The Crutch of Christ

A few years back, when my wife and I were living in Abilene, Texas, we were a part of a young adults group made up of singles, marrieds, and those with young children. On Sunday mornings, members of the class took turns teaching. One of these Sunday mornings the focus was on the story in Luke 18 of Christ and the little children. Our teacher started the class by asking us to describe traits that we associate with children. The singles and marrieds volunteered words like “innocent” and “precious” and “honest”. Then one of the members of the class who actually had children raised his hand and said “stupid”. Our teacher was a bit taken aback, but he recovered and said “Well, maybe, but for the purposes of this class, let’s focus on the good qualities.”

That’s the temptation that faces all of us, isn’t it? To focus on our good qualities and try and pretend that the bad ones don’t exist. After all, if you can’t say something nice don’t say anything at all. Where’s the harm in putting on a good face and “faking it ‘til you’re making it”?

There was a group a few years back who were working to get the wording changed in one of the hymns we sang this morning, Amazing Grace. All they wanted to change was one word so that the first verse would be: “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved someone like me.” Not so bad, right? Someone like me. I’m not some wretch; I’m just someone. Much better. I can work with that.

As a college student, I took a class entitled Counseling Adolescents. During one of the classes, the professor asked us to think back on what life was like during our middle school and high school years. Now, this may surprise you, but I was not the incredible physical specimen you see here before you when I was in junior high school. I was what was then called a nerd, which may be an outdated term. I was not surprised to discover that many of my college classmates had shared a similar fate.

What did surprise me was a guy in the class named Kyle. Kyle was the kind of guy who had picked on guys like me. But the story he shared was very similar to mine, he talked about being lonely and anxious and out of place and pressured. He ended his thoughts by asking something that I will never forget; “Why did we all feel the need to put on such a show in school? Why didn’t we all just come clean?”

The problem is that this is the last thing the world tells us to do. The world functions on keeping up appearances, the TV ads tell us to “never let them see you sweat” and we as a church have slowly bought into Satan’s lie. We’re going to pretend like everything is OK, and the last thing we’re going to do is come clean.

Why? Well, if I can play with phrase a bit, it probably has something to do with the fact that no one comes clean. We come broken, and dirty, and dead. Our lives don’t make sense, our mistakes are catching up with us, and even the best things in our lives, our families, our friends, cannot fulfill us. And coming into the presence of God doesn’t make us less aware of that fact, but more aware of it. Many of us have set ourselves apart from relationship with God and when we find ourselves in His presence we join Isaiah in shouting “woe is me.”

So, what can be done? We suck, now what? For a long time in our churches, the message ended there. But the Bible’s message does not. It only begins there. The Bible speaks to us like a doctor might, “there’s bad news and there’s good news.” We got the bad news first, and it is bad. We are dead in sin. But now comes good news and it is the only good news that can boldly claim to be THE good news, the gospel.

The good news is that while we do not come clean, through Christ, we can BEcome clean.

Comedian Dennis Miller states that his problem with Christians is their insistence on being “born again”. His comment is this; “excuse me for getting it right the first time.” We are here today to proclaim that no one gets it right the first time.

Going back to the story in Luke 18, Jesus says that we must come like little children in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. The teacher from my young adult class wanted to focus on the good stuff, because he thought that is what Christ was focusing on. Except it wasn’t. The way in which we are meant to model children is not in their innocence, which we lost a long time ago, but in their incompetence. In their flat out, can’t tie their own shoes, can’t feed themselves, neediness. We must come to Christ that way, or not at all.

There are those, like Dennis Miller, who will look down on the idea of being “born again”. There are those who will refer to Christianity as a crutch. There was a time when that would have offended me, but I have come to a stunning realization in recent years. Christianity IS a crutch. What I had missed was that I was a man in need of a crutch. We are a world full of broken people and when Christ offers us a crutch we should take it.

In Matthew 9:1-7, we see Christ tie these two things together. In the same instant that the paralytic’s sins are forgiven he is also given the strength to walk. The one who has come to save us from sin has provided a crutch so we can walk again. Jesus reinforces this in verse 12 when he states that “it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” We don’t have to come clean to Jesus, in fact we cannot. Jesus looks at our brokeness and our neediness and our incompetence and says, “I can work with that.”

Thomas Merton once said that “A saint is not someone who is good, but someone who has experienced the grace of God.” We aren’t any good folks, none of us are. We are wretches. But because of God’s grace we don’t have to be. Only with God’s grace can we avoid it.

My first job in youth ministry, I worked with a kid named Travis. He had lived a pretty hard life for a high school student and when he decided to give his life to Christ, he still had some habits he wanted to break. He came to me before being baptized and said that maybe he should wait until he had quit smoking to get baptized. What Travis had trouble understanding was that we don’t become Christians because we’re good enough to be, but because we’re too bad not to be. As his dad dunked him in the water, his mom looked at me and said “remember what creep that kid was?” I did indeed, and I also knew that he would still be a creep, but was being made perfect everyday from that day forward.

What is offered to us in Christ’s death and resurrection is justification by grace through faith. Justification is to be in right relationship with God again, not to suddenly be without flaw. During my growing up, the relationship between my brother and I was fairly hostile, bordering on volatile. So much so that for 8 years we lost all contact and didn’t speak to each other. 4 years ago, by the grace of God, we were able to set things right, and reestablish our relationship. Does that mean that there aren’t still times when I forget to return a phone call? Absolutely not. Can I do harm to the relationship if I go a month without speaking to my brother? Definitely. Do I need to worry that I could lose the relationship I have reestablished with my brother? Never. The same goes with our relationship with God. If you go a week without praying or cracking open a Bible, don’t be surprised if God seems distant; but please don’t think that your salvation is in jeopardy. Christ’s blood has justified you, and no amount of getting it right on earth is getting you into heaven.

But what about those who have received the call of salvation and obeyed it? What about those who continue to take up our cross daily, who continue to wrestle with God and, like Jacob, wind up with a limp for our trouble. The answer is that the cross is not what burdens you, but what props you up. The cross was Christ’s burden, but it is our salvation. The crutch that is offered to us in salvation is not taken away as we continue the journey. The crutch of Christ continues to hold us up as we walk through life and it will not be taken away until he has taken us home.

What this means is that the church has a responsibility to outsiders, to our children, to each other to lean on the cross when we find ourselves in trouble. Not on our connections, not on our education, not on our money, none of these can save us. It means that prayer must be our first inclination and not our last resort.

At the age of 82, near death, John Newton, the author of “Amazing Grace” spoke these words; “My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things. I am a great sinner and Christ is a great savior.”

We are great sinners in need of a great savior, and we have been invited to leave behind our old life, to take up the crutch of Christ, and to be washed clean in the waters of baptism.