Like Oxygen in Our Cells--July 30, 2024

Like Oxygen in Our Cells--July 30, 2024

"I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love." [Ephesians 3:16-17]

It's more than just willpower, you know?

And it's more than just a self-help book.

Sometimes (maybe most of the time) Christians are not great at remembering that. We have some sort of belief, probably, that following Jesus will change us... but if we are pressed to explain it, we often just slide into talking about willpower. We end up sounding like we are saying, "Well, Jesus guarantees we get into heaven... but now it's up to you on your own to become a moral person." We end up falling into fads like wearing bracelets with WWJD on them, as though all it takes to be Christ-like is a momentary pause to ask yourself, "What would Jesus do?" In other words, we end up picturing Jesus way "out there" in front of us--so far in front of us that he's either waiting already in heaven twiddling his thumbs until we get there on our own, or he's ten steps ahead of us while we do our best to copy his moves from a distance. Either way, it ends up sounding like Jesus is merely a means to an end--just a ticket to heaven or a template we have to figure out how to copy.

But the writers of the New Testament don't picture the scene that way. They don't think of Jesus being just way out in front like the lead pacer in a horse race, while we are left in the dust. The writers of the New Testament keep talking about Christ living and dwelling within us. He's not just "out there" or "up ahead." And our job is not simply to follow the footprints to go where Jesus already went long before. The life we call Christianity is not simply our willpower trying to force ourselves to retrace Jesus' steps. No--the audacious claim of the New Testament is that Christ himself comes to be the animating presence within the people of Jesus, who trains our spiritual muscles to walk and move and reach and stretch in new directions... from the inside. Like the old campfire scary story puts it, the call is coming from inside the house.

That is to say, for the followers of Jesus, growing in love is not simply an option I can either choose to do or not to do. It's not just that Christians take a look at Jesus' example and then decide if they will or won't try to copy it. It's that--even in spite of my continuing resistance--Christ himself is within me, changing me from the inside out. My sheer willpower doesn't have much force to it--ask the half-empty bag of Fritos in the pantry if you want confirmation of that. And on my own, I am going to keep sliding back into selfishness, fear, suspicion of those who are different, hate of others, hypocrisy, and lying. We are all wired with that fight-or-flight, angry rage or fearful retreat, kind of outlook on the world on our own--but Christ makes something new possible. And Christ does it, not by just giving us an example for us to try to copy, but by residing within us in a real, meaningful way.  The people of Jesus, in other words, are not merely a fan club of admirers of Jesus, nor a troop of impersonators workshopping their best impression of Jesus, but people in whom Jesus himself lives and dwells, putting roots down through us into the good soil of God's love.

Ask a kid who is just learning how to hold a pencil to copy da Vinci's "Vitruvian Man," and even if you have a poster-print of it right in front of the child, you will end up with stick figures rather than anything close to a reasonable facsimile. Same with us and Jesus--if all we have is Jesus' example to look at and then to try and copy with our own messy lives, we will never come close to looking like Christ that way. It's not possible, anyway, to simply extrapolate Jesus' first-century life and world into twenty-first century situations--at least it's not like you can do it with mathematical precision. But that's not what the Christian faith is about--we are not meant to copy by rote the picture in front of us and get it right by our sheer willpower and determination. We have Christ within us, teaching us to move, training our hands and feet, so that our pictures of Christ look more and more like Jesus' own self-portraits, traced not on paper or canvas but on our own lives.

In all honesty, the good news we call "the gospel" is not (despite so many billboards saying otherwise) that Jesus is merely a means to an end like a ticket to get you into heaven, while you continue to be a relentlessly self-centered jerk forever. And nor is the good news, "If you can copy Jesus well enough, you'll be deemed acceptable to get in." Both of those imagine that Jesus is unconnected and unrelated to me and my actions now. But the New Testament instead says that Christ fills me even now, so I am brought into daily communion with the Creator of the universe right now, already, every day of my life, as Christ grounds me in his grace. And as Catherine of Siena says (one of my favorite medieval Spanish mystic women theologians, if you are keeping score), "All the way to heaven is heaven... because Jesus said 'I am the Way.'" If the reality we usually call "eternal life" is really about being in the very presence of the One who IS unending life, then Catherine is exactly right--Jesus isn't just a ticket to "getting" some other thing called "eternal life" or "heaven." Jesus IS this reality of life in the full--he IS what eternal life looks like. He IS what makes heaven...heaven. Not gold streets or pearly gates. But Jesus. And if Jesus is not simply "out there up ahead" but dwelling within me, and you, and us, then the Christian life is not really about "getting TO heaven" so much as it is about increasingly discovering the One who IS eternal life already permeates our being like oxygen in our cells.

How would it change your outlook in this day--and even your outlook on your whole faith--to consider that it's never been about chasing Jesus from behind to find a way to get to some other place called heaven... but rather that the One who is Life already dwells in you and is shaping the way you live and move and speak, so that you begin to participate in his own fullness of life right here and now?

See? This is good news that is so much better than "Use your willpower to copy Jesus. And use a bracelet if necessary to remind you to do it." All the way to heaven is heaven already.

Lord Jesus, direct me so that I live already like your abundant life is coursing through me already, beyond the bounds of my weak willpower and innate anxieties.