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To make the cross of Jesus just about human salvation is to miss that God is interested in the saving of everything. Every star and rock and bird. All things.

And God isn’t just interested in reclaiming his original dream for creation; he wants to take it further. Imagine if you took all the sin and death out of the Bible. You would be left with a short book. It would have four chapters to be exact: Genesis 1 and 2; Revelation 21 and 22. In Genesis 1 and 2, we are told of a garden, but in Revelation 21 and 22, we are told of a city. A city is more advanced, more complicated than a garden. If a garden is developed and managed and cared for, it is eventually going to turn into a city. If there was no sin or death, creation would still move forward because God doesn’t just want to reclaim things; God wants to see them move forward.

A New Culture

Let’s return to the garden, to Jesus rising from the dead, having conquered death. The early community of Jesus’s followers saw in his resurrection the moment their people had been waiting for: God continuing, but in a new and significant way, the restoration of the world. Paul goes so far as to say that Jesus’s resurrection was the firstfruits— a very Jewish way of saying, “Hang on, there’s more to come.”13 (#ulink_082bcf01-05d9-5c4c-9df5-3aaa456914e9)

In the first century, this claim of restoration had numerous social, political, and economic dimensions to it. The world was ruled by the Roman Empire, and the Roman Empire was ruled by a succession of emperors called the caesars. The caesars claimed they were sent by the gods to renew creation. Caesar Augustus believed that as the son of god, he was god incarnate on earth, the prince of peace who had come to restore all of creation. He inaugurated a twelve-day celebration called Advent to celebrate his birth. Sound familiar? His priests offered sacrifices and incense to rid people of their guilt. One of his popular slogans was “There is no other name under heaven by which men can be saved than that of Caesar.” Another phrase they used often was “Caesar is Lord.” Throughout the Roman Empire, the caesars called on people to worship them as the divine saviors of humankind, and a city that acknowledged Caesar as Lord was called an ekklesia.14 (#ulink_5c6a9b90-0037-5af4-986b-b7a98e299ac8)

Being a citizen of the Roman Empire was significant. It was membership in the most powerful kingdom ever. All of society, for that matter, was ranked and ordered. Roman citizens were higher status than non-Roman citizens. Men were ranked higher than women. Slave owners and those who were free were ranked above slaves, who were seen as property to be owned. And then there were the masses—the majority of the population who weren’t the elite, ruling class. Everybody had their place in society.

It was at this time, in this world, that the Jesus movement exploded among an ethnic minority in a remote corner of the empire. These people claimed their leader was a rabbi who had announced the arrival of the kingdom of God, had been crucified, and had risen from the dead and appeared to his followers. One of their favorite slogans was “Jesus is Lord.”15 (#ulink_8a1ed19c-a406-5876-8ed0-5ccfc47d9449)

Take a minute to reflect on the political dimensions of that claim. If Jesus is Lord, then what does that say about Caesar? These first Christians were subverting the entire order of the empire, claiming that there was a Lord, and he wasn’t Caesar. And what did they call their gatherings? Ekklesias.16 (#ulink_0e7cc2e8-0d79-523a-841b-4adf18bdd281) A word that translates in English as “church.” Another of their favorite slogans was “There is no other name given under heaven by which we must be saved than that of Jesus.”17 (#ulink_e1d16f29-9479-5562-bfe8-321e31dc2784) Shocking. They took political propaganda from the empire and changed the words to make it about their Lord. To join up with these people was to risk your life. And not only this, but they made claims about the whole way society was structured.

In a letter to a church in a region called Galatia, one of the first Christians, Paul, claimed that “in Christ”—the phrase Christians used to describe this new reality—there was “neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female.”18 (#ulink_00cc6e7e-b136-590e-aa99-f56af15a9045) He is calling the entire culture into question, insisting that through this risen-from-the-dead Jesus, the whole world is being reorganized. And in this new reality, every person is equal. Everybody. Paul is the first person in the history of world literature to argue that all human beings are equal.19 (#ulink_165dc9e9-51d6-51f1-9041-ead2781fdbb2)

Not only were these first Christians subverting the dominant power structures of their world, but they were confident that the resurrected Christ was working in them and through them to reclaim God’s dream for the world. The writer Luke gives us insight into what this confidence looked like in their everyday lives. He wrote that they were witnessing the resurrection, “and God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them.”20 (#ulink_c33ceb42-af74-53fc-8dca-c614bcd2eb2b) What was the result of the resurrection, according to Luke? “No needy persons among them.”

