Divinity of Jesus: The Difference between Christian and Muslim Views

 

            The ocean is a big place.  We had a chance, as a family, to go to the beach earlier this summer.  For a second time in my life I was humbled by having to ask a fellow swimmer to help me out of a riptide.  It was pretty close to shore but it caught me.  Most people don’t like to need help and I felt especially small considering this wasn’t a place with w0rld-class surfing waves. 

            The ocean can do that – make one feel small.  In ancient times, the ocean was a place of industry; fishermen could make good money.  The ocean was the pathway to exploration.  What’s out there?  The ocean was the highway to commerce and the means by which people encountered one another.  Dominant armadas could enable empires to rule the world.

            The ocean was a also a source of mystery and fear.  What creatures lurk beneath the black depths?  How deep does it go?  There were no satellites, no light houses, no GPS, and no coast guard.  The ocean was seen as a place of danger and death. 

            When we were at the ocean and I was raucously riding the waves but also trying to stay close enough to the shore so I could handle any riptides, we looked out, far out to sea.  We watched fishing boats.  We tried to sight dolphins.  We think we saw one.  But the most amazing thing was a man, guy.  He was way, way out there, swimming for all his might.  He’s wasn’t swimming in.  He was swimming parallel to the shore.  I thought, who is this guy?  If he got a cramp or if he became complete exhausted, he was dead because he was so far out, no one could get to him.  In fact, it’s unlikely anyone would see him unless they were looking hard.  He must be a serious triathlete who does the iron-man competition. 

            As amazing as his stamina and strength are in swimming, even he is small next to the expanse of the ocean.  It is beautiful, breathtaking, and awe-inspiring.  And the ocean declares that Jesus is God. 

            Why is this declaration so important?  And why is it so important to do more than just say, “Jesus is God?”

            I write a blog and occasionally I write on the way Islam and Christianity co-exist in the world.  Sometimes this coexistence is a violent collision.  Sometimes it is a warm friendship.  In my writings I make it clear that I see the two faiths as fundamentally contradictory.  They cannot both be true because Isalm sees Jesus as a prophet.  To be sure, Muslims believe in most of the miracles reported in the New Testament.  Muslims revere Jesus.  Muslims love Jesus.

            However, Christians worship Jesus.  This is anathema to Isalm.  To say something is anathema is to say it is so detestably untrue it calls for damnation.  Muslims feel it is damnable to call Jesus ‘God’ because this is a direct assault on monotheism.  God alone is God, and in their view, to say that Jesus is God is to have a second God.

            Christians are as fiercely monotheistic as Muslims or Jews for that matter.  We believe there is one God.  And this one God exists in three forms and three manifestations and the three have a relationship with each other within the Godhead.  Father God, Son Jesus, Holy Spirit – one God; God is three in one.  It is utterly against Islam to say Jesus is God.  It is utterly essential to Christianity that we acknowledge Jesus as fully human and fully God. 

            The two religions can co-exist.  We can and should befriend Muslims.  We can and must love Muslims.  That love includes respecting their commitment to their faith.  Respect means if we want to invite a Muslim to consider Jesus, it has to be that, an invitation.  If he’s not interested, we still love him and respect him and honor him as a friend even when we’re completely convinced that he’s wrong about Jesus. 

            Along these lines Muslim readers have commented on my blog writings.  There is no way Jesus could be God, they say.  One reader linked me to a Muslim talk-show.  It’s a setting that skews younger, is hip, cool and the host had a guest who was a Christian pastor but then converted to Islam.  He was giving 10 reasons why Jesus could not be God.

            We can stop right here and just say, “Who cares.”  We think Jesus is God and he doesn’t so we think he is wrong.  There.  Now can we all just get on with our lives?  We can, sure, but if we take that kind of a shrug-of-the shoulder approach, then our faith is not a reasoned faith.  It is not a thought-out faith.  It is one we inherit, one we accept because it was given from people we trust, and it is one based on our emotions.  Our emotions tell us we are sinners who need Jesus; people we trust – authors of scripture, pastors, youth pastors, Sunday school teachers – tell us Jesus forgives us and we need Him.  And so by trust and by emotion we are Christ-followers. 

            That is all good and nothing I am saying negates that or detracts from it.  What I offer this morning adds to that emotional confession born out of a faith community and relationships with Christians and relationship with the Holy Spirit.  We are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind.  To Love God with the mind, I think includes a reasoned defense or explanation of why we believe what we believe to be true.  And this is where the ocean and Jesus’s demonstration in Mark’s gospel comes into the conversation.

            The ex-Muslim turned youth pastor gives 10 reasons why Jesus never says he is God.  We might say, “Oh yes he does say it.  He says, ‘the father and I are one,’ in John 10:30.”  Be careful with that response.  Remember, this Muslim was a Christian.  He knows many of the references on which we base our belief that Jesus is God.  He looks at that and says, ‘wait a minute.   That means Jesus and God are united, one in purpose, not one in being.  In those terms, God and I are also one because I am united with God.’  He makes this point pretty clearly.  His articulation is not good but his arguments have logic.  Many of the standard verses we use to show that Jesus is God are well-known to Muslims and they have a ready refutation. 

