John Stott: Gone

John Stott died yesterday. He was 90 years old and had some years ago made the choice to retire completely from public life. (That is merely one evidence of his unusual wisdom and humility) His writing and life has influenced mine, like it has thousands of others. It wasn’t just the clarity of his exegetical Bible teaching, it was his example and pure delight in loving and caring for God’s creation. I’m sure there are already dozens, perhaps hundreds of memorials and obituaries going up for him and I don’t pretend to add anything profound. Only want to say I’m sad he is gone, but thankful for a life that served God and others so fully to the very end.

I remember when I was first introduced to his book Basic Christianity through Intervarsity when I was a student. I wasn’t interested in reading it because the title insulted me and so did the young man who suggested I read it. Who was John Stott, anyway? Basic Christianity?! As though having been raised in a Christian home and a pietistic church did not mean I had not committed more Scripture to memory than this young man had ever read?! Pish.

Then one day I picked it up and began to read and the claims of Christ became so radical and so living, it was like I’d never heard the Gospel. For one of the things John Stott insisted upon, was that unless we struggle to build bridges built between what the Bible says and the modern world, through having listened to and understanding the modern world, then all our religiosity, all our sermons and piety makes Christianity irrelevant to those who don’t believe. He claimed that our task is to demonstrate Christ’s relevance to the world through our lives.

Until then no one ever described Christ in a way that seduced me through love. He began a new way for me to think and live.

“There is in him no trace of the crank. He believes ardently in what he teaches, but he is no fanatic. His doctrine is unpopular, but he is not eccentric. There is as much evidence for his humanity as for his divinity. He gets tired. He needs to sleep and eat and drink like other men. He experiences the human emotions of love and anger, joy and sorrow. He is fully human, but He is no mere man.

            “Above all, He was unselfish. Nothing is more striking than this. Believing himself to be divine, yet he did not put on airs or stand on his dignity. He was never pompous as men tend to be who think themselves greater than they are. There was no touch of self-importance about Jesus. He was humble. It is this paradox which is so baffling, the self-centeredness of his teaching and the unself-centeredness of his behavour.  He combined in himself the greatest self-esteem and the greatest self-sacrifice. He knew himself to be the Lord of all, but he became the servant of all. … The essence of love is self-sacrifice. The worst of men is adorned by an occasional flash of such nobility, but the life of Jesus irradiated it with a never-fading incandescent glow. The conclusion of the matter is this: Jesus was sinless because he was selfless. Such selflessness is love. And God is love.”

Humilty

“Thank God often and always…Thank God, carefully and wonderingly for your continuing privileges. …Thankfulness is a soil in which pride does not easily grow.

             “Take care about the confession of your sins. Be sure to criticize yourself in God’s presence that is your self-examination. Put yourself under the divine criticism: that is your confession.

            “Be ready to accept humiliations. They can hurt terribly, but they help you to be humble. There can be the trivial humiliations. Accept them. There can be the bigger humiliations… All these can be so many chances to be a little nearer to our humble and crucified Lord…

            “Do not worry about status… here is only one status that our Lord bids us to be concerned with, and that is the status of proximity to himself…

            “Use your  sense of humor. Laugh about things, laugh at the absurdities of life, laugh about yourself, and about your own absurdity. We are all of us infinitesimally small and ludicrous creatures within God’s universe. You have to be serious, but never be solemn, because if you are solemn about anything, there is the risk of becoming solemn about yourself.”

 (From The Radical Disciple by John Stott where he quotes Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury on the topic of humility.)

           There is something so attractive, so compelling about people who are humble. Especially when from our perspective they might have cause for pride. I look for people like this to be examples, to be models. Being Christ-like is not something I’m a natural at (who is?) so my desire to be what God wants me to be is nurtured by such as John Stott. He helps me keep walking toward Christ with my humiliations and absurdities dogging me all the way.

Why I Avoid Work

I’ve been mute lately, maybe you noticed. In a slump, I guess. Being “out there” is not always where I want to be. And the hard thing about living with who we are and the doubt we can generate about our worthiness – I should probably change the pronouns to first person since I shouldn’t be speaking or writing for you – which also may be a cue or would that be clue? – that I shouldn’t say or write anything at all. This morning I got up and Denis asked right away, what’s wrong? And I was evasive, just saying, I had bad dreams. I’m moody. He managed to make me laugh right away, or a little laugh, anyway, by saying I wasn’t allowed to be moody, that was his department. And true, it usually is.

However. Taking a deep breath. Sighing and trying to come round again. Begun to read a little book by John Stott The Radical Disciple. It will be his last. In it he says farewell: “As I lay down my pen for the last time (literally since I confess I am not computerized) at the age of eighty-eight, I venture to send this valedictory message to my readers.” As he says, he is “reflecting on death and seeking to prepare for it” and thus leaving us behind, he distills with piercing clarity what we need to know to remain faithful disciples.

John Stott has meant much to me over the years, his whole-hearted following of Jesus. The profoundness of his writing – so elegant and yet simple enough for me to gain not only the ideas, but the love and devotion behind them. At my own crossroads with dark questions, he’s met me through his words and pointed me on, on to following Christ. He’s been one of my dear teachers. I don’t want to see him stop writing. I don’t want him to go. And yet, stupidly saying the obvious, he must. We all must.

Anyway, bits and pieces of this final book will stick to me, I hope, here is one that in the moment helps re-orient my thinking, my heart, and points me onward, specifically addressing the fact that I sometimes don’t want to do the work I’m called to do. I want to glide. I don’t want to be bothered. I want to complain and be miserable.

So he gently chides: “Our common way of avoiding radical discipleship is to be selective: choosing those areas in which commitment suits us and staying away from those areas in which it will be costly. But, because Jesus is Lord, we have no right to pick and choose the areas in which we will submit to his authority.”

And so…. Soon I will tell you about the angora bunny our housemate brought home, and will try to get that video posted of me making cast iron bread and answer some mail, and make a pot of chile for a friend who just had a baby… my work for the kingdom.