Remember, the caesars claimed they were the ones who provided for everyone and saved everyone and made the world a better place. For these first Christians, the question was, Who is Lord? Jesus or Caesar? Who orders society? Who provides for you? Who puts food on your table? Who brings peace to the world?

To be a part of the church was to join a countercultural society that was partnering with God to create a new kind of culture, right under the nose of the caesars. These Christians made sure everybody in their midst had enough to eat. They made sure everybody was able to pay their bills. They made sure there was enough to go around. The resurrection for them was not an abstract spiritual concept; it was a concrete social and economic reality. God raised Jesus from the dead to show the world that Jesus is Lord, and it is through his power and his example and his Spirit that the world is restored.

It is important to remember that we rarely find these first Christians trying to prove that the resurrection actually occurred. For one, a lot of the people who saw Jesus after he rose from the dead were still alive, so if people had questions and doubts, they could talk to somebody who was actually there.21 (#ulink_9fbd7f50-23e3-55ec-a11e-e5b98b801277) But there’s another reason: Everybody’s god in the first century had risen from the dead.22 (#ulink_73785619-3f7e-5fb2-93bf-df75efbcd68c) To claim a resurrection had occurred was nothing new: Julius Caesar himself was reported to have ascended to the right hand of the gods after his death. To try to prove there was an empty tomb wouldn’t have gotten very far with the average citizen of the Roman Empire; they had heard it all before. This is why so many passages about the early church deal with possessions and meals and generosity.23 (#ulink_7c95207e-ec92-50f8-8751-3c28c97fb2c4) They understood that people are rarely persuaded by arguments, but more often by experiences. Living, breathing, flesh-and-blood experiences of the resurrection community. They saw it as their responsibility to put Jesus’s message on display. To the outside world, it was less about proving and more about inviting people to experience this community of Jesus’s followers for themselves.

And so these first Christians passed on the faith to the next generation who passed it on to the next generation who passed it on to the next generation until it got to . . . us. Here. Today. Those who follow Jesus and belong to his church. And now it is our turn. It is our turn to step up and take responsibility for who the church is going to be for a new generation. It is our turn to redefine and reshape and dream it all up again. It is our turn to rediscover the beautiful, dangerous, compelling idea that a group of people, surrendered to God and to each other, really can change the world.

Serving Others

I am learning that the church is at its best when it gives itself away. And this is because blessing is always instrumental. Let me explain. In Genesis 12, God tells a man named Abram that he’s going to bless him, and through him, he is going to bless the whole world. This is the birth of the Jewish people, whom God wants to use to reach everybody. This blessing is instrumental in nature. God wants to use Abraham, to flow through him, to have him be the conduit through whom God can bless everybody else.24 (#ulink_78bc7a93-969f-5d81-aa6a-22cde5b390d9) Abraham is just a vessel. God doesn’t choose people just so they’ll feel good about themselves or secure in their standing with God or whatever else. God chooses people to be used to bless other people. Elected, predestined, chosen—whatever words people use for this reality, the point is never the person elected or chosen or predestined. The point is that person serving others, making their lives better.

The second significant idea in Genesis 12 is that Abraham’s calling is universal. It is for everybody. All kinds of people all over the place are going to be blessed by God through Abraham. God has no boundaries. God blesses everybody. People who don’t believe in God. People who are opposed to God. People who do violent, evil things. God’s intentions are to bless everybody. Jesus continues this idea in many of his teachings. In the book of Luke he says, “I am among you as one who serves.”25 (#ulink_6e5f68bb-2ff2-52bf-a4dd-b13cf77987c2) He not only refers to himself as a servant, sent to serve others, but he teaches his disciples that the greatest in his kingdom are the ones who serve.26 (#ulink_4fa2ba3f-d927-5487-abe9-629576cdbcdc) For Jesus, everything is upside down. The best and greatest and most important are the ones who humble themselves, set their needs and desires aside, and selflessly serve others.

