Have you ever had a difficult time starting something? Maybe a sentence while talking to a friend or a paper you needed to write for that psychology class last semester? I know what I want to talk about but I am having "starters block."
What do you think about in the shower? Ok… I admit that is an awkward question to ask. This morning in the shower I was thinking about Jesus. I am reading Donald Miller's book Searching for God Knows What. I had just finished a long chapter titled: Jesus. In it, Mr. Miller sets out to describe who Jesus is. Although Miller is the anti-list, anti-formula writer, he gave a list of eight personality traits or facts he saw in Jesus after reading through all four gospels 10-times each. He wanted/needed to know who Jesus was for himself. The things Miller found were beautiful. Here they are: He believed all people were equal, He was ugly, He liked to be with people, He had no fear of intimacy, He was patient, He was kind, He was God, He is I AM. I know there are many more things to Jesus than just these eight items. Having spent the morning reading Miller's chapter on Jesus, I jumped into the shower with many thoughts rumbling around in my head.
I had this scene flash before my eyes: I enter the building where my church meets and walked toward the entrance to the Sanctuary. I scan the seats as I round the corner. A man is sitting in the third row from the front on the right side about 4 or 5 chairs in from the center aisle. He has dark hair. I see the man's head turning slowly from left to right, scanning the room in front of him. Every so often I see him put his head down and look at the ground. Something seems heavy on this person. I go to take a step toward the man when a bone in my body loudly creaks. I pause. The man hears the noise and turns his head to me, staring. I catch a glimpse of his eyes. I cannot describe them beyond the sadness that I saw. I knew almost immediately who it was I was looking at. It was Jesus. Jesus was sitting in the third pew from the front on the right side. I did not notice any color to his eyes (although I admit that my mind wanted so badly to give him blue eyes… I know Jesus did not have blue eyes). What I did see though was the sadness. He seemed to be speaking to me through his eyes. Saying to me that he was hurting here in this room. I said nothing to him. I partly knew why he looked so sad.
Why did Jesus come to die? Was it so we would have the freedom to spend half a million dollars a year on "running" the church? Was it so that we could have a stage with sound equipment and lighting and a candle burning and a pulpit and a table with plastic bread and a dusty wine goblet? Was it so we could have pews and chairs all lined up perfectly? Was it so that we could have budget meetings and be "good stewards of what God has given?" Was it so that we could join others who doctrinally and politically believed the same things we did? Was it so that we could come together for an hour once-a-week to hear some preacher dude bring down the house with his incredibly Spirit-inspired words that he wrote three days before? Maybe this is why Jesus came to die. Seems like such a small thing to come and die for.
When I looked into Jesus eyes and saw that sadness, I knew that he was saying to me: "Kevin, this is not what my message of life was supposed to be about. I love my Bride. But it seems that while my Bride was trying to find me and glorify me, she found something easier and more entertaining to care about. I just wanted to give her new life. A life filled with love and the realest relationships she could ever imagine. I wanted to give her myself." Jesus and I continued to look at each other in silence. Then the image faded from my mind.
It has me asking a lot of questions. I guess the first is: "Who is Jesus? Really?" I want to read the gospels with this question firmly in thought. The next few questions I have are these: "What would Jesus have to say about what His Bride seems all about?" "If Jesus came to heal the sick, why are we all trying to pretend like we aren't sick?" "What happened to the realness of the gospel and the power of the Spirit?" "What do all of our traditions really mean?" "What happened to genuineness?" "Why does the Bride look more like a business or golf club than a Kingdom under its righteous King's reign?"
I admit, these are just questions. I know intrinsically there is more to this life with Christ than we have right now… than I have right now. I know… and I have known for many years that something wasn't right. There is this self-focus to everything we seem to be about in church. God doesn't seem to exist beyond the many words we serve up each Sunday morning. Behind each of these questions lies my heart's true intent: "God, I want more of You! I need you to be REAL! I do not need the happy-thought of you. I need You!" I feel like I have lost sight of Him, because I have been more concerned with what others think. Men. Not God. Jesus seemed to be about healing and love and sacrifice. He looked at people in the eyes. He was patient, as Miller already stated. He cared about people. People were people in His eyes. His own creation… that He desired to bring back to His own perfect intent originally designed for them. People were not objects on a chess board to be moved about in a step-by-step preplanned-out process of winning a game, as I think the church seems to think we are. I AM NOT A CHESS PIECE! I DO NOT CARE ABOUT THE GAME!
I have talked before about the hole I feel in my heart. I am realizing all the things I have tried to put in my heart to fill it. Girls… or more accurately a single relationship with a girl… have been my number one filler. Each time left me still empty and hurting. The number two thing I try to fit inside my heart is other people and everything that comes with having them acknowledge my existence. The number three thing is all the material possessions that seem to bridge a "happy-gap" from moment to moment in my life. The number four thing I have learned is I try to fill my hole with the church. I have looked for the church to answer the question: "What is the purpose for life?" I keep asking church to answer this question or that question and when it can't I get frustrated with it and call it mean names and storm off in the other direction. When all along I am just misusing it. All I really want is to feel validated. To be a part of something.
I am still figuring out why the Son of God came and sat in the third row of my church this morning in the shower. I guess I needed to see Him in there. And I suppose I needed to see the sad look on His face to know that there is more than I have been feeling. That church cannot fill my hole… only Christ can do that. But also to know that something is making Jesus sad about where His Bride is focused. Honestly, the umbrella leadership of the church looks not-so-different to that of the Pharisees. Jesus came up hard against the Pharisees. They made Him very sad and a little frustrated. He died for them too, you know. But they just wanted their law – a safety-net of right and wrongs. What they really were doing was waving their hand back and forth at God trying to draw His attention to themselves and say: "Hey, look what I can DO… look what I can DO!" They pushed God out of their everyday breathing. And we have not fallen so far from the apple tree.
Jesus. Let me see you again. I felt close to you this morning. I am sorry for the mess we've made of your Bride. I am sorry for my own involvement in that mess. I really just want to see You. Let's meet up again.
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