Before you get all concerned and start quoting 'Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever,' (Heb. 13:8), which in context is actually referring more to his covenant faithfulness than any perception of 'change' in our immutable and impassable God (however you view that), I'm certainly not suggesting that Jesus is as changeable as the weather, petrol prices, or the form of some football teams (which is playing havoc with my tipping by the way). I am suggesting, however, that Jesus keeps moving because my understanding of him and knowledge of him, through both study and experience, keeps growing and changing, and therefore my concept of him does as well.
It would be a terrible thing if the understanding and image I had of Jesus as a twelve year old that had just come to faith was the same today after almost thirty-seven years as a believer. So go ahead, choose to just love Jesus, and just serve Jesus, but be careful, because if that is what you do, then despite your best efforts he will move because you will change.
In Philippians 3 Paul expresses his earnest desire to know Christ and to press forward in a greater understanding of him. I can identify with this. The depth, wonder, complexity and immensity of Jesus is still captivating me after all these years. He is a Lord who can be known, and yet never fully known. How could my finite little head possibly grasp the incarnate and resurrected Son of God?
Karl Barth, on being asked in 1962 how he would summarise all the words he had written famously replied, 'Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.' At the core this Jesus of Nazareth - this Saviour and Lord and God and King - is love. His love toward us, toward you and me, is so very deep and so very great. Undeserving though we are and rebellious though we may be, Jesus loves us. And yet, fixed as this truth may be, to truly know him requires that we are constantly evolving in our understanding of this moving target.
Being a disciple of Jesus Christ means living without a comfort zone. As soon as you get comfortable, he changes the furniture. Not in a radically irrational or erratic manner, but in a fundamentally disturbing and subversive way. There are always aspects of Jesus life and teaching that challenge our life and thinking. In many ways following Jesus is like those late-night adverts on tv. Before they advise you of the price there is the customary, '...but wait, there's more.' Jesus is like that, except the price has been paid, all we do is follow the instalment plan of taking up the cross daily. This means that just when you thought you had a handle on things, he leads you to an area, a thought, an understanding, a practice that not only redefines what you thought you knew, but gives far greater clarity and challenge to the life of Christian discipleship.
I remember reading a book once entitled, 'A few things I've learned since I knew it all,' which I think sums up the experiences we have with Jesus. To know his love through his Word is the beginning of a life's journey of a constantly growing and deepening understanding of just who he is, why that matters, and how it is expressed in my life. That's why there is great danger to see the Bible as a book of life principles to apply, promises to appropriate or instructions on how to live. The Bible is an interactive, personal connection with Jesus himself meeting us in his Word by his Spirit. Through it's pages I am drawn in to understand and engage with him and be changed and challenged to live out of all he is and all he does.
Jesus never stops moving because I never stop learning and growing and changing. Jesus never stops moving because he is always encouraging me and commanding me and cajoling me to press on and in and be transformed and shaped to be more like him.
So, really, who is moving? Jesus or me? Yes. You see, I have to move, for all the reasons given above. There is no standing still, there is only pressing forward or falling back, because Jesus also moves. Perhaps not in a theologically definable way, but certainly in an experientially discernable way. One of the truths of the Bible is that we become like what we worship. That is why when we worship idols or images that are less than the image of God we were created to reflect, we actually become more and more dehumanised; but when we worship Jesus, the image of God, and we become more like him, we become more and more fully human in every way. Jesus moves because the image of him in my understanding is redefined and transformed as my mind is renewed. I pursue and seek to be like this new image, and as I do, he moves again and with new understanding and clarity I follow and pursue this new image....
So, Jesus, please don't stop moving. In my own way I, like Paul, want to know him and pursue him, and to do that effectually means he must continue to move even as I continue to change. To live is to change, and to live with Jesus is to change with him as in a beautiful dance where, fortunately, he leads and we follow.
Perhaps, then, this entry shouldn't have been titled, 'Will you stop moving,' but, 'Teach me to dance!'
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