orphanages – Dancing In The Kingdom

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 3 – Dancing in the Kingdom– Chapter 18 – Entering the Dance

Reclaiming the institutional church

[Bible references: Matthew 5:1-16, 38-48; Luke 6:1-49; John 13:1-17, 34-35]

There are many people who claim to love Jesus but not His church (which is his body). But we need to keep in mind that every accusation we may choose to hold against the church is against us personally. The church is comprised of sinful people, and that includes us. The church has done inappropriate things in the past and so have we. As part of our, and the church’s, sinful behavior is the ease with which we focus on the things that have gone wrong while forgetting to examine the “log” in our own eye. A quote from an old cartoon strip is appropriate here, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”^[1]

The second thing we need to hold onto is that as Jesus loved the world enough to die for – and redeem – the very people who rejected him. That includes the church – which includes us. If we are commanded to love our enemies, what should our attitudes be towards the group that we are part of? It is normal for us to have higher expectations towards our own family than those who are outside the family. Because of that, it is normal for us to be disappointed by or hurt more easily by people within our family than by anyone else.

Those hurts and disappointments can lead to us overlooking all the ways in which the church has, in its broken way, still managed to fulfill at least some of the intentions God has had for the church. Within the very messiness of church history, the church had not totally neglected its ability to show love to one another and to reach in love to those outside the church. It is through the church that we have the Bible and faithful Christians through the years that created hospitals and orphanages, taken care of the widows and others who need care. It is the church that made it possible for us to hear about the gospel and respond to Christ’s invitation to follow him.

The church is the body of Christ. We serve as the hands and feet, etc. of Christ, doing together what is not possible to do by ourselves. In the apostle Paul’s articulation of the Body of Christ, he notes how we all serve as different parts of the body, helping each other grow by serving in the unique ways God has prepared for us. Furthermore, Christ has told us that we will be recognized as his disciples by how we serve one another in love. This is one of the grand themes of the Bible, God has reached out to us in love, and we can respond by loving him in return; also loving one another. It is through our reflection of his love that others will respond to God in love as well.

On this side of the second coming of Christ, we all remain broken and so our institutions will remain broken. But that does not mean that Christ is unable to use us (as individuals or as part of an institutional church) for his purposes and that does not mean that the goodness of Christ is unable to be reflected through us as individuals or groups or through the institutions we create as his co-heirs to bring mercy and justice to his image-bearers and the world he has prepared for us.

In formal or informal ways, we create the institutional church to help us more effectively serve one another within the Body of Christ and to serve others outside the Body of Christ. As we take an historical look at the expected mixed record of the Body of Christ’s broken church (and, we must remember, our personal records as well), we need to cling to Christ, His love, His sustenance, and forgiveness us for all the ways we have failed to love each other within the church and outside the church.

^[1] Kelly, Walt, From a Pogo strip, 22 Apr 1970 www.thisdayinquotes.com/2011/04/we-have-met-enemy-and-he-is-us.html

Reflect

Sometimes our church organizations can be hard to love. Nevertheless, we cannot truly love Christ without loving his church. How could you better express love for your local congregation this year?

Observe

Read John 13:1-17. How can we love and serve the church as Jesus showed us?

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 3 – Dancing in the Kingdom– Chapter 18 – Entering the Dance

Occupy Till I Come

[Bible references: Jeremiah 29; Luke 19:11-27]

On His way to Jerusalem the last time before His triumphal entry, Jesus knew the kind of expectations the people had about how the Kingdom of God would appear. To prepare them for the long wait between His resurrection and His return to fully restore the Kingdom of God, He told them a parable about a nobleman who would, before going into a far country, give his servants some money with instructions to engage in business while he was gone. The parable ended with rewards given to those who made profits and penalties for those who did not.

This then is our instruction, to make use of what God has given each of us to ‘engage in business,’ (KJV “Occupy Till I Come”) that is, we are called to help advance the kingdom until He returns.

When Jesus came two thousand years ago, he announced the beginning of a new age, “The Kingdom is here … The Kingdom of heaven is near … The Kingdom of God has come.” As disciples of Jesus we can say, “The Kingdom of God is within us.” Then, with our hearts changed by Jesus, we are charged to go and make disciples, to do justly, love mercy and to walk humbly with our God.

