giving notice that the text for my next sermon is Isaiah 9:6 and the corny marquee line in front of the church is gonna be something like "CMD + F 'Savior' Nothing Found"

you know what actually let me do this one right now ahead of my morning run

so I was looking a church's website, seem like great folks in the community, I like to just think about church and community, I am who I am, right

and there was the familiar Pentecostal bit about "realizing that we are imperfect and need a Savior"

and I'm like, well, OK, yes, on the one hand of course ONE of the functions of Christ's ministry is to help us see that we need God to help us look beyond some of our human tendencies -- vanity, selfishness, cruelty, all that stuff

that's what we need to be saved from, that's where we need Somebody to point us in the right direction

so I thought: why is it, then, that when some of the streetcorner/doorstep evangelists lean so hard on this -- it's the first thing they do, usually: You acknowledge that we're fallen, right? And so we need a Savior, right? -- I bristle, I feel an instinctive desire to object?

It's Isaiah 9:6, that's why.

"For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." (NIV)

What's not there? Savior. This doesn't exclude "savior" from the things we can call God -- God has a lot of Names, more than we'll ever know -- but in our OT/NT discourse it sure is interesting to see what the prophet prioritizes

To Isaiah, these qualities in the Jesus he prophesies will be foremost: that He counsels; that He is strong; that He parents; and that He brings peace.

OK, so what happens if we don't kick "Savior" completely out of the equation but give a little more weight in our walk to Isaiah 9:6?

Jesus becomes somebody who's going to help us act, not just somebody who's going to just bail us out. A wonderful counselor, a Person Who does not act ~for~ us but to Whom we should turn instead ~to know how we, ourselves, must act~

when we put "Savior" at the front of the queue, we center ourselves. "Lord, I can't do it by myself! I'm broken and worthless! I need You to save me!" And well, yes, OK

~but that's a narcissistic thing to put at the center of your God discourse~ and His whole ministry was one of almost unimaginable selflessness

God calls us to feed the poor, heal the sick, to build the Kingdom, and the work of the Kingdom is the work of justice: freedom, a voice to the voiceless, a place at the table for anybody who's been out in the cold

and to do specifically that work, what we need is not a Savior. We need a Counselor, an Example, a Friend Who'll hold our feet to the fire if we're slipping, Somebody strong enough to tell us: Do more. You can do more. You know what's right: ~do~ that.

If I put Isaiah 9:6 up near the front when I think about Jesus, then I can stop thinking "well, He's going to save my soul, that's what's great about Him"

because if what's great about God is that He does me a solid, then I have made God very very small indeed

and if I do that to God, who have I really prioritized? /cue exit music, in this case the John Talbot remix of of Pye Corner Audio's "Resist)