“Are you the one who was to come?”

(I have been laboring over this post since the momentous decision by the SCOTUS on marriage.  Jesus changed the world. How can the Church in America have so little impact on culture today? Below are my thoughts on this question.)

After a physically and emotionally taxing week, Judy and I finished packing and cleaning the condo. The moving van came and took away all of our stuff – 103 boxes plus furniture; in total weighing over 4000 pounds. Then we loaded up Judy’s car with more stuff and drove to NC. We can no longer officially call Houston home.

The last time I moved across country was 1972.  I was a 21 year old single guy driving from NY to Houston with all of my possessions in the back of a 1970 International Scout to begin graduate school and a new life. I was also an unbeliever. This time I am a married grandfather following Jesus, with 40 years of accumulated things. The two moves could not have been more different.

The same can be said for my country. America was a very different place in 1972 than it is today. We are better in many ways now. But not in every way. Attention spans are shorter and relationships are more shallow. We have many more ways of spending (wasting?) our time. Our idols are more numerous and powerful than ever. Social media give every person a platform to express their viewpoint and opinion (including me). Many of us get our news of the world from Facebook, Twitter, and Google News. The E-sphere is filled with every conceivable point of view; some useful and affirming, others divisive and dehumanizing. I think the end result is a society, a culture, and communities becoming increasingly fractured and divided. We are losing the ‘human glue’ of relationships that holds us all together. Large regions of America have stopped seeking God and true belief is at an all time low.

It is a time of anxiety and uncertainty. The social order is being overturned. Some would say this is a good thing – progress. But something is happening in America. It feels like a covering is being lifted off of us. That powerful force that drives human interactions and history: the need for value, acceptance, and connection – and the anxiety and fear of this age – is causing the rise of ‘tribes’ in America based on race, sexuality, education, social status, and religious beliefs to name a few. In many ways, the Church has become both one of these tribes and a loose confederation of many tribes called denominations. We feel safe in our tribe. The members of the tribe can look alike, think alike, are accepted, valued for their beliefs, and are strongly connected to others in the tribe. The tribe seems to give its members life and stability in a time of rapid change.

And I suppose they do give a kind of life; at least the illusion of life. But if you are not of that tribe, especially if you reject the beliefs of that tribe, you can be attacked by the tribe you criticize. We are beginning to see this happen more frequently in America.  The result is a type of strife that sometimes rises to the level of culture war. This drives us deeper into a place of anxiety and fear strengthening our resolve to remain true to our tribe. Tribalism fuels racism, income inequality, poverty, and gangs; even political parties and religions. As America turns it’s back on God and His son Jesus, we find ourselves descending into the maw of disunity and disharmony driven by this growing level of tribalism. We are compelled to find our value somewhere. If not God (and I would say, Jesus), where? Within ourselves and others like us. And so grows the kingdom of self and the power of Satan.

One of the great accomplishments of Jesus was to unify around two common and related core values – “love God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself”. I don’t have to agree with you politically or socially to love you if I am walking in the power of Jesus and His Holy Spirit (and therefore not walking in my power – a power which is inadequate to love someone from another ‘tribe’; the proverbial ‘other’). Jesus values our diverse personal heritages and family histories. His love for each of us and our love for one another in Christ embraces the differences but also transcends them, uniting us into one coherent community rooted in the Father’s love and acceptance. Of course, there is behavior called sin, beginning with pride, which is antithetical to community and our relationship with God. Jesus clearly spells this out and admonishes us to “sin no more”.  Jesus points out that sin has consequences and calls us to confession and repentance, often daily. But He also promises forgiveness and gives us the power of the Holy Spirit to heal our pain which is often the source of our bad decisions.

I know that much of the ‘world’ does not understand or agree with this idea of the unifying power of Jesus. They probably see the Church as the source of much of the division in the world today, and in some ways they are correct. Christians, especially people who call themselves Evangelical Christians, are just as susceptible as anyone else of distorting and corrupting the message of Jesus. But below the surface many reject Jesus most fundamentally because they believe that “no one can tell me how to live my life” and reject unity as an intolerable interference of their ‘human rights’. In fact, many who call themselves Christians fall into this camp. But if it becomes widespread, such antisocial belief is the death knell of any meaningful community. We must get along, we must agree on a basic set of beliefs that unite rather than separate us. In my opinion, Jesus provides this fundamental foundation. Furthermore, I don’t see any other way forward because Jesus, most fundamentally, is love; the best kind of love – the Father’s love.

