Toward A Missional Worldview: Understanding Redemption Should Mean More Partying
Author: Anthony Bradley
I write this while just returning from an amazing trip to Central America hanging out with friends living there. I haven't had that much fun in years. Since my return, I've been wondering why many Christians are such boring people to be around if redemption is true. If Christ's mission was truly accomplished and if the Kingdom of God is alive then Christians ought to be the most celebrative people on the planet throwing the best parties and social events. If the Gospel is true one would think that Christians would be the best at "getting their party on."
David got buck-naked and started dancing because of the grace of God. Why don't we celebrate like this (fully clothed, of course)?
Look, redemption is huge. It's more than personal salvation. The redemption achieved by Jesus Christ is cosmic and is directed at all of life, including creation. Men and women are saved by grace so that they may fulfill their role in the kingdom as God's managers of the earth. In a fallen world, this managing function takes on even greater importance as it relates to being 'salt and light.' God has planned to "reconcile to himself all things" (Col. 1:20) through the work and person of Jesus Christ. His church shares and displays this truth in all of life.
The scope of redemption is as great as the scope of the fall. It embraces creation as a whole. Being a Jesus follower is personal renewal and walking away from sin but it also means that Jesus followers are about the business of promoting renewal and shalom in every aspect of creation. Jesus followers have been called into a "ministry of reconciliation" on his behalf (2 Cor. 5:8).
In the name of Jesus all distortions and perversions must be opposed everywhere-at the club, in a bar, at school, in the kitchen, in the bedroom, at work, on the radio, on the canvas, on the internet, in the factory, and so on. God's people bring Christ's victory, in his defeat of sin and the recovery of creation, in all aspects of culture. All of it!
Jesus' miracles provide us a picture of the full scope of redemption, says Al Wolters. The miracles are "a freeing of creation from the shackles of sin and evil and a reinstatement of creaturely living as God intended." Since his ascension Jesus has been actively extending the implications of the kingdom all over the world (Luke 19:11-27).
Only the atonement deals with sin and evil effectively at the root. The gospel, then, is preached to all creation (Mark 16:15) because there is a need of cosmic liberation from sin everywhere. It is worth celebrating here and now that being united to the Kingdom through Jesus Christ destines his people to an eternity with him in the new heavens and the new earth (Rev. 21). No pain, no tears, no worries, no stress, no IRS.
It makes sense, then, that celebration is also part of the Christian tradition: from the feasts and celebrations in the Torah, the celebration in the Psalms, various celebrations of God's people renewing their fidelity to Him in Old Testament, to the story of Jesus ministry, and beyond...
It makes sense that one of the first "signs" of the Kingdom was Jesus turning water into wine (real wine) at a wedding celebration. This was not a lame, hour-long modern evangelical reception with people sitting around drinking watered-down punch, eating peanuts, only waiting around to say "congratulations" so they can jet home to play a board game. Nope, hours and hours of laughing, dancing, eating good food, and drinking. They drank so much that they ran out and Jesus kept the celebration going by demonstrating his lordship over cosmic reasons to celebrate.
So if the kingdom is real, if creation is all good, if life is not suppose to suck, if God is renewing all things to himself through Christ, if you are united to Jesus and standing before God forgiven, then why is your social life so boring? Why are you not either at a party or throwing a party every weekend? Why are you not inviting people into your community of celebration?
Wouldn't it be awesome if Christians were such a celebrative group of people that our non-Christians friends and neighbors would get introduced to Christianity by wanting to come to our parties? Here's a great question for someone to ask you: "why are you Christians always partying so much? Missional living pursues not only shalom but celebration. Jesus followers should party now like they will in heaven.
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The Vision?
The vision is Jesus: obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus.
The vision is an army of young people.
You see bones? They are an army.
And they are free from materialism. They laugh at the markets.
They hardly care! They wear clothes like costumes:
to show and to tell, but never to hide.
They know the meaning of the Matrix; the way the West was won.
They are mobile like the wind; they belong to the nations.
They need no passport.
People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence.
They are free, yet they are slaves of the hurting and dirty and dying.
What is the vision?
The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes.
It makes children laugh and adults break and cry.
It scorns the good and strains for the best. It is dangerously pure.
This is an army that will lay down its life for the cause.
A million times a day its soldiers choose to lose that they might win, one day
the great "Well done" of faithful sons and daughters.
Such heroes are as radical on Monday morning as Sunday night.
They don't need fame from names. Instead they grin quietly upwards
and hear the crowds chanting again and again: "COME ON!"
And this is the sound of the underground
The whisper of history shaping
Foundations shaking
Revolutionaries dreaming once again
Mystery is screaming in whispers
Conspiracy is breathing...
This is the sound of the underground.
And the army is disciplined.
Young people who beat their bodies into submission.
Every soldier would take a bullet for his comrades at arms.
The tattoo on their backs boasts "For me to live is Christ and to die is gain."
Sacrifice fuels the fire of victory in their eyes.
Winners. Martyrs. Who can stop them?
Can failure succeed? Can fear scare them or death kill them?
And this generation prays like a dying man with groans beyond
talking, with warrior cries, sulphuric tears
Waiting. Watching: 24 - 7 - 365.
Whatever it takes they will give: Breaking the rules.
Shaking mediocrity from its cozy little hide.
Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs,
laughing at labels, fasting essentials.
The advertisers cannot mold them.
Hollywood cannot hold them.
Peer-pressure is powerless
to shake their resolve
Material clothes matter not
Would they surrender their image or their popularity?
They would lay down their very lives,
swap seats with the man on death row;
guilty as hell.
A throne for an electric chair.
With blood and sweat and many tears,
with sleepless nights and fruitless days,
they pray as if it all depends on God
and live as if it all depends on them.
Their words make demons scream in shopping malls.
Don't you hear them coming?
Here come the frightened and forgotten, with fire in their eyes.
Their prayers summon the hounds of heaven and invoke the ancient dream of Eden.
And this is the sound of the underground
The whisper of history shaping
Foundations shaking
Revolutionaries dreaming once again
Mystery is screaming in whispers
Conspiracy is breathing...
This is the sound of the underground.
1 comment:
Tim,
I check you out daily; and I want you to know it. This one was real good.
The previous one . . . Wow. I'll be chewing on that for quite some time.
Billy
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