The Golden City of the Gospel

Read: John 3: 1-21

The Gospel is the proclamation of a new age begun through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That Gospel, moreover, has a form, a political form. It is embodied in a church that is required to be always ready to give hospitality to the stranger. The Gospel is a society in which difference is not denied but used for the discovery of goods in common. It is… a society called into being by Jesus who gave them a new way to live. –Stanley Hauerwas

If there’s one thing I’ve learned quite a bit in Singapore, I’ve learned about the depth and complexity of the Gospel. I know – many of you might be surprised. After all, shouldn’t a guy who taught Sunday school a few times know the Gospel pat-out? The problem, I think, is that we’re used to thinking the Gospel like 9/11. It’s some life-changing news that forever changed the trajectory of history. We see the Gospel from some source, become caught up in the “fullness of the event”, and then we react somehow. And that’s why we emphasize “spreading the Gospel” as a telling it to someone. We “share” the Gospel, as if it were some news that caught our attention, and should catch another person’s attention.

What Hauerwas warns us in the quote above is that such a view is not the Gospel in its entirety. Of course, when the opportunity presents itself, we should share the Gospel. But the Gospel is much greater than that. In the passage above, Nicodemus sneaks out to meet Jesus, who tells him that he must be “born again”, continuing that “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus was confuzzled. What’s that supposed to mean?

The Jews of Jesus’ time had only one conception of the Messiah. He was to come in glory to lead an uprising. Picture the final battle between good and evil in front of the walls of Gondor in The Return of the King. That was what the Jews were thinking of Jesus. Jesus was Aragorn, who will destroy the Romans, and kick them out of the Holy Land! But Nicodemus was further confused with the idea of “born again”. After all, he was a Jew by birth. That’s not enough? What is Jesus trying to get at?

Jesus was issuing forth something revolutionary – an alternative Kingdom, so to speak. This is not a Kingdom that’s identifiable with a flag with a parliament of sorts. This is a Kingdom of people who have a new identity. You can’t put a finger on it, aside from the fact that this Kingdom’s people call themselves Christians and follow Jesus. Christianity is not just about “God so loved the world.” It’s not about a “relationship”, or even a world order. Christianity is about a Christ who died to conquer sin instead of exterminating the sinners. It is about a Christ who died a servant instead of a master. It is about a Christ who died to save.

And when Christ died to ransom many from their sins, His people will organize themselves differently, because we would see others differently than the world does. That’s why the Gospel is also political, because politics is fundamentally about how people organize themselves. And the church, ideally, offers a pleasing alternative to the workings of the world. The question is, is the Church a place where people know to come for a crazy love that the world doesn’t even comprehend; a shelter in a violent storm; a resting place for the weary? Or are we only making the world worse?

Wednesday: Pray for friends (inside and outside church)
Lift up a person that you want to start a conversation with this week. Pray that God will give you an opportunity to be intentional