The Good News Story

What would you say if you had the chance to explain the gospel to someone who had never even heard the name Jesus before?  That would mean not relying on any assumptions about any biblical background knowledge or familiarity with the Jesus story, as well as being careful to avoid “Christianese” — those theological terms we sometimes employ in conversation that to the uninitiated sounds like the kind of technical jargon you might here in a conversation between two computer programmers.  Personally, if I were faced with this opportunity, I would not be interested in explaining things in a concise, point-form, “4 Spiritual Laws” kind of way.  I would want to tell a story.  I want the message of Jesus to be captivating.  So here’s my version (naturally a little more formal in this written version than the way I would speak it):

I follow the teachings of a man named Jesus who lived nearly 2,000 years ago in what is today called Palestine.  But I don’t just follow his teaching, I follow his lead.  By all contemporary accounts, there was something undeniably different about him; and by the four accounts contained in a book called the Bible, that difference was that he was God.  At other times in history, great religious teachers like Mohammed or Buddha or Moses have pointed their people toward God in some hugely significant ways, but Jesus didn’t simply point the people toward God, he wanted people to have an up-close-and-personal, face-to-face meeting with God.  Jesus was God with skin on.  

Jesus wasn’t satisfied with reinforcing the status quo or letting those he met continue to believe whatever they might about God, wrong or right.  He made it his mission to show people that God isn’t at all like many of them thought – most thought God was primarily interested in people being good and playing by the rules.  If they did so, he would be pleased and might make their lives easier; but if not, disaster and punishment might ensue.  But God, according to the teachings of Jesus, loves everyone all the time, and there isn’t anything we can do to make God love us any more or any less.  

That isn’t to say that God doesn’t care what we do or how we live our lives; in fact, God cares very much.  But the kind of God that Jesus taught about, the kind of God that Jesus himself embodied, knew that the kind of behaviour that would make the greatest impact in the end isn’t about following a list of dos and don’ts, it’s about operating with a bigger vision of life.  This is what Jesus modelled for us when he took time to give a blind man his sight back, or healed a man who hadn’t had the use of his legs since the day he was born, or healed a woman who had been bleeding for twelve years.  He showed everyone who was watching that God is concerned about more than what people do or don’t do, but about who we are on the inside and our complete emotional, physical, spiritual, and social well-being.  And he wanted us to know that God was already getting started on his grand master plan to set things right for good: a plan to totally change humanity and history.  

But Jesus didn’t stop there, because he hadn’t gotten to the root of the problem: Jesus also taught that at some level, each of us is messed up.  We sometimes do the things we don’t want to do, say the things we don’t want to say, think the things we don’t want to think; and we sometime don’t do the things we want to, or say the things we really want to, or think the things we really want to.  And that doesn’t just mess each of us up as individuals.  That spills over into the way we act toward each other.  We can hurt each other quite badly; we can quite easily, given the right circumstances, abuse, manipulate, and intimidate.  And it seems even some of the social systems that we have set up in this world thrive on injustice and inequality, on power and its abuse   And at times it seems like we are powerless to rid ourselves of this twistedness completely.  Is that just part of being human?  Or is there a remedy? 

Jesus offers us a remedy.  He actually freely offered to take the rap for everything every single person who ever lived and would live had done and would do wrong; he collected all our wrongs and transgressions, the patterns of negativity that we could never seem to get rid of it, and when he died, they went to the grave with him – buried, never to be seen again.  He didn’t put up a fight, but let people kill him unjustly, and so exposed the world’s ugliness and hatred for everyone to see.  

He was able to do this because he knew how the story would turn out in the end; his death was only mission half-accomplished.  He didn’t actually stay dead.  He was God, and you can’t kill God.  He got back up again and dusted himself off, and then he offered us the remedy to our problem.  He offered to allow us to share in the kind of unending life that brought him back from the dead.  He said to everyone who was following him around at that time, “Look, I have put an end to everything that is bad about you and this whole planet, but if you don’t have the ability to live any other way than you have been living all along, then what’s the point?”  So everyone who asked for it then, and everyone who has believed in this story and asked for it since, has been given the ability to live life differently because God himself has put his own power inside of everyone who wants it.

