Becoming a Sent People: Humility and Identity

In John 17:21 and 23 Jesus’ prayer includes what I would consider an audacious promise.  His prayer states that if those who believe in the apostles words (vs. 20) will be one, the world will know and believe that Jesus was sent by the Father. I believe that the key to why this is the case is found in John 17:18 and 20:21. As Jesus was sent by the Father so also he sent out the disciples. As Jesus was sent, so we are sent. The world knowing and believing in Jesus comes about from more than lone evangelists crying out for sinners to repent. The revelation of God’s sending Jesus comes from the body being bound together in oneness. It comes from us living as one, sent people and that comes from dwelling in the reality that we are a loved people (John 17:23).  Loved with the same perfect love that Jesus was loved with and sent by.  When we accept and rest under that weight of undeserved love we are shaped in two ways that lead into us being formed into a sent people: Humility and Identity.

Humility

When you begin to realize you don’t deserve God’s affections and that you can not earn grace, it forces you to a position of humility.  To be loved first, before any movement towards holiness was ever displayed in your life, is an assault against any grounds for pride.  The very nature of being sent also points to humility – a humility that Jesus displayed.  His words to commission the disciples referenced his own sending to show what it would look like.  Paul the apostle sums up this example of humility in Philippians 2:5-7.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. (ESV)

Submission to the sender is required of one who goes at the request of another.  There is a position of subordination that is required.  Now in that submission you are not making yourself less, but saying that God is more trustworthy with your life than you are.  You become more by placing yourself in right relationship with God, which leads to the second result of resting under the undeserved love of God.

Identity

The phrase that is fast becoming cliche is, “To know who you are is to know whose you are” or some variation there of.  But cliche or not – it is true.  To know our relationship with the One who sends us secures in us identity.  Jesus was sent as the only beloved Son of God, and because of Christ’s sacrifice we are all invited to become sent out as beloved daughters and sons of God, in whom He is well pleased.  To become a sent people is to live in the reality that we are chosen into a family of brothers and sisters, and that we are given commission to expand that family to every corner of the earth.  To make disciples is to witness the re-birth of people into the kingdom as daughters and sons of God.

Humility and Identity as a People

I believe that the relationships between brothers and sisters in Christ become attractive to the world when we live in the tension between knowing that we are unworthy of grace and believing that in Christ we are called worthy.  Humility kills pride and identity creates confidence.  The two working in tandem create a freedom to not only be sent into the world, but sent into the joy and hardships of our brothers and sisters.

Not doing so good on the mobile blogging thing

I spent most of the last three weeks in Washington DC and Alexandria.  It was a time of vacation, site seeing, encouraging friends, and a little bit of lobbying for northern Uganda.  I’m back in Dinuba for a week and then I’ll be off to Uganda on July 6th.  I’ll try to post a couple of stories from the East Coast adventure here in a bit but for now you can read some of it from my friend who I stayed with.

http://wanderingwhispers.blogspot.com/2009/06/treasure-hunt-not-what-you-might-think.html

http://wanderingwhispers.blogspot.com/2009/06/intuition-gut-feeling-or-god-talking-to.html

The Gospel

“Our gospel is not the gospel unless it is good news to everyone.”

I think this statement has caused me to examine my faith more than anything else I’ve ever come up with or read.  Very likely I stole it from someone smarter and wiser than me but it has sunk to such depths in my heart that it compels me to find people and places that challenge my gospel with their culture, condition, and personality. It leads me to ask questions like: Can my gospel be presented to the rich and the poor? Is it freedom for those oppressed by corporate America and those who will die of starvation today? Does it matter to the urban poor and the middle class? Is the language of my gospel accessible to an un-churched, Hispanic, junior high youth?  Is it hope to the mentally handicapped?

I’m still not able to answer very many of those questions, but I’m trying.  There are a few things I have figured out. The gospel we present must be simple and deep.  It must be refreshing to the weary and freeing to the burdened. It must be the explanation and invitation into the gift of the crucified and risen Christ.  We have to present it out of excitement rather than requirement, and if we aren’t excited about it then we need to re-engage the story through prayer and scripture until we burn once again.  Those who hear our message should walk away knowing that they have heard a deep message of love from someone who cares for them about a God who cares even more.  Conviction is a work of the Spirit, and I believe it comes when a soul is laid bare in front of incomprehensible grace.  We proclaim that grace – the Spirit lays bare the soul.

