On "Thoughtful Thursdays", you'll get a chance to hear "thoughts" from someone I love very dearly and have a great deal of respect for...
As the years have passed, I have grown to look up to my younger brother. The days when I "ran the show" are gone and now, I'm blessed to turn to him for wise council, often. I'm thankful you get to hear from him today. His past 4 years of study at Vanderbilt University, earning two Master's degrees including a Master's in Divinity) have equipped him to teach others more about how we can draw nearer to the heart of Christ. I pray your eyes are opened as you hear from him now...
***
Derek is a college grad thrice over, having earned a B.A. in
biblical studies at Azusa Pacific University, a Masters of Divinity at
Vanderbilt Divinity School, and a Master of Arts from the Graduate department
of Religion at Vanderbilt University. He is now exceeding all expectations as a
server at a P.F Chang’s China Bistro in his town. When he is not serving
chicken lettuce wraps or spilling beer on the dining room floor, he listens to
Liverpool F.C. games on the internet and wonders when Andy Carroll with fulfill
all his early promise as the solution to Liverpool’s striker problem. Sometimes
his friends join him, but more often they convince him to do something else,
like talk theology, food and art over wasabi burgers at P.M. or a cup of coffee
at Bongo Java. He is always reading and writing and experiencing theology,
hoping he can make a profession out of it someday,
although he has a sneaking suspicion that he will have to try harder to enjoy
the daydreams of visiting his family that interrupt his reading a little less
if he is to succeed.
Do you remember Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the classic
John Hughes’ film starring Matthew Broderick, about a plucky high school senior
determined to live one day free from the stale routine of high school life? Such
is the movie’s iconic status, you probably know some of its classic scenes. An
ingenious plan to cut school, which includes a far reaching (but false) rumor
of Ferris’s serious illness and the creation of a crazy contraption designed to
conceal his truancy from pesky adults? Well, that’s Ferris Bueller. The image
of three teenagers in a red Ferrari rushing headlong toward a city skyline to
meet their fate there? That’s Ferris Bueller, too. Matthew Broderick (Ferris
Bueller) spontaneously performing the Beatles’ Twist n’ Shout in a parade? Ferris Bueller again. Few movies are so
intent on letting the good times role, or on converting its audience to the
cause. “Life moves pretty fast.” Ferris preaches, “If you don’t stop to look
around every once in a while, you could miss it.”
Maybe
Ferris is right: life is short. The Bible reminds us: “What is your life? It is
even a vapor that appears for a little time and then passes away” (James
4:13-14) Fair enough, Ferris; it
is important to take time to appreciate our lives. If we can’t find time, then maybe
it is worth it to make some. Unfortunately, like so many promising life
philosophies (i.e. the atkins diet or something), the devil is in the details.
For one thing, who among us can afford to bounce from our ordinary lives in
such a dramatic fashion and expect to suffer no real consequences? After all,
Ferris is just a high school kid – no one relies on him for anything. But ask
parents with young children, the employed, those with bills to pay, or basically anyone with a crumb of ordinary
responsibility for others what would happen if he or she took an
unannounced vacation from her life for just one day. They would tell you it’s
impossible. Moreover, even if someone was willing to take such a risk, what
difference would it make? What difference did make to Ferris? Did he receive
courage to face the same old routines? Inspiration to make new ones? Far from
giving an answer, the movie seems to imply that once the day is over, it’s back
to business as usual, time to reprise his ordinary life as though nothing
happened. Indeed, Ferris’ life philosophy, so resonant with our need for life
more full than what the ordinary offers, seems unable to deliver on its promise.
Here’s the gist of my problem with
the movie: what is the point of going to such desperate lengths to “stop and
look around” if it makes no difference to the ordinary lives we have, the life
knit together by routines that dull our sensitivity to the fullness of life?
Nevertheless, the movie can hardly be blamed for failing to help us answer this
question. Life itself is the problem.
Our ordinary lives, which often feel unsatisfying and pointless, are difficult
to change for the better permanently. So many duties, customs and trivialities
pile up on us, claiming our time and resources, leaving so little for
ourselves. Kids, work, bills, errands- you name it. Responsibilities like these
don’t just go away or expire like high school; more, commitment to one invites
a host of others to settle in, our routines multiply and eat up more time. No
wonder it’s difficult to stop and look around every once in a while.
If it is possible to live
passionately and experience life’s fullness like Ferris Bueller urges us, then
it is not escape from the ordinary,
routinized life that we need but its redemption.
We need to experience fullness and passion in the midst of the ordinary rather
than rely exclusively upon extraordinary moments and experiences to remind us
of what we are missing. The Bible tells us we need look no further than Jesus.
