By John Page
In 2007, the Barna Group published a study of perceptions of Christianity among 16- to 29-year-old Americans.[1] They found that among young non-Christians, 87% perceive Christianity as judgmental, and 85% as hypocritical. Even among young Christians, about half agreed that Christianity is judgmental and hypocritical.[2] The researchers found that one of the most frequent unprompted observations by both Christians and non-Christians was that "Christianity in today’s society no longer looks like Jesus."[3] Little wonder, if nearly 9 out of 10 non-Christians describe Christianity with the same terms Jesus himself used to characterize his antagonists.
Do these perceptions matter to us? They ought to, precisely because the church’s commission[4] is to make disciples of all peoples by proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ. If proclamation is our task, clarity of proclamation is no trivial consideration. And what we “do” is every bit as important as what we “say”, because our conduct will proclaim as loudly as – if not louder than – our words.
If the church is the body of Christ, shouldn’t Jesus be more visible among us? Shouldn’t Jesus’ antagonists be less visible among us? If so, we might start by examining what makes Jesus recognizable.
Jesus and the Kingdom of God
According to the Gospels, Jesus inaugurated his public ministry by proclaiming that the kingdom of God had come near – which we are told is good news – and inviting people to turn their lives around and believe the good news.[5] His proclamation included teachings about the nature of God’s kingdom, tangible signs of the kingdom’s presence, and its consequences for people’s lives. But why would the nearness of God’s kingdom be “good news”?
Actually, it wasn’t good news to everyone. But, for those living with hunger and abject poverty, for those tormented by chronic sicknesses or demons, for those grieving untimely deaths, for those treated as disposable human commodities, for those who longed for justice in a despotic society – for those people, the nearness of God’s kingdom was welcome good news. In Jesus’ teachings which we know as the Beatitudes, we are told:
- Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God
- Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. (Luke 6:21a; Matthew 5:6 reads “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”)
- Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. (Luke 6:21b; Matthew 5:4 reads “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”)
- Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. (Luke 6:22; Matthew 5:11-12 reads “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”)
- Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. (Matthew 5:5)
- Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. (Matthew 5:7)
- Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. (Matthew 5:8)
- Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. (Matthew 5:9)
- Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:10)
According to Jesus, people should expect a radically different and abundant life in the kingdom of God
And the kingdom of God
Then Jesus called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God
After this, the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. He said to them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, "Peace to this house!' And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, "The kingdom of God
With words and tangible evidence, both Jesus and his disciples proclaimed the nearness of God’s kingdom here and now.
As noted before, not everyone greeted this proclamation as good news. For those who only see life in categories of “winners” and “losers”, where “blessings” are in short supply and have to be rationed and hoarded, the nearness of God’s kingdom poses a serious threat. The Beatitudes suggest a reversal of fortunes, and the wealthy fear for their wealth; the powerful for their power; the influential for their influence; and the privileged for their privilege. Fear of becoming one of the “losers” leads to desperate actions, and in the case of Jesus and many of his disciples, that fear could only be placated with the decisive end of the so-called “good news” and those who proclaimed it. Jesus was not the first Jewish “messiah” – nor the last – and experience taught the fearful that an appropriately gruesome and humiliating death[9] for messianic leaders effectively buried their messages with their corpses.
But Jesus’ resurrection frustrated the purposes of the fearful. By raising Jesus from the dead, God effectively vindicated Jesus’ mission, Jesus’ proclamation that God’s kingdom has come near, and Jesus’ teachings about the consequences of God’s kingdom for humankind and for all of creation.[10] The new community that Jesus created with his disciples was called to embody the risen Jesus and to continue his mission to all people.[11]
The Disciples
Before his crucifixion, Jesus gave his disciples a “new commandment”:
I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:34-35)
By mutual love, Jesus’ disciples make Jesus’ presence known. What’s more, the disciples are to love one another as Jesus loved them. Often misunderstood and much abused, “love” as Jesus loved is no sentimental indulgence. Jesus’ love was intentional under the most revolting – and risky – circumstances[12]. For Jesus and his disciples, it wasn’t just about feeling love; it was about doing love.
But Jesus’ love is not constrained exclusively within the community of believers; disciples are to love their neighbors – all neighbors – as well. Love manifest is the sine qua non of the kingdom of God
When the Pharisees heard that [Jesus] had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." (Matthew 22:34-40)
Jesus’ disciples are to love one another and all people as Jesus loves them. By this, the kingdom of God
So Paul reminds believers that they are a body – the body of Christ. Each member of the body participates in the whole, and the whole serves the head – who is Christ. Diverse as the body may be, each member is essentially joined to the others in Jesus’ love – for the purpose of manifesting that love with words and actions – and thereby make Jesus known and visible for all to see.
