Jesus

The Divine Contrast

As I was preaching through Jesus’ life in the book of Luke, I was struck by the “divine contrast” that exists between Christ’s baptism and wilderness temptation. Last Sunday, I shared this writing at the end of my sermon entitled “Is It.”

In each of our lives the brushstrokes of God reveal the masterpiece of divine contrast. Carefully, He blends the cool refreshing blues of the baptism with the warm arid hues of the wilderness.

Whether in the refreshment of baptism or the dryness of the wilderness: two things about Jesus are apparent: His obedience and His humility.

When we are in the cool waters of baptism, it is easy to get puffed up in pride: to believe that God blessings are a result of our goodness rather than His grace, to shift our focus from His will to ours. It is in the cool waters of baptism that the compassionate heart is tempted to fill with judgment, relationship yields to ritual, exhorting words are replaced with venomous words, and the life of courageous risk fades to an apathetic life lived in spiritual opulence.

Yet those that find themselves in the wilderness do not escape the piercing rays of temptation themselves. It is the wilderness that we are tempted to lose sight of grace, obedience, and love. When we succumb to the wilderness’ temptation, we sleep in darkness: replacing grace with doubt, obedience with rebellion, and love with fear. Beneath the wilderness stars we are tempted to show our dissatisfaction with God by embracing a life of self-sufficiency. We forget that the church is God’s gift of community, and we bathe in the mirage of isolated loneliness believing that the path to living water belongs to others.

Yet, when we remember the humility and obedience of our savior:

That is when the refreshing waters of baptism open the floodgates of heaven. When we remember the humility and obedience of our savior, that is when we live our lives in the rhythm of Father’s will; that is when we swim in the flow of the Spirit’s current. The cool refreshing blues of baptism restore our soul, announce new chapters, submerge us to new depths, and carve for us a path of purpose.

And when we remember the humility and obedience of our savior:

The divine contrast of the wilderness becomes a tranquil spring of growth for our souls. We march through treacherous days beneath the cadence of our Father’s instruction. The warm arid hue of the wilderness stretches our soul, burns the master’s mark into the plot of our lives, bends our will, and prepares our heart for the day when the dryness of the wilderness becomes the floor of the refreshing river from which we emerge a humble and obedient child of the Father with a soul that dances to the rhythm of the Divine Contrast.

Life from the Margins: Abnormally Normal

Among the battle-grounds in the same-sex marriage debate was an elusive, sought after quality called “normal.” For centuries, those with same-sex attraction were labeled as abnormal, so much so that society cut them off from what Justice Kennedy described as the “foundational” rights to love and marry. But that has now changed. In a 5-4 vote of the Supreme Court, the label of abnormal was officially removed. The White House, Coca-Cola, Cinderella’s castle were among the millions proclaiming their joy and support with rainbow gleam. Our culture celebrates when that which was abnormal is embraced as normal.

Among many Christians, there is a deep seething. You likely won’t see it marching down streets, hash-tagged, or acknowledged in the news. But, as a pastor, I have never seen such despair in the hearts of church-goers, especially those who remember America before the sexual revolution. They are depressed and frustrated; they feel betrayed, lost, and abnormal in their own country. Many of them feel they are being cut off from the “foundational” rights to exercise free-speech and faith. It is a painful irony that many in our culture also celebrate when the normal becomes the abnormal.

As a graduate of approximately 6,500 Christian worship services and 10,000 sermons, I have an observation: American Christians have been obsessed with being normal! We desire Jesus, love, grace, and the blessings of the cross, but we have often run from the scorn that accompanies His message. Have we forgotten that Jesus’ own culture wanted to kill him? The message of Jesus has always been abnormal. In our quest to be relevant, we have often abandoned our heritage and embraced the superficial. We have tweeted self-help with a twist of Jesus and unfriended the substantive preaching of sacred Scripture. We have envisioned church as an amusement park where we ride the Jesus-coaster to our preferred destination instead of a community of believers who profess that Jesus is the destination.

Where has our obsession with normal gotten us? Well, fewer people are now going to church, fewer people are being baptized, our cultural voice is on mute, churches are closing at an alarming pace, and we have a shortage of godly pastors. Meanwhile, our congregants struggle to understand page-one truths of Christianity like: life is a gift from God, gender as divine design, marriage and family as foundational to society and well-being, sexuality as an expression of biblical marriage, and new-life as both the destination of redemption and the action of God’s love. (https://lashbanks.com/2014/10/25/5-gifts-of-covenant-marriage/)

Now Christians are being forced to the margins of the discussion, perhaps we should take a deep breath, familiarize ourselves with our new surroundings, and realize that the margins are our earthly home. Genuine believers in Christ are not normal; we are abnormal. Remember the words of Jesus:
“If the world hates you, understand that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. However, because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of it, the world hates you. Remember the word I spoke to you: ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will also keep yours. But they will do all these things to you on account of My name, because they don’t know the One who sent Me (John 15:18-21,HCSB).

As Christians, we have a unique place within the social order. Our faith is anchored in sacred truth. For centuries, millions have lived their lives, loved their families, and cared for the world guided by the truths of Scripture. We understand that the 100 year window of earthy life is not the tense of past, present, and future. Our lives here are but a vapor and our future is with Christ in eternity. The cross is the place where the normal become abnormal; heaven is the place where the abnormal become normal.