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THE SCIENCE OF SALVATION #23
FACE PAINT FOREVER
I don’t want to get into a big radio brouhaha – especially
here in March – about the rightness or wrongness of Halloween. Every October
31st, the kids are out there, and you either go with the flow and hand
out some candy, or shut out the lights and make like the Sugar Pop Scrooge.
But here’s my question: when you open the door, and there’s a little pint-sized
Dracula standing there, or a three-foot apparition wearing a fright wig
– these used to be Lon Cheney; now they’re DICK Cheney – are you frightened?
Does your heart skip a beat and your palms get clammy? And of course the
answer’s no; we realize the kids are just pretending. They’re not actually
monsters . . . most of the time.
I mention masks and wigs and costumes for a reason, because just as children
love to put on these nocturnal accouterments and pretend to be what they
are not, the same is true in the kingdom of Christian grace. Doesn’t God
– in letting the holiness of Jesus count on our behalf – do much the same
thing? Isn’t He pretending we are good when we’re not?
There’s a very colorful parable told by Jesus in the book of Matthew,
chapter 22. And the way the story goes, it’s nothing but “let’s pretend”
and a huge game of Charades from start to finish. It’s entitled “The Wedding
Banquet,” and early on, the King offered to host a huge feast for His
Son, the Bridegroom. You can figure out those two players easily enough,
I’m sure. But all the people on the good guest list – the “A List,” we
would say – spurned the invitation. “Aaah, I’m too busy.” “I have to work
late that night.” “I can’t come during The Bachelor.” Things like that.
So in Part Two of the story, the King says, “All right, go get anybody
you can. Comb the homeless shelters. Put up posters in the bus depot.
Go down to Harrah’s and bring in the gamblers and the slot machine addicts.
Everybody.” So all at once, there are all sorts of people enjoying a wedding
banquet they really shouldn’t have been invited to. This strange King
is pretending they’re royalty!
In his book, Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis has a chapter he actually
entitles “Let’s Pretend.” And reminds us of the classic Beauty and the
Beast story, where a girl who kisses the beast, wishing it were a handsome
man, finds that – Hey! What do you know? – he actually turns INTO a man!
Or how about the “mask” story – not the Jim Carrey kind – where an unsightly
man who wears a handsome mask his entire life slowly but imperceptibly
has a face that grows into the outward beauty? The facade becomes reality.
Now, what’s this got to do with grace? Simply this. When you or I decide
to become a Christian, when we fall down on our knees and pray a prayer
of repentance – maybe the Lord’s Prayer, Lewis suggests – what is the
first thing we say? “Our Father.” But of course, God is not REALLY our
Father. Is He?
“YOU are a bundle of self-centered fears, hopes, greeds,
jealousies, and self-conceit,” Lewis writes, and he’s looking in his own
mirror as he does so. “All doomed to death.”
And now we say “Our Father.” What we’re really doing
is placing ourselves in the place of His Son. We’re kind of sitting in
Jesus’ own chair at the banquet table. Lewis puts it this way: Dressing
up as Christ. Which would be horrible blasphemy, or, in Lewis’ words,
“a piece of outrageous cheek.” The only reason it’s all right is because
God tells us to do it!
And friend, this is grace. You stagger to the door of God’s kingdom, and
because He says to, respond in amazement: “All right. Uh . . . Dad. This
is Your . . . uh . . . Son. I guess. Wow. Nice chandeliers.” And just
like those guests at the banquet, with their boozy breath and their poker
chips still in their pocket, with call girls who still have the runs in
their tacky nylons, God graciously comes along down the line and says
to each one: “My son! My daughter! What a blessing to have you here in
our family! Welcome! Thanks for honoring My Son by your presence.”
And friend, this is grace. God pretends we are His children. We pretend
it too. But now the Halloween-in-March question is this: does the fiction
become real? Is grace more than just a eternal cosmic charade?
This is where it gets interesting – and very encouraging. Because you
and I want and need to be Christians our whole lives, not just on Day
One when we stand at the gate. How does this “pretending” continue? How
far does it go?
