Missing the Point

If you had asked the apostle Paul, "If you were to die tonight, do you know for certain that you would be with God in heaven?" I'm certain Paul would have said yes. But he probably would have given you a funny look and wondered why you were asking this questions, because to him, it missed the point. To Paul the point of being Christ's follower was not just to help people be absolutely certian they were going to heaven after they died. Paul's goal was to help them become fully formed, mature in Christ, here and now -- to experience the glorious realities of being in Christ and experiencing Christ in themselves.

After hearing Tony Campolo speak a week ago (after hearing Len Sweet a few days before that) I'm treading water in ideas, trying to sort out and process what I've heard. At the Campolo display, I picked up a book he wrote with Brian McLaren, from which the quote above is taken. Our faith is not given to us for warm fuzzies by some Cosmic Care Bear (that's Derek's image and one I really like). Our faith is given to us so that God can get to work through us.

When Misha and I were married in the States, after our Chinese wedding(s), my mother preached at the ceremony in Virginia. The liturgy we chose was a "Blessing of Civil Marriage" in which we did not exchange vows but rather to affirm the vows we had made in a previous civil ceremony, and ask God and the congregation to bless those vows. One of the clearest memories I have of that ceremony is Mom's sermon: we had been blessed with an amazing start to our relationship but God asked now that we use our relationship to bless others. Mom used the stories of Abraham and Sarah at our wedding, McLaren conveys much the same essense in Jesus' hypothetical tyrade in his book with Campolo:

God's promise to Abraham was not limited to Abraham's descendents: his promise was to bless Abraham and make him a blessing, to make Abraham's descendents a great nation, so they could bless all other nations. So by being preoccupied only with your own blessing, your own liberation, your own concerns -- you are missing the whole point about salvation.

The church exists primarily for the benefit of its non-members. God, strengthen me to lead such a church.