Jesus asks us to envision a different life: a different us, a different way of being in relationship with one another, and a different way of conducting ourselves in the world that will work toward ending hatred, oppression, inequality, and injustice.  And the best news of it all is that Jesus stayed alive and continues to live on, empowering those people who even today want to become his followers.  And one day, no one knows when, God will have had enough of the way this whole world has been running, and will come back again to clean house and set everything in order once and for all.  And those who choose to be on his side, who choose to imagine a different life and a different world, and move toward making that a reality, will enjoy the new world that Jesus will be setting up — enjoy it forever and forever because like him, we will live life on without end.

What would you say?  I think it is so crucial for each of us to at least have some idea of what we might say if we were to have that opportunity to speak about Jesus to someone who just doesn’t know much about him.  How can we speak with passion about what we hold true, and make it sound as stirring and game-changing as it did to that original group of men nearly 2,000 years ago?  Post a response with your version, and let me know if you feel I have accomplished my aim — think of the person you know who understands the least about the Christian message, and see if you can imagine sharing with them what I have written and if he or she could make sense of it (whether or not he or she agrees).

Reflections on Jude VIII: Discerning Gatekeepers

For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.v (Jude 4).

Every week at The Meeting Place and many, many other churches across Canada and North America, people come to check out a faith community for the first time.  Some are coming from another church because it is simply time to move on, however painful that may be.  Some are coming from another church because they were unhappy with something in their previous faith community, like they were in the church before that and like they most likely will be in yours.  Some are present in body but not in mind or spirit because they have come out of a sense of obligation or because a family or friend dragged them along (sometimes all but kicking and screaming).   Some are returning after an absence of some time because they have experienced a period of disobedience and running away from God.  Some may have had some experience of church growing up but it was either fairly forgettable or deeply painful, so they come with anything from anticipation to skepticism.  Some are coming to church for the first time, but they have an interesting amalgam of spiritual ideals running around in the backs of their minds based on books they have read and the opinions of family members and friends.  And some are complete blank canvases: they realized something was not as it should be in their lives and they are here, but they have no idea what church or Jesus is really all about.

With all this traffic, it is hard to be discerning about the kinds of people who are showing up, but Jude implies a stern warning. He says that amongst all those people there are those who will cause trouble.  Particularly, he says they have bad theology and will try to corrupt the belief system of whatever faith community they find their way into.

There is a malintent to this creeping in unnoticed.  You could think of it as someone slipping in through the side door or coming in posing as a true Christian but secretly in their heart figuring out how to wreck up the place.  Jude here imparts evil motives to these people, so they are certainly not the confused or the misinformed or the desperate or the poorly-behaved.  At the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit this past year, there was a session on the three people you find in a church and how to deal with them.  The three categories are the wise, the foolish, and the evil.  The people that Jude talks about here are well into the evil camp.  They know what they are doing and have no intention to do otherwise.  As a co-worker of mine says, “everyone blesses you: some by coming and some by going.”  These are the kind of people who bless you by going.  Unfortunately, they usually go somewhere else and give that church and leadership grief, too.

The fact that Jude says these people sneak in or come in unnoticed means that no matter how diligent you are, likely some will get into the community no matter what happens.  As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but when people get past our initial defenses, what do we do?

All of us, whether we have a defined leadership role within a congregation or not, are called to guard the faith, as we have already seen Jude admonish us to do.  It may be one thing to shy away from correcting an individual who has privately-held notions that do no line up with the Scriptures, but as soon as a person begins to teach against the faith in a public setting or even goes about confusing and derailing numerous people in private conversation, each one of us who understands the central teachings of the Gospel, ought to do what we can to expose this person.  They may have come in unnoticed, but they cannot be allowed to spread their false teaching in peace.  We may think we have to be nice and pleasant toward everyone, but the Bible is clear that those who are malignantly warping the truth must be confronted and either straightened out or cut off from the community.