Making Jesus Visible
Why do so many today say that Christianity no longer looks like Jesus? We know that Jesus proclaimed the nearness of God’s kingdom with words and tangible signs. We know that God’s kingdom is welcome good news to the poor, the hungry, the abused, the sick and grieving, and those who yearn for peace and justice. We know that God’s love pervades God’s kingdom, and that intentional self-sacrificing love is the clearest evidence that God’s kingdom is near. We know that Jesus’ disciples are called to manifest Jesus’ own love for one another and for all people – to embody the risen Christ, and thereby make Jesus known.
If Christianity no longer looks like Jesus, we Christians have no one to blame but ourselves. We obscure Jesus’ presence in the body of believers when we fail to proclaim the nearness of God’s kingdom with both words and tangible actions that the poor, the hungry, the abused, the sick, the grieving, and those who yearn for peace and justice can recognize and welcome as good news. We obscure Jesus’ presence in the body of believers when we avoid intentional self-sacrificing love for one another and for our neighbors, and instead sacrifice one another and our neighbors on the altars of our own righteousness. We obscure Jesus’ presence in the body of believers when we hijack – or passively allow others to hijack – the name of Jesus to proclaim the bad news – the anti-gospel – that poverty, hunger, abuse, sickness, grief, violence, and injustice are perfectly acceptable if working toward their abolition isn’t profitable or doesn’t otherwise serve our own self-indulgent agenda. We obscure Jesus’ presence in the body of believers when by words and actions we deservedly earn a reputation of arrogant pretentiousness that revels in the show of “righteousness” – as if we are somehow better than “those” people – while forgetting entirely that we are debtors ourselves whose gratitude to God can only be expressed by self-sacrificing acts of love toward our neighbors – including “those” people. And we obscure Jesus’ presence in the body of believers when we manipulate the instruments of secular power to serve the anti-gospel – in the name of God, of all things!
Healing... How do we make Jesus visible in the church in the midst of our current national debate about healthcare? Jesus made healing one of the most obvious signs of the nearness of God’s kingdom, revealing God’s compassion for the sick and afflicted who were otherwise without hope or recourse. Christians might reasonably and faithfully disagree about the “particulars” of what healthcare reform should look like, but can we plausibly dispute the claims that God desires the health and wellbeing of all people, and that profitability is an unconscionable excuse for allowing sickness and affliction to continue when remedies are available? When fear, greed, and secular partisan ambitions conspire against efforts to make healing and relief available to all people, the body of Christ is called to act with hope, with the intentional love of Christ, and with a partisan commitment to making the nearness of God’s kingdom a tangible reality for everyone who suffers disease and affliction.[15]
Making peace… One of the longest running conflicts of sustained violence in this and the previous century has been the conflict between Israel
Thirsting for righteousness… Far too often throughout the centuries, Christians have abandoned mutual love for one another for the pretense of righteousness. We have a long history of supplanting the apostles’ teachings that the righteousness of God is disclosed through faith in Jesus Christ[18] with false teachings about the righteousness of being bound to the law. Loving one another as Christ loves us has been of secondary importance to being right about our righteousness. “The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it” – and God forbid that the Holy Spirit should act beyond the constraints of established law, dogma, tradition, and ministry policies! How do we make Jesus visible in the midst of our family squabbles? Surely, Jesus’ commandment “… love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” would go far in making Jesus visible for all to see, for “by this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another”.[19] When righteous indignation, hidden agendas, and pious contempt for others[20] conspire to rend us, the body of Christ is called to act with hope, with the intentional love of Christ, and with Jesus’ own commitment to making the nearness of God’s kingdom a tangible reality in our communities of faith, as places where Christ-like love abounds.
Following the Way of Jesus… The Way of Jesus stands in contrast to the way of the world, precisely because hope in God’s kingdom and the work of making the Beatitudes a tangible reality for people can often seem ludicrous to the faithless; self-sacrificing love for strangers is pointless; and a single-minded commitment to the kingdom of God, and making the nearness of God’s kingdom known by words and deeds, can pose a serious challenge to the demands and expectations of human kingdoms. The Way of Jesus is a challenging way to follow, and we Christians have often found ways to mitigate the challenges: we’ve found novel and convoluted ways to confuse the kingdom of God with the kingdom of human ambitions – to transform Christianity into Christendom; we’ve become so adept at “spiritualizing” the Beatitudes and the kingdom of God, that we are content to push out to some future undetermined date any tangible evidence of the nearness of God’s kingdom, making Christianity little more than a cognitive and largely self-centered exercise in self-justification and personal salvation – Caesar need not worry himself about the Jesus who’s just lord of my life, and who otherwise makes no inconvenient demands on the whole world, where greed, self-interest, and fear are beatified.
