Unos, Dos, Tres, Catorce . . . ?

PRAYER OF CONSECRATION

Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. 

Jesus, I belong to you.

I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body as a holy and living sacrifice to you. 

Jesus, We belong to you. 

Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. 

Romans 7:14–20 (NIV)

CONSIDER THIS

“Hello. Hello. I’m at a place called Vertigo. It’s everything I wish I didn’t know.”

Those words capture the chorus in a song of recent years by one of the greatest rock stars of our time—Paul David Hewson, also known as, “Bono,” of the band U2. 

Today’s text gets us into the full melody of this place we have been calling Vertigo—this no man’s land between the occupied territory of Sin and the promised land of Grace. 

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.

For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.

If that’s not a state of vertigo, I don’t know what is. Now, can we be really real here? 

The best Romans scholars and commentators tell us Paul is not using the word “I” for himself but as though he were speaking for a hypothetical other. They also tell us Paul is not describing the Christian life in Romans 7 but rather the state of a pre-Christian person who is likely Jewish or who considers themselves a Christian while still trying to appropriate transformation by faithfulness to the Law.

For what it is worth, here is what I think. Certainly, I don’t doubt Paul was dealing with Jewish members of the church who did not yet truly understand the gospel. While this particular audience is not so common among us now, I believe our churches are filled with these same kinds of people. I would call them functional Christians. They are doing their best to get with the program, follow the rules, practice spiritual disciplines, study the Bible, raise their children to believe and behave, help people in need, give to charities, tithe to the church, go on the occasional mission trip and otherwise do the things good Christian people do. And yet when the road meets the rubber, after years of doing this, they are still struggling with the same sin patterns, living with a scarcity mentality, judging other people for the things they most dislike about themselves, keeping score, holding grudges, blaming, shaming, withholding, and stonewalling their spouses, and I could go on but you get the point. 

In other words, we are still living too much in the overlap of sin and grace. Sin persists as an undefeated enemy. And when functional Christians are really honest (which is not often because they mostly lack the context to do so), they say things like this:

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.

For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.

They find themselves regressing in faith as a result of a lack of progress or because of besetting sin, infirmity, affliction, or addiction, which they can’t seem to beat. And I’m not trying to say what I am calling a “functional Christian” is not a Christian, because I know too many people who are definitely bonafide Christians who are living at this address. I myself have lived at this address before as a Christian and even still on occasion find myself visiting this old place. I think what I am saying, to borrow another classic lyric from Bono, is we get “stuck in a moment we can’t get out of.” 

And the bottom line of all this “functional” faith is it has a way of leading us deeper into “Christianity” (or worse “churchianity”) and often further away from Jesus himself. It’s why I feel much of what I am trying to do here on the Wake-Up Call is to try and strip away so much functional religion and bring us back to the primitive faith of the gospel himself: Jesus. 

Back to the U2 song, “Vertigo.” It opens with Bono’s voice counting in Spanish: Unos, Dos, Tres, Catorce. For the non-Spanish speakers, that is one, two, three, fourteen. Well, that’s interesting; why from three to fourteen? This is how a master poet works, through signs and symbols. Many believe (present company included) Bono is pointing to the ancient stations of the cross. Yes, there are fourteen of them. The song ends with the lyric,

“Your love is teaching me how to kneel.” 

And that’s what we do at the cross, over and over and over, station after station after station. We kneel. And as we kneel with Jesus, he consecrates us. 

That is the only way out of vertigo. Kneeling with Jesus in consecration. 

THE PRAYER

Yes, Lord Jesus, can we strip it all away except this simple place of kneeling with you at the cross, where we learn to behold you until we find ourselves being transformed by the renewing of our minds to become like you? Can it become that simple for us again? Indeed, your love is teaching us how to kneel. I am so weary of the vertigo and I want to believe it will eventually go away. I am learning it leaves only to the extent you stay. You are my balance, Jesus. Yet it doesn’t look like a balanced life. It looks like the cross; not trying harder but death and resurrection. Come Holy Spirit and interpret this great mystery of consecration into my everyday life. Praying in Jesus’s name, amen. 

THE QUESTION

What insights come to you from today’s entry? What are the implications of those insights? What holy intentions are beginning to form deep in your soul? How can they be enacted most simply? 

THE HYMN

It’s time to sing “Jesus Keep Me Near the Cross” again. Thank you, Fanny Crosby. It is hymn 241  in our Seedbed hymnal, Our Great Redeemer’s Praise. Let’s sing it in a spirit of simplicity; of humble and holy desperation. 

And if you are up for an adventure, give a listen to the U2 song, “Vertigo” here. 

For the Awakening,

J. D. Walt

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