Reflections on Jude VII: A Priceless Inheritance

“I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people“ (Jude 3).

There are two things to think about in this boldface phrase:

(1) The declaration that the faith was entrusted to us, God’s people.  This is a startling and sobbering reality, when you think about it.  I mean, the message of the Gospel, the very truth of who God is and how he relates to us and the world, has been entrusted to us to preserve.  If we look at the history of the Christian Church, we have seldom done a fantastic job at this.  We have gotten it wrong or twisted more often than we have transmitted it to the next generation unblemished and with passion.  Sure, it is written down and codified in the Bible, but we as his people then need to translate and interpret it.  It really makes me wonder why God would entrust this to us.  I suppose for the same reason that he has invited us into his project of redeeming the world and being Jesus-with-skin-on to our friends, families and neighbours: because he loves us and created us to serve and glorigfy him.  And because we are loved by him, he has also made us holy, which goes a long way toward preparing us for the task given us.  

Whenever I get up in front of the congregation to preach, I feel the weight of the responsibility I have: to the best of my ability, I am to transmit the truth of the message of God to those who are gathered to listen.  This is an awesome responsibility that I pray will always put into me a little bit of holy fear to keep me one my toes and keep me honest.  But this isn’t just for me.  All of us should be conscious each day of the amazing privilege that we have of guarding and preserving the Gospel by living according to what we say we believe as well as making sure we dedicate some time to study so we can be clear and confident in what we do, in fact, hold to be the central message that Christ came to earth to communicate to us.    

(2) Then there is Jude’s declaration that our faith was entrusted to us one time for all.  In order words, we heard it once, and it is never going to change.  The exact some truth that Jesus came to show us is still today the truth that will set us free.  It cannot be changed or altered without losing its power.  That is not to say that it cannot be communicated in a way that is understandable and relevant to the historical and social context in which we find ourselves, but by God’s design the content of the message will stand true for all people and throughout all ages.  So dig in and decide what the core of the Gospel is and what some of the contextual apparatus is.  Be prepared to keep the former (don’t get too clever with it) and discard and change the latter as need be.  Admittedly it is not always 100% clear which is which (thus part of the reason why we have not done a great job of handing down the message intact — see point #1 above), but that should not deter us from conducting such a needed exercise.  Examine what the Bible really says and be prepared to discover and admit your own biases that would otherwise unduly change our pure and priceless message.

Reflections on Jude VI: Contend Earnestly for the Faith

“…I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints” (Jude 3b).

“Fight the good fight of faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called…” (1 Tim 6:12a)

I have to admit that when I read this kind of striving and battle language, part of my is a bit put off.  I am put in mind of obnoxious and sanctimonious Bible-thumpers who are leading the charge in opposition to the so-called “War on Faith.”  There is an indignant bellicosity to the phrase.  In an age of myriad militant causes, do we need to add another cause and more vitriolic rhetoric?

But the concepts of fight and struggle are not always negative.  There is a certain dignity and valour involved.  The struggle for human rights in 1960s America and the fearless protests of the Arab Spring show us that there are things worth fighting for.  The fight summons up a nobility within us that illuminates and gives shape and perspective to life.  While there are certainly negative conflicts based on avarice and pride, there are also worth-while conflicts that contend earnestly for the good in the world and are not necessarily violent.  In which case, to not participate in them but instead sit idly by is the regrettable choice.

What Jude and Paul are both advocating here is most simply the opposite of passivity.  They are asking us to struggle and strive to maintain the heart and root of the Christian faith against corruption and wrong belief – a nobel cause.  This is not a call to violence and aggression, but to perseverance, grit, and honest effort.  Jude and Paul are calling their readers to know what they are about, to understand their opponents, and to be ready to give a compelling answer to why the message of Jesus has captured their hearts.  In a world of hostility this can often mean giving a gentle and disarmingly winsome response.  But it also means having the courage to stand up and declare what is true in spite of popular opinion ore likely negative reaction.

