Ode to Larry Norman

As a teenager in the late 60's and 70's I listened to a lot of the top 40 music: Beatles, Three Dog Night, Bee Gees and many others. I never really found any Christian artists that caught my attention, that is until I encountered Larry Norman. Here was somebody who was unashamed of his Christian faith and was willing to use a variety of musical styles (rock, blues, ballads, etc.) to communicate it. Here is a video clip of one of my favorites:

I think what I appreciated about Norman was he did not sing syrupy Sunday School songs where everything turns out hunky dory. He sang about life in a very raw form and was able to intersect that messy life with the life of Jesus. So about the time I was thinking that the Church had very little to do with real life, just something that happened for a couple hours on Sunday, Norman helped by connecting my life in Jesus with the uncomfortable reality of our world.

Norman was an evangelist who sang the Gospel to people who would not have heard it any other way. He was my first encounter in how to contextualize the Gospel into contemporary culture. He was simply doing musically what Paul did when he said, "I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some." (1 Corinthians 9:22) Sounds like a great way to go about touching people if you ask me. We need to continue to put the Gospel in language which is understandable to people in every culture, even the ones in our back yards.

The Popsicle Cross

In Matthew 16:24 Jesus says to his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." Christians have often taken the bite out of this saying of Jesus by looking at it very passively. We erroneously believe that if God wants us to bear a cross He will give us one. Then we pray like crazy that God would give us a little cross that is easy to bear, something like crooked teeth or having to drive an old Chevy.

But there is really only one cross and that is the same one that Christ was nailed to. He also needed help carrying his cross and thanks to Simon, the guy from Cyrene, he got it. If we think that we have been able to sneak through life with a Popsicle stick cross, it is time to find the cross of Christ and begin to hoist it. What I mean is that we must find the suffering, the oppressed, the depressed, and those that really need help and begin to lift the heavy burden that they have been bearing. This will probably mean getting out of our comfortable existence to enter into their uncomfortable one. But this is exactly what Jesus is asking us to do. Paul reiterates this when he says to the Galatians, “Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” They never said it was going to be easy.

Bearing the real cross of Christ is a very powerful thing for us to do. I have seen people take the sick and suffering into their homes and watched as they shared the burden with each other. I love to see people “adopt” a disabled person and become that person’s family. These are powerful things that would re-image the entire church of Christ if we could just get more and more people to imitate him.

What do you think? Should Christians do more to actively bear the cross of Christ?