Poisonous Prescription or Perfect Panacea . . . .

This morning I did my now habitual task of filling up the weekly medication box for my husband. Each week since his triple bypass I religiously check through the list of medications sent home with him from Papworth; anxious not to get anything wrong, I double check my work. I also re-read the list of do’s and don’ts he brought home with him from the hospital . . . follow this exercise regime . . . take these tablets ... eat these foods . . . and all will be well with your heart. The surgeon will be pleased with you. That is good news! Worth the effort.

But it also reminds me of how, all too often (as a former pastor I plead oh so guilty) the amazing, mind-blowing good news of Jesus Christ has been presented as a daunting and uninspiring prescription - make the effort, whether you feel like it or not; follow the rules, however tedious; take the medicine, however unpleasant; and all will ultimately be well. God will be pleased with you.

But that is a million miles from the abundant life Jesus said he had come to bring us; it is never what he said, taught, demonstrated or lived out. It is surely no surprise that it is a message that it is utterly repellent to the vast majority of people outside of the church in this post-Christian age.

Tim Keller, a pastor for over 40 years, 25 of them in New York, wrote this -

“Jesus's teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did.”

Timothy J. Keller, The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith

For most of us this past year and more has been a time when we have experienced life-challenges of hitherto unknown proportions - physical and emotional isolation, health issues, separation from loved ones, anxiety and depression, financial hardship, grief . . there is so much pain . . . and the one thing we need to know through all of this is that, however insecure the world looks right now, God is ultimately on the throne, and that his commitment and love for us has never and will never fail. Jesus came to demonstrate in word and deed that if I trust in him nothing will ever separate me from his love, and I need to know that deep in my soul.

When Jesus was on earth the people he sought out, spent time with, sat down and ate with, were the outcasts, the people on the fringes of society, the socially and morally unacceptable, the moral misfits. It was the religious law keeping, rigidly upright people he offended - and who offended him. He called the religious teachers “whitewashed tombs” and “blind guides” who “travel over land and sea to win a single convert and when you have succeeded you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are” (Matt.23).

Those are strong words, maybe too strong for the respectable, kindly, loving folk we who are Christians may consider ourselves to be. But I think they are also a stark warning of how easy it is for those of us who stumblingly follow Jesus to fall into the self-righteous trap of presenting him as some sort of moralistic kill-joy. It is all too common to leave church feeling beaten up rather than built up, bowed down by a list of rules to live by rather than invited into the comforting arms of a Saviour who loves us unconditionally. And of course, like the dutiful elder brother in the Prodigal Son story, who is furious at his father for running to welcome back his younger wayward brother, we convince ourselves that we have somehow earned God’s special approval when in reality we are all, without exception, struggling sinners utterly dependent upon the grace of God.

The older son was more distanced from his father than the younger, high-living, rebellious son. Nothing separates us more from the heart of Jesus than self-righteousness. Non-religious, wayward, hurting, off-the-wall people, those shunned by the religious respectable law-keeping establishment were the ones who were drawn to Jesus, because they knew he was drawn to them. He loved them - loves them still.

Dane Ortlund in his beautiful book “Gentle and lowly” says that his Dad pointed out to him something Charles Spurgeon had said, that the one place in the Gospels where Jesus reveals his heart - beyond his teaching, his speeches, his prayers, his purpose - the core of who he is is revealed when he says “Come to me all you who labour and are heavy laden (I guess that could describe most of us right now), and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matt.11:28-30).

Gentle and lowly - the first is just beautiful, the latter Ortlund unwraps as fundamentally meaning Jesus is “accessible”, utterly approachable - “The minimum bar to be enfolded in the embrace of Jesus is simply: open yourself up to him”. No payment, no penance, no priestly pardon - Jesus is the one who invites us to come and he is the one who gives us rest.

Oh how I have needed to hear that again and again this past year.

I don’t need to hear a five point plan to be a better Christian. The Bible is not a handbook I need to observe as meticulously as I follow Graham’s prescription list. It is a love letter from a Father to his children. There are no first class and second class followers of Jesus - no upper spiritual echelons who have special access into the throne room of heaven because of their special efforts - there are just flawed forgiven people willing to fall into the open arms of grace.

As we come out of lockdown . . maybe . . sometime! . . if we begin to live as the beloved children of God we actually are, people will begin to be attracted once more to the beauty of Jesus.

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