Step out of the Crowd (part I)

In our culture and our time, it is relatively easy to be swept up in the beauty of the kingdom, of seeing shalom, seeing wholeness and restoration. Right? We’re a social justice culture! We like the idea of the kingdom coming. But it is easier to hold ourselves to a standard of legalism of “do’s and don’ts”, to model our lives after Jesus, to try to transform our own lives, than it is to actually follow Jesus and let him do the transforming. We are fascinated by Jesus, but we don't want to give him any authority in our lives...

There were always crowds surrounding Jesus, and often, we are content to be members of those crowds. Observing, but never interacting on a personal level.

My senior year in college, I had a cat named Marusia... She was a cute, 3-5 pounds of gray fluff. She looked like a sweet-heart. WRONG. She was MEAN. She had had abusive previous owners, and she had some serious trust issues. She took great delight out of biting, scratching, and climbing you like a tree. But at nights, when I was sleeping… she would slink up onto my bed, doing her little cat turn-around thing, meow meow, and then climb up onto my face. And she would sleep with her belly across my nose and mouth.

So of course, I would wake up unable to breath, choking on large hairballs of Marusia… or would have dreams about suffocating in rooms full of green shag carpets that had suddenly grown arms and were strangling me. It was great.

But here’s the deal: Marusia was not interested in relationship with me. Her trust issues were too big. But she wanted to be as close to me as possible …

The sad thing is, often times, our interactions with God are very similar: we want to get as close as possible, without actually having relationship.

And here’s the punch-line:

Jesus is not satisfied with a casual interaction in a crowd. He wants to know you. He longs for relationship with you. And you, on an intimate level, were made for relationship with him.

In fact, if you look at all of the times in which Jesus heals people or interacts with people, you will not find a single example of a time when he claps his hands, turns around three times or taps his red sparkly magic slippers together, and whole crowds of people are healed anonymously. When Jesus interacts with people, he does so intimately, personally, and relationally.

Make no mistake: this is not the same thing as our culture’s narcissism which says, “It’s all about me, yay! Jesus is my own personal God! My own personal Savior!" But rather, as we seek the kingdom, the restoration of all things, it has to begin with restored relationship between us and God.