As a follow up to that quote I posted today, I wanted to offer a couple thoughts. This isn’t a commentary on Mars Hill Portland, I have my issues with video venues, but I truthfully don’t know that much about them individually outside of some boneheaded things I’ve heard Driscoll say.
What I’d rather comment on is our posture as Christians towards our cities. When our rhetoric for church planting starts with “_______ is the darkest city ever imagined in the US and if we don’t come they’re all screwed” even if our intention is to love our neighbors we’re going to sound condescending. And condescending scores zero points in the ultimate goal which is to love people and show them the way of Jesus.
It’s not even that we shouldn’t have a prophetic witness, I’m all for prophetic witness. One of the things that’s been strongly growing in me over the past few months is a stronger inclination to speak of conversion. If we don’t present Jesus as discontinuous with the way we naturally desire to live as people, we miss just how radical what Jesus is teaching about his way of life. The Jesus way is unimaginably against everything about how we want to live. From the sermon on the mount we hear “not only don’t murder, don’t continue to harbor anger. Don’t just not commit adultery, take lust even if it’s just in your mind deathly serious. Don’t do things because of what people will think, if that’s why you’re doing it, you’ve already gotten everything out of it.” We hear other things too, but if we don’t react to this the way that one of my friends once did when we were reading this together, asking “who the heck could ever do this?” we’ve probably missed what Jesus is getting at.
The Jesus way isn’t just a fulfillment of everything you’ve already wanted, it’s an incredibly challenging way of living that constantly feels like death because it cuts against everything we’re naturally wired to do.
It’s almost impossible to grapple with the teachings of Jesus and end up with a posture of “those horrible sinners, we know what they need.” When we speak this way we’re just taking mission and corrupting it into a new manifest destiny or a paternalism.
The image of the Jesus way as we engage our neighbors ought not to be a guide with a map helping all those people who are lost and just can’t seem to figure it out, so we’ll show them the trail. The Jesus way of engaging our neighbors is more like sitting with them staring at a sunset in awe of how much we’re both learning.
Similarly in the Sermon on the Mount we get from Jesus over and over - you’ve been using the law as a weapon against each other, you look at that person who’s failed this or that law and since you’ve observed it, you think you’re good. But these teachings show you that you haven’t even got what these laws are about.
The Jesus way is more to enter humbly, not announcing ourself with trumpets, but seeking to serve. Not using our momentum or social networking clout or fame/infamy of our teacher to promote ourselves, but rather to seek the lowest position. Instead of seeking to sit at the head of the table, we volunteer to sit at the bottom. Instead of coming in guns blazing ready to tell people how screwed up they are, we seek to co-journey towards Jesus.
As Sacred Roots has been studying the sermon on the mount these last couple months, the words that have really resonated with me as the summary of what Jesus is doing are “de-weaponizing” and “sincerity.” Jesus teaching about the law takes away any chance that we have to grasp it as a weapon to judge others. He illustrates to us how that cuts both ways and shows us how when we use the law as a weapon it’s doubly so against ourselves. And what we’re led to instead is a way of sincerity where we are constantly being checked on why we’re living the way we’re living. Is it really because we believe it’s the best way to live, or because we want people to be impressed by our deeds. Jesus says if it’s not sincere and it’s really just to impress people, well… you’ve already gotten everything you’re going to get out of it.
So that letter to the editor that was posted before this, we could look at it and say “well the world will always reject what Jesus has to bring” and we would be partially right. The way of Jesus is often rejected because it does cut hard against everything about how we’re naturally wired. But it also ought to be a message to us Christians, a reminder that we are to seek to do everything in a posture of humility, not trying to use the teachings of Jesus as a weapon to say “look at those damned sinners,” but rather to seek to humbly love. To confront in truth, but to not seek to wield our power to condemn others, but rather to love them in a way that reflects the way of Jesus.
