Chapter 6 ReJesus Book Study by Rev. Lynn Munson

Sign holders at stadiums and on street corners, tracts handed out door to door, conversations and conflicts in our churches; all cause me a bit of dis-ease. Each reducing Christianity to a set of rules, a code of ethics, and a three-point prayer that will swing wide the gates of heaven; only for the few.  And somehow it makes me uncomfortable. In fact, it feels to me as if there is an anger and a coercion behind the proclamation. If you don’t do this…you won’t get that….and in fact you’ll get something worse. Eternal damnation…if you don’t believe exactly what I say. Did God really leave it in our hands to believe exactly the right thing; when He knows how we humans have been getting it wrong from the beginning?

I think of my daughter when she was about two. She always wanted to be near me when I was cooking. I’d open the stove, and there she was. I’d be stirring something over a burner and she wanted me to hold her. Every time...wanting to reach out and touch the hot surface or the flame. Until, one day, she saw me burn my finger, “ouch!” She witnessed me cry out and shake my hand, and pull away. After that, when we were near the oven or the stove top, she would gesture toward it and say, “owie” and pull away. The way she saw me react to the burn, she re-enacted. She followed.

For me, this is a helpful epiphany found in our chapter’s discussion on the dichotomy of Hellenistic and Hebraic worldviews. I’ve not thought about it before, that Hellenism would direct us toward a Christian Ideology; a system of ideas or ideals. And yet, authors, Frost and Hirsh invite us to consider that no person, much less, no Messiah can be reduced to an idea…or an ideal. And rather than someone to believe…as we would an idea. Jesus is someone to follow.

Additionally, the point of faith changes when not trying to labor over right-thinking; where the goal seems to be, that if we could just get the right read on scripture we’d find the fast track to holiness. Rather, if the point is, as Kierkegaard encourages, to “let the text read us,” then it is only in following Jesus’ way with us that holiness can be found.

This too, is uncomfortable. Because, I cannot control what Jesus might read in me. And I cannot control where He might lead me…or how He might lead me to change…or to do something I don’t want to do. He might even call me to love and have grace with those sign holders at stadiums and on the corner. He might bid me to welcome the tract distributors. And He might even push me into the center of those church chats to be present as He is present.

What does the Word find when it reads you (and me)?

How do we uncover our own preconceived ideas of who God is and how He responds in the world?

Rev Lynn Munson is the Senior Pastor at Yorba Linda UMC.