Encouragement for Those Who’ve Joined the Rebellion
This week, I heard a national news anchor on NPR say something I’ve never heard before—she noted how we’re inundated with shocking, disturbing news reports right now, and encouraged people who are struggling to contact mental health services for help. And then she suggested a couple of free services, with links posted on their website. What made this unusual (at least for me) was the breadth of the suggestion. The anchor was essentially recognizing that all of us may be in need of emotional support right now.
Meanwhile, my wife and I are nearly through the second season of the popular Star Wars-inspired series Andor, nominated for 14 Emmy awards. I heard friends and reviewers gushing over the series, but had zero interest in the ever-expanding universe of Star Wars-related storylines. But the praise was so persistent that we (late in the game) took a chance and watched the first episode, quickly recognizing this story would be a “slow burn” over the course of 24 episodes and two seasons. Yes, you guessed it—we got hooked. It’s the story of Cassian Andor, an orphan raised by his adoptive mother who reluctantly joins an anti-fascist rebellion against the Nazi-like advance of the “Empire”—the same regime that the villainous Darth Vader serves in the original films. Andor tracks back to the beginnings of a rebel movement that, much later, manages to take down the evil Imperial warlords. At a tipping point in the Andor story, a key figure who’s sympathetic to the rebellion but unwilling to give up everything to join it finally jumps into the deep end. Cassian levels his gaze at her and grimly offers: “Welcome to the rebellion.”
Andor has reminded my wife and I of two important truths as we try to make sense of our chaotic and broken world, and our role in it as ministry leaders: 1) As we journey through the mangled landscape of our culture, the followers of Jesus are wholly engaged in the necessary advance of goodness in the face of evil. The Body of Christ is the vanguard for the Kingdom of God in the world, a kingdom defined by a transformational counterculture. 2) All of us who live with Jesus as the generative source for everything in our life, and are “losing our life to find our life” in Him, have been “welcomed into the rebellion.” And, just as Jesus warned us in John 15 and 16, our membership in the rebellion puts us at odds with the values, priorities, and objectives of our culture. Here, Andor offers a visceral reminder—those who’ve joined the rebellion pay a steep cost, driven by a passionate allegiance to something (Someone) higher than ourselves.
So, as we try to keep our heads above water in a culture that threatens to drown us in deception, violence, and brutality, what propels us forward in our mission? Nothing less than our countercultural mission, and the heart of Jesus that animates it. More than ever, the people in our pews are starving for the transcendent goodness promised by the advance of God’s kingdom in the world. That kingdom is defined by the words and actions of Jesus, who is everywhere and all the time modeling what goodness looks like. I offer five re-centering truths about that mission, the same truths that still drive Jesus’s renovating impact in the world…
- The heart of Jesus pursues the “ones,” not the “ninety-nines.”
Remember the parable of the lost sheep? The shepherd has a herd of 100 sheep, but he leaves 99 of them on the hillside so he can pursue the missing one, caught in the brambles. Jesus is always in pursuit of the ones. The crowds (the 99 on the hillside) seem to have greater potential. But this is “Jesus Economics”—he values the little, not the big. The individual is of inestimable value; each person a treasure. This is why Jesus pays ridiculous attention to the widow who drops two pennies into the temple offering. This is why he compares courageous faith to a mustard seed, or to a bit of salt and a bit of leaven. He is after the overlooked and the isolated and the overshadowed. Because a little thing—even a little you and me—can change the world. - The heart of Jesus is playful.
One day over lunch, I asked a pastor who’d planted a storefront church in a strip mall 10 years ago to tell me what that experience has been like. He described both victories and heartbreaks—and the hurdles he’s had to overcome along the way. And then he said this: “Christian people, or people who’ve grown up in the church, are a lot more critical than people who have no connection to the church. They’re a lot more picky and demanding about little details, and whether or not you’re ‘getting it right,’ as far as they’re concerned.” I nodded, not just because I knew what he was saying was true, but because I knew it’s also true that those who’ve had had a long relationship with the church don’t often exude a playful, relaxed attitude toward Jesus or the brothers and sisters who are on this journey with us. We want to get it right, and we really want others to get it right, too.
The Swiss psychologist and child development pioneer Jean Piaget famously said, “Generally speaking there is continuity between a child’s play and work.” In other words, play is the work of childhood. And Jesus pushes that observation even further: Play is a distinctive reality in the kingdom of God, because it belongs to children, and play is a child’s default setting. We distance ourselves from true intimacy with Jesus when we refuse to play like children in his presence. When we treat everything about him and around him with the intensity of a root canal, we miss his smile. At his core, Jesus not only values play, He created everything that was ever created in a spirit of play. “Playing with Jesus” means we respond to his playful heart, living with a relaxed openness to possibility. He’s already climbing on the monkey bars, and invites us to join him. - The heart of Jesus is determined to transform ugly things into beautiful things.
