Select Excerpts From

Holding Out for a Hero: A New Spin on Hebrews

From the On the Road With Lisa Harper series (Tyndale)

Coffeehouse Outcasts

I once dated a nuclear physicist, and as you can probably imagine, we were poster children for the “opposites attract” school of thought. He liked playing chess; I prefer charades. He liked complex mathematical problems; I’d like someone else to balance my checkbook. He talked slowly and deliberately; I fell asleep during some of our phone conversations. But he was a really nice Christian guy, and I thought it would be interesting to go out with a man who read something besides Sports Illustrated.

I visited him one weekend when he was completing his postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard (just writing those words makes me feel intellectual by association), and we decided to drive out to Cape Cod since neither of us had been to that part of New England before. We made reservations at a hotel—separate quarters, of course—on the very tip of the Cape, loaded bikes on the roof of his car, and drove out of Boston with what seemed like half the city’s population.

After we checked in, we got on our bikes and started exploring. The path was hilly, dotted with historic lighthouses and beautiful views of the ocean. We peddled for hours, enjoying the scenery and solitude. When our stomachs started rumbling, we headed back toward town to get something to eat. As we got closer to civilization, I noticed that men seemed to be staring at us. At first I thought they were looking at me, so I held in my stomach and smiled. But soon I realized they were admiring my boyfriend in his biking shorts! Although it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen any women or children since we’d arrived, I still didn’t quite understand what was going on. It took a little more time, and one embarrassing restaurant incident, before we both figured out that we’d unwittingly stumbled upon a town that catered to homosexual men.

I’ll never forget walking into a little café and having the proprietor greet my beau warmly, only to give us both the cold shoulder when he discovered we were a couple. I was hoping for a muffin and some coffee instead of condemnation. That catastrophe in Massachusetts is one of the few times I’ve ever been treated like a pariah.

But Jewish Christians were reviled constantly. Not only were they ignored at the neighborhood coffee shop, they were being killed because of what they believed. Therefore, the temptation to turn back—to renounce Jesus and revert back to Judaism—was strong. As practicing Jews, they’d be tolerated by Greco-Roman culture. They could still worship God the Father and have the nostalgic consolation of ritual; they just wouldn’t claim the Jesus-as-Messiah part.

The coach of this battle-weary team of believers knew the discouragement his team was facing. He understood the price they were paying for worshipping Jesus Christ, Son of God. This is why he begins his exhortation by extolling Jesus’ superiority to the old revelation, angels, and the Law. He wants his team to remember that a relationship with Jesus is far better than the religion of their youth.

The Problem with Idols

To me, “Christian celebrity” seems as oxymoronic as jumbo shrimp. Just because someone can sing or teach or write books doesn’t mean he or she is worthy of exaltation. And marketable gifts don’t always represent Christian maturity. Some people have huge talent but tiny humility. Frankly, idolizing fellow believers is contrary to the gospel; it’s like someone who’s dying of thirst being enchanted with the plastic container rather than the life-giving water inside it!

The minute Peter came through the door, Cornelius was up on his feet greeting him—and then down on his face worshiping him! Peter pulled him up and said, “None of that—I’m a man and only a man, no different from you.”

--Acts 10:25-26 (The Message)

The pastor of Hebrews makes the same point as Peter regarding the foolishness of human idolization: We aren’t worthy of being worshipped. Only the Messiah is.

Whining for a Different Kind of Messiah

Ever been there? Have you ever wished for a different kind of “coach,” one who didn’t demand a lifetime of selflessness and blind faith and lugging crosses?

I have. Every now and then when I can’t see around the corner of my circumstances or when I feel alone or misunderstood, I whine for a different kind of Messiah. One who will make all my messes disappear. One who will answer my prayer for a husband and children. One who will make my closest friends interested listeners, conscientious encouragers, and fatter than me. Sometimes I just wish our Hero of a Savior would make my life less hard.

Of course, a Savior like that only exists in fairy tales and isn’t really very heroic. A Messiah who only serves to grant our wishes would be akin to an overly indulgent mother who lets her child eat all the candy he wants, stay up as late as he likes, and never makes him accept responsibility or obey authority. Pretty soon she’s got a middle-aged man with no job, no friends, and no respect for her still living in his boyhood room and demanding Twinkies for lunch. And if we had a Messiah like that, we’d be no better off.

