A Package Deal

A Package Deal--June 20, 2019

"Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says, 'Let Jesus be cursed!' and no one can say, 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit." [1 Corinthians 12:3]

You don't have to like the Beatles.  But if you do, it makes no sense to say, "But I don't like John Lennon or Paul McCartney."  They're sort of a package deal.

Lennon and McCartney were, of course, the beating heart of the Fab Four, writing by some counts nearly two hundred songs together that became part of the Beatles' catalog.  Sure, Ringo gets credit for singing "Octopus' Garden," and George Harrison was the brains behind "I Me Mine," but hit after hit after hit came from the collaboration of John and Paul.  And it was their unique chemistry that gave the Beatles their distinctive and innovative sound, from "Please Please Me" at the beginning of the band's arc, to the beautiful harmonies of "Two Of Us" on Let It Be.  In short, if you like the Beatles, whether you know it or not, you like them in part because of the musical collaboration of Paul McCartney and John Lennon.

Now, take that same train of thought and apply it to the words of a different Paul--this one the apostle who wrote what we call First Corinthians.  And Paul the apostle says that there's a similar essential connection between the Spirit of God and the person of Jesus.  You don't get to have one without the other, just like you can't meaningfully like the Beatles without also liking John and Paul's musical and lyrical talents.  So Paul's way of saying it is that no one who has the Holy Spirit abiding in them will ever say, "Let Jesus be cursed," and on the flip side that no one can say, "Jesus is Lord" except that the Spirit has prompted the words to bubble up from their hearts.  The Spirit's presence is bound up with the person of Jesus, and Jesus comes along with the Spirit.  They are sort of a package deal, too.

Now, while that might seem obvious for anybody who has spent a bit of time in the church, what isn't so obvious--but should be--are the implications of that connection.  It means, for one, that we can't "do church" without Jesus.  And when I say that, I mean, we cannot leave behind the teachings, life, and perspective of Jesus but keep his name and cross to endorse our own agendas like they are merely a brand and logo we can slap onto anything.  The trouble is we do in fact try to do church without Jesus--at least any semblance of what the Jesus of the Gospels actually does and says--and we try it all the time.

Jesus, for example, both models and teaches his disciples to practice in their own lives a willingness to put the needs, well-being, and reputations of others before focusing on getting more for themselves.  He embodied--and then taught his followers to imitate--a way of life that served rather than lorded his position over others, from washing feet to taking the lowly position at the dinner party to laying down his life at the cross.  You can't read the Gospels without getting that message loud and clear, unless you are deliberately trying to ignore it.  And yet, we live in a day and place where lots of people who name the name of Jesus and sit in pews on Sundays think that Christianity is compatible with seeking your own interests first, ignoring those most in need around you, and defining success in terms of how much money/popularity/status/power you wield--not how well you give yourself away.  We are people who think we have the Spirit of God, but have left Jesus behind.

Or, as another example, Jesus makes it clear that in his community, we are to do good not only to those who can pay us back, grant us favors in return, or have influence to offer, but for those who can do nothing for us, and even for those who see themselves as our enemies.  Jesus grounds this practice of enemy-love in the character of no less than God, and he says that God in fact is merciful to the "wicked and ungrateful."  And yet, there are lots folk with dusty Bibles on their coffee tables who would call themselves Christians who dismiss that kind of thinking as foolishness, naïve, or "just not how the world works," as if that were a reason to dismiss Jesus' teaching.  We want to use the label "Christian" and even name Jesus as our "personal Lord and Savior," but without the baggage Jesus brings in his actual words and perspective.  But Paul the apostle says we don't get to do that--we don't get to claim to have the Holy Spirit and then dismiss the actual way of Jesus.

I am reminded of a scene in Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamozov in which one of the characters offers a sort of thought experiment where Jesus comes back to earth, not in glory and power, but in ordinary vulnerable humanity, and the Respectable Religious Crowd in the Church arrests him and threatens to burn him at the stake for showing up, when they have all decided they don't need him anymore.  The Church will tell folks what is good or bad. The Church will copy the hierarchies of the empire and act as Lord.  The Church will decide which of Jesus' teachings we are free to ignore, and where to set the boundaries of love--not the Nazarene.  And when the Grand Inquisitor in the story makes all these threats to the prisoner Christ, Jesus walks up to him, kisses him on the face in silence, and walks out.  It is a reminder to me that sometimes we Respectable Religious folks try to claim possession of the Holy Spirit while trying to leave the troublemaking way of Jesus behind because we find it inconvenient.

Well, Paul the apostle calls us out on that.  For all our churchy talk about having the Holy Spirit, we do not get to leave Jesus behind.  We can't claim to have the Spirit abiding in us and then declare that Jesus' teachings are foolish or impractical.  We do not have permission to use the cross as our logo for endorsing a Me-and-My-Group-First agenda.  And we do not have any right to announce Jesus' blessing on the world's definition of "greatness" while the actual Jesus himself says that true greatness looks like suffering love, radical generosity, and care for the neighbor, whoever that neighbor might be.

Today, it might be worth the time to do a little honest self-reflection and to explore where we have been trying to use Jesus as our personal brand, or to assume the Spirit endorses our personal wish-lists, while we have at the same time been trying to ignore what the actual teachings and way of Jesus look like.  And where we see discrepancies, maybe this is a moment to bring those things back in line.  

We can be people who do name the name of Jesus, and who do confess he is Lord--but it will also mean that we allow this one we name as Lord to direct the ways we live, the ways we love, and the ways we see the world and the neighbors in it.

If it doesn't make sense to say you love the Beatles but don't care for John Lennon or Paul McCartney's contributions, it makes even less sense to claim you've got the Spirit but to ignore the words and witness of Jesus.  The movement of the Spirit and the way of Jesus are one and the same, after all.

They're sort of a package deal.

Lord Jesus, as we dare to name you "Lord" and call on your Spirit, keep us faithful to your vision of the world and your way of life.