Politicians charter tour buses to towns so small both bumpers can’t fit within city limits. They talk about their “roots” and “getting back to basics.” They want credibility. Superstar actors slum in indie film roles between filming blockbusters. They want street cred with their fans. They intuit that if the average guy measures too great of distance between the seats and the stage, they’ll stop listening. If they are going to keep in touch with their followers, they can’t be more than an arm’s length above them. Maybe we’re jaded, but most of us are pretty good at sniffing out someone who doesn’t “get” us. Jesus knew this, too.
When it came to picking a team to share his good news, Jesus didn’t draw from the pool of religious leaders. They had the right letters after their name, and they had positions of authority and power. They were religious experts, but they didn’t have street cred. Those guys didn’t have a clue what it was like to be an ordinary dude. Jesus picked blue-collar guys, grassroots leaders, and government workers. This scares me a bit.
I’ve got a string of religious degree letters after my name. I’ve paid the bills by talking about faith and spirituality. I was ironically ordained an “elder” before I was thirty. But I desperately hope that I never disconnect from how Jesus connects with us as real people: Living, breathing, cubicle-dwelling, dog-walking, kid-raising, raise-needing, sport-event-attending, collapsing-on-the-couch-in-the-evening people. To disconnect faith from life is to make spirituality merely a topic or a hobby. It might as well be geology or collecting Pokemon cards.
My hope is that I always stay “Steve from the block.” As I process centuries of spiritual scholarship, my goal is to bring it to practical use today—for real people. Besides, no one part of my anatomy is worth independently insuring for a million dollars.
