what do i gotta do
I was about 26 when I served as a chaplain for my training to be a pastor. …Can you imagine that? Asking for a chaplain and having some fresh-faced twenty-something walk into your hospital room? It’s not hard for me to imagine, though. The folks I visited let me know exactly what they thought. “You CAN’T be the chaplain,” they’d blurt, “you’re just a kid.”
During that time, I thought, once I’m ordained, then I won’t have to prove I’m really a card-carrying member of the clergy anymore. Only, that’s not what happened. After all, I was ordained just a couple of measly years after that. Plenty of you can remember those days. And while I don’t think anyone was so frank as to say I couldn’t be a pastor, it was made clear, in so many ways, that my youth was a scandal.
In fact, I remember complaining about this to an older, wiser pastor. I asked him what he thought I should do. Grinning, he rubbed his bald head and said, “that will take care of itself.” And for the most part, he was right…
Now, you may be tempted to chuckle. But hold your tongue. Hold your tongue because you, too, are no different. We all have these external marks we THINK measuring up to will finally prove our bonafides. It may be mortgage payments. It may be how your children are doing. It may be where your waistline is. It may be how far you’ve made it on the corporate ladder. It may be what your friends and family say about you when you’re not around. Or it may be all of these or something else entirely. Either way, though, we all have them. We all have these standards we think stacking up against will silence the nagging doubts we’re not really all we’re cracked up to be.
The problem, however, is all these benchmarks are just like the ones I told you about in my pursuit to be the consummate clergy. They’re moving goalposts! You can’t reach them!
…As it turns out, this problem isn’t anything new. Although, it does seem turned up to eleven these days. The quest to measure up starts sooner. And the goals get higher every year. For the folks at First Lutheran in Galatia, though, the issue was religious observance. Specifically, male circumcision.
They thought if they could just chin up to that bar of historical custom, then maybe they could show they were real Christians after all! The problem with all that, says the Apostle Paul, is they’re trying to make a nothing into a something.
You’ve heard of making mountains out of molehills, but this is worse! The folks in Galatia were taking the nothing of doing this or that and trying to make it into a something! A something that could quell their insecurities. A something that could confirm they were the genuine article.
The reason all that’s a bunch of nothing, though, is because none of those actions can deliver on the promises they make! Even if the folks in Galatia went all the way and got circumcised, there’d just be the next thing to do! And Paul points out, they don’t have to look any further for evidence than those pushing for ritual themselves! Even they can’t get themselves across the finish line! That’s why they’re pressuring the folks in Galatia to give it their all! To pad their own religious bottom line!
…It’s no different with our self-justification projects, either. Is it? You have enough experience under your belt to know that no sooner do you reach one goal than another emerges. Or worse, suddenly, the meager progress you’ve made becomes an attainment you’ve got to keep on proving!
*Here’s one’s for free, don’t tell children they’re smart. Instead, tell them they work hard. A study of fifth-graders found they were more likely to work on a test above their level if they were told they work hard rather than they’re smart. The reason for this, it’s supposed, is the kids who were told they were smart thought they had a reputation maintain.
We may not be fifth graders. But we’re no different. Are we? Apparently, human nature emerges early. We think meeting the benchmark will finally prove our worthiness. But it doesn’t really work that way. Does it? The benchmark isn’t really a benchmark! In the end, it’s just a whole bunch of nothing!
What we really need, as it turns out, isn’t to measure up at all. What we really need is for the whole enterprise to come to an end. And the brilliantly Good News Paul can’t believe the folks in Galatia are turning their nose up at is that in Jesus Christ that’s precisely what’s happened!
You might expect Paul to say circumcision isn’t anything. And he does. But he also goes on to say that neither is uncircumcision anything either! You see, in Christ, it’s not a matter of meeting any of those marks out there. It’s all a matter of meeting him! Meeting Jesus!
Jesus, who is the fullness of God’s love! Jesus, who settles the question of your worth by proving his love for you! Jesus, who silences all those other voices out there telling you you’ve got to measure up by telling you of his immeasurable love for you!
In Jesus, all those externals have come to an end once and for all! And that end is Jesus Christ himself! Jesus, the alpha and the omega. Jesus, the beginning and the end! Jesus, who meets every last standard, not to justify himself, but to justify you!
In Jesus, all those old measuring rods have been broken to pieces by his unending love. And what’s more, Jesus takes those pieces and fashions them into a cross. A cross, the sign of his undying love for you! A cross, the sign you were marked with at your baptism!
You, too, have been crucified with Christ! All those old standards don’t have a thing on you anymore! In Christ, they’re as good as dead. And now, all that’s left is the eternal measure of God’s love for you sealed on your forehead forever at baptism!
Here, and here assuredly, is where all your worthiness is found! And, best of all, this judgment is unmovable! God created the cosmos to mark you by it! Jesus carved it on the palm of his hand at the cross to prove it to you! And the Holy Spirit tore apart heaven to seal you with it at your baptism!
You want to see what you're worth? Look no further than the cross! Better yet, look no further than that very mark upon your own brow put there at your baptism by the power of the Holy Trinity! Each person of the Holy Trinity showing up to move heaven and earth themselves to show you just how far God’s love will go!
Comments
Post a Comment