Performance Review

October 12, 2018 ~ John Koessler ~ 1 Comment

Anybody who has a job is familiar with that yearly ritual known as the performance review. Performance reviews are a common occupational liturgy. Like worship, they usually begin with praise. Your boss tells you the things you do well. But we all know what comes next. The real point of the meeting is the short list of areas where you could do better. I’ve been told that a good performance review is both summative and formative. They are supposed to affirm and inspire. But it never seems to work that way with me. Somehow the pleasure of the praise is always canceled out by the pain of the criticism.

Of course, employers aren’t the only ones who engage in this kind of ritual. We all got report cards when we were in school. Mine always included a section where the teacher checked the box that said “needs improvement.” Somehow knowing that I needed improvement never seemed to motivate me towards improvement. Instead of being the searchlight which illuminates a better path it felt more like a spotlight whose only purpose was to show me my shortcomings. It did not inspire me. It just made me feel bad.

Maybe it’s a personality flaw. I have a friend who used to work as a personal trainer. As far as I can tell, he loves criticism. Knowing he has missed the mark seems to energize him. Why doesn’t it affect me the same way? I suspect the difference between us is a matter of hope. He believes he can change. I am not so sure. Indeed, I’m pretty sure I can’t. Not when the same boxes get checked year after year. Or day after day.

We would like to think that our shortcomings are really only missed targets. All we need to do is step up and take aim again. But sometimes they are more. They are also limits. What if the spotlight isn’t just revealing where we have fallen short but what we cannot become? What do we do when we discover that no amount of practice or well-intended effort is going to be enough to close the gap? In such cases the only thing we can do is mourn. We grieve the loss of what we thought we were or hoped to become.

It is to such people that Jesus addresses His second beatitude in Matthew 5:4: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” Like all these blessings, it is counterintuitive. What Jesus says is unexpected. What kind of blessing can possibly come from knowing what we are not and cannot become? None at all. Not without Jesus’ implied promise that He will close the gap Himself. “Nobody is helped by negatives, even when they are true” someone has said. Especially when they are true.

The Sermon on the Mount, like the Law it illuminates, is not a performance review. It is not a target. It is a reality check. When we read it, we know instinctively that all the checkmarks will fall in the box that says “needs improvement.” It is a diagnosis. We used to think that we were doing well and that our potential was limitless. Now we know it is otherwise. It is a good thing. As Jesus Himself said, it is only the sick who need a doctor.

Empty is Enough

October 9, 2018 ~ John Koessler ~ Leave a comment

I have reached the age where a large percentage of the articles that show up on my social media feed offer suggestions about retirement. They appeal to a combination of greed and fear. Apparently, your retirement savings need to be at least a million (if not more). Social security won’t be enough to cover your expenses. You need a steady stream of income from stocks or bonds or annuities, which are luckily being sold by whoever has posted the article in the first place. No matter the source, the message is almost always the same. Whatever you have, it probably isn’t enough. The aim is to make me nervous. It often works.

For people like me who by nature and long experience have learned to want more, Jesus’ blessing in Matthew 5:3 seems jarring and maybe even nonsensical: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Nobody really believes that less is more, least of all the poor. Those who want to view this remarkable saying as a statement about the genteel virtues of poverty are really saying that Jesus was merely a sentimentalist and of the worst possible sort. They imply that He was a naïve sentimentalist. “We should not think that Jesus merely wanted to give us a few maxims of practical wisdom, that he merely intended to talk about the blessing of suffering and poverty and console us by telling us that suffering would make us more mature” theologian Helmut Thielicke warns. “Jesus knew all too well that it can turn out just the opposite, that a man can break down under suffering, that it can drive us into cursing instead of prayer, and that its ultimate effect will perhaps be bitter complaining and accusing of God for his injustice.”

Yet the qualifying phrase “in spirit” hardly removes the scandal of Jesus’ pronounced blessing. In Christ’s day as in our own, one’s spiritual standing was considered to be a function of accumulated merits. This is true of all salvation systems save one. The world’s religions all operate on the same basic economy that we employ with our finances. More is always better. You can never have enough. And if you want to acquire it, you’ve got to earn it. There is no other way.

