Dictionary Versus Cookie Dough--May 17, 2022

Dictionary Versus Cookie Dough--May 17, 2022

"He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, 'Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord'." [1 Corinthians 1:30-31]

There's an old line of Eugene Peterson that has stayed with me over the years--the late theologian and prolific writer once said, "Jesus is the dictionary in which we look up the meanings of words."  I am convinced that he is right.  The challenge is to take his point seriously, even when it challenges my old thinking, habits, and actions.

What he means, of course, is that for the Christian community, we don't start with our own personal definitions of things like "wisdom" or "justice" or "goodness" or "love" and then shoehorn Jesus to fit our expectations.  Rather, just the opposite--we look to the way of Jesus to show us what love is really like... to see what God's kind of wisdom really is... and to have our old notions of "justice" or "holiness" or "goodness" stretched, expanded, or even broken open.  

So, for example, instead of starting with the assumption that being "holy" means refusing to associate with "notorious sinners" or people who don't believe in God or think differently from what you believe, we look to Jesus and see that whatever else holiness involves, it certainly included hanging out with all the outcasts, sinners, and "those people" who were around to have dinner with back in the first century.  That's important, because sometimes we get the idea that being made "holy" (or, to be fancy about it, "sanctification") means increasingly withdrawing from the world, condemning everyone who is different, and baptizing your own hatred as righteous indignation.  But if we start with Jesus for the shape of holiness, we'll get a very different picture--we get the very embodiment of God getting a reputation for hanging out with "tax collectors, prostitutes, and sinners," touching the unclean lepers, and striking up conversations with foreigners over again the protests of the "holy people."  See the importance of letting Jesus be our dictionary, rather than making him fit our mold like cookie dough cut out into the shape you wanted?

Paul says much the same here, but not just about holiness--he points out that Jesus shows us the shape of redemption, the form of wisdom, and the meaning of justice (the same word as "righteousness" in Paul's Greek).  So rather than us assuming we know what justice looks like (and often it involves punishing "bad" people and demanding satisfaction of wrongs and repayment of debts), we look to Jesus, who shows us a surprising picture of God's kind of justice, in both his words and his actions.  And for Jesus, "justice" turns out to look a lot more like making sure everybody gets enough to eat, forgiving debts outright, and showing mercy to the vulnerable, than it does zapping people for their wrongdoing.  The question is whether we start with our own preconceived notions, or let Jesus redefine the terms for us.

The same is true with wisdom as well.  As we've been noting over these last several verses from First Corinthians, the world brings its own assumptions about what is the "smart" thing to do, and conventional wisdom often has the ring of "You gotta get THEM before they get YOU in life!" or "More is always better!" or "Me and My Group First!"  But if we start with Jesus to define wisdom, we get the sense that in God's Reign, we put others first and seek the well-being of all rather than just ourselves, we find freedom in letting go of possessions rather than hoarding them, and we refuse to answer evil with evil.  It's all a matter of whether we let Jesus shape our assumptions, or use our assumption as a lens to see (or distort) Jesus to line up with those expectations.

The really scary thing, of course, is that in both cases, you end up convincing yourself that your actions are in line with Jesus--if we let Jesus shape our way of seeing the world in the first place, of course, we hope that our lives will come to be more and more Christ-like.  But it can (and sadly does) happen the other way around, too--when I make my mental picture of Jesus fit my already existing assumptions, prejudices, political agenda, and economic interests, I'll find that my version of Jesus never challenges my greed, hatred, fear, or hypocrisy.  I'll have cut all of those out of my cookie-dough Christ.  Much like Anne Lamott says, "You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do." That, of course, is how you end up with churchgoing devout people naming the name of Jesus who are convinced that their Savior endorsed slavery, Jim Crow, and the extermination of indigenous peoples in our own country's history, or the Nazi war machine during World War II or apartheid in South Africa, or the Crusades, or all sorts of other atrocities all propped up by church folks who were sure Jesus was on their side.  And that possibility scares the willies out of me, if I can be honest.

So today, the challenge for you and me both is to be people who keep going back to Jesus to redefine terms for us--to show us again in his actions and words what real love, genuine justice, and authentic holiness looks like.  And the hope is that we will come to become more and more like him, rather than distorting Jesus to fit our expectations.

Today, let's look up the most important words of this day's need in the dictionary whom we confess as Lord--Jesus the Crucified One.

Lord Jesus, break free of the expectations we try and confine you within, and instead shape our view of the world in light of your character.