A Barren Field? A Tired Message? ...

What do our assumptions tell us about our witnessing?  Somehow in the United States, Christians have a view of the world that “mission” lies in a remote village, in a far corner of the globe; a place without electricity, internet, and exposure to traditional missionaries.  We fund endeavors to reach such places from the comfort of our church facilities here in the US.  And we lose the idea of local mission.  The Gospel here in the US, to an audience of the affluent, or the middle class; has either already been preached. or is expected to have little impact.  Missionaries in our country no longer carry that name.  We call them Evangelists.  And they generally move from region to region, with accompanying marketing campaigns.  But the message our evangelism tries there is not the simple gospel, it is one of prophetic interpretations, or fear of the end of days.  We assume shock and awe are the only ways to reach the hardened hearts of Americans long exposed to Christianity, and long hardened to receiving it.

So by comparison, our success in foreign missions, in areas overseas that have had little exposure to the Bible and the Gospel, have much better results, than the work in our own neighborhoods.  People in our back yard are tired of the same old message, and same old messengers.  Fear may put seats in a pew for a while, but inevitably unchanged hearts, and untransformed messengers, tend to pull them right back out again over time.  We begin to assume the United States, and well developed European countries have become a barren land.  Our consumer is tired of the same old advertising.  Our consumer is tired of the visible hypocrisy.  Our consumer is tired of the seemingly infinite number of brands with minimal distinctions, that from the point of view of the non-believer, look horribly unimportant, and no reason to separate the body of Christ.  Even though that is exactly what supposed Christians do when they do not agree on a “critical” doctrine.  And our consumer’s reluctance … is well founded.

But in truth, it is not so much our doctrines that are unattractive.  Our beliefs are not the real reason we drive away the unbelievers.  Our lives, and our way of living is.  Our Gospel is all twisted around.  We define our hope and our way to live in His perfection, as ONLY something that can be achieved AFTER death, or in a far-off future where the Second Coming occurs, and everything is falling apart at the seams.  And we define Hell as a punishment baked in flames that torture the wicked FOR everything they have done, and only again AFTER death, in a far-off future even past the Second Coming when “judgment” is meted out by a vengeful God bent on our destruction.  But the truth, the real Gospel is neither of these.

John the Baptist had it right.  The kingdom of God is at hand, meaning, it is here.  The Kingdom of God is in the here and the now.  It is a way of transformation that impacts your current life, and the way you currently live it.  It is the basis of a testimony only you can carry, about how Jesus took the sin from you, took the desire to sin from you, and replaced it with a passionate love for others, you can now, no longer live without.  This transformation is a road to perfection in the here and now.  No waiting.  No future, far-off thing, but right now, at hand, for you.  Embrace it, and the hypocrisy of calling yourself a Christian dissolves into the reality of being a Christian.  All of the sudden, your life looks different than those who still refuse the hope right in front of them.  All of the sudden, there is a difference in the life of the messenger.  Hypocrisy on the decline.  Hypocrisy becoming an endangered species.

John the Baptist had it right.  Repent.  Submit yourself to something greater than yourself.  Humble your ego to Jesus and realize you could indeed be living better.  Understand that what you repent from is THE punishment all of us want to avoid.  Hurting self.  Hurting others.  Hurting God because we engage in the love of self that lies at foundation of the definition of every sin, is the problem.  It causes us to hurt everything around us.  It damages our lives, cuts them short, and makes existence less than it could be.  THAT is the definition of Hell.  Not some far off punishment for what we HAVE done.  Hell is the punishment that comes from what we ARE doing, in the here and now.  The pain we cause, the ripple effects that it spreads are the Hell we would all avoid if we could choose to.  But our choice is locked up in 6000 years of bad genetics, and bad choices of our ancestors.  Our very DNA is presupposed to the desires and behaviors we are unable to escape from ourselves.  Repentance only reminds us of this reality, and points us to a divine source able to re-write our very DNA to avoid the Hell we must otherwise endure.

Our land is not barren.  Our old gospel of self merely leads to barren results.  A new gospel based entirely upon Jesus and our submission to Him, leads to new results entirely.  And “mission” becomes the image in your mirror, and at the extensions of your own front yard.  The field is no longer barren, but yearning to know this kind of transformative truth.  Our consumer is not waiting to hear these words, but to see them acted out in your own life.  Our consumer is not waiting for you to preach about what you have seen others do, but to witness with a first-person testimony about how they work in your life.  Perfection is not the tale.  But the journey to perfection decisively is the real story you can relay.  And the only way it could have been achieved or started began with a simple concept that John the Baptist so forcefully preached all those years ago, namely … Repent.