We make Jesus visible among us, for all the world to see, when we follow the Way of Jesus; when we embrace the kingdom of God for all that it stands for: relief and blessings for the poor, the hungry, the grieving, the persecuted, the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart, and the peacemakers; when we proclaim the good news that God’s kingdom is near, by words and tangible signs; when we love one another in the body with the intentional self-sacrificing love of Christ; and when we love all people in the same way that all people are loved by Jesus.[21]
[1] Kinnaman, David, and Lyons, Gabe. unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity... and Why It Matters. Grand Rapids , MI
[2] Ibid., p.34.
[3] “A New Generation Expresses its Skepticism and Frustration with Christianity”. Barna Group. September 24, 2007. http://barna.org/barna-update/article/16-teensnext-gen/94-a-newgeneration-expresses-its-skepticism-and-frustration-with-christianity
[4] See Matthew 28:16-20
[5] See Matthew 4:17; Mark 1:14-15; Luke 4:43
[6] Whatever you may make of demon possession, the relevant point is that people suffered.
[7] Certain afflictions could make a person “unclean”, which could require that they restrict their contact with others or be removed from communities. Examples include leprosy (Matthew 8:1-4; Mark 1:40-45; Luke 5:12-16), menstrual bleeding (Matthew 9:18-26; Mark 5:21-34; Luke 8:40-56), and demon possession (Mark 5:1-20; Luke 8:22-39).
[8] See also Matthew 10:1-15
[9] According to Deuteronomy 21:22-23, a person executed by hanging on a “tree” was cursed by God, making crucifixion an especially effective way of ending messianic careers.
[10] Debates about the “historicity” of Jesus’ resurrection tend to miss the theological point that his resurrection validates his mission and proclamation. When Christians affirm the resurrection of Christ, we profess our conviction that Jesus faithfully and authoritatively represented God’s kingdom in his life and teachings. We further profess, that in baptism we are united to Christ in his continuing life and mission, with the hope of the resurrection assuring us that Christ’s mission is valid and our participation in his mission is not in vain.
[11] See Mark 16:14-20; Matthew 28:16-20; Luke 24:44-49; John 20:19-23; Acts 1:4-8
[12] Jesus’ willingness to suffer and die for the sake of his mission and proclamation to the world is the most obvious and dramatic example and model of how Jesus loves. But Jesus’ ministry abounded with acts of risky and intentional love. Examples include healing people in defiance of the law (Luke 5:17-26; Luke 14:1-6; John 5:1-16) and risking ostracism and retribution by associating with the wrong – unclean – people (Matthew 9:9-13; Matthew 9:20-22; Matthew 15:21-28; Mark 5:25-34; Mark 7:24-30; Luke 5:27-32; Luke 7:1-10; Luke 8:43-48).
[13] See Romans 7:4; Romans 12:5; 1 Corinthians 12:27; 1 Corinthians 12:12; Ephesians 3:6; Ephesians 4:12; Colossians 3:15
[14] Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians provides a substantial litany of some of the problems. See 1 Corinthians 1:10-13; 1 Corinthians 1:17-31; 1 Corinthians 3:16-20; 1 Corinthians 8; 1 Corinthians 11:18-22.
[15] See the ELCA social statement Health and Healthcare – Caring for Health: Our Shared Endeavor. Also, Jim Wallis at Sojourners offers some thoughts about faith-based principles to guide efforts to reform American healthcare: A Faith Declaration for Health-Care Reform
[16] Christian Zionism of the 20th and early 21st centuries, coupled to “dispensationalist” theology, actually justifies and encourages ongoing violence and injustice toward Palestinian people – including Palestinian Christians – because Christian Zionists are convinced that it is God’s will that the Biblical land of Israel must be “cleansed” of what they consider interlopers, in anticipation of “end-time” events. For more information, see Toward a Lutheran Response to Christian Zionism by the Rev. Robert O. Smith of ELCA Global Mission.
[17] Ann Hafften provides frequent updates and information about peace and advocacy efforts toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at her blog A Texas Lutheran's Voice for Middle East Peace.
[18] See Romans 1:16-17; Romans 3:21-24
[19] See John 13:34-35
[20] Lutheran CORE’s website provides a number of examples: A Vision for Lutheran CORE, RECONFIGURATION, and What After Minneapolis?
[21] The ELCA tagline “God’s work, our hands.” represents something of our Church’s understanding of our mission and purpose, and encourages all of the members of the Church, individually and together, to make Jesus’ mission of proclaiming the nearness of God’s kingdom a present reality for all people, and to invite others to join that mission. Read the theological foundation for this tagline here.
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