I’m home.
But how did my Race start? I was troubled with fresh conviction and shocking ignorance, and the racket in my head grew much worse before it got better. It’s one thing to acknowledge a different worldview; it’s another thing to absorb it. The next season was marked by me thrashing around, ranting and raving, and generally freaking out as the spiritual tension caught up with me and exposed the true condition of my heart.
I was frozen, attempting to get my head around the idea that I’d missed something so central. I was sitting on the proverbial curb by the wreck God had engineered, trying to catch my breath. But that was less chaotic than the subsequent direction change. Switching gears was on par with trying to teach an older woman to text message.
Thus began a period of reorienting my mind in the restorative mission of Christ. I was convinced of the need to change my mind, but what came next was actually changing my mind, and I don’t envy God that task. (I once told my teammate regarding the chaos, “I’m not even going to pray about that.” This was what Jesus was up against.)
God does His heaviest spiritual lifting with me in the Word. Insert home. And back to the drawing board, a theme began to lift. I began noticing the liberal use of the word new, particularly once Jesus hit the scene. Since that concept was hitting close to home, I dug in:
- New wine has to be poured into new wineskins. (Matthew 9:17)
- The kingdom of heaven is a storehouse of not just old treasures but new ones too. (Matthew 13:52)
- Jesus rolled out a whole new teaching. (Mark 1:27)
- We have a new and different life linked to the way Jesus lived and died. (Romans 6:4)
- We’re supposed to be serving in a new way, the way of the Spirit. (Romans 7:6)
- All our rules mean nothing; the only thing that matters is being a new kind of human. (Galatians 6:15)
- Part of our salvation is having a new attitude about things. (Ephesians 4:23)
I realize these Scriptures may seem familiar. And honestly, a lot of times, they simply make me want to say, “Blah, blah, blah,”—white noise in the Bible almost. But, the Bible took a new dimension for me, and I discovered significance in verses I’d read with near boredom before.
The concept of “new” began to trouble me for the first time. So let’s just go old school and look at the actual definition: “Other than the former or the old; different and better.” Well, because I’ve been a citizen of Christian culture my entire life, I didn’t have a great concept of “the old me.” The old me before salvation was in kindergarten (maybe), learning how to sort and sequence, so I went broader in terms of old, meaning a life ungoverned by Jesus’ principles. Ah yes, I’m there now—how could one forget. The kind of life Jesus introduced was new; everything outside of that was old.
Perhaps the synonym that most grieved me was different. Because, sure, parts of my life were different from your average Westerner’s, but not really. I went to church more than a normal human would, but I still had too much pride and self-absorption, same as everyone. I lived for me and mine. Outside of my spiritual titles—youth pastor and YoungLife leader—there were no radical lifestyle distinctions that would cause anyone to say, “Wow, you live a really different life.”
I realized I was normal.
But my Savior was the most un-normal guy ever. And it was His un-normal ideas that made everything new.
Truly, Jesus never fit in. He was never the cool guy. He was always wrecking everyone’s life. I’m positive the disciples sat on pins and needles when Jesus talked to a crowd, worried what crazy thing He might say next. (Pretty talk: “I am the bread of life.” Minutes later: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” [John 6:48, 53] Ok. Damnit!)
But it wasn’t just what He said; it was what He did. It was who He spent time with, who He talked to, who He argued with—to say nothing of His very unaffluent life. If we took Jesus’ famous teachings away and just focused on the way He lived, He would still be radical. Which, of course, I’ve heard, but somehow, before the Race, I was content letting Jesus do the messy work. I would just talk about it. Or I made it fit, inventing a way to merge it with my normal context. Sure, He hung out with lepers, but we don’t really have a leprosy epidemic anymore, so I’ll just be kind to customer service reps and telemarketers, which is about the same sacrifice…am I right? Hah, wrong.
All of this got me thinking about Communion. Stick with me.
