Woosh: Helicopter church takes off

One of the newest entrants in Nairobi’s ever expanding “churchscape” has a name that reminds me of a story I heard about Judas Iscariot. The church is called Helicopter of Christ Ministries.

When I first saw it one Sunday in January, it was overflowing with worshipers with some sitting on plastic chairs dangerously close to a busy road. The first question I asked myself was: where did all the members of the new church come from? Had they left other churches or were they completely new converts? It did not take me long to figure things out.

In Nairobi, people are moving from one church to another all the time. The instant attraction of the Helicopter of Christ must have been, of course, the promise implied in the church’s name. Its members must have been made to believe that Jesus would within a short span of time more or less lift them up from their misery and settle them in a wonderland of personal success and peace for the rest of their lives.

That is where I find the connection with the tale I heard about Judas. He is said to have been fully convinced that Jesus was the Son of God. Judas was supposedly a streetwise fellow who “sold” Jesus to make quick money while all the time believing that nobody could actually kill the Son of God. In fact, all Jesus’ disciples seem to have thought that the Messiah was invincible and would either miraculously evade capture or blow his enemies to smithereens with as much as a snap of the fingers.

That was why, the tale goes, when Jesus was captured without any resistance, was tortured and nailed to a cross to die, Judas lost his mind and killed himself. The other disciples were inconsolable. How could the story of the great miracle worker end just like that? They must have thought the whole thing had been fake all along.

This Judas tale could be just that — a tale. But associating religion and religious figures with miraculous power is deeply rooted in human hearts. Indeed in Nairobi, the kind of Christianity that has nothing spectacular to show seems to be on the wane. The story of God who made the universe and all life, created man and woman who fell into sin prompting the Creator to came down from heaven, take a human body, suffer and die on the cross for the salvation all human beings is good, but it doesn’t really pull the crowds.

People want Christ the superhero who fixes their problems within a few Sundays of churchgoing. They want their minds blown by the drama of the stupendous. They want results.

But the Easter story sobers us up. It is certainly not a Helicopter of Christ story, whatever the owners and members of that church intend to convey through the name. The power of God is shown in his love for us in which he humbles himself to the extent of accepting a painful and shameful death on a cross.

This death is not exit into oblivion. It is a passage into fullness of divine glory, the resurrection. Called to be an imitator of Christ, Easter reminds me to live my life with intense faith in God, to hope in his promises and to try to love him and fellow human beings as he has loved me.

I should die to selfishness and resurrect to newness of life, not in the distant future but every day. The joy of Easter is my faith that in his suffering, death and resurrection, Christ has obtained for me the most precious gift of eternal life with him. He accompanies me throughout my journey of life. He is not a superhero whooshing around in a helicopter in the sky, but a deeply loving friend who is at my side.