Last week, I was studying John’s description of heaven in Revelation 21 and noticed a grim pause in John’s lovely visions. In the verse above, the One sitting on the throne in John’s visions included a quick list of people who won’t get to enjoy heaven’s eternal wonders. Of course I’d read the list before, but it had never previously stunned me. For some reason, I’d never really paid much attention to the first disqualified people. Cowards. Cowards aren’t getting in.
What?? Out of all possible disqualifying sins to make a scary list like this in the exultant second to last chapter of the Bible, Almighty God chooses to begin His list with cowardice? Wimps? Wussies? Whiners? Wow! Cowards don’t get in? That is worth a moment’s pause!
But when we go back through the rest of the Bible, this exclusion does make complete sense. God has always demanded radical faith and courage. And if we think about it deeply, cowardice is the simple antithesis of faithfulness. Cowardice is both sin and sin causing. The evil ripple effects of cowardice run wide indeed.
Now enter yet another of Pastor Kevin’s kitty pictures…My older sister Sharon sent me a Valentine’s Day card last week with this picture on the front. The caption on the inside read, “Here comes your Valentine’s Day hug!” Cute, huh? But for some reason last week, as I looked at the funny picture, I couldn’t help imagining what this kitten was thinking at the moment the picture was snapped. I imagined if this kitten were a surfer or Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtle, she would be screaming “Cowabunga!” or some such thing. And as I thought about the glories of heaven last week and the important issue of cowardice/courage today, I wonder if this “cowabunga” image might be a good picture of the godly Christian attacking life. Cowardice is not a word we would ever attach to this cat!
Tony Dungy, in his excellent new book Uncommon, tells the story of something his former University of Minnesota football coach Cal Stoll taught all his freshman players. He said “Success is uncommon, therefore not to be enjoyed by the common man. I’m looking for uncommon people.” Dungy goes on in the book to discuss how success, regardless of how we define it, is not something we can take for granted. Success in anything is something only going to those with truly uncommon “cowabunga” attitudes towards life. And nowhere is this truer than in our faith lives.
We are swimming against the tide trying to be courageously Christian in our culture, especially when it comes to what we are attempting to do together as a church. Contrary to the claims of our former governor, Christianity is not a religion of wimps and weaklings. That idea is simply laughable to anyone even remotely familiar with Christian history! While we must all start our spiritual lives in full recognition of our wimpiness, Jesus has no intention of leaving us there. Jesus has no interest in accommodating whatever is sinfully common, normal and culturally acceptable. Our faith is always, always, always on offense. Heaven has no rooms reserved for cowards. Jesus intends to take our weakness, broken lives and fearfulness and turn us into water-walkers and wonderfully wild men and women of faith. Whatever we are called by God to do in this life, however we are gifted, we’re supposed to do all with faithful, courageous abandon.
This month we’re going to do a teaching series on baptism. I love the cowabungally Christian metaphor of baptism by immersion. While of course there is nothing sacred about any particular baptismal method, I love baptism by immersion not only because I believe it to be the most faithful biblically, but much, much more so because it is a glorious image, a powerful declaration to our superficially spiritual culture, that we want to be cowabungally Christian! “Lord, don’t just wash my feet, but my hands and head as well.” Let there be no aspect of my life not buried into your death and raised to courageous and cowabungally new life!
May God help us think clearly this month about cowardice, courage and faith! May we lean forward together in eager expectation and courageous hopefulness!
Amen.
