One little fish

Several years ago I purchased a Jesus fish for my car. I so I wanted my identity to be linked with Jesus, that I wanted to put a fish on my car. I still do! But that fish remains in its packaging, never having seen the back of my car.  

It's not that I'm ashamed of the name of Jesus, far from it. In fact it's really the opposite.   I know I'm not the only Christian who doesn't have a fish on the car because their driving is fairly questionable some of the time! Hesitancy comes from not wanting to dishonor the name of Jesus by poor behavior, or driving.

So with my car, as in life in general there seems to be only two options. One is that you do not identify yourself with Christ, so that your bad behavior does not draw the charge that he is not real.  The alternative is to proclaim the name of Jesus, but pretend that you are totally perfect, so that you can lift up his name.

But since nobody is fooled by the pretense of perfection, it seems that both of these options draw criticism, draw condemnation, draw judgement. Both from the world, but also from within the church.

And yet I think that many of us find ourselves living one or both of these scenarios, depending on who we are with.

But Jesus didn't die so that we would continue to live in shame or that we would continue to pretend that we have it all together. Jesus didn't rise again so that we would continue to live in hiding.

 It is only in our brokenness that his mercy and healing is revealed. As the church we need to come out of hiding, and be able to share that we are broken, we are still very broken but we are with hope, we have a future and we have redemption.