|
WHAT A SAVIOR! #4
ME BOSSING THE PRESIDENT
Have you ever been in a social situation that you felt was completely upside-down? The lowest person at the party seemed to be running things, while the king was checking people’s coats at the door?
A couple of years ago, a number of us from the Voice of Prophecy and our sister broadcast ministries were having a good time at the National Religious Broadcasters convention. There were seminars to attend, plenary sessions with wonderful music, a media booth to man, station representatives to shmooze with.
All of a sudden, a couple of my friends walked over and their faces were lit up like 500 watt bulbs. “We’re never washing our hands again,” they announced. “Not for dinner, not even for . . . communion!” How come? It turns out they had just shaken hands with the 43rd President of the United States, who had dropped by to make a little speech.
That’s the true part of my story. Now I’m going to move into some sanctified fiction. About an hour later, I go to lunch, and am sitting in a booth at Marie Callendar’s – Jeannie is at a women’s ministry banquet listening to Joni Earickson Tada – so I’m all by myself. Suddenly I look up and here is the man from Midland, Texas. “Mind if I join you?”
Wow! The President! Marshall Chase just shook his hand is all; I’m going to have LUNCH with the most powerful man on the planet. I feel like a wee little man named Zacchaeus! He sits down – for some reason there aren’t any Secret Service men around that I can see – and orders soup and some cornbread, and we begin to talk. I’ve got butterflies in my stomach, a frog in my throat, and my hands are shaking like a hummingbird’s wings. The whole menagerie. But we visit for a few minutes, and I manage to let him know that if he wants to really pursue his “faith-based initiatives,” Mr. President, I know a good Christian radio ministry that could use some assistance.
And then all at once, the leader of the free world asks me a question. “I need some help, Lon,” he says. “The crisis in” – wherever, Haiti, let’s say – “is reaching crisis proportions. I want to send some Marines in. Is it okay? Will you sign off on it?”
Now, let’s freeze this fictional story right here. What’s wrong with this picture? Just one thing. The President of the United States doesn’t ask Lonnie Melashenko for permission to do anything! He’s over me; I’m not over him. He’s high and I’m low. I know what my place is, and it certainly isn’t to tell the man living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue or sitting in a big oval office where he can or cannot send American troops.
We’re studying for a few weeks the place and position and authority of a Man named Jesus Christ. “King of kings and Lord of lords.” And as we’ve studied, it’s been our experience to come to believe that Jesus, according to the Bible, is from all eternity fully God. He’s divine in every way. He has all attributes of God-ness. He’s not a “lesser” God than His Father; He’s not an inferior ambassador ordered to this unpleasant territory where people are waiting with crosses and nails.
And yet we seem to find an “upside-down” element to Jesus’ three-and-a-half years of ministry here on Planet Earth. In a number of ways, it seems that there IS some kind of “positioning” in the relationship between the Father and the Son. Jesus is the obedient one. He follows the Father’s will. He accepts the Father’s guidance. He prays to the Father, and there’s no record of the Father ever praying to Him. Jesus once told His followers:
“I always do what pleases Him.”
So it appears that we have this incredible, mysterious, fully equal and divine team . . . where, for some heavenly reason, there ARE roles. As a Man on earth, Jesus plainly demonstrates many of the elements of the Christian faith that we are to adopt: prayer, obedience, fellowship with the Father, seeking and doing His will.
You know, speaking of my fictional encounter with a fictional President at a fictional Marie Callendar’s, there’s a story in Matthew chapter 3 where we find an even more upside-down moral encounter. Jesus, the pure and holy and sinless Son of God – who is totally God while also the SON of God – comes to His cousin John for baptism. Now let’s just put this scene on the table. Jesus is God; John isn’t. Jesus is holy; John is a sinner. Jesus is King of the universe; John is just a human man with a big beard and a rough camel’s hair robe. John has fallen and failed many, many times; Jesus never. And yet Jesus says to this soiled little human: “Please baptize Me.”
And John, to his credit, says no way. He’s knows it’s not right. He knows Jesus is the spotless Lamb of God; in fact, he’s already announced that to the crowd.
“I need to be baptized by YOU,” he protests, “and do You come to me?” Forget it!
So we ask: why does Jesus set up these off-balance, morally inverted moments? Because He insists, and John the sinner does baptize Jesus the holy God of all galaxies and kingdoms.
The NIV text notes suggest several reasons why Jesus stoops to perform this unnecessary step. First of all, the Bible says, “to fulfill all righteousness.”
“The baptism indicated that He was consecrated to God and officially approved by Him,” they write, “as especially shown in the descent of the Holy Spirit.” (Remember the dove coming down?)
Why else? The baptism served to publicly announce Jesus’ ministry as the Messiah. What’s more, baptism was Jesus’ way of showing us that He was identifying with us in every possible way. He prays; we pray. He obeys; we obey. He converses with the Father; so should we. He was baptized; we should do the same. Reason #4 is kind of a connected idea: He was baptized simply to be our example. To show us that these are the steps to the Kingdom of God.
It’s a difficult challenge to use words like “Son” and “first-born” and “begotten” to talk about a person – Jesus – who is equal with His Father, and who has existed as long AS the Father. That doesn’t seem right! Especially when we see Jesus obeying and following and depending as He does. We’ve used a very insightful C. S. Lewis illustration before: the two books on the table. One book is on the bottom, the second book is resting ON the first book. But both of them have always been on the table! The first one didn’t get there first, but the second book has its position because the first book has ITS position.
“The Son exists because the Father exists,” Lewis writes, “but there never was a time before the Father produced the Son.”
This Christian writer goes on to point out some ways that being the “second book” does mean some defining of roles. It is the Son who went to Calvary. While on earth the Son followed the Father’s will. Lewis describes – and we’ll get into this later – that the Son is always . . .
“. . . Streaming forth FROM the Father, like light from a lamp, or heat from a fire, or thoughts from a mind. He is the self-expression of the Father – what the Father has to say. And there never was a time when He was not saying it.”
And it is always – we must fully believe this – a teamwork of love. Of equality. Unity of purpose.
Speaking of Jesus doing something “lower” than God-like, to be our example (as in His baptism), you might already be thinking about that Thursday evening when Jesus really did the most un-divine thing . . . we think. Remember how He wrapped Himself in a towel and began washing feet? And we think, “Oh, my. This is self-abasing. This is almost embarrassing. The King should not be doing this. The President shouldn’t be eating cornbread at Marie Callendar’s with a guy like Lonnie? What’s going on?” And we assume that Jesus again is simply play-acting, doing what WE should do, washing feet like we should wash them. Being “lowly” so that we will learn to be lowly.
And perhaps that’s true. But we noticed an essay the other day – unfortunately, the byline escapes us – where the writer resoundingly rejected the idea of “theater.” No, he asserted. Jesus served that evening BECAUSE HE IS A SERVANT. “The Son of Man came TO serve” (Matthew 20:28) because that is a divine thing. God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are all about service, about reaching down, about washing feet, about going two miles instead of one. That is never “acting” for them; it isn’t just “showing us the way.” It isn’t Jesus dropping Himself down 50 political notches to make some Thursday night point. No, Jesus washed feet that night because serving and helping and teaching and comforting and getting rid of dirt – the real kind and the soul kind both – are simply what the high and holy God of the universe loves to do and is here in this universe TO do.
It’s ironic – our truly understanding, fully grasping the nature of Jesus as a servant, willingly doing the “low” thing, is precisely how we come to realize how “high” this King of all kings should be in our lives.
|
