Wednesday, January 26, 2022
“Let me give you a
new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one
another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when
they see the love you have for each other.” (John13: 34 -35, The Message Bible)
So, let us consider the spiritual
value of a container of Mr. Noodles. If
you are not familiar with said luncheon delight, it is composed of dehydrated, thin
Chinese noodles, a very few dehydrated, previously frozen vegetables (corn, a
pea or two and a bit of onion), a packet
of ground seasoning which is made up of various spices and flavours. Sounds
yummy, right? Add boiling water to it all and you actually get a tasty noodle
soup. It is one of my favourite lunches. It comes in chicken, beef, vegetable,
spicy chicken and spicy beef flavours. Beef
is my favourite.
Except it is not really beef or
really chicken, either. On the package, it
tells me that it is “simulated flavour.” I don’t how one goes about simulating beef
or chicken flavours or why one would want to. You mean to tell me that the manufacturer
can’t throw some chicken bones in a big stew pot and get authentic flavour or toss
some beef bones in a huge crock pot and get real beef flavour? They claim that
there are ingredients like sesame seeds, mushroom powder, garlic powder and
even peanuts and shellfish, of all things. But there is no hint of a real chicken
or a real cow. A vegan could eat this
and not feel guilty. (They probably wouldn’t anyway but you get my point.) It
is an insult to chickens and cows.
But here comes the leap of faith
in this analogy.
How often do we simulate the love that we are supposed to show in the name
of Jesus Christ?
Paul says it best in 1 Corinthians 13: “If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.” (1 Corinthians 13: 1 – 7, The Message Bible)
I suppose I could also make a
case for dehydrated Christianity and the need to add the boiling water of the Holy
Spirit to spur us into active love. But let us stick to the concept that too often
our Christian walk is simply going through the motions; we keep up the pretense
of our Christian faith but it lacks some down-deep authenticity. We do all the
right things, say the right things, but is it really real? Do we simulate our
Christianity? Are we like what Jesus said of the Pharisees? “Hypocrites! For
you are like whitewashed tombs—beautiful on the outside but filled on the
inside with dead people’s bones and all sorts of impurity.” (Matthew 23:27,
New Living Translation) Ouch!
If our Christian walk is boring,
mundane, dull, uninspiring, or disengaged, we need to wake and pour the love of
Christ into our faith and its practice. The real Christ, the authentic Christ,
the true Christ, the deep-down, savoury Christ. “My old self has been
crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.
So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and
gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20, NLT)
Christ lives in me. And you. He
is real. Our faith needs to be real and demonstrative and full of the
compassionate love that Jesus himself demands and expects of his followers. Nothing
but the real thing is as good.
Accept no substitution or
simulation or imitation or replacement. Only the real love of Christ is our all
and be all.
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