Ragamuffin Gospel
The Ten Words
Kevin Beck
The commandments originally appear in Exodus 20. They are introduced like this, "And God spoke all these words." Neither here nor elsewhere in Scripture are they referred to as the Ten Commandments. This is why the Decalogue is often referred to as the Ten Words, Sayings, Declarations, or Things.
Seeing them in this light transforms them from being arbitrary dictates that individuals must follow lest they incur the wrath of God into revelatory wisdom for skillful living. Reframed, the Ten Words become life guidelines rather than explosive land mines.
The tradition, spirit, and evolution of the Ten Words as sacred insight to living wisely compels us to translate them into fresh settings. A new awareness of them transforms our perspective of the Ten Words. It allows us to appreciate and embrace them as truths that enlighten our mind, enlarge our heart, and ennoble our being.
I. Everything is spirit. Interior domains are real and neglecting them impoverishes yourself, others, and the world. There is no dichotomy between secular and sacred. See blessed beauty everywhere in everything. What appears to be profane is holiness in disguise.
II. Because everything is spirit, the divine cannot be adequately represented by any single thing alone. Appreciate the expression of divinity in all that you see, hear, experience. Don't fight over your understanding of God with others because your view is limited. Open yourself to discovering, hearing, and learning from others. Be willing to add your perspective to the conversation. In giving and receiving, you will be merciful, faithful, and loving.
III. Honor mystery. Experience awe. Never lose your sense of wonder. Spirit is not a magical tool that you can manipulate in order to fill your wishes. With open eyes and heart, you will feel radical amazement at the very presence of all that is. In the sublimity of the holy, you will discover venerable humility.
IV. Take some time off. Detach from attempting to control outcomes. Play, reflection, meditation, prayer, recreation, and similar activities can produce healing and creativity. Become like a little child. Understand that everyone, every thing, and every situation can benefit from enjoying some down time. Fallow ground produces a richer harvest. Foster an inner space of tranquility.
V. Honor your mother, father, sister, brother, neighbor, strangers, enemies, and yourself. Cherish the earth, the sky, and the sea. Respect all people. Admire the ecosystem. Because all is interconnected, the way you treat the planet, animals, and people reflects the way you treat yourself. They way you consider and care for others reveals your true feelings for God. Your service to the smallest is a service to the divine. Abusing others is a path to your own ruin.
VI. Respect life. The earth, the seas, the heavens, and all that is in them sings glory and praise. Life is a precious gift to be nourished. Embrace the range of life, the process of life, living creatures, and all life experiences. Learn. Welcome change because change is engrained into the fabric of living. No being exists independently. Respect everything that gives its life for you. Live artfully and gracefully. Live with the awareness of integration, not with the illusion of alienation.
VII. Never confuse sex for intimacy. Know the difference between impulses and emotional fulfillment, desires and meaningful relationships, urges and love. Sex is not a guilty pleasure, nor is it the supreme act of spiritual realization. Intimacy is precious. Sex can create a context where you experience joy, revelation, and profound connection. Or it can bring pain, distrust, and emptiness.
VIII. You have been given innumerable blessings -- many seen, many more unseen. Tend to your own garden. Draw water from your own well. Share when you see that others are in need. Ask when you are in need. You are only entitled to be you; generously permit others to be themselves. Relinquish the lust for judgment, power, possessions, respect, adulation, glory, and correctness.
IX. Be compassionately honest with yourself and everyone. Tell the truth. Hold to your integrity. Also, realize that your perspective differs from other people. Someone who disagrees with you is not necessarily lying or accusing you of lying. Be coachable. Truth is dynamic, often paradoxical, and always discovered in relationship.
X. Be grateful. Gratitude derives from awe, wonder, and intimacy. Greed rises from selfishness, from holding people and things as merchandise, and from the hope to create a sense of identity through ownership. Appreciate who you are, and you will never have reason to crave what you do not have. Gratitude blossoms into generosity, and thankfulness takes the form of altruistic service.
The Shack
Wm. Paul Young
God’s voice has been reduced to paper, and even that paper had to be moderated and deciphered by the proper authorities and intellects. It seemed that direct communication with God was something exclusively for the ancients and uncivilized, while educated Westerners’ access to God was mediated and controlled by the intelligentsia. Nobody wanted God in a box, just in a book.
