Last Friday, John left you with the announcement that I had buried him next to his dead father and that I was dancing on the grave. I can hardly imagine what went through your mind; was I celebrating that I outlived him?

No, I was simply happy to see the plain and ordinary give way to a husband walking with authority through the power of the Holy Spirit. As you have come to know John, littleness does not fit very well on him. Yet as he has shared with you at times, if given a choice to live small, that would suit him just fine. And I think if John extended an invitation to other men to join him, he would have many friends who feel at times that everything is just “too big” for them and that they too fear that they do not have the stuff to do what is called for.

It is all about fear – the great deceiver – whispering in your ear that you are not capable of doing more. Fear turns Big into little. Fear tells men especially that they do not have what it takes to be who they are, and thus they are not able to initiate. Fear loves to tell John especially that he has to do the right thing, which is impossible of course if he is little. John is not alone.

Take the great American fable of the mild-mannered newspaperman, Clark Kent. Clark is plain and ordinary. He wears a plain and ordinary suit with a sick little smile and thick, black glasses. We meet Clark as he walks down a plain and ordinary street. But suddenly (suspense) he spots two bad boys stealing a little old lady’s purse. Clark declares that this act is not right. He looks to the left and to the right before slipping into an always-handy telephone booth where he strips off his plain and ordinary business suit and emerges with bulging muscles and a spectacular red and blue outfit. It is Clark Kent transformed. No longer plain and ordinary, he jumps into the air and upon viewing the thieves, he darts to the ground, bounces the surprised boys heads together, and returns the purse to the now astonished little old lady.

John’s identity with Christ though the Word of God tells him who he is, to whom he belongs, and who is within him, and immediately his motivation is spoken through the authority of God and the power of the Spirit with unbinding love. John is able to do what otherwise he could not do. This is what our Lord is teaching all of us in John 14:15-21:

If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.

This is an appeal from Jesus not an order. “Love me,” Jesus implores, and obedience follows. He is not instructing John to obey, adding that maybe one day John might come to love him. There is a big difference here between an urgent request and an order. Jesus requests that John love Him, suggesting he retreat to that place where love is made known in John’s heart by the Spirit. Then, Jesus says, your love for me will greatly increase your desire to obey.

Holding the door to the telephone both shut from the inside, little John cries out to the Lord, “No. I do not want to give in to what you have asked. You ask too much from me.” And of course John is right. I add a complicated intrigue as a wife, spirited for sure and a bit too feisty for my own good, always upsetting things.

Yet when it is John’s chief motivation to love the Lord through the power of the Holy Spirit, John is free and confident that the Superman within will work the situation out for him and will do it through him… and he does!

This is why I dance on the grave of the plain and ordinary John. Without the power of the Spirit causing John to love the Lord, and thus do what he otherwise could not do, he might never come out that telephone both, and considering who he married, he better not unless he’s changed his clothes.