Under the Cape

Welcome to Week 2 in our series Superheroes through Christ! Our title today, “Under the Cape,” is a play on words from the phrase “Under the Hood,” referring to how you lift up the hood of a car to look at the engine, to see the part that matters most, the engine. Going with this analogy that we are somehow like superheroes, the question for today is, “What is really in us? What matters most? Who and what are we?”

Now, I happen to really like superhero stories – I guess that isn’t a great surprise given that we have tied this whole series to the superhero ideal. What about these stories do I like? There are probably many things, but I think I especially like to see how a superhero sometimes has to struggle to do the right thing, that it isn’t easy, but yet he still chooses to do what is right. I also like to see that even superheroes aren’t perfect; they aren’t good at everything, and sometimes things just don’t go their way. Yet they continue; yet they go on.

In this vein, I want to show a short clip from Spider-man 2. This is from the original Spider-man movie series, the ones starring Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst. In this scene, Peter Parker, who is Spider-man, has a job delivering pizza but, due in large part to going around saving people all the time, has had trouble being on time and otherwise being reliable at work. Coming to work late yet again, his boss has just given him an ultimatum that he has only 7 ½ minutes to deliver a multiple-pizza order or he will be fired; this pizza place guarantees delivery within 29 minutes or your pizzas are free.

[Scene: He starts on his bike in busy city traffic, but is forced to switch to Spider-man mode. Along the way he has to set aside his pizzas on an upper deck on a high-rise to save two children who almost get killed walking into traffic. He saves them, telling them no playing in the streets. They respond by saying “Yes, Mr. Spider-man.” Meanwhile a guy has found the pizzas up on that deck where Peter left them and has opened one box and taking a slice out, about to eat it. But the next thing you know Spider-man has taken the boxes and swung away. The man is surprised but he still has his one slice of pizza. As he is about to finally take a bite, Spider-man shoots a web-filament to yank the slice out of his hand. The next scene shows him in an office building where he is in a janitorial closet, presumably to change back into normal clothes. After changing, he spends almost a full minute fighting with the mop and broom handles that keep falling down around him. Finally he manages to shove the closet door closed and plops down the pizza boxes in front of a secretary who looks unimpressed. The pizza boxes look a little worse for wear, but that is not her issue. She points to the clock and tells him that she isn’t paying for these pizzas. Without a word, Peter unhooks his straps that held the pizza boxes together and leaves, knowing that this will cost him his job.]  

I love how Peter doesn’t tell the secretary anything. I am sure he was tempted to say, “The reason I am late is because I just saved two children’s lives. Can you please cut me a little slack?” But he doesn’t, in part because it might jeopardize his secret identity, and perhaps in part because he doubts it would make any difference to this person.

Have you ever felt like this? I have received two speeding tickets in my life. The first one literally happened after I had just delivered one of Mimi’s home-cooked meals to a very sick family in our church. How I wanted to explain this to the officer, but I knew he wouldn’t believe it. The other one happened quite recently – when Sarah and I were on our way to the airport to go to California. How I wanted to tell the officer we were on our way to see my niece with leukemia! Could you create a better sob-story? But I didn’t. Sigh.

I was really mad at myself for getting this ticket; I spent a lot of time going over the location, how fast I went vs. how fast the officer said I went, and so on. Don’t get me wrong – I was definitely speeding, but both Sarah and I don’t think I was going as fast as the officer said I went. Anyway, after our trip, still feeling a lot of these emotions, I went to pay the ticket, and as I stood in line the person in front of me, a woman, was there to do the same thing. She gave the name of her husband, because it was his ticket she was there to pay, and the person at the window asked her which ticket she wanted to pay. “What do you mean, which ticket?” she asked. It turns out that the husband had even more recently gotten another ticket but had not yet told his wife. Boy, she was really mad. I think she even said, “I’m going to kill him.” Probably not the wisest thing to say at a police station! Now I’m not sure what this says about me, but for some reason I felt much better after that.

