Was Jesus Seeker Sensitive? - Part 2

In Mark 2:15-17 Jesus is having dinner with a social outcast identified as Levi the tax collector.  Some of the religious elite notice Jesus kicking it with Levi and his many tax-collector/sinner friends and they want to know why.  Jesus responds, "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."  Jesus is not seeker sensitive he is sinner sensitive.

The new reality - the Kingdom of God - that Jesus has ushered into existence through his life, death, and resurrection is a gift offered to all of humanity and not just those who are "seeking" God.  Romans 5 tells us that God proves his love for us in that while we were not seeking him he was seeking us.  God has acted on behalf of you and me before we even knew we needed someone to act on our behalf.  The penetrating reality of the Kingdom of God is not dependent upon my searching or seeking after it.  The Kingdom of God expressed through Jesus is a reality actively seeking those who aren't seeking it.

There once existed a reality that now looks like a dream.  It was a reality in which love, honor, mutuality, wholeness, and peace defined God's relationship with humanity, humanity's relationship with itself, and humanity's relationship with all of creation.  That dream has once again become a reality through Jesus and it is offered for the entire world...as we Christians like to say, "For God so love the WORLD that he..." 

God is not sensitive only to seekers he is sensitive to sinners like me.  14 years ago God didn't meet me in a church coffee shop, he met me in a bar.  He didn't meet me through a Christian radio station, he met me through the mysticism of Bob Marley.  He didn't meet me through an annual revival, he met me through a hospital emergency room.  He didn't meet me in a Worship Center, he met me in a county jail.  God didn't meet me because I was seeking him, he met me because he was seeking me.

The Good News is that there is a God who doesn't wait for us to seek him before he seeks us. The Good News is that a dream has become a reality, and I don't know about you, but I'm tired of dreaming.

Was Jesus Seeker Sensitive? - Part 1

Of late, I have become convinced that Jesus was anything but seeker sensitive: "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me" (Mark 8:34). He repeatedly admonished individuals and groups to give up their wealth, religious traditions, vocations, and family relations to follow him. There was no 1,000 seat amphitheater in Capernaum where Jesus attempted to attract to himself droves of religious explorers with his 1st century beatnik/hipster style and his life-of-the-party miracles. There is no evidence in Scripture that Jesus registered visitors during the Sermon on the Mount, or handed out coffee outside the synagogue (though feeding the 5,000 was a sweet "First Impression"), or called church members when their attendance or giving declined. Jesus presented and embodied the in-breaking of a new reality - "the Kingdom of God has come near." This was not a new religious ideology or philosophical summae; it was a claim on the nature of existence and being, a claim on reality itself. Jesus quite simply gave his life to proclaiming, modeling, and ushering in a new reality. His call to follow is not merely a call to right thinking or right behavior; it is a call to a new reality characterized by peace, love, wholeness, life, repentance, forgiveness, grace, sacrifice, justice, truth, and reconciliation. One cannot make more palatable or inviting or inoffensive the truth or nature of reality itself. It is what it is. Jesus proclaimed, modeled, and ushered in a new reality that is what it is and no cross-less worship center, skinny jeans, or double latte will change that.

"Shift Happens" - Part 2

The kenosis hymn in Philippians 2 is the "new" church model for a culture enveloped in rabid, discontinuous change. The Greek word kenosis means quite simply to "empty." In the context of Philippians 2, Jesus "empties" himself utterly and completely for a purpose greater than himself - namely the salvation, reconciliation, and redemption of the world. Jesus "emptied" himself of his position, power, rights, and identity and replaced them with enslavement, human frailty, humiliation, torture, and mortality. His was an act of radical obedience.

We the church, the body of Christ, must embody individually and corporately the radical obedience modelled in Philippians 2. We must "empty" ourselves of the traditions, practices, and theologies that prevent us from becoming "obedient to the point of death - even death on a cross." Radical obedience may entail removing the pews and the hymnals that rest in them from the sanctuary. It may mean turning down the glitz and glamor of our rock-concert worship and turning up the Apostle's Creed. It may mean knocking down a few steeples and putting up a few homeless shelters. It may mean selling less "Church Growth" books for the senior pastor and buying more time catechizing new believers. It may mean closing the doors on hundred-year old-churches and openning our homes to the least, the lost, and the broken - people like you and me.

Radical obedience isn't a model for church growth. It isn't a formula for our "Best Life Now." It isn't a time capsule for "the way church ought to be." Radical obedience is a choice to seek emptiness, enslavement, humility, and death in hopes that our individual and corporate lives will truly embody the petition Jesus taught his followers,"thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

The pursuit of radical obedience isn't easy, but it is simple. I think it can be broken down into 3 steps: 1.) Read the Bible; 2.) Pray; 3.) Do what the Bible says. It seemed to work for Jesus (Yes I know Jesus did not have the New Testament, but he did have the Hebrew Scriptures.)