by John Lynch
It absolutely shatters our way of being. It either destroys the arrogance of our false piety or it strips bare the pretended enjoyment of our unbelief.
At first, we don’t experience grace as tender and comforting. It comes to destroy the old fortress. We don’t experience love as fulfilling and desired. It comes to rip apart fear and unbelief.
Once we see its unyielding demand, once we submit to its power and all-encompassing life, we become free. Freedom we have never even considered. … In a moment, it changes the entire playing field and fills our hearts with dreams and pulsing life.
… Here, in the dark of this theater, I am watching what I was feeling that night as a boy. My eyes are filling with tears. Already, by eleven, I had learned to survive, to mistrust, to manipulate, to play all who wanted to love me.
I am no longer watching a play. I am being transported back to my childhood—to the night God revealed himself on my frightening walk home. The words the priest speaks to Jean Valjean mirror the impression God flooded my heart with, all those years ago:
John, you are marked now. You will run as fast as you can, but you will not be able to escape. You belong to me. You were made for a life of grace and redemption and love. Of freedom beyond what you can imagine. You have been bought. You just don’t know it yet. And that feeling of being understood and adored by one who knows everything about you? It will lead you eventually home. You called me. I answered. I rescued you. I revealed me to you. It has filled you with a longing you never knew you had. Run, my friend. But know you have been marked.
And now, this radical, inscrutable, life-giving grace will now become my singular life purpose. I must find pictures, stories, and ways in—to allow others to experience this grace. Nothing else will matter to me. I will preach the grace of God, I will model the grace of God, I will live fused with God, the sustainer of grace. I will stand as an old priest in front of other Valjeans and I will “speak to that new man who will believe and emerge.” I will fail at it, misrepresent it, and misapply it. But God will override every failure, and create beauty I had never imagined to see.
1988
I stumbled into a community of grace while wildly theologically opposed to the concept. I didn’t learn this way of life in seminary. These young believers at Open Door Fellowship probably didn’t even know they were influencing me so strongly. They didn’t even know how to cogently articulate what was happening to them! But I watched them live with each other so well. It all got through to me.
For two years I was preaching to them all I knew: a “man-up,” “buck-up” pile of theological-sounding self-importance and parroted platitudes. They endured it. I was boldly proclaiming a moralistic sin-management doctrine, while hiding the pain of my own compromise and immaturity.
It happens all the time, almost everywhere. We have a gift and it finds us a platform. We fall in love with being important. People actually think we know what we’re talking about. The greatest drive is to keep our platform, because people start to admire us.
So we create a pretend, competent, assured self, hoping to buy ourselves some time. But it makes us less healthy and less teachable. They don’t know we’re lying. God still is growing them up in spite of our carefully polished mush. So a gifted, clever, funny, articulate young preacher blusters and poses as having a maturity and wisdom he does not actually possess.
Looking back, I can’t understand why they didn’t stop me. It’s like they had a meeting. “Anyone else notice this kid is bluffing? Maybe if we stay close, eventually he’ll catch on we’re not buying his line. He may let us in. Then we get to watch the kid mature into these truths. Either way, he’s still pretty funny.”
So a community gradually teaches a preacher what to preach.
Awakening: It’s exceedingly difficult for anyone to understand grace as anything other than a theological position, unless they experience it in community.
I remember the Sunday it happened. Some call it a “grace awakening.” Bruce McNicol calls it “meeting Jesus for the first time, all over again.” For months, I’d been studying Ephesians and been rocked by Paul’s overwhelming account of what Christ has completed in us already. He’s teaching the only way to live is to trust who we are in Christ and who Christ is in us. He’s pleading we try no other method to face our sin and failures. I’m arguing with Paul all week before preaching this passage, “…be renewed in the spirit of your mind and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.” I keep rereading Romans 7 and 8, Philippians 3:9, 2 Corinthians 5:21 and Galatians 2:20. They are forming a chorus convincing me I’m a saint who still has sin but is adored, rather than a saved sinner who is a grave disappointment to God.
“Yeah, but what about personal responsibility? What about fighting the good fight? What about living with fear and trembling?” For so long those verses appeared to demand a buck-up response. Now they are slamming up against this new conviction of a Christ who had already radically changed me and is now maturing me in his perfect timing.
A friend recently gave me a copy of Brennan Manning’s The Ragamuffin Gospel. Manning is destroying me with his ragged and brutal admission of his pretense, arrogance, and pretending. He is building a case for trusting only in Christ’s power in him and the unwillingness of God to receive even my own condemnation. He is exposing my charade.
This Sunday morning’s message begins with an apology:
“Something is happening inside me. I’ve been bluffing to you, trying to impress you with my seminary insights and knowledge of the original languages. I actually don’t know enough of either to understand what I’m talking about. I’ve talked tough and told you to be sold out to God. The truth is, I’m not doing this life very well. I’m in a continual battle of willpower against sin. I’m losing, badly. I have no idea how to communicate what I am beginning to understand about living out of a new identity. It’s still pretty elusive to me. I’m sorry it has taken me this long. I only know I am tired of forcing this Bible to say what I think it should say. I’ve wanted it to tell you off, so I could get you people to be better. It has been ugly and humbling to realize I’m the one who doesn’t know how to be better. That’s all I’ve got right now.”