After Christendom
Andrew Perriman
We are looking for new modes of being to replace the expansionist, imperialistic, institutionalized Christendom mode. Perhaps we are something more organic; perhaps simply a people, a tribe, a global community. Perhaps we are fractalized prophetic communities, imaginative story-telling communities, commissioned to tell the story of the creator through the concrete circumstances of our existence, in diverse, even conflicting ways, under diverse conditions. Perhaps we are a dispersed priestly people who mediate between the world and God. Perhaps we are localized collectives that seek to model justice and an awareness of the createdness of things. Perhaps we are all of these… and more.
The point is that our calling is not to save the world, not to assimilate all cultures and peoples into the kingdom of God, but to be an authentic new creation, both actually and prophetically, in the midst of things. Salvation, in this narrative, is something that happened historically to a people. There are all sorts of ways in which we now participate in that salvation, but there is an important sense in which it is behind us – it is what God did for his people at a time when they faced not merely exile but destruction at the hands of an enemy that presumed to govern the whole world. Abraham was summoned from Haran not to save the world but to be the beginning of an alternative world, a faithful microcosm within the corrupted macrocosm.
We still evangelize; but evangelism is simply the public proclamation, through speech but also through the drama of our shared lives, that the creator God is, that he has gathered a people for his own possession from all the nations of the earth, that he has demonstrated his abundant love for them and through them, that he has instilled in that people the capacity and potential of a new created life, that he has given them a king who cannot be toppled by any earthly power, that he will ultimately hold humanity accountable, and that evil and death will not have the last laugh.
It is a proclamation that is to be heard universally, but it is always the story of a circumscribed people, its boundaries safeguarded by its crucified Lord, that must embody the story of God for the sake of others. Many will hear it and believe; they will become part of the Spirit-filled collective. But they will believe, in weakness and humility, for the sake of the many who cannot or will not believe.
Re: Mission
Andrew Perriman
1) Yes, I would say that ‘new creation’ provides the overarching form of Christian hope - and indeed of corporate identity and mission. Kingdom language in the New Testament refers to critical moments in the history of that mission and the emergence of that hope, when God is believed to act sovereignly to judge, deliver and restore his people.
2) From the historical perspective of the New Testament the expectation that God will intervene sovereignly as king is oriented, first, towards the national catastrophe of AD 70, and secondly, towards the victory of the early church over its pagan enemies. The ‘new creation’ motif is always at hand as a metaphor for the restoration of the people of God, but because Jesus’ resurrection is a victory over death, there emerges on the outer edge of New Testament hope the prospect of the whole of creation being made new.
3) It seems to me that the bulk of eschatological or future-looking material in the New Testament relates to the first two horizons of judgment on Israel and victory over Rome. Only a few texts (Rom. 8; 1 Cor. 15; Rev. 20-21) really foresee an ultimate renewal of all things.
So yes, broadly I think that what the New Testament referred to as the kingdom of God has come and that the fundamental renewal of all things lies in the future. However, I think it makes some sense to re-use the kingdom language outside the particular eschatological purview of the New Testament if by it we mean that God may still act sovereignly in history on behalf of his people.
Also, since Jesus’ resurrection was itself a non-metaphorical ‘new creation’ event, it’s probably fair to say that the ‘new creation’ has broken into the now, into history, but it does so proleptically or prophetically, pointing forward to a wholesale remaking of heaven and earth and a final defeat of evil and death.
So kingdom already, new creation not yet is probably an oversimplification.
The Parousia
Milton Terry
Acts 1:11 is often cited to show that Christ’s coming must be spectacular, “in like manner as you beheld him going into the heavens”. But in the only other three places where the expression occurs, it points to a general concept rather than the particular form of its actuality.
In Acts 7:28 it is not some particular manner in which Moses killed the Egyptian that is notable, but rather the certain fact of it. In 2 Tim. 3:8, it is likewise the fact of strenuous opposition rather than the special manner in which Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses. And in Matthew 23:37 and Luke 13:34, it is the general thought of protection rather than the visible manner of a mother bird that is intended.
Again, if Jesus did not come in that generation, and immediately after the great tribulation that attended the fall of Jerusalem, his words in Matthew 16:27, 28 and 24:29, and parallel passages are in the highest degree misleading.
