Irreplaceable

Beyoncé, “Irreplaceable”

So don’t you ever for a second get to thinking you’re irreplaceable.

Caedmon’s Call, “The Truth”

[M]aybe all that I’ve to do was done a long time ago.

‘Cause there was life before my life,
There was provision before my need,
There was redemption before my sin,
For the sake of the world I thank the Lord,
That the truth’s not contingent on me.

Psalm 103:15-17

As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more. But the steadfast love of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting . . .

This last month and a half has been (in many ways) an extended exercise in forced humility. There is little virtue is having one’s weaknesses exposed, particular those banal, petty weaknesses that I’d hoped were a thing of the past. Cultivated humility for the sake of spiritual growth is one thing. Being pushed down under the weight of one’s own failures is another. As Jesus told his disciples in Matthew 12, there’s nothing more pitiable than exorcising one demon and “putting your house in order” just to have the same unclean spirit show back up with seven fresh companions in tow. “The last state of that person is worse than the first” (Matt. 12:45). It takes real spiritual sanity to live proactively within that truth.

All metaphors aside, by far the hardest thing to deal with has been the stark realization that I am (despite my previous thoughts to the contrary) thoroughly replaceable. I don’t mean replaceable as a person (like with my wife, friends or family). I mean replaceable as a tool of the kingdom. It’s been tough (unbelievably tough) to realize that I’m not indispensable, not foundational, not one-off. In the end, God’s about doing His will, building His church, glorifying His Son and he’ll do it with just as much glory, power, and beauty with me as without me. Jesus is irreplaceable, Aaron isn’t.

I don’t say this to evoke sympathy. A sort of “There, there. You’re special.” is the last thing I need (not that I’ve given up hoping for it; pride dies hard after all). In the end, however, what it has to come down to (what I need most) is grace. Grace that comes from the outside in. Grace that has nothing to do with me, the receiver, and everything to do with God, the Giver. Grace to be forgiven. Grace to be renewed. Grace to be made clean. Grace to grow-up. “For the sake of the world [am myself] I thank the Lord / That the truth’s not contingent on me.”

Easter and the Goal of the Gospel

N. T. Wright’s most recent book—After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters—begins with a simple question, “What am I here for?” The question is posed not as abstract philosophy but rather as the concrete concern of a genuine disciple: Given that, as follower of Jesus Christ, I’ve been saved by grace through faith . . . what now? What’s am I to do with my time this side of the second coming—the ‘in-between’ time, so to speak? Where’s it all going? And, most importantly, how do I become a part of what God is doing in the every day realities of life?

For most evangelicals, the goal of the gospel—what it’s really all about—can be summarized in a single word: heaven. We may (at our more humble moments) say, “It’s all about God,” and we may (at times) even mean it. But when it comes to our own personal happy ending, when we really get down to what it’s all about for us, heaven is the goal.

The trouble with this goal isn’t so much that it’s not true; only that it’s half true. Heaven—in the sense of a spiritual, disembodied, escape-from-the-world-down-here sort of place—is certainly a part of the story (part of each of our own personal in-between time), but it’s not where the story ends.

The problem is that ending with heaven leaves out the most significant event in the New Testament: Easter. As Wright has elsewhere put it, “Heaven’s important, but it’s not the end of the world.” No, the goal of the Christian story—from Genesis to Revelation—is not going-to-heaven-when-you-die. The goal is resurrection—God’s cosmic, kingdom-enacting re-creation of all things “in heaven and on earth.”

Where does Easter fit into this story? In 1 Corinthians 15:20 and 23 Paul tells us that Jesus’ resurrection was the “first-fruits” of God’s new creation, the down-payment in the present guaranteeing and even providing the foundation for what will one day flood creation.

