St Thomas the Doubter Church

There aren’t many sins that I would really resist shedding. That’s not because I’m a pious person. It’s just that there’s no sin that I’m so partial about that it would kill me if I wasn’t able to do it anymore. If my job was taken away, if any one of my licentious pleasures were unplugged, or if any one of my  material possessions stolen, it’d be painful but the loss of any one of them wouldn’t be a killer.

What would kill me is the death of the story that I am committed to for my life. All of my sins are support columns for my story. One of those support columns is my desire for respect from my peers. Another is a desire for respect from my wife and family. A third column is my desire to be thought of as having done great things in ministry. A few others are my desires to have many followers and to have a nice home and car. I want my wife to think I’m a good husband and my children to think I’m a good father.  I want people to think I’m smart.

Each of these sins are support columns for an overarching story that I have for my life which, frankly, I wasn’t aware of until about 2 months ago. In this story I am the central character and everyone else, including Jesus, play important supporting roles. The primary role of everyone else in this story is to revere me. Even when I think of my most vulgar sins, I can trace them back to my story of wanting to be revered.

If any one or two of the support columns get knocked down but my story remains intact, I don’t feel threatened. But as soon as I feel like my story is being threatened by God, that’s when my gloves come off and the worst comes out of me. That’s because I don’t want to experience the death of my story. I’ve discovered that I will furiously fight God for it.

In the Bible, Luke chapter 21, Jesus prophesied about the destruction of the temple and with it, the dying of a story. The temple was significant to the Jews not only because it was their place of worship but because it symbolized their distinct relationship with God and their distinction from the other nations. It also symbolized a vision of greatness they hoped for their nation. It took them 40 years to build that temple. That one place connected their past, present, and future.

So it would have been shocking when Jesus told them that the temple would be destroyed. But even more shocking would have been Jesus’ response to their questions of when the temple would be destroyed. He responded “See that you are not led astray. For many will come in my name saying ‘I am he!’ and, ‘The time is at hand!’ Do not go after them. And when you hear of wars and tumults, do not be terrified, for these things must first take place, but the end will not be at once.”

Jesus was saying that there would be men who would claim to speak prophetically about the destruction of the temple. They would speak as if the destruction of the temple would be the defining moment for them as a people. Jesus told the crowd to ignore them because the walls of the temple would topple down but it would not be their defining moment. But the walls would be toppled down. And it wouldn’t be the only catastrophic event that would happen to them. The destruction of the temple would be one of a number of support columns that God would knock over that would eventually bring to death the story they were committed to as a people. It likely felt like death to them.

I’ve had a number of my support columns knocked over recently. I could have dealt with the loss of any one of them but losing a collection of them has so threatened my story that a vital piece of me feels like it’s dying. But like the crowd Jesus spoke to about the destruction of the temple, the death of my story will not be the defining moment for me.

I needed to participate in a new story. One in which the central character has the kind of character that  if everyone in the world had it, the world would finally have peace. I don’t have that kind of character. I know that I don’t. I think Jesus does. He frustrates me because he meekly and humbly accepted crucifixion in the face of his enemies. I want to open a can of whoop a** in the face of my enemies. Not out of justice but out of pride.

I think the world has had enough cans opened up out of pride. I believe the world would be a better place if her character was humble and meek like Jesus and if she loved her enemies like Jesus. That sounds like a good world. It sounds like the making of a good story.

For the people whom Jesus was speaking to at the temple, the defining moment for them would not be the destruction of the temple or any of the other catastrophic events they would experience. That’s because the death of their story would not define them. What would define them was their being ingrafted into the better story. In the better story the defining moments are Jesus’ meek acceptance of his crucifixion by his enemies and then him defeating them by raising from the dead three days later. In the better story the genuine goodness that flows through Jesus’ veins flows into everyone whose ingrafted into the story.

But my problem is that I want my story and I would never have given it up even for a better story. That’s why God is putting mine to death, toppling one column after another. Because it will only be when my story is fully dead that the spirit of the new story will fully live in me. As my story dies it does feel like a vital piece of me is dying. But as the spirit of the better story fills me and as I participate in it more and more, I feel like I’m finally living. - Saji