Around the Office: Deluxe Miracle Jesus

Man, April was a crazy, crazy month, as evidenced by the fact that I only posted six times. May (so far) looks like there will be more time for the three R’s – reflection, response, and writing stuff.

A friend of mine bought this for me a while back at a toy store in Austin. It’s not just any old Jesus action figure – it’s Deluxe Miracle Jesus! He comes with five loaves and two fish, and a water/wine jug (on one side the interior of the jug is blue, the other is red – awesome).

And – the best of all – glow-in-the-dark hands!!

There is a lot to say about Deluxe Miracle Jesus. A lot. I’ll break it down into categories.

I. Deluxe Miracle Jesus As A Toy
I think we’ve all seen action figures of Jesus, but have we really given much thought to Jesus as an action figure? I can only speak from my own experience, but the primary utility of an action figure, to me, was to create and live out your own adventures. In the cartoons Superman might never make it out to the Sahara and discover that Skeletor had kidnapped Wonder Woman, and he certainly wouldn’t usually team up with Spider-Man to save her (two different comic companies, you know), but that could happen in my sandbox.

Is this an appropriate thing to encourage children to do with Jesus? It seems like you’re veering uncomfortably close to blasphemy if you have Jesus team up with Batman to fight the Joker, or the Devil, or a Devil-possessed Joker (though stranger things have happened in comics). Wouldn’t children be encouraged instead to stick with the canonical stories? Get yourself a “Herod’s Temple Playset” with flipping-over-table action? Ok, that actually sounds fun, but essentially what you are doing is re-enacting stories you’ve already seen – is that fun? By a strict definition, it’s not “play.” “Play” has no rules. Sports have rules, and games, and art, but not play (my wife does play therapy a lot with children– she takes this distinction very seriously). Can you really “play” with a Jesus action figure? Can you really “create” with one? (There’s a theological pun in there somewhere.)

Now - other Biblical characters? I think there's a lot more potential there. A quick Google search reveals a LOT of Bible action figures, including Moses, Noah, David, Goliath, Samson, and...Esther?

Ah, I see now, Esther, as a queen, and a girl action figure, comes with a ton of changes of clothes. And a tambourine. There is a lot of potential here. A LOT (strangley, there is no Lot action figure...). But it would take us too far afield from the present topic. Come back soon for more on Bible action figures.

Putting these more theoretical issues aside, here are the pros and cons to this particular Jesus action figure.
Cons:
* Not much articulation, he can only move his wrists, hands, and head. In other words, this version of Jesus will not be drop-kicking anyone, through goal posts or otherwise (though he could flip over tables).
* Those little loaves and fish aren’t going to last long.

Trust me on this – accessories are the first thing to disappear forever from a toy collection, followed by removable costume pieces like helmets and capes, then arms and/or legs. I still mourn the childhood loss of The Lone Ranger’s tiny, tiny guns.


Pros:
Four words (hyphenated) – glow-in-the-dark-hands! Glow in the dark toys remind me of these bad boys:


II. Deluxe Miracle Jesus as a Product of Our Culture
I heartily recommend to you the book “They Like Jesus But Not the Church” by Dan Kimball.

It will make you think – a lot – about the culture around us and how best to reach them with the gospel that changes lives.

In chapter three, “Jesus as Son of God and Plastic Action Figure,” he says:
“Something about Jesus fascinates us. Whether we want him on our dashboards or on our T-shirts or in the lyrics of our songs, he has become something of a pop icon in our culture. ..It’s almost impossible to tell sometimes which Jesus paraphernalia comes from Christians and which comes from pop culture.

What makes all of these products and all of this attention to Jesus interesting and exciting is that, combined with all the interest in and respect for Jesus among many people, it is becoming easier to talk about Jesus. Most people today, whether in a church or outside the church, believe Jesus is a good person who has some sort of spiritual insight.”

Deluxe Miracle Jesus is a great example of this. The sides of the box have the passages which talk about the miracles which the accessories are based on (both from the gospel of John). The back text of the box talks about the meaning of his name, and his place in various world religions, from prophet of Islam to avatar of Hindus to the Christian designation as Son of God.

The text box on the back concludes, “Although he is understood in many different ways, everyone seems to agree that he was an extraordinary man.”

Which leads us to our third point…

III. Deluxe Miracle Jesus as a Theological Statement
As a toy, glow-in-the-dark-hands are awesome. As a statement of belief, this is completely wrong, and a fun little heresy that has been popping up since the second century or so. In the theology world, we call it docetism. In the real world, we call it “believing Jesus wasn’t fully human.”

