Lessons from Jafar (Or, A Jesus-Shaped Life)--May 15, 2024

Lessons from Jafar (Or, A Jesus-Shaped Life)--May 15, 2024

"I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead." [Philippians 3:10-11]

I'm not usually one to build much theology from the plot points of classic animated Disney movies, but I'll make an exception this time.  As someone who will admit he loved Robin Williams' take on the Genie in the 1992 Disney version of Alladin, I will also confess that I loved the delicious twist near the end.  It's that moment where the nefarious villain Jafar is conned into using his third wish to become an all-powerful genie himself--only to realize (too late) that becoming a genie also binds him to the rules of serving the wishes of other masters and being trapped in a magic lamp himself, just like the genie he'd been wishing to.  "Great cosmic power... itty bitty living space," Robin Williams' blue Genie laments.  In other words, even in a Disneyfied version of a fairy tale, there is no unchecked power.  There is no magic without the cuffs of servitude; there is no supernatural spectacle without the confines of an ordinary looking lamp.  There is no seeking the "power of a genie" without also having to live accept that "ten thousand years in a lamp will give you such a crick in the neck!" 

As the story suggests, the ones who go for limitless power without service are the villains.  The ones who want triumph without surrender are fools.  The ones who want glory but cannot conceive of it as intertwined with humility are missing the point.  That truth, even without Robin Williams' hilarious celebrity impressions as the voice of a blue cartoon, make the movie worth the watch.

In the life of the Christian community, there are no cartoon genies or magic lamps, but the same truth is there: there is no shortcut to the power of resurrection that doesn't come through the reality of facing death.  And there is no share in the Reign of God without also walking the way that leads to a cross.  There is no triumph and glory that doesn't arise from self-giving love and humble surrender.  There is no skipping ahead to Sunday without staring down Friday. The life we are aiming for as Christians is always and only a Jesus-shaped life.

That's the way the apostle Paul talks about his own hopes, as he writes to the church in Philippi.  Writing from house arrest in Rome, Paul knows there is a significant likelihood that he will be executed by the Empire (Rome did not take kindly to claims of a different sort of kingdom coming and any "Lord" other than Caesar), and he has pinned all his hopes on the God who raises the dead.  He trusts that the same One who raised Jesus is capable of raising him to new life as well, and he longs for that kind of life-giving power to be evident in his own life.  But Paul also knows that sharing the resurrection life of Jesus also means sharing the cruciform path of Jesus, too.  Paul will not make Jafar's mistake of clutching at power for himself without walking in Jesus' own footsteps of serving.

I think sometimes we Christians in the twenty-first century forget that ourselves.  We're always looking for cross-free versions of the gospel--worship as entertainment that never stretches us beyond our comfort zones and preferences, a country-club feel without being challenged to give of our abundance, messages that suggest (or outright claim) that God's will for each of us is wealth, status, financial success, along with 2.5 kids and a white picket fence, and theology that says Christians should be given preferential status in society and wield political power to keep themselves in charge.  You know, all the things that Dietrich Bonhoeffer called "cheap grace" in the 1930s as the Nazis overran the German (yes, Lutheran) church of his day. 

All too often we want to repackage the Christian faith as our shortcut to a resurrection like Christ's, while keeping the cross and tomb just for Jesus alone.  We want Christianity as a matter of baptized wish-granting, and we'd like Jesus alone to be the lamp-bound, cuff-constrained genie, while we get all the benefits of his magical powers.  If that isn't the underlying premise of a lot of radio and TV Christianity, I'll eat my hat.  The trouble is--that kind of approach has left Jesus behind altogether.

As Paul understands it, the Christian life is not a system of beliefs or rituals that grant us access to awesome powers or the afterlife; Christianity is simply bringing us into the way of Jesus--no more and no less.  And because Jesus is risen, we are given the hope of his risen life for ourselves.  But also, because Jesus' kind of life meant the constant choice to lay his life down for others in humble service and self-giving love, we are also called to lives of surrender and radical love.  To be a Christian--literally a Christ-follower--is indeed to be given a compelling power for life; but it is always inescapably a Jesus-shaped life.  That's what makes it compelling in the first place.

What illusions might we need to give away and leave behind if we are going to take that truth seriously?  What counterfeit notions of "power" and "triumph" might we need to set aside in order to more fully step into Jesus' authentic resurrection power--that comes through the way of the cross?  What could it look like today?

Lord Jesus, shape our lives with your own Friday-and-Sunday likeness.