What's It All About?

We live in a time when there are lot of questions about what church is going to look like in the future.  Terms like post-modern and emergent are now a regular part of church jargon. And while there is not much consensus on where things are headed, there is more general agreement that church models and forms and practices are in flux, that this is a time of great transition.

But I suspect that uncertainties and conflicts about methods and styles and forms also reflect uncertainties with regard to what it means to be Christian.  Some of the things I took for granted as a child in church are no longer givens.  My Southern Baptist and Methodist playmates might have looked and sounded a bit different from this Presbyterian, but deep down we all knew the Christianity was primarily about saving your soul, about getting your ticket punched for heaven.  There were also sides of morality and blessings from God on the menu, but the main course was heaven when you died.

This ticket to heaven revolved around Jesus, of course.  It seems that God would have had to punish us, but thanks to a magic formula with Jesus as central ingredient, we could get a pass, getting into heaven even though we didn't merit it.  Pity those poor folk who thought they could get in by being good.  Turns out that didn't work. You have to know the Jesus password.  Those folks who imagined they could make it without Jesus were only fooling themselves.  You can't be good enough for God. 

To the degree I ever thought of such things as a child, I assumed that those who rejected Jesus mistakenly thought they were good enough on their own and didn't realize what a terrible fix they were in because of this mistake. (I do recall once arguing with a Baptist friend that since it was only a mistake and not intentional evil on their part, surely God wouldn't send Jews to hell.)  I don't think it ever occurred to me that Jewish people knew all about God's grace long before Jesus showed up, as can be seen in today's reading, Psalm 143.

Hear my prayer, O LORD;
    give ear to my supplications in your faithfulness;
    answer me in your righteousness. Do not enter into judgment with your servant,
    for no one living is righteous before you.

There it is right there. "I'm not right before you, God.  Please don't judge me because like everyone else, I fall short."  And the psalmist doesn't say anything about going to heaven.  Judgment and salvation for him have nothing to do with heaven. They are much more present and concrete.

It comes as a surprise to many Christians to learn that Jesus didn't speak very much about heaven either, and when he did he wasn't talking about us going there.  On the other hand, Jesus did talk a lot about the Kingdom, about a coming reign of God that his followers were to get ready for.  And this kingdom was not off-world.  It was breaking out here and there, within Jesus' followers, and it would eventually involve all of creation which itself "waits with eager longing" for that day, according to the Apostle Paul.

But if it doesn't require Jesus to know about God's grace, and if Jesus didn't come to get us to heaven (something Brian McLaren calls a "gospel of evacuation"), what's it all about?  I think answering this question is the vital task of the church in our day. 

Certainly the promise of eternal life is key component of Christianity, but popular notions of immortal souls are extra-biblical ideas imported from Greek philosophy, entirely foreign to Jesus and Paul and other early Christians.  And eternal life is not the end to which Christian faith aspires.  That end is the kingdom, the new heaven and new earth, the day when God's will is done on earth as it is in heaven, when earth becomes heaven-like.

In the notions of Christianity I picked up as a child, God doesn't really come off all that well.  God is forever sending folks to hell and some day will get so fed up that the whole world gets fried.  But it turns out that much of this view is not inherently biblical, and we Protestant Christians have long made a big deal about being biblical.  The biblical God comes off much better than the popular one I met as a child, a God you only wanted to be around if Jesus was there to keep God from getting you.  The biblical God has no plans to destroy the world, rapture anyone, or leave anyone behind.  The biblical God desperately wants to move the world toward a better future and is relentless in trying to draw us into that work, to enlist us as people who can show the world what they new day looks like.

It seems to me that a hopeful, loving, faith-driven vision of the future is something the world desperately needs right now.  It doesn't need a gospel of evacuation.  It needs a gospel of hope for a redeemed future.  It needs more people who have learned to live by the ways of heaven, not because they're getting ready to go there, but because they're getting the world ready for it to come here.  The world needs a Christianity that proclaims God's love for the world, a love that will not simply let the world do itself in, but will, in ways that confound and surprise us, bring life out of death and hope and possibility in the midst of cynicism and despair.

Whew! I'm getting wound up.  Think I'll stop now.

Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary.