Irrelevance is irreverence. I don’t remember where I first read those words. But as soon as I read them, I wrote them down so that I didn’t quickly push them aside to relieve my discomfort. Those three words capture the essence of George MacLeod’s classic plea:
“I simply argue that the cross be raised again at the center of the marketplace as well as on the steeple of the church. I am recovering the claim that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves, on a town garbage heap, at a crossroads so cosmopolitan that they had to write his title in Hebrew and Latin and Greek…and at the kind of place where cynics talk smut, and thieves curse and soldiers gamble. Because that is where he died and that is what he died about. And that is where Christ’s men ought to be and what church people ought to be about.”
The Good Shepherd said that some traits of good sheep include helping people whose only qualification is that they need help. As we serve others where we find them, we serve Him who found us. Remember His insight to those on the right side? “I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was homeless and you gave me a room, I was shivering and you gave me clothes, I was sick and you stopped to visit, I was in prison and you came to me…Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me” (Matthew 25). Giving shoes to someone who has a hole in their sole is a spiritual service that ranks right up there with giving a sermon to those who want their soul to be whole. You may even discover a more kind and less caustic reason to say “If the shoe fits, wear it.”
Sara Groves sings a short little song that brings a short-lived smile to my face and a lingering ache to my heart. She understands that irrelevance is irreverence.
“It was there in the bulletin, we’re leaving soon, after the bake sale to raise funds for fuel. The rocket is ready and we’re going to take our church to the moon. There’ll be no one there to tell us we’re odd, no one to change our opinion of God; just lots of rocks and this dusty sod, here in our church on the moon. We know our liberties, we know our rights; we know how to fight a very good fight. Just grab that last bag there and turn out the light. We’re taking our church to the moon. We’ll be leaving soon.”
If you want a whole new atmosphere where believers can bounce around with only each other in sterile, insulated suits and enjoy the distant view of life on earth, then church on the moon has an undeniable pull. But if that’s how we long for church to be, then we’ve already turned out the Light (or at least hid Him under a bowl the size of our selfishness).
There is absolutely nothing irrelevant about Jesus. We represent Him poorly and serve Him in pathetically puny ways when we are so fearful of being “of the world” that we refuse to be in it. What might reverence for God, your bold belief in His contemporary compassion and awesome power, lead you to do that is ridiculously, righteously relevant?
Dennis Lynn