Secondly, there is also a personal dimension to this fight.  There is a sense in which to contend for the faith means to grow in our personal discipline not to let spiritual growth and discipleship slip through our fingers.  This is something echoed in Paul’s exhortation to put on the full armour of God.  We are both defending ourselves from that which will rob truth and joy from us, but also proactively taking back from the enemy darkened corners of our hearts and lives.  We shall not settle within ourselves for mediocrity.   

In the end, these calls to fight and contend are not calls to be angry and confrontational, but to capture the nobility, courage, passion, and purpose that comes in standing up for a worthwhile cause.

Reflections on Jude V: Our Common Salvation

“Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation…” (Jude 3a)

What does Jude mean by this phrase?  There are at least three distinct possibilities:

(1) The salvation that each of us had received from Jesus is something that we share or have in common.  In this sense, the salvation still remains mostly an individualistic transaction between God and whoever is accepting his gift of grace.  It is only after the fact that we seek out and celebrate our relationship with like-minded individuals.  This fall short of what I believe Jude to be saying here.

(2) When we enter into and experience the Gospel, we are not merely doing so as individuals but as members of the collective.  When we accept Jesus we immediately become part of the body in a way that goes beyond just being part of a community because we all value the same things.  Our identity actual becomes changed, such that we are now (though still distinct individuals) one of the many Jesus followers in the world: we are not now individuals making up a group, but rather slices of the whole.  There is something in salvation that only be gained and accessed within the context of community.  We are not merely being saved as individuals, but together as the Church we are being saved.  This is my preferred reading.

(3) Salvation is often described in terms of the actions and activities we engage in based on the belief we have, rather than just as the belief itself.  Salvation is seen as us acting as Jesus in the world in order to expand the Kingdom of God.  So when Jude speaks about “our common salvation” this is more like a short-hand for “our common salvation project to be ambassadors of Christ and redeemers in the world.”  While this may be true elsewhere, in the next portion of the verse, Jude speaks about the faith that has been handed down, so I suspect that it has to do more with the actual belief part of things.

This phrase leaps off the page because it is my distinct impression that in church contexts generally in North America, some aspect of a common or shared salvation experience is not often spoken about or taught on.  And if it is, generally the emphasis is more on the first option: that we need each other because we all believe in the same things and therefore need to encourage one another.  The individual is still the main unit in the discussion.  However, we ought to shift the dialogue away from the individual and toward the collective, a thought that is much more indigenous to the NT than the individualistic way of seeing things.  In this context, the main unit to be considered is the collective Church community.  Individuals should rightly not be relegated to mindless servants of the collective, but when we change the nature of the discussion toward group, we are forced to ask ourselves what we are contributing rather than what we are receiving; and we have an easier time seeing what God is doing in the wider Church community rather than simply in my own life, which can be a source of hope when God doesn’t appear all that active in one’s own life.

Reflections on Jude IV: Mercy, Love, and Peace

May mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you (Jude 2).

I don’t have fantastic insight into this verse.  The only thing that crosses my mind is why Jude chooses these three words.

Paul’s nearly unwavering salutation includes the phrase “grace to you and peace,” but in the Timothy’s letters, he adds “mercy” into the mix.  And  in 1 Cor 13, Paul says the most important three things are faith, hope, and love, with the greatest of these being  love.  So I realize Jude isn’t Paul, but Jude likely would have read Paul’s stuff.  Still, mercy, peace, and love are all good things.

Much like the calling, belovedness, and being guarded mentioned in the ealier verse, these three things are things that are bestowed upon us by God through the Spirit as we seek to pursue him.  If we could have done these things ourselves, there would have been no need for Jesus to come.  Jesus came to bring us mercy, his Gospel is peace, and he showed us the Father’s love.  These things are now available liberally to us if we should choose to receive them and then live accordingly.

