Jesus cannot be domesticated. Every time someone tries to house train Him, He breaks off the leash and starts causing trouble. We keep trying to cover Him up with our “isms”, (individualism, consumerism, Methodism, denominationalism, Catholicism, etc…), but He refuses to be covered by them. Underneath the crusts of our “isms”, the pressure of the pure gospel is slowly bursting through. You see, my friends, there is no such thing as “Gospelism”.
Even with the abundance of “Jesus Junk”, by which I mean all the stuff you can buy about Jesus, there is a current of activity swarming around Christianity that will change the face of serving Jesus forever. In the massively successful The Purpose Drive Life, people flocked to it because it loosely offered a gospel package that could be completed in 40 days. Churches everywhere ponied up huge dough to hold a “40 Day” event. But the Gospel message of Jesus cannot be contained or taught in 40 days.
What people are struggling with, or more to the point, churches are struggling with, is that serving Jesus is messy. Churches work hard to keep the membership controlled like a zoo, with certain kinds of animals in certain kinds of cages. Once you have them segregated, you can give them what they need to be cooperative in their environment.
Jesus, on the other hand, preached freedom and non-segregation. He went where the problems were, met with the people that had the problems, fixed the problems and then left the people there to help others work through the problems. Crowd compliance and control where not top on Jesus’ priority list.
Face it, the gospel of God’s uncompromising love for His creation (all of His creation, even the socially unaccepted parts), incarnated most perfectly in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, will be just as unpredictable as the wild-eyed Messiah was Himself. Jesus absolutely refused to be domesticated by the cultural, political and theological forces of His day. That’s why the more we try to make Jesus out to be a conservative Republican, the more ridiculous we look. More importantly, by trying to get Jesus to look whatever way we need Him to, we remove His effectiveness and availability to other groups of people.
We think we are making progress as we fight the evil of our day. The truth is, all we are doing is making the wrong people rich. Think about it, much of the “left versus the right” confrontation is a farce to prop up television rating and find a way to stuff 20 minutes worth of news into 24 hours’ worth of coverage. We have kept radio show hosts employed, filled the treasuries of political parties, while at the same time laying off vital ministry team members so we can secure our church mortgage so we have a rallying point to fight this axis of evil.
But people in the pews are checking out, becoming savvy to the moral bankruptcy they see on both sides of the “debate”. They didn’t sign on to be the world’s moral police department, they signed on to make an impact in assisting the restoration of the world.
Now enters Jesus.
Brian McLaren says, “Either Christianity itself is flawed, failing or untrue, or our modern, Western, commercialized, industrial strength version of it is in need of a fresh look, a serious revision.”
I think McLaren is close, but I don’t find the answer in any kind a revision of today’s Christianity. It will take a complete overhaul, including but not stopping at a restructuring of clergy and a return to congregational accountability for their own growth and spiritual learning.
While this may sound like a daunting task, it can be accomplished by returning to the model of discipleship as taught and demonstrated by Jesus. Our best estimates tell us there are about 225 million people in America that see themselves somehow and someway attached or affiliated to a church. The question isn’t how many professing Christians there are, the real question is what level of commitment they have to their churches. Herein lies the issue.
Now enters Jesus.
It’s not God who is dead. In the 21st Century, it is the church that is dead. At the very least, the conventional forms of church. Our elaborate edifices, our professional clergy, denominational bureaucracies and residential seminary training are failing to serve the needs of today’s spiritual communities and are working in unison to further push the radical and life changing message of Jesus out the door.
As the very fabric of the denominations is tearing apart, we can still bring a vibrant and radical Jesus to the forefront. We are challenged to stop preaching sermons and start living them. By letting Jesus out of the cage of our own design, He will help us repair our current landscape and then get back to the business of His work: repairing the world.
David
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