Just what is God doing?
For Jesus' disciples, the three years were a roller coaster ride! Each day, they must have wondered how it would pan out. These were events they knew they were going to remember for the rest of their lives. But every day was a struggle, because everything was so hard to understand. And Jesus, of course, never gave a straight answer to their seemingly simple questions!
Like all of us, to really comprehend, they needed to see the big picture. As on that old TV programme, A Question of Sport, as the portion of photo zooms out, there is confusion and puzzlement, and then suddenly you see it, the close up the sportsman's, that was a moustache, not an eyebrow, etc, etc!
Here’s the close-up picture of what was happening around Jesus.
God becomes incarnate in a baby. He grows up living a perfect life. He confronts the petty bureaucrats of his local community. He attracts a huge following. He causes division, confrontation, and consternation. He faces down the institutions and undermines their authority. He is persecuted, hounded, beaten up, finally executed publicly.
Then he comes back to life. He appears to different sized groups, some individuals, some large crowds. Then he disappears back to heaven.
Somehow, his followers become convinced of a new message. They spend their lives talking about it. Some write books about it. They meet to discuss it, trying to thrash out what really happened in those three years. They construct a number theories with a variety of wackiness. They argue. But through it all, more and more are attracted to the movement.
So if that is the close-up that we know about, then what is the big picture?
What is God doing in the affairs of men? Come to that, why did he create all this in the first place? Why create a hugely complex massive universe, and apparently populate only one tiny planet? What is God doing in history? And can he really be interested in me? Or you? Where is it all going to end? What is his end goal? The questions are easy to ask, the answers somewhat harder to find.
Paul pondered some of these questions, as he wrote a letter to the church at Ephesus. After giving some instructions on how a man and a woman should relate to each other in marriage, he writes ...
This profound mystery – this deep enigma – is the closest Paul ever got to understanding the big picture – that God in Jesus Christ would take a bride – a wife – and the relationship between God and humanity would be consummated somehow, once individual men and women and boys and girls had become joined in an organic whole – like a body – where each part has it’s place and it’s function – individual but not independent, and destined to function in unity.
It is a deep mystery, we see it again in the Book of Revealing – “Revelation”.
God’s big picture, his end goal, is not a wonderful individual relationship with you and me. Rather, it is a growing unity with God alongside an inner transforming that reduces our insistence on selfish independence, which consequently leads to an openness to be united with others. That unity faintly seen now, somehow consummated in the creation of the perfect bride-church, who marries the husband - the Son of God.
So if that is the end goal, we need to examine ourselves –
Do I set up barriers between myself and other Christians?
Do I consider other types of churches inferior to mine?
Do I have a tendency to separate from other Christians, and just stick with those who think like me?
Do I talk about other Christians or churches in disparaging ways?
Do I criticize them, put them down?
Is my instinct now redeemed, so I have the mind of Christ?
Do I actively try to get alongside all Christians – even the weird ones?
Do I try to bring Christians together, by focusing on what we have in common?
Do I consider that it may be possible that my church is not so correct as others?
Do I take a humble position as a servant of the whole church of Christ?
We must take great care that we are not dividing Christ’s bride. When we take pride in our individually correct theology, and are intolerant of others views, we are working against that interdependent unity.
What's better? To hold a correct theology you can be proud of, or to be humbly aware that you're probably wrong about something?
In my reading of the gospels, both Jesus teaching and his actions promote much more about right attitudes to others and to the Father, than they do about precisely correct theology. It is true that Jesus was evidently very concerned that his disciples figured out who he was, but his explanation of even that central cardinal fact was obscured by his humility.
He could so easily have said, “Let me save you a whole boatload of time, and let me save the church countless wasted man-years of arguments, and state a few simple things …
1. The Holy Spirit really is a person / a breath / a life force
2. The King James / New Jerusalem / Message bible is the only proper one
3. Speaking in tongues is / is not okay but is / is not essential
:
:
996. The church organ is / is not the only sanctified instrument
997. If you have a choice, then sit in / burn the pews
998. A congregational / apostolic / elders leadership is the best church governance
999. Sunday is / isn't a special day
1000. And finally, correct eschatology is of course pre / post / amillennial
He didn't. So could we not let go of some of these arguments, and see the church drawn together in unity.
