Square pegs, round holes, etc.

In order to fit a square peg into a round hole, you’ll have to dull its edge. That’s why I used to drink so much. I would dull my edge to fit into social situations and places where I knew I didn’t belong. At even just a cursory reading of the gospels, you find the narrative replete with stories of men and women who didn’t belong--didn’t ‘fit in.’ And over and over and over, in the gospels, it’s ok.

One of the first we see, we see in the gospel of John. John the Baptist was not the light, we’re told, but he came to testify to the light. And how did he testify about the light? By existing as a mirror, living as a mirror, turning the hellenistic, Herodian culture against itself. He wore the hair-shirt of a mourner. Funeral clothes. Every day. Imagine, you see someone in all-black and veiling her face, and you ask, “Are you a widow? Are you in mourning? Who died?” Who died? We did. John lived to say, “This whole culture is a culture of death.”

Or take the gospel of Matthew, first chapter. Even in Christ’s own family tree, his genealogy, the passage makes a point of calling our attention to ‘knots in the family tree.’ The passage calls out Tamar, who played a sex worker to win her rights; Rahab, the actual sex worker, who harbored Israel’s spies in a foreign land; then there’s Ruth, herself a foreigner, an immigrant in the land of Israel; and, the passage mentions no other man’s wife but Uriah’s, Bathsheba, calling our attention specifically to the victim of abuse at the hands of her king.

Take a quick mental inventory of the characters you find thereafter, in the gospel narrative. Think of Jesus’ parents: Mary, and Joseph, and all of the baggage they carried. Mary being labeled a scandalous young woman for having the Christ out of wedlock. Joseph, raising a boy for whom he was not the father. Think of the Christmas story, the story of Christ’s birth. Consider how Luke put it in his gospel: It wasn’t the kings of Israel who came to pay tribute to the Christ, but three wise men of the world--foreigners.

Over and over, throughout each of the gospels, we see a familiar theme: God chooses the foolish to confound the wise, he chooses the poor to confound the rich, he stores his treasures in jars of earthen clay to show that the all-surpassing power of God can choose whatever vehicle it wants through whom to come into this world. He picks square pegs for round holes. He is God, and his power is made perfect when it’s demonstrated not in the hands of powerful men, but in the hands of broken men. Men this world has rejected.

Men like me.

That’s what gives this square peg hope of ever fitting in. I’ve read my bible, and I’ve seen how God is always on the side of the poor, needy, orphaned, widowed, anxious, ill, imprisoned, and oppressed. I’m poor: I just paid my taxes and was left with a crisp $20 bill in my bank account. I had $2,960, and my tax bill was $2,940. God is good. And I’m needy. I might be the neediest man in the world; I have a hundred thousand little things that have to be just so or my day won’t go like I want it. And I’m orphaned; I have a truly fraught, truly damaged relationship with my wonderful parents. Jesus looked at his own mother and said, “Who is my mother? and who are my brothers?” Some days I find myself asking, “Who are these people?!” And I’m widowed; I’ve never had a relationship that wasn’t broken from the start. And I’m anxious, oh, how I’m anxious! I’m ill; I’ve got a nervous stomach and several screws loose in my brain! I’ve been imprisoned, and even today I feel trapped. And I’ve known oppression and injustice--oh, so very much of it.

There’s another man, who was like me. The apostle Paul. He recognized his weaknesses, but, he also recognized that, in his weakness, Christ is stronger. So, yeah, I’m human, and to err is human. I’m messy. I’m obtuse. I’m weird. I don’t have it all together, not any of it. But, if you’re being honest with yourself, so are you. In my way, I’m merely a reflection of you. That which is in me is the same as that which is in you, the thing that drives us to reinforce our little dramas. The honest man admits what Christ called us to admit, in Revelation (I think chapter three) when he said: “You say, ‘I’m rich. I’m really well-off.’ But can’t you see that you are wretched, you’re poor, you’re blind, and you’re naked?”

That’s our spiritual state before the Christ. And in that passage, he counsels us to buy from him garments which aren’t stained by our yucky sinfulness. He looked at the woman at the well, and he asked, “Hey, where’s your husband?” She answered that she doesn’t have a husband, and his response is so telling. He didn’t condemn her, but that didn’t mean he was going to shy away from the truth. He says, “You’re right. You don’t have a husband. In fact, you’ve had five husbands, and the man you’re with today is not your husband.” Remember that they were standing at a well, and talking about living water. In other words, Jesus was saying, “Girl, you gotta stop going to that well looking for water.” A man ain’t going to fulfill you, honey. And to me he says the same thing. You’ve traded the source of living water for your own, broken cisterns which hold no water.

The story of salvation is the story of square pegs and round holes, of men who just don’t fit. Men who, try as they might, can’t seem to get it together. Men like me. But that’s not where the story ends. If the story of salvation terminated on me, a broken man, and ended with me receiving healing for my brokenness and being reconciled to my family and being treated for my addictions and being restored to right patterns of my own thinking, if I were the point of all of this, well, that’s not a very good story. The story of salvation is one authored by Christ, whose finisher is Christ, and whose end is Christ, Christ, Christ. He turns to a dying thief and says, “Today, you will be with me in paradise.”