Monday, March 18, 2013

Why you can't buy grace on the clearance rack at Primark


The following is the farewell speech I gave at the Final Symposium, celebrating the end of our time in Oxford.

<><><>

I'm half British. My understanding of the UK though was some sort of strange blend of C. S. Lewis, Harry Potter, and Downton Abbey - as if all three of them had a baby, and the baby was me. I thought that by coming here, I would find some sort of connection to my ancestry. I would discover my roots. I would identify with the British people and the British culture.


 

But I didn't. Although I have loved my time here, I found that I miss Hulu, Pandora, Target, and sunshine. I miss driving a car and serving sizes the size of my face. I found that I am not British. I am an American, through and through. And that's the problem.

 It's a problem because my identity should be in Christ first.

In The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer talks about abandoning all that we have and all that we are until the only thing we can cling to is Christ. Christ calls us to a life of sacrifice and suffering, but all I want to do is get some In N Out and lay out by a pool.

I didn't come here to find beauty. If I am honest, I came here because I wanted to. I distinctly remember the chat I had with God that was more like a monologue. I remember boldly telling Him that I was going to apply and I was going to go to Oxford. But like all good Christians, I covered my tracks by convincing myself that I would let God lead my life by allowing Him to deny me to the program. If I was rejected, I wouldn't apply again because I was obedient, yet He and I both knew that it was only because this semester was the only time I could travel.

But our God is a God of grace, and He sent me here and He taught me things that no tutor could.

My blog's title is Finding Yofi. I'm probably pronouncing it wrong, but yofi is the Hebrew word for beauty. Over the last couple of years, I have been actively seeking to find beauty in all the wrong places, all the mundane places, all the places that our chaotic lives and glamorous culture teach us to ignore. It's not hard to find beauty in Oxford. Everything is beautiful here - the shops, the libraries, the very building we are sitting in. We don't have to look far and we don't have to try hard to become settled and content in the magic and wonder.


One of our friends who we have made this term from another school was over for dinner a few weeks ago. My flatmate and I were talking about our time with Mexico Outreach, and this friend asked if Mexico was pretty. I said yes, but it's not a normal kind of pretty - as if there is some sort of secret beauty that only some people are able to understand.

And there is.

There is the beauty of Christ. There is the beauty of the cross, a murderous weapon of shame and pain that somehow has become a symbol for the last two thousand years of grace, love, and hope.


I'm finding yofi here in Oxford, but sometimes I wonder if it is too good to be true.

If it's a faith that is simple that is a faith that is best, then I've got a faith that is much too complex.

I've believed a lie that the more I know, then the better I will love, but the truth is that I am at the mercy of the God from up above.

I try to figure God out like He's a topic to study, like if I read enough books in the Gladstone Link then I will finally understand. Maybe that was also the desire of the first man. Of Adam, the guy who wanted to know what God knew. The guy who lost it all and suffered not because he represented Christ and chased after His grace, but because he identified with himself and bought the cheapest understanding he could find.

In my own life, my faith is one of how much I can learn and how much I can know. It's not the costly faith that Bonhoeffer preaches of. It's not yofi. My faith, it costs me nothing. Sometimes I even think I bought it at Primark.* In my head I have memorized a lot, but in my heart I know little of the suffering that Christ endured, little of the martyrdom that Bonhoeffer was subjected to. My God is a pocket full of sunshine, and although these Oxford skies may be grey and dreary, I risk little and expect all the blessing.


We know that knowledge isn't cheap in dollars. We know that APU charges more for two semesters than the average American makes in a year. But what if we spent the same amount of time, money, and effort on the Kingdom than we did on our diploma? I'm not saying education isn't good, and I'm not saying our school is bad - I am saying that where our treasure is, there our hearts will be also.

I encourage all of you as this chapter of our lives comes to a close to find the yofi wherever you go. Even when the food isn't good and the pub doesn't have enough ketchup. Even when the air is cold. Even when we have to be somewhere early in the morning. I encourage you to seek for the higher grace, the more expensive grace, the grace that costs us yet gives us all the more.

* Primark is a budget clothing store in the UK. Very cute. Very cheap. Very low quality.

No comments: