“This is the one I esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word.” (Isaiah 66:2, NIV)
I stood on a local driving range late Monday afternoon, having run into an old friend there. Our conversation may sound familiar.
“The TV commentators don’t know what to do with Bubba,” he said. “He’s never taken a lesson and his swing is so unorthodox.”
“And he lets his emotions hang out,” I added.
“That’s right,” my friend confirmed.
Just an hour earlier, I’d been listening to the Masters winner’s press conference replayed on the radio. “Your winning on Easter has special meaning to you,” one of the reporters prompted him. “Can you explain that?”
“This is the day Jesus rose from the dead,” Watson—he of the pink and now green—said. “Friday was the day he died. Sunday was the day he rose.” Here was the unorthodox one delivering the most orthodox of Christian orthodoxies.
It’s only fitting, of course. If ever there was a knock on Jesus, it was this: “He doesn’t fit our idea of God. He’s way outside our box.”
Hard to know just where the religious leaders of Jesus’ day got this orthodoxy. Of himself, God has said through Isaiah: “See, the Lord is coming with fire, and his chariots are like a whirlwind” (Isaiah 66:15). When Ezekiel’s wife died, God instructed the faithful prophet not to mourn, all part of God’s pronounced judgment on his people (this was the God, by the way, who revealed himself to Ezekiel as “glowing metal”). All over the Old Testament, the pictures and prophecies and instructions of God are disturbing and unexpected. Just where were these leaders coming up with their orthodoxy?
Then Jesus entered the scene. He healed on the Sabbath, dined with known reprobates, showed mercy to adulterers. He answered every difficult question, yet said nothing in the face of fateful accusations. He forgave those who denied him and crucified him. That is, he did just about everything backwards. On such an unorthodox Savior we have built our orthodoxy. No wonder the best thing we can do is tremble at his word!
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Jeff Hopper
April 11, 2012
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