The point in all of this is that knowing the end of the story drastically changes how we answer the question: “What am I here for now?” Wright sketches out the following answer through what he calls “moral thrust of the New Testament”:

1. The goal is the new heavens and new earth, with human beings raised from the dead to be the renewed world’s rulers and priest.
2. This goal is achieved through the kingdom-establishing work of Jesus as the Spirit, which we grasp by faith, participate in by baptism, and live out in love.
3. Christian living in the present consists of anticipating this ultimate reality through the Spirit-led, habit-forming, truly human practice of faith, hope and love, sustaining Christians in their calling to worship God and reflect his glory into the world (67).

Failure and Success in Acts 5

I’ve spent the last two Wednesday nights teaching at our church’s high school group—Ignite. It’s been a great experience. There’s such an atmosphere of authenticity there, as though the group’s leadership (especially the student leaders) is after really building disciples and not just putting on a show.

Last night we were in Acts 5:17-42 which records the second conflict between the “church” (i.e., the apostles and the emerging group of Spirit-empowered, Jesus-followers) and the Jewish high council (i.e., the religious powers-that-be). Two passages in particular stood out:

Acts 5:18-21

[The council] arrested the apostles and put them in the public prison. But during the night an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors and brought them out, and said, “Go and stand in the temple and speak to the people all the words of this Life.” And when they heard this, they entered the temple at daybreak and began to teach.

Acts 5:40-42

[A]nd when they had called in the apostles, they beat them and charged them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. Then they left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name. And every day, in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ.

In the first passage, the angel’s revelation must have been a bit confusing to the apostles and (in a way) even disturbing. In essence, they’re arrested, miraculously rescued and immediately told to go right back to the very same place and activity that got them in trouble to begin with. What’s more, all that their impromptu (and incredibly brief) release does is embarrass and further enrage the very people who’re already taking issue with them.

What this passage teaches us is that (despite our personal expectations), God (at least in this story) isn’t all that interested in our physical safety or our social well-being. Instead, God’s all consuming priority is that the “words of this Life”—the gospel—be declared.

This run contrary to the way we naturally respond to trouble. Normally, our goal when things get hard or scary is to simply put our heads down, take a deep breath and just get through it as quickly possible. Our aim is simple: “Get out.”

The problem with this is that all through the book of Acts, God is much more interested in getting his people into trouble than he is in getting them out of it. Now, it’s important to understand what this trouble is. The trouble in question isn’t brought about by laziness, short-fuses or sinful mistakes. What I’m talking about are situations in which our reputations, our names, our futures, our emotions and even our bodies are threatened for the sake of the gospel.

At an even larger scale, we usually go through life as if the point were to basically be as safe and as comfortable as possible. Now, there’s nothing wrong with getting good grades, playing sports, going to a good school, getting a good job, buying a nice house and raising a family in a safe neighborhood. All I’m saying is that that’s not what God’s people, under the direct guidance of the Holy Spirit, were after. Nor was that what Jesus was after either.

The second passage is equally disturbing. We’re used to thinking of persecution as a very physical thing. Here, while it’s certainly partly physical—after all, the apostles are beaten and have their lives threatened—what they ultimately rejoice in is being “counted worth to suffer dishonor for the name.” The Greek word behind “dishonor” could just as easily be translated as “degradation,” or “mockery” or even “abuse.” The point is that the apostles weren’t just physically hurt, they were socially rejected. They were looked down upon, belittled, by the very people who their culture most admired and looked up to.

What this part of the story’s trying to tell us is that so-called “personal success” is just as much an enemy of the gospel as other more overt and stigmatized sins. In fact, it’s probably even more of an enemy because of how deceptive, acceptable and even trumpeted it is. The problem is, if what motivates us is success—personal recognition, looking good, being beautiful, liked and looked up to—then we simply will not be willing suffer public dishonor for the sake of Christ. It’ll just be too hard. Your heart won’t allow it.