Childhood actually gives us an ongoing answer. Don’t little boys dress
up as soldiers . . . and learn just a bit about real warfare? And develop
some fighting muscles as they do? Kids will play “store” or “house,” hopefully
using play money, and begin to get the idea of legitimate finance. The
pretending is good preparation for the reality. If you’ve ever lived (or
survived) in a house where a small child is just learning to play the
violin, you may have to pretend in an Oscar-worthy manner to let on like
it is beautiful music. But the pretending and the sawing away slowly turns
INTO good music as your little Henry musically morphs into a Heifetz.
Now, how about for us big people who are brand new Christians, still with
the costume paint on our faces? As Lewis points out:
“The moment you realize ‘Here I am, dressing up as
Christ,’ it is extremely likely that you will see some way in which at
that very moment the pretense could be made less of a pretense and more
of a reality. You will find several things going on in your mind which
would not be going on there if you were REALLY a son of God. Well, stop
them. Or you may realize that, instead of saying your prayers, you ought
to be downstairs writing a letter, or helping your wife to wash up. Well,
go and do it.”
Does that ring a tiny bell somewhere? If we are really
the sons and daughters of God, that will certainly impact a hundred, a
thousand, a million big and small things in our lives. Won’t it? Which
would be cause for despair if we had to rip off the masks of grace and
instantly succeed in the million things in our own power. But God doesn’t
ask us to do that. We don’t qualify by getting rid of the masks, but in
gratitude we do want to begin living up to them.
And here’s the next point. On a daily basis, just as grace happens as
we first come to Him, it also is what helps us daily in our growing up
into TRUE sons and daughters. Jesus helps us here as well. In fact, without
His daily assistance, we couldn’t even start! Any efforts on our own would
be doomed legalism, fraught with pride. And of course, pride is always
worse than the thing it replaces.
Here’s a bit more from the Mere Christianity essay:
“You see what is happening. The Christ Himself, the Son of God who is
man (just like you) and God (just like His Father) is actually AT YOUR
SIDE and is already at that moment beginning to turn your pretense into
a reality. . . . There are lots of things which your conscience might
not call definitely wrong” – there is such a thing as a badly wired conscience,
isn’t there? – “but which you will see at once you cannot go on doing
if you are seriously trying to be like Christ.”
And you know, the rest of Jesus’ Matthew 22 parable
here in the elegant ballroom of the Ritz Carlton goes into this part of
the story as well. Because we see a man there who doesn’t have a tuxedo.
He gets in trouble for not wearing the black-tie dress code of the evening.
And those of us reading say: “Wait a minute! These folks just came from
Skid Row! They were bused here from the bowery district, from the bars
and Indian gaming reservations. Why would any of THEM have evening gowns
and tuxes?” And it appears in this story that the King Himself had provided
the nice clothes. Knowing these “sons” and “daughters” were pretending,
were all fakes, essentially, He had His servants kindly deliver sequined
gowns and handsome penguin suits to all of these down-and-outers.
Now, what does this mean? First of all, the provided gown is the righteousness
of Jesus. Remember, we are still sinful and smelly and selfish. We don’t
have any banquet dresses or perfume of our own. But the free wedding garment
ALSO represents the ongoing cooperation with Jesus, where He daily helps
us with this business of “pretending,” of growing up.
And it appears that it was only here that the one man made his mistake.
The wedding garments were free, so he certainly could have had one. The
righteousness of Jesus, poured out on our behalf at Calvary, is a glorious
and handsome complimentary gift. But this one guest either must have had
the idea, “My own righteousness is sufficient to qualify me for this feast,”
or perhaps he thought, “I’m not interested in having this friendly Groom
come along day by day and help me to learn to play my spiritual violin
any better. I can master this thing myself, thanks anyway.”
No matter where in the spectrum, where in the story, you and I might find
ourselves, it seems clear we’d better stay right close to Jesus’ generous
make-up table.
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