Jesus, the Offensive Bread of Life

I've spent most of the day sermon writing in preparation for this weekend.  After spending the obligatory 15 minutes feeling bad for myself because I have to "work" over Thanksgiving weekend and I'm stuck inside while my wife went hiking in the snow (I promise I'm not still feeling bad for myself. Maybe a little.), I queued up my Grooveshark playlist and began to dig into the sixth chapter of John.  As I began to ponder the strange paradox of exclusivity and inclusivity found in the gospel proclamation of Jesus, my headphones were filled with David Bazan's Curse Your Branches.  It was an odd juxtaposition to say the least, and I was struck anew at the mysterious workings of the Spirit, and the offensiveness of a Savior who requires me to eat his flesh and drink his blood.

It seems I can't remind myself enough of the fact that Jesus came to me to give me life, not to improve me, not to help me, not to fulfill me: to give me life.  It's tough, after all, to improve or fulfill a dead person.  I'm also in need of constant reminding that I am not to be a PR representative for Jesus Christ, Incorporated.  He's offensive and there's nothing I can do to get past him.  If I could look at my situation honestly, I'd realize I'm a corpse in a morgue, and Jesus is the mortician.  Unlike any mortician that's ever been in any movie I've ever seen, he's there to tell me he loves me enough to bring me to life, not just tell me he loves me and then leave me dead.  No, he lifts my head off the sterile table, breathes life into my lungs, and offers me food and drink: the food of his flesh, the wine of his blood.  Do I dare spit this offense out of my mouth? Or do I drink down to the last drop the cup of the new covenant, and continue eating?  After all, man can't live by bread alone, we need to eat the Word, or should I say, the Word-become-flesh.

Tomorrow, when I tear into the flesh of turkey, the bread of stuffing, and gulp down blood-red wine, I hope I'll remember that he is the bread come down from heaven, that life is found when I eat his flesh and drink his blood.

Happy Offensive Thanksgiving.

The Outrage of Grace

I've been wrestling through some Robert Farrar Capon recently.  His writing makes me feel as if I've walked into my grandfather's study.  Only now instead of off-white carpet and cheap furniture, the study is full of classic books on shelves of teak, the obligatory green-glass library lamps lighting up antique desks.  And in one of the overstuffed, leather chairs that would obviously be in this upgraded study, he's sitting. But instead of my staunchly fundamentalist-Baptist grandfather waiting to talk to me about music choices and maintaining a good witness with my hairstyle, it's Capon, smoking a pipe with another lit for me.  He hands it to me with a glass of rather good scotch, and I'm disarmed by his stories of grace.

But every few minutes I come to my sense.  I'm a pretty traditional evangelical guy.  A pastoral intern at a PCA church.  I can't be consorting with potential universalists who place so much emphasis on an outrageous grace that I'm no longer aloud to be upset at anyone, except maybe those few that are trying too hard to look alive.  I just can't be hob-nobbing with someone who would say, for example, this:

"I don't know why God insisted on allowing us to run our own history in the first place; and I don't know why he insists on leaving us free enough to botch it in the second; and I don't know why he insists on saving it in the third.  Maybe he really is a jerk.  But if those three insistences are the facts of the case (and if you're a Christian, you believe they are), then there's no way around the outrage of grace.  By and by I shall give you something on judgment and hell, just because they're part of the imagery too.  But don't hold your breath waiting for the other, score-evening shoe to drop, because it's not going to.  Ever since Noah, God has had trouble keeping track of that shoe; and he finally lost it for good in Jesus.  He simply doesn't keep score.  History does, and we do; but as you just proved, keeping score simply ends the game.  And therefore he refuses to do it.  Instead, he erases all our records by death and raises us by grace with nothing but his record left.  Maybe it was just the best he could do; I don't know.  But I do know that's what he says he does.  Your objection to it was voiced perfectly --if less vehemently-- by the Elder Brother; and God's only answer to you was given equally perfectly by the Father: 'It is meet that we should make merry and be glad: for this your brother was dead and is alive again.  Even your rotten kid brother.  Even Hitler. End of Subject.'" (Between Noon and Three p. 252)

I may just need another glass of scotch.