The bottom line is this: following Jesus means following in the footstep of a man who (in the eyes and estimation of the world) was a colossal failure. This means that following him will inevitable lead us into the same sort of apparent failure. It’s simply impossible to look good and follow Jesus. At times, the two become mutually exclusive. In the end (as hard as it may be to accept), it’s better to be a “failure” who loves Jesus than a success who left him behind long ago.

Participating in the Sin-Suffering Way of Jesus

Eugene Peterson, The Jesus Way

The servant [in Isaiah 52:13—53:12] serves God. That goes without saying. But the distinctive thing that comes into focus . . . is that the servant serves God by serving the sinner, by taking the sinner’s place, taking the consequences of sin, doing for the sinner what he or she is helpless to do for himself, herself.

This is the gospel way to deal with what is wrong with the world, deal with this multifaceted sin-cancer that is mutilating and disabling us. . . . [W]hether the wrong is intentional or inadvertent, the servant neither avoids it in revulsion nor attacks it by force of words or arms. Instead, the servant embraces, accepts, suffers in the sense of submitting to the conditions and accepting the consequences (177).

[W]hile the suffering and death of Jesus is definitive and complete, there is more—and the more has to do with our participation in what Jesus accomplishes in his suffering and death. . . . The overall pervading concern of the text is that every follower of the gospel shall embrace the identity of servant in the very terms in which the Prophet of Exile presents it . . . . Much as we try to get out of it or find a way around it, there is simply no following Jesus that does not involve suffering and rejection and death. No exceptions (178).

The uniqueness that is Jesus does not exclude us from participation in his servant ways. We can—we must—participate in Jesus’ work the way Jesus did it and does it and only in the way Jesus did and does it, obedient and joyful servants as we follow our servant Savior who “came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45) (179).

Sin is not redeemed by scrubbing it out of existence but by taking it in as a sacrifice that makes “many to be accounted righteous.” This is obviously what Jesus did. We, of course, are not Jesus; we cannot do this in and of ourselves. But we can participate in what Jesus does with the sins of the world, the sins in the church, the sins in our family, as he takes and suffers them. We can enter the way of Jesus’ cross and becomes participants in Jesus’ reconciliation of the world. Salvation is not escape from what is wrong but a deep, reconciling embrace of all that is wrong.

This is a radical shift from condemning sin and sinners—an ugly business at best. We no longer stand around as amused or disapproving spectators of the sins or troubles of others but become fellow sufferers and participants in the sacrificial life of Jesus (184).

Aaron Orendorff

Dealing with the sins of others is messy work. The points of contact where another person’s sin overlaps with our own disheveled lives often feel like war-zones. It makes little difference whether we’re the one’s actually being sinned against or if we’re simply “collateral damage.” Pain is still pain. Dealing with sin—in whatever form—defiles and deconstructs. The wages of sin is death (inescapably).

In those moments, what we want (or rather I should say: what I want, what I desperately want) is to simply do away with it, to condemn it—sin and sinner alike—to escape it, to “scrub it out” and wash my hands of the whole affair. It’s always easier to just avoid the business of other people’s sin, to check-out, to distance ourselves from the mess, create a fortress and hunker down.

The way of the gospel, however, will not allow this. The way of the gospel calls us not to condemn sin but to bear it. To enter in, with eyes wide-open to the pain and dirt of their trouble. The gospel calls us to give our lives away—our emotions, financial security, reputations, health—as an act of saying, “I believe in Jesus. I believe in his way. I will suffer your sin, not reject it; I will suffer it with you as he suffered for me.”

The degree to which we suffer the sins of others is the degree to which we have understood how Jesus suffered for ours.

Sin, Forgiveness and Confession

Eugene Peterson, The Jesus Way

Praying with David, who knew a good deal about sin, we soon learn that the remedy for sin is not the extermination of sin, not long training in not-sinning, not a rigorous program conditioning us in a pavlovian revulsion to sin. The only effective remedy for sin is the forgiveness of sin—and only God can forgive sin. If we refuse to deal with God, we are left dealing with sin by means of punishment or moral education or concocting some strategy of denial. None seem to make much of dent in the sin business. No. The way, the only way, is to get in on God’s forgiveness. And we do that by confession (91).