It’s understandable why we would fall for this. We worship the resurrected Christ, the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, the agent of creation, the image of the invisible God, etc. When we read the gospels, especially those stories involving miracles, healing, and God-given foreknowledge, we transpose the heavenly Jesus onto the figure who lived in first-century Palestine. We imagine Jesus as almost but not quite floating six inches off the ground. We see him as untroubled, sinless, always in control of every situation, able to read the mind of God and everybody else, able to perfectly discern God’s will, and maybe even with glow-in-the-dark-hands. We even imagine such thoroughly human people as Abraham, David, Peter, and Paul in this or similar ways. We take our heroes of the faith and make them more than human. We make them angels.

But – none of these people were angels. And neither was Jesus. He was a man. Everybody who met him saw him as a man. No one who saw his physical appearance said “That guy must be divine.”

And – get this, no one who saw him do miracles thought he was divine. When he calms the storm the disciples say, “What kind of man is this?” The Samaritan woman to whom he revealed knowledge he could not have received on his own did not say, “Sir, I perceive that you are the Son of God.” She said, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.” And prophets were human.

There has been a lot of ink spilled over how the human and divine nature of Christ are related – that isn’t my concern here. My concern is a more practical one. How did Jesus do what He did? How did he know what he knew? And what if (cue ominous music) the power that he used to do such things were also available to His followers – to those who are in him?

Jesus got hungry. Jesus got tired. Jesus got worn out by crowds. Jesus got angry. Jesus got stressed out. Jesus got thirsty. Jesus was deeply moved and upset by the sin around him. Jesus was deeply moved by compassion for those hurting around him. Jesus wept for his dead friend. All of these things are part of what makes us human.

Jesus wasn’t afraid when all others around him were. Jesus wasn’t confused when everyone else around him was. Jesus knew what God required from him, and he didn’t waver in doing it. He knew His life’s purpose. Jesus spoke with authority. Jesus loved with abandon. Jesus healed the sick. Jesus saw people as God saw them, not as how they were labeled by their culture (especially their religious culture). Jesus did not sin. And I propose to you that all of these things are every bit as much characteristics of humanity as the characteristics in the paragraph above. They are characteristics of a human who is in right relationship to the Father.

When we think about humanity in religious terms, we usually think in terms of negatives. Sin, brokenness, and eventually death. But God made humans to be good – completely good – righteous, whole, and alive. That’s what it really means to be human. We see Jesus' example of being righteous, whole, and alive, and we think “he’s more than human.” He’s a Deluxe Miracle Action Figure, a superhuman in human form. But we’ve got it backward. Jesus is the only person who did “human” the way it was always supposed to be. It’s not that he was more than human – it’s that we are all less than human. We’re missing the one key thing that makes a human fully human – a right relationship with God.

How did Jesus, the human, get this right relationship? Well, you’re not going to believe this, but apparently – according to the gospels - Jesus got this right relationship through prayer and reading the scriptures.

We read the divinity of Jesus that we believe now back onto the Jesus of the first-century, and we imagine that Jesus had some sort of heavenly telepathy, and powers of transmutation. We read the divinity of Jesus that we believe now back onto the Jesus of the first-century and we miss that he asked the Father to give his disciples (that’s us, too!) the same kind of connection as he had to the Father.

The last word here is that, of course, Jesus is also divine. He is, in a sense that is very difficult to articulate, but not hard to believe, God. What we sometimes miss is the moment that people started saying these kinds of things about Jesus. It was after his resurrection from the dead. “You know, what, everybody,” the disciples said to each other, “I think we can now safely conclude that Jesus was the Messiah, the son of God.” The same Jesus they ate breakfast with, took long walks with, saw perform miracles, saw DIE, and then – saw alive again. Not a ghost, zombie, or angel – but the real, honest-to-God Jesus, back from the dead, never to die again. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t the Son of God before (that’s another heresy that’s been around a looong time). It means the resurrection confirmed for the disciples and the world what had already been true in the kingdom of God.

We'll let Peter have the last word here, from his Pentecost sermon - but pay attention to how and when Peter refers to his friend and master, Jesus:

“Men of Israel, listen to these words! Jesus the Nazarene, a man accredited to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through him in your midst, just as you yourselves know – this man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put him to death. But God has raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power…This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses…Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ – this Jesus whom you crucified.” – Acts 2:22-24, 32, 36

Bible Verses That Freak Me Out #20 - "Put your hand into my side" - John 20:27

“Then He said to Thomas, “Reach here with your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand and put it into my side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing.” – John 20:27

The above painting is one of my favorites. It’s “The Incredulity of Saint Thomas,” by the Italian Baroque artist Caravaggio, painted in 1602 in Rome.

