July 6, 2007

“Blue Like Jazz” is such a good book. I’ve really enjoyed reading the challenging, engaging, personal, and freeing thoughts of Donald Miller. This book makes you think. Not like a chess game, but more like a hearty game of Battleship where you express demonstrative emotions and laugh out loud.
I think anyone who wants to be an honest-to-goodness authentic Christian, and help create a very real church, should read “Blue Like Jazz.” It has forced me to evaluate things a bit deeper. For instance…
We hit some beach shops last night… the gaudy ones advertising t-shirts for $1.99. They have those t-shirts alright, but they are in a rack in the back of the store, and have been there since 1974.
One of the very upscale stores we ventured into was called Shell World. They had it all. It really was a world of shells and cheap ash trays with sharks and porpoises glued to the side. I’m not quite sure why people buy stuff from Shell World. My best guess is that most plop some cash down at Shell World because they want to take home a decorative souvenir to remember their enchanting time at the beach. I’m also fairly sure that these impulse purchases eventually make for great conversations with people going to garage sales somewhere in Ohio.
I spotted an irresistible classic in Shell World. It was a funky Jesus clock. In a stylish mirrored frame, this funky Jesus clock depicted Jesus dying for our sins --- with a spinning, colorful disco effect whirling behind the cross. The funky Jesus clock seemed to be attempting to merge theology with clubbing. It’s almost as if the clock was trying to make Jesus more attractive and appealing. I asked my thirteen-year-old what she thought of the clock. She rolled her eyes and said, “Pssshhhh.” This is what Lauren says when something is beyond ridiculous. With that, I knew I had to buy the clock.
There was something else going on with this funky Jesus clock. It seemed to capture how weak and impotent I have made Jesus by trying to be seeker-sensitive, believer-focused, purpose-driven, right-winged, and cutting edge. In trying to be relevant, effective, and successful, what have I done with Jesus? Have I made him something he’s not? Corporate? Is it my job to make Jesus more attractive? Does He need me to do this? Sometimes I wonder if I’ve made Jesus more rigid and less appealing.
Strangely enough, Donald Miller and this funky Jesus clock made me think about Lance McKinney and Barry Combs. I haven’t thought about these guys in years. Lance, Barry, and I came up together in the Sunday School ranks. We painfully endured promotion Sundays when the teachers would parade us up in front of our parents as we moved on to the next grade and class. I remember how promotion Sundays were embarrassing for 7th graders, but the little kids seemed to love the whole parade thing.
There were never any new kids in our class. It was always just Lance, Barry, and myself, and the only time we would interact with each other was during the nine o’clock Sunday School hour. Other than our time with the flannel graph board, we never spent much outside time together. Our Sunday School teachers seemed content, and perhaps a little apathetic, with the three of us remaining the three of us. Sometimes Charlotte Kruer would join us for class because she lived just a short walk from our church. Charlotte began blossoming in the 7th grade and high school boys started becoming intrigued with her maturation process. After this, she stopped coming to church.
There came a time when Lance and Barry stopped coming to church as well. I think it was later in our high school years. Maybe one of them started dating Charlotte and she convinced them to stop going to church. Definitely by college, Lance and Barry had drifted far from the church. I kept going to church, but for a time was merely going through the motions. I still felt better about myself though… especially when I compared my Christianity to Lance and Barry’s.
Lance went off and studied at MIT. He wanted to become a big-shot car designer. During my college years, I remember bumping into Lance. I went to a restaurant with a friend and decided to exert my independence and legal age. I ordered a beer. To this day, I don’t like beer. Sometimes I wish I liked beer because drinking an occasional beer as a pastor seems to help dissuade people’s boxy ideas of how nerdy pastors are. Of course there are others who think pastors drinking a single beer are a horrific, sinful example, and a terrible stumbling block for everyone’s fragile Christianity. I’m quite certain my mother, who raised me in the church and got me to Sunday School with Lance and Barry, would be shocked to know that I had ordered a beer in college.
I did… and then Lance walked in. This moment is etched in my mind with a full dose of legalistic guilt and condemnation attached. I didn’t even drink the beer, I just remember feeling like a sinful slime ball as I said an awkward hello to Lance.
Lance did become a big-shot car designer. Last I heard, he was rolling in the big bucks and enjoying the good life apart from God. Lance became skeptical and eventually a non-believer.
Today I questioned that beer I ordered. After years and years of Sunday School (and VBS, and camp, and memorized lines in Christmas pageants, and youth group), was the totality of my spirituality defined in one guilt-producing beer? Was this the Jesus I was taught? Was Jesus reduced to a rule book of do’s and don’ts that only worked well inside the church walls? Where was the Jesus who worked practically Monday through Saturday, and was more powerful than any evils unleashed in a great big world?
I’m sure many great things and values were drilled into my thick skull as I grew up in church. They had to give me some good stuff, right? But what about Jesus?
Where was Lance? What happened to Barry? Why did Charlotte quit? Why is one, untouched beer so memorable? Was Jesus taught as a guarded God of legalism? Was Jesus held up as a Savior reserved only for 9 a.m. on Sunday mornings?
Jesus, help me to show people the real you. Please guard me from trying to make you more attractive, more appealing, watered down, or propped up with too many rules. Help me to simply teach and reflect you. Help me to love and connect people to You and each other.
The new funky Jesus clock in my office will be my daily reminder and prompter.