LRC, Houston - the weekends-free church in Houston, Texas

I am sure that you’ve seen him as well as having been told about him in Sunday school and church. His picture is in almost every Protestant and charismatic church. He has brownish-blonde hair, silky smooth skin, blue eyes, and pearly white teeth (like the gates of heaven I suppose). In Catholic churches though he is frail, weak, and of course hanging on a cross though you can tell his Western features.

The thing about most American churches though is not so much what Jesus looks like but where he is put in the religious time frame. Bottom line, America embraces an HISTORICAL JESUS! We speak of Jesus who walked the shores of Galilee, overturned the tables in the temple, and walked the dusty roads to Jerusalem. We have facts upon facts as to what he DID!

All past tense stuff!

While we affirm Jesus as the incarnation, it too is historical. The incarnation somehow isn’t still present or at least the present stays in the box all neatly wrapped. As long as Jesus remains an historical person, His power in and for us will remain nominal. While I understand “Jesus on the cross” and all that represented, and still symbolizes, Jesus isn’t still on the cross.

Jesus is ALIVE!

Jesus is the Christos. Jesus became the Christ. Jesus broke the power of death. And Jesus is NOW ALIVE and lives within each of us. That my friend is the only “hope of glory”. We must add to the historical Jesus, a present Christ. I must acknowledge that HE is in ME right now as my fingers force the electron letters onto this screen that you’re reading. and it is IN HIM that I live, move, breathe, and have my now being.

The American Jesus is too historical. How PRESENT is your Jesus- right NOW?