Just what is under our capes? Who are we? What do we see when we look into the mirror? I think it is easy to struggle with this. We are quick to see our imperfections, our failings, and our weaknesses, and we compare ourselves with the idealized Christian, the true “Superhero,” who can do no wrong, and we groan inside, thinking, “I’ll never be like that.”

Some of us may err in the other direction. We would rather not look in the mirror at all. We have an internal narrative that helps us get by each day that says that we “aren’t all that bad.” Instead of comparing ourselves with the Superhero Christian, we compare ourselves to the most messed-up people we can find and say the same thing the first person said, although with a very different meaning, “I’ll never be like that.”

I think both approaches, both views of self, are wrong, misguided. I want to tackle this question of what is “under the cape” by starting all the way back in Genesis 1, because one of the most important ways to see what is under the cape is to see us as God sees us.

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. – Gen. 1:26-27

So the first thing I see is that we are made in the image of God. That means that when creation looks at us, we are actually a reflection of God. Do you understand how much God must love us to allow us to “wear” His image? God knew we would fall, that He would have to send Jesus to die for our sins to reconcile us back to Him, and yet from the beginning He was willing to do that. He knew that in our sin we would, in effect, tarnish His image, that at times we would turn the beauty of God into something twisted and ugly, yet He still went forward and made us in His image. Think about the depths of love this proves He has for us.

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” – Gen. 1:28

The very next thing God does after making us in His image is what? He blesses us! Did we do something to deserve that blessing? No! We hadn’t done anything yet. Adam and Eve didn’t have to earn God’s blessing; indeed, they couldn’t earn it because it was given before they had a chance to do anything. The same is true for us – we don’t earn God’s blessing. This too is a sign of God’s love. If you are a parent, you understand the idea of having an intense love for someone before they can do anything – all babies can do is cry and produce various bodily “products.” And yet, that birth of a little one wraps your heart up in knots – you would do anything for this precious one. How much more must God’s love be for us! We might say we would die for our baby, but God has actually done it in that Jesus has gone to the cross for us.

When we bless someone it is often just words we say (for example when someone sneezes) but when God blesses it is something very powerful. Here God blesses us with what the angels must have seen were almost superhero abilities – the ability to reproduce, to multiply, and the ability to rule creation, that is, superiority over all the rest of God’s creation on earth. This incredible blessing came not because of something we had done – we hadn’t done anything yet – but simply because of God’s love for us.

Listen – we don’t earn God’s love by being superheroes. God’s love for us is at the very core of our identity as superheroes. Don’t waste mental energy trying to earn what you already have!

Notice too that He gives us His creation – yes, He equips/blesses us, but then He hands creation to us. Again, this is a sign of love. He gives each of us our lives, and gives us freedom to make decisions in our lives, decisions that not only affect ourselves but those around us, indeed, all of creation. If you are a believer, He even entrusts you with taking part in His great eternal purpose of helping others come to faith in Christ. So He not only equips you as a superhero, He also entrusts you with actually being a superhero!

What does God see when He looks at us? He doesn’t focus on our imperfections, but neither does He have a false sense of our goodness by comparing us to the worst around us. He sees us with love, knowing that He has equipped us, and hoping that we will work in His strength, dependent on Him, to do that which He has desired us to do.

There is one more thing I see in this passage in Genesis – He speaks to us. He is not distant! God’s desire is to be ever-present in relationship in our lives. We are to walk with Him, talk with Him, day by day. A common theme in superhero stories is that they are alone, that no one understands the pressures they face, the challenges not only of defeating their arch-enemies but, as in the case of spider-man, even dealing with daily life. This is an area in which our lives should be totally different from those superhero stories. He is God-with-us, and He desires that we bring everything in our lives before Him.

