We Are The New Normal

What is “We Are The New Normal”? It’s an understanding that status quo just doesn’t cut it sometimes, that going against the flow is sometimes the best direction to go, that sometimes we settle for less. Jesus example of “the normal Christian life” was an adventure with God of intimacy and power that changed lives, then whole cities, then the whole world. For us “the normal life” ends up looking more like the routine of going to church, coming home, going to church, coming home. It looks like fitting into a mold where everyone looks the same, formed by the same cookie cutter. It ends up looking rather…boring. The normal life of Jesus was filled with life and color, personalities and characters, freedom and passion, power and breakthrough. Perhaps, what we need is redefining. Perhaps, we need a new normal, a new standard for what everyday life should look like, and, therefore, and new picture of what church looks like. We need a new normal where the adjectives used for church aren’t “boring”, “judgemental”, or “irrelevant”. We need a normal life where church is a place of life and safety, freedom and healing, change and love. We need a place that is family…not an event, where people that gaze in from the outside may say, “what is with those people…they’re just not normal”, and we can respond, “Nope, we are the new normal.

Grace

Grace- the freely given, unmerited favor and love of God

I appreciate grace. I love grace. I’m not certain I “get” grace, in the sense of having it figured out. Over and over again in my life I find myself on the journey of trying to uncover the layers of grace and live in the middle of what I find. One of the ideas I have arrived at is that I think I have an easier time with the “favor” part than the “unmerited” part. It is not that I think God’s favor is merited. It’s just that I often live as though I believe I have to make it merited, to earn it, or at least to attempt to repay it. In that way of thinking, I miss the beauty of what makes grace so beautiful. Last week I was considering the following story from Acts.

“The crowd rose up together against them, and the chief magistrates tore their robes off them and proceeded to order them to be beaten with rods. When they had struck them with many blows, they threw them into prison, commanding the jailer to guard them securely; and he, having received such a command, threw them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks. But about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns of praise to God, and the prisoners were listening to them; and suddenly there came a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison house were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened.”
-Acts 16:22-26

The focus of the passage is usually Paul and Silas’s response to their imprisonment. They worship when they could have been sinking in despair or fear. In darkness of the night, their suffering birthed a song that caught the ear of God and He came to their rescue. What struck me was not Paul and Silas’s story, but the story of the prisoners around them. The had done nothing to deserve to have their doors opened. There is no evidence that they were joining Paul and Silas’s choir. There is no mention of anything that would have provoked God to come to their rescue. God poured out grace on Paul and Silas and the other prisoners were swept up in the overflow.

I’m was one of those prisoners. Having done plenty to earn my cell and nothing to deserve release, I am swept up in the grace poured out through Christ. He is the song ringing through the prison halls in the midnight hour. He is the shaking of the cell walls. He is the only one worthy of having heaven come to open the door for His release. He is sinless and spotless, therefore no prison (death, hell, persecution, rejection, etc) can hold Him. I am fortunate. I get to enter into the overflow of His victory, and find favor with the Father. Favor I can never merit.

Rise of The Third Verse

Why is this place called “rise of the third verse”?  Well, growing up, any time we would sing a hymn we only ever sang verse one, verse two, and ended on verse four.  As I got older and fell in love with hymns I continually found that it was often the third verse that I loved the most.  Usually the third verse seemed to be the most personal, the most confrontational, or the most convicting.  It was the point in the song where the writer was done setting the stage, but was not yet trying to close the song in grandiose fashion.  It was the point where the writer was driving home the meat of the hymn.  When I started leading worship I began always doing those verses that we had often left off.  Some of our people had never known of the existence of, much less worshipped with, those forgotten stanzas.  Singing those “long lost” lines helped me find new ways to cry out old prayers, and find strength in words written by those who went before me.

For me, it’s a metaphor for uncovering, discovering, or recovering all those portions of our faith that we let slip through the cracks.  It’s a metaphor for allowing the finished work of the cross to be revealed in all its implications in every part of life.  It’s a metaphor for not allowing my spirituality to consist only of the portions with which I’m comfortable, or the portions that are popular for the moment.

Basically, if there are expressions of authentic faith that I have never seen, or dropped along the way, I want them to come to the surface, to rise like all those forgotten third verses.

 

Keith