In Charles Yu’s short story collection, Third Class Superhero, Nathan is not good enough to actually be a superhero. Oh, he has a power ... of sorts. But he works a thankless job to cover his food and board because his power is too meager to qualify him for full time heroics (which pays a lot better).
I’m not going to tell you much more about Nathan, because you need to pay Amazon $2.99 so Mr. Yu can pay his bills. Believe me, the stories are worth the money; a bargain at that price.
What I am going to do is tell you that I know actual people like Nathan. No, they don’t have special powers, not even third class ones, but they do suffer from the same problem: life has been signaling something to them ... for a while.
They’re just not good enough.
It’s hard to accept that the thing you’ve invested yourself in —that goal you’ve had for your life; that career you’ve been working hard to build; that relationship you’ve been pursuing— is never going to be a reality, that the window of opportunity is not just closing, it’s already closed. And, as hard as that is, there’s worse.
As bad as it is to face our shortcomings, it is even worse to have to hear it from someone else.
I was one of those latter folk. Life had been signaling, but I hadn’t been receiving. Nathan knew he was a third class superhero: he had the test scores to prove it. But I just couldn’t recognize it ... or, in retrospect, maybe I did suspect my inadequacy, but I wasn’t allowing my conscious self to really know it. Maybe it was in the back of my mind and I just couldn’t let it come to the front.
It took being confronted with it to really know the truth of it. As long as I was the way I was, I wasn’t going to be good enough to be the way I wanted to be.
In this week’s scriptures, Zephaniah, Isaiah, and Paul exhort us to sing and shout, to exult and rejoice, to be thankful and prayerful ... because God is in our midst. They are all about Immanuel (“God with us”), the Messiah, Jesus. The shocker is in the Gospel of Luke, where John the Baptist looks out over the crowd and gives the most unusual “alter call” I have ever encountered: "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” As unwelcome as it sounds, I believe John was doing them a kindness. He was shocking them into a realization. Like Malachi before him, John saw them for what they were:
Not good enough.
John knew their need, even if they had not yet grasped the situation. They needed to understand their need for Jesus, and why repentance was the beginning of fulfilling that need. God had not been “in their midst” for hundreds of years ... and they were the reason why. Like in Marshall Goldsmith’s book, What Got You Here a Won't Get You There, John’s audience needed to grasp their inadequacy to bridge the gap between themselves and God, to realize they needed an entirely new approach.
To their credit, many came forward and asked: “What then should we do?” The shock treatment worked. They began to see their need. It’s a lesson for us, too, this Advent. As we look forward to the coming of the Lord —to that time of rejoicing, exulting, singing, shouting, thankfulness, and prayer— we must first recognize our need ... that part of preparing for the coming of the Lord is accepting that we need Him.
We, too, must also be willing to ask, “What then should we do?”
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PHOTO: https://www.amazon.com/Third-Class-Superhero-Charles-Yu/dp/0156030810
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READINGS FOR THE COMING WEEK
Third Sunday of Advent (December 16, 2018)
https://lectionary.library.vanderThird Sunday of Advent (December 16, 2018)bilt.edu//
Zephaniah 3:14-20
Isaiah 12:2-6
Philippians 4:4-7
Luke 3:7-18
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