In Step

I was talking with a friend this morning whose son just got out of a leg cast which had forced him into a  wheelchair for a while and then onto crutches. He was telling me the strange unexpected phase 1 of post-crutches life was that his son still occasionally walked with a limp as if his leg was still in a cast and he wasn’t able to walk smoothly. The leg wasn’t the problem, it was his realization (belief) that he was healed. So he would catch himself limping, come to his senses and continue on with his healed walk.

This is a revealing parallel to our spiritual life. This morning’s sermon was on Galatians 5: 16-25, which starts and ends with the same concept: “16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.  25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.”

Paul is telling us that all who are in Christ have been healed and are invited to live “in step” with the Spirit, the power of our newly created life. He goes on in the passage to firstly describe acts of the “flesh”, which are practical ways in which we walk in synchronized cadence with our old sinful self-centered nature, and secondly the practical dance-steps that the Spirit is producing in our new nature (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control). Here is what Paul is saying: our old nature HAS BEEN, IS BEING, and inevitably WILL BE crucified with Christ. Our brokenness has been healed by our crucified Jesus as he was broken in our place on the cross…yet we still “walk with a limp” even though our bones have been put back together. We fall back to the muscle memory from our old nature and limp around (i.e. “sin”, or serve ourselves), but then the Spirit reminds us of who we really are…that our old selves have been crucified and we have been given a wholly new life with new abilities. Sin no longer has power over us, though it still have presence and annoying persistence. But in the end, the sinful nature will be fully and finally defeated at which time it will have neither power nor presence. But until that day we are called to remember the Gospel: Who Jesus is, what he has done on our behalf, and who we now are in Christ…and walk in step (cadence) with the Spirit not out of guilt or fear but because we are healed and made to dance.

Dancing King

kids dancingMark 1:9-11
In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

This has been one of my favorite passages in Scripture for a long time. In it we see so much power, beauty and intimacy in the Trinity. In this passage we see all three persons of the Trinity in one place at one time for the first time since Creation in Genesis 1. This passage shows not only the intimacy between the Trinity, but also that he was re-creating creation in that moment. But this time the “new Adam” would not fail in the temptations and be sufficient to live the life we were required to live and die the death our sin requires of us. And it starts right here. At the scene of the Dancing King.

So look at that moment. Jesus the Son coming up out of the baptism waters; the Father speaking words of Hope over him; the Spirit like a dove coming not just over but INTO Jesus. This is how God works. Exists. Dancing in and around one another. And, for all who are in Christ, dancing over and in us. Inviting us to Dance with Him.

Here’s how C.S. Lewis puts it in Mere Christianity: “[Christians] believe that the living, dynamic activity of love has been going on in God forever and has created everything else. And that, by the way, is perhaps the most important difference between Christianity and all other religions: that in Christianity God is not an impersonal thing nor a static thing — not even just one person — but a dynamic pulsating activity, a life, a kind of drama, almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance”.

So what is that to me? Why would I care? Here is how C.S. Lewis speaks to that:

“And now, what does it all matter? It matters more than anything else in the world. The whole dance, or drama, or pattern of this three-Personal life is to be played out in each one of us: or (putting it the other way round) each one of us has got to enter that pattern, take his place in that dance. There is no other way to the happiness for which we were made.”

We are invited to live a life of Spiritual Dance. Christianity isn’t about rule following or “just” being saved. It is about organic, rhythmic, relational, intimate, exciting (and sometimes dangerous) dance. Does that describe your relationship with Jesus? To be honest, it rarely describes mine…which beckons me to “repent” or dancing with the the wrong partner (but more on that in the next blog).