As we then join Jesus in bringing His kingdom into the world, we need to remember our humble estate …We cannot even change our own hearts, never mind the hearts of others. Certainly, we cannot change our culture. It is up to our Savior to change our hearts, and even more so to change the culture around us.

Jesus and his disciples lived more as servants or slaves within the Roman Empire. They had no political influence. But as the disciples lived transformed lives, living as well as preaching the Gospel, and showed the power of sacrificial love, their Spirit empowered lives opened the way for the Spirit of God to change the hearts of many throughout the Roman Empire, eventually moving the heart of a Roman Emperor, Constantine.

History has shown the mixed results of combining the power of state and church, but the teachings of Jesus have penetrated even our secular postmodern culture in ways that are not widely recognized as such. Despite the church’s own history of abusing and misusing power, Jesus’ concepts of using power to serve others, even one’s enemies still managed to occasionally penetrate the halls of power – in imperfect form to be sure, just as the ideas expressed in the Enlightenment imperfectly expressed ideas from Christianity.

“Reparations let’s say for slavery or in New Zealand reparations to the Māori or in Australia reparations to the Aboriginal even for native indigenous American Indians. And this language is actually not a historic language. This is a language since Jesus. See, because Genghis Khan never worried about reparations. He never felt he had any moral responsibility to somehow make it right for all the women he raped and all the men he killed and all the families destroyed and all the villages he burned down. We have Caesar or Alexander, they never really had remorse for anything they conquered or anything they destroyed or any people whose lives they overthrew. This concept of justice of using power well is a concept that only emerges because Jesus lived 2,000 years ago. He revolutionized the entire understanding of power. The idea that a government should actually care about its citizens is really, it’s not a historic human concept. This concept is infused by the ethics that Jesus brought to the understanding of power that it says when Jesus had all power and all authority, he ties a towel around his waist and he washes his disciples’ feet. This is a reinvention of power. … if you go back to World War II … when you look at the American response to conquering Germany and conquering Japan, and how within a decade or two, both of them became two of the greatest economies in the world … You get to see what happens when you’re conquered from a Christian mindset world with West Germany. You realize that Japan becomes one of our greatest allies. That doesn’t happen historically. You do not conquer a nation and then rebuild it to feel a moral obligation to re-establish that country better than it was before. Even what we’ve done historically has been informed by a Christian worldview. I’m not saying that England or United States or any Western nation is a Christian nation. What I’m saying is the conversations we’re having are informed by Jesus’s revolutionary, brilliant genius thoughts about power.” ^{^[1]}

There are debates on the ideas expressed above, often fraught with ideas of self-interest[2] and ideology, about how to provide for populations that have experienced oppression or how to manage the after-effects of war. But these ideas and other expressions of compassion and justice – like hospitals, orphanages, the concept of “war crimes,” or the many ways to carry out “social justice” (that is, God’s expression of compassion and justice) – are ideas not found in history until God introduced them first to his chosen people, Israel, and then through the person of Jesus to His Body. As God’s image-bearers

Unfortunately. the church often abused its privilege, often succumbing to the worldly temptations of power and ignoring its mandate to steward God’s world with compassion and justice. But even though the church has stumbled, it has still managed to live out, admittedly imperfectly, its mandate of compassion and justice. And the world has noticed. Bu interestingly, many have adopted those same values even though they choose to ignore the source of our mandate.

^[1] Mcmanus, Erwin. Interview with Carey Nieuwhof, CNLP 452: Erwin McManus on the Future of the Church, How to do Evangelism More Effectively, Authenticity and Reflections on Being Labeled a Heretic Carey Nieuwhof careynieuwhof.com/episode452

[2] Niebuhr, Reinhold. “Editorial Notes” republished as Christianity and Crisis Magazine providencemag.com/2022/06/christian-realism-enlightened-self-interest-marshall-plan-emerges-reinhold-niebuhr/ 17 Jun 2022

Reflect

In what ways have you lived out a sacrificial love?

Observe

Read Jeremiah 29; Luke 19:11-27. What do we need to do to live transformed lives, living and preaching the Gospel, and show the power of sacrificial love with Spirit empowered lives?