            The host of the talk show says, “If Jesus was really God, why doesn’t he say, ‘I am God?’”  A few years, this very question troubled me, and I went searching for that verse, and it’s not in there.  It’s not in John’s gospel, the primary source for Jesus’ “I am” statements.  It is not in the other gospels.  Why doesn’t Jesus say, “I am God”?

            We need to be able to answer that.  The world is shrinking.  It’s not just in college towns and big cities.  Across America people are setting up homes, people who do not have a Protestant or Catholic worldview.  We can stay isolated, stick to spending time with people who think like us and talk like us.  But if we do that, we dare not call ourselves Christ-followers.  He calls us beyond our familiar circles and once we step out of our comfort zones and into conversations and friendships with people who see the world total differently, we have to be prepared to say why we think what we think.  “Jesus is God.” 

            Why do we think so?  Did he say that?  Not in those words. 

            The statement would have been absurd to the ears of the first century Jew Palestine.  So instead of saying, “I am God,” Jesus said things only God can say.  Jesus did things only God will do.  And Jesus received things only God can receive.  In this way, there was no mistake.  Everyone around him understood him to be claiming to be God; otherwise, they would not have killed him. 

            I am thankful for David Garland’s commentary on Mark’s Gospel.  Before reading it, I always thought the place to look for declarations of Jesus’ divinity was the Gospel of John.

            In Mark 6, Jesus is rejected by his old neighbors in his home town of Nazareth.  Herod, the Jewish King, a puppet of Rome, imprisons and executes John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin and the prophet whose preaching and practice of baptism paved the way for Jesus’ ministry.  On a remote hillside, Jesus feeds 5000 people by miraculously multiplying one person’s lunch. 

            Then he does something very human.  He sends the disciples off on their boat out into the Sea of Galilee.  And in isolation, he prays.  Human beings pray to God.  Jesus was exceptional as a human being and he was 100% human.  His wisdom was supreme; his prayer life incredible; and his love perfect.

            While he was praying, the disciples were out to sea and straining against the wind.  This is different than what we read in Mark 4.  There the windstorm was so fierce, it kicked up the waves to the point that the boat was swamped and in real danger of sinking.  In that situation, Jesus commanded the storm to be silent and it obeyed.  That account illustrates the same truth this one does, but the circumstances are different.  There Jesus was in the boat and the disciples were about to die.  Here in Mark 6, the disciples are not going to die, but they’re also not making progress.  They’re straining at the oars against the power of the mighty sea and the uncontrollable wind.  As he’s praying, he sees them.  This must have been a vision.  Still, this is a human thing.  Peter, Paul and many others had visions while praying.  The clincher is what Jesus does next.

            Alone on the land, praying, in a vision, Jesus sees the disciples as they row at night, and he walks on the sea.  Who does that?  Who just walks across the water?  Jews in the first century would have had a ready answer that they would have accepted without question.  Thinking back to their scripture, they would remember the prophet Habakkuk.  “Was your wrath against the rivers, O Lord?  Or your anger against the rivers or your rage against the sea?  … You trampled the sea with your horses” (Habakkuk 3:8a-b, 15a).

            They would remember the book of Job where God says to Job, “Who shut for the doors of the sea? … Have you entered the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep” (Job 38:8a, 16).  Who?  God.  God walks on the sea.  People were terrified of the unseen depths, but God walks in the recesses of the deep at His pleasure.  At His pleasure, he shuts the sea as you or I would shut a door.

            The disciples and later, Mark’s first readers would remember Psalm 107.  “They saw the deeds of the Lord, his wondrous works in the deep.  For he commanded and raised the stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea.  … He made the storm be still and the waves of the sea were hushed” (107:24-24, 29).  Ancient Israelites spoke in scripture; “it was written;” “as the prophets said;” “Moses wrote.”  This is how they conveyed ideas and understood the world.  So, in these terms, Jesus made very clear statements and some of his statements came through actions.

            Note the end of Mark 6, verse 48.  Jesus is walking on the water and it says he intended to pass them by.  He didn’t.  They were terrified and he got into the boat to calm them.  They had not been terrified by the wind.  They strained against but did not fear it.  But a man walking on the water sent them into heart-thumping panic and Jesus came to them.  But his intention was to pass by.  Why?

            Moses, the greatest of prophets wanted to see God.  God set Moses in the cleft of a rock, and passed by and Moses saw God’s backside glory.  Elijah, the great prophet in the book of 1^st Kings, the one who never died but was just taken up to Heaven in a Chariot of Fire, got so depressed in his fear he was suicidal.  Again, God set him in a cave, and in silence passed by him.  Who are the Old Testament two prophets who join Jesus on the mount of transfiguration in Mark 9?  Moses and Elijah. 

