From the beginning of time, God has longed for change. God's very nature is that which produces newness. Along the way God did a radically new thing and produced us, new persons building with God a new society where love reigns. As Paul says, "In Christ you are a new creation. The old has passed away, the new has come" (II Corinthians 5:17). From the first creation till now, God keeps saying, "I want to be with you and you with me. As you are with me, you'll take on my nature, my way of being. You'll become radical love alive in the world." This powerful ending to our history will surely be because it is what God intends.
To do a new thing always means an undoing of the old. The way the world has been is collapsing and, at the same time, being redeemed. The central context and instrument of this change is the Church. Just as God's central work is to generate newness, our central work is to be the Body of Christ -- the salt of the earth. Out of this corporate being flows all of our other work. If we are to be faithful to Christ, we cannot by-pass Church. God has given us a vision of the way the world can be. It is not our job to make it happen, but to companion God and willingly carry the piece of the dream God gives us to carry. Our task is to be so deeply and intimately connected with Christ that the world will experience the resurrected Christ -- the newness God intends -- whenever it touches our corporate life.
This radical newness will require discipline. Not discipline connected to punishment or shame, but discipline that roots us in Christ, deepening our connection to God and one another. This rootedness will come from having consistent, ordered ways in which we remain open to Grace, and they will be unique for each one of us. Grace constantly seeks entrance into our souls in order to effect change, but Grace will never force her way in. Discipline is the means by which we open ourselves to the sort of radical change that has always been God's intention for us.
Ultimately, our embraced disciplines will open every area of our lives to Christ's total indwelling. We will die to ourselves, having been totally crucified with Christ. This sounds formidable, but in actuality it is a glad, joyful self-surrender because an awareness dawns that the most wonderful thing in the world is simply, with all stops pulled, to give our lives to a loving God. Having been crucified with Christ, we are then raised with Christ to newness of life, and this newness of life will reveal itself in our lives as deeper freedom. For starters, let me suggest four freedoms we will experience as we go deeper into Christ.
Freed from Our Addictions to The Culture
Most of us today are living, to some degree, as addicted persons, striving anxiously after power and money and prestige and relevance, trapped in the turbulence of wanting more. These addictions are so subtle for most of us that we have the illusion of being free people when in actuality we are immersed in society's expectations. We have given ourselves to God, but who decides what we do with our lives? Usually, we do. We are subtle control freaks, truly believing we are turning our lives over to God but demanding a minimum of comforts, whether it be good health or a secure home or caring friends. We are addicted to having more and more comfort, which society says we deserve.
We are addicted to the things that money and power can buy. We spend more on entertainment and pet care and toiletries than on the needs of children barely existing in poverty; we strive after positions that seem important in our jobs and our churches, whether or not God is calling us to them; we long to be noticed and honored, superficially if necessary. We forget that Jesus, "... though he was in the form of Goa did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself.." (Philippians 2: 5-7a). Our culture promotes a constant filling up, but our disciplines will draw us toward greater emptiness, so that we can be better prepared for obedience and, ultimately, for finding our place in God's plan -- finding true relevance.
Freed From Our Resistance to Depth Community in Christ
It is a rare event when somebody is eager to make a full commitment to Jesus -- to respond when Jesus calls out, "Follow me!" To be willing to leave one's family, one's means of livelihood, the culture's way of thinking, as those first disciples did, is unusual today. Then, to stay with it -- to link oneself intimately with a little group of unimpressive people, to grow together into a community of love, working out problems corporately, to move from the initial excitement of saying a resounding and individual yes to Christ into the rigor of living that yes with others in long-haul faithfulness -- that is another level of commitment altogether.
Think of those initial followers of Jesus. They each made that radical first decision to follow Jesus, which meant also a commitment to a little group of 11 others who hung in there together, struggling to understand what Jesus was sharing with them. It was all so alien to their understanding of life, but something -- the very Being of God in their midst -- kept drawing them. After three years of being constantly together, after watching their beloved friend die in love for them, and after meeting him in his resurrected Being and having the Holy Spirit fall on them, only then did they grasp at a new level what they had said yes to. When we say yes to Christ's invitation and then commit to stay with it within the bonds of intimate, stressful, joyful, growing community, we find ourselves freed by love to become literally the Body of Christ, in service to the world.
