The Great Inversion

 

Most modern scholarship agrees that Jesus was an actual historical person.  They can vouch for him gathering a rag-tag group of disciples in and around Galilee - largely as a counter-movement to the harsh treatment of the Romans and the excesses of the elites down south in Jerusalem.  But, when Jesus finally made the long journey down to the center of the Jewish people in the city of David, things did not go well.  That's an understatement.

Arrested for sedition and charged with blasphemy, Jesus was beaten severely.  Then he was crucified, which wasn't anything out of the ordinary for those stringent Romans.  In six hours he was dead.  They came by to break his legs, but there was no need.  This hero of the people from Galilee went like so many other messianic-figures, only with even less of a roar.

Just like that, three years of budding hope seemed a total loss.

Jesus was dead and buried.

Historians, of course, can't vouch for what actually happened next.  What they care about are the discernible things - the ripples that spread out from the stone hitting the water.  And, in the case of Christianity, the ripples are clear.  Somewhere after Jesus' death, Jesus' closest friends and disciples began operating with the belief Jesus had come back to life.  The women claimed to have seen him.  So did the eleven, although some found doubt to be a persistent little bugger.  But bit by bit, this "stone" lodged itself deep into their collective memory and took hold as the center-piece of their fellowship:  Jesus was alive.

Historian and one-time Sunday school teacher, Bart Ehrman describes all of this in his latest book, The Triumph of Christianity, but then he goes on to note the even more scandalous, shocking news from a historical perspective.

What is that news? 

It's what happened to Paul of Tarsus.

Yes, that Paul.  The 1st Century man who grew up somewhere in the Jewish Diaspora of the Roman Empire - trained by his parents and his culture to work his way through life with a solid education and a strong work ethic.  That meant applying himself to the observation of Torah.  It meant maturing in religious perfection, adhering to the codes and laws laid out through of his people.

Because, and here is the key point, if there was ever going to be any true achievement in Paul's life, it could only come by pleasing God.  And God - in Paul's early mind - was, above all, a god to be pleased.

God was for those who were deserving, who were "righteous" (to use the terminology from Paul's culture).

Which meant only one thing for this first part of Paul's life.  

He had to strive.

He had to work on perfecting himself.

That he did.  Wholeheartedly.  With characteristic directness (and a healthy dose of ego), Paul tells us he excelled in his striving.  He was the top of his class.  He stood out among his peers.  He was a Pharisee of the Pharisees.

And then he wasn't.  

Because Paul found Jesus.  Or, if you like, Jesus arrested Paul.

Ehrman says that posed a HUGE problem for Paul of Tarsus.  

Everything about Jesus oozed imperfection.

If God were to seriously do something ridiculous like take on human flesh, God wouldn't look like Jesus.  He wouldn't be so scandalous.  He wouldn't so brazenly ignore and walk all over Jewish dietary laws or trample upon the Sabbath.

And most importantly, God wouldn't have died on a cross.  

Every a well-trained Jewish Torah scholar would know that "cursed is any man who dies on a tree."

Jesus, in Paul's Pharisaical mind, is the exact opposite of "worthiness."  

So, to Paul, this notion that this Jesus of Nazareth would be the Messiah?  You've got to be kidding me!

Indeed, to young Paul, this news was such a vermin of an idea that he spent a great deal of energy trying to hunt, trap and kill it.  He was bound and determined to get rid of this heresy. 

Because everyone knows that God is someone you have to work you way up to.

Everyone knows if you're going to be anything in life, you have got to find a way to be a winner.

Sure, we can argue about the type of game were playing and whose winning.

And don't think we don't try.

It's changed a great deal from Paul's day.

No one in America really cares if you ace all your Bible exams anymore.

No one today sees excelling in moral righteousness as a valuable life-goal.

No one is growing up right now wanting to be the next Billy Graham.

America has other gods today.

Success is a six-figure salary and a life of financial independence.

Success is matriculating through the right schools and with the right test scores and with the right bona fides to come out with a degree in medicine or law or engineering.

Success is racking up enough clout in a community to be seen by others as important or established.

It wears a thousand different faces all across the country, but make no mistake, it shares one, undying, common value:  proficiency.  Being good at something.  Being rich.  Being attractive.  Being intelligent.  Being wise and prudent enough to figure out the retirement game with enough left over for plenty of leisure.

---

Somewhere in the mid-point of his life, Paul of Tarsus gave up this game.

More importantly, he gave up this god.

Because he found the only true God.  Or, to say it better, the only true God found him.

A humbled, beaten, scandalized, weak, insufficient, "loser" of a god in Jesus Christ showed up.

And then, little by little over the years, the great truth dawned upon Paul in ever deeper ways until he got so entirely swallowed up by this great majesty that he gave every single day going forward to proclaiming this message.

God isn't someone we have to reach.

God has flipped the whole script.  God has inverted the game.

The Master of the Universe moves downward into the very depths of our humility and pain and suffering and agony and scandal and downfall.

So instead of trampling over others in endless exercises of perfection and winning and success, we will find Christ in our weaknesses, where his grace is made perfect.

There's no other way to say it.  Paul's whole world view was flipped completely upside down.

Instead of striving and working to obtain perfection, he now saw life through a completely different lens.

If Jesus is truly hidden in the weak and in the humble places of life, then that unleashes a healing wave of grace.

Good news!

To borrow the freeing word of Paul Tillich, "you are accepted" even in your sinfulness, in your slothfulness, in your financial ruin, in your sexual addiction, in your unending follies that continue to hamstring your pursuit of perfection!

And second to that is this:  if Christ is truly made perfect in our weakness, than our best approach to life is completely inverted as well.

Want to please God?

Bend down in heart and in posture and starting seeking to serve the least of these around you?

Want to see God?

Strive to open up your eyes and your heart to the hurting, the disadvantaged, the poor, the marginalized, and the neglected around you.

Not because it's "social justice."  

Not because your a liberal.

Not because you'll get attention.

No.  

Because somewhere in the most scandalous, unworthy place in your life is Christ.  The hidden Christ.  The Christ who longs to arrest you in your perpetual squirming and to slowly, patiently, lovingly unpack all that unhealthy ego and show you that you didn't have to go looking for God.  God has lovingly been moving towards you every moment of your life, waiting for you to let down and to let go.

Strange god that Jesus.

Fearlessly and fully striving to reach you because you'll never do enough to reach God.