Transition from Prioritizing the 'Sail' to Prioritizing the 'Wind'

One of the shifts happening now in the church (see my post here about the historic transition we're going through presently) is the movement away from Christendom to simpler, more creative ways of encountering Jesus in community. In other words, through the centuries of organized religion, we have collected a lot of practices and beliefs that aren't all necessarily bad but that are often barriers to encountering the living Lord. This shift is taking the form of disillusionment with institutional Christianity and the exploration of simpler means of encountering Him and sharing Him.

In his book, Selling Water by the River, Shane Hipps contends that Jesus (the River) is accessible to all people and that unfortunately our religious systems and structures have become barriers to this access to Him. In the chapter about "wind and sails" Hipps shows how Jesus went out of His way to disregard the boundaries that religion had established. In His first miracle of turning water into wine Jesus "sets the stage for his way of operating in the world. It frames his entire ministry."

In this miracle, what's astonishing is not only that Jesus changed the chemical composition from one liquid to another but that He flagrantly broke the ceremonial rules which insisted that wine not be put into vessels that were dedicated for ceremonial washing. This is exactly what Jesus did - he had the servants use the  jars that were for ceremonial cleansing rather than use the empty wine jars. By doing this, He was mixing wine and water thereby defiling both and causing the people to be unclean.

Why would Jesus do such an offensive thing (and continue doing this sort of thing throughout His ministry)? Hipps says that it was because He was always trying to get people beyond the banks of the river and into the great expanse of the river of God's love.

"Religions have a tendency to get stuck. Institutions aren't made to stay limber...Thus the trajectory of any religion is always to become brittle. A basic law is at work in most things we humans create: whatever the intended purpose of our creation, when overextended, it can reverse on itself...when it (Christian religion) becomes overextended, the impulse is to preserve the institution rather than the message...Jesus consistently undermined the natural inertia of institutions. He was the embodiment of pure, unbridled creative force. Creativity is often disruptive. It has little interest in preservation; it is about making new things and making things new."

Jesus is not against religions. The author says that Jesus is the wind while religions are the sails. His own conviction is that the Christian religion is the sail that best catches the wind but adds the following, "We must never make an idol of the sail and thereby miss the wind. But it is also a mistake to say the sail doesn't matter. Without a sail, the wind is difficult to catch..."

"It is not the sail, but the wind we are after." Jesus continually broke the rules and boundaries established by religion so that people could get to Him; this is happening in our day as more and more of God's people work to make Jesus (the Wind and the River) more accessible to all people.