My brothers and sisters, we are heralds of the good news.  Sharing with others should be exhilarating rather than debilitating.  It should be a natural outcome of a life abandoned to Christ.  And calling disciples into Kingdom living should be a natural product of the church reaching out in love to places where only the Gospel can give hope.  I say this mostly to invite you into my personal struggle to make the previous three sentences a reality in my life.

Thanks for praying!

I’m growing in satisfaction with how things went today.  God moved noticeably in several people, and I’m trying to rest in the work that I was able to see and trust in the things that God is doing beyond what I will ever know.  I’ve uploaded the raw audio to http://www.sermoncloud.com/dpc/unity-is-evangelism/ for those of you who are interested.  To explain the two distractions that are mentioned – at one point someone dragged a window onto the projector screen, and a little later someone shut off the main stage lighting…it was awesome!  Thanks again, and the Lord give you peace.

John 17 – Unity is Evangelism

I’m preaching on Sunday so please pray for me…right now…. Thanks.

Currently here are my sermon notes:

• Pray
• Read John 17
• Preach

1. Believe/Know – Shift in world view
2. Unity/One – Unpack being one as Jesus and the Father are one
3. Sent – Unpack being sent by Jesus as Jesus was sent by the Father

I’m still working on how I’ll expand that into a 30 minute sermon – but in rehearsing by myself I’ve managed to preach consistently 30 – 40 minutes. As practice I’m going to do a little unpacking here on my blog. If you have feedback please be specific and quick in case your comments might help to shape the sermon.

John 17 has been rocking my world for the last year and a half. The entire chapter is Jesus praying, and towards the end his words speak directly to the church throughout time. “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word,” (John 17:20). For a brief moment before Gethsemane, Christ focuses his prayer on the generations of followers to come, on “the sheep that are not from this fold”(John 10:16), on all of us who have believed and ever will believe. I find it compelling that to describe future generations of disciples Jesus labels the Church as “those who will believe in their word”. Believe is a major theme of John (e.g. John 3:16) and is very closely related to the theme of knowing (John 17:21, 23). So what does it mean to know and believe? It means knowing something in a way that it sinks into every part of your being, it means knowing in a way that changes the way that you think about things. At it’s core, truly knowing something changes your behavior as a result of having changed your world view. When you know and believe that Christ was sent by God all of life comes under the lens of scripture, Christianity, and ultimately Christ.

So Christ lays before the Father a petition for those who would believe in the apostles word, which was Christ’s word (John 17:14 – 17). There is three fold purpose for this petition.

1. That the believers would be one (17:21)
2. That the world would believe/know that Christ was sent by God(17:21, 23)
3. That the world would know that the Father loves the Church with the same love that He has for the Son (17:23)

Now here’s where things get really tricky for me. You see, these three purposes are so interwoven and the themes of Oneness, Christ’s Sent Nature, and The Father’s Love are inseparable. So pseudo linearly here’s my best attempt.

That we would be one/perfectly one so that the world might know/believe:

In his prayer, Jesus uses an equivalence statement to describe unity. “that they may all be one, just as you, Father are in me. and I in you, that they may also be in us,” (17:21). Somehow, as the Church binds together in the Godhead (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) we are called to attain a unity that in someway resembles the interwoven nature of God. Look again at the tapestry that is woven just in these few verses: The Father in the Son (21,23); The Son in the Father (21); Believers in the Father and Son (21); and then the final stitch The Son in Believers (23). The relationship between the Father and Son is seen as key throughout John’s gospel. It is central to the attempts on Jesus’ life (yes, multiple attempts), because He made himself out to be one with God. Which was true – but it was “unbelievable” for many in Jesus’ day. It was Jesus’ connection to the Father that motivated his every action (John 5:36, 7:16, others). With Christ in us, we can strive for the intimacy that Christ and the Father had – and we can expect some strong resemblance of it. Why? Because Christ has already interceded that it would happen and Christ is fully inside of the Father’s will because he and the Father are one!