So what is a group of people living this way called? That’s the church. The church doesn’t exist for itself; it exists to serve the world. It is not ultimately about the church; it’s about all the people God wants to bless through the church. When the church loses sight of this, it loses its heart. This is especially true today in the world we live in where so many people are hostile to the church, many for good reason. We reclaim the church as a blessing machine not only because that is what Jesus intended from the beginning but also because serving people is the only way their perceptions of church are ever going to change. This is why it is so toxic for the gospel when Christians picket and boycott and complain about how bad the world is. This behavior doesn’t help. It makes it worse. It isn’t the kind of voice Jesus wants his followers to have in the world. Why blame the dark for being dark? It is far more helpful to ask why the light isn’t as bright as it could be.

Good News

Another truth about the church we’re embracing is that the gospel is good news, especially for those who don’t believe it.

Imagine an average street in an average city in an average country, if there is such a place. Let’s imagine Person X lives in a house on this street. Next door is a Hindu, and on the other side is a Muslim. Across the street is an atheist, next door to them an agnostic, and next door on the other side, someone from Ohio.

Imagine Person X becomes a Christian. Maybe she read something or had friends who inspired her to learn more, or maybe she had an addiction and through a recovery movement she surrendered her life to God. However it came to be, she became a follower of Jesus. Let’s say she starts living out Jesus’s teachings, actually taking him seriously that she can become a compelling force for good in the world. She is becoming more generous, more compassionate, more forgiving, more loving. Is she becoming a better or worse neighbor? If we are her neighbors, we’re thrilled about her new faith. We find ourselves more and more grateful for a neighbor like this. We wish more people would be like this.

Let’s make some observations about this street. The good news of Jesus is good news for Person X. It’s good news for Person X’s neighbors. It’s good news for the whole street. It’s good news for people who don’t believe in Jesus. We have to be really clear about this. The good news for Person X is good news for the whole street. And if it is good news for the whole street, then it’s good news for the whole world.

If the gospel isn’t good news for everybody, then it isn’t good news for anybody.

And this is because the most powerful things happen when the church surrenders its desire to convert people and convince them to join. It is when the church gives itself away in radical acts of service and compassion, expecting nothing in return, that the way of Jesus is most vividly put on display. To do this, the church must stop thinking about everybody primarily in categories of in or out, saved or not, believer or nonbeliever. Besides the fact that these terms are offensive to those who are the “un” and “non,” they work against Jesus’s teachings about how we are to treat each other. Jesus commanded us to love our neighbor, and our neighbor can be anybody.27 (#ulink_c6ad7e5f-3056-5f4c-b7ec-b13fc397ac97) We are all created in the image of God, and we are all sacred, valuable creations of God.28 (#ulink_553e3280-76df-5470-b849-afe4eff8a799) Everybody matters. To treat people differently based on who believes what is to fail to respect the image of God in everyone. As the book of James says, “God shows no favoritism.”29 (#ulink_be8cffb9-b347-5534-9604-c2a9e0ebe002) So we don’t either.

Oftentimes the Christian community has sent the message that we love people and build relationships in order to convert them to the Christian faith. So there is an agenda. And when there is an agenda, it isn’t really love, is it? It’s something else. We have to rediscover love, period. Love that loves because it is what Jesus teaches us to do. We have to surrender our agendas. Because some people aren’t going to become Christians like us no matter how hard we push. They just aren’t. And at some point we have to commit them to God, trusting that God loves them more than we ever could. I obviously love to talk to people about Jesus and my faith. I’ll take every opportunity I can get. But I have learned that when I toss out my agenda and simply love as Jesus teaches me to, I often end up learning more about God than I could have imagined.