            The disciples out on the sea were not in trouble in the sense of needing Jesus to save them from imminent death.  He didn’t need to walk on water to save them.  He walked on the water so they could see that God was passing by again.  The final verse of this section says their hearts were hardened.  Shortly after this, James, John, and Peter, would come with Jesus to a mountain top where Moses and Elijah visited from the Heavenly beyond to watch God pass by. 

            When Moses asks God’s name in Exodus 3, God says, “I am.”  That is God’s self-identification.  In Greek, that phrase is rendered “ego emi.”  “Ego emi” from Greek to English can be rendered, “It is I,” or “It is me,” or “I am.”  Knowing this, it is pretty clear in John’s Gospel that Jesus is saying “I am” to indicate that he is the same God who visited Moses and named himself “I am.”  I never paid attention to “I am” statements from Jesus in the other Gospels.  But, here, on the sea, a place of dread and terror, the disciples see what sailors fear most, a phantasm, a ghostly creature come to take then to death.

            To their fear, Jesus says, “Take heart, Ego emi, it is I, I am.”  In Mark’s symbolic world, no clearer declaration can be made.  Mark’s gospel shouts that Jesus is God in human flesh, to be followed and worshiped.  To hear Jesus say, “I am God,” you have to turn to Revelation 1:17.  At the end of the verse he says, “I am the alpha and the omega, the first and the last, the living one.”  That is a direct reference to God in apocalyptic language, and Jesus makes that reference to himself.

            Some skeptics won’t be satisfied by such evidence and that’s just the nature of things.  Muslim friends will believe Jesus walked on the water and say it didn’t mean he was God.  Jewish friends will deny that it really happened.  Modernists and naturalists will say it could not have happened and thus it is just a legend.  When Mark wrote it, he did not believe he was writing a legend.  He believed he was describing how Jesus demonstrated for his disciple who he was and is. 

            This is who we worship and follow.  This is the Lord, the master of our lives.  We are in service to Him for eternity.  This is our creator, redeemer, protector, defender, and savior, the one who forgives us of all sin, and makes us new each day.  All that we are depends on who He is.  And thus we submit ourselves to Him completely.

AMEN

Driven by Compassion

At the end of the week, this past week, the headlines told of an awful tragedy.  A gun man walked into a crowded theater in Colorado and began shooting.  This was front page news, but not in Burgas, a city in the Eastern European nation of Bulgaria.  There, the big story was a terrorist attack.  A suicide bomber blew up a crowded bus.  And in Iraq, the big news was the seizure of border stations along the Syrian border by rebel militia groups.

            Where you live determines what you would call the biggest news of the day.  Everything I mentioned would fall in the category of bad news.  Horrific; awful; tragic; depressing. 

            As followers of Christ, we are called beyond our own lives.  We have our individual problems which are significant.  Our individual stories are stories of faith.  We are also a body of believers, bonded together in Jesus.  As individual disciples and as a body, we are called to respond to the happenings of the world, elections, wars, random violence, weather patterns (like extreme drought) and natural disasters.  When chaos is unleashed and humanity panics, people look to the church because they’re looking for someone – anyone – to help bring order and reveal meaning in all that goes on.

            We’re in our 3^rd week of seeing Jesus in the pages of Mark’s gospel.  In today’s passage, we find a key component, not the only one, but an important aspect of a Christ-follower’s response to a world afflicted with suffering, chaos, fear, and hurt. 

            We pick the story up with Jesus and the disciples on the move again.  This time the location is not specifically named, nor is the exact spot important.  What catches our attention is Jesus’ care for his disciples.  A lot has happened.  His popularity is at its peak.  Mobs overwhelm him and them.  He has endowed the 12 with his miraculous powers, and he knows that as they cure diseases and defeat demons, crowds would come upon them just like the do on him.  “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest awhile,” Jesus tells his friends and followers. 

            They get in the boat, a sure way to separate from the crowd that hungers for every word that falls from Jesus’ lips just as much as they long for every wonder he performs.  The thing is, when Jesus works miracles, he’s not performing.  He’s revealing God’s love and he does this through his inclusion of people who are rejected everywhere else.  He does it through a radical new understanding of the Law that sees it as a door to God and not a burden that keeps people under heel.  And he does it through his ceaseless sharing of grace and mercy.  But he gets tired.  The disciples are tired.  They need down time. 

            The mob travels faster.  When Jesus and the disciples arrive at the location of their prayer retreat, we see a throng waiting for them. What does Jesus do?  Get back in the boat?  Mark writes, “As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion for them” (v.34).  Get the highlighter out, underline verse 34, and on your notes session in the worship bulletin, write that Mark 6:34 is one of the most important verses in the entire Gospel.  Confronted by the crowd he wanted to escape, Jesus was filled with compassion.

Someone is traumatized because they go to be entertained by the comic book violence of Batman on the screen and instead have to deal with real life, senseless violence right in their face.  Do we love them? Even when we don’t have the words or the energy, do we reach out to them and walk with as Jesus does?  Do we, as compassion literally means, “suffer with” them?

A nation, Iraq, beleaguered and broken by a decades of war and tyranny is now trying to get it together, and it’s neighbor, Syria is bringing her war onto Iraqi grounds.  And Iran and Israel are trying to fight their own battles and Iraq is right in the middle.  How does the church – you, me, churches all round – respond?  With compassion?  A compassionate response could take on many forms from care for refugees to financial contribution to Christian ministries to political advocacy.  It begins with prayer.  Do we pray for Iraq?

Or Iran?  Or Bulgaria?  Or Israel?  Or victims of drought in our own nation?  Or victims of insidious combination of drought and terrorism in Somalia?  Are we gripped by the Spirit to pray compassionately?

“As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion for them.”  Why?  Why did they need Jesus so much?  Mark’s narrative continues.  “They were like sheep without a shepherd.”  If I were in that crowd, I might not like being characterized that way.  Americans have self-sufficiency woven into our worldview.  The pioneer spirit and protestant work ethic on which our nation stands say that we are never meek, directionless sheep.  By our will and courage, we’ll find a way.  The truth is our nation is great, but sin has been around longer.  We as a nation and as individuals are fallen and will fall short of God’s glory just as that hungering crowd fell short in Mark 6.  We may not like it, but we are often also sheep without any guidance or protection against wolves that would use our greed, our sense of independence, and our pride to devour us. 

In describing those around Jesus in this way, Mark reaches back to the prophet Ezekiel.  He wrote,

              Ezekiel 34 New Living Translation (NLT)

34 Then this message came to me from the Lord: ² “Son of man, prophesy against the  shepherds, the leaders of Israel. Give them this message from the Sovereign Lord: What sorrow awaits you shepherds who feed yourselves instead of your flocks. Shouldn’t shepherds feed their sheep? ³ You drink the milk, wear the wool, and butcher the best animals, but you let your flocks starve. ⁴ You have not taken care of the weak. You have not tended the sick or bound up the injured. You have not gone looking for those who have wandered away and are lost. Instead, you have ruled them with harshness and cruelty. ⁵ So my sheep have been scattered without a shepherd, and they are easy prey for any wild animal. ⁶ They have wandered through all the mountains and all the hills, across the face of the earth, yet no one has gone to search for them.

⁷ “Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: ⁸ As surely as I live, says the Sovereign Lord, you abandoned my flock and left them to be attacked by every wild animal. And though you were my shepherds, you didn’t search for my sheep when they were lost. You took care of yourselves and left the sheep to starve. ⁹ Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord. ¹⁰ This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I now consider these shepherds my enemies, and I will hold them responsible for what has happened to my flock. I will take away their right to feed the flock, and I will stop them from feeding themselves. I will rescue my flock from their mouths; the sheep will no longer be their prey.

Jesus came to seek out and save the lost, to rescue the sheep who were being devoured.   Yes, he and the disciples were tired, but they were needed.  So compassion ruled and he welcomed the crowd and began to teach them.  Mark says he taught many things until late into the day.  The crowd, captivated by Jesus’ gentle but unquestioned authority, drank in his words without thought of provisions. 

The disciples finally had to interrupt him to say, “Hey, enough compassion for now.  It’s supper time.  We’re kind of compassioned-out.  Send them away.  They can fill up the Cracker Barrel and the Chik-Fil-A.  They can sit around and discuss your great teachings.  Send them away so they can eat and we can have some peace.” 

But Jesus wasn’t compassioned-out.  He was full of compassion.  He was driven by deep love for people who were hurting spiritually, politically, emotionally, and physically.  Jesus never runs out of compassion.  He runs on compassion.  It fuels him and comes from him.

Mark 1, Peter’s mother-in-law cannot perform hospitality her most crucial service as a first century lady of the house.  She’s down with a fever.  Jesus takes her tenderly by the hand and lifts to her feet.  By the time she’s standing, the weakness and sickness is gone and she’s 100%, ready to do her thing. 

Also in Mark 1, a leper runs to Jesus.  Lepers were, by law, to keep their distance.  In approaching, this one broke the rules, but his disease made him so desperate, he did not care.  Seeing him, Jesus was moved with pity.  He healed the leprosy (1:41).

In Mark 2, Jesus is surrounded by tax collectors, those in Israel who were treated as hated turncoats because they collected taxes for Rome.  Jesus never minimized the base sin in the crowd at the party that surely included gamblers and prostitutes.  He saw the very shepherdless sheep Ezekiel lamented.  In response to the Pharisees who complained about the company he kept, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners” (2:17).  Jesus saw sin as an evil disease that puts sons and daughters of God in harm’s way.  He came to cure us of what ails us because he loves us.

In Mark 5, he meets another woman, sick, bleeding, cast out from society.  The law called her untouchable, unclean, unworthy.  Jesus called her “daughter.”  This forgotten, stepped on woman was a daughter of God in the eyes of the compassionate one.

In two other healing miracles, one with a deaf mute, and another with a blind man, Jesus could see that the healing was going to be an involved process.  It included rubbing mud on the blind man’s eyes and spitting on the mute man’s tongue.  Knowing this and knowing that the diseases would be attributed to sin by some legalists; in other words, the deaf mute and the blind man would not only suffer their maladies but be blamed for them; knowing this, Jesus first took both individuals, again by the hand, away from the crowd.  Not only did he heal these illnesses.  He preserved the dignity and restored these lost souls to society. 

Jesus was driven by compassion.  Jesus we have to send the crowd away so they can eat.

No.  The teaching I give comes from God and if the people hear it and heed it they will understand that in my coming the Kingdom has arrived.  A kingdom where the rejected are welcomed and compassion and love are the rule. No.  No one is sent away.  You feed them.

We know what happens next.  The disciples protest and Jesus takes a meal of 5 pieces of pita bread and a few fish, and he feeds 5000 people and there are 12 baskets of leftovers. 

Flipping over to Mark 8, it happens again.  The circumstances there are slightly different, but again, Jesus takes the food from an individual’s meal, miraculously multiplies it, and feeds thousands.   

People were so desperate for what Jesus had they would follow him.  He was on the move, so to keep up, they had to move.  They may have meant traveling without making adequate preparation and then being caught in the wilderness with no food.  Jesus, driven by compassion as he always was, determined to teach the truths of the Kingdom of God would not allow hunger to distract his followers any more than he allowed storms at sea to consume the 12 disciples. 

I think miracles can still happen, but I don’t know when.  It’s the Holy Spirit’s call, not ours.  But, whether miracles happen our not, the body of Christ, the church, is to be driven by compassion every bit as much as he was.  Middle class Americans living high-tech, educated, affluent lives may feel like we have it all together.  But then we have a week where people die going to the movies.  That reminds us of our history of senseless violence.  Drought and heat remind us that we’ll never be more powerful than the weather and when it is dangerously bad, it can hurt us.  News from wars and terrorism from around the world remind us that the chaos of sin is all around us and no matter how independent we want to feel, in truth, we need Jesus like never before. 

Can the church command miracles with ease of Jesus?  Not every time.  I have never worked a miracle.  But you and I, we can be driven by compassion as he was.  We can show his love even it means standing with someone who is suffering. We don’t know what to do, so we stand with them as long as we need to.  In coming alongside, God shows us what forms compassion takes. 

Jesus is the compassionate one.  If we want to see Him, we go where there is pain and we love those who hurt.  When we do, we realize He is in us, working through us.  And in our compassion, which is His compassion in us, the world sees the Kingdom of God.

AMEN

Holiness - what a terrible, difficult concept

Below is a page from my journal.  I keep a notebook.  Each day, I read through a chapter or a few verses from the Bible.  Then, I write reflections.  This is not refined writing, but rather my immediate, raw comments.  I am currently in the book of Numbers, one of the places in scripture I rarely go.  I found today's reading difficult.  Here's what I wrote after reading Numbers 4:1-5:10.

In chapter 4, we see the specific details of three clans' work in the Tent of Meeting, the Kohathites, the Gershonites, and the Merarites.  Each grouping is assigned specifc tasks with the seemingly most serious assigned to the Kohathites.  Their service concerns the 'most holy things' (4:4).  The Kohathites carry the covered vessels for worship.  If they touch the holy things directly (by intention or by accident), they will die (4:15).  The Lord makes a point of telling Moses not to let the Kohathites die off from among the Levites (4:18).  Even looking at the holy things will bring death (4:20).

How completely troubling is this?  A point is made to preserve the Kohathites, but seemingly, only because of the holiness of their task.  It's OK if a few Kohathites die, but they as a group must not die off.  If's OK if other groups die off, but not the Kohathies.  Their task is too holy.

O dear God!  Please tell me I am too sensitive and I am reading thing wrongly.  As I read through Numbers, I am made aware of how unaware I am of your Holiness, and how much I don't understand the importance of holiness.  I am a pastor of a church, but I read Numbers, and I feel far from you, distant, and unknown.  I am supposed to be a spiritual leader, but as I read Numbers, I am aware of how much of a gentile I am, and how Holy Other you are.

In Numbers 5:1-13, the exile of lepers from the community, I wonder about Jesus and lepers.  He didn't kick them out.  He healed them.  In the mission of your holiness, O God, the mission that is running through Numbers, where is the compassion for lepers?  Are these poor, suffering people a defilement and nothing more?  God, what am I missing?  This seeming troubling and cruel.