Unlike Ferris Bueller, who achieves a kind of salvation by disentangling
himself from the wash of mundane routines and responsibilities that stifle his
passion for life, the God of Israel, who enjoys absolutely free and eternal
life, humbles himself to be born the human Jesus of Nazareth, a humiliation
that at once entangles Him in the ordinary and routinized fabric of human life
(Phil 2:6-11). Though the Gospels do not give an exhaustive list of the kind of
things God experienced as Jesus, it says enough to invite us to believe that
God’s human experience was complete. He is born (Lk. 1:18-25); He hungers (Lk.
4:2); He keeps friends (Jn. 11:36; 21: 20), He sorrows and is moved by the
suffering of others (Jn. 11:33-36); He suffers Himself (Mk. 15:16-32); He dies
Mk. 15:33-37). Yet, through it all, God remains Himself, that is, God. If these examples teach us that
Jesus was fully human, the resurrection urges us to believe that fullness of
God’s freedom and eternal life was His all along. Rather than succumb to death,
He rose from it revealing Himself totally free from its power; and since free,
thus eternal as well. Indeed, in all Jesus underwent He did so as the
absolutely free and eternally rich God. Why did God do this, why did He live a
human life? The bible answers: to show how much He loves us and wishes to share
the abundant riches of His eternal life with us. Jesus shares His inheritance
with us through giving us His Spirit, the same Spirit which raised Him from the
dead (Rom 8:9). This is the Gospel of Jesus Christ and it is completely
different than the Gospel of Ferris Bueller.
Nothing God deemed worthy to save
can be held as worthless. Nothing God’s Spirit touches can be written off as
void of life. The Spirit transforms the ordinary and elevates its dignity. To experience the passionate and full life
the “Ferris Bueller” inside each of us craves, we must discover and accept God’s passion for us. Only then can we
experience the abundance of a full
life which comes from His inexhaustibly rich Spirit. Jesus, again, is the key
to shifting our perspective, for he shows us what ordinary human life responsive
to and perfected by the freedom of the Spirit looks like. Indeed, He shows us
how to live eternally in a world pressed for time. To respond to the Spirit, we
must learn to live by the light of Jesus’ life.
How? Though Christians have answered this in
many ways, I want to propose one under used way: the Christian calendar. The
Christian Calendar maps the life of Jesus onto the ordinary calendar year, thus
framing it in Jesus’ life. For example, it begins with the season of Advent
(the Sunday between Nov 27 and Dec 3rd), during which we join Mary
and Elizabeth in eagerly anticipating the arrival of our Messiah, Jesus. This
season gives way to Christmas (which actually lasts for two weeks! – Dec 25-
Jan 6th), when we celebrate the birth of our savior. Christmas in turn leads us
to the season of Epiphany (Jan 6th- the end of February), the time
we take time to see in the Gospels our Messiah in action. Epiphany gives way to the Easter
Season, and the Easter Season to Pentecost. We start over again at Advent. The
Christian calendar encourages us to bring the various rhythms of family, work,
errands, billing cycles, and so forth into accord with the grounding rhythm of
Jesus Christ’s life. It teaches us to trust our time pressed lives to Him and
believe that He will repay our trust by giving us companionship and guidance in
the ordinary, filling it with meaning and purpose.
If
these reflections have resonated with you, Bobby Gross has written a weekly
devotional book designed to help Christians bring their lives in synch with the
Christian calendar. It’s called Living
the Christian Year: Time to Inhabit the Story of God. It has been the basis
of these reflections. It’s a rarity of its kind: the devotions are beautifully
written, theologically rich, and short! He packs more theological umph into a
few sentences than I could shake out in this overly long blog. But most
importantly, he is helping me see that even if life is as short as Ferris
Bueller thinks, there is time enough to experience its fullness in God.
***
Derek is a college grad thrice over, having earned a B.A. in
biblical studies at Azusa Pacific University, a Masters of Divinity at
Vanderbilt Divinity School, and a Master of Arts from the Graduate department
of Religion at Vanderbilt University. He is now exceeding all expectations as a
server at a P.F Chang’s China Bistro in his town. When he is not serving
chicken lettuce wraps or spilling beer on the dining room floor, he listens to
Liverpool F.C. games on the internet and wonders when Andy Carroll with fulfill
all his early promise as the solution to Liverpool’s striker problem. Sometimes
his friends join him, but more often they convince him to do something else,
like talk theology, food and art over wasabi burgers at P.M. or a cup of coffee
at Bongo Java. He is always reading and writing and experiencing theology,
hoping he can make a profession out of it someday,
although he has a sneaking suspicion that he will have to try harder to enjoy
the daydreams of visiting his family that interrupt his reading a little less
if he is to succeed. 
