Some of the people in Scripture read like a
list of toys on the "Island of Misfit Toys" from Rudolph the
Red-Nosed Reindeer. Misfits one and all from a worldly and secular perspective.
The rejects of society, the rejects that the godless world doesn't want. I
mean...look at what they did to Jesus. Even our Messiah was ostracized by his
own people who did not recognize Him as the Son of God. Rejected and sentenced to
death by crucifixion in the greatest miscarriage of justice the world has ever
known.
We then have people like David standing in for King
Moonracer with his dysfunctional family. A rebellious disobedient lot they were.
There is Abraham with his faith and faithlessness the equivalent of Hermey the
Misfit Elf who lives a double life as a dentist and one of Santa's helpers. And
of course we have the Apostle Paul who reminds me of the "Bumble"
(abominable snowman) who initially beats the living daylights out of mostly
defenseless reindeer and has a thorn in the flesh. Paul who fell off his horse
on the road to Damascus and bounced into the annals of Christianity as one of
the greats in the Faith.
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It is through God's eccentric lot that we truly see the
glory and the power of God.
It is through God's eccentric lot that we see the earth move
and the sky catch fire. I sit amazed after reading the Bible and the stories of
the rejects God picks to accomplish the amazing tasks we see in the Bible. He
has continued to pick the same type of person when he picked you and I to carry
on the Good News. It is the very reason that he picked them (and us) to do His
work too. Flawed vessels accomplishing great things in faith by the power of
God. The very power that resurrected Christ from the grave.
"For consider
your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh,
not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the
world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to
shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the
despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the
things that are, so that no man may boast before God. But by His doing you are
in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and
sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written, “Let him who
boasts, boast in the Lord!” ~1 Corinthians 1:26-31
It was once written by novelist Frederick Buechner that the
absolute improbability of the Jewish and then subsequently the Christian faith
succeeding based on its followers is astounding. It is exactly this reason
though that brings all the glory to our holy God, Jesus Christ.
In what other book besides the Bible would we read the story
of the very first pair of people who would violate the only thing forbidden to
them? They would eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
That God would select an old man in the middle of the desert
where it had never rained before to build a boat the size of a modern
battleship. This same man after having been afloat for months on a foul
smelling cramped zoo on an inundated world would immediately proceed to plant a
vineyard, hit the bottle and pass out stone cold drunk.
We would see Abraham the father of the nations have his faith
accredited to him as righteousness. He would also leave his wife out to dry by
basically giving her away to Pharaoh to protect his own skin...Sarah be damned.
Very chivalrous [sarcasm intended].
Who could've imagined God would not pick Esau who was
generally honest, capable, and a provider over the lying, duplicitous and
conniving Jacob who was essentially a snake in the grass?
We see that God would pick the line of Judah for His King
Jesus to descend from, the same Judah that had a hand in throwing his brother
in a well and then selling him into slavery. The same person that ended up
sleeping with his daughter-in-law Tamar who he thought was a prostitute.
Then we have Moses, who was a murderer and was trying to
outrun the homicide rap for clobbering a man on the noggin and killing him in
Egypt. If it weren't for a twisted sense of honor he'd have also just as soon thrown
his brother Aaron under the bus by letting Aaron go back in his stead to take
the heat from the Egyptians.
That God would invariably pick David as a King who would
become the archetype of every king that would come after him until the advent
of Jesus Christ to surpass him. The same David who was a known adulterer,
murderer and a polygamist like his son would also be. He was man
that really could not keep his house in order because he had been cursed by God
for what he had done to Uriah the Hittite. This incident would drive him into
exile from his very own kingdom by his own son Absalom. David would also take a
census of his military strength and not depend on the Lord in faith which would
lead to the death of thousands.