And one thing to keep in mind is that we never arrive. Ever. One of the illusions of faith is that at some point we get it all mapped out and things get smooth and predictable. It is not true. The way of Jesus is a journey, not a destination. On a journey, the scenery changes. A lot. We can prepare for some things but not all. We make mistakes, figure it out as we go along, and try new things. Failures are really just opportunities to learn. If you are part of a church, is the dominant understanding of faith in your church that of journey or destination?

I am learning that the church is at its best when it is underground, subversive, and countercultural. It is the quiet, humble, stealth acts that change things. I was just talking to a woman named Michelle who decided to move into the roughest neighborhood in our city to try to help people get out of the cycle of poverty and despair. She was telling me about the kids she is tutoring and the families they come from and how great the needs are. Some other women in our church heard about Michelle and asked her for lists of what exactly the families in her neighborhood need. (One of the families wrote on their list “heat.”) They then circulated the lists until they found people who could meet every one of the needs. It’s like an underground mom-mafia network. Michelle told me at last count they had helped 430 families, and they are making plans to expand their network.

“Jesus lives; here’s a toaster.”

These are the kinds of people who change the world. They improvise and adapt and innovate and explore new ways to get things done. They don’t make a lot of noise, and they don’t draw a lot of attention to themselves.

Difficulty, Suffering, and Hope

To be this kind of person—the kind who selflessly serves—takes everything a person has. It is difficult. It is demanding. And we often find ourselves going against the flow of those around us. Which is why we are reclaiming the simple fact that Jesus said the way is narrow.30 (#ulink_50063b51-2f10-597c-95fb-b3f3aadb74e1) We are honest about this, especially to our friends who wouldn’t say they are Christians. Very few people in our world are offering anything worth dying for. Most of the messages we receive are about how to make life easier. The call of Jesus goes the other direction: It’s about making our lives more difficult. It is going out of our way to be more generous and disciplined and loving and free. It is refusing to escape and become numb to and check out of this broken, fractured world.

And so we are embracing the high demands of Jesus’s call to be one of his disciples. We are honest about it. We want our friends to know up front that the costs are high, which is what is so appealing about Jesus—his vision for life takes everything we have.

In the accounts of Jesus’s life, often the larger the crowds get, the more demanding and difficult his teachings get. In John 6 he gives a teaching that is so hard to swallow, everybody but a few leave him. He is constantly trying to find out who really wants it. And so he keeps pushing and prodding and questioning and putting it out there until some leave and the diehards stay. We never find him chasing after someone, trying to convince them that he really wasn’t that serious, that it was just a figure of speech. He didn’t really mean sell your possessions and give to the poor. If anybody didn’t have a Messiah complex, it was Jesus.

This is what we are all dying for—something that demands we step up and become better, more focused people. Something that calls out the greatness that we hope is somewhere inside of us.

Not only is the way narrow, but it involves suffering. To truly engage with how the world is, our hearts are going to be broken again and again. Just this past week, I met a woman who is terrified her husband is going to beat her, and another woman who has a degenerative muscle disease that is causing her face to freeze up, and I can think of at least five couples who are splitting up, and . . . you get the picture. It is your world too. And so we are learning how to suffer well. Not to avoid it but to feel the full force of it. It is important that churches acknowledge suffering and engage it—never, ever presenting the picture that if you follow Jesus, your problems will go away. Following Jesus may bring on problems you never imagined.

Suffering is a place where clichés don’t work and words often fail. I was at lunch last week with a friend who is in the middle of some difficult days, and I don’t have any answers. I just don’t. I can’t fix it for him. I’ve tried. And we sat there and talked and ate, and I let him know that I’m in it with him. It isn’t very pretty and it isn’t very fun, but when we join each other in the pain and confusion, God is there. Sometimes it means we sit in silence for a while, not knowing what to say. And it is in our suffering together that we find out we are not alone. We find out who really loves us. We find out that with these people around us, we can make it through anything. And that gives us something to celebrate.

