Strange Life

strange life: being red-letter christians in a post-christian world
13 january 2013
franktown united methodist church

Once I was kayaking.  I can tell you just where I was.  It was a sunny day, a few wispy clouds on a spring afternoon, and I was heading south in the Great Channel behind Cedar Island.  I had just turned the bend to head back towards Burton's Bay.

I stopped paddling because I realized that I was floating on glass.  It was the slickest of slick cam.  I knew I would never see water this still again.  It was stretched like a skin across the channel.  When I looked down into the water it was a perfect mirror of the sky above.

So there I was looking down at my reflection.  I could see the lines in my face.  I forgot I was looking at water.  I really forgot.  And I know I forgot because, as I was looking at my face in the water I suddenly realized that another face was looking up at me.  A fish had darted up towards the surface and its scales glistened behind my reflection.  I had forgotten that beneath me was the deep, a whole other world below the surface.

The Irish priest and poet, John O'Donohue, begins his book on Celtic wisdom, Anam Cara, with the words, "It is strange to be here.  The mystery never leaves you alone.  Behind your image, beneath your words, above your thoughts, the silence of another world waits.  A world lives within you."*

It is strange to be here.  Do you ever feel that way?  Does the world as it really is ever catch you by surprise, like a fish rising from the murky depths?  I mean, it is easy to get caught up in the world.  It's easy to think that all there is to life is the surface of things.  The job.  The bills.  The routine.  The homework.  Honey Boo Boo.  Fighting politicians.  Wars and rumors of wars.  But every so often you catch a glimpse of God and the vastness and the wonder of creation and you realize that John O'Donohue is right.  It is strange to be here.

Philip the apostle went down to Samaria.  The good news of Jesus had hit Jerusalem like a thunderbolt.  The new Christian community was living out Jesus' promise that they would receive power when the Holy Spirit came upon them.  They would be his witnesses in Jerusalem.  They would be his witnesses in Judea.  Now, Philip was going to live out of the next promise - that they would be his witnesses in Samaria. (Acts 1:8)

He preached Christ to them.  He performed signs and wonders.  They brought him paralyzed and crippled people and he healed them.  With loud shrieks, unclean spirits came out of them.  The people rejoiced.

They were so caught up in what Philip was doing that they forgot about the man who had entranced them before.  There had been a man performing signs and sorcery before Philip arrived.  Simon, by name.  Simon the Great.  But even Simon was caught up by what Philip was doing.  He believed what Philip said about Jesus.  He was baptized into the way of Jesus.

Word got back to Jerusalem.  Samaria was accepting God's word.  Peter and John were sent.  But something strange was going on.  The people, like Simon, were baptized in the name of Jesus, but they had not received the Holy Spirit.  The book of Acts never really explains what this means.  The Holy Spirit elsewhere seems to accompany the gift of baptism, but here, for some reason, the power had not yet come.  It takes Peter and John laying their hands on these baptized Christians for them to realize the power of the descending Holy Spirit.  Now they become Christians not only in name but in deed.

Simon the magician sees this power that comes through the laying on of hands and he thinks it's some surface trick.  He thinks the power is somehow resident in the apostles.  He thinks he can buy his way into it and continue to be known as Simon the Great.  So he offers the apostles money.  "Give me this authority, too, so that I can lay hands on others."

Peter rebukes him.  "May your money be condemned to hell along with you because you believed you could buy God's gift with money!"  Because you see, Peter knows that it's not about him.  It's not about what he can do.  It's not about his hands.  It's about God.  And no amount of money can buy this gift.  Like every true gift, it has to be received.

What is it that Simon the Great doesn't get?  He doesn't get that it's not about the trappings or the show.  It's not about the signs and wonders.  It's not about the charisma or the authority.  If it was, then the apostles would be like every other traveling sideshow that rolled through town.  They would be like every other flash-in-the-pan celebrity who shoots up the charts today and is gone tomorrow.  If it were all about the display, they would be just like...Simon - great as long he can keep producing the goods.