“The Battle Hymn of the Republic”was written more than 150 years ago during a time of great racial strife in the U.S.—the Civil War. The violence fueled by racial division during this time is still the worst in American history. And in the midst of this wrenching moment in our journey, Julia Ward Howe wrote a song of conviction and hope that helped redirect the nation’s focus. This song is best known for its crescendo—the “Glory, glory hallelujah!” chorus. But a lyric in the first stanza of the song, a phrase that’s always been something of a mystery to me, catches my attention: “He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.”
All my life, I’ve heard this lyric but never really understood its meaning. I’m grateful to Jesus for bringing the clarity that has escaped me… Howe is capturing the transforming heart of Jesus in the face of the relentless advance of hatred. The “storehouse of wrath” is overflowing in our culture, but Jesus is determined to make vintage-quality wine out of these terrible “grapes.” Jesus will make beauty out of ugliness, no matter how much ugliness we throw at him, because it’s the default setting of his heart. And he is, right now, stomping on whatever ugly grapes we offer up to him, preparing them for his latest vintage. Musician Michael Gungor captures this reality in the opening lines of his poetic song “Beautiful Things”:
All this pain..
I wonder if I’ll ever find my way
I wonder if my life could really change, at all.
All this earth…
Could all that is lost ever be found?
Could a garden come out from this ground, at all?You make beautiful things,
You make beautiful things out of the dust.
You make beautiful things.
You make beautiful things out of us.
- The heart of Jesus defines true love by how we treat our enemies.
Jesus is an apple cart–upsetter. Just when you think you understand, for example, what love is really all about, he throws you for a loop. That’s what happens when, early in his ministry, he redefines love for the crowds gathered to hear him teach: “You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:43-45). It is our response to our enemies—the people who hurt us and oppose us and drive us crazy—that defines the depth of our love. And that’s because Jesus’ own love is defined by how he treats his enemies. He doesn’t say, “Be nice to your enemies, and smile when you’re persecuted”—that’s shallow and inauthentic. Jesus’ love is bent on redemption, and that means it’s soft when it needs to be and hard when it needs to be.
Jesus is free to love into redemption those who hate and oppose him because his love is not based on reciprocity. He longs for a mutually trusting, mutually passionate relationship with us, but he doesn’t require that to give us the treasures of his heart. When we stay connected to Jesus, he gives us the freedom and courage to love our enemies the way he pursues the wicked tax collector Zacchaeus, the notorious woman who washes his feet with her tears, and the scandalous woman at the well outside the city walls of Sychar. - The heart of Jesus is extravagant.
Somewhere in Australia’s Epping Forest, northern hairy-nosed wombats should be nervous. Their anxiety is warranted because there are only 115 of them left in the world. This is distressing, but it’s overshadowed by the number of existing species: The latest guess is that there are 8.74 million species in the world. And almost half a million (400,000) are plants. Why are there more than 1,000 kinds of trees? Almost a million (925,000) kinds of bugs? More than 30,000 varieties of weeds? And even one mosquito species would be five too many, but there are more than 3,000 species of them. Why?
Annie Dillard writes: “Nature is, above all, profligate. Don’t believe them when they tell you how economical and thrifty nature is, whose leaves return to the soil. Wouldn’t it be cheaper to leave them on the tree in the first place? This deciduous business alone is a radical scheme, the brainchild of a deranged manic-depressive with limitless capital. Extravagance! Nature will try anything once. This is what the sign of the insects says. No form is too gruesome, no behavior too grotesque. If you’re dealing with organic compounds, then let them combine. If it works, if it quickens, set it clacking in the grass; there’s always room for one more; you ain’t so handsome yourself. This is a spendthrift economy; though nothing is lost, all is spent.”
Creation, it’s obvious, is extravagantly wasteful—impossibly stuffed full of so many varieties of things that if choices were pennies we’d all be trillionaires. And this is because extravagance defines the goodness of God. Over and over, Jesus accentuates the beauty of extravagance—from miraculous meals that produce mountains of leftovers to His delight over a woman washing His feet with her hair. Over-the-top behavior makes his eyes light up, because he is wildly exuberant in his expressions of love, creation, pursuit, kindness, and even judgment. He gravitates to extravagant responses to people and situations because his heart is boiling with passion for his beloved. “Too much” is business-as-usual for Jesus.
In the Kingdom of God Rebellion, we move more deliberately toward the heart of Jesus. We come to a place where it’s impossible to see anything, hear anything, taste anything, smell anything, and experience anything that doesn’t remind us of his heart. And in that place, he’s not just camping out in our world, he is our world. This is truly when we’re living in the momentum of a passion for something higher than ourselves, when we lower our bucket into a deeper well of spiritual grit. And in a world where we all need mental-health support, spiritual grit is the living water that quenches our thirst and drives our mission.
Rick Lawrence is Executive Director of Vibrant Faith—he created the new curriculum Following Jesus. He’s editor of the Jesus-Centered Bible and author of 40 books, including his new release Editing Jesus: Confronting the Distorted Faith of the American Church, The Suicide Solution, The Jesus-Centered Life and Jesus-Centered Daily. He hosts the podcast Paying Ridiculous Attention to Jesus.
