It's that time of year again.
There are lambs showing up in the fields and farming Twitter is filling up with pictures of lambs.
The thing nobody tells you (out loud) is that lambing is often gruesome and that lambs ... well, did YOU know lambs stink?(!)
Well ... there y'go.
The cat is out of the bag.
But people don't always relate well to reality all that well, y'see?
Often, plastic coating is preferred.
'Fake Plastic Trees'
I guess it depends what sort of age you are, but have you by any chance come across 'Fake Plastic Trees' by the band Radiohead?
The lyrics are about living in a broken plastic world that's trying to pretend it's not broken at all.
If you have five minutes you can listen to it HERE.
Somewhere around the mid-point it goes:
She lives with a broken man
A cracked polystyrene man
Who just crumbles and burns
He used to do surgery
For girls in the eighties
But gravity always wins
It wears him out, it wears him out
It wears him out, it wears him out
She looks like the real thing
She tastes like the real thing
My fake plastic love."
Pretending everything's OK IS the problem
The problem lies in pretending everything's OK ... when it's not.
Plastic!
Jesus has a different approach to dealing with the broken, embarrassing, stinkier side of life.
It challenges the pursuit of the 'plastic' but requires the recognition of reality.
"‘Come to me,
all you who are weary and burdened,
and I will give you rest."
Matthew 11:28
Dane Ortlund puts it really well in his highly praised new book 'Gentle and Lowly':
"You don't need to unburden or collect yourself and then come to Jesus.
Your very burden is what qualifies you to come."
The Lord’s people are messed up people ... complex, confused and often pretty broken.
That is the reality ... that is OUR reality.
That's the reality - we need to OWN it!
If we want to address this we need to OWN it, not attempt to feel better about it when nothing gets changed.
The Lord is not a therapist, He's the Saviour!
Neither does He peddle fake positives about what a wonderful person you are because that wouldn't be true and it wouldn't change anything for the better.
Jesus is absolutely clear about this in Luke 5:31-33:
"Jesus answered them, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor,
but those who are ill.
I have not come to call the righteous,
but sinners to repentance.’"
Do you see that?
Not the self-righteous but sinners.
Called not to therapy but to repentance.
Things go badly wrong in a church where this realisation isn't blended well in to its DNA.
And that's why ...
Paul hunts down the 'plastic Christians' in Corinth
The Apostle Paul absolutely takes 'plastic Christianity' head-on when he writes to the wayward church in Corinth:
"Do not be deceived: neither
- the sexually immoral
- nor idolaters
- nor adulterers
- nor men who have sex with men
- nor thieves
- nor the greedy
- nor drunkards
- nor slanderers
- nor swindlers
Here's the key bit ...
"And that is what some of you were.
But
- you were washed,
- you were sanctified,
- you were justified
and by the Spirit of our God."
1 Corinthians 6:9-11
The Point
The Church ... and any REAL church ... must always be open to any and all the broken, messed up people the Lord calls into it.
If you are broken, wounded, hurt, confused and pained – welcome!
We have great news for you.
There is a Saviour.
There is rest.
Whatever we've been, there's SURE hope!
But for plastic pretenders?
There is not.
Sometimes I fear that we forget that.
I'm grateful for a reminder to this effect I saw recently from David Robertson:
"The Church is beautiful not because it is filled with the beautiful people, but because Christ has died for her, wants her as his bride and will bring us to glory, clothed in glory.
The Church is beautiful not because we are beautiful, but rather we become beautiful because Christ beautifies the Church."
The Takeaway
This is our reality ... the sheep of God's flock are not fragrant in themselves.
The Biblical reality is that the flock is lovable to the Shepherd Who calls us, but NOT for any property or quality in themselves
So let's quit with empty flatteries and false hopes which shut people out from the Lord's help!
He hasn't come to call 'the righteous' but sinners ... and He's come to call us, not to a more positive outlook but to turning back to God in repentance!
Let's make a LOT of the fact that Jesus is in business to bind up the broken-hearted.
His invitation is totally glorious:
(Get this!)
"‘Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened,
and I will give YOU rest'."
No comments:
Post a Comment