My grandfather always bought Cadillacs. From the Gas-Guzzler Sixties through the Energy Crisis Seventies, every few years he would trade in his Caddy for a new one. However, when the Eighties rolled around he walked into the dealership where he has been a customer for decades and was shocked by what he saw - the Cadillac Cimarron. This smaller inelegant J car was GM’s late-to-the-paty attempt at fuel efficiency. When the salesman attempted to show my grandfather this new car, my grandfather huffed indignantly, “That - is not a Cadillac!” He promptly purchased an ‘84 Coup De Ville, which he insisted was charcoal gray, but us grandkids all knew was a light shade of purple (and kidded him about being a pimp).
We have specific expectations for certain products. In the eighties, a Cadillac was supposed to be a big boat of a car. It was part of the car’s identity. Today, we expect a Mac computer to be sleekly designed with cool easy to use features. If Steve Jobs came out with a new iPod that looked like an old transistor radio, we would say, “That’s not an iPod.” We expect elements of a sports team’s identity to remain the same. If the New York Yankees were to give up their pinstripes for polka dots we would say, “That - is not the Yankees!”
We associate particular characteristics with definitive identities. The same was true in ancient times with Judaism. The religion had definitive identity markers that made one a Jew. These included monotheism (the belief in one God), circumcision, keeping the Sabbath day, and what we now refer to as kosher dietary laws. These were the things that made Judaism Judaism. Two in particular, keeping Sabbath and dietary laws, made it obvious to others that one was Jewish. To remove any one of these pillars from the Jewish faith was even worse than stripping the fins from a Cadillac.
Yet Jesus and the early Jesus movement routinely came into conflict over each of these foundations of their religion. The belief that God was in Jesus and the later doctrine of the Trinity brought on charges of polytheism against Christians. The apostle Paul and the Jerusalem church fought bitterly over the issue of whether or not one had to be circumcised as a Jew in order to join the Jesus movement. In his day, Jesus came into conflict over Sabbath laws for healing on that day and proclaiming that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. Finally we have the story of Peter’s vision, in which God declares all animals as clean and edible for a Jew, thus abolishing the dietary laws.
If you were a first-century Jew with a fear of change, the Jesus movement was not a comfortable place for you to be. Year by year, all you had taken for granted about your life with God was challenged, re-invented, adapted or expended. The God and religion which was previously described with words like foundation or rock, was now talked about by these Jesus-followers in amorphous terms such as wind and flame, water and spirit. We can easily empathize with a first-century Jew looking upon the early church with fear and saying, “That - is not my religion! That - is not my God!”
Yet most of us in the Christian church today believe that that movement was indeed our religion and our God. God was creating big changes in the first century and God continues to make big changes today. As in the first century, we can choose to respond to those changes with fear or boldly step into the change God is creating. It is important to remember that the changes God made in the first century, while unique as far as Jesus coming into the world, were not final. As Christians, we may be tempted to view those changes merely as God correcting Judaism, as if it were inherently broken or bad. Indeed, throughout church history, there have been many Christians who have claimed just that and it has led to tragic episodes such as the Spanish Inquisition and the Holocaust. But that was not was God was doing.
The reason God changed so many things in the first century was that God is a God of change. God the Creator is always and still is creating. Consequently, that means we are always living in a sea of change. That may scare some of us. When something changes in our life, we fear that God has somehow withdrawn. But when we encounter change, whether in our faith or in our personal life, it may be a sign, not that God is absent, but that God is very present and active.
Even so, change can be a scary thing for some of us. I must confess something here. Last week, when we addressed the fear of intimacy, I said it was difficult to write about since I shared that fear. This week, I have the opposite problem. I love change and struggle to understand people who fear it. Looking back on my life, my favorite times have been times of big changes and new starts. Nevertheless, I’ll try to share some wisdom about it.
First, find comfort in the fact that we should expect change, since in this universe God created it is inevitable. Creation was not just a one time event for God, it is an ongoing process. Whether it is the birth and death of stars and galaxies, or the evolution of life on this planet, our universe is constantly changing. Throughout history, even in our own lifetimes, players we always thought would be there, fade from the stage. Empires once thought to be eternal rise and fall (look at the USSR), giant corporations close their doors (Pan Am, Pontiac) once common habits disappear (when was the last time you dialed a phone in a phone booth?) Although few of us could imagine those things just a few decades ago, things change and life goes on. Contrary to our fears, we’re still here.
Second, as Christ-followers, we need to understand that the gospel is essentially a message about change. The message of Jesus was simple, “The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe it.” It was an announcement that the world was changing and all of us needed to change our hearts because of it. Much of the Sermon on the Mount begins with the phrase, “You have heard it said but I say to you...” Jesus had an agenda of change. In his letter to the Romans, Paul said that all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. He didn’t go on to say that God’s OK with that. Instead, Paul calls us to change our ways and to get right with God. The overarching story of the Bible is that there is something not right with the world and with us and it needs to change.
Third, the difficulties we have with change are usually not caused by the change itself, but by us. Several years ago, Robert Kriegel wrote a book on organizational change entitled “Sacred Cows Make the Best Burgers.” In it he said, we tend to resist change because we fear it is unpredictable and unsafe. Business experts tell us that when a new process, policy or product is introduced in an organization, the reason it often fails is not because of the new project itself, it is because of people. Some people act as gatekeepers and slam shut the gates of change. So whether its in your business, our church or your personal life, that means you are in control of the anxiety change causes you. The problem is not the change but your resistance to it.
Knowing that change is inevitable; that the gospel is all about change; and that our anxiety about it is rooted in our own attitude and not the change itself, provides us with a way to knock down this roadblock of the fear of change. Think for a moment about a change you are experiencing that scares you. Maybe it’s in your career, a relationship, your faith, or your health. The uncertainty that change presents is scary. Perhaps you don’t know how things are going to turn out or you fear that, like a string of dominos, if this once certain aspect of your life changes it’s just a matter of time before everything in your life falls apart. Even worse, you may fear that if this change happens, God will somehow be further away from you. For you, God is in the status quo, not in the change.
Now reframe the situation in your mind. Imagine that God is not in your life the way it once or always was, but that God is coming to you through this new change in life. The change may be good or it may be bad, but regardless, what if God the constant Creator is somewhere in the change? What if Christ’s gospel lies not in the security of your unchanging past, but in the change of your transforming future?
It is not easy to approach change that way. It requires not trepidation, but trust, not fear, but faith. The changes we face throughout life may scare us. But why do we expect life to be comfortable, predictable and safe all the time? We have no more reason to expect those things than we do to always be happy.
In his vision, Peter learned that the once unchangeable was changing - and it was going to be okay. In a change in which he feared he would lose his identity, God was opening up people to new life. You may be undergoing a change in your life that is as alien to you as a Cadillac Cimarron was to my grandfather. You may picture your life after that change and declare in fear, “That - is not my life!” Well that’s a good thing, it isn’t? Maybe your life needs to change.
If we are to experience the new life to which God beckons us through Christ, we too will need to overcome the roadblock of our fear of change and step into the new transformed life that God has in store for us.
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