Distorted Relevancy

Henri Nouwen uses the Temptation of Jesus to explain Jesus' downward mobility. In the fist temptation, Jesus was asked to turn the stones into bread (Matt. 4:3-4). "This is the temptation to be relevant, to do something that is needed and can be appreciated by people--to make productivity the basis of our ministry" [The Selfless Way of Christ: Downward Mobility and the Spiritual Life (Orbis, 2007), p. 49]. In other words, relevance means productivity, usefulness, and visible results. To be relevant is to produce; to produce is to make progress.

Jesus refused to be relevant in a worldly term. When I was in wine country for wine tasting today, I was thinking about this temptation and the feeding of the 5, 000. It was my first time to put the two incidents together in my head. I guess the wine worked pretty well. Jesus could turn stones into bread just like he turned five loaves into many loaves (5, 000 loaves?). But during the temptation, he did not do it because if he did it, it would not honor God. The miracle of turning stones into bread would be self-seeking and ego-promoting. Instead of feeding his appetite, he said, "One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God" (Matt. 4:4). Rather, he fed the 5, 000 out of his compassion (Matt. 14:14), not out of his ego-centric personality.

Ministry can be done in many ways but achieve a similar result, but the motives attached to it can be totally different. Often time, the church or ministry is the place where we hide our motives and exercise our egos. Out of rivalry, competition, self-centeredness, and low self-esteem, we "serve", "humble", and "love".

"Bread is given to us by God..." (p. 51). This is a simple concept, but it carries the idea of grace. Out of His compassion, bread is given unto me (and us). If I have any bread to give, it's because the bread is given to me first. When I give it, I ought to give it out of compassion because He did't give me any out of His distorted relevancy in the first place.

In the beginning of Jesus' ministry, he refused to be relevant in a wrong way. And he refused not to be irrelevant to people's needs because of his compassion towards them.

"To be a Christian who is willing to travel with Christ on his downward road requires being willing to detach oneself constantly from any need to be relevant, and to trust ever more deeply the Word of God. Thus, we do not resist the temptation to be relevant by doing irrelevant things but by clinging to the Word of God who is the source of all relevancy" (pp. 52-53).