The Subversive Savior--March 8, 2018
"But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption..." [1 Corinthians 1:27-30]
Make no mistake about it: the God of the Bible is subversive.
I remember the first time I can recall hearing that word and learning its meaning, that word, "subversive." It was one of those unexpected teachable moments that came on a car ride with my father, years and years ago. My dad was driving the car, and yet somehow I was the one picking the music on the radio--or maybe I just had stopped the dial while it was scanning for FM signals when I recognized a song in between the static, and my father had let me, perhaps just out of curiosity about what kind of music his son was listening to at the moment. It was Sheryl Crow's "All I Wanna Do," from her 1993 debut album--that jangly anthem that was on the radio quite a bit for a while when it was new...twenty-five years ago (my goodness, it has been twenty-five years). It's an earworm of a song that gently skewers the rat-race life, including a verse taking shots at the "good people of the world, washing their cars on their lunch breaks, hosing and scrubbing as best they can in skirts and suits, driving their shiny Datsuns and Buicks, back to the phone company, and the record store, too." And it keeps coming back to the catchy refrain, "All I wanna do is have some fun, and I've got a feeling I'm not the only one... All I wanna do is have some fun... until the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard."
And I can remember this sliver of conversation as soon as Sheryl Crow and her Tuesday Night Music Club had faded into voice of the DJ on the radio. My dad said, just matter-of-factly when the song was done, "That was a little subversive, wasn't it?"
I confess my teenage ears didn't know the word until that moment, although I could guess at the words meaning from the context of my father's tone in the question and Sheryl Crow's proud declaration that she didn't want to work at a respectable job but just wanted to drink through the day at a bar and have fun throughout the night. And sure, even my thirteen-year-old self would grant that if you took Sheryl Crow's lyrics literally, it would sure come off like a slap in the face of all those "good people of the world" whose lives are spent earning money to pay for their sensible sedans, which they then have to wash on their lunch breaks in their professional clothes before continuing with their respectably bland lives. I suppose the song was subversive in that sense, insofar as it wasn't earnestly celebrating the joys of the white-picket-fence-and-two-point-five-kids life or sincerely singing the praises of pragmatic mid-size cars. I suppose as much as anyone selling bubble-gum pop Top 40 songs generic enough to appeal to eighth-grade kids from the suburbs can be "subversive," Sheryl Crow was.
And now that I am a father of a young boy myself, I can certainly understand having an interest in just what kind of music my son's head will be filled with as he grows up. There will come a day, all too soon, I know, when he will not be satisfied to let me be his personal music curator, exposing him to the music I think he should know and like. And I should be prepared, too, to hear him one day stop the proverbial radio dial on some song that I think is "too loud," or "too much noise," or "too rebellious," or, if history is any example, "too subversive."
But all that said, looking back on how a relatively tame pop-rock song earned the label "subversive," I am rather surprised that anybody ever let me actually read the New Testament.
The Gospel, after all, doesn't simply lightly and playfully critique the Datsun and Buick owners of the world who wash their cars in business clothes. The Gospel overturns all of our respectable notions about what "power" and "strength" and "wisdom" look like, and in their place it offers only the cross of Jesus. Sheryl Crow, for all of her singing about just serenely wasting her days in a bar, was still part of a music industry cranking out music (back then it was on CDs) for profits, and she got paid a pretty penny and got a crack at superstardom for her labors. The Gospel, however, subverts.... everything. And to hear Paul tell it, that is precisely God's intention.
"God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise;" Paul says. "God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are." That is so say, God has the divine target sights set on all the usual markers of "the good life" we measure people by--God shakes the foundations of what "wisdom" and "common sense" look like, what "power" and "weakness" look like, and what "lowliness" and being "high and mighty" mean, too. And, as Paul says it, God knows what God is doing in that attack.
It is not accidental, in other words, that the redemption of creation comes through the execution of a peasant rabbi in the backwater of an empire in an act of radical self-giving and willing surrender. It is not a fluke that God saves the world, not by raising up an army with guns blazing or sending in the heavenly host with flaming swords, but by dying for it. And it is not an exception to the rule that God declares victory in the love that lays its life down for its enemies--the cross is not a theological outlier against a usual pattern of God ruling by force and endorsing the powerful to keep on being powerful. The cross is the key signature for the tune God has been singing from the beginning--it may just be that we did not have the music in front of our eyes to recognize it until Good Friday.