Hanging on for Dear Life

While I was working for Focus on the Family, I was part of a national women’s conference series called Renewing the Heart. Our conferences were similar to Promise Keepers events, but instead of thousands of men in a football stadium, ours featured thousands of women in indoor arenas. One year (Renewing the Heart enjoyed fourteen conferences over a three-year period) I thought it would be a good idea to rappel into the arena after lunch. You see, women tend to get a little sleepy by the afternoon session and need something to wake them up. Plus I thought it would be a fun way to demonstrate the fact that you don’t have to be boring to be a Christian! My boss, Dr. Dobson, wasn’t too keen about the stunt because he didn’t savor the idea of me becoming a pancake, but after I assured him that I was taking safety precautions, he reluctantly agreed.

Jerry, an experienced union “flyer” who swings through the rafters of arenas all over the world in order to attach sound system cables and speakers, was assigned to help me. We decided our debut would take place at the inaugural conference of the year in Greenville, North Carolina. I wasn’t nervous at first because I had rappelled in the mountains a few times and I thought this would be similar. But when I followed Jerry up a flimsy metal ladder onto a swaying, chicken-wire walkway, my confidence evaporated. He told me to follow him to the very edge of the walkway and then casually told me to hop up on the railing so he could fasten me into the harness. We were more than a hundred feet in the air above a cement floor. I really wished he had already fastened me into something—something like a big elevator going down!

But when the band started to play the song signaling the beginning of this never-before-attempted-at-a-Christian-women’s-conference stunt, I knew that backing out would ruin the whole program. So I grabbed the rail with sweaty hands and gingerly slid over the side. When Jerry saw that I was literally trembling with fear, he held my hand and said gently, “You don’t have to be afraid; everything’s going to be okay.” Then he clipped me into my harness and told me the rope I was holding on to was tested to ten thousand pounds and was attached to the steel girders that held up the roof of the coliseum. He said all I had to do was hang on to the rope because the steel wouldn’t budge. I had blisters afterward to prove just how tightly I held on!

Even steel beams are toothpicks compared to the strength and stability of our heavenly Father.

We who have run for our very lives to God have every reason to grab the promised hope with both hands and never let go. It’s an unbreakable spiritual lifeline, reaching past all appearances right to the very presence of God where Jesus, running on ahead of us, has taken up his permanent post as high priest for us, in the order of Melchizedek.

--Hebrews 6:18-20 (The Message)

Nothing can break the relationship we have with God in Christ. Nothing can collapse His love for us. Don’t get so distracted by the difficult verses in the middle of this chapter that you miss the promise at the end: God will never fail us.

Blind Date Gone Bad

Last summer I was introduced to a very interesting man for a blind date. Mutual friends thought we would make a good pair because we’re both outgoing, athletic, and ride Harleys (although I don’t like motorcycles enough to have one tattooed on my back like he did). Little did they know he wasn’t quite the choirboy he pretended to be!

Anyway, within thirty minutes of my arrival at the mystery man’s lake house (which was an hour and a half from Nashville) I started to feel really dizzy. My date seemed genuinely concerned when he asked if I wanted to lie down, but when he started making inappropriate comments, I realized his gratuitousness was nothing more than thinly disguised lust. I don’t receive such brazen compliments too often, so I have to admit I was mildly flattered. But I still had enough good sense to hightail it out of there!

Do you think I should get a special chastity award for that? Did my lack of lusty conduct earn me a better husband in the future? No. God isn’t a vending machine, granting our wishes when we make good moral choices. Just because I’m attempting to be chaste in my less-than-robust romantic life doesn’t mean I’ll get a husband with hair and money. In fact, I may never walk down an aisle wearing something borrowed and blue. But while my wedding dreams may never be fulfilled in this lifetime, I must still strive to live in a manner worthy of God. We shouldn’t be committed to faithfulness in order to earn good-behavior brownie points. We should be faithful because it brings God divine pleasure.