There is one more element of unity that is key, but we can’t get there until we look at one final theme. See, our unity isn’t the end of the petition Christ prayed for us. He continued praying “…so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”(17:20) and later repeated “…so that the world may know that you sent me…”(17:23). Why is it so important that the world know/believe that Christ was sent by God? What shift in perspective and world view does that enable? The answer comes from asking the question: Why was Jesus sent? And the answer that most would give is very close to right: Jesus was sent to suffer, and die as the atoning sacrifice for my sins. Absolutely true. However, equally true, and more important to unity and evangelism: Jesus was sent to satisfy the Father’s need for justice. Jesus’ love for the Father put him on the road to Calvary, the Father’s love for the Son and for us sent Jesus there.

The standard for unity that Jesus set out points to a love entirely outside of ourselves (thank God!). That standard is that of the Father and Son’s love for each other. That love was passionate, it suffered gladly for the beloved. When we become incorporated into that love and incarnate carriers of the divine presence through the Holy Spirit we are invited to love bigger than ourselves. Christ enables us to suffer for God and for one another with zeal, joy, and patience. The reason that unity leads into evangelism – that the Son in us and us in the Father and Son provokes a knowledge and belief in the deity of Christ – is that when we begin to incarnationaly invest in each other it is so supernatural that the world will take notice. When we begin to walk out a true knowledge and belief that there is a transcendent love, a love that exists perfectly outside of ourselves, and that that love suffers passionately, that that love is unfailing.

This love will only fully be displayed in the church if we invest in one another dangerously. In my mind Christ’s prayer leaves no room for poverty in the church, it leaves no room for loneliness, hidden pains, closet depression, or any number of things we could “never talk about in church”. We cannot hide from each other in any way and expect the world to see Christ as truly sent by God. If there is lack or need, then brothers and sisters in Christ must give of themselves and their resources. The word compassion literally means “to suffer with”, and with Christ as our example for passion (suffering) so we cannot limit our giving to what is comfortable.

When we invest in the lives of our brothers and sisters sacrificially we are in a very small way sharing in Christ’s sufferings that we might share in his glory (Rom 8:17). It is not our prosperity that will attract the world to Christ – it is our lack of poverty. It is the way that we love each other, out of the eternal well of love that exists in the Trinity. In that perfected unity the world will know that Christ was sent by God and loves the church with the same love that sent Christ to the cross (John 17:23).

Jesus seems agitated. (Using relational language to explore scripture)

My last post proved to be the basis of my Sunday morning lesson with the youth at my church. Following the time for imaginative prayer I asked for gut check reactions to how Jesus seemed in the passage (a question I stole from the practice of spiritual direction). The answers were great and opened the door to a deeper relational exploration of scripture. Jesus seemed agitated and firm. The words felt like discipline. The students felt nervous and worried. One student articulated how the words both brought hope and dread because they revealed the reality that our circumstances and death can not be tied directly to our sin. In other words, “we’re not in control”.

Then I asked if they could imagine Jesus saying this with tears in his eyes. Somehow in the hardness of the words they were the fullness of love – not only for those who listened but for those who had died. Jesus was saying that worse than tragic death was the failure to repent. This is about when I stopped asking questions and poured my heart out about the reality of hell and how if we truly seek to have God’s compassionate heart we must not ignore the fact that some will perish apart from Christ and will suffer eternity for it. Those words hurt me to say and still hurt me to write. Yet they are truth and I can not imagine living life in ignorance to them.

Mildly related tangent:

I think my aversion to teaching on eternity has been my experiences with people who ignored the damage they did on Earth because all of their energy was focused on the afterlife. But we as Christians have the strange reality of following the ever-present God. The great I Am. So we are called, once again, to tension in the Christian life. A tension between this life and the next. A tension between the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth and the Kingdom of Heaven afterwards.

Imaginative Prayer Prompt

At it’s most basic, imaginative prayer is reading scripture and then prayerfully imagining that you are actually an observer in whatever was described in the passage.  If Jesus is speaking you might imagine what his voice sounds like and what emotion he is showing.  Asking questions like who you are in the story or how are those around you reacting to what is going on can also be useful.  To give you an opportunity to try this out I’ve chosen a pretty hard to swallow teaching of Jesus in which he responds to the question of suffering due to injustice and disaster.  My hope is that imaginative prayer may prove to be the chewing that prevents choking.

There were some present at that very time who told [Jesus] about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.  And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”

Luke 13:1-5