Caravaggio is quite the character. He’s a spectacular artist. This article describes his style as “radical naturalism which combined close physical observation with a dramatic, even theatrical, approach to chiaroscuro, the use of light and shadow.” One of his contemporaries describes his personal character as follows, “after a fortnight's work he will swagger about for a month or two with a sword at his side and a servant following him, from one ball-court to the next, ever ready to engage in a fight or an argument, so that it is most awkward to get along with him.” He was an artist, all right. He was exiled for killing a man in a brawl.

The “radical naturalism” mentioned above manifests in some interesting ways in his work, which you can review here. A lot of his paintings have very visceral, or even violent subjects. A partial explanation of that he is working in Renaissance Italy, with work largely commissioned by churches on Biblical themes – and there are a lot of violent biblical stories. And, of course, he seems to have been a violent person in general.

But, man, look at the list! Amongst the “Baskets of Fruit” and portraits, you’ve got several crucifixions, “Boy Bitten by a Lizard,” “Tooth Puller,” two different “The Sacrifice of Isaac,” and two different pictures of Jesus’ flogging. Both of his pictures of St. Francis have a skull in them! He seems to have been particularly enamored of beheadings – there are two different paintings of David with Goliath’s head, three of the beheaded John the Baptist, one from the apocryphal book Judith with her in the act of beheading a guy, and Medusa’s chopped off head. Wow.

All this to say – Caravaggio has a thing for visceral paintings. And the above is no exception. It’s one of my favorites because it tells a little story in itself of how the scene described in the Bible might have happened.

The title is “The Incredulity of Saint Thomas” – but look at Thomas' expression (click on the picture to enlarge it). That isn’t doubt. Or at least, not the kind we normally associate with Thomas. It’s the “I can hardly believe this is happening to me” kind of doubt, as opposed to the “I don’t believe what you are telling me” kind that we normally associate with him.

Look at the expressions on the other disciples’ faces. Look how their heads are grouped together – they want to be as close as possible to the action.

Look at who is guiding Thomas’ hand. Jesus is holding his wrist, guiding his hand to the place where He was stabbed with a spear. Jesus' pierced hand is at the center of the painting. He is not just having Thomas touch the wound, but put his hand inside the wound, just like the verse says. This is the part of the painting that astounds me, and made the verse come alive for me in a new way. It’s as if Jesus made the invitation for Thomas to touch His wounds, and Thomas initially refused. And Jesus said, “No - you said you wanted to touch the wounds – so touch the wounds.”

Have you ever felt someone’s scar? Placed your hand on flesh that has been torn and then put back together? It sends shivers down your spine. It puts you in the moment - lets you imagine the hurt that person must have gone through in a unique way. Maybe that’s the expression on Thomas’ face. Thomas wasn’t there when Jesus received that wound. The disciples behind him weren’t there either. They had fled, and abandoned Jesus to die. Is Thomas imagining what it must have been like for his Lord? Is it that Thomas, from touching Jesus’ wounds, more than any of the other disciples, realized what it must have been like to die on the cross? And now, seeing Him alive, is that why he says, “My Lord and my God!”- ? It is at that moment that John has him express more than anyone else in the gospels has about who Jesus is.

Finally, look at Jesus’ face. Caravaggio has it in shadow, to symbolize that even at this most intimate moment, He is still unknowable to some degree. But His expression is not one of frustration, or anger. He wants Thomas to know – He wants Thomas to believe, and to understand exactly what has happened. He wants to erase any doubt that He is alive.

He still wants to do that.

“Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.”

Bible Verses That Freak Me Out #18 - "He must increase, I must decrease" - John 3:28, 30

“You yourselves are my witnesses that I said, ‘I am not the Messiah,’ but, ‘I have been sent ahead of Him.’ He must increase, but I must decrease.” – John the Baptist, John 3:28, 30

You know who is kind of a big deal? John the Baptist.

All four gospels either start with John the Baptist, or start to explain Jesus’ ministry by starting with John’s ministry. Considering that there aren’t that many things outside of the Passion narrative that appear in all four gospels (the feeding of the 5000 and the cleansing of the temple are the others), that makes John the Baptist a big deal.