Solomon who would be given the riches of a kingdom and
wisdom from God that people would come from other lands to witness. Solomon who
couldn't seem to put a clamp on what appeared to be a matrimonial
obsessive-compulsive disorder. He also couldn't stop collecting horses,
overtaxing his subjects and in the end allowed his nutty pagan wives to put a
damper on things by introducing their false Gods and idols into the promised
land. Solomon who was a perfect example of how a person can have wisdom but unless
it is Godly wisdoma and used correctly...it is worthless.
We see the likes of Rahab whom the Jews well into the New
Testament (Hebrews 11:31) viewed as a paragon of faith when she cooperated with
the two spies from Shittim sent by Joshua. Rahab who was also a
prostitute/harlot who literally lived in a hole in the wall (of Jericho). After
the walls fell, her and her family were the only survivors.
...and who could forget all those wild-eyed prophets of God
both major and minor? The whole lot of which were probably nuttier than
fruitcakes based on outward appearances. They wore camel hair shirts, leather
belts, and ate bugs dipped in honey. Crazed disheveled men that screamed at the
others often times with spittle flying out of their mouths in the
middle of the desert wilderness at everyone and no one in particular.
Of particular note Jonah, the most miserable excuse for a prophet ever seen. Jonah who, other than telling the Ninevites to repent, ended up serving God very little. We learn from Jonah mostly how to serve as a bad example. Jonah, who after having be told to, "Arise, go to Nineveh" gets up and goes...in the opposite direction (180 degrees) towards Tarshish. A prophet that nearly drowns an entire ship of mariners because of his disobedience. A prophet that after telling the Ninevites to repent (and they actually do), gets angry about it because he wants them to be destroyed. Instead of having mercy on them as God has done he still nurses a homicidal rage.
Then we look at God's chosen people. Of all the races He could've chosen to be His nation of priests, he chose the Jews. As somebody once said, "The Jews who are just like everybody else only more so like everybody else." When they were religious, they were more religious than anybody else. When they were piously hypocritical they were so pious and hypocritical that the term for being too pious and hypocritical is to be "pharisaic". A people who apostatized and build idols and worshipped them even before the last of God's commandments had left His mouth and were delivered to them at the foot of Mt. Sinai.
Jump into the New Testament and we have the thick-headed
Peter who denies Christ not just once but three times. The same Peter who is
the first to confess Jesus' true identity as the Messiah, Son of the living
God. Then almost immediately needs to be yelled at when Jesus tells of his coming
death. Peter who couldn’t even wait until the boat reached shore. Finally,
there is Paul. The great apostle Paul who wrote more books of the Bible that
anyone else (13) thirteen, (14) fourteen if we included Hebrews. Paul the
expounder of the faith...and a slayer of the brethren. Paul formally known as
Saul. Yeah, that Paul, the one who killed Christians prior to conversion.
The list from the Bible continues but in reality you
should read it. If we look forward two millennium we now have similar
situations in our church. Young idealists decked out in jeans, piercings and
tattoos, share the pews with conservative white collar "suits".
Teenagers and occasionally spouses tuning out sermons that others are straining
to hear from the back of the congregation over top the whine of their children.
Recovered and reformed drug addicts preaching from the pulpits. Former
criminals, adulterers, miscreants and generally immoral people that have now
become paragons of the Faith. Believers gather together methodically and move
through a centuries old synchronized dance or worship.
I shake my head in disbelief at the outward incongruities
and the absurdity of it all...but this is the way God has made it and this is
the way God wants it. God's power is made perfect in our weaknesses. It has
been done by his measure and according to His timeline. The idea that all these
misfits and rejects could work and fit together defies conventional logic.
"....Holy Father,
protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may
be one as we are one." John 17:11
This is the only possible way something this diverse and
chaotic could possibly work...it is the work of God. Only in Jesus Christ could these cast-offs
of society pull this off. It’s nothing they themselves can do. If God could
use all these offbeat characters this should give us reassurance that He can
certainly use us who are the same. Rejects of the world. A tribe of lost
causes. A Faith of Misfit Believers.
