Repo: The Church in Foreclosure

Sometimes I believe that the reason I am in politics is more to observe people than to serve them, though the latter is my calling.  The former, politics, is certainly a great tool for schooling me in the relevance of scriptures.  Each day as I read the Word, contemporary parallels become more obvious.  If spiritual progress has occurred over the centuries it sure is subtle.

Today I was reading about Peter, his imprisonment by Herod just after James the brother of John (Acts 12) had been beheaded.  You may know the story, in that while he was chained in prison, his friends, those in the Way (no pun intended) were praying for him.

Note the response to the young girl Rhonda, who ran inside to report Peter’s “unexpected” arrival at their place of prayer, “You must be out of your mind, it must be his angel.” (NIV).  What they were praying for and what they could believe for were way distant from each other.   Some had already assumed Peter’s similar demise to that of James, though masking their dark gut feeling as they offered corporate prayers for Peter; much like we often do, as we publically pray “in faith believing.”  Possibly hoping more that our own faith will be healed, than grasping that what we have need of has already been provided in Christ’s suffering.

My point is little has changed in the way we react today as church folk.

God is surely doing a new thing among all His people, yet like those acclimated to the Temples of that day, we work hard to sustain our own traditions and think less outside the box of our deeply held beliefs, than does the God who instructs those beliefs.  We ever resist those unlike us, whom God loves and reaches toward (“but God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean” (Acts 10:28b).  In that day it was the Gentiles, in our day, well, you may insert here the faces of those people groups that come to your mind.

Like the earlier Peter, we boast to God of how we would never be so unclean as to associate with sinners or even eat unclean things, having forgotten that all have sinned and were it not for the grace of God, we too would be in the numbers of those for whom we carry subtle hatred and bigotry.  Jesus died for all sinners!  Our task is not to identify sin (I recall Jesus’ response to the woman caught in adultery) but to love people.

When election season rolls around, our biases are only enflamed and more open, now justified in some way by our party affiliation.  The challenge for a spiritual leader during this season is to not be distracted from truth by sudden and unnatural displays of religion.

My conclusion, people are people and seldom change unless God intervenes and mercy prevails, even among those who prey (sic), blinded by silent but deeply held assumptions about God, just as was this post Pentecost Peter prior to his visit by Cornelius.

I continue to be amazed at how the scriptures read so differently each time I pass through the pages of my Bible.  The text never changes barring translations, but even when reading the same translation, the message or at least the depth of impact seems so different each time I read through the Word.  This has been my year to see a different Jesus than the one we American Christians so often communicate by our actions, even more so during this election year.

The Sermon on the Mount provides a radical insight into this man.  Always maintaining a certain tension between distain for the negative impact of religion and politics, while fully open to the repentant leader or any person unjustly diminished, regardless of class. He just never missed a moment.

His words were stern at times, “Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name…Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you.  Away from, me you evil doers.’”   Yet, living far above the human ego, he seemed unmoved by crowds or criticisms, always with an eye for that last single person who might have fallen through the cracks of culture.  This morning it was the leper whom Jesus happens upon as he descends the mountain.  Unlike the political leaders or charlatans of our day, who almost stumble upon themselves as they seek out the crowd, we never find him looking over his shoulder to make sure they are still there; though, as Matthew 8:1 reveals, “large crowds followed him.”

As well, he was never concerned that his political in-correctness might diminish his popularity. This leper humbly comes to him, probably rejected numerous times since his unfortunate disease, and Jesus responds immediately, touching this “untouchable”, curing his leprosy.  Rather than turning to the crowd for applause, or having the man run through the multitude of onlookers as a means of demonstrating such miraculous power, he instructs him that he tell no one; rather, that he go to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded, a testimony to the religious.  Here He is again reaching back toward the very people who had created the culture He had come to overturn.

Undistracted by crowds, but drawn to the outcast; fully understanding the curse of religion, yet far less than disgusted by the religious; always desiring that everyone come to see the light of grace.

Even the hardened Centurion who approached him in Capernaum, holding the power to take lives, brought Jesus to rejoice.   Astonished at his faith, though far be it from religious, Jesus declares, “I tell you the truth, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith.  I say to you that many will come from the east and the west (outside of Israel, a type of the church), and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of Heaven.  But the subjects of the kingdom (possible the religious) will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Matthew 8:10-12.

In a day when religious and political polarity mute the spirit of grace, it would behoove us to once again look inward, lest we too find ourselves cast out of the very kingdom to which we profess allegiance.