To make the one statement of the angel in Acts 1:11 override all the sayings of Jesus on the same subject and control their meaning is a very one-sided method of biblical interpretation.
But all the angel’s words necessarily mean is that as Jesus has ascended into heaven so he will come from heaven. And this main thought agrees with the language of Jesus and the prophets. And so he did come to execute judgement on that very generation as he foretold.
N.T. Wright and Reformed Theeology
Right answers to the Wrong questions
Pagan Christianity
Frank Viola, George Barna
The New Testament never links sitting through an ossified ritual that we mislabel “church” as having anything to do with spiritual transformation. We grow by functioning, not by passively watching and listening.
Christianity had taken Greco-Roman rhetoric and adapted it for its own purposes, baptized it, and wrapped it in swaddling clothes. The Greek homily made its way into the Christian church around the second century. It reached its height in the pulpit orators of the forth century - namely Chrysostom and Augustine.
The sermon makes the preacher the virtuoso performer of the regular church gathering. As a result, congregational participation is hampered at best and precluded at worst. The sermon turns the church into a preaching station. The congregation degenerates into a group of muted spectators who watch a performance. There is no room for interrupting or questioning the preacher while he is delivering his discourse. The sermon freezes and imprisons the functioning of the body of Christ. It fosters a docile priesthood by allowing pulpiteers to dominate the church gathering week after week.
The sermon often stalemates spiritual growth. because it is a one-way affair, it encourages passivity. The sermon prevents the church from functioning as intended. It suffocates mutual ministry. It smothers open participation. This causes the spiritual growth of God’s people to take a nosedive.
The sermon preserves the unbiblical clergy mentality. It creates an excessive and pathological dependence on the clergy. The sermon makes the preacher the religious specialist - the only one having anything worthy to say. Everyone else is treated as a second-class Christian - a silent pew warmer.
The sermon makes “church” both distant and impersonal. It deprives the church of receiving spiritual nourishment from one another.
Agnostic About the Afterlife
Marcus Borg
I am a committed Christian and a complete agnostic about the afterlife. I use “agnostic” in its precise sense: one who does not know. Moreover, I know that I cannot resolve “not knowing” by “believing” – whatever we believe about an afterlife has nothing to do with whether there is one or what it is like.
There is more to say. I think that conventional Christianity’s emphasis on the afterlife for many centuries is one of its negative features. I have often said that if I were to make a list of Christianity’s ten worst contributions to religion, it would be its emphasis on an afterlife, for more than one reason.
When the afterlife is emphasized, it almost inevitable that Christianity becomes a religion of requirements and rewards. If there is a blessed afterlife, it seems unfair to most people that everyone gets one, regardless of how they have lived. So there must be something that differentiates those who get to go to heaven from those who don’t – and that something must be something we do, either believing or behaving or some combination of both. And this counters the central Christian claim that salvation is by grace, not by meeting requirements.
Another problem: the division between those who “measure up” and those who don’t leads to further distinctions: between the righteous and the unrighteous, the saved and the unsaved.
Another problem: an emphasis on the afterlife focuses our attention on the next world rather than on this world. Most of the Bible, on the other hand, focuses our attention on our lives in this world and the transformation of this world. At the heart of the Lord’s Prayer is the petition for the coming of God’s kingdom on earth: your kingdom come on earth, as it already is in heaven. There is nothing in the Lord’s Prayer asking that God take us to heaven when we die.
As yet another reason for my agnosticism about an afterlife: does it involve the survival of personal identity and reunion with those we have known in this life? Are family reunions part of the afterlife? For some people, this is much to be desired, for family has been the primary source of love and joy in this life. But for perhaps an equally large number of people, family has been the primary source of pain and unhappiness. So, are we going to be with those people forever?
What I do affirm about what happens after death is very simple: when we die, we do not die into nothingness, but we die into God. In the words of the apostle Paul, we live unto the Lord and we die unto the Lord. So whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.
For me, that is enough. My not knowing anything more does not bother me at all.
And I am very wary when the Christian gospel becomes a message about the afterlife. I am convinced that it invariably leads to distortion. This is not the Christian gospel.
