The beauty of the Jesus gospel is on whom depends the initiative. It is with, in and through Divine Presence.
Admittedly incredulous, even absurd as we lift our eyes long enough to acknowledge the killing fields of the Taliban, the children of refugees who have seen in their short lives enough of hell to ever hope for a heaven.
And yet, in the deadliest night of dispair we are enabled from within or beyond to hum a few lines of “Jesus loves me, this I know..” And our spirits are lifted up and out of our pain, our empty peace-less longing to believe and given hope that carries us to our last breath in faith. Even more remarkably this hope informs our next breath and the one after that and so on.
The Kingdom of God breaking in around us is neither our making or our possession. “This salvation is God’s gift. It’s not something you possessed. It’s not something you/(we) did that you/(we) can be proud of. Instead, we are God’s accomplishment, created in Christ Jesus to do good things. God planned for these good things to be the way that we live our lives”
(Ephesians 2:8-10 CEB).
Now, to be clear, this life journey whose hope rises in love and good works is not without our efforts, as though it was something other than we who awake to the pains of a new days dawn with creativity and courage and love. It is us, living and acting in our own skin. But it is not us, alone, but we who are connected with the Creator of all, aware or not. It is the Creator’s life blood that poured out upon the earth at Galgotha that flows in and through and around each one of us and gives the world its ability to move on, believe on and live into the very Kingdom of Love that is already present and breaking in.
That is the essence of what it is to be Christian.
It is not to convert the atheist or Buddhist or Jew or Muslim to become Christian. Conversion, as often practiced over the centuries was the very thing we were called by Jesus to refrain from. Did he not say, “Let both (the weeds and the plants) grow side by side until the harvest. And at harvesttime I’ll say to the harvesters,“First gather the weeds and tie them together in bundles to be burned. But bring the wheat into my barn”’”” (Matthew 13:30 CEB). We have learned nothing from Jesus if we are unaware that the closer we are to the ‘revealed faith’ the more likely we are to be vulnerable to weeds cropping up in us like the thorns of a beautiful and unfolding rose. Our very proximity to The Story of God often produces pride and arrogance and judgment so that we, like the Pharisee in Jesus parable are guilty of thinking and feeling, “God, I thank you that I’m not like everyone else—crooks, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give a tenth of everything I receive’” (Luke 18: 11b, 12).
So, then Terry—you might contend—if we are not to convert others, what is our purpose? Is it not to cooperate with God in the ever deepening conversion of our own lives and to bless the world with the same blessing that we ourselves have received? …This very love that permeates all life. That is our mission—the very same given to Abraham of old, to ”be a blessing” (Genesis 12:2 CEB).
Blessings! Terry
See this blessing, produced for our morning worship on August 28, 2021:
https://youtu.be/aTM4-K2d6zc
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