Jesus’ words are a diagnosis as much as they are a promise. Only the poor in spirit can be blessed because there is no other category for us when it comes to righteousness. This is what sets Jesus’ message apart from all others. Those who look to their own reserves to calculate whether they have enough holiness to find acceptance with God will inevitably come up short. If you want it, you must take it as a gift or not at all. This is what the Bible calls grace. Where grace is concerned, only empty is enough.

But this rule only makes sense in light of the second half of Jesus’ beatitude. His point isn’t about the inherent virtue of poverty, whether it is economic or spiritual. It is about access. According to Jesus, emptiness is the necessary precondition to entering what He calls “the kingdom.” Actually, Jesus doesn’t employ the language of entering here, even though He does elsewhere. Jesus uses the language of ownership. The kingdom of heaven belongs to the empty. Only they can claim it as their own because they alone know that they cannot buy it. They do not obtain it by natural right or by personal effort. If they are to receive the kingdom it must be delivered over to them by Christ Himself.

This is the first principle for any who wish to experience the blessedness that Jesus describes in the beatitudes. You must come to Christ as you are. You must come to Him empty and without anything to recommend you. All that you need will be given to you upon entry into His realm. You cannot store it up in advance. You cannot bring it with you as you cross the threshold. You can only come to Christ as a beggar and receive. There is no other way.

Added Value

October 4, 2018October 4, 2018 ~ John Koessler ~ 2 Comments

The leaders of a church I know were discussing the membership roll. It is the sort of thing that congregations have to do every once in a while. People move away or they decide to attend somewhere else. If the constitution calls for a certain number to be in attendance in order to hold a business meeting, a bloated and inaccurate roll makes it difficult to achieve a quorum. I get it. I really do. From time to time a church needs to purge its list of members.

But more than once during the meeting, as various candidates for removal were discussed, the same observation was made: “Well, they don’t contribute anything anyway.” The comment didn’t have anything to do with money. They weren’t even talking about attendance. Not really. They were talking about involvement.

I have found this to be a common way of thinking in churches these days. It is a perspective which believes that the value of those who claim to be a part of the church is shaped by what they produce for the church. It is not enough to simply show up on Sunday or even to worship. You must somehow add value to be of value. Serve coffee or sit in the nursery. Teach Sunday school or go on the church’s latest ministry trip. Serve on a church committee. Do whatever you like but don’t just sit there. I thought the same way when I was a pastor.

I was wrong. Our value is derived not produced. We are of value to the church simply because we belong to Christ. Even those members who seem to contribute nothing are essential. As 1 Corinthians 12:21 says, “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you!’ And the head cannot say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you!’” “But that’s just the point!” some of us will want to reply. “Everybody knows that eyes and hands are important. They make a contribution to the overall well-being of the body. The problem with these deadbeat members is that they are atrophied limbs. They just sit there. They don’t do anything. They are just dead weight!” Yet Paul warns that we cannot even say this. Those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable. The parts that seem to be deserving of less honor are to be treated with “special honor” (1 Cor. 12:22).

We, of course, tend to do just the opposite. We value the strong and award special treatment to those that we think contribute the most. But God’s assessment is radically different. He has “…put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other” (1 Cor. 12:24). His standard of measure is not what people contribute but their need for someone to be concerned about them. We are not the best judges when it comes to determining whose presence adds the most value to the church, especially when we are in leadership. Our motives are too mixed. Our assessment is shaped too much by our own goals. Those who are worthy of the most attention are likely to be the ones we notice the least. Those who add the most value are liable to be those in whom we see little or no value at all.

What Not to Say on Your Next Job Interview

September 25, 2018September 25, 2018 ~ John Koessler ~ 2 Comments

A while back I got a call from someone who was starting an alternative school. They thought I might be a good candidate for their faculty. I thought it couldn’t hurt to hear their pitch but it turned out that they were expecting the pitch to come from me. Details about the project were a little vague. They seemed more interested in listening than in talking and I could tell that they wanted to ascertain whether I was a good “fit” before getting into the specifics.

“So tell me, what are you passionate about?” the interviewer asked. It had not been a stellar week and I wasn’t feeling passionate about much of anything. “Uhm…I like to write and I like to teach” I began, sensing that I wasn’t quite hitting the desired mark. I could soon tell that I was turning out to be a disappointment. I wasn’t that interested in changing jobs but I didn’t want to be rejected either. I floundered a bit more, trying in vain to think of something to say that would make an impression.