God Provides, Doesn’t Protect
Marcus Borg
I believe that God is present everywhere, in everything - that the universe is shot through with the radiant presence of God. Thus we are always "in God," even as God is more than the universe.
But to say that God is everywhere and in everything does not mean that God is the cause, directly or indirectly, of everything that happens. To say the obvious, utterly horrible things happen in the world, and with great frequency. To imagine that these somehow fit into the long-term purposes of God is blasphemous. Rather, we are creatures who are able to act (as we often do) in ways contrary to God's purpose and dream. And more: tragedies like the shootings and deaths at Virginia Tech indicate, in my judgment, that thinking of God as an interventionist is impossible as well as unhelpful. If God could have intervened to stop this (or the Holocaust, or 9/11, or the war in Iraq, or the individual tragedies that never make the news), but chose not to, what kind of sense does that make? We live in a world still under the sway of "the powers" - powers in individual and collective lives that lead us away from God and God's passion for life on earth. But in the midst of all this, there is a source of sustenance that can help us in the darkest night. The most concise expression of this that I have heard comes from the late William Sloane Coffin, who died a year ago this month. He said - and I am confident of his "gist," if not his exact words: "God provides maximum support, but minimal protection."
Does God as an interventionist protect us? No. Does God provide a means of support in the midst of our tragedies? Yes.
Easter Is About Life, Not Death
Marcus Borg
As I understand Easter, to the extent that Easter can be understood, it is not about something happening to the corpse of Jesus, but about the continuing experience of Jesus among his followers after his death.
And it is not just about experiencing him as one might experience a ghost, but experiencing him as “Lord,” as a divine reality who is one with God and who invites our allegiance and loyalty.
All of this is included in the early Christian post-Easter affirmation, “Jesus is Lord.” The lords of this world - a collusion of religious authorities with Roman imperial authority - said “No” to Jesus and executed him. Easter is the reversal of Good Friday: it means that God has vindicated Jesus, said “Yes” to Jesus and his vision over against the rulers of his world. God has made him “both Lord and Christ,” as Acts 2.36 puts it. “Jesus is Lord” is the most common post-Easter affirmation of his significance. He is Lord – and the would-be lords of this world are not.
Were the skeletal remains of Jesus to be indisputably identified, it would not matter to me. To think that the central meaning of Easter depends upon something spectacular happening to Jesus’ corpse misses the point of the Easter message and risks trivializing the story. To link Easter primarily to our hope for an afterlife, as if our post-death existence depends upon God having transformed the corpse of Jesus, is to reduce the story to a politically-domesticated yearning for our survival beyond death.
Rather, what mattered for his early followers was that they continued to know him as a living figure of the present after his death – not just during the forty days of appearances that the author of Acts mentions (Acts 1.3), but in the years and decades (and centuries) ever since. And to affirm, as Christians do, that the living presence of Jesus is Lord is to commit oneself to the story of Jesus as the central revelation of God’s dream for the world. It means to stand against the powers that killed him and to stand for the vision of God’s kingdom that he proclaimed.
Easter is both personal and political. The lordship of Jesus is the path of personal liberation from the lords of culture, and the affirmation of a very different kind of world. To lose this emphasis in a debate about what happened to the corpse of Jesus is to be distracted by the lords who killed him.
Yes and No
Marcus Borg
Yes, Jesus is the Son of God, Lord and Christ; the Light of the World and the Bread of Life; and the Way, Truth and Life. He is all of this for me, as a Christian who is also a historian of early Christianity. And yet I do not think that Jesus spoke of himself with these grand terms and phrases.
Together with most mainstream scholars, I see the gospels as containing earlier and later layers of Christian traditions about Jesus as they developed during the first century. The gospels (and to some extent, the New Testament as a whole) contain the early Christian movement’s memory of Jesus and their testimony to what Jesus had become in early Christian experience, conviction and thought.
In shorthand that I often use, the gospels are about both the pre-Easter Jesus (Jesus as a figure of history before his death) and the post-Easter Jesus (what Jesus became after his death).
As a historian who is also Christian, I do not think that the pre-Easter Jesus spoke about himself as the Son of God, or as Lord, or as the Light of the World, and so forth. Of course, I know that the gospels attribute this kind of language to him, so it is not a refutation of this position to quote the gospels against it.