So... what does any of this mean for how we face the day, or raise our kids, or spend our lives? Well, to be brutally honest, God's subversive Good News forces us to rethink everything:
If the message about the cross is true (and I dare say it is), then it is no longer sufficient for us to just "get by" in life trying to make some money to save up for a comfortable retirement. It means confessing that life is about more than me just making a pile of acorns for my future self. The cross of Jesus subverts our old mindset of self-interest.
If the message of the cross is true, then it is no longer enough to teach our children that they'll be "successful" and have the "good life" if they make more money than their parents did, live a slightly larger house than their parents did, or achieve more degrees for their wall than their parents did. The cross of Jesus subverts our old picture of success.
If the message of the cross is true, then all of our repeated attempts to get more for "me and my group first" have been missing the point of existence itself, and we should not be surprised when God reduces those attempts all to nothing, in order to show us the real power revealed in One who gave his life away for strangers and enemies while they mocked and murdered him. The cross of Jesus subverts our old fear of "the other."
If the message of the cross is true, then all of our fuss and bluster about needing to make ourselves look "tough," along with all of our insistence on clutching with death-grip tightness onto "my rights," simply misses the heart of the Gospel itself, because at the cross, Jesus doesn't insist on his right, and Jesus holds nothing in his hands but the nails in his wrists. The cross of Jesus subverts our silly talk about protecting our rights.
If the message of the cross is true, then the declarations, "But I have to look out for ME first!" and "We've got to get THEM before they get US!" will be silenced over against the cry of Jesus, "It is finished!" as he spends his life for others... for me... for you. The cross of Jesus subverts it all.
I think for a long time, families, teachers, and society-at-large have all assumed that exposing children to the Bible would make them grow up into respectable, restrained, rat-race-running adults who lived to make their car payments and wash their sensible sedans in business attire. But nothing could be further from the truth. The message about the cross shakes all of our old respectable religious assumptions to their core, and says that real power, wisdom, and greatness are to be found in a disrespectful death on a Roman execution stake.
That is subversive indeed... enough to make you want to rethink everything else in life.
Lord Jesus, subvert our old assumptions, loves, and priorities, and give us your own cruciform way of living.
Make no mistake about it: the God of the Bible is subversive.
I remember the first time I can recall hearing that word and learning its meaning, that word, "subversive." It was one of those unexpected teachable moments that came on a car ride with my father, years and years ago. My dad was driving the car, and yet somehow I was the one picking the music on the radio--or maybe I just had stopped the dial while it was scanning for FM signals when I recognized a song in between the static, and my father had let me, perhaps just out of curiosity about what kind of music his son was listening to at the moment. It was Sheryl Crow's "All I Wanna Do," from her 1993 debut album--that jangly anthem that was on the radio quite a bit for a while when it was new...twenty-five years ago (my goodness, it has been twenty-five years). It's an earworm of a song that gently skewers the rat-race life, including a verse taking shots at the "good people of the world, washing their cars on their lunch breaks, hosing and scrubbing as best they can in skirts and suits, driving their shiny Datsuns and Buicks, back to the phone company, and the record store, too." And it keeps coming back to the catchy refrain, "All I wanna do is have some fun, and I've got a feeling I'm not the only one... All I wanna do is have some fun... until the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard."
And I can remember this sliver of conversation as soon as Sheryl Crow and her Tuesday Night Music Club had faded into voice of the DJ on the radio. My dad said, just matter-of-factly when the song was done, "That was a little subversive, wasn't it?"
I confess my teenage ears didn't know the word until that moment, although I could guess at the words meaning from the context of my father's tone in the question and Sheryl Crow's proud declaration that she didn't want to work at a respectable job but just wanted to drink through the day at a bar and have fun throughout the night. And sure, even my thirteen-year-old self would grant that if you took Sheryl Crow's lyrics literally, it would sure come off like a slap in the face of all those "good people of the world" whose lives are spent earning money to pay for their sensible sedans, which they then have to wash on their lunch breaks in their professional clothes before continuing with their respectably bland lives. I suppose the song was subversive in that sense, insofar as it wasn't earnestly celebrating the joys of the white-picket-fence-and-two-point-five-kids life or sincerely singing the praises of pragmatic mid-size cars. I suppose as much as anyone selling bubble-gum pop Top 40 songs generic enough to appeal to eighth-grade kids from the suburbs can be "subversive," Sheryl Crow was.
