A Better Way?

I went to a football game last night.  My team, the Fremantle Dockers, took ineptitude to new and exciting levels and after the deflation of seeing my team lose so badly, surrounded by tens of thousands of rabid opposing fans, it was with great dejection I left the stadium.  Putting on a brave face and absorbing the almost pitying sounds of home fans as they noticed the colors of the team I was supporting, we walked with the throng along the street to the ranks of buses.

Just opposite the stadium, directly in the path of the flow of the river, a booth had been set up with a sign perched high in the air which proclaimed in bold and underlined letters: All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God!  REPENT! For the kingdom of God is at hand! 

Although I agreed with the sentiment, the man speaking, holding onto the booth like one grasping a downed branched in a flooded river, shouted to the jubilant spectators, "Jesus has come to save you.  All you need to do is have a personal relationship with him!  All you need to do is open your heart!  All you need to do is accept that you have sinned..."  One of the women walking behind me responded, "I'll get down on my knees before God if he will just give my team the championship."  I don't think that was the point of the man's argument.

A few other people heckled him on the way past and the irony was not lost on me.  As he presumably stood strong in the torrent secular culture flowing like an engorged river from the bastion of sporting entertainment, his voice rang hollow.  Make sure you have a relationship with God because I, myself, don't (and probably won't) have one with you.  Make sure you do the right things.  Make sure that your efforts and your energy all do...  When he said these words: "All you have to do..." I cringed because unknowingly, perhaps, he had stripped the gospel message of all its power and put it back into the hands of humanity.  If its up to me and about what I do, well I'll certainly get to it later when I really need a savior.

This kind of preaching doesn't work anymore.  Maybe it never worked - the doomsayers, the placard holding Pharisees who stand in the middle of what they believe to be the cesspool of secular culture pronouncing judgement against the happy crowd.  Instead of reaching out to people, engaging in their joys and sorrows, the man at the stadium overlooked what everyone human on the face of the planet needs...

Connection.

Yes, with God, certainly, but with people who are willing to walk alongside them and wait for the right opportunity to talk about God's grace as well as the law.  To pronounce judgement on the sin of the crowd without an opportunity to hear their names or their stories is inviting, almost begging for, irrelevance.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes it beautifully: "Do not try to make the Bible relevant... Do not defend God's word, but testify to it. Trust the Word. It is a ship loaded to the very limits of its capacity."

In Christianity's attempt to bring relevance to the Bible, music, art, worship and all things 'churchy', all things which try to make Jesus 'cool', rather than trusting that the Word of God, Christ incarnate, and the written word, the cradle of Christ, we have actually done the opposite; we have made Christ irrelevant in modern society.  There is no room for a delicately flowing-robed Jesus, gently coiffed hair and neatly trimmed beard, who speaks about sin - because our culture accepts the fact that all activities are relative - and therefore irrelevant.

But there is room for the Son of Man who was given from heaven to be in relationship with all humanity, to hear their names and their stories, to heal and to preach repentance in a way that drew people to him and to salvation.

As Easter draws close and the purifying beauty of Lent rushes to an end at the cross of Christ, can we ponder once again how we speak of God?  How do we stand in a modern world which is flooded with distractions, to engage with a God on a long term basis - one fraught with difficulties and joys?  How can we avoid being crushed by the onslaught of negativity and mockery from a world that thinks it sees no evil, hears no evil and speaks no evil?

How can we draw on the message of the cross of Christ to deliver wonder to a wonderful world which is wondering about a hesitant future?

We connect. 

In the next days - let's take a look at Paul's opportunity in Athens when he seems to be doing the same thing as the man outside the stadium.  Acts 17:16-34.  Walk with me.