God sets me on a course that morning to discover how to articulate this way of life in Christ. This time it will not be in isolation, but in a community learning it together.
Jesus has been waiting for me to start reading the Word without a shame and moralistic filter. Only then could I understand him saying this to me:
You and I are absolutely and completely now fused with each other. Your strength, joy, hope, peace, everything will come from risking this to be true. We are melded as precious metals. Yes, I am God and you are human. But the unthinkable has happened. All of me infused into all of you. It is impossible to discern where I begin and you end. I am no longer God up there with you down here. I am now closer than a burning bush, a vision, or even a Peter sitting next to me. I am now identified by you my dear friend. Your true identity is Christ in you. You may absolutely put your entire weight upon this. It most perfectly honors what the cross and the resurrection accomplished. Please don’t shy from this in some religious sense of it being too good to be true or beyond your worth. This declares your worth. Enjoy this with all your being. Don’t waste a day pretending it is not true. I promise you it is.
Awakening: We’re all screwed up. Only bad religion can cause us to pretend we’re not. We’re still compromised and maturing, even on our best day. It’s just better to know we are.
1990
I almost peed my pants, right in front of my audience.
I was in the middle of an illustration on a Sunday morning. All of us started laughing and couldn’t stop. It was one of those times where you think you’ll stop laughing and then somebody in the audience snorts and you’re all back on the train.
At one point, I stood there and stared out upon this congregation with tears of
laughter in my eyes. I was struggling to catch my breath.
It’s like we were speaking words behind our laughter to each other:
Audience: “John, we never thought we’d get to be like this in a church. It’s incredibly exhilarating. But do you think God likes that we’re playing around right now? This story you’re telling—it has no point, no value. It’s like a lead guitar solo in a spiritual song. We want to believe our God values all of this. But it does seem sort of wrong.”
Me: “I hope he’s delighted. I’m banking everything he’s in it all. That he enjoys it all. That it’s all part of this incredible being he’s remade us to be. If we’re in him, it’s all God stuff. This enjoyment, it too is created by him! I have a feeling he’s laughing as hard as we are.”
Audience: “We were hoping you’d say that.”
Awakening: God is not afraid to risk the consequences of what we do with his grace.
I could have landed in ten thousand other communities, where there would have been a built-in religious expectation I would’ve had to fake my way through. To be in a place that was risking to trust I am Christ in me felt so freeing and dangerous all at the same time. We’re trusting we have new hearts that can be trusted. We’re trusting God with the pace of each other’s maturity, humor, and kindness. And many of us are getting healed in the gamble. …
Awakening: One of the most freeing moments in my life is to discover that who I am as a Christian and who I really am have become the same person.
1990
Back in 1983, Mike McDevitt and I were watching a rerun of the sixties television show Bonanza while we ate lunch in the home I shared with the Mc-Devitts and several others.
Long story short: “Little Joe” Cartwright was the handsome son of Ben Cartwright. Ben was the wise, kind, and benevolent patriarch of this wealthy ranching family. This particular episode ended with the two of them working through a breakup with a young woman Little Joe had been seeing. Little Joe was sad.
Ben was about to make a final, concluding, profound statement. It’s what he did. He was a strong man of few words, but the ones he chose carried immense weight and should be heeded by his children. He put his hand on Little Joe’s shoulder and said these words, which apparently would make sense of all the heartache Little Joe was facing. It was the last moment before the episode ended and the theme music started up.
What both Mike and I heard was this exact phrase: “Bubbleen, Little Joe. Bubbleen.”
I looked over at Mike. “Uh…did he just say…?” Mike answered, “Bubbleen.” He said “Bubbleen, Little Joe. Bubbleen.”
Me: “That’s what I heard! He can’t have said ‘Bubbleen’! It means nothing.”
Mike: “I think his exact words were ‘Bubbleen, Little Joe. Bubbleen.’”
There was no rewinding in those days. Unless you worked as a film editor at the network station, one shot was all the consumer got.
We must have laughed for twenty minutes about “Bubbleen.” There’s no other phrase it could have been! We substituted dozens of alternatives, trying to give them the benefit of the doubt. But nothing worked. What important phrase of help from Ben to Little Joe could possibly rhyme with “Bubbleen”?
“Break my spleen, Little Joe. Break my spleen.”
“My real name is Lorne Greene, Little Joe. Lorne Greene.” “Bub, we’re on the big screen, Little Joe. On the big screen.” “Boy you’re lean, Little Joe. Boy, you’re lean.”
“Let’s get out of this scene, Little Joe. Let’s get out of this scene.” Nothing fits it.
Six months after that I moved and wouldn’t see Mike much at all for nine years. But I told the “Bubbleen” story dozens and dozens of times to friends, wherever I went. I shared it when I’ve taught at conferences and camps. I used it as an illustration in a Sunday morning message. Maybe I’ve been hoping someone can shed some light on it and put this mystery to bed.