And now that I am a father of a young boy myself, I can certainly understand having an interest in just what kind of music my son's head will be filled with as he grows up. There will come a day, all too soon, I know, when he will not be satisfied to let me be his personal music curator, exposing him to the music I think he should know and like. And I should be prepared, too, to hear him one day stop the proverbial radio dial on some song that I think is "too loud," or "too much noise," or "too rebellious," or, if history is any example, "too subversive."
But all that said, looking back on how a relatively tame pop-rock song earned the label "subversive," I am rather surprised that anybody ever let me actually read the New Testament.
The Gospel, after all, doesn't simply lightly and playfully critique the Datsun and Buick owners of the world who wash their cars in business clothes. The Gospel overturns all of our respectable notions about what "power" and "strength" and "wisdom" look like, and in their place it offers only the cross of Jesus. Sheryl Crow, for all of her singing about just serenely wasting her days in a bar, was still part of a music industry cranking out music (back then it was on CDs) for profits, and she got paid a pretty penny and got a crack at superstardom for her labors. The Gospel, however, subverts.... everything. And to hear Paul tell it, that is precisely God's intention.
"God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise;" Paul says. "God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are." That is so say, God has the divine target sights set on all the usual markers of "the good life" we measure people by--God shakes the foundations of what "wisdom" and "common sense" look like, what "power" and "weakness" look like, and what "lowliness" and being "high and mighty" mean, too. And, as Paul says it, God knows what God is doing in that attack.
It is not accidental, in other words, that the redemption of creation comes through the execution of a peasant rabbi in the backwater of an empire in an act of radical self-giving and willing surrender. It is not a fluke that God saves the world, not by raising up an army with guns blazing or sending in the heavenly host with flaming swords, but by dying for it. And it is not an exception to the rule that God declares victory in the love that lays its life down for its enemies--the cross is not a theological outlier against a usual pattern of God ruling by force and endorsing the powerful to keep on being powerful. The cross is the key signature for the tune God has been singing from the beginning--it may just be that we did not have the music in front of our eyes to recognize it until Good Friday.
So... what does any of this mean for how we face the day, or raise our kids, or spend our lives? Well, to be brutally honest, God's subversive Good News forces us to rethink everything:
If the message about the cross is true (and I dare say it is), then it is no longer sufficient for us to just "get by" in life trying to make some money to save up for a comfortable retirement. It means confessing that life is about more than me just making a pile of acorns for my future self. The cross of Jesus subverts our old mindset of self-interest.
If the message of the cross is true, then it is no longer enough to teach our children that they'll be "successful" and have the "good life" if they make more money than their parents did, live a slightly larger house than their parents did, or achieve more degrees for their wall than their parents did. The cross of Jesus subverts our old picture of success.
If the message of the cross is true, then all of our repeated attempts to get more for "me and my group first" have been missing the point of existence itself, and we should not be surprised when God reduces those attempts all to nothing, in order to show us the real power revealed in One who gave his life away for strangers and enemies while they mocked and murdered him. The cross of Jesus subverts our old fear of "the other."
If the message of the cross is true, then all of our fuss and bluster about needing to make ourselves look "tough," along with all of our insistence on clutching with death-grip tightness onto "my rights," simply misses the heart of the Gospel itself, because at the cross, Jesus doesn't insist on his right, and Jesus holds nothing in his hands but the nails in his wrists. The cross of Jesus subverts our silly talk about protecting our rights.
If the message of the cross is true, then the declarations, "But I have to look out for ME first!" and "We've got to get THEM before they get US!" will be silenced over against the cry of Jesus, "It is finished!" as he spends his life for others... for me... for you. The cross of Jesus subverts it all.
I think for a long time, families, teachers, and society-at-large have all assumed that exposing children to the Bible would make them grow up into respectable, restrained, rat-race-running adults who lived to make their car payments and wash their sensible sedans in business attire. But nothing could be further from the truth. The message about the cross shakes all of our old respectable religious assumptions to their core, and says that real power, wisdom, and greatness are to be found in a disrespectful death on a Roman execution stake.
That is subversive indeed... enough to make you want to rethink everything else in life.
Lord Jesus, subvert our old assumptions, loves, and priorities, and give us your own cruciform way of living.
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