A recent confluence of events and media resources has led me to this topic and has given me opportunities to confirm what I think about it and a reason to restate it in this format.
Yesterday, I was a substitute teacher and since most of the classes were fairly well-behaved and self-controlled, I was able to get almost half way through Brian McClaren's "Everything Must Change." The premise of the book is that he is exploring the major crises our world faces and seeking answers from the life of Christ. He says a lot of good stuff, but you kind of have to duck through some of the crazy crap he throws at you to synthesize his best points.
This morning, Jack woke us up before I was ready to function so I took him downstairs and turned on the movie 2012 hoping to give Sandy a bit more beauty sleep time... she is beauty sleeping for two, you know. Like the book, I got about half-way through the movie before I had to take off for breakfast with some fellas and "evaluate" a recent even we did. I remember drinking coffee.
In 2012, the planets line up and somehow that leads to the sun melting the earth's core and so the top layer goes crazy and seems to be killing everyone except for John Cusak, Amanda Peet, and Young Shawn from Psych. Danny Glover is President but I think he dies. Again, I am only like half way through the movie so I can't say much for sure.
So anyhow, it all got me back to thinking about the end of the world and what that means.
In every disaster movie, you see a guy with a sign that says, "Repent, The End is Near." In most
sermons you hear a similar message.
If you watch much TV on certain channels or listen to much talk radio, the message is all about what action we need to take before the world plunges into anarchy from being either too liberal or too conservative. In most sermons you hear a similar message.
I am of course not talking about the minister I work with specifically -- I never have the chance to hear his sermons since I am in Children's Worship. The individual sermon is really irrelevant here anyway, since its more of a commentary on the general direction of the Christian faith in America at this point. I have yet to read anyone who thinks everything is peachy.
McClaren blames it all on framing stories. The idea makes some sense but it is officially my second-least favorite thing about his book thus far so I will spare you an explanation. I would love to quote him in a few places, but that's not really my style, and the book isn't with me right now. One interesting thing he notes is that we have focused too much on the gospel ABOUT Jesus rather than the gospel OF Jesus.
Having grown up in church, it is easy to see how one can become familiar with the "good news" (that is what the word gospel means after all) about Jesus and miss the good news of Jesus. We know who he was and is, what his role was and is, and what that means for us. However, Jesus didn't limit his sermons and lessons to the fact that he was the divine/human son of God come to die for our sins and offer us eternal life. He didn't limit his role to being a ticket to heaven.
I have two friends who made the transition from being in youth ministry to being preaching ministers in the last year. Oddly, both of them, with no communication or common thread between them, started by preaching a series of sermons on the Kingdom of God. They had different resources and inspirations for their sermon series'.
I think that this was more than a coincidence. I think they both were seeking something meaningful and significant as they started preaching regularly. I think they were both seeking the gospel OF Jesus: the good news he preached and lived. Jesus was the best and most intelligent theologian ever, yet he synthesized all the deep theology that guys like Calvin and Luther and Augustine wrote volumes about into single sentences, simple actions, and short stories.
Obviously I could go on for a long time, but in the spirit of simplicity, I want to reference one story. McClaren does a good job of highlighting the motivations behind the questioners and the deeper relevance behind the answer here, but I think the words Jesus spoke do themselves justice: when asked what the most important law was, Jesus basically responded that there is one God and we should love him with all we are. To take it a step further, he gave them the second most important law, too - Love your neighbor. Everything else hinges on those two laws.
Of course a deeper understanding of "love" is needed to have a fuller understanding of what he meant, but when we simply state that loving someone means putting their needs and desires and well-being ahead of your own, I think we get the picture. If you worship an idol, you are not "loving" God and if you punch someone in the face, you are not "loving" them.
Sounds like a bunch of hippy crap, eh? I am going to tell a vague story now. If you think you are in the story, maybe you are. It starts with two fellas I am really rather fond of. One had been abused and misused by a person/group of people. Their ministry, livelihood, and family had all been compromised in some way and it was a painful blow dealt to them. When this guy asked the other guy for advice, his answer was, in short, "love."
The guy who asked the question wasn't pleased with the answer. I would not have been either. You have to protect your own, right? Jesus protected his disciples from danger, his family from pain, and his friends from death, right?
That was sarcasm. If you didn't catch it, you are seriously behind on your Bible reading and linguistic awareness.
Jesus is pretty much the standard for love, seeing as he willingly took on the sins of the world so that we wouldn't have to suffer the consequences. That is the gospel about Jesus. The gospel of Jesus also includes the fact that he wants us to follow his lead. If Jesus was merely here to secure our eternal salvation, we would kick the bucket as soon as our ticket was punched. It doesn't really take that careful a reading of the New Testament to recognize that the Kingdom of God isn't a reference to heaven, but a reference to those who live with Jesus as their Lord, or King.
He doesn't call us to be happy, safe, successful, or comfortable. He calls us to be, in short, good. People seem to have forgotten that the term Christ indicated that Jesus was the KING of the Jews, come to redeem them and create a new Kingdom. As king, He didn't secure them a nice place to all live together peacefully. As King, He didn't encourage them to threaten to move to Canada based on which political party was in control. As King, His Kingdom talk was not about a revolution to overthrow Rome. He spoke about creating a spiritual kingdom - not of this world, but in it. Jesus spoke to huge crowds, but he did more to disperse them than to incite them.
Good grief, this is a huge topic that I can't effectively cover in a blog and I feel like I have said a little bit on a lot of things. If you disagree with me on most of it, good. I am probably wrong on some of it... and I am certain you are as well. I think it is an important topic though - the role of the Christian in the world: to escape, to conquer, to assimilate, or to love.