But – again with the majority of mainstream scholarship, a point that I repeat not to give my perception authority, but to indicate that it is not eccentric or peculiar to me - I see this language as the early Christian movement’s testimony, their witness, to what Jesus had become in their lives.
I see the pre-Easter Jesus as a Jewish mystic who knew God, and who as a result became a healer, wisdom teacher, and prophet of the kingdom of God. The latter led to his being killed by the authorities who ruled his world. But I do not think he proclaimed or taught an extraordinary status for himself. The message of the pre-Easter Jesus was about God and the kingdom of God, and not about himself.
Rather, I see the grand statements about Jesus – that he is the Son of God, the Light of the World, and so forth - as the testimony of the early Christian movement. These are neither objectively true statements about Jesus nor, for example in this season, about his conception and birth. To speak of him as the Son of God does not mean that he was conceived by God and had no biological human father. Rather, this is the post-Easter conviction of his followers.
Is that enough for me as a Christian? Yes, yes it is. To be Christian is to affirm that Jesus is the Son of God and Lord, and that the would-be lords of this world are not.
So, even as I do not think that Jesus’ status as Son of God is because of his conception, I affirm the early Christians conviction that he is, for those of us who follow him the Son of God, the Lord, the Light of the World.
He is all of this for Christians – and we do not need to negate the other enduring religions of the world in order to say: for those of us who are Christian, he is the decisive revelation of God’s character and passion. He is for us the Son who discloses the Father, the light who shines in our darkness, the Lord who comes each Christmas. And there are other revelations of God. But affirming Jesus as the Son of God means: this is who he is for those of us who follow him.
Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time
Marcus Borg
The gospels are the church's memories of the historical Jesus transformed by the community's experience and reflection in the decades after Easter.
This understanding of the gospel is the basis for the well-known scholarly distinction between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. The first phrase refers to Jesus as the particular person he was - Jesus of Nazareth, a Galilean Jew of the first century who was executed by the Romans. The second phrase refers to the Christ of the developing Christian tradition - namely, what Jesus became in the faith of the early Christian communities in the decades after his death.
The picture of Jesus in John is clearly quite different from the picture of Jesus in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In John, Jesus speaks as a divine person. I am the bread of life, the light of the world, the vine, the way, the truth and the life. I and the Father are one, He who has seen me has seen the Father. In the synoptic gospels, Jesus speaks very differently; his message is not about himself or his identity.
The pre-Easter Jesus consistently pointed away from himself to God. His message was theocentric, not christocentric - centered in God, not centered in a messianic proclamation about himself.
Though compassion as the content of Jesus' imitatio dei was rooted in the Jewish tradition, it was not the dominant imitatio dei of the first-century Jewish social world. Instead, a different imitatio dei, also ground in the Hebrew Bible, had become the primary paradigm shaping the Jewish social world: "Be holy as God is holy."
It is in the conflict between these two imitation deis - between holiness and compassion as qualities of God to be embodied in community - that we see the central conflict in the ministry of Jesus: between two different social visions. The dominant social vision was centered in holiness; the alternative social vision of Jesus was centered in compassion. Holiness eventually became understood to mean "separation from everything unclean." One's purity status depended to some extent to birth, behavior, Jew or Gentile.
In the message and activity of Jesus, we see an alternative social vision: a community shaped not by the ethos and politics of purity, but by the ethos and politics of compassion. Compassion, not holiness, is the dominant quality of God, and is therefore to be the ethos of the community that mirrors God.
An interpretation of Scripture faithful to Jesus and the early Christian movement sees the Bible through the lens of compassion, not purity.
Conventional wisdom is the dominant consciousness of any culture. It is a culture's most taken-for-granted understanding about the way things are and about the way to live. It is "what everybody knows" - the world that everybody is socialized into through the process of growing up. Enculturated consciousness, a consciousness shaped and structured by culture or tradition ... Page 75-80 ... Jesus' subversion of conventional wisdom is a subversion not only of the central convictions of his social world, but of many common forms of Christianity as well.
Jesus' own self-understanding did not include thinking and speaking of himself as the Son of God whose historical intention or purpose was to die for the sins of the world, and his message was not about believing in him. Rather, he was a spirit person, subversive sage, social prophet, and movement founder who invited his followers and hearers into a transforming relationship with the same Spirit that he himself knew, and into a community whose social vision was shaped by the core value of compassion.
