The Goodness of God

Jesus gives his core group of disciples some last marching orders, and then, we ascend into the sky. What he wanted them to do was simple: get out there and preach the good news. Christ had been preparing them for this moment the whole time, but he did one last thing that was incredibly important. He got out of the way. He shifted what it meant to be the Body of Christ. It was no longer the body of a man but a body of empowered believers.

In his journeys, Paul finds himself called right into the center of Athenian culture with one opportunity to make his case. Standing before Athens' ruling council, he artfully uses a combination of pieces of Greco-Roman culture to make a convincing and intelligent argument to a group of people who appreciate that exact kind of thing. Paul got to that point because the early church didn't have the option to sit in buildings of their own hoping that a skeptical world will wander in looking for something. He had to go out there and reach the people where they already were.

There are some real highs and lows to the religious experience. Stephen experiences all of them at once. He has this moment of direct connection with God and gets killed by a mob for speaking out against the religious authorities. Pushing forward God's Kingdom has always been difficult and remains so. We don't have to seek out the suffering. It just comes with the territory sometimes.

At some point, when asked, "what is church?" we end up with architecture. Even if we know on some level that the Church is people and not a building, we still probably picture those people in a building. Maybe, it's a grand steepled structure, a modern theater looking space, or something clapboard and down home. At the start, 2,000 years ago, there were no buildings that belonged to the church. They met in homes and the Temple. Instead, when it all went right at first, it was purely about devotion to God and devotion to each. That's what got it all started and can always be what we run on now.

Every once and while, we catch that moment of clarity. "Oh geez, I need to change." Reams of self help books and the bowels of the Internet will gladly give you some advice, but there's something much more ancient (and reliable) - God's Holy Spirit. At the tail end of his sermon in Acts 2, we see Peter striking a fine balance. He shows the crowd that they have a need to change. He hopes to lead them to that moment of clarity, but because of God's power and grace, we never to stay there. There's a better way forward.

For his first ever sermon, Peter became the first person to face a new a troubling questions: "How do I tell people about Jesus?" Peter had walked with Jesus, talked with Jesus, and bore direct witness to the resurrection. The crowd of thousands that he now stared down had done none of that. When Jesus did all the talking, this was easy. Now, Peter is in charge and has the proverbial microphone, so he finds a point of commonality and points the crowd to the eternally scared thing that Jesus did.

The way that we tell the Easter story has at least a couple of problems. First, we read it as if every one is perfectly calm and in command of themselves, so we lose the impact that it most of had on the people at the time. Second, the meaning of Easter isn't contained in the accounts of the resurrection. For each Gospel, we get an account that Jesus rose, but it's the rest of the New Testament that explores that meaning. So, we often fail to appreciate Easter for what it is - a profound turning point in human history where God's power overcomes even the mightiest of foes.

The entire setup for the Last Supper sheds important light on what really matters. Jesus only has a few hours before his arrest. He decides to spend it teaching his closest friend about the importance of loving and serving one another. Jesus even washes the feet of the man who had already betrayed him. This should put life and faith into perspective. With limited time, Jesus stressed to his friends the deep spiritual significance of loving each other.

Our tendency, as Jesus triumphally enters Jerusalem, is to keep our eyes on Jesus. Fair enough. He's the protagonist for the entire Gospel narrative. He's also the Son of God, the Divine Logos, etc. If anyone deserves our attention, it's Christ. However, if we look beyond who is in the center of the shot, we see something powerful - a massive group of disparate people coming together to spontaneous worship and begin to understand who this Jesus guy is. This is a potent image of the fulfilled Kingdom of God: Jesus at the center, victorious and people being brought together to be transformed.