By the time the interviewer asked me about my career goals, I’d had enough. “To tell you the truth, I’ve reached that stage in my life where my next major career move is probably death” I replied. It made an impression. The interviewer’s eyebrows shot up. There was a long pause. “Well…let’s just let this sit for a while,” she said. “I’ll give you a call in a few weeks to see where we are at.” The call never came. Not that I was expecting it.

If there is a pithy lesson here, perhaps it is this, “Don’t go for a job interview when you are having a bad day.” Or maybe it is, “Don’t be such a smart aleck.” Still, while the interviewer was sincere, so was I. I meant what I said. At the time of our conversation, I really couldn’t see a rising vocational trajectory in my future. I still don’t. My career is in its descent phase not in ascent. Ecclesiastes 1:4 says, “Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.” It is just the nature of things for careers to come to an end and for one generation to give way to another. Now that I am in my mid 60’s, I no longer have the same perspective that I did in my 20’s and 30’s when I believed that the possibilities before me were limitless. If it feels like I am running out of road, it is partly because I am.

Yet, if what the Bible says about eternity is true, this is also an optical illusion. My career may indeed be in descent but my life is in ascent. The bulk of my life till lies before me. It is only the details that are vague. 1 John 3:2 says, “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”

Signs & Wonders

September 20, 2018September 20, 2018 ~ John Koessler ~ 5 Comments

Kelefa Sanneh’s New Yorker article about Larry Norman and the rise and fall of Christian rock music reminded me how much music played a role in my early Christian experience. But it didn’t start with Christian rock and it didn’t really start with Christianity. It started with the radio.

I was working the midnight shift at Jack in the Box, a fast food restaurant that was about a block away from my home. I had graduated from high school and didn’t know what to do with the rest of my life. I wanted to be a writer. More specifically, I wanted to be a poet. But how did a person get a job like that? I had no idea, probably because there were no jobs in that field, except perhaps as poet laureate to the Library of Congress. My mother was wasting away from the illness that would eventually claim her life and my father was slipping deeper into alcoholism. Meanwhile, I cleaned the grill and mopped the floor with the radio tuned to WABX, Detroit’s underground rock channel. I was hoping for signs and wonders. I was listening for messages from God.

The radio waves were pregnant with meaning in those days. From Bob Dylan’s latest musical metamorphosis to Detroit’s homegrown rock scene, there was plenty of music to hear and I listened to it the way an exegete studies Scripture. I didn’t just wonder what it meant. I wanted to know what it meant for me. Was God speaking to me about my life and my future? When the songs were upbeat and hopeful, I hoped He was. The night they decided to devote the entire show to the blues, I wasn’t so sure. Although, at the time the blues were probably more suited to my situation.

By the time I started to follow Jesus seriously, the Christian music scene was just reaching its early stride. At the Fisherman’s Net, the Friday night meeting where gang member turned evangelist Frank Majewski preached the gospel, they had a music table right next to the book table. I purchased the first volume in what would eventually become the library I used as a pastor and professor there. It was a book that explained the manners and customs of the Bible. I also bought my first Christian record, an album by the group Love Song.

I attended the Lost Coin coffee house on Saturday nights. We sometimes sang, “I wish we’d all been ready,” Larry Norman’s cautionary tale about the fate of those who will be unprepared when Jesus finally comes for His church. The song terrified me. What if I wasn’t ready? What if Jesus took everyone but me? It was a widely shared fear in our circles and a common theme in the messages we heard. I spent the first few years of my Christian experience worried that I would backslide. I thought that if I could make it past year four, I might have a chance. I’m not sure where I got the number.

Mike led the songs at the Lost Coin. He played the guitar and wrote some of the songs himself. Mike prayed for Bob Dylan daily and got excited when he heard the song “Father of Night” on Dylan’s New Morning album. “I know God is working in his heart,” he said. Mike was the first one to invite me to attend Glad Tidings, the little church that sponsored the coffee house. Although I was nervous, his reassuring smile and gentle assurance won me over. The church believed in signs and wonders but I didn’t see any performed that day. Just a soft-spoken message from the pastor about love and a few old songs from the red hymnal in the pews.

