Change

Today is Halloween. It has become one of the largest and extravagant expenses in Canada. Perhaps we are seeking something to break up the on-coming dreariness of our winter? Perhaps we are looking for something that seems weird, different, and other-worldly? It’s the only time we give ourselves permission to be weird.

But is this what “weirdness” is supposed to be?

I’m getting comfortable with a different kind of weirdness and I hope there is more of it in our lives: the weirdness of a life dependent on God and moved along by the Spirit of God. I’m convinced that in our bodies and in our life together there is supposed to be a kind of weirdness discovered in the activity of prayer, justice and mission. And Yes I experienced this again in Belfast during the 247 Prayer gathering this last week.

But my reflections of weirdness have not been driven by the pursuit of “weird” experiences. Rather they were sparked by Dallas Willard — a person on the surface who didn’t seem very weird — a professor of philosophy. I’ve spent this year slowing reading through Dallas Willard’s posthumously published meditation on Psalm 23. It’s wonderful. I suggest you get the book, Life Without Lack: Living in the Fullness of Psalm 23. Here are his reflections on what is supposed to be weird. This is a long- read, but it’s worth it!

From Living without Lack

by Dallas Willard

If you’re thinking this is weird, you’re right. There actually is a direct relationship between weird things and holy things. One use of the word weird is to indicate that an experience is strange, uncanny, or has a sense of the supernatural about it. From that perspective, everything I have been describing–from Moses’s shining face to Jesus glowing on the mountain–is truly weird. It’s supernatural, out of this world. That is what holy is, something otherworldly.

Remember that the second of the Ten Commandments states “You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth” (Ex. 20:4 NRSV). God is so “other” that he is literally “out of this I world” and should never be identified with any physical thing in this world. It is this total otherness, this holiness, this weirdness that makes most people not want to get close to God. They want to have just enough of God to make their little train chug on down the track, something to fix them up, a cosmic aspirin to help them get on with their own business. So when they see the light and smoke coming out from around the door and the walls shaking, they say to themselves, “Maybe this is a little too big. I don’t think this will fit into my plans.”

And, of course that is exactly right. While we may talk fervently about how we want to be close to the Lord, he does not take us seriously because it’s only talk. We often don’t really mean it. That may be because we have not had the magnificence and grandeur of glorious reality of God’s being brought to our attention. God is not something to be toyed around with. He will not fit into our plans. But we can fit into his, and they are glorious I plans indeed.

The Israelites had a hard time learning this. Not long after their liberation from Egypt, as God led them through the Sinai desert, lots of very strange things were happening. Water flowed from rocks and massive flocks of quail appeared, but the Israelites could only think of their former  lifestyle with its leeks, onions, garlic, and nice soft beds, forgetting that they were slaves. So God responded with more weirdness in the form of manna, which was quite a strange phenomenon. 

Moses reminded the Israelites of this as they were getting ready to cross over the Jordan into the promised land:

And you shall remember that the LORD your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the LORD. (Deut. 8:2-3)

The Israelites knew all about the food of Egypt, but no one knew anything about manna. Ask them about Cairo stew and cornbread, and they could tell you all about it. But manna was a mystery to them until they trekked across the wilderness. It was strange stuff: the congealed word of God. According to Exodus 16, it did not grow on any shrub; it was not an animal that could be hunted down and served up; it was not a crop that could be sown and harvested. It just appeared every morning lying on the ground for the people to gather before it melted in the sun. They were instructed to gather a one-day supply for each person in the family on Sunday through Saturday each week. And water they gathered more or less than, they always had exactly the right amount. That’s weird.

If they tried to save some of it for the next day (just in case God didn’t provide), it rotted and had to be thrown out. Then on Fridays they were told to gather a two-day supply to last through Saturday, the Sabbath day of rest. The extra day’s manna didn’t rot. That’s weird too. But the Israelites tired of it and whined to Moses, “We’re sick of manna! Take us back to what we were used to in Egypt! At least the food was spicy!” (Num. 11:4-6 PAR).

Of course, this was a litmus test of their hearts, to gauge whether they did, in fact, want nothing more than the God who had rescued them. They didn’t. It is the same with us. We are going to be living on weird stuff if e draw near to God. One of the promises Jesus gives, in the book of Revelation, to those who are faithful is that he will give them “hidden manna” (2:17). This connects with the discussion Jesus had with a group of people who were pressing him to prove his credentials as one sent from God (John 6:22-59). They brought up the example of the ancestors whom, under the leadership of Moses, God had provided with manna in the wilderness. The implied question was whether Jesus measured up to Moses, to which Jesus responded:

Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. (John 6:32-33)

When they said, “That sounds great; give us some of that bread,” Jesus made his disturbing claim:

I have the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.” (v. 51)

And if that wasn’t audacious enough, he went on to shock them with this bit of weirdness: 

Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. (vv. 53-55)

This was over the top. Even some of his own disciples essentially said, “Yuck!” They concluded they could not longer follow someone who talked like act (vs. 66).

There is no denying it: this is high unusual behaviour. But Jesus as talking about being transformed into a completely new reality, a world of complete sufficiency, where all our needs are supplied by God. If you go to work tomorrow and declare, “I don’t need anything,” people will probably think you are weird…very weird. You are supposed to be in need. You are supposed to lack. That’s one of the things that people can use to manage you. But if you go there complaining, griping, groaning, even cursing God, making it known just how much you lack, they will say “Yes!” They are likely to call you a really good person, the salt of the earth, because complaining is the way of this world.

I am not saying that is it is always wrong to complain: each of us need to work this out in our own way. I am saying that there is a life to which there is no lack. Jesus is the example that proves this claim to be true. The good new is that, by his grace, it is a life that each of us can move into by faith. If, by faith, you can now declare, “ I have no lack,” you will increasingly experience the Shepherd’s sufficiently in your life. It will be as Paul described:

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord. (2 Cor. 3:18)

The more we place our minds on God’s greatness and self-sufficient (“beholding…the glory of the Lord”), the more we will be transformed from one degree of glory to another. And because our faces are “unveiled” (that is, they have had the lampshades removed) others will see a difference; we will radiate generosity, peace, and contentment. And the reverse is also true; as we associate with others whose faces are “unveiled” and who are growing in the experience of God’s sufficiency, their “glory’ enlightens us, encouraging us in our own journeys of faith in the Shepherd. It becomes a matter of one person reminding another of the full sufficiency of God.

Notice the word reminding in the sentence above. It should really be written re-minding, because in the first two chapters we have been talking about getting new minds. Minds that are “on God.” In 2 Corinthians 3:18, Paul wrote that we are being “transformed” into the image of Christ. The word translated transformed is the Greek word from which we get the English word metamorphosis. It literally means a change (meta) of form (morph), as in changing from caterpillar to butterfly, except we are talking about the form of our minds. They are meant to be God-formed rather than world-formed. That is why elsewhere Paul instructed us to avoid being conformed to the ways of the world (or being “normal” rather than “weird”), but that we should rather “be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom 12:2). This is the key to a life without lack, that we would have the mind of Christ — our Shepherd, who knew first-hand the complete and perfect sufficiency of our magnificent God.

Dallas Willard, Life Without Lack: Living in the Fullness of Psalm 23, p. 42-46, 2018.