Valerie Rae Hanneman
October 15, 2004
Romans 12: 1-2 “So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life--your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life--and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for Him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what He wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.” (MSG)
An man is being tailgated by a stressed-out woman on a busy boulevard. Suddenly, the light turns yellow, just in front of him. He does the honest thing, and stops at the crosswalk, even though he could have beaten the red light by accelerating through the intersection. The tailgating woman hits the roof, and the horn, screaming in frustration as she misses her chance to get through the intersection with him.
As she is still in mid-rant, she hears a tap on her window and looks up into the face of a very serious police officer. The officer orders her to exit her car with her hands up. He takes her to the police station where she is searched, fingerprinted, photographed, and placed in a cell. After a couple of hours, a policeman approaches the cell and opens the door. She is escorted back to the booking desk where the arresting officer is waiting with her personal effects. He says, "I'm very sorry for this mistake. You see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, flipping the guy off in front of you, and cussing a blue streak at him. I noticed the "I’m not religious - I just love God" license plate holder, the "What Would Jesus Do" bumper sticker, the "Follow Me to Sunday School" bumper sticker, and the chrome plated Christian fish emblem on the trunk."
"Naturally I assumed you had stolen the car - it was an honest mistake."
This is a joke that I got over my e-mail. But I don’t really think it is that funny. Oh, I laughed at first, but it was a nervous little laugh, and there was this slightly hinky feeling right between my shoulder blades. To be honest, it hits a little close to home.
I get all sorts of excuses and reasons when I invite people to church with me. And the interesting thing is that sometimes I get the flat-out truth. “I don’t want to have to get up Sonday morning and get dressed” “But you don’t have to dress up for my church.” “No, you don’t understand - I don’t want to get dressed at all.” or “I’m going to be watching the Dallas Cowboys smash the 49'ers into the turf.” or “I don’t go to church”
The excuses that I have difficulty with are the ones where the underlying current of the excuse is “It’s not my fault I don’t want to go to church.” We have all heard them - “I was forced to go to church when I was young - I just can’t go anymore.” “I was hurt by someone in a church and I swore I would never go back.” I don’t really understand those because I wonder - you went to the circus a lot at a child - so do you not go anymore? If a teller at the bank gives you a hard time - do you never go back?
But there is one excuse that is an excuse with just enough of a ring to the truth to it. “I don’t go to church because of the hypocrites there.” I always have to agree with them. There are hypocrites in the church. Then I ask them if the hypocrites keep them away from church - do they also stay away from their job? The grocery store? The movie theater? The truth is that hypocrites abound - they are everywhere. But it is also the truth that the Church is held to a higher standard than the rest of the world. Jesus started that when He said that we would be called by His name and He would expect us to be a light to the world. Jesus expects us to hold to a higher standard.
I can understand the world’s amazement and disbelief when we raise our hands to God in praise on Sonday morning, and our middle finger in anger on Monday morning. Or when with one breath we talk about God and in the next breath we slander a co-worker. Who can blame them if they make an honest mistake about whom we belong to?
The word “hypocrite” comes from the Greek word for actor. Back in those days actors held masks in front of their faces and they spoke through the masks. When the world sees us act one way on Sonday morning and the complete opposite the rest of the week then they think we are hypocrites - actors who are wearing a mask. Only they think we wear the mask on Sonday morning and the rest of the week is the real us.
Jesus does not want us to live like Him on Sonday morning and like the rest of the world the rest of the week. He wants us to lay our entire life before Him as a willing offering. He absolutely wants Sonday morning - but He also wants Monday morning when we don’t want to get up, Wednesday afternoon on our coffee break, Saturday morning at our kid’s soccer game and every moment in between. With our lives we are going to reflect His culture of living - or we are going to reflect the world’s culture of living - but we cannot honestly reflect both cultures. They are incompatible with each other. And when we do try to live in both cultures - the world is going to call us actors behind a mask.
Do you ever wonder what Jesus looks like? I have an idea of what He looks like. To a world who does not know Him - He looks like you and me. I wonder about the Jesus they see when they look at me.
LORD Jesus, there is no better time of my week than to be in Your presence on Sonday morning. Help me to take that joy into my everyday life. Help me to be the same on Monday as I was on Sonday.
Contact Valerie at valerie@fresnofirst.org
Posted by Valerie at October 15, 2004 05:27 PM