Jesus Freak: Excerpts

From the Introduction to Jesus Freak:

It might be comforting, to those Christians who doubt the current indwelling of the Holy Spirit in our damaged, compromised selves, to tell ourselves our failures are because Jesus is now far, far away.
It might be reassuring, to those tired of dealing with our violent, scary or just unpleasant neighbors, to think that we can worship God by turning our backs on them. That we can’t do much anymore about our lives, or the lives of other people, except gaze at the sky and pray to a disembodied spirit. That Jesus was alive once, and we remember him fondly, but now we’re left with nothing more powerful than plastic crosses, Christian rock bands, and church committees. With Jesus safely tucked away in heaven, we’re off the hook.
But he’s still breathing in us.

I was standing at the bus stop across from the church one Friday, as the food pantry was winding down, talking with Miss Lola Brown. A tiny, elderly black lady with sensible shoes and bent, arthritic hands, she was shaking her head in despair because she didn’t know how to get her groceries across town to her apartment. “I can’t even lift this,” she said, pointing to the teetering shopping cart, filled to overflowing with potatoes, cans of beans and some exuberant heads of lettuce.
I was exasperated. I didn’t have a car, I didn’t have money to give her for a cab. I had to be somewhere else in a little while. I looked at the man standing next to us, a big, quite psychotic white guy, a ranter, who’d also just been at the pantry. “OK, we’ll help you,” I said, not very nicely. I had no idea how. And then the bus pulled up, and the man shuffled forward, muttering, and the two of us lugged her cart on board.
Miss Brown smiled and raised her hand to heaven. “I know,” she testified. “I know the Lord will always send me help.”

I told that to my wife when I got home, and Martha rolled her eyes. “Couldn’t the Lord send her a taxi at least, if he’s got all that power to help?” she asked. “Instead of a crazy guy and some feeble middle-aged lady, and she’s still got to take the 22 Fillmore for an hour?”
“Nah,” I said. “Jesus has a sense of humor. He just sends us.”

Like most people, I have an ambivalent relationship to power. I want it and I’m scared of it. I think I couldn’t possibly use it well, and I know others can’t. Why should humans receive the power of the Spirit? Isn’t that what God’s for?
But Jesus is right here with me and the crazy guy: the lowly and unprepared, as the prophets foretold. Among the weak, faithless, and doubting, as his disciples proved, then and now. He doesn’t look for the most “religious,” the most doctrinally correct, or, for that matter, the smartest of his beloved people to build his Kingdom, but hands over authority to anyone willing to suspend self-doubt, and simply trust Jesus’ faith in us.
There is no other authority on earth we have to wait for; no permission we need to act on his words. All it takes to be a Jesus freak is to follow him.