And the gospels continue to refer to John. He is even referred to in Acts, when Paul finds Apollos and several disciples in Ephesus – hundreds of miles from Israel, and a decade or more after John’s death – still ordering their lives on the things taught by John the Baptist.

Sinners come to him repentant. Tax-collectors, Roman soldiers, Pharisees, and even freakin’ King Herod are fascinated by him and want to hear what he has to say. He has a large group of committed disciples. People wonder aloud if he is the second coming of Elijah, and even ask him breathlessly if he is the Messiah.

Remind you of anyone?

In Luke’s gospel his going ahead of Christ starts in a prenatal state, as his parents receive an angelic birth announcement in an old-school “barren woman conceives” scenario. Eventually, love him or hate him, everyone in Israel is talking about him. People compare him and Jesus early on, and even after his horrific death “what do you think about John the Baptist” is a sort of spiritual litmus test Jesus gives to his opponents.

I like to think of him as the Last Old Testament Prophet. He plays a central role in the gospels, and yet, we Christian types really don’t talk about him all that much. Why?

Because he did his job, and he did it well.

His job, even before he was born, was to fulfill the prophecy and be the voice of one calling in the wilderness, “Prepare the way for the Lord.” To turn the hearts of Israel back to toward their God. To prepare for the One Who Is To Come. To be the forerunner. And then – when the real Messiah stands up – to stand back. The last prophet of the Old Covenant turns it all over to the Living Word of the New Covenant. To prepare the way, and then get out of the way.

It makes sense. But it could not have been easy. I can only speak for myself, but one of the hardest things for me to do as a minister is to stand back and get out of Jesus’ way. To yield the stage, the attention, the ability to influence – to Jesus.

I like attention. I like it when people laugh at my jokes. I like it when people think I am deep, spiritually discerning, and wise. If someone asked me, like they did John the Baptist, “Are you the second-coming of Elijah?” I’m pretty sure I’d be humble enough to laugh and say no, but I’m not sure I’d be humble enough not to let that affect my perception of myself for the rest of my life.

I fantasize about being famous. About being the next Rob Bell, or the next (insert your favorite famous Christian pastor here), or get a VERY big mural with the stuff from Revelation on it and be the next John Hagee, but a moderate version.

Or, if not a famous pastor, I fantasize about writing the children’s book that lives in my head and being the next J.K. Rowling. (I mostly fantasize about the fame, but the money would be nice too.)

Part of that fantasy is the culture that we live in that continually tells us that your worth is based on your name recognition, but a bigger part of that is that I like attention and, most of time, would like to have more of it.

And that’s where John 3:30 comes in. “He must increase, but I must decrease.” John the Baptist was famous, not just in Israel but all over the ancient world. He was talked about with awe, so when he said he wasn’t worthy to tie the shoes of the Messiah, people were REALLY in awe of the Messiah. He was famous, and so when he said, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!,” everyone turned around to look at Jesus – and then didn’t turn back. John handed it over to the one who was all the things he was not. Messiah, Savior, Lord, Son of God, and worthy of worship. We don’t talk about John the Baptist because he did what he was supposed to do – pointed people to Jesus, and then got out of the way.

I apologize in advance for the very, very nerdy example, but I think of the scene in the Fellowship of the Ring. Frodo offers the ring of power to Galadriel, the Elven Queen. She is surprised that he offers it freely, and she gets sort of excited. You can tell she is excited because she starts glowing, talking in a very deep voice, and saying things like, “All shall love me and DESPAIR!!!!”

Then she stops moving toward the ring, stops glowing, catches her breath, gets her normal voice back, and says, mostly to herself, “I pass the test. I shall diminish, and remain Galadriel.”

John the Baptist passes the test. He will diminish, and remain the forerunner.

Another verse that freaks me out about John the Baptist is Jesus' tribute to him, in Luke 7:28: “I say to you, among those born of women there is no one greater than John; yet he who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.”

Let’s break that down:
1)John the Baptist, according to Jesus, was the greatest human being ever born
2)But the one who is lowest on the totem pole in God’s kingdom surpasses him

Interpretation by your friend and mine, F.F. Bruce – being part of the kingdom of God is exponentially more important and more valuable than being great (or famous).

And when it comes down to it my job is pretty similar to John's. To point to Jesus and say, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” – and then get out of the way.

I think we can say with great certainty that the greatest Christians who ever lived are unknown to us. That they made sure to decrease, so that Christ would increase, to the point that they are anonymous, unknown, and forgotten….except to the One who sees what is done in secret.