PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “LET YOUR THEOLOGY BECOME YOUR BIOGRAPHY!”
It was William Cowper who wrote the words “God moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform. He plants His footsteps in the sea And rides upon the storm”. (1773). We know that. God has shown His awesome nature and power in His creation and in His many works that reflect His majesty and bring Him glory. But God sometimes performs His greatest works through the commonplace and the least expected means. Frederick Buechner changed my entire perspective of Christmas when he emphasized the commonplace of the Christmas story. He wrote, “Those who believe in God can never in a way, be sure of Him again. Once they have seen Him in a stable, they can never be sure where He will appear or to what lengths He will go, to what ludicrous depths of self-humiliation He will descend in His wild pursuit of man. If holines and the awful power and the majesty of God were present in this least auspicious of all events, this birth of a peasant’s child, then there is no place or time so lowly or earthbound but that holiness can be present there too. This means that we are never safe, that there is no place that we can hide from God, no place where we are safe from His power to break in two and recreate the human heart because it is just where He seems most helpless that He is most strong, and just where we least expect Him that He comes most fully”. Yes when God became flesh and dwelt among us in Christ-God acted in an untheological way; an unsophisiticated way; and undignified way. Buechner says, “But according to Christianity it is the way things are”. The incarnation gives us the ultimate model. If He wanted to teach us about psychology, he’d sent a psychologist; if He wanted to teach us about science, He would have sent a scientist; But He wanted to teach us about Personhood, so He sent us a Person, the Word made flesh-not only to show us what God is like, but also to show us what Life is life. Life as He intended, and will restore through this Person. That model is how wants to continue to work. He wants to continue to reveal Himself and accomplish His work through those who have become followers of His Son Jesus. Jesus in His incarnation and Calling knew that He had come to do the works of His Father, and He only had a certain amount of time to accomplish it. So do we. Buechner summarized how that model is pertinent to our calling and work. He wrote, “The incarnation means that all ground is holy because God not only made it but also walked on it, ate and slept, and worked and died on it. If we are saved anywhere…we are saved here…One of the blunders religious people are particularly fond of making is the attempt to be more spiritual than God Himself!”
Major Ian Thomas explained it this way-when God reveals Himself He often does it through an ordinary bush-“Any old bush will do!”. In other words the shocking message of the Bible continues to be that God has chosen the least suspecting of all vessels to do His work. What you are at this particular moment in your life is irrelevant. What counts the most is what and who you are willing to become for His glory. See that scruffy-looking bush over there? That bush will do. See that funny-looking bush over here? It will do too! What makes that ordinary bush aglow is the Presence and Power of God. That is what makes it glow and aflame. That is what makes it continue to attract bystanders to it-To bring glory to God. We need to learn that lesson. God would use Moses, not because of His noble relationship to Pharoah; not because of his elite education in the best schools of Egypt; not because of his years of experience in the desert region through which the children of Israel would pass. He would use him for His glory because of His presence and power in the life of Moses. So with us. Moses learned about God. But his theology become his biography.
Madeleine L’Engle said it so well, “In a very real sense not one of us is qualified, but it seems that God continually chooses the most unqualified to do His work, to bear His glory. If we are qualified, we tend to think that we have done the job ourselves. If we are forced to accept our evident lack of qualification, then there is no danger that we will confuse God’s work with our own or God’s glory with our own.” Philip Clarke Brewer has writen a poem entitled “The Five Loaves and Two Fishes” to remind us of the insignificant things God uses in a significant way His wonders to perform. Here is that significant poem-
God uses
what you have
to fill a need which
you never could have filled.
God uses
where you are
to take you
where you never could have gone.
God uses
what you can do
to accomplish what
you never could have done
God uses
who you are
to let you become who
you never could have become.
LET YOUR THEOLOGY BECOME YOUR BIOGRAPHY!