musings on evangelism, 2

now for the good news: the spread of the kingdom doesn't require that my life is remarkable. it wouldn't hurt, but the good news is not that some of my friends are worried about their real estate investments, or not, nor that i, who live on social security, am worried about how many books my stipend will buy this month, or not.

rather, of first importance, the good news is that god was in christ, reconciling the world to himself. we are more accustomed to hearing that as god so loved the world that he gave his only son. indeed, that's on quite a few of the t-shirts walking round eureka springs on any given saturday.

god so loved the world: me, with all my books; my friends who find their real estate investments more enslaving than liberating; the earnest young man on the plaza clinging to his bible as he spoke; the lesbian couple who came to stand by me because, they said, i was peaceful.

what people need, what "saves us" (i.e., heals us, makes us whole), is to know the love of god, and to love in return. some of us remember when each sunday the anglican rite started with the words, "hear what our lord jesus christ saith. thou shalt love the lord thy god with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. this is the first and great commandment. and the second is like unto it; thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

i said that if i were to preach at the park on a saturday morning, i would start with the eighth chapter of the gospel according to john. that's the story of the woman caught in the actual act of adultery. what jesus says to her, after all her accusers have gone, is remarkable: "neither do i condemn thee. now go and sin no more." as all gospel stories do, this one seems rather hard. likewise hard is the reading from the eighteenth chapter of st. luke in this morning's daily office. a certain ruler comes to jesus to find out what he needs to "do to inherit eternal life?" jesus tells him that he must "sell all tht thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shall have treasure in heaven, and come, follow me. and when [certain ruler] heard this, he was very sorrowful: for he was very rich."

we do not really know the responses of the woman caught in adultry or of the ruler. perhaps they followed jesus' command, even if the ruler were sorrowful at first. if indeed they did, their lives would probably have been as remarkable as anthony of the desert's. but we do know that jesus said about that the difficulty for those of us with richest to enter the kingdom of god, that "the things which are impossible with men are possible with god." and we do know that not all of us achieve sanctity immediately. remember that st. mark, whose gospel we have been reading on friday nights, was sent away by paul. but he went on to accompany peter in jerusalem, to write the gospel, and to become the first bishop of alexandria.

even if the life of christians are not always so remarkable as we might wish, the total life of the church neverless is. we are part of that great cloud of witness which includes the blessed virgin mary, apostles, martyrs, confessors, and those of us who worry about our mortgages and retirement funds. the holy one may have finished the work of creation, perhaps even the work of salvation (in the sense that if i were to tell someone the time and date of my salvation, i would probably say 3:00 p.m. 4 april a. d. 31, judean local time), but the work of sanctification continues, and the inclusion of more and more of the people the holy one loves into the body of those being sanctified continues.

there is, your see, nothing intrinsically wrong about t-shirts or houses or books, or love of another human being. but as we come to know and love the holy one, our love for all of these other things falls into perspective and is rightly ordered. that is good news indeed.