But don’t just take my word for it.  Let us examine what Matthew recalls about the opening of the ministry of Jesus Christ.  Just after the great temptational fire, and near death experience in the desert.  Jesus recovers.  You would expect Him to now, finally, head to Jerusalem to be blessed by the current church leadership.  At least that is what the current church leadership expected.  Without their blessing, all His efforts were sure to be fruitless, or heretical.  But Jesus saw His Father as the Real church leadership.  And He was most interested in keeping the real Gospel alive.  The Gospel John started, not the one based on doctrinal debate found in the Temple.

So Matthew begins in chapter four of his gospel, picking up in verse 12 saying … “ Now when Jesus had heard that John was cast into prison, he departed into Galilee; [verse 13] And leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the sea coast, in the borders of Zabulon and Nephthalim:”  Jesus hears that John has been cast into prison by Herod Antipas.  And the first thing He does, is to travel into largely Gentile territory, into tribes considered Samaritan land.  The ten tribes of Israel had dishonored God by breaking with Judah and Benjamin.  The kingdom of Israel had been split in two from that time on.  The north had its own kings, its own temple, and its own ideas about worship free of the order at Jerusalem.  The south remained traditional, if not always faithful.  But all fell to the hand of Nebuchadnezzar and the captivity.  And all were returned by Cyrus some years later.  Even then, the north was regarded as lesser-than from its history.  A reputation they were somewhat content to carry.

Jesus however, immediately breaks down these kinds of barriers.  He travels first to what every Jew in the south would call barren land spiritually.  He goes to tribal areas of Zebulun, and Naphtali.  There is no barren land in the mind of Jesus.  Matthew continues in verse 14 saying … “That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, [verse 15] The land of Zabulon, and the land of Nephthalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles; [verse 16] The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.”  Matthew is ever cognizant that his gospel is to bridge the Old and New Testaments through the life of Christ.  He calls us to remember the prophecies that bring hope to the Samaritans as much as to the Jews of the south.

You would think, that a study of Isaiah, might help reduce the prejudice of the time.  If the Messiah was to bring His great light into barren territory, then perhaps the territory was not so barren after all.  Perhaps all it needed was to see truth, instead of see religion packaged as truth, but absent any love in the process.  Flash forward 2000 years.  American Christians are very good at packaging doctrine, rolling it up into the brand management of a particular denomination, and then attempting to sell only that version to the listening ear.  But this approach seems only nominally effective at stealing one Christian from one brand and making him loyal to another.  It is because we lack passion for others, that we would leave unbelievers to their fate, while we argue among ourselves as to who is the Samaritan, and who is the purist.

But there is truth greater than our distinctions, upon which all of salvation is based, and all of hell is avoided in the here and now where the Kingdom of God is at hand.  And Matthew identifies it for us as he continues in verse 17 saying … “From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”  Jesus Himself continues the ministry of John the Baptist.  The need for that message did not disappear at His first arrival, and it does not disappear throughout His ministry, after His sacrifice, or after His ascension.  The need remains.  Because the mechanism for how we are transformed remains, and immediacy of the impact upon how we live remains.  Repent.  And why you ask?  Why the immediacy?  Because the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.

This is not a statement about our mortality.  It is a statement about our transformation.  This is a statement, a truth, about how the REAL gospel works.  It is based on Jesus, and our submission to Him.  It identifies a continued need to repent, to submit to a higher power than ourselves, to Jesus Christ who alone is The Truth, and can save us from us.  The sin we would otherwise long to commit, can be taken from us, not just the actions but the longing itself.  The hell we cause ourselves, the separation from God we choose to endure need not be so.  All of it can be repaired right here and right now.  No future waiting.  Right now.  At hand.  Today. Tonight. Tomorrow.  No after death, end of the road, promise when so much time is wasted between now and then.  That is the message Jesus Himself continued to teach from the start to the end of His ministry.  It is the real gospel, that leads to real results.  It transforms a life, and makes that life a living witness, with a living testimony, unique to a single person.

Lands we thought barren, were not actually barren to a real gospel, only barren to a religion without any real results.  Lives lived without the pain sin causes.  Lives lived that are happier, and passionate about others, are not founded in wealth and ease, but in reformation Jesus alone can bring.  It is not about looking like pilgrims, living in some sort of twisted self-denial.  It is about looking like someone who knows something others just do not seem to know … because they do.  That kind of passion cannot be faked.  That kind of happiness cannot faked.  It is the “faking” that has been the problem all along.  Real Christianity is based on a real different right here, right now.  The Kingdom of God is at hand.  It still is.  It is still waiting to be reflected in your life, my life, and the lives who sit in pain all around us.  THAT is a truth the entire world longs to hear.  Perhaps even those who sit beside us in pews that we only see once a week.  But for certain in the lives we know are suffering from the pain sin causes us all.  THAT is a new gospel, that is brand new and yet more than 2000 years old.

The gospel of self we have been preaching, needs to be replaced with a gospel of Jesus that yields a reason to change, and the only mechanism by which change can come.