Now the message of the Bible of course is that, unfortunately, Genesis 2 followed Genesis 1. That is, we went our own way, rebelling against God, choosing to believe the lies of the serpent, Satan, over the truths and promises of God. Because God is holy, perfect, without sin, this forced God to separate Himself from us, and we were expelled from Eden and placed under the curse. But God did not leave us there – He sent His own Son, Whom He loved more than we can even begin to imagine, to teach us truths about God and then to die on the cross as payment for our sins. When we believe in Him, agreeing with Him about our sin and promising, by His grace, to hand over the reins of our life to Him, the Bible says we become new creations, new in Him, once again, you could say, superheroes through Him.

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. – Eph. 2:1-3

Notice the tense: past tense. When you look in the mirror, are you looking at yourself in past tense or in the present?

But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages He might show the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus. – Eph. 2:4-7

When you look in the mirror, do you see yourself raised up with Christ and seated with Him in the heavenly realms? Or do you see yourself alone, on your own?

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. – Eph. 2:8-10

Our position with Him is His gift to us, given through faith. We don’t earn it, we can’t earn it. And He says we are God’s handiwork. That word in Greek is poiema, from which we get the word poem. The key concept I want you to understand is that being a poiema does not imply something like a utilitarian, ugly building – it implies a work of art and beauty! Other translations use the word “masterpiece” and even “work of art.”

Here is what Spurgeon says about this:

“You have seen a painter with his palette on his finger and he has ugly little daubs of paint on the palette. What can he do with those spots? Go in and see the picture. What splendid painting! In an even wiser way does Jesus act toward us. He takes us, poor smudges of paint, and He makes the blessed pictures of His grace out of us. It is neither the brush nor the paint He uses, but it is the skill of His own hand which does it all. (Praise the Lord!)”

Again, I ask you, what do you see when you look in the mirror? Do you see the masterpiece the Lord sees?  

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. – I Peter 2:9

When you look in the mirror do you see someone chosen? Do you see someone royal? Do you see someone holy? Do you see yourself as God’s special possession? You are this created work of art, and He has put you on display so that all can see! Do you think of yourself like this?

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making His appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. – 2 Cor. 5:17-21

There is so much here! Again, we are new creations, in Christ. And we have a job to do – the very job of God, reconciling people to Him. He gives us the most important job in the universe to do. Yes, we have the easy part – we don’t actually have the power to cause reconciliation; it was entirely the work of Christ on the cross that did that – but we get to share in this ministry by loving others and telling others the wonderful news of God’s love, that Jesus has made the way for us, reconciling us to God with His own blood. And so we are ambassadors – ambassadors are pretty important people. Do you see yourself in the mirror as a nobody or as an ambassador whose citizenship is Heaven? This is what we are!

If it seems like I am kind of repeating myself it is because you absolutely have to get this! Most superheroes seem to be made by accidents or freaks of nature. Not so with us! There is nothing accidental about us. We are superheroes through Christ. We are His plan. And we are created for good works, heroic works. In Him we are to become the very righteousness, goodness, love of God.

And so this is who we are. The other question I want to explore today is what we have got. The first thing to understand is that in ourselves, alone, we look like Peter Parker in that janitor’s closet. But in Christ, we look like Spider-man. You may ask, “What can I do?” Scripture answers that question.

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. – Phil. 4:13 (NKJV)

It’s funny, but Bob and Larry explain this verse pretty well in one of the VeggieTales videos. The verse doesn’t mean you can do anything you want to do; it means that anything God wants you to do, you can do. Do you believe it? Do you really believe it?

Apart from Me you can do nothing. – John 15:5b

Do you believe this? Some of us who are especially independent-minded, who see themselves as self-made, may struggle more believing this second verse than the first. But both are absolutely essential to believe with every fiber of your being if you really want to do great things (or even little things) for God.

I want to take a few minutes to do something different today – I want everyone who is here to memorize these two verses right now. I want you to pair up in groups of two, and practice saying them to each other. Memorize the words of the passages along with where they are found. [If you are reading this transcript, do this now.]

I want you to keep these verses in your mind every day this week. Keep practicing them so they stay memorized. Next week I am going to ask you to recite them!