Christians in America are losing (or have lost) an understanding of the Kingdom purpose of Jesus and therefore have been swept up in this vast cultural upheaval. Ours is now one voice among many, and a not very potent voice, as we are increasingly perceived as a community of the old order of things, pushing back against inevitable social ‘progress’, and fighting against liberal activists, the government, the Supreme Court and their ruling on marriage, atheists, and others who are bent on restricting the rights of the Church, or destroying Christianity altogether. Ours is not a message of love, especially for our enemies, but an activist message requiring conformance to the rules or laws laid out in the Bible and lacking in love. Many of us have joined the Christian ‘tribe’ and are as guilty of fostering disunity as any unbeliever. Tribalism in any form is antithetical to the Kingdom of God. Following Jesus, the real Jesus of the Gospels, is the only way I know of to find acceptance, value, and connection to God, my neighbors, and even within myself that does not cause more disunity but fosters acceptance, value, and connection (or community) across racial, social, economic, educational, sexual, and religious boundaries. But this is hard work – Christians must turn away from seeking our value in the world (that is, give up our idols) and relentlessly seek  Christ day-by-day. Few of us know how to do this anymore. And this brings me to the title of this post.

When he was in prison, John the Baptist sent his followers to Jesus with a question. We read about the exchange between Jesus and the disciples of John in Matthew 11: 2-5 in the NIV translation:

“When John heard in prison what Christ was doing, he sent his disciples to ask him, “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?” Jesus replied, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, and the good news (the Gospel) is preached to the poor. Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.”

Jesus began His ministry in Mark 1 by saying “repent, the Kingdom of God is near. Believe the Gospel.” The Jews in the time of Jesus were marginalized by the Roman government who tolerated their religion but kept them oppressed. They were hemmed in on every side by unbelieving Gentiles. They paid exorbitant taxes to a secular government, and they had to put up with income inequality as they watched their leaders become rich through corruption and privilege. They had been waiting for generations for the Messiah, the anointed and chosen one, to return and bring the Kingdom of God. From the least to the greatest of them, they knew or thought they knew, what the Kingdom of God meant. Among other things it meant to them that a King would arise and raise up a mighty army that in the power of God would beat back Rome, kill the contemptible gentiles or at least enslave them, and restore Israel to the nation that God intended them to be, a triumphant nation of God’s chosen people. Theirs was a nationalistic hope. In other words, their tribe, the tribe of Israel, would dominate all the other tribes around them and God would be glorified.

Jesus, the self-proclaimed Messiah or anointed one chosen by God arrives in the middle of this time of great anxiety and fear. He says in Luke 4 “The Spirit of the sovereign Lord is upon me. I have been anointed to preach the gospel to the poor and to heal the broken-hearted”. He could not have been more clear. “Your Messiah is here. I am he”. The Jews rejoiced, they flocked to Him for healing and deliverance and sat back and waited for the real action. The time had come. Israel was about to seize her destiny.

And then the doubt set in. Jesus was not behaving according to their plan. He wasn’t killing Romans. He was healing their children. He wasn’t punishing tax collectors and prostitutes. He was eating with them. He wasn’t driving out sinners (Jews believed that the lame, the deaf, the sick, and those with leprosy had sinned against God in some grievous way), he was healing them. He wasn’t attacking Israel’s enemies with a sword, He was loving them! “What kind of King is this?”, they asked. “Are you the one?”.

John heard what Jesus was doing – healing, accepting, delivering, loving, joining – and he was bewildered. John should have known better. He was the cousin of Jesus. He baptized Jesus in the Jordan. He saw the dove, the Holy Spirit, descend on Jesus and heard the Father say “this is my Son, with whom I am well pleased.” But John was an Israelite and he too was waiting for the Messiah to come and defeat Israel’s enemies and set his nation free. Old ways of thinking die hard. So he asked “was I mistaken? Are you the One?”

The great irony, perhaps the greatest in history, is that Jesus came to do exactly that. He came to set His people free from the enemy. Only, the ‘people’ of Jesus would be the whole world, just as God had spoken to Abraham, “your descendants will be as numerous as the grains of sand on the beach.” And to the prophet Isaiah God said “my house will be a house of prayer for all nations (all people), not just Israel. And the ‘enemy’ that Jesus came to defeat? That enemy was not Rome or the gentiles; the enemy was Satan and his power of darkness. Jesus came to deliver men from the dominion of darkness and bring them into the Kingdom of light, the Kingdom of the Son – the Kingdom of God where they will find freedom, healing, and wholeness; where they will find the abundant life. The Kingdom of God was not some future Kingdom that they (or we) would experience when they got to heaven. Although not in its fullness, that Kingdom was now. And God’s Kingdom would exist on earth whether Rome was the government or not.