Freed From The Tyranny of Time
We often marvel at the depth of Jesus' earthly journey, considering he had only about 33 years in human form. Some of us are given much more time to deepen our God-connection, and yet we panic at how fast the months and years pass. We are haunted continually by the voice that taunts, "You'll never accomplish enough, learn enough, be enough." We fall victim to the tyranny of time, trying to pack as much as possible into each day, feeling guilty if we pause in our gluttonous pursuit of enough. The paradox of God's dream that we be co-creators of a redeemed world lies in keeping the Sabbath, the only commandment that God knew we would forget -- "Remember the Sabbath," God admonishes us, "and keep it holy." Remember to rest. Remember we have enough, we've done enough, we are enough. Remember that God is in caring control of our lives and nothing we do -- or fail to do -- will alter God's loving presence.
Our lack of rest and stillness is not just a personal affliction; it affects the way we listen for God's voice, the way we are in community, the way we respond to suffering. The creation of the Sabbath shows us that even God cannot be fully who God is intended to be without incorporating rest into the rhythm of the created order. How can we possibly exist with less? How can we hope to be God's people if we ignore God's healing ebb and flow of both work and rest? As Solomon says, "Better is one handful! of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after the wind" (Ecclesiastes 4:6). We would be well-served if we occasionally stopped our endless grasping, moved into a larger leisure, and sat still, holding nothing but a handful of quietness.
Freed from Despising the Afflicted and Brought into a Deeper Love For The Poor
When we see the culture as it really is, with its empty, illusory promises of success and power; when we plant ourselves into the common life of a small group of people intent on listening to Jesus and following wherever he leads; when we rest -- pulling away from the important activities of our days in order just to hang out with the One who loves us beyond all measure; when we begin to live this way, we will find our hearts flowering, opening to the needs of the afflicted, the oppressed, the poor. Those whom we quietly despised for their lack of hygiene, their lack of education, their lack of willpower, their lack of being more like us, we will begin to love -- really love -- in the way that Christ loves each of us despite our despicable and continual human failures.
This change of attitude won't be the result of anything we have done; in fact, we won't understand rationally how it is possible. It will seem as though it "just happened" inexplicably, mysteriously. We will have become such a community of love -- we will so completely be the Body of Christ -- that we will find ourselves drawn irresistibly to the Christ within the hungry, thirsty, naked and imprisoned ones whom He loves. (See Matthew 25.) Our fear and our distrust will be erased by the reality of coming to know and love specific individuals who are poor. They will no longer be "those" people, but "our" people. We first will hear God say it: "My people...," and then we will hear ourselves say it.
There is a oneness in the human family that we deny at our peril. Being with the suffering poor is not optional. Jesus himself said that whatever we do or fail to do for the hungry or sick or imprisoned or destitute, we do or fail to do for him. Why would Christ use such a measurement? Perhaps because being with those who completely and utterly have no physical means of support causes us to ask life-altering questions: Am I taking God seriously? What difference does God make for a world with such need? What does God wish I would be about in my one brief life? If! really believe that "God so loved the world" that Jesus was willing to die for it, am I willing to risk my pride, my self-esteem, my security, my comfort in order to immerse myself completely in loving service to this world? Do I care enough about the things that matter the most to God?
Conclusion
Finding, with God's guidance, the disciplines that will allow us to ask such searching questions as these, disciplines that will lead us into greater freedom and commitment, will open the floodgates of Grace, and God's very Being will flow into and through us, hastening the day of our becoming an authentic Church. On this day we will experience anew, and in its completeness, the reformation -- God's radical re-formation of the Church. The ultimate goal is for us to be at home with God, united as one in the heart of God.
Jesus said, "If you have seen me, you have seen God." We, as the Body of Christ living in the world today, should be able likewise to say, "If you have seen us, you have seen Jesus." The time is ripe for the Church to claim Christ's servant power in response to the needs of our aching world.
Gordon Cosby (co-founder of Church of the Saviour in Washington DC) with Kayla McClurg (edits Sacred Stories from the wider Church of the Saviour community). Gordon's book, By Grace Transformed, is available from Faith @Work.