Reflections on Jude III: Called and Kept

To those who are the called, beloved in God the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ (Jude 1b).

In his address, Jude uses three descriptors to define the identity of his readers.  Notice that these describe the people but are based on the action of God.  For example, if I use “well-dressed” as a descriptor of myself, that would be based on an action of mine (i.e. dressing myself in nice clothes).  Or if I used “patient” to describe myself, that would be referencing my character, which I have control over through the decisions I make and the disicplines I practice.  But in this verse, Jude points out that the realities of who we are in God’s eyes, which are not dependant upon us but upon God.  Whether in any given moment we choose to live according to this new identity in no way diminishes the fact that we are called, beloved, and kept.

So let’s break this down.  First, we are named “the called.”  We, as individuals, and together as the people of God, are identified as those who have been called by the Father and received and acknowledged that call at some point.  We have been named by God and given an assignment and a vision for the future.  We have a “calling” in life, which is to become the people that God wants us to be, and to take part in His Kingdom purposes.  This calling is primary and above any other “calling” in life, be that to any specific job or task that we might identify as a personal “calling”.

Then Jude says we are beloved of the Father.  I could write a book on what that means, but suffice it to say, there is nothing that we could do or say that would change the way God feels about us.  Our “belovedness” is secure because it rests in God’s capacity to love rather than our ability to perform or to receive that love.

And then Jude mentions we are kept for Jesus.  It is unclear what is a better translation of the last part of the verse: “kept in Jesus” or “kept for Jesus” or “kept by Jesus”.  In both of the first two instances, the Father appears to be doing the keeping.  In the first instance it indicates our spiritual status and our relation to Jesus, and in the latter it seems to mean we are preserved for the sake of Jesus, which I don’t quite understand.  Then, in the third option, Jesus in the one doing the keeping the guarding.  I suppose any of these options are good, but I do not know that Paul refers to the “saints in Christ Jesus” (Phil 1:1) and from Jesus’ own teaching we know that he fiercely guards and protects his own (See Lk 20:31-32; Jn 10:28, 17:12), so I prefer the “in” option.  But again, it is God who is doing the action on us.  We do not guard or protect ourselves, but are sustain and kept by the God who is able to do so, and who does so out of his love for his beloved, and in order that we may persevere in the calling to which he has called us.

Reflections on Jude II: I’m a Slave For You

Jude, a bond-servant of Jesus Christ (Jude 1a)

“Bond-servant” is kind of a funny word.  I think “slave” would be a more appropriate and generally understandable term.

But what do we think of when we think of slavery?  Likely we think of the brutal and inhumane abduction and trafficking of humans and back-breaking labour in the cotton-fields of antebellum America.  However, slavery in the Old and New Testaments was quite different.  I do not mean to suggest it was a cake-walk or comparable to the life of the free person, but you could say that harsh edge of more recent expressions of slavery are not there.

In the Old Testament, people became slaves because they could not pay their debts or because they were war captives.  In each case,  however, slaves could participate in religious festivals (like Passover), the life of the family to some extent, and the Law condemned unduly harsh treatment and killing of slaves.  In the New Testament era, slavery was similar.  Slaves were often tutors and stewards of households.  There are a number of stories that record the elevated status of slaves.  So this is what Jude and others like Paul have in mind when they use the term “slave.”

Followers of Jesus are now his slaves, but in the past we have experienced being slaves to Sin, and I might say that our lives under Sin looked more like the lives of black slaves in America and the Caribbean.  Sin was a cruel and hard taskmaster that would do whatever it could to maintain its control over us; and we were powerless to do anything else but carry out its dictates.  But when Jesus came along, he purchased us with his blood out from under the dominion of Sin and made us his own slaves.

So what does slavery to Jesus look like?  Well, as our master, he retains control over us in the sense that he is the one who gives the orders and we are asked to obey.  The slave does not decide what is best for himself, but rather trusts the master.  So this is what Jesus asks of us: trust, faith, and obedience — in return for which he offers protection and to work toward our best interest.

