Kingdom People Doing Kingdom Things

I don't know how long I've been saying something to the effect that "it is all about kingdom people doing kingdom things." Long enough that when my adult children are in a room where I'm speaking, they seem to anticipate the phrase before I do. But I'm not embarrassed by that - it truly is all about kingdom people doing kingdom things.

Just as I was handing out our first test in Biblical Interpretation on Monday of this week, I got a message that, despite my tendency to ignore the iPhone while in class, I checked. It was from a former student, Laurie Wardle, telling me that earlier Monday morning, another former student, Scott Gamel, had unexpected died of a massive heart attack. (Somehow I think Scott might have chuckled a bit when he realized that he had just interrupted my Interp test!)

Today I've been looking at Facebook with an uncommon interest in what people are posting. Lots and lots of Scott's friends have posted sweet notes about Scott's life and notes wanting Vicki and the six sons they brought into this world to know that prayers are being offered in their behalf. When moments like this come barging into our lives, one thing we know for sure is that the body of Christ knows that it is time for us to get on our knees. There's comfort in that thought all by itself.

Scott was at Point (then ACC, but Scott loved the college and supported its ministry and on his FB page you see "Point University") during a time when there were lots of great young men who would marry equally great (or greater - smart boys marry up) young women who have truly become kingdom people doing kingdom things. I'm thinking right now about posts I've seen from people like Buck and Laurie Wardle, Mike Thompson, Chris Rollins, and lots and lots of other people who are stunned by the untimely loss of such a great kingdom worker. Seeing what they are writing reminds me of what a blessed life I have had to have been a part of their lives at some level.

Scott was a model of what I hope Point continues to produce - both in ministry degree programs and other degree programs where students may not have vocational ministry in mind, but understand that when all is said and done, we're all ministers. He believed it was all about Jesus. Period. No more. No less. He refused to let the gospel, anchored in Jesus and oozing grace, be encumbered by the nonsense of legalism, tradition, and the rest of that stuff that keeps us from transforming the world. Despite his die-hard Alabama Roll Tide view of life, I think he actually thought it was possible for Auburn fans to go to heaven - but only by the grace of God! Young guys like Scott, Buck, and Chris - and lots of others - have established kingdom outposts in very different places in the United States - but somehow with the same message: Jesus. Period. No more. No less.

It's so rewarding from my vantage point in life to see them post on Facebook about their churches and ministries, their families, their kingdom outlooks, and life in general. The occasional email or response to some blog I've written more than makes the day. It's hard for me to imagine why God would bless me with the opportunity to have been a part of the lives of young Christians like this - but I'm incredibly thankful He has.

I've been thinking about Scott - and Vicki and their sons, their church family, all their family and friends from all around all day. I can't help but think of a little verse from Jeremy Camp's Give Me Jesus.

When I come to die
When I come to die
Oh, when I come to die
Give me Jesus

It wouldn't surprise me if Scott loved that song as I do. But even if he never heard of it - it was his song.

Thank God for Scott Gamel - a kingdom person who did kingdom things!

Troubling Reminders and The Breaking of Dawn

Last week in my Biblical Interpretation class, we were finishing up a section titled, “Is Scripture the Trustworthy Word of God?” The subtitle to that section is “If it is, what do we do with it?” A part of how that second question is to be answered is to realize the transforming power of Scripture in the heads and hearts of those who follow Jesus. The exact quote from the PowerPoint slide at this point was, “With Scripture – the extant story – in head and heart, believers are to the world what Jesus was to Israel.”

We spent a little time talking about “the world” to which we are called to bring the transforming message of Jesus. I asked a simple question – “What’s going on in the world right now?” The answer wasn’t quite so simple. Students mentioned issues like the outbreak of Ebola in Africa, the questions about justice in Ferguson, Missouri, the Ukraine versus Russian story, the Hamas versus Israel story, and of course the beheading of two American journalist by ISIS. Most of the students in this class aren’t old enough to remember the details of September 11, 2014 – but someone mentioned the anniversary was coming up – and that the events happening right now were cause for concern.

Perhaps we will never know exactly all the motivation for the horrific events of 9/11, or for that matter, what could motivate ISIS to do such cruel and inhumane acts against two Americans. Even more troubling is the fact that if what we read is true, often Christians are being targeted by terrorists groups simply because of their faith in Jesus. 

Our culture’s insistence on remembering 9/11 every year along with the reality of today’s headlines provide for us troubling reminders of how desperately our world needs the Jesus story to become its story. To His own disciples, Jesus said, “As the Father has sent Me, so send I you.” (John 20:21) Only in our willingness to be Jesus to the world will His story become its story.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote much of Ethics while in concentration camps in Germany during the last years of his life. I think that if he and I compared “troubling reminders,” I would quickly concede and admit that he faced far greater struggles as a believer than I have. But that isn’t to say that the rather long and troubling list of items from my class when I asked them to tell me about our world isn’t challenging. 