In my remaining time I want to talk about what I think is our greatest superpower. Again, this superpower is available to us through Christ, not apart from Him. But what is it? What are our “mad skills”?

And yet I will show you the most excellent way. If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. – I Cor. 12:31b-13:3

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. – I Cor. 13:4-8a

Love is greater than walking on water. Love is greater than parting the Red Sea. Love is greater than climbing up the side of a building or shooting spider webs from your fingertips! If you think I am taking these verses out of context, I am not. They follow right on the heels of a discussion of spiritual gifts. Paul’s very point is that love is greatest thing of all, greater than any other spiritual gift. He goes on to say,

But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. – I Cor. 13:8b-13

Your mad skills are love! Love is your greatest superpower. Love goes hand-in-hand with sharing the gospel; in fact without love we would never be motivated to share the gospel with anyone. And it is through love that the gospel reaches down into people’s hearts, it is through love that they see the truth of what we share. Love is how we build one another up, how we rescue people from discouragement or depression. Love is what enables us to do exhausting things for one another. Love is what brings reconciliation, what enables forgiveness. Love is what overcomes sinful habits, what brings freedom. Love is everything. And love is eternal.

Nearly every superhero story involves a period when the superhero undergoes training in their special power. We are no different. Love grows by practicing love. Love is our greatest commandment, is it not? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. And love your neighbor as yourself.

In my remaining time I want to say a little about practical steps we can take in how to grow in love. For this I am going to quote from a classic message by Bill Bright. In this message he uses the phrase “agape love.” As many of you have heard before, there are several Greek words for love. Agape is the word used to describe the kind of love that Jesus has for us. It is much more than friendship; it is not romantic love. But it is the kind of love that compelled Jesus to lay down His life for us. Here is what Bill Bright wrote:

“Agape love frequently expresses itself as a flow of compassion. Jesus said, ‘Rivers of living water shall flow from the inmost being of anyone who believes in me.’ Compassion is one of these rivers. It is a gentle stream of tenderness and concern for another person's need. Such love compelled Jesus to feed the hungry, comfort the sorrowing, heal the sick, teach the multitude, and raise the dead.

“Most of us at some time in our lives have experienced this flow of love toward someone. Perhaps you felt it while washing the dishes, or while working on the job, or driving down the freeway, or sitting in a classroom. You couldn't explain it, but your impulse was to do something special for that person.

“I encourage you to take the first step; start loving by faith and follow that flow. It is Gods compassion streaming toward the one in need. The tug of love within you means that He is filling you with godly compassion and that He has chosen you to minister to that individual.”

“Ask God to manifest His tender compassion through you in some way today. As you pray, ask Him to lay someone on your heart. When you sense God's love flowing through you to that individual, find out his need and begin ministering to that need. By following the leading of Gods Spirit, you can help those whom the Lord has prepared for His transforming touch, and you will become part of His miraculous provision. When God leads you to help someone, He will enable you to do what He leads you to do. […]

“Remember, the agape kind of love is an act of the will, not just an emotion. You love by faith. […] ‘The fruit of the Spirit is love...’ Like fruit, love grows. Producing fruit requires a seed, then a flower, then pollination, then warm sun and refreshing rains, and even some contrary winds. Similarly in daily life, your love will be warmed by joy, watered by tears and spread by the winds of circumstances.

“God uses all that you experience to work His will in your life. He is the one who makes your love grow. It is a continual, ever-increasing process. As Paul says, ‘May the Lord make your love to grow and overflow to each other and to everyone else...’”

I find Bill’s words very practical and encouraging. As we wrap up, I am reminded of the words of Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben, what he told Peter: “With great power comes great responsibility.” We, who are made in the image of God, blessed by God, unconditionally loved by God, who have been given the superpower of love, have a responsibility to grow and develop and use that power. Apart from Him we can do nothing, but we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. I entreat you to enter fully into the life to which we have all been called.