“Take this and divide it among you,” that was a onetime command. But when He said, “Do this in remembrance of Me,” it required continuous action (Luke 22:17). So not only does Jesus’ statement require a constant response, but remembrance is from anamnesis, meaning “to make real.” Communion is more than a memory, more than a reverent moment when we recall Jesus’ heroic sacrifice. Remembrance means honoring Jesus’ mercy mission with tangible, physical action since it was a tangible, physical sacrifice. In other words—constantly make this real!
Not only was Communion a symbolic ritual, it was a new prototype of discipleship. “Continuously make My sacrifice real by doing this very thing.” Become broken and poured out for hopeless people. Become a living offering, denying yourself for the salvation and restoration of humanity. Obedience to Jesus’ command is more than looking backward; it’s a present and continuous replication of His sacrifice. We don’t simply remember the meal; we become the meal.
Insert my Race. Doesn’t this concept of being broken for others ring true? It’s a spiritual dynamic that bears out physically. Why is it so exhausting to uphold someone’s heavy, inconvenient burden? Why are we spent from shouldering someone’s grief or being an armor bearer”. Why is it that limiting someone out of his or her rubble leaves us breathless? Because we are the body of Christ, broken and poured out, just as He was.
Mercy has a cost: someone must be broken for someone else to be fed. The sermon that changed your life? That messenger was poured out so you could hear it. The friends who stood in the gap during your crisis? They embraced some sacrifice of brokenness for your healing. Anytime you say, “That fed me, that nourished me,” someone was the broken bread for your fulfillment.
Carrying on the life of Christ is somehow integrated with the concept of death. There is a death/life rhythm that sustains creation. Much like a seed is destroyed to produce a living tree, self-sacrifice is hardwired into the mission of a believer.
Brian McLaren wrote in The Secret Message of Jesus (if you haven’t read this—I highly suggest it!!),
“What if our only hope lies in this impossible paradox, the only way the kingdom of God can be strong in a truly liberating way is through a scandalous, noncoercive kind of weakness; the only way it can be powerful is through astonishing vulnerability; the only way it can live is by dying?”
That helps me better understand Paul’s teaching to the Corinthian church:
We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you (2 Cor. 4:10-12).
Death in me = life in you. Broken so someone else is fed. “Feed my lambs.”
It was on the Race that God continued to ruin me for justice, and it required a willing brokenness. A crack in my wholeness.
So who was Jesus broken and poured out for? If I’m picking whom I sacrifice for, I’m thinking future martyrs, gospel writers, and world changers. I love to pour into believers who take Jesus seriously. These are my people. Love. You. This convinced demographic worked for me, or at least it was familiar. The pesky part came when the question burrowed deeper, since Judas was also part of the “for you” group Jesus referred to. Who does Judas represent: those who would turn on me despite what I sacrificed or why.
This facet of broken and poured out for you”. Not what I envisioned. A romanticized notion of social compassion gets trashed once you actually turn your bias to the bottom. This is where sometimes instead of a “thank you,” you get a “fuck you.” Deep disappointment exists here. Betrayal resides here. Rip-your-eyes-out frustration lives here. Inflated White Savior Complex lives (and must die) here. Hooray! Anyone still want to join me?
So this is what God has taught me through Judas at Jesus’ table, eating the broken bread that was His body: We don’t get to opt out of living on mission because we might not be appreciated. We’re not allowed to neglect the oppressed because we have reservations about their discernment. We cannot deny love because it might be despised or misunderstood. We can’t withhold social relief because we’re not convinced it will be perfectly managed. We can’t project our advantaged perspective onto struggling people and expect results available only to the privileged. Must we be wise? Absolutely. But doing nothing is a blatant sin of omission. Turning a blind eye to the bottom on the grounds of “unworthiness” is the antithesis to Jesus’ entire mission. How dare we? Most of us know nothing, nothing of the struggles of the poor. We erroneously think ourselves superior, and it is a wonder God would use us at all to minister to His beloved.
So here’s the truth. I have no clue what is next for me. But I have full faith that it’s going to be pretty damn great.
Until then. I’m here. In Washington. Praying. Waiting. Discerning.
Becoming new.