This week Detroit rocker Bob Seeger announced that he was ending his touring career. Bob Dylan wasn’t touring for a change but his website was hawking bootlegs of his old concerts from the 60’s and 70’s, along with his signature brand of whiskey. Meanwhile, in the chapel service at the school where I teach, we sang one of the songs we used to sing at the coffee house, along with a hymn from the old red hymnbook. I stood silently. My mind drifting back to a time when I listened for God to speak to me through the radio and the church waited for Him to show up with signs and wonders.

The Personality of Jesus

September 17, 2018March 30, 2025 ~ John Koessler ~ 11 Comments

A former student of mine once complained about what he called “the language of unsustainable intimacy” that the church often uses when it speaks of our relationship with Christ. “I hear it most often from youth group leaders who tell students to ‘date’ Jesus for a year,” he said. At the time, I had been reading through the gospels and marveling at how little they seemed to reveal about Jesus’ personality. They do not deny that Jesus had a personality. In fact, their emphasis on the reality of his humanity implies the opposite. Yet they tell us virtually nothing about the things we normally talk about when we describe what someone is like. We know nothing about the Savior’s physical appearance and next to nothing about the sound of his voice. We know that he was a carpenter, but what did he like to do in his spare time? How did he act when he was among friends?

We know that Jesus cried but do not know what made him laugh. We cannot see the gleam in his eye or the way his forehead might have wrinkled when he thought deeply about something. Indeed, I feel as though I have a much clearer notion of Simon Peter’s personality than I do of Christ’s. This does not mean that the Bible portrays a Christ who is devoid of personality. But it does, quite frankly, make it difficult for me to relate to him. At least, it makes it difficult for me to relate to him in the same way that so much of our worship music seems to suggest that I should. The overheated imagery of these songs often sounds like it was lifted from a romance novel.

In his essay on the emotional life of Christ, theologian B. B. Warfield describes the two dangerous tendencies that the church has exhibited in its attempt to understand the humanity of Christ. One is to lean so far into his divinity that the human is undermined. The other is to err in the opposite direction and so rob him of his divinity. “Between the two, the figure of Jesus is liable to take on a certain vagueness of outline, and come to lack definiteness in thought” Warfield warns. We must do justice to both dimensions of Christ’s nature without somehow allowing each to cancel out the other or ending up with a hybrid being who is neither truly God nor truly man.

I think we are on similar ground when it comes to Jesus’ personality. Some propose that Jesus had a perfectly balanced personality. They suggest that if Jesus had taken the Myers-Briggs Personality Inventory, he would have scored equally in every area. It seems to me that this is just a way of saying that Jesus had no personality at all. What is more, if Jesus was truly God in the flesh as the Bible declares, such a possibility seems extremely unlikely. If personality is the result of a combination of factors that includes both genetic makeup and experience, then Jesus must have had his own distinctive personality. Otherwise, he would not be human. To say that Jesus’ personality was perfect does not mean that it was indistinct.

Yet there are moments in the Gospels when the clouds of silence part and the rays of his personality peek through. When the religious leaders set a watch on him to criticize him for healing on the Sabbath, Jesus gazes at them in anger “deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts” (Mark 3:5). When a young man asks him what he must do to inherit eternal life, Jesus looks at him with love (Mark 10:21). He speaks tenderly to a shy woman (Luke 8:48). These accounts open a window on what Warfield calls “the profound internal movement of his emotional nature.” The divine being revealed to us through the humanity of Christ is not only a God who thunders but a God of tears and sighs.

According to Warfield, these are the clues that fill in the gaps for us. In particular, they show that the personality of Jesus is marked by both compassion and justice. Jesus felt love and expressed anger. His love was directed toward those who suffered. His anger was aimed at religious hypocrisy and hardness of heart. Warfield notes that in the Gospel accounts Jesus comforts, rebukes, and threatens. Although the New Testament does not describe Jesus’ smile, Luke 10:21 says that he was “full of joy through the Holy Spirit” when the disciples told him of their victory of the demons.

However, in the conclusion to his book Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton observes that there is a missing note in the Bible’s portrayal of Jesus’ personality. There is joy, grief, and even anger. “He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell” Chesterton writes. “Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness.” But shyness about what? According to Chesterton, the one thing that was too great for God to display while he walked upon the earth was his mirth. Zen Buddhism has its laughing Buddha but the Gospels do not portray a laughing Christ.

