Ronnie McBrayer

I often feel the pressure, from my peers and others, to come out and __ake a stand_ on a moral or social issue. Typically, I refuse to do so, or at least I refuse to do so in a way that will please my critics. On so many of the hard and divisive issues of our times, I don__ close my eyes. I do stand for something: I stand for love. For if Jesus came, not to condemn the world, but to redeem it, how can we who bear the Name respond any differently? Yes, what I believe about all these moral and social issues matters, without a doubt. But these beliefs mean nothing, if my first and consuming conviction is not love for those who are different and believe differently than me. We have a choice: We can choose to show how __ight_ we are, or we can choose to love. Sometimes, it is impossible to do both at the same time.

We preach grace, but we don__ always practice it. We talk about God__ mercy, but we don__ always want the people who need it most to know it or get in on it. We say we are in the redemption business, but the door to that redemption is often locked by us from the inside. We say, __ome in! All are welcome!_ but __ll_ is often marked with an asterisk. How, I ask, can the world change _ how can heaven come to earth _ if we stingily protest against God for his grace to others, grace we have freely received ourselves? How can we pray __hy kingdom come,_ and be resentful toward God and those he allows to enter the kingdom in his way and his timing?

When __octrinal integrity_ (a term usually defined by those using it) trumps kindness and grace, faith has wandered out of bounds. Anything claiming to be truth that does not lead to compassion for our neighbors cannot rightfully be called the truth.

We in the revivalist tradition have viewed grace only in terms of privatized, individualized spirituality. Give people enough Jesus to save their souls, move them to an emotional decision, help them get their hearts right and acquire a more responsible morality, and that will be enough. But that is not enough. It is not even the beginning of enough. God was concerned about those living in dire suffering long before Bono, Angelina Jolie, or George Clooney turned into social activists.

Jesus is not a white, middle-class Republican. Jesus is not a Democrat, a Libertarian, a Marxist, or a Socialist. Jesus is not a Baptist, a Catholic, a Lutheran, or a Buddhist. Jesus isn__ even a Christian. Jesus Christ is Lord.

Jesus did not come to start a religion. He came to blow religion off the map. Jesus did not come to tinker with our ideas about God. He came to show us who God really is. Jesus did not come to build cathedrals or pulpits. He came to start a revolution. Jesus came to initiate a way of life, a new way to live, that knocks the props from beneath everything else we have ever known.

You will not find Jesus in heaven, reclining on a cloud. He isn__ in church on Sunday morning, sitting in the pews. He isn__ locked away in the Vatican or held hostage by a denominational seminary. Rather, Jesus is sitting in the Emergency Room, an uninsured, undocumented immigrant needing healing. He is behind bars, so far from his parole date he can__ think that far into the future. He is homeless, evicted from his apartment, waiting in line at the shelter for a bed and a cup of soup. He is the poor child living in government housing with lice in his hair, the stripes of abuse on his body and a growl in his stomach. He is an old forgotten woman in a roach infested apartment who no one thinks of anymore. He is a refugee in Sudan, living in squalor. He is the abused and molested child who falsely feels responsible for the evil that is perpetrated against her. He is the young woman who hates herself for the decisions she has made, decisions that have imperiled her life, but did the best she could, torn between impossible choices. Jesus is anyone without power, ability or the means to help themselves, and he beckons us to come to him; not on a do-gooding crusade, but in solidarity and embrace.

To not follow Jesus is to be unmoved. To be unmoved is to risk the greatest danger of all: To misunderstand and misrepresent God.

Violence promises us something we all deeply desire, something we genuinely want; violence promises us peace. Violence promises us, that in the end, when the last battle is fought, the last bomb is dropped, and the last enemy is slain, we will have what we always dreamed of _ safety, a world without suffering, death or bloodshed; a world at rest. Yet, these are the very things Christ offers with the Kingdom of God. A world where the lamb will lay down with the lion, where swords are beaten into plowshares, where mercy and justice flow down like the waters, where every tear will be wiped away from our eyes, and where there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. Christ and violence seem to offer the same final result, the two being competitors for our allegiance.

By telling stories, Jesus isn__ somehow putting sugar in a spoon to make the medicine go down a bit easier. These stories are the medicine. These stories are an extension and explanation of Jesus_ revolutionary ministry. These stories show us that things are not as they appear. Our tidy, well-packaged ideas about spirituality, faith, and reality shatter when confronted by Christ and the God he represents.

Jesus and institutional religion are on a collision course, and those who go with Jesus will find more adventure, freedom, and religion-bursting grace than they can stand, all the things that make traveling worth the effort. But they will also find clash and conflict. The path of Jesus is not well tolerated by the establishment.

Being a __riend of sinners_ is an accusation that Christians should wear as a badge of honor, for nothing could honor Jesus more, and nothing is more revealing of who God actually is.

Jesus does not demand of us higher standards, he offers us himself. Jesus does not require of us super-human ability or commitments. He gives us his ability and grace.

Is God-like forgiveness humanly possible? Yes, if it remains God__ work! Forgiveness is not something we can accomplish on our own or within our own power (no more than we make the kingdom of God happen in the world). It__ not something we conjure up. If forgiveness flows out of us to others, it is because God is doing it and not us ourselves.

To take Christ into our well-ordered, well-kept lives is in many ways to ask for trouble, for he will not leave well enough alone.

In serving others, the church will save itself from becoming nothing more than a spiritualized 501c3 not-for-profit, self-centered corporation, organized for the benefit of donor tax exemption. Serving others will remind us of our identity and call us out from this self-absorbed, selfish world to be the people of God on a journey following his Son, Jesus.

One of the tragedies of current Christianity in America is that we have so few compelling illustrations of this life that Jesus lived and the type of radical community he came to create. Leading pastors and preachers are little more than family-friendly celebrities or game show hosts with all the razzle-dazzle and mass media presence that accompanies the position.

Being a __hristian_ _ a word used only three times in the New Testament _ is not Jesus_ goal for his people. But the making of a community of revolutionary followers or __isciples_ _ a word used nearly three hundred times in the New Testament _ seems to be exactly the goal. The church must return to these roots. The church must become a way of life, an alternative lifestyle, a counter-community of Christ-followers. Church must once again become a people who are on __he Way_ formed by the words and way of Jesus.