To be clear, there can be no choice not to be a slave.  We are either slaves of Jesus, or we are slaves to Sin and our own selfish interests. There is no third option.  True self-determination is a myth.

Reflections on Jude I: The Nasty Side of Networking

Jude, a bond-servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James (Jude 1a)

In a world where name-dropping and family connection has often been seen as the way to get ahead, Jude (and likewise his brother James [see James 1:1]) has the opportunity to really make a big deal of the fact that he is the brother of Jesus himself (see Mt 13:55.  Note: Jude in Greek is Judas).  But the way Jude describes his relationship to Jesus is as a bond-servant (likewise Paul [see Rom 1:1]).  He knows his place in relationship to a man who more than being his brother is his Lord and Saviour.   He humbly accepts this designation as a slave of Jesus, and, by extension, the very servant of the Church of God.  He knows his place.

Now, he does call himself the brother of James, a recognized leader in the church and fellow contributor to the New Testament, but I wouldn’t begrudge him for making mention of such a close relationship as a brother.  And in a world without last names and fairly come first names like John, Jesus, and Judas, designations like “son of” (in Hebrew bar-) and “brother of” served to answer the question “which Jesus, Judas, or John?” (see Mt. 27:17).

But I wonder how often I get by in the world by trusting in important relationships.  The old adage “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” seems to me to be very true.  Does this then define my approach to relationships?  Do I compute my worth and future job prospects based on these relationships rather than trusting myself into the care of Jesus as his bond-servant and relying on his provision?  I do not mean to suggest that networking 0r making a call to someone who you know can help you in certain situation is a bad thing, but reliance on these instead of upon God, and having a puffed-up image of yourself because of these connections, is sin.

The New and the Old

Consider these words of Jesus from Mark 2:21-23:

“No one would patch an old piece of clothing with a patch of new cloth; but if anyone did, the new patch would pull away, making the tear worse.  And no one would pour new wine old wineskins; but if anyone did, the wine would burst the wineskins, and both the wine and the wineskins would be ruined.  Instead, new wine goes into new wineskins.”

To tell you the truth, I have never really understood where Jesus is going here.  He says lots of confusing and cryptic things, but this is on the top of my list of “what?!” moments.

So I did some thinking and digging.

It is worthwhile to note that Jesus makes this statement in response to some people who asked him: “How is it that John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, but yours are not?” (v. 18).

It would seem to me that Jesus is contrasting the religious traditions of the day with his own teaching and the kind of community he was beginning to create.  He was doing something different, symbolized by this new or unshrunk (literally, pure or unspoiled) piece of cloth that would act as a patch.  But the problem is that the new patch and the old garment are incompatible.  The cloth in the new patch is still dynamic.  It is in the process of changing, and trying to match that with the new old garment won’t work.  Likewise, the new wine was still in the process of fermenting, and the gases released would break and old and brittle wineskin, but a new and flexible skin would be fine to handle a little expansion due to fermentation.

In this context, I believe Jesus is saying: “We don’t fast because at this point I am breaking and reinventing the rules.  Not that we will never fast (v. 20), but I mean to say that the old structures and all the details about them do not necessarily serve the new things that God is doing.  If Judaism as it currently stands is not flexible enough to accept this new thing, well then we just need some new wineskins or a new garment.”

While God was doing something unique and very new in the person of Jesus — something never to be replicated or trumped — he is always doing something new in our world on some scale, and the question Jesus asks us here is whether the wineskins and the garments (i.e. the beliefs, traditions, structures, and institutions we have) are flexible enough to incorporate the new thing.  And if we still insist on trying to stuff the new God-movements into our old ways of doing things, our old systems will explode and we won’t be treated to all that has God has to offer either.

So what new things is the Spirit doing in your life and faith community and where does there need to be change in order for Him to accomplish this new work to the fullest?