Does this mean that Christ was joyful but humorless? This cannot be true. Although the Bible does not say that Jesus laughed, there is an underlying wit reflected in his teaching. Many of his analogies use the ridiculous to make their point. Camels go through the eye of the needle. The religious leaders strain the gnat and swallow the camel. The most unlikely people find forgiveness, and the least qualified are appointed to lead.

Divine mirth as Chesterton describes it seems to have more in common with glory than it does with what we usually think of as humor. It is hidden from us not because it does not exist but because we do not yet have the strength to behold it. Yet it should not surprise us if creation itself bears witness to the fact that God has the capacity to laugh. “Anybody who has ever wondered whether God has a sense of humor only needs to look at the platypus for an answer” someone has said. Or you might just look at what he has done with your own life.

Shadow of a Doubt

September 11, 2018 ~ John Koessler ~ Leave a comment

I had a friend in college who said that Jesus appeared to her in her dreams. The two had long and meaningful conversations. I was terribly jealous. I wondered why Jesus didn’t appear to me too. Then one night I had a dream about Jesus. He sat at the end of my bed and spoke to me. He didn’t look like I had imagined he would. For one thing, he had blond hair that looked like it had been shaped by a stylist. He grinned at me, his white teeth shining in the dark. He looked like the host from a TV morning show. But it was the conversation that bothered me most. He just wasn’t making any sense. When at last I realized that what he was saying to me was only gibberish, I woke up.

I have to confess that my first thought was, “Yeah, that’s about right. That’s just the sort of Jesus who would appear to me.” Not the Jesus I read about in the gospels. No, I get surfer dude Jesus with blow-dried hair and dental implants. Then, for a brief moment, I felt a stab of panic. What if it really was Jesus? What if, up close and personal, Jesus turns out to be a figure sold to me by the church’s public relations machine? Would I someday discover that what I believed about Jesus had all been a carefully manufactured façade? Like a celebrity who has evaded his handlers, would he prove to be only ordinary in the end? What if the light that had blinded me on the road to Damascus was only the flash of the paparazzi’s cameras? Or, perhaps even worse, what if I got to know the real Jesus and realized that I didn’t especially like him? I know that such a question is unimaginable to most evangelicals. But you have to admit that such a thing does sometimes happen in our other important relationships. We all have people to whom we must “relate’ but with whom we feel distant or uncomfortable. It may be a boss, coworker, parent, or sometimes even a friend.

Evangelicals often say that Christianity is a “relationship” and not a religion. I understand what we are trying to do when we say this. We want to humanize Jesus for people (as if the incarnation were not enough). We do not want them to confuse faith with the rituals that are associated with the Faith. But sometimes I wonder if we make too much of it. Is it possible that the “relationship” frame is as liable to misunderstanding as the “religion” frame? Many of our notions of relationship are sentimental. This is especially true of our idealized relationships. What is more, many of our relationships (especially in the dating realm) are voluntary associations that are a function of personal attraction. We meet somebody and if we like them we enter (or attempt to enter) into a relationship with them. But what happens if, after we enter into a relationship, we find that we don’t like their personality as much as we thought we did at first? What if “relating” to the person makes us uncomfortable or our sense of that individual’s personality is elusive?

I am not suggesting that we may find, upon closer inspection, that Jesus really is the shallow creation of some public relations machine or that we will hate his personality once we finally come to know it. My point is that the rhetoric of ordinary relationships is probably not an adequate framework for understanding all that it means to be joined to Christ. Such language predisposes us to expect certain kinds of experiences with Christ that we rarely have. I can’t help noticing that Jesus’ own disciples did not always feel comfortable with him. Sometimes, like the disciples in the storm, it was because Jesus far exceeded their expectation (Luke 8:25).”Who is this?” they asked. There is a measure of distance implied in such language. The effect of such experiences on the disciples was not a sense of casual familiarity but one of awe and sometimes even terror. This does not change after the Resurrection. If anything, it intensifies the experience. When John, “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” comes face to face with the glorified Christ, he is so startled that he faints dead away (Rev. 1:17). At other times, the discomfort experienced with the disciples was because Jesus disappointed them. They looked for bread and Jesus offered himself instead (John 6:53-54, 60). They expected him to drive away their enemies. Instead, he surrendered to death at their hands and then walked out of the tomb they buried him in (Luke 24:19-24).

