My daughter has always word-jumbled. From 'paint-facing' to 'hodgehegs', 'otturpunities' to 'barrelinas', her brain still today struggles with 'vobaculary'. Her siblings used to take great delight after church on Sundays asking her to relate what she had learned in S Club. There's nothing like Bible names when it comes to what she would call a twist-tonguer. But she had it sussed. It didn't matter whether the story was about a baby in a basket or in a stable, or whether there were lions or whales or donkeys involved, she called everyone "Moseph".
Moseph, in name and in narrative, was basically her morphed, skewed, jumbled concept of Jesus who she understood, quite rightly, to be the central character of the Bible. But it's not just my daughter who struggles with jumbled up thinking about Jesus. It is more common than you might imagine. Paul's masterly introduction to the letter to the Ephesian church can help us spot our errors and sound out a clearer picture of the one Christians seek to love and serve.
Restrictive Jesus
Often the Christian faith is depicted as a restrictive kill-joy religion that prevents people from expressing their true selves. It is shown to be the enemy of true happiness; a controlling set of rules taken from an ancient homophobic and mysognistic book. Paul once had a sincerely wrong view of Christianity. Once a Jew with impeccable credentials because of his personal ethnic heritage and his academic training, Paul was so adamant that followers of Jesus belonged to a dangerous destabilising cult that he hunted down every Christian he could find in order to exterminate them.
Paul personally oversaw the death of Stephen but it was a direct and personal encounter with the resurrected Jesus that literally stopped him in his tracks and transformed him. By the time he comes to be writing the book of Ephesians he has been fearlessly living for the gospel facing danger on every front - even the threat of death - for the sake of Jesus.
He writes a letter to the Jesus-followers in Ephesus from prison, bidding them an emotional farewell because he believed he would never see them again. Paul needed to encounter the real resurrected Jesus to rid him of his perceived restrictive Jesus. Now his fundamental identity had changed and nothing, not even imminent death, would stop him proclaiming Jesus to be not only his personal liberator from "an empty way of life", but the joy and the hope of the world.
Emergency Jesus
For too many of us Jesus is like a parachute or a fire alarm. He remains an invisible part of our lives but it is comforting to know he is there. When crisis hits or when disaster strikes we call him into action on our behalf. Jesus is like the fourth emergency service. What's wrong with this, you may ask. Don't we call him the saviour? Doesn't Jesus' name mean Jehovah is Salvation, or in plain English "God to the rescue"?
The problem is that Jesus deserves so much more from us. He is not a lifeguard who pulls you from drowning only to climb back up the ladder to his chair in the sky. He calls us to ongoing relationship in the closest possible way. The technical term that Paul uses 34 times in Ephesians to express this is "in Christ Jesus." It signifies our corporate solidarity as believers with Jesus. I like to think of being 'in Christ Jesus' as a combination of being "on duty" and "on line."
When we are online our digital devices have access to all of the benefits of the internet, resources that far outstrip any single computer or phone. Through our faith connection with Christ, all that he has accomplished for us through his life, death and resurrection become ours, we receive "grace and peace" through our relationship with Jesus. But being "on duty" captures something of the fact that we belong to Jesus. We do his bidding. We are at his disposal. We are available to him. Jesus is not just our parachute or fire alarm, he is our Saviour and our Lord.
Stingy Jesus
Too many Christians live with the functional conviction that Jesus is stingy. We spend a lot of our time making sure that we get what we think we need in life - whether relationships, finances, pleasures or honours - because we don't expect God to provide. We look out for ourselves because we think God does not really have our back. Perhaps we really believe Jesus to be a miser, who withholds from us what we need in life.
Paul wants to set the record straight on this and he does so in a barrage of words that sound like Macklemore in full force in a highspeed rap or Mohammad Ali in full flow after winning a famous victory. Paul can't repress his praise of God and he launches into a recitation of some of the incredible blessings that every believer has received "in Christ": "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ." What follows is 12 verses of uninterrupted praise which was a single sentence in the Greek where Paul doesn't pause to take breath or bother with punctuation. Paul wants to set the record straight: Christians don't serve a stingy Jesus but one who delights to pour out blessings on us of adoption, redemption, reconciliation, predestination, revelation and purification to name but a few. Paul's first chapter of his letter to the Ephesians destroys the myth of the miserly messiah.
Micro Jesus
My daughter once declared over dinner that Jesus (still aka Moseph) was locked in a cupboard in her school. It was an understandable conclusion for a seven-year-old after the resident Catholic father had explained that the wafers were Jesus' body, and the chalice contained Jesus' blood.
Too often we unwittingly reduce Jesus to a manageable size. A Jesus we get out on special occasions and put away at the end of the day. Perhaps it all began when we "asked Jesus into our hearts" as if Jesus could squeeze into a ventricle or be confined to our emotions. Once again Paul's introduction to the letter to the Ephesians can help us here. He reminds us of the sheer scale of Jesus. He is the infinite God and his rule extends over all things. Paul describes the mystery of the gospel which is that God "purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment - to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ." Did you catch that? Jesus not just the lord of our hearts. Jesus not just the savior of our souls. But the one who unites and reconciles all things in heaven and on earth.
Which jumbled Jesus do you recognise in your life? Allow your mind and your heart to meditate on Paul's first chapter of Ephesians and pray that God helps you again to rediscover the beauty and wonder of Christ.
Rev Dr Krish Kandiah a contributing editor to Christian Today, the founding director of Home for Good and an author and speaker. Follow him on Twitter @krishk