But what's strange is that these Christians who are experiencing such power are not using it for gain.  What's strange is that they are persecuted and killed.  What's strange is that they give up their possessions and live in community.  What's strange is that they give all the credit to a God who was crucified.  What's even stranger is that that is what makes them powerful.

Here we are some 2000 years later and there are many who wonder if we are on the other end of this story.  If Acts shows the church as powerful and in its ascendency, maybe 21st Century America shows the church as losing that power.  Sociologists looking at the Western world sometimes refer to it as post-Christian.  If the Christian message is evaluated solely on cultural prestige, they might be right.

But the power of the Church was never in how big an institution it became.  The power of the Church is not in how large our footprint is.  The power of the Church is not in how many buildings we can build or how many politicians we can influence.  The power of the Church is in the Holy Spirit.  And if we have been baptized with the Holy Spirit then we are in touch with a power to transform that has not been diminished.  The same Holy Spirit that sent unclean spirits shrieking away in Samaria is the same Holy Spirit that you can experience here today.

And what does that mean?  It means that we have been baptized into a strange life - a life that is in touch with that deep mystery that John O'Donohue talks about - that deep life within us that is awakened by our encounter with the living Christ.  And when we know that life - we are called to a strange life in the world - a life that will seem out of step, unusual, peculiar.

In her new book, The Last Runaway, Tracy Chevalier follows Honor Bright, a Quaker, on her journey from England in 1850 to Ohio.  As a Quaker, she is part of a community that lives a simple life with qualities that make her distinct.  Part of that is her commitment to a community that finds slavery abhorrent - something not all Christians felt in 1850.  It also means that she lives life differently day to day.

She spends a few days with a rough-hewn seamstress who chides her about her lifestyle:
 "I'm glad I'm not a Quaker," [she says.] "No whiskey, no color, no feathers, no lies.  What  is there left?"
"No swearing either," Honor added..."We do call ourselves 'the peculiar people,' for we know we must seem so to others."**

Do you ever feel like you are a part of a 'peculiar people'?  If you don't, then maybe we've got our finger on part of the problem.  We are not coming into conflict with the evil powers that rule in our day.  If there are no shrieking spirits, perhaps we have yet to claim the power of the Holy Spirit.

The evangelical writer and speaker, Tony Compolo, has started talking about being a Red Letter Christian.  The goal, he says, is simple: "To take Jesus seriously by endeavoring to live out His radical, counter-cultural teachings as set forth in Scripture, and especially the lifestyle prescribed in the Sermon on the Mount...By calling ourselves Red Letter Christians, we refer to the fact that in many Bibles the words of Jesus are printed in red.  What we are asserting, therefore, is that we have committed ourselves first and foremost to doing what Jesus said."***

What would it mean for you to be a red letter Christian?  Would it mean showing mercy when you feel like being vengeful?  Would it mean loving your enemies?  Would it mean forgiving?  Would it mean spending time in spiritual practices to root out those places that are resisting the spirit?  The strongholds of lust and anger and self-loathing and pride?

Over the next few weeks I want to challenge you to accept this strange life that we are given in Christ.  I want to invite you to a journey that is not easy but which can give you back your soul.  I want to invite you to a path that will put you in the company of others who are struggling to be holy, too.  Sinners who know that their redemption is only in Christ.

It is a strange life.  But you know that the world we think we live in is only paper thin.  You know because there have been moments when you, too, have been surprised by some glint behind your eyes, like that fish that stared up at me through my reflection.  You suspect that there is a world much richer, much deeper - a world filled with the glory of God.  And our brother Jesus has shown us the way.  Our brother Jesus is the Way.  Thanks be to God.

*John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom, Harper Perennial: New York, 1997, p. xv.
**Tracy Chevalier, The Last Runaway, Dutton: New York, 2013, e-book loc. 632.
***Tony Compolo, Red Letter Christians blog, www.redletterchristians.org/start/.