering from this was forced to stay outside the camp until the discharge ceased. Under no circumstances could she associate with people because by merely touching them she transferred her filthiness to them. A detail of the story is that she had spent her entire fortune on doctors who could not heal her and after years of isolation from community and her faith she was left impoverished and hopeless.
The reason for her secrecy is clear then. If she was jostling around in a big crowd and was ceremonially unclean she risked making some of her neighbors pretty peeved. So covertly, silently, clandestinely she merely touches the hem of the savior’s garment, and is HEALED! But unlike how she came, she will not leave under the cover of the jostling crowd. Jesus stops and turns and confronts her. Not for her messiness, or her deceit, but instead to affirm that she as a sick, broken, lonely person and was exactly right in coming and putting her faith in him.
The gospel is not get cleaned up and then if your shoes and belt match and you have just enough make up on (not too much now), you can enter God’s community. For the Righteous one, cleanliness is not next to godliness. In the messy exchange of the cross, Jesus proclaims that if you come as you are, your curse, your mess, your death will be his and his love and righteousness will be yours. Only by being exposed for who you are and relying on Christ to meet every one of your needs can you be freed from the tendency to hide. The one in whom there was no sin was banished outside the camp like a leper and crucified as a blasphemer so that we could stand before the throne of God, eat at His table, and enjoy true fellowship with Him and with each other. Only by our faith through His grace when our friend asks “how are you?” will the answer ever honestly be, “I am well.”
Now don’t read me saying that dressing up for church is wrong or being pleasant and friendly to those with whom you worship is not a good thing. Being hospitable is very much at the heart of Christianity But it is to misunderstand gathering as a people and uniting heart and voice in worship if all we know about the people to our right and left is that they are fundamentally “good.” Indeed, it is to misunderstand more than that, even the nature of humanity itself.
However, as fake as we might feel giving highlights of our week to an interested friend it doesn’t compare to the fear of having our deepest sins revealed to those around us. We don’t mention the fear gripping us since our husband lost his job three months previous. We don’t let on that our children are infuriating us. No matter the guilt we experience from acting like a hypocrite, the look on our friends’ face when we open up about how lonely we feel because our boyfriend/girlfriend broke up with us and we are developing a dangerous addiction is far worse.
As big a barrier as this antiseptic version of Christianity is to community among believers, the greater issue is that it has colored the way we view Jesus himself. Could you imagine the man in these pictures in over-100 degree heat and no showers?
In the mind’s eye of too many Christians, our savior looks like a composed, unaffected Harlequin novel character. Indeed, greatest among Jesus’ miracles must have been that in the midst of dusty roads and pressing crowds, walking miles daily with indoor plumbing about a millennium and a half years from being invented that not a hair of his head ever appears out of place. Seriously, he is a walking Pantene Pro-V commercial. Attended by bright faced children and innocent white lambs, this is a nice Jesus, a fine Jesus, a great Jesus.
When did the doctrine of Jesus’ impeccability mutate into this caricature only worthy of posing for Polo? I don’t know, but it could not be further from the biblical picture. Jesus is not a keep your distance kind of guy. He is not a check my hair kind of guy. He’s not a shower in the morning and evening kind of guy. Jesus does not remain impervious to spiritual ugliness by keeping it at arm’s length. His message and the express intent of his incarnation is to confront sin. Confront sin in the leaders of the day. Expose sin in his own disciples. Embrace the sinners around him in very uncomfortable ways.
In Luke 9 when a sick woman is healed by touching Jesus’ garment, our Master’s response shows his complete disregard for the fact that if he deals with messy people, he is going to get a little messy himself. The poor woman suffers from a discharge of blood that in addition to being terribly embarrassing trapped her in a perpetual state of uncleanliness. According to Jewish law, a woman suffering from this was forced to stay outside the camp until the discharge ceased. Under no circumstances could she associate with people because by merely touching them she transferred her filthiness to them. A detail of the story is that she had spent her entire fortune on doctors who could not heal her and after years of isolation from community and her faith she was left impoverished and hopeless.
The reason for her secrecy is clear then. If she was jostling around in a big crowd and was ceremonially unclean she risked making some of her neighbors pretty peeved. So covertly, silently, clandestinely she merely touches the hem of the savior’s garment, and is HEALED! But unlike how she came, she will not leave under the cover of the jostling crowd. Jesus stops and turns and confronts her. Not for her messiness, or her deceit, but instead to affirm that she as a sick, broken, lonely person and was exactly right in coming and putting her faith in him.
The gospel is not get cleaned up and then if your shoes and belt match and you have just enough make up on (not too much now), you can enter God’s community. For the Righteous one, cleanliness is not next to godliness. In the messy exchange of the cross, Jesus proclaims that if you come as you are, your curse, your mess, your death will be his and his love and righteousness will be yours. Only by being exposed for who you are and relying on Christ to meet every one of your needs can you be freed from the tendency to hide. The one in whom there was no sin was banished outside the camp like a leper and crucified as a blasphemer so that we could stand before the throne of God, eat at His table, and enjoy true fellowship with Him and with each other. Only by our faith through His grace when our friend asks “how are you?” will the answer ever honestly be, “I am well.”
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