Evangelism

Below are comments I made in my monthly report to our church leaders.  Ours is a healthy, small congregation of 125-175 participants.  We do great at welcoming and loving people who show up.  We need to improve in going out with the good news that Jesus is Lord.  Here are the comments I shared with our leaders:

You undoubtedly have noticed throughout this year a strong emphasis on Evangelism.  The reason for this is I believe God is calling us beyond where we are right now.  Currently, we have a good website.  People read it and want to attend our church.  When they come, they find an attractive building.  They are greeted by friendly people.  The music is engaging.  By the time the sermon starts, most guest have decided whether or not they will come back and considering making HillSong their church.  Research bears this out.  Many people will even stay at a church where there is some doctrinal disagreement if the people of the church are kind and welcoming.  That’s where we are.  We have a lot of first time visitors, about 5-8 every single week.  Many of them stay. 

However, we are not in the “get-them-into-HillSong” business.  A classic question for success is What business are you in?  The follow up question is how’s business?  I think our business is to proclaim that Jesus is Lord, His Kingdom has come, and all who repent can have abundant, eternal life in His name.  I think making that proclamation is the business we are in.  How’s business?  I am not sure.

The purpose of the current series in Mark’s gospel (http://hillsong.org/)is to proclaim the Kingdom; to proclaiming provocatively and confrontationally.  The purpose of the emphasis on evangelism is carrying our business efforts beyond our church walls.  Lost people/unsaved/unchurched need to know Jesus.  They won’t know Him if the only place we ever proclaim Him is from 11-12 on Sundays at our property.  Evangelism has to be a lifelong project for each of us and for all of us collectively, as a body.

How we proclaim is as important as that we proclaim it.  I encourage an approach that takes genuine interest in other people whether they ever turn to Jesus or not.  We love for the sake of God and out of obedience.  We do not love and we do not extend friendship for the sake of getting people to become Christians. We love.  We listen.  We care.  We do things to help people materially (give “helping hand” money, do “brush-with-kindness projects” etc.).  And we get to know the gospel so well and our lives are so saturated with scripture that in conversation and in the way we approach people, it naturally comes out in conversation that we love Jesus and He loves others to the point of dying for them. 

This is a comprehensive approach to evangelism – the whole church taking the whole Gospel to the whole world (including Culbreth Road, Southern Village, Carrboro, Pittsboro, Chatham Co. etc.).  It is done through ministries, outreach, projects, and in our individual lives.  It has to be what HillSong is about.  Our proclamation – Jesus is Lord, His Kingdom has come, and all people need Him desperately.  All who turn to Him in repentance receive forgiveness of sins and (eternal, abundant) life in His name.  We have to get this message to all who come.  And we have to get out into the community so we can take the message to those who don’t come (here or anywhere else), but desperately need Jesus. 

Run From Jesus or Follow Jesus

Instead of teaching, Jesus told stories  - stories about planting seeds, good and not so good soils, small seeds that grow to become enormous bushes, lamps.  Jesus compared the grandest of ideas, the Kingdom of God, to these simple, everyday things.  Speaking to crowds along the seashore, he told parables, and those who could discern the message understood.  Those who could not understand what Jesus was saying, well …

As twilight set, Jesus told the twelve they should get on the boat and head to the other side of the water.  The experienced sailors jumped to it with no problem until the wind kicked up.  No man of the sea is so experienced as to be able to overcome all weather.  Even the best boatmen are sometimes lost to sea and the 12 disciples feared this very fate as the waves rose and tossed them about.  Is anything more humbling that being made aware of how small we are?  The boat was swamped. 

Yet Jesus lay on a cushion in the stern, sleeping through it all.  The hours of teaching, expending creative mental energy, all the while outdoors in the sun and breeze had drained him.  “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing” (4:38).  He woke and gave the storm a concise, sharp tongue-lashing.  “Peace!  Be still!”  The winds and waves had not sinned; they behaved the way the seas and lakes and oceans are supposed to behave.  They acted as God had created them.  But now God was telling them to knock it off and they did. 

Cranky, Jesus turned to the wide-eyed disciples and demanded to know why they were afraid and where was their faith?  They began asking, whispering to one another, hoping he wouldn’t hear, “Who is this?”  Who is this that has called us to follow him?  Students seek out masters, but he sought us.  People like us don’t get to study under true masters – not fishermen or rebels, and certainly not tax collectors.  He called us, and he’s greater than the greatest masters.  Who is this?

And so it was that they landed on the other side of the lake, heads shaking, questions rising.  They walked inland into the region of the Garasenes.  Ahead was a graveyard. 

Once, I went away for three days of uninterrupted study.  Someone generously let me use a cabin by a lake.  I walked inland, and came to a cemetery in a churchyard.  I took my time, studying the headstones.  This was out in the country, midweek, about 11 in the morning.  No one was around.  Uninterrupted, basking in the rural sounds, I tried to imagine that place in the late 1800’s.  Many of those buried were children.  The funerals would have been mercilessly hot in June and July, and potentially freezing in December and January.  In that quiet reflection, I felt the Spirit of God speak into my heart.

Jesus and the disciples did not enjoy tranquility.  As they came to this ceremonially unclean place, a cemetery with above-ground tombs, a horrific roaring assaulted them.  It was a prelude to a remarkable scene.  How do we envision what rushed at them?  Mark was not striving for drama, but even his straightforward reporting cannot contain the force of this event. 