Story theology not only emphasizes the centrality of story in the biblical tradition, but also criticizes much of Christian theology and modern historical scholarship for having obscured or eclipsed this feature. Theology, with its natural inclination toward conceptualization, has typically sought to extract a core of meaning from a story, which is then expressed in nonnarrative form. The story as story is lost. Modern historical study of the Bible has also tended to lose the story, either by seeking the history behind the story or by an analytical approach that often loses the story by focusing on its bits and pieces. In both cases, the story as story disappears.
Religious laws speak of how to behave; theology and doctrine speak of how to understand and what to believe; but stories appeal to the imagination, to that place within us where our images of reality, life, and ourselves reside.
Conventional wisdom is life under the lordship of culture, which is both oppressive and alienating, and his message is filled with the theme of liberation and return.
The author of Hebrews uses the priestly story to subvert the priestly story. Within the traditions of the early Christian movement, the priestly story was used to negate the priestly story. there is an unfortunate irony here. In the documents that became the New Testament, imaging the death of Jesus as a sacrifice for sin originally subverted the priestly story; but when the New 'testament became sacred Scripture, these same texts established the priestly story as the central Christian story. As a consequence the emphasis changed from seeing the story of Jesus-as-sacrifice as undermining the priestly story to believing in the priestly story (with Jesus now as the central figure in the story).
Disciple: It does not mean to be a "student of a teacher," but rather to be "a follower after somebody." discipleship in the New Testament is, of course, a following after Jesus, a journeying with Jesus. Journeying with Jesus also means to be in a community, to become part of the alternative community of Jesus. Gather the folks, tell the stories, break the bread.
And discipleship involves becoming compassionate. "Be compassionate as God is compassionate" is the defining mark of the follower of Jesus. compassion is the fruit of life in the Spirit and the ethos of the community of Jesus. It is a vision of the christian life as a journey of transformation, exemplified by the story of discipleship as well as by the exodus and exile stories. It leads from life under the lordship of culture to the life of companionship with God.
It is an image of the Christian life not primarily as believing or being good but as a relationship with God. That relationship does not leave us unchanged but transforms us into more and more compassionate beings, "into the likeness of Christ." It is the vision of the Christian life spoken of so eloquently by Paul in a densely packed passage in 2 Corinthians: " And we all, with unveiled faces, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the likeness of Christ from one degree of glory to another. And this comes from the Lord, the Spirit. " Beholding the Spirit, we are being changed into the likeness of Christ.
I want to close by talking about a very familiar Christian phrase - believing in Jesus - and how it is related to the image of the Christian life that has emerged in this book. For those of us who grew up in the church, believing in Jesus was important. For me, what that phrase used to mean, in my childhood and into my early adulthood, was "believing things about Jesus." To believe in Jesus meant to believe what the gospels and the church said about Jesus. That was easy when I was a child, and became more and more difficult as I grew older.
But now I see that believing in Jesus can (and does) mean something very different from that. The change is pointed to by the root meaning of the word believe. Believe did not originally mean believing a set of doctrines or teachings; in both Greek and Latin its roots mean "to give one's heart to." The "heart" is the self at its deepest level. Believing, therefore, does not consist of giving one's mental assent to something, but involves a much deeper level of one's self. Believing in Jesus does not mean believing doctrines about him. Rather, it means to give one's heart, one's self at its deepest level, to the post-Easter Jesus who is the living Lord, the side of God turned toward us, the face of God, the Lord who is also the Spirit.
One can see this also in the German word belieben, which is the immediate root of the English word believe. Belieben does not mean "to believe," but rather "to belove." Thus to believe is more properly understood as "to belove."
Believing in Jesus in the sense of giving one's heart to Jesus is the movement from secondhand religion to firsthand religion, from having heard about Jesus with the hearing of the ear to being in relationship with the Spirit of Christ. For ultimately, Jesus is not simply a figure of the past, but a figure of the present. Meeting that Jesus - the living Jesus who comes to us even now - will be like meeting Jesus again for the first time.
The Gospel According to Jesus
The Center for Progressive Christianity
Jesus proclaimed an astonishing Gospel! But, isn't it strange that his harshest criticisms were directed at those within the religious community? He said, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut up the kingdom of heaven from men, for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in" (Matt. 23:13).