My relatively new friend, Bob Ryan, has heard me tell this story in different settings many times already. He is a freelance graphic designer and is teaming with a local design artist on a magazine project.
Bob calls me. “John, I’m working with a guy named Mike McDevitt. Could this be the Mike McDevitt from the ‘Bubbleen’ story? He’s a design artist in town.”
“Wow! I didn’t know Mike was in town. Yes, that’s probably him!” Bob says only this, before he hangs up: “I’ve got an idea.”
… It is now four days later. Bob’s meeting with Mike again. They are standing over a large, angled, design board. The project paper is in front of them and they are trying to solve an issue of design space usage. Mike is a bit frustrated he hasn’t found a solution yet.
Then God releases the hounds of humor. Both men are standing over the document. Bob taps his mechanical pencil on the table and says these words: “You know Mike, this puzzle we’re trying to solve is sort of like ‘Bubbleen, Little Joe.’”
… And then the three seconds of wonder I can barely wait to see in heaven. I will ask to see it over and over and over again.
Mike turns his head, as on a swivel, leans into Bob, and exaggeratedly mouths, slowly and sternly, “What … did … you … say?”
Mike has not heard these words from outside his own head since 1983. His expression conveys that if Bob does not say the exact words in response, Mike will choke him until he does.
Bob, in a moment of near genius says this: “Yeah, ‘Bubbleen, Little Joe.’ You know, from the Bonanza show. It’s a statement people make when they hear something which doesn’t make sense. You hear people in graphic arts use it all the time. It’s like saying you’ve got a conundrum or a paradox of misunderstanding. You know, ‘Bubbleen, Little Joe.’”
Mike stares at Bob like he has said, “vegetable mallet of corrosive steam harnessing.”
Mike: (moments of staring, then attempts to form words without success) “What?”
Bob: “‘Bubbleen, Little Joe.’ Come on, you know. Ben’s trying to help Little Joe. And no one can figure out what he says next. Stop screwing with me. Now, let’s get back at this.”
Mike: (more trying to form words without success) “Where did you hear this? How do you know this? Nobody knows this. There’s only one other person who …”
Then, mercifully, Bob smiles and says, “I know Lynch.”
Awakening: God is able to stand in the pain and injustice, while at once transcending it. He employs humor, which reminds evil it cannot win.
1991
All my Christian life I haven’t known what to do with my sin. I fought so hard against it. But I rarely saw significant change. Now I’m married. I’m discovering I can hurt Stacey in so many ways. I am still very frightened to have my unvarnished self presented in public. I’m still a frightened performer. I want to be perceived a certain way. Stacey cares nothing about such varnish. She has no supreme court. She usually says what she thinks, without working the angles. This now includes talking about me. I make her pay whenever she speaks of me in a way I don’t like. She is losing herself more and more under my control. I don’t know what I hate more than hurting Stacey. She has little agenda, little guile. She is being Stacey—trusting God to convict her on her error in his time. She understands grace, most of the time, better than her husband, who is endlessly preaching it.
I need to discover something stronger against my sin than self-loathing and stronger promises. Only a community can try out and prove this truth:
Awakening: Trying to fix me won’t help. But if I don’t have to hide, my life issues will begin to be resolved.
What will protect Stacey is the courage to tell on myself as quickly as I discover wrong.
Awakening: The courage to tell on myself about the wrong I am intending to do is one of the most heroic actions I can take.
To tell on ourselves before we do the action is a stunning display of the new life in us. We are choosing to no longer give ourselves permission to do something that moments we were willing to risk integrity and health to gain
.
Such a choice is revolutionarily supernatural. It also happens to be the only thing we can do to stop sin once it begins to present itself to our consciousness. No self-discipline, no intense striving, no promises, no beating ourselves up, no other anything will stop sin’s power once it forms. Any other means than telling another is so utterly pitiful. We are trying to resist a failure we’ve already given ourselves permission to do! The very action of resistance only heightens the anticipated pleasure of the acting out.
As certain as dawn, when I choose to tell another what I am planning to do, it breaks the cycle of sin’s power in that very moment. This is why we’re asked to confess our stuff to each other. Even stuff that hasn’t yet happened. Because the inflamed darkness brewing inside is only waiting for time, location and opportunity.
Imagine! Having a friend safe enough to call and say, “Hey, it’s John. I haven’t done anything yet. But I need to talk to you, because I trust you. You need to know what I’m plotting.”
In that moment, we are free. Free!
It will come again. But this episode has lost its power. For this is the grace of God offered in real time, for real life. He is not out there; he is in here, at the most crucial moment.
Awakening: The objective is not to build communities appearing to have sin under control. The objective is to nurture a place safe enough where people can stop faking they have sin under control.
It’s messy but utterly healthy. Those who live in it become free … and they end up sinning less.
A true leader is able to stand in the tension of such a community, even such a work environment. There will always be structure, expectations, and something worth doing being done with great diligence. Many leaders never learn the best environment for great accomplishment is an environment of trust, safety, and authenticity. Any other means of accomplishing anything eventually misses the quality of relationship needed to remember why we were doing the work in the first place.