In the mist of his struggles, Bonhoeffer said “The night is not yet over, but already the dawn is breaking.” (Ethics, page 17) He said that in the context of understanding our call as followers of Jesus is to be Jesus to the world. “Only the form of Jesus Christ confronts the world and defeats it. And it is from this form alone that there comes the formation of a new world, a world which is reconciled with God.”  (17)

I reminded my students that when we allow Scripture to be what God intended it to be and in our wrestling with its meaning and application in our own lives, “it allows us to move from mere story line about a man named Jesus to an agenda for the world which transforms it into the Kingdom of God.”

Just thinking about the memory searing images so many of us witness on September 11, 2001 is a troubling reminder of how evil humans apart from Jesus can be. Reading the front page of yesterday’s  newspaper likely does the same. The world without the Jesus story embedded in its core being has no way to live beyond the old, beyond death, beyond sin.

But what we know – because the Jesus of trustworthy Scripture told us – is that God’s mission is to renew and restore creation to its God-intended purpose. In the person of Jesus, God has inaugurated that mission which will one day be fully consummated in the glory of His reappearing.

Until then, surrounded by troubling reminders, let us not forget what Bonhoeffer understood – The night is not yet over, but already the dawn is breaking.”

Hot House Flowers

In his masterful little book on the value of Christian community, Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer says, “Human love breeds hot-house flowers; spiritual love creates the fruits that grow healthily in accord with God’s good will in the rain and storm and sunshine of God’s outdoors.” (page 37) That statement is in the midst of a discussion on the importance of having the courage to “be ready to leave him (the unbeliever) alone with this Word for a long time.” (page 36) That idea is, from Bonhoeffer’s perspective, the right alternative to taking “pleasure in pious, human fervor and excitement.”

Last spring, for some special occasion that slips my memory at the moment, I sent my wife a “hot-house” grown – in full bloom – hydrangea. It was beautiful and, I thought, the perfect flower to send, since I love hydrangeas and want as many different kinds as I can manage to plant in my yard. So, once the flowers began to fade, I planted it in a great spot for a hydrangea. I did all the necessary soil amenities required when you plant something in North Georgia red clay.

For a while, in the cool spring time days where plenty of rain showers kept it moist, the hydrangea looked pretty good. But as the days grew warmer and the rain showers grew less frequent, my poor little hydrangea suffered. Only because I kept it watered, put some mulch around it, and otherwise babied it along has it survived.

Not ten feet from that particular hydrangea, I planted one that wasn’t from a hot house – but to use Bonhoeffer’s language, was from “the rain and storm and sunshine of God’s outdoors.” It has grown to triple its original size – and I’ve seldom needed to water it. When it comes to plant life, apparently “the real world” does a better job than “the artificial world” of a hot house.

I think there is a lesson there for us, especially if we are interested in being a part of God’s work to renew and restore creation through the body of Christ. Rather than retreating to the safety of spiritual hot houses, we need to be willing to trust that the Word – in all its meaning – can and will transform us and the world around us. Raising my children in an artificial hot house of pseudo-spirituality is a formula for failure. Seeing the church as little more than a safe haven from the godless world around us is a guarantee that we won’t change that godless world. Failing to learn about the whole world – yes, even science and the liberal arts – means that we continue in our cute little individualism that reeks of the same hypocrisy modeled by the Pharisees and was so disgusting to Jesus.

The gospel – the good news that in Jesus of Nazareth God has kept His promise to renew and restore creation – isn’t a very good hot-house plant! But it thrives in the “rain and storm and sunshine of God’s outdoors.” But we have to be courageous enough to trust that it will do just that!

Reading through the first six chapters of Acts this week has reminded me again of just how true that is. It is a remarkable story of kingdom growth. The story starts out with 11 guys still unsure what the kingdom is all about and by the time you get to the end of section one (6:7), Luke can only describe it by saying “the Word of God continued to spread; the number of the disciples increased greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.”  (NRSV)

Interestingly, there are a few occasions in this first section of Acts where “the world” is on the attach when it comes to the body of Christ. But when that happens, it only makes the church grow more rapidly and encourages it members to be more courageous in their witness. Only when there is an “internal, retreat mode” problem (Acts 5:1-12) do we see a bit of a bump on the road to advancing the Kingdom of God.  Using Bonhoeffer’s language, it was a “hot-house flower” moment.

If Paul could lay down the gauntlet to the Roman Emperor in the opening words of Romans by declaring “I am not ashamed of the gospel, it is the power of God for salvation for everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also the Greek,” (Romans 1:16) it seems to me that we ought to have confidence in that Word to renew and restore creation to its God-intended purpose. 

That can’t happen in the hot-house world of retreat, but only in the courageous world of “the rain and storm and sunshine of God’s outdoors.”