He condemned certain prayers: "Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you devour widows' houses, even while for a pretense you make long prayers; therefore you shall receive greater condemnation" (Matt. 23:14)
He condemned certain generous tithers: "Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected . . . justice and mercy and faithfulness . . ."" (Matt. 23:23).
He condemned certain moralists: "Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the . . . dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self-indulgence" (Matt. 23:25).
He even condemned certain missionaries: "Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you travel about on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice the son of hell as yourselves" (Matt. 23:15).
Above all, he condemned self-righteous hypocrites: "Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men's bones . . ." (Matt. 23:27).
It's disconcerting to admit that Jesus' adversarial relationship was not with vile sinners. It was not with irresponsible drunkards. It was not with degraded prostitutes. It was not with enemy soldiers. Instead, it was with religious leaders.
They were Jesus' adversaries because they totally misunderstood the Gospel. They constantly dealt with petty, trivial issues. They "strained at gnats and swallowed camels" (see Matt. 23:24).
They misunderstood the concept that positive not negative approaches are more productive. They had complicated legal systems which prohibited even the most compassionate deeds if these broke their Sabbath laws. (See Luke 13:14-16).
They misunderstood the concept that flexible not absolute presentations are more productive. They insisted upon converts adhering to fixed ceremonial requirements (see Acts 15:1).
Theirs was an assembly line salvation. Everyone must go through the same steps and repeat the same formulas.
They rejected the insight that God lives in individuals rather than in temples.
They saw no inconsistency in offering devout prayers to God in the morning and perpetrating cruel injustices in the afternoon. (See Mark 13:38-40).
They rejected the insight that power resides in truth rather than in traditional authority. They equated counting out the exact legal tithe of dill seeds with momentous virtues such as justice, mercy and faithfulness. (See Matt. 23:23).
They judged things by ancient taboos and traditional authority rather than by actual results and visible fruits. (See Matt. 12:33)
They rejected the insight that the Kingdom is here on earth rather than in some future heavenly sphere. They refused to embrace a rewarding, creative and joyful lifestyle; and by the burden of their laws made it impossible for others to do so.
They ignored the idea that we're to show as well as tell. They talked a pious script, but lived lives that exemplified vindictiveness and cruelty (see Matt. 23:29-36).
They ignored the idea that we're to be life-savers as well as soul-winners. Their religious doctrines were often inhumane (see Matt. 23:15-22).
They ignored the idea that we're to share and not to hoard. They limited their outreach to one race, one class and one gender (see John 8:33).
Their exclusive practices and narrow prejudices made a mockery of God's love. Now, if the Gospel includes these positive concepts, what is our task? What did Jesus tell us to do?
Our purpose is stated in the Great Commission. Jesus said, "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (Matt. 28:19-20).
But, what do these verses really mean?
I. First, We're To Make Disciples.
Now, a disciple is much more than just a believer. A disciple is a learner and a follower. Think back to your youth and recall some personality from the world of sports or entertainment that you wanted to be like. Didn't you pattern your life after that idol in matters of dress, actions and speech?
Without even knowing it, you had become a "disciple" of that personality, a follower and learner of everything he or she did and said. Every TV appearance, every word, every mannerism became an object of intense interest to you because of your commitment to be like that person.
That's what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. He said, "Whoever serves me must follow me . . ." (John 12:26, niv).
In fact a disciple means one who is disciplined. Discipline includes responsibility, reliability and productivity.
II. Next, We're To Baptize These Disciples.
Again, baptism is more than just a water event. The word means being totally immersed in a way of life. John said Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit. "I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit" (Mark 1:8, niv).
Now, this wasn't a physical immersion in water, because the Scripture says Jesus didn't baptize anyone in water. (See John 4:2).
In fact, Jesus used the word "baptism" to mean going through a traumatic event. He said, " ‘Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?' ‘We can,' they answered. Jesus said to them, ‘You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with' (Mark 10:38-39).
Paul used the word "baptism" to mean taking on an obligation and being set apart for service. "Every one of them (allowed himself) to be baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, [that is, they were thus brought under obligation to the Law, to Moses and to the covenant, consecrated and set apart to the service of God]" (I Cor. 10:2, amp).
