I'm With You Johnny....

I read an interview with Johnny Depp the other day while getting a pedicure with my big girl. The interviewer asked him who he wanted to meet. Johnny replied, "God. I want to smoke a cigarette with God."

Now, Johnny Depp being who he is, this response is particularly fascinating. He's clearly a free spirit and a phenomenal actor (who ISN'T in love with Jack Sparrow?). He also seems to be an intensely private person. The man lives on an ISLAND with his family for goodness sake!

It seems like Johnny Depp would be completely comfortable sitting on a front porch, feet kicked up on the porch rail, smoking a cigarette with God while discussing all of the sorrowful, unanswered, desperate things human beings experience.

And that makes me think of something Shane Hipps said once....

{Behind the locked doors of our lives...} "There nestled in among the shame, sin, sickness and sorrow is the Creator of the Universe relaxed and at home. Not the least bit offended, surprised or fearful."

I understand that, for some, the first response to the idea of Jesus being relaxed and at home in our ugliest spaces is appalling. I remember a time in my life when I would have raged against the idea of Jesus entering our darkness to fish us out. It had seemed unthinkable. I would have said firmly, "Not God. God is HOLY. Holy doesn't enter into unholiness."

I would have felt sorry for anyone who was so disillusioned and, clearly, SO wrong.

But I get it now. Johnny Depp's words resonate with me. His desire to sit, naturally and comfortably, with the God who offers comfort and redemption to every single human being speaks to my own heart's ache. I want to smoke a cigarette with God too. I want to open up the deepest recesses of my heart - the places that are filled with shame, sin, sickness and sorrow - without fear of being scorned or rejected.

Because isn't that the point of Jesus surrendering to the cross? Isn't that EXACTLY what he was doing? Jesus took on every single sliver of sin and flesh and human sadness to heal us. That means he ENTERED IN. That means the HOLY GOD walked straight into what was UNHOLY and made himself at home.

I know. It sounds wrong somehow right? All that felt-board theology we grew up with seems to push against the grain of everything this suggests. Our limited brains can't reconcile a holy God entering into anything unholy. Especially since we KNOW that light and darkness can't live together. They can't mingle. And that's my point exactly. Jesus, the light of the world, enters into our darkness and we are slowly and certainly set on fire. Our internal darkness becomes a blazing fire. We who were once in darkness are flooded with light.

But first He enters in. He doesn't stand on the front lawn demanding that we put out that cigarette and get it together before he'll sit down with us. He's bigger than that. Jesus, because of the cross, steps over the threshold and sits down next to us. Everything we encounter from there on out is holy. It's holy because we are in his presence and he has no need to bend to our rules. Whatever we've decided makes us unworthy of his presence becomes the very gateway to the Creator.

He knows no limits. Thank God. There would be no hope for those of us who over eat, smoke cigarettes, drink too much, make ourselves throw up, lie, swear, covet, greedily store up our "stuff", dishonor one another, look at pornography, harbor anger and resentment, gossip, yell at our kids....

Johnny Depp, you have no idea how real, personal and overflowing with hope your desire is. I pray you get to do it.