Jesus thown everything off.
1st Monday of Easter, 2008.
In thinking about my sermon for Easter Sunday, I kept coming back to Flannery O'Connor's well-loved story "A Good Man Is Hard To Find." In it, a ruthless (but oddly profound) outlaw named the Misfit takes a family hostage broken down country road. As his friends loot the car and execute the other members of the family out in the woods, the Misfit apologizes to the grandmother because he is not wearing a shirt. When she finally wraps her mind around the utter horror of what is happening, she cries out "Jesus, Jesus." The Misfit replies:
"Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead, and He shouldn't have done it. He thown
everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it's nothing for you to do but thow away
everything and follow Him, and if He didn't , then it's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few
minutes you got left the best way you can ...."
The Misfit names a dichotomy that troubles us a great deal I think. I like to put it this way: If Jesus was raised from the dead, then I've got to stop being such a mediocre Christian; and if Jesus wasn't raised, well then, I've got to stop being such a mediocre sinner. 'Postle Paul put it this way to his friends in Corinth.
If Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has
been in vain.... For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has
not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have
died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people
most to be pitied.
That last line has always intrigued me. In one way Paul is saying, "How ridiculous would my life be if I had gone through all this trouble--being whipped, shipwrecked, jailed, that bad bout with writer's cramp after I wrote Romans--and at the end it turned out . . . zilch, it was all a waste of time." Paul lived in such a way that there was no doubt what basket his Easter Eggs were in. In contrast, most of us Christians wanna put one in this basket and one that basket . . . just in case.
I think I have a good solution to this dilemma of divided affections. As a good pastor guy, I guess I should say, "We all need to be better Christians." No, not this time. We've been trying that for a while and it's just not working. Instead, my suggestion for anyone who is not sure where their true love lies is to simply assume that it is not with Jesus and to go ahead and live the life they really want to live. "Your best life now" sorta thing. Do what you want to do. Don't worry about being a good Christian. Like the Misfit, Raskolnikov, Tony Soprano, or your run-of-the-mill adulterer, just do what makes you happy. No halfway measures, no hoping to be a PG-13 guy with a nice family, no hoping to be a contestant on Oprah's Big Give, no mediocre sinning. Go where your heart tells you.
My advice here is only good if you really follow it. Being a nice person, being from a good family, being "good country people" is not gonna get it--in this life or the next. Our mediocrity will only be broken through an encounter with someone like the Misfit whose choice is clearly made. Perhaps O'Connor is right, the only way for some of us to be a truly good person is to "have someone there to shoot us every minute of our lives."