Jesus, the Messiah, was for the world, not just Israel. He came to defeat the enemy of mankind, Satan, not the political or social forces that were enslaving and oppressing Israel. Because by defeating the power of Satan and driving back the darkness the malignancy would be cut out and the body would be healed. Then the obvious, outward ills would disappear.

Jesus’ response to John was important and profound. The Kingdom of God holds a place of centrality in the Gospels and the Book of Acts. But nowhere is it actually defined. The closest we get to a description of the Kingdom is here in Matthew 11. Jesus answers John reminding him of the healings and deliverances that Jesus is performing and that the good news, the Gospel, which is, in part, the Kingdom, is being preached to the poor – the least. Jesus is quoting from Isaiah 35. This entire chapter is a description of the Kingdom of God, the abundant life, which Jesus is saying to John is “happening now.” In the NIV the chapter heading is “Joy of the Redeemed”.  The Kingdom is described as a well-watered garden, there will be strength for all, and no fear. God will come with vengeance to save His people from Satan and darkness. There will be healing in the Kingdom. The road to Zion, into a deep-spirited relationship with God, will be there: the Way of Holiness. “Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away” as God’s people seek Him, as they know God and are known by Him. All of this will be real while Israel is living under the heel of Roman rule!!! But if the Kingdom truly broke out, ultimately Roman rule would crumble and the external manifestation of Kingdom rule would become a reality.

This message was offensive to the Jews and to the Jewish leaders. It was not what they wanted to hear. Ultimately, it was so countercultural that it led to the death of Jesus. He needed to be silenced. 70 years of so after the death of Jesus, the Jews rose up against Rome in an effort to bring about their vision of the kingdom of God. They were smashed and the great Jewish diaspora began. But the Kingdom of God, born in the soil of Jewish faithfulness, grew into the Church we see today.

Caught up in the vortex of social and societal change, many Christians are asking a related question to the one that John asked: “Jesus, you don’t seem to be doing a good job of handling this crazy world. Surely, you need our help.” And we begin to spend our time and money doing what the rest of the world is doing – forming political action committees, attacking the government and liberal courts, railing against liberal activists groups, and generally pointing fingers at atheists and all the other ‘ungodly’ people we see coming out of the woodwork in America, so to speak. We cry out “Jesus, what is going on? Why are you letting the enemies of your Church marginalize you, and more importantly, us?” We find ourselves in the same place that Israel did during the time of Jesus. We’ve misidentified the enemy. The enemy is not the other: the unbelievers (aka Gentiles, during the time of Jesus) and atheists, the Government, the Supreme Court, the liberal activists, and the other voices that want to marginalize Christians. God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow; so is Satan. He is our enemy. To the extent we focus our energy on the wrong enemy, as Israel did, and not embrace the methods and objectives of Jesus – release the Kingdom of God into the kingdom of the world, defeat the power of Satan, push back the darkness and take back the spiritual territory –  we too will be smashed. Our weapons are powerful: preaching the word that moves and empowers, persistent and effective prayer, deliverance and healing, and the Father’s love intended for all people, but released by the Church. But first the Kingdom must reconquer the Church in America; then the Church can release the Kingdom of God into the world.

Only in this way will we see the unity, victory, holiness, and harmony that marks the Kingdom of God here, in this world. Love can conquer hate, light can overcome darkness, life can replace death, health can replace disease and brokenness, and unity and harmony can replace tribalism. Only the Church, following and seeking Jesus, can do this. And only if we correctly identify the enemy, repent and seek God’s  face, and use the Kingdom power and authority He has given us to take back the territory.

“Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.” Many Christians today will find the message of Jesus offensive. If we attack an enemy that we can see then we can be in control of the battle. We just have to organize better, raise more money, form stronger political action committees, write more letters to our Congressmen, vote for the right candidate so that the government can reinstate Christian values in our great nation, and grumble against the other tribes. Jesus did none of these things. He relentlessly sought the Father, obeyed His Father in all things, and walked in the Way of Holiness. Jesus loved with the power of the Father’s love. What if the Church focused on these things? What if we repented (the first word of the Kingdom) individually, held a national solemn assembly to repent corporately, and rejected all of our idols, cleansing the temples of our hearts and our Church? What if we returned to God in humility and obedience and then cried out to Him? Is it too late for America? I don’t think so. But I do know that the Way of Jesus is the only Way. Maybe we should try it. The Church in America is certainly not doing it now.

The Kingdom is in the world. The world is not the Kingdom. So what if America turns against the Church and begins active persecution? The Church will grow stronger, as it has over the Centuries in the face of persecution. So what if people hate you because you are a Christian? Love them and show them the Way of the Kingdom. They are not the enemy. Satan is the enemy. Defeat him with all the powerful weapons we have and the Way of Jesus will change the nations including America. “Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.”