Either way, the disciples sometimes found their experience with Jesus to be profoundly unsettling. For those who were able to successfully make the transition from surprise or disappointment to faith, the result was not comfortable familiarity but a sense of mystery. There was apprehension (in the old sense of the word) but not comprehension. They were able to grasp something about Jesus but not with comprehensive understanding. John, who arguably “knew” Jesus better than any of the other disciples, tells us that such knowledge is yet to come for us (1 John 3:2).

In an essay on the subject of faith, Dorothy Sayers observes that a faith is not primarily a comfort, but a truth about ourselves. “What we in fact believe is not necessarily the theory we most desire or admire” she explains. “It is the thing that, consciously or unconsciously, we take for granted and act on.” Her friend and peer C. S. Lewis made a similar observation about faith. Faith, as Lewis defines it, is “the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.” I am suggesting that the same thing is true of the “relational” faith that joins us to Jesus Christ. Although faith often includes an experiential dimension, it does not require a particular kind of emotional experience in order to be genuine. Instead, faith requires that I take certain truths about Jesus and his relation to me for granted and act upon them. The relationship that I have with Jesus Christ is not dependent upon the way I feel about the relationship. This relationship is a fact before it is an experience. As C. S. Lewis has wisely observed, it is not a mood. Indeed, according to him, one of the functions of faith is to teach your moods “where they get off.”

It was not a carefully argued apologetic that reassured me after waking from my dream. Instead, I was reassured by the Jesus I encountered in the Bible. He was nothing at all like the Christ of my imagination. He exceeded my expectations. He disappointed me too. Fairly often, I might add. On too many occasions I came to him like the disciples, with my own assumptions about what he should say and do, only to have those expectation shattered. I quickly discovered that the Jesus of the Bible was beyond my control. I could not manipulate him with my prayers, bribe him with my behavior, or wheedle him with my praise.

We often treat doubt as if it were mostly a matter of unsettled reason. If we can prove that the Bible is historically accurate or that it agrees with science, we feel that we will overcome the doubter’s objections. But I think there are other factors in play when doubt’s uncertain shadow looms over our hearts. Certainly, it is a lack of confidence. Like Eve, we hear a whispered question which undermines our thinking and unsettles our soul: “Did God say?” However, more than anything else, I suspect that most doubts arise from our own lack of imagination. We cannot really envision Jesus as he truly is. We prefer a more controllable version to the one we read about in the Scriptures. Someone who is more comfortable and predictable. If such a Jesus shows up in your dreams with his shining smile and comfortable patter, you should probably ignore him. He is only a figment of your weak imagination. He bears as little resemblance to the real Jesus as a kitten does to a lion.

Anti-Hero Worship

September 4, 2018 ~ John Koessler ~ Leave a comment

Everybody needs a hero. When I was a small boy, Superman was mine. I dashed around the house with a towel tied around my neck and my arms stretched out in a vain attempt to fly. When I realized that I couldn’t leave the ground, I asked my dad to teach me how. He told me that he didn’t know either but I refused to believe him. Although I had never actually seen him “slip the surly bonds of earth” on his own power, I was certain that he could. I was convinced that it was a secret he was keeping for himself.

When I got older, I abandoned Superman for heroes who were more flawed. By that, I mean that I stopped reading DC Comics and started reading Marvel. I admired the way they combined angst-ridden insecurity with wisecracking bravado. It appealed to me, perhaps because this was the way I wanted to see myself. I felt like I lived most of my life hidden behind a secret identity. Underneath my ordinary exterior, I was sure there was some kind of greatness just waiting to burst forth. Someday everybody would be surprised.

These days there doesn’t seem to be any real difference between DC and Marvel. All our comic book heroes are flawed (with the possible exception of Wonder Woman). Meanwhile, although our flesh and blood leaders have the patter down, they lack the necessary skills. The bravado is there but without the superpowers and corresponding humility that is required to wield them safely.

Now that I am old, I see myself in them too and find the identification less than alluring. My secret identity is a secret no longer. It seems that myopic vision, insecurity, and a mild-mannered demeanor were my true nature all along. There is no inner superhero waiting to burst forth. I’d say something clever and dismissive about being in such a predicament if only I could think what it might be.

