Jesus Christ is Lord

This is a rough draft from one of the chapters of my book FundaMergent. This is one of the 5 fundamentals I am arguing are true for Emergent Christians (to get the full list see Why I Am a FundaMergent). One of the differences between these fundamentals and those of “fundamentalists” is that these 5 fundamentals result in an ethic – a way of life. They develop a Christian in such a way that the way of Christ is lived experientially, and as such, truthfully. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this short sample: 

 

There is a sandwich deli in Durham called Jimmy John’s.  I love Jimmy John’s.  I am somewhat a creature of habit which means every time I eat there I get the same sandwich – the Pepe – and sit in the same booth.  The sandwich is great but the booth is better.   On the wall next to me is a placard with a story that I read each time I am here.  It pulls me in like a fish caught in a net. The story goes like this…

 

An American tourist was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked.

 

Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The tourist complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.

 

The Mexican replied, “Only a little while.”

 

The tourist then asked, “Why didn’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?”

 

The Mexican said, “With this I have more than enough to support my family’s needs.”

 

The tourist then asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?”

 

The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life.”

 

The tourist scoffed, ” I can help you. You should spend more time fishing; and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat: With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats. Eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor; eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You could leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then Los Angeles and eventually New York where you could run your ever-expanding enterprise.”

 

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?”

 

The tourist replied, “15 to 20 years.”

 

“But what then?” asked the Mexican.

 

The tourist laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions.”

 

“Millions?…Then what?”

 

The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”

I love this parable because I find it liberating.  It calls into question the things we so often get caught up into making lords of our lives.  The Mexican fisherman is not tangled in the net the tourist seems hung up in.  He is free.  Just like another group of fishermen discovered, this fisherman seems to know the truth – truth that is freeing.

 

The question facing all of us is not whether something or someone will be our lord but rather, what or who will?  

 

Christians have from the beginning confessed that Jesus Christ is Lord.  We might say that fundamental to being a Christian is the rejection of all other claims upon our allegiance and worship apart from Christ.   Christians are people in the business of actively snuffing out and excluding pseudo-lords – lords that often promise salvation but really serve only to undermine our wholeness, our peace, our freedom .

 

As the church was dawning and waking up to the realization that Jesus Christ is Lord they began to see that the old lords would not and could not give life.  In the book of Acts, shortly after Pentecost, Peter and John make their way to the temple to pray.   Laying around one of the temple gates, a gate called Beautiful, was a man crippled from birth.  Luke, the author of Acts, tells us that people would lay him at this gate daily so that he could ask for alms, or offerings, from people as they entered the temple to pray.  

 

Stop for a moment and consider the irony at play within this story.  A lame man from birth begging for money outside the house of God at a gate called, of all things, Beautiful.  There is nothing beautiful about this picture.  It’s rather tragic.  I think Luke is reminding us, the church, that we often call beautiful what is in actuality sucking the life out of us.  Far too often we accept the reality around us and dress it up rather than living into the reality that Jesus has inaugurated and empowered us to proclaim.   Consider the rest of the story…

 

Peter and John come upon this lame man at the “Beautiful Gate” where they are solicited for money.    Just a few coins, the man requests.   Won’t you show compassion on me by giving me some of your silver and gold?  He is hoping for anything to maintain his present reality if not make it just a bit more cozy.  What more is there?  Daily he has been lying outside this place of prayer, asking for one of the world’s most seductive lords – money.   He cannot imagine any other way to live.  Each person that drops a coin in his needy hand gives him one more day to live and one more reason for everyone to look around and say, “Beautiful.”   

 

But not Peter and John.  They tell the crippled man that they do not have any silver or gold.  They do not have any of the old ways and means of salvation to offer.  They will not placate him with pseudo-lords and in the process conceal the hope found in the one true Lord.  So while they will not give him the lords he requests they give him something far better, something they have the freedom to give – salvation in the name of Jesus Christ.   

 

“In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, get up and walk.”  

 

Peter and John tell the man the truth about himself. They tell him that Jesus is the Lord of life, that he no longer has to live this way, to get up and walk. They tell him he is saved.  Now walk. 

 

In a flash the man’s identity is changed. He is no longer a cripple. It has nothing to do with who he is or what he is willing to acknowledge at the moment.  It has everything to do with Jesus and what he has done on his behalf. The command to get up and walk is our command as well. Peter and John look at us and tell us to get up and walk. Why? Because we are saved.  Because Jesus Christ is Lord and we no longer have to sit under gates we name as beautiful but are really barring us from true fellowship with God and others. 

 

Being a FundaMergent is to be a person who, like Peter and John, looks intently into the face of oppressive systems, powers and idols and insists they are not beautiful but crippling.   We insist that Jesus Christ is Lord and that the abundant life Jesus promised is available when we walk in such a way that dismantles the gods that would keep us lying on a mat, outside the house of prayer.

 

But the gospel is not just about freedom.  It is also about slavery.  As we confess Jesus Christ as Lord we are also confessing our allegiance to a person who had a particular, and peculiar, Way about him.   To this we now turn…