I came across this list of Jesus impostors with a simple Google search (the quickest way to get the facts!). While Jesus was certainly an eyebrow-raiser and a radical in the eyes of many, somehow I don't think these anomalies have quite got what it means to "be conformed to the image of [Christ]." And yet, if we are content to simply sit back and perform our religious rituals and favorite Christo-American pastimes-- attending church, talking about theology, listening to Christian music, reading Christian books by Christian authors writing about Christian things to do or think about, going to Bible study to sing and to do all the above activities with people who are just like us-- we are also missing something essential in our reflections of the Messiah who gathered to himself lepers and prostitutes. All of those rituals that I listed, those are very nourishing for a vibrant Christian life-- but there's more!
"Good things come when Jesus comes!" was the jubilant song echoing from lungs of Africans in the film I just watched. As we watched an American well-driller and an African evangelist carry good news-- clean drinking water and eternal living water-- into village after village, our friend Liz turned to Dustan and said, "The Gospel brings social reform!" And I was thinking in my mind, The Gospel brings better life! That's what real good social reform is-- better life. In many different ways, physical and spiritual.
My own first trip to Africa lent me an awareness of the physical needs of those on the poorer sides of the tracks-- or the ocean-- three years ago. Since then I've wrestled long and strenuously with my role as a bringer of "better life"-- both spiritually and physically. I have been given great gifts as an American: freedom of travel, discretionary finances, educational depth and breadth-- to name just a few. How should I use them? What quickly became the heaviest motivator on my heart was, How can I use this wealth on myself when Christ cries out to me from the teary eyes and open hands of the poor and needy all over the world-- in Greenville and in Africa? But, as I saw needs I had never noticed before exponentially multiplied before my burdened soul and as I eagerly reached into my middle-class American pockets and reached out to calloused, dirty, drug-plagued hands, I soon realized that I could easily spend all my time and resources dishing out my valued American dream into needy hands and never bring my hungry fellow man to the feast that my Father has prepared with the broken body and spilt blood of His Son. A feast to which he bids me compel the hedge and highway dwellers come!
So over the past three years my thinking has developed to the question, How can I best use these resources made available through a worldly citizenship from an unprecedentedly wealthy and free country to further a Kingdom whose King conquers through love rather than swords and bombs, by sacrifice rather than with Roman denarii or American dollars? I've had to learn that God directs the path of each member of his body uniquely, that I cannot judge my brother who drives a Mercedes anymore than he ought judge me for the color of my shirt. The wallet that opened for the purchase of the $50,000 luxury sedan is also the wallet that feeds my pastor and donates generously to my enormous school bill-- and that wallet is filled by the same Father whose love compels me to "sell everything [I] have" and follow his Son to the poor and illiterate.
But understanding that liquidating my meager assets and showing up at the rescue mission food line with a backpack full of cash to hand out with the chicken soup and stale bread is probably not what will shake the gates of Hell most, how do I sacrifice it ALL for the Kingdom of Heaven?
Live in a shed? Drive a $500 car? Shop at Goodwill, SOS, Safe Harbor, Miracle Hill? Live off Raisin Bran and charity? Type this post up on a 10-year-old Toshiba? Leave it all for China, Albania, Africa? Sure. That's for me, and I'm sure there's more to pursue, there's a heavier, more rugged, more fatal cross awaiting me. For Roland the Well-driller it is a life in Africa far, far away from his American homeland. For Dennis the Evangelist it is a headlong, do-or-die assault on the Hell-tended gates of a demon-worshiping village in West Africa. For you it could be walking to school, providing care for your aging parents or grandparents, giving your summers to the mentally impaired or the foreign mission field, walking to the fringes of downtown to find blank-eyed homeless wanderers and to be a friend-- a true friend. It could be to take that guy out to lunch-- you know, the guy that just has no clue how to hold a conversation and leaves Sunday School as fast as he can because he doesn't want to feel awkward standing around with no one to not-be-able-to talk to? It could be to sell everything you own and give the money to an orphanage. To go and live in that orphanage.
Whatever the cross, whatever the reflection of Jesus that you will be called to be, it will be your own, but you will not be alone. You will find the body of Christ more ever-pervasive than you have ever imagined. You will share in the sufferings of Christ and find out what it really means to "be Jesus to them."
Episode 3: I Once Was Blind from Dispatches From The Front on Vimeo.
