the rambling missionary

by erika haveman

Jesus was fully God and fully man.

As I recently studied Luke’s account of Jesus’ life, in order to prepare a 9 hour lecture, I found it very interesting that in between 1:1 – 5:11 Jesus is referred to 5 times as the Son of God.  Between 5:12 – 22:69 the term used becomes Son of Man.  It only switches back to Son of God when a Jewish leader “accuses” Jesus of being the Son of God in 22:70.  I really think Luke was trying to make a point: Jesus was fully God and fully man.

Even beginning with the genealogy – so often looked over – Luke is setting a precedent for his account.  The genealogy is typically understood to be the physical line of Jesus whereas the genealogy in Matthew is most often to be understood as the legal/royal line from which Jesus came.  Luke’s genealogy points to the humanity of Christ and Luke’s Gospel points us to the humanity Christ encounters.

If I’ve learned anything in the past year it’s the depths to which Christ will reach – has reached – to encounter my own failing humanity.  I can see myself in the story of the woman who comes to Jesus with nothing but perfume and herself.  She washes the feet of Jesus with the thing most precious to her, knowing how sinful and awful she is and having nothing “good” to give of herself.  Yet she attempts, tries, makes the tiniest of efforts, using her weakness to submit herself to this man Jesus (Luke 7:36-50).

In my last post I talked about how between February and September 2019 I found myself barely hanging on.  I left Montana in October, a month after I started to open up, fully believing and having faith that my decision to go was doing the obedient thing.  In some ways that was my submission: function in weakness to give myself up to Him.  Of course I thought that submission meant He’d then do His thing and His timing would be my timing.  I’d have my visa within a couple of weeks and I’d be back to Montana in no time – right?

I could not have ever been more wrong about the visa but I can look back now and see that it was completely right to submit to leaving.  As I referenced last week I had no idea how terribly I was ailing.  I was totally blinded by my own brokenness – I am learning we often are…  I always thought having a blindspot meant having some glaring sin issue that everyone but me can see.  I’ve learned that blindspots are much more subtle.  They aren’t always behaviours that can be rooted out and destroyed – like the ones John the Baptist called out in Luke’s Gospel – but they are wrong beliefs founded in the deep, dark places of our minds and hearts that have solidified so much we function out of them without even knowing it.

What became wildly obvious to me in the fall of 2019 was how much I really, truly, deeply believed I was not good enough.  I was letting everyone down.

I had encountered this belief before.  It seemed that it would rear it’s ugly head every time I found myself desiring truer closeness with Jesus.  It was almost like – it is like – when I desire to be vulnerable the wrong belief is crouching there ready to distract me, take me away from my aim and my purpose.  This does sound like sin (Genesis 4:7 anyone?) and in truth all sinful behaviours have got to be rooted in a lie – which also makes total sense as the devil is the father of lies (John 8:44).  I just never realized how sometimes my actions are a result of my incorrect beliefs.

In the months that followed the attempts into vulnerability I battled – gave into? – the lies that so easily crept as in seemingly innocent whispers:

“You are letting your fellow staff down.  You’re letting your leaders down.  You’re letting the leadership team down.  You’re letting your supporters down.  You’re letting your friends down.  You’re letting your family down.  You’re letting everyone down.  You’re letting God down.”

Overwhelmed by those voices it was with painstaking effort I would get out of bed.

About a month after I left Montana home I concluded there would be no point in going back to Montana before Christmas so I got myself a gym membership.  Exercise wasn’t the miraculous cure – I didn’t ever feel the rush of endorphins or even feel strength returning to my body.  But I started to hear those voices, acknowledge them, but then I’d let them know they were wrong.  I’d prove it to them by leaning into my own humanity and hitting the gym hard, thinking this was a true expression of having God’s strength and Jesus as Lord of my life.  I can see now my thinking was still incomplete: I should have leaned into the humanity of Jesus.

And yet I felt wholly laid out, bare and worn.  Exposed.  Broken.  Alone.  Confused.  Flawed.  But existing at the feet of Jesus, nothing to offer but the breath in my lungs, exerting itself with intensity whenever I’d make it to the gym.  Exercise became a lifeline – not an addiction, but a way for me to feel like I was connecting to something real.  To feel something real.  I had no idea what I was missing in my life was the ability to connect with the emotions that were stemming from how I was feeling, so I turned to the external, the physical – my limited humanity over the unlimited humanity of Jesus.

I had nothing to offer my friends so I never talked to them.  I had nothing to offer my staff except what I heard in meetings and had to relay to them.  I did what I had to do for the mission that was my job, but there was no joy, no true heart investment – the Gospel is unstoppable and thank goodness I was not stopping it.

Jesus was making small strides in my life, though.  Tiny, but strides nonetheless.  The first was going to the gym – getting out, being active.  The second I was about to discover was the lifeline to the church.  But as I’m running out of words – as per usual – I’ll save that for next week.