Friday, May 24, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Looking inward
As the heavens are high above the earth, so surpassing is his kindness toward those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has he put our transgressions from us.
In Plough Magazine, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove notices that our Christianity isn’t always something into which he wants to invite others.
Our gospel has been too small. It is, indeed, too small a thing to think that the hope of the world rests in our ability to recruit others into a religion which has too often made us morally worse.
But Jonathan doesn’t only criticize; he suggests a far far better alternative.
To confess that the hope of the world IS Jesus Christ.
This has nothing to do with religion, although everything to do with Jesus Christ and his church.
To make this confession is to open ourselves to a kingdom beyond our control – beyond our imagination even.
I suspect that my old desire to avoid church, religion, and especially the demands of other Christians on me, unspoken maybe but still there … as I say, that old desire won’t work for me after awhile.
Do not complain, brothers and sisters, about one another, that you may not be judged. Behold, the Judge is standing before the gates.
God’s kingdom is and always will be “beyond my control.”
Beyond my imagination even.
So I might resist old-fashioned notions of church community with potlucks and shopping list prayers, old hymns and new choruses sung loud by a whole congregation, as well as sermons that attempt to invite me into the Bible without much imagination. I might consider the good-natured hellos at the beginning of Sunday service as inadequate greetings that refuse to acknowledge the darker parts of life, or at least attempt to obscure them. And I might resent the judgmental rejection of others who are different, when those outsiders challenge … well … anything.
But in spite of all that, I need those folks, with their willingness to be at least a little obedient to God, who made us all.
Take as an example of hardship and patience, brothers and sisters, the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Indeed we call blessed those who have persevered.
Jonathan says:
To confess that the hope of the world is Jesus Christ is to open ourselves to a kingdom beyond our control – beyond our imagination even.
It is to embrace the revolutionary notion that everyone belongs to God.
No matter who they are.
(James 5, Psalm 103, John 17, Mark 10)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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