"If you ever find yourself stuck in the middle of the sea, I'll sail the world to find you" -Count on Me, Bruno Mars
"'No one, sir,' she said. 'Then neither do I condemn you,' Jesus declared. 'Go now and leave your life of sin.'" -John 8:11
I was a choir boy. No, really! growing up, I sang in a high school church youth choir of 100 every Sunday. We wore the robes and the stoles and stood in the choir loft and struggled to sing and clap at the same time with the same rhythm.
I was a choir boy.
Every summer we would take a tour with this Sunshine Choir somewhere around the country. The summer after my junior year of high school, we loaded up the buses with risers, sheet music, and enough Swedish Fish to last 2 hours of road trip and headed off to Washington D.C.
Truth be told, I don't remember much about the tour. I know we got to see a tour of the Capitol. I know we got to sing in the National Cathedral. I'm sure we visited nursing homes and the like to share the hope of Jesus. But what I remember most about that trip was our host for the last night.
You see, like other choirs, once or twice a tour we would sing in churches. When the concert was over and the customary potluck had been consumed, we'd be paired or tripled off to stay with a family in the church overnight. This was presumably to keep costs down (but looking back, how none of us was ever kidnapped or brought back the next morning with one less toe is beyond me). On the last night, after we'd sung outside of Richmond, Virginia, my friend Tyler and I were shoved off with a guy named George.
Tyler and I had done this before, so we were old pros. It would take a lot to mess with us. George succeeded with perhaps the most confusing conversation I've ever experienced.
After we'd arrived to his house and he'd confirmed that his kids and wife were all asleep, he asked if we'd like to watch a game (basketball or something). We stayed up for a bit eating pizza and watching some guys on a screen making small talk with a host who by all accounts was a great family man and churchgoer. (Disclaimer: nothing that follows did anything to dissuade me that that was true, so don't worry about what comes next.)
He turned to us at one point and asked, "Do you know why we have such an obesity problem in the is country? Taken aback, Tyler and I kind of eyed one another for a second before shrugging our shoulders as high schoolers do and kind of mumbling a simple, "Nope."
That's when he dropped the hammer. "Because not everyone is a Christian."
You've got to understand, I've heard of Christian diets and discipline. But we have an obesity problem because not everyone is a Christian?? That was a pretty bold claim, especially to two idiot sixteen year olds. But we waited for any kind of explanation.
"That's right. Look at it this way, kids don't get any exercise anymore. Why? Because parents are afraid that if they let their kids go to the park they'll get abducted or taken by child molesters. And if everyone was a Christian, there wouldn't be any child molesters, so kids would play outside, and there wouldn't be an obesity issue in America," he said with a straighter face than I'd ever encountered.
And that my friends is a theologian. Tyler and I looked at each other, not sure what to see, think, or do. Maybe we should run. Or should we argue. Or should we just sit and eat pizza and nod along. (We obviously chose the latter.)
The next morning we got back to the church, said goodbye to our host, jumped on the bus, and began telling everyone in earshot about George's "theology." (You have to understand, group messaging wasn't a thing then. We had to wait a whole eight hours to tell people things.) But in the twelve years since then, I've never forgotten that story.
I think that's because, underneath the crazy, George may actually have been onto something. No, I don't agree with just about any of his major premises, or the conclusions that followed them, but underneath them, there was a kernel of truth we often miss: that following Jesus ought to leave us different.
When people experienced Jesus in Galilee and Judea, they came with backstories and histories. They came with assumptions and goals. They came with expectations and desires for who Jesus was. And Jesus didn't live up to any of them. Typically, those expectations dissolved and those hopes were unmet. To meet Jesus meant to be changed.
To experience Jesus meant that people had to take loving our neighbors (yes, all our neighbors) sacrificially. That's hard. To experience Jesus meant that people had to begin to give generously and recklessly. That's hard. To experience Jesus meant that you went out to invite a bigger and bigger crowd of left behinds and outcasts back into the party. That's hard. To experience Jesus ultimately meant that you had to lay down your life if need be out of love for your neighbor. That's hard. To experience Jesus was to hear that your story, with its brokenness and hurt and pain and imperfections, was worthy and loved and irreplaceable. That's hard.
Even now, two thousand years later, I find myself thinking that I am living in the kiddie pool of what it means to follow Jesus. I see this deeper life, this changed life, offered to me, and I'm too terrified to take the plunge into deeper waters, but every moment I spend experiencing Jesus, I know I'm called to move.
There's a church in Ohio with a tagline that has forever messed with me. "God loves you just the way you are, and God's not done with you yet." That is the story of our God. In the incarnation and the resurrection, we see a God who is moving towards us, not waiting for us to make the first move. We see a God desperately seeking us. But that's not where it ends. Jesus doesn't let us stay where we are. There is a bigger story God is writing and inviting us into. It will involve change, and pain, and re-orienting our goals. But it will also involve transforming the world God made.
I believe, even if the world were full of Christians, there would still be pedophiles. We're all part sinner and part saint. Anyone who's decided that following Jesus isn't the worst idea knows that perfection isn't within our grasp. But I also know that those who profess to follow Jesus ought to live a little bit differently. We ought to live changed. We ought to be the people in the world who know we are loved and shine the light in every corner we encounter.
So may you not end today the way you started it. May you be transformed by the light of Jesus.
forever unfinished...