In Amazing Fantasy #15 the Spiderman origin story ends with the narrator’s observation that, in this world, great power brings with it great responsibility. But I think the narrator is wrong. That is how things are in the world of fantasy. In this world, great responsibility is usually shouldered by those who are ordinary…or even less. We are all anti-heroes now.

Hope, Agony, & Prayer

August 28, 2018 ~ John Koessler ~ Leave a comment

There is a homeless man I often see on my walk to the train. All knees and elbows as he sits on the curb, he looks as if his bony form has folded in on itself in total collapse. He holds a cup in his hand, which he lifts high above his head as I approach. Waving it in my general direction he cries, “Can I get a blessing today?” His voice seems strangled, as though it pains him to ask the question.

An observation by C. S. Lewis about prayer brought him to mind this morning. In Letters to Malcolm, Lewis mentions a friend who is waiting for confirmation of a potentially catastrophic diagnosis and is experiencing the tormenting uncertainty that afflicts people in such circumstances. There is hope but there is also the agony of waiting. As you wait, Lewis notes, your thoughts run in circles. You alternate between expectation and despair. You pray, “but mainly such prayers as are themselves a form of anguish.”

When I was a young Christian, I thought the key to answered prayer was to be sure God would do as I asked. This posed a problem for me because I could never find that kind of certainty within me. It wasn’t that I doubted God’s capability. It was His willingness that was in question. I concluded that the purpose of my prayer was to prove to God that I was convinced. But how? Usually, it took the form of posturing. I labored to affect the right tone. I spouted affirmations and made declarations. Sometimes I shouted. If I did not weary the courts of heaven with my voice, I at least grew weary of it myself. And of course, when I was finished, I was no more certain of the answer than when I had begun.

According to Hebrews 11:1, faith is “being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” But I do not think this means that I must be convinced that God will do what I want in order to get answers to my prayer. It does not even mean that I must be sure that the thing I ask of God is a possibility. Jesus’ qualifying, “if it is possible,” in Gethsemane is proof enough of this (Matt. 26:39). Jesus’ many predictions of His own impending death make this request even more striking. He seems to have known that the request would be refused even before He asked.

This means that we can make our requests of God without possessing absolute certainty of the outcome. It also means that, even when we are persuaded that the thing we desire from God is unlikely, we have permission to ask anyway. We lift the cup of supplication high above our heads and cry out in the agony of hope, “Can I get a blessing today?”

Same Story, Different Players

August 23, 2018 ~ John Koessler ~ Leave a comment

When it comes to the Bible, does it ever feel like you are reading the same story over and over again? In his book The Art of Biblical Narrative, author Robert Alter observes that one of the most common features of the narratives in the Old Testament is their use of repetition. He sees this as an indication of “literary purposefulness” on the part of the authors. Alter writes,“The most crucial case in point is the perplexing fact that in biblical narrative more or less the same story often seems to be told two or three or more times about different characters, or sometimes even about the same character in different sets of circumstances.”

No doubt he is correct. But I think there may be an additional reason. It is because people do the same dumb things. Any pastor can tell you this. Not only do different people do the same stupid things but people often make the same mistakes repeatedly. Actually, you don’t have to be a pastor to spot this. If you’ve attended more than one church, you’ve probably already noticed that it seems like the same story is unfolding with different faces. “Really?” we are tempted to say. “You did that too?”

It’s a comfort, in a way. There is a certain warm familiarity in driving past the same broken down barn every day. The wreckage is a landmark, part of what makes the landscape feel like home to us. The same is often true of our lives. Over here is the secret drunk. Over there is the important man, whose voice must always be heard. And there is the queen of the kitchen, who likes to tell everyone else how things are done. But after a while, it starts to feel like a cliché. We grow weary of the storyline. This is especially true once we spot ourselves among the cast of characters. “Really?” we want to say to ourselves. “You did that again? Will you ever learn?”

In view of the Bible’s Old Testament narratives, the answer might actually be no. But if this is the case, the point is not our own stupidity. The message is something else altogether. This repetition is intended to draw our attention to the other main character who shows up again and again. It seems that the story was not about us after all, but about God. He does not always rescue us from the consequences of what we have done. Sometimes, He lets us complete the narrative arc of our foolish choices. He does not show up at the last minute to save the day. Instead, when He enters the story, it is to save us.