Welcome to the Freakshow!
Welcome to the Freakshow!
Welcome to the Body…welcome to the Church…welcome to the Kingdom…welcome to the Mission. Why do I see us as the freakshow? Other than coming any morning to any church in the World and simply looking at the people next to you, it is the pattern that Christ set down. I had it pointed out to me once what a motley crew that Jesus put together. Jesus the Christ, the Savior, Son of God, came to earth with his agenda of redemption and the establishment of the Kingdom and decided to have as his partners… (drum roll please): a few smelly fishermen (aka: blue collar/small business/tradesmen), an intellectual snob, a young daydreamer, a religious zealot, a religious super zealot, a national traitor and a few others that we don’t even hear that much about. Cool, we all know that. But have you stopped to think about what that looks like? The Zealots of the day were a wild bunch of people, so enamored with their nation of Israel and belief in it’s unique relationship to God that they would go around dispensing “street justice” with a sword to those who crossed the line and sold out Israel. Next to these guys (Simon and Judas) slept Matthew, a tax collector for Rome and branded traitor to his nation. Do you get the idea he had a few sleepless nights? He brought the intellectual elite together with the basest of base and seemed to say, “Now get on with it!!”
I try to figure out what that would look like today… staunch Republicans, democrats, feminists, red necks, soldiers, pacifists, communists, capitalists, socialists, Dot coms and tradesmen, traitors to the country, misfits and “normal” people. I think the modern 12 disciples would look like a freaky cast from a bad reality show, thrown together with an audience waiting for the mayhem to ensue. This is what the Church is: a hodge podge of misfits from every background (economic, cultural, social, philosophical, political, theological) put together with ONE unifying thread: Jesus the Christ. We are a freak show and I think that is how God intends it because he made us with wondrous variety, but with the same thumbprint of divinity. I presume a lot to make the following claim, but God does not seek for us to, in unity, look alike. We as his people are united by Christ, focused on Christ and from there get pointed (by Christ) in every direction to go fulfill the mission of the Kingdom, that the whole freaky world would see and know God, and in knowing him trust in him and live in his Kingdom reality.
But that’s just me! My question is how do you see the crew that Jesus has called together, whether it be at MVPC, in New York, Madrid, Tanzania or Iraq? What does the face of Christ look like today?