Weighted Down

I was working at a state park in central Florida called Wekiva Springs, where the water was crystal clear and fifty-eight degrees. We usually had to make several rescues each weekend because, due to the clarity of the spring water, people often didn’t realize how deep it was. Or sometimes they just got too cold to swim back to shallow water, which is exactly what happened to a woman one Saturday, right after I had eaten a jumbo chili dog for lunch. The minute I saw her flailing arms and bobbing head, I dove into the water. She was in the deepest part of the natural pool, the area where most of our rescues took place.

When I reached the woman, I put her in a basic lifeguard hold and tried to calm her by assuring her she would be back on dry land in just a few minutes. I had pulled a lot of big swimmers out of this hole before and didn’t think a petite dog-paddler would be any problem. But pretty soon I was having a hard time keeping my head above water, too. The woman was so much heavier than I expected. I strained with all my might, chastising myself for eating fair food, and collapsed into a wet heap when we finally made it to shore. That’s when the woman’s husband—who, unbeknownst to me, had been hanging on to her legs the whole way—sputtered up and began thanking me profusely!   

Similarly, the ancient Christians didn’t recognize the weight they were still lugging around. Remember, these people came from homes that attempted to cross every t and dot every i in the law of Moses. They didn’t eat cheeseburgers lest they break the “no mixing meat and milk” dietary laws. They didn’t mow the yard on the Sabbath, and they sure didn’t wear leather Manolos on Yom Kippur.

Much like a sprinter attempting to race in work boots and coveralls, the Hebrews were weighted down by legalism. When they chose to perform rituals instead of pursuing a relationship with Jesus, they suffered spiritual hernias. The load was just too heavy. That’s why their pastor tells them to unzip those confining, rigid clothes and run in the freedom Jesus had given them.

Leather Pants and Fringe Streamers

In the introduction of this book, I wrote about a pastor who asked me to ride his Harley-Davidson down the center aisle of the church in order to stir up some stiff women in the congregation. I didn’t mention that I wore leather pants during the stunt. I thought since I was probably going to be blackballed from retreats everywhere after that wild ride, I might as well go out with a bang. But the site of my healthy posterior poured into leather pants seemed to be even more shocking for some of those women than the motorcycle!

Plus, those pants caused a disturbance I hadn’t counted on. It’s one thing to roar into a sanctuary on a big bike with fringe streaming from the handlebars. It’s quite another to dismount and stride toward the podium to the tune of geese being massacred. I’m sure slender people wearing animal-skin attire have never had to deal with this particular problem. However, when your dress size is in the double digits, embarrassing noises are just one of the negative consequences of wearing cowhide slacks. Needless to say, it took most people in the audience awhile to take me seriously!

But at the end of the first session, a woman approached me timidly. She smelled like she’d been bathing in cigarettes and had visible tattoos; she certainly didn’t fit the stereotype of Christian conference attendee. After we exchanged a few pleasantries, she told me that the only reason she had come to the conference was because a friend from work invited her and wouldn’t take no for an answer. She said she hadn’t darkened the door of a church for twenty years. She went on to confess some colorful mistakes she had made with men and booze. Then she looked down sheepishly, pulled on the hem of her skirt, and said, “I don’t know if you can tell, but this is even a borrowed dress. I didn’t have anything nice enough to wear to church.” I could tell.

She said she almost got up and left before the conference started because she felt so out of place. “But,” she said, “then you came in on that Harley and I thought I would stay and see what happened.”

We started talking about motorcycles (she and her husband are enthusiasts) and ended up talking about God. She stayed until the very end of the conference, and when I looked over at her during the last song, she was singing with her eyes closed, her hands raised, and a radiant expression on her face. She looked as if she really believed God loved her. There were probably a few women put off by the motorcycle and squeaky pants, but that woman’s response was well worth it.

I want to encourage you to run the race God has called us to with authenticity and passion. I’m not advocating that everyone should manifest those qualities by wearing leather pants, but I do think it would behoove some of us to get out of the box we’ve built to protect our image. This wonderful sermon in Hebrews makes it clear that Christians shouldn’t expect to fit in anyway. The Hebrews stuck out like sore thumbs in their world, and we probably should in ours, too!

Excerpts From: Holding Out for a Hero: A New Spin on Hebrews

For permission to reprint: contact Pamela McClure, pamela@mmpublicrelations.com, 615-595-8321