On Sunday morning, during the introduction to a sermon series on the Sermon on the Mount, I told the congregation that I would be pushing their buttons throughout the series, mostly because the text of the Sermon that Jesus preaches in Matthew 5-7 is a provocative rule of life–a rule that requires us to embody our faith in Jesus rather than merely stating or theologizing it.
To that end, today’s reflection goes at what I believe is one of the most unhelpful concepts that has crept into Christianity and deflected attention away from the way of discipleship–the idea of Jesus as “my personal savior.”
If you were to ask most Christians, particularly those from more evangelical traditions, what the “gospel” is, you would mostly likely here something along the lines that it involves “asking Jesus into your heart” as your “personal savior” whose salvation makes it possible for you to go to heaven when you die. The good news in this sense is good news for the individual.
This theological construct reminds me of something N.T. Wright talks about in his wonderful book After You Believe, where he compares this theology with a pre-Copernican view of the universe. Before Copernicus, you might recall, most people believed that earth was the center of the solar system, and that the sun revolved around the earth for the earth’s purposes. That would seem to make sense if you didn’t know the truth about astronomy and the laws of the universe.
Humans have always been prone to see themselves at the center of things, thus it makes sense that we would expect God, as well as the universe he created, to revolve around our purposes, our needs, and our desires. Wash that through the Western worldview of consumerism and Platonic dualism and you get a gospel that is custom made for the individual. I invite Jesus into my life, and when I do I get points in the ultimate rewards program. All I have to do is ask. Nothing else is required.
As we look at the Sermon on the Mount, however, and as we look at Jesus’ teaching on the kingdom of God, it becomes clear that the opposite is true. Jesus doesn’t revolve around us and our purposes and our personal salvation alone, instead he calls us to revolve around his purpose–establishing the kingdom–the reign and rule of God “on earth as it is in heaven.” Jesus invites his disciples to follow him on his mission, rather than simply waiting for an invitation into their lives. Jesus teaches them in private, but then takes them public. Jesus isn’t leading them off to heaven, but leading them to a cross–the place at which God’s love for the whole world is played out on a very public stage. Jesus does not rise from the dead as a disembodied spirit, showing the disciples the way to a spiritual heaven, but rises from the dead in the body, showing them the reality of death defeated, and the promise of resurrection life for his people–renewed people in a renewed world where heaven and earth are truly one. The kingdom of heaven isn’t far away, says Jesus, but is “within you,” and compels you to give your allegiance the king who is bringing in his kingdom.
The biblical reality of the gospel is that Jesus is inviting us to join him in a very public project called the kingdom of God. That’s a project that is less oriented toward reward than sacrifice, less about “me” and more about “we,” less about praying the right prayer than it is working for what we pray for.
“Many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord,'” says Jesus, but unless we have reflected his public mission, unless we have obeyed his call for compassion, justice, and peacemaking in the world, then he won’t recognize us as his own (Matthew 7:21-23; 25:31-46).
What is needed in Christianity today is nothing less than a Copernican shift in the center of our theological universe. Rather than asking Jesus into our hearts, inviting him to revolve around us and our needs and purposes, we need to accept Jesus’ invitation to follow him as disciples and agents of the kingdom. To be a disciple means that our purposes, hopes and dreams revolve around Jesus and his mission, not the other way around.
The Sermon on the Mount gives us a comprehensive view of what that kind of worldview looks like in practice. John Wesley said that the Sermon on the Mount is what shows us the true “way to heaven…the royal way which leads to the kingdom; and the only true way.” Here’s a new way of defining heaven–heaven as a way of life on earth. That is the way of the kingdom. E. Stanley Jones puts it this way: [Jesus] came, therefore, not to get men into heaven, but to get heaven into men; not to get men out of hell, but to get hell out of men.”
This is the way of the kingdom, and Jesus calls us to follow.