Ultimately our gift to the world around us is hope. Not blind hope that pretends everything is fine and refuses to acknowledge how things are. But the kind of hope that comes from staring pain and suffering right in the eyes and refusing to believe that this is all there is. It is what we all need—hope that comes not from going around suffering but from going through it. I am learning that the church has nothing to say to the world until it throws better parties. By this I don’t necessarily mean balloons and confetti and clowns who paint faces. I mean backyards and basements and porches. It is in the flow of real life, in the places we live and move with the people we’re on the journey with, that we are reminded it is God’s world and we’re going to be okay.

Central to reclaiming creation and being a resurrection community is the affirmation that when God made the world, God said it was “good.”

And it still is.

Food and music and art and friends and stories and rivers and lakes and oceans and laughter and . . . did I mention food? God has given us life, and God’s desire is that we live it. It is the job of the church to lead the world in affirming and, more important, enjoying the goodness of creation. We are not going somewhere else at the end of time, because this world is our home. And our home is good.

One of the most tragic things ever to happen to the gospel was the emergence of the message that Jesus takes us somewhere else if we believe in him. The Bible ends with God coming here.31 (#ulink_623b507d-9d9c-5244-b27a-bbe9cbaf8187) God, in the midst of all the people who can imagine nothing better, celebrating the life that we all share. The images Jesus used were of banquets and feasts and celebrations.32 (#ulink_0c58ffb4-d6f3-5336-9124-38da4c7c23a1) What do we do at parties such as these? We eat and talk and dance and enjoy each other and above all else, we take our time. What does Jesus do almost as much as he teaches and heals? He eats long meals. As Christians, it is our duty to master the art of the long meal.

If you find yourself wanting to take me less seriously, let me ask a question: What was the ritual the first Christians observed with the most frequency? Exactly. The common meal, also called the Eucharist or the Lord’s Supper. And what did this meal consist of? Hours of talking and sharing and enjoying each other’s presence. Food is the basis of life, it comes from the earth, and the earth is God’s. In a Jewish home in Jesus’s day—and even now—the table is seen as an altar. It’s holy. Time spent around the table with each other is time spent with God.

My wife and I threw a party last summer and we called it “An Epic Celebration of All That Is Good.” We had a band playing in the backyard and food everywhere, a DJ set up in the living room, all the furniture was pushed against the walls, and there were cars up and down the street—and it was just the best. And what was the occasion for the party? I was hoping you’d ask. There wasn’t one. That’s the best reason you can have. Relax. Slow down. Quit having a purpose for everything. Eat more slowly and enjoy it more. Ask people how they are doing—and mean it. Take more walks. You will get more done anyway.

She

One of the central metaphors for God and his people throughout the Bible is that of a groom and his bride. God is the groom; his people are the bride. I like this because it makes the church a “she.” We need to reclaim this image.

The church is a she.

She’s a mystery, isn’t she? Still going after all this time. After the Crusades and the Inquisition and Christian cable television. Still going. And there continue to be people like me who believe she is one of the best ideas ever. In spite of all the ways she has veered off track. In spite of all the people who have actually turned away from God because of what they experienced in church. I am starting to realize why: The church is like a double-edged sword. When it’s good, when it’s on, when it’s right, it’s like nothing on earth. A group of people committed to selflessly serving and loving the world around them? Great. But when it’s bad, all that potential gets turned the other way. From the highest of highs to the lowest of lows. Sometimes in the same week. Sometimes in the same day.

But she will live on. She’s indestructible. When she dies in one part of the world, she explodes in another. She’s global. She’s universal. She’s everywhere. And while she’s fragile, she’s going to endure. In every generation there will be those who see her beauty and give their lives to see her shine. Jesus said the gates of hell will not prevail against her. That’s strong language. And it’s true. She will continue to roll across the ages, serving and giving and connecting people with God and each other. And people will abuse her and manipulate her and try to control her, but they’ll pass on. And she will keep going.

EPILOGUE (#ulink_b2ca9e2c-63f0-5425-8783-39ad670f27ab)