Metal shackles could not contain this man – he snapped them apart as if they were paper.  His body was a wreak – dirty, bloodly, bruised, hair going everywhere, beard matted, filled with who knows what; indescribable wildness in the eyes.  What inflicted such harm?  The man did it himself.  Mark does tell us the entire community in the village nearby could not contain the madman or restrain him.  They tried, but he flung them aside like unwanted rodents.  He howled and screamed.  He was death living among the dead, one whose body still lived, but one completely overcome by evil. 

An entire village could not calm this rage, but at the sight of Jesus, he threw himself on the ground, bowing at Jesus’ feet.  Jesus was one of 13 people, walking at the head of group.  Yet the demon possessed man seemed utterly indifferent to the disciples.  The demons disdained Jesus, yet they also feared him tremendously.  For them, there was no mystery.  He was the very presence of God.

The demons who ravaged a man’s life and kept an entire town in fear were now reduced to begging.  They pleaded that Jesus might send them into a herd of pigs.  Can we even realize the mixing of awfulness for Jesus, for the disciples all of whom were Jews, and for the first readers of Mark who were most certainly Jews?  What was worse for them, pigs or gentiles, or demons?  All three are right here, converging on the disciples, and the only one in control, the only one with authority is Jesus.  All other powers are reduced to nothing before him – raging storms at sea; armies of demons.  It’s all insignificant. 

When the Jesus demanded the demons’ name, they collectively said “Legion.”  That doesn’t just mean there were ‘1000’ of them.  A legion was a unit of Roman soldiers.  Jews, Egyptians, Greeks – all feared the coming of a Roman Legion.  Legionnaires dominated through intimidation.  Was this pack of demons trying to put some fright into Jesus by calling themselves “Legion?”  That couldn’t work because Jesus was not scared of Rome.  In him there is no fear.

He sent the demons to the pigs and the pigs went mad, rushing over a steep bank and into the sea where they drowned.  Pigs gone; demons gone.  What about the Gentiles?  Here we see God in the flesh.  Yes, he came to redeem God’s chosen people, Israel.  He also came as Lord of all creation with a message of salvation for all people, even non-Jews.  Here, in the Garasenes, among the tombs, Jesus claim authority.  The Kingdom of God had come here and He was Lord in this place of all places.  But then, he is Lord of all places. 

The keepers of the pigs, stricken with freight, ran to town to report that a group of Jews were with the graveyard madman, and all the pigs went crazy, and now the madman wasn’t a madman anymore, well … the townsfolk had to come see for themselves.  And they did.

I wonder if they brought torches and pitchforks.  After all they had kind of designated this as the area to warn the kids about.  Don’t go down to the graveyard, kids, there’s a wild monster down there and he’ll eat you.  They had built up quite a life avoiding the unfortunate man they had relegated to there.  Their response to a demon they could not confront was to accept the dehumanization of the poor possessed man.  Let that one suffer at evil’s hand, and we’ll all be safe staying away from him.  We won’t confront the evil in our own lives – jealousy, greed, gluttony, laziness, faithlessness, prejudice.  We’ll ignore all that and pretend that all the evil in the world is in the demoniac who lives in the tombs. 

Were they ever upset to arrive and find him clothed and in his right mind.  Did they remember what he was like, before the demon came?  Was he the town blacksmith or the town tanner?  Maybe a farmer?  Perhaps he had been quite an important man in town, the grounds keeper in the graveyard.  Maybe some evil he committed opened his heart to the invasion of this beastly legion of demons.  Whatever they case, they could dismiss him now, as the sole possessor of evil.  They had to deal with him as a community member, a neighbor and brother.  Their whole worldview was upset at this change in things.

But didn’t they celebrate their friend’s healing?  O no.  After putting the pitchforks down and hearing the story once again from the swine herders, the town elders quickly reached a conclusion.  Their eyes fixed on the one thing that paralleled the drastic changes of events.  A group of Jews had come to town.  No one doubted that the leader, Jesus, had done this.  No one questioned his power.  They simply did not want any part of it. 

There’s a lot of begging in this story.  The demons who exerted a hideous sort of tormented authority over the region were reduced to begging.  They begged Jesus to let them enter the pigs.  He did.  They died.  The town elders, supposedly the leaders in town, begged Jesus to leave.

What do we do when Jesus comes along?  The coming of Jesus is the coming of God.  The moving of the Holy Spirit is the moving of God.  What do we do when God moves in our lives and confronts us as a people, as individuals?  Do we beg God to let us leave, run away?  Do we beg God to leave?  If He stays everything changes.  If He stays, He gets to be in charge.  There can only be one Lord and it is Him.  So, in life, He will come along.  Every person has that moment when they have to decide about God.  Do we beg that we might be allowed to run away?  Do we beg God that he might go away?