Later, Paul explained true Christian Baptism. "You were all baptized into Christ, and so you were all clothed with Christ. This shows that you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:26-27, edb).
So, when people are baptized, it means they have entered into a spiritual union with Christ. They are immersed into his nature. When that happens, others notice.
Once a man was asked by a neighbor to drive her son to the hospital. Although he had other things planned, he couldn't say no, so he put the child in the car and started on the fifty-mile journey. Suddenly the boy turned to him and asked, "Are you God?" Startled, he said, "No, son. I'm not God." The boy continued, "Well, I heard Mom asking God for some way to get me to the doctor. If you're not God, do you work for Him?" The man replied, "Well, I guess so! At least sometimes and I'll try to do it more often!"
III. Finally, We're To Teach These Disciples.
We're to instruct people in the principles that will produce abundant life. As Christians we're to discover all the facts and information of the universe. We're to adapt ourselves to reality. We're to observe, listen and enrich our knowledge in all areas of life. We're to help unify such diverse subjects as science and theology, history and technology, politics and ethics. We're to be spiritual connectors.
We're to emphasize Jesus' teachings. But, we're also to demonstrate Jesus' actions. He said we're to observe and obey his precepts. That's more than head knowledge. If we follow Jesus' example, we will accept, respect and love our fellow men; not criticize, condemn and judge them. We'll see our creator reflected in everyone of his creatures. We'll treat associates as if they were Jesus himself. In short, we will worship God by serving others.
An old poem by Gertrude Sturgeon says,
Sometimes it's just a little thing That lifts the heavy load; A look of understanding As we travel life's hard road; Again it is a little thing That makes the way so dark' A look-a frown-a hateful word, That makes one miss the mark!
Be kind and understanding And helpful every day; Then you will be a blessing To those who come your way; Remember all the "Little Things" That lifts the heavy load Of others as you journey down Life's daily rugged road.
The gospel according to Jesus is different from the one emphasized by many religious groups. It's not complex theology. It's not exact doctrine. It's not a lot of rules. It's not mystical experiences. It's not slick publicity. It's not endless meetings and activities. Instead, it's very simple. Jesus said, "You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the other commandments . . . are based on these two commandments" (Matt. 22:37-40, nlb).
That's our commission. As we live out our values, others will see their merit and adopt them as their own. Jesus said, "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another" (John 13:34).
We are here on earth to effect change and accomplish God's purposes. We're to realize that each one of us is an ambassador, an agent and a representative of the divine realm. We're not merely to "play God" we're here to act for God!
When Jesus said, "he who has seen me has seen the father," he meant, "If you can't see God in the concern, and love and service I exemplify, you will never see Him!"
Furthermore, we are now here in his place. John said, "As he is, so are we in this world" (I John 4:17).
What a responsibility this imposes upon you and me. We are the only likeness of God most people will ever see. God doesn't want graven images of his physical likeness. Instead, he wants living images of his moral likeness.
When a disciple asked, "Show us God and we'll be satisfied" (see Luke 16:19). Jesus' answer was, "Look at me. I am a reflection of God" (see John 14:8).
Then he said something else, that's even more important. He said, "If you follow me you will become reflections of God too" (See John 14:12).
That's what Christianity is all about. God involves Himself on this earth through those Christians who offer Him their eyes, ears, hands, feet and hearts.
The world says, "Show us God and we'll be satisfied." His reflection is in you and me. That reflection can be distorted by mirrors that are tarnished by selfishness, greed and hostility. Therefore, the greatest question is this: "How truly, how correctly, how clearly are you reflecting God?"
An old poem by Edgar A. Guest, expresses this profound principle:
I'd rather see a sermon than hear one any day; I'd rather one should walk with me than merely tell the way. The eye's a better pupil and more willing than the ear, Fine counsel is confusing, but example's always clear; And the best of all the preachers are the men who live their creeds, For to see good put in actions is what everybody needs.
I soon can learn to do it if you'll let me see it done; I can watch your hands in action, but your tongue to fast may run. And the lecture you deliver may be very wise and true, But I'd rather get my lesson by observing what you do. For I might misunderstand you and the high advice you give, But there's no misunderstanding how you act and how you live.
That's the Gospel according to Jesus!