The
lights flicker in the empty train station. A man has fallen, while
the woman beside him pants as she faces their two mysterious
attackers. They have put up a good fight, but they are almost spent.
It's only a matter of seconds before their enemies kill them.
A
whistle blows, and a train whizzes by. The four people squint; is
that a figure in the shadows, its image flashing between the train
cars?
It
is. As soon as the train is gone, Captain America steps into the
light.
The
audience erupts into cheers—they can't help it! This hero is
beloved, and his timing couldn't be more perfect. He strides in and
deals some well-aimed blows that send the enemies crawling.
I've
watched this scene twice so far, and every time, tears follow.
Something stirs within me as I see elements of the real Hero: Jesus
Christ. Our story, The Story, is about Him, and He doesn't fit
into our molds. Yet we so easily forget and assume that we are the
main characters.
This
mistake comes from forgetting who Jesus is. We see this in the
Gospels. The Jews didn't recognize their Messiah, not because they
weren't looking, but because they were looking for something that He
wasn't: a warrior who would overthrow their physical oppressors. Even
some who loved Jesus thought He was just a great prophet. Many walked
and talked with Jesus without realizing who He was!
How
much more might we fail to see Him?
Jesus
is the Hero, fully God and fully man. If you ever wonder how
different a cult, religion, or worldview is from Christianity, find
out what that belief system says about Jesus. It might sound pretty
good at first, but if it denies Christ's true identity, it's
displacing Jesus as the Hero.
He
calls Himself “the cornerstone” for good reason. The whole Story
rests on Him.
I
have had some good conversations about Jesus with a friend. He loves
Jesus—or thinks he does. We have discussed faith and agree on a
lot, but this friend denies that Jesus should be Lord. He can't
accept that crucial detail, and he lives in fear as he tries to be
the hero himself.
Even
if we recognize Jesus as the Hero, our ideas of Him are often
inaccurate. Jesus may have emptied Himself to put on flesh, but that
doesn't mean that He steps into our perfect little boxes. He is God!
He is supposed to stump us! Our faith is reasonable, but that doesn't
mean that the infinite God of the universe has to always make sense
to our puny brains.
Recently,
a Muslim friend showed us a YouTube video of a former Christian who
had converted to Islam. This convert had tried to convince Muslims of
the Trinity's plausibility.
“God
is like an egg,” the man argued.“He has a shell, egg white, and a
yolk, but He is all one.”
“Then
what if you have a double yolk?” His Muslim contenders asked.
So
the Christian tried again: “God is like water. He is liquid, solid,
and gas.”
“But
then He couldn't be all three at once,” the Muslim apologists
argued back.
With
arguments like this, the man's “faith” broke. He converted to
Islam because he couldn't come up with a small, concrete analogy
about an infinite God. There are better analogies out there, but the
video made me want to laugh.
If we could reduce God and His mysteries
to a petty analogy, wouldn't He be a lot less great?
Jesus
didn't come to make God more understandable. He came to turn our
thinking upside down—or really, right-side up. People didn't listen
to Jesus and say, “I get God now.” Instead, they heard Jesus talk
about feasting on His flesh and declared, “This is a hard saying;
who can listen to it?” (John 6:60, ESV)
Recently,
after discussing theology with some Christian friends, I found myself
reading the Bible to find supporting evidence for my side of the
discussion. But the Spirit convicted me of this. We need to read
God's Word to know who God really is, even if it means pushing past
our preconceived ideas of Him and how we think He works. In the end,
knowing Jesus is all that matters, and I'm pretty sure that, like in
the book of Job, God is going to show up in the end and tell us that
we were all wrong about Him in some way.
Finally,
even when we start to get who Jesus is and that He is bigger than our
ideas of Him, we forget that our Story is about Him. In his book
Crazy Love, Francis Chan says
that we are like extras in a movie. The back of our heads may appear
for a second, but Jesus is the star of the film. But for some reason,
we act like the movie is about us.
We're
wrong.
The
Scriptures point to Jesus (Luke 24:27). “[F]rom Him and through Him
and to Him are all things”; no wonder we can't know His mind or
expect to be the star! (Romans 11:33-36)
God
is setting the stage. No matter how bad things get, everything is
building to that moment when we'll see that dark form flickering
behind the train. Everything is building to that moment when the Hero
will step into the light. And when Jesus shows up for the final
throw-down, no one will doubt who the real Hero is. As He descends
from heaven with a cry of command and takes His throne in glory, all
eyes will be opened, and we will all recognize Him (1 Thess. 4:16;
Matt. 25:31).
Better
than Captain America, our Hero will return to make everything right.
And when He does, perhaps we will put our hands over our mouths.
Perhaps we will burst into cheers and tears of joy. Or perhaps we
will fall down at His feet at last.
Rise Up
Every stone that makes you stumble
And cuts you when you fall
Every serpent here that strikes your heel
To curse you when you crawl
The king of love one day will crush them all
And every sad seduction, and every clever lie
Every word that woos and wounds the pilgrim, children of the sky
The king of love will break them by and by
And you will rise up in the end
You will rise up in the end
I know the night is cruel
But the day is coming soon
When you will rise up in the end
If a thief had come to plunder
When the children were alone
If he ravaged every daughter
And murdered every son
Would not the father see this?
Would not his anger burn?
Would he not repay the tyrant
In the day of his return?
Await, await the day of his return
Cause he will rise up in the end
He will rise up in the end
I know you need a savior
He's patient in his anger
But he will rise up in the end
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