The person healed of the demon possession knew that the coming of Jesus meant everything changed.  He had been living like a crazed animal, a rabid dog who couldn’t even find relief in death.  His was a living Hell that the 1000 demons in him perpetuated.  With no end in sight, he wanted everything to change.  He desperately wanted out.  When Jesus freed him from the grip of Hell, he begged Jesus with everything in Him.  Let me go with you.

When the demons begged for pigs, Jesus gave pigs.

When the terrified town elders begged for relief from Jesus’ holy presence, he left.

But, when the now healed man, in his right mind, begged to be with Jesus, Jesus said no.  The Gospel of Mark includes several miracles where Jesus tells all involved to say nothing.  Here, it’s the opposite.  “Jesus refused [him] and said to him, ‘Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you’” (5:19).  Was that a joke?  This guy had lost all his friends a long time ago. 

He did what Jesus instructed, kind of.  He into town and then throughout the Decapolis telling everybody how Jesus healed him.  Decapolis was a region of 10 mostly gentile cities.  The demonian of the graveyard was surely a local legend.  Now he was on the preaching circuit, showing himself, healed, sane, and ready for life because Jesus had come.    

Sure, Jesus left. But he also stayed.  The results of Jesus’ work, the man, healthy, living, breathing, and in the very center of society in those 10 important cities, daily testified that the Kingdom of God had come and that Jesus was and is Lord.  The man testified to Jesus with his words, but his very presence was testimony.  Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works.”  This was Jesus’ workmanship. 

Had the man gone off with Jesus, the town elders could have downplayed the entire event.  They could have found a new scapegoat on whom they would load all of the town’s guilt.  That type of buck passing would never work as long as the healed demoniac was around, speaking of Jesus.  I used to read these types of stories and wonder why Jesus wouldn’t let the healed people come.  Now, it makes sense to me. 

Before the cross, before the resurrection, before the birth of the church, before the missionary age in which Jesus followers spread out over the globe to share the good news of salvation in his name, Jesus walked the earth.  He told stories about seeds and lamps and pearls.  And people had to respond to the stories.  He calmed raging storms at sea.  He calmed raging people and exorcised the demons who tormented them.  And people had to respond to his actions, his miracles.  He taught with wisdom that exceeded Israel’s greatest religious minds.  And the crowds had to respond to the lessons he gave.  Before there were a billion people on this earth claiming the name ‘Christian,’ Jesus was known in a small nation.  God in human flesh came and announced that the Kingdom had arrived.  How would people respond?

How do we?

It’s the age of the church – the body of Christ doing God’s work in the world at the leading of God’s Holy Spirit.  Do we beg Jesus to let us just run away?  Do we be God to go away from us so we don’t have to deal with Him?  Or do we beg Him to let us go with Him?  It doesn’t get easier that way.  And we give up authority because He is Lord.  But then, that’s the real challenge.

Will we give up authority and live under His lordship?  One – at the last judgment, we will do that whether we want to or not.  Right now we can choose to do so.  The man possessed found out that Jesus is the one who heals, the one who rescues us from death and gives us eternal life and abundant life.    Because Jesus saved Him, he chose to follow Jesus and tell the world about the salvation Jesus gives.

What do we choose?  How do we respond to Jesus when He shows up in our lives?

AMEN

Apologetics and Evangelism

Both words raise suspicious eyebrows in casual conversation.  When I speak of evangelism, I mean something very specific: sharing the good news that Jesus is Lord and Salvation from sin and death can be found in him.  Sharing that news, inviting others to faith in Jesus, showing that his eternal Kingdom was permanently established at his death & resurrection, and letting all know that at the final judgment, Heaven and Earth will be reconciled and be forever in the bodily presence of God – that’s what I mean by evangelism.  It is not voting republican, attending Liberty University, advocating for Israel, or being a patriotic American.  Evangelism is announcing the inevitable in-breaking of the Kingdom of God.

            My understanding of apologetics is explanation/defense.  Dictionary.com defines it as the defense or proof of Christianity.  I have always been a bit suspicious of “proofs.”  When Jesus walked the earth, his miracles led to confrontations with religious leaders and ultimately, he was crucified even though people saw 5000 fed with a few loaves, and the dead raised (Lazarus in John 11).  The “proofs” did not lead to faith then, so why do great thinkers in Christian history since the resurrection think that their reasoning will lead doubters to faith? 

            Can evangelism and apologetics work together not just to defend Christianity (as if God’s truth needed defending), but also to enlighten skeptics to the point that they would be open to giving their hearts to Jesus and submitting to Him as Lord?  In the end conversion and transformation are works of the Holy Spirit, but God invites us to play a role.  We know how missions/works of compassion and social justice open the hearts of doubters.  We know many come to faith when a friend invites them to church.  Can evangelism and apologetics team-up and be bridges from unbelief to faith?

            The answer is … I don’t know.  I will seek this out in my own reading, and I would love to hear your feedback on this.  What do you think?  You can email me (tenant.hillsong@gmail.com), or contact me on Facebook, twitter, or comment on my blog (http://honesttalkwithgod.blogspot.com/).