Confession is a way out of the puny, self-deceiving, mulish contrivances we attempt in order to manage sin on our own. Confession is entrance into the vast world of forgiveness, encompassed with God’s deliverance and steadfast love (92).

An Immersion in [Imperfect] Humanity

Eugene Peterson, The Jesus Way

There is not the slightest effort given in the biblical story to make David admirable in any moral or spiritual sense. And yet there is the assumption in all of this that flawed and faithless and failed as he is, he is representative—not a warning against be behavior but a witness, inadvertent as it was, to the normalcy, yes, the inevitability of imperfection (82).

The life of David is a labyrinth of ambiguities, not unlike our own. What we admire about David does not cancel out what we abhor, and what we abhor does not cancel out what we admire. David is not a model for imitation; David is not a candidate for a pedestal. The David story is an immersion in humanity, no different from the humanity conditioned by our culture and flawed by our sins. The story of David is a not a story of what God wants us to be but a story of God working with the raw material of our lives as he finds us. David’s story is told with so much detail so that we will have spread out before us exactly what goes on in a thoroughly lived human life in which God is shaping a life of salvation (88).

God is Christlike

Michael Frost and Alan Hirsh, The Shaping of Things to Come

[I]n light of the New Testament, the remarkable truth is not so much that Jesus is Godlike, but that God is actually Christlike. (God is Christlike and in him is no un-Christlikeness at all). In the light of the New Testament revelation all who would wish to know who God is and what he is like, need look no further than the person of Jesus (John 1:18, 14:9). From now on, all true perspectives of God must pass through the very particular lens of the man called Jesus of Nazareth. To say this more technically, all theology must now be understood through Christology. . . . From our perspective as human beings Jesus becomes the reference point for all genuine knowing, all true loving, and all authentic following of God (37).

“he prefers partnership to mere accomplishment”

Michael Frost and Alan Hirsh, The Shaping of Things to Come

There’s a riddle in the Talmud that goes like this, “If God intended man to live by bread, why didn’t he create a bread tree?” And the answer is that, in fact, God could have created a tree that produced crusty loaves of bread, but he prefers to offer us a grain and invite us to buy a field and plant the seed. He prefers that we till the soil while he sends the rain. He prefers that we harvest the crop while he sends sunshine. He prefers that we grind the grain and knead it and bake it while he gives us air in our lungs and strength in our arms. Why? Because he would rather we become partners with him in creation.

Of course, God could simply supply our every need and solve our every problem. But our God invites us into a creative partnership with him. . . . We suppose he could have converted the whole world by now, but he prefers partnership to mere accomplishment (159).

Aaron Orendorff

It is striking and admittedly a bit jarring to entertain the thought that God “prefers partnership to mere accomplishment.” My basic orientation towards the two is exactly the opposite. I see partnership as the means and accomplishment and the ends. In other words, I regard accomplishment as the point and operate as if the real business of life was about “getting something done.” God, on the other hand, appears to think quite differently about the matter. The real business of life is partnership itself. Relationships are ends (not means) and “getting something done” is in many ways little more than a clever and handy excuse to partner.

Why?

Because God is interested in people, not projects. Real people demand real relationships. By inviting humanity into the process of creation and recreation—by making us agents of his kingdom’s coming—God is deliberately forfeiting productivity for the sake of process. He is saying (on purpose), “Yes, I’ll get less done and it’ll get done slower and there’ll be a lot more pain in the getting, but that’s the way I want to go. I want to go the way of people.”

In a similar way, we must begin to see our own relationships as ends in and of themselves. We love because we’ve been loved and because loving is good (morally and existentially), not because loving gets us somewhere. How would our approach to work, school, family, ministry and life all change if we adopted the same attitude as God? How would our approach to people be different if they themselves were what we were after and not what they might do for us?