Our
Over-arching Mission
(Acts
1.8; Mt 28.19-20)
We have complicated Christianity to the point
where the message is geo-politically defined. The message of evangelical
Christianity is considerably different here in the U.S. than it is among
evangelical Christianity in Palestine, or Lebanon, or Iran, or Indonesia.
The poor Christians trying to keep the doors open in the Baptist Church of
Gaza City aren't espousing the same message of Zionism as a typical Baptist
church in northwest Arkansas.
The typical perspective of Islam that has
permeated most of evangelicalism in the U.S. isn't the perspective that a group
of Christians meeting house to house somewhere in Indonesia has as they lift
their voices in prayer for their fellow countrymen.
Perhaps it has pretty
much always been this way since the days of the Constantine era church. Kings
and Prime Ministers and Presidents have endeavored to get the church on 'their
side' in order to literally 'rally the troops.'
If troops are being
rallied, someone is going to die. There is a political imperative for any cause
to be declared 'just' - and the highest moral authority has typically been
vested in whatever religious vestiges are most prominent in any given country.
Quite a few popes and many preachers have given moral authority to whatever
the cause nationalism was defending in whatever era of history we might choose
to examine. Even Hitler was successful in getting most of the churches in
Germany to espouse the politics of the Third Reich.
Jesus didn't intend
for the message to be construed and used to defend political forms or
geo-political boundaries.
Here is simply what he said,
"you will be my witnesses...teaching them to obey
everything I have commanded you."
If we
really want to consider what that 'witness'
was to be we need to pick up a 'red letter' New Testament and just read the
passages in red.
The teachings of Jesus could never be construed as a
platform to come against the Roman Empire, nor any other government. Indeed,
when Jesus was 'against' someone or some entity it was invariably the ensconced
religious system and people of His day...His 'religion' and His people!
He didn't rail against the Romans, or the gathering 'hordes' across the Caucasus
Mountains, or the Egyptians, or the desert marauders, or the barbarians from the
eastern reaches of the old Persian empire.
Each of them were those to
whom He was sending His witnesses with teachings not of Jerusalem, but of the
greatest force of Grace and Mercy and Love that the world had ever seen.
These were not to be forces with the sword, but instruments of faith, the
substance of Hope! These were to be witnesses that brought reconciliation of
mankind with God...who healed the sick, fed the hungry, clothed the naked and
brought Peace with the message of the Prince of Peace.
That, my friend,
is the over-arching mission Jesus gave to His followers. That is our mission.