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A New Center of Gravity

Aug 4, 2009

"Every generation gets a chance to change the world."

This is the U2 lyric on the latest Blackberry commercial. It is so true. This is really what we are up to in our efforts to plant Emmaus Road. We are trying to change the world. And even though it is not happening overnight, it is happening.

It was extremely useful for me to get away last week to study in Canada. I had some great times of prayer and reflection on our mission as a church and I came home fired up to reach the Eastside with the Good News together with you. I have been reading 1000 pages for one of the classes that I took there called "Becoming a Missional Church."

God is using the books to remind me how easy it is to reduce the Gospel to make it manageable. As I pay attention to my own soul and to the struggles that some of you have shared with me, I am more and more convinced that all of our difficulties spring from this same source: a misunderstood and truncated gospel.

We live in an egocentric age where it really is all about "me" We therefore tend to evaluate our life choices through that grid of "what's best for ME?" of "What's in it for ME?" We are the center of our own universe and everything is evaluated in that light. My career, my clothes, my money, my spouse, my free time, all orbit around US like the planets fly around the sun. If our career does not bring us joy, we change it. If we have money in our bank account we are the ones who choose how to spend it, and we usually spend it on making ourselves happy and comfortable. ME ME ME. We can reduce God to one of the "things" in orbit around us. If he does not make us happy or comfortable, well then He better beware because we might just move on. Church becomes an accessory to our life that helps us feel better about ourselves rather than a team of people who I depend on (and who depend on me!) to become effective ambassadors for Jesus.

Yes Jesus did say, "Come to me and I will give you rest." But he also said "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me."

If we go through life thinking Jesus came to make us happy we will avoid suffering and treat all hardship as if it is against the will of God. "God wants me to be happy" is a small and truncated Gospel. It is good news :-) but it is not THE Good News. The Good News is bigger than this. Was the cross a "happy" place? NO! It was painful and horrible and lonely, yet it was the Father's will that Jesus go there. And if Jesus had avoided it, in the name of 'staying happy', we would be lost in our sin. This is the Good News. God goes to unhappy places and experiences un happy things to make it possible for others to enter into the eternal happiness of communion with God. As Christians this is exactly what we do too. We go to unhappy places (homeless shelters, retirement homes, AIDS hospices, our neighbors' house) and experience un happy things (people who are poor, lonely, sick, bored) to make it possible for others to enter into the eternal happiness of communion with God.

This is our chance to change the world.TO lay our lives down for others.

1 John puts it this way, " This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers." Jesus said this was the defining mark of his followers. "love one another: just as I have loved you," he said "By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

We are fooling ourselves if we think we can pursue our own temporal happiness and live as the center of our own universe and be Christians! Its a lie, a reduced Gospel, and shallow facade for egocentric living, an extravagant SUV driving through the slums with a "Jesus loves you" bumper sticker on it, a farce, a joke.

Instead we are called to see that God is the center around which everything, including us, orbits around. So when our careers are hard, or family life is challenging, we do not evaluate it on a scale of how much it pleases us, but rather on a scale or how much it pleases him.

I would be much happier to sleep in every morning and let my wife get up at 6am with the 4 kids, cook them breakfast, get them dressed etc. BUT does this make Jesus happy? To see me sawing logs while she parents alone?? NO! But doesn't Jesus want me to be happy and sleep in? NO! He wants me to love her the way He has loved me by laying my life down for her. God is more interested in conforming you to the image of Jesus than he is in making you temporarily happy. So as I reenter into church planting with you I want to call us all to become even better theologians who do not reduce the Gospel, who live with God in the center of our lives, and who realize by the power of the Holy Spirit that it's not just ME ME ME.

Encouraged to be with you on the road!

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