Living in the Grey
Living in the Grey by Rev. L. John Gable
November 18, 2018
During the past month or so we, at Tab, have been talking about the “art of coming alongside” others in a desire to share our faith, the Good News of God’s love and the saving grace of Jesus Christ. We have been guided in our discussion by reading a book together titled Living the Gospel in the Grey, written by Rob Schrumpf, lead pastor of Campus House on Purdue’s campus. Last weekend Rob was our guest speaker at TabFest, so we were well-fed by his teaching there, even as I know you were by Oscar’s preaching and your worship here.
While I believe that much of what Rob shared with us will become an on-going part of the lexicon of our conversations about the many ways we can share our faith, this will be the last in our series of sermons as next week is Christ the King Sunday, leading us in to the season of Advent and our preparations for the coming of Christmas and our anticipation of the Messiah. So this morning rather than trying to recap or summarize all that we have read and discussed let me see if I can put a fine point on it. The “art of coming alongside” someone is born of our desire to share with them something which has, or better Some One who has, made a life-changing difference in our lives, namely Jesus. It is born not of guilt (“have to”), or even good intention (“want to”) but out of must (“cannot not”). We cannot not share our faith with others because it is really is “good news”!
So in order to do that genuinely and effectively we need to “come alongside” those we want to share the Good News with. We can’t just yell it at them, or email it to them, or dump our load of religious truth and conviction on them and then move on; rather we are best to “come alongside them”, which entails our walking with them, getting to know them, listening to them not just talking at them, our sharing life with them. In this way we also get to “come alongside” what God is already doing in their lives. In other words, we don’t need to pressure or cajole people to believe in our version of God, we simply need to help them see the difference God has made in our lives as we make the connection between God’s story and our story, and then their story; as we help them see how God is already at work in their lives and has been for a very long time. To put it another way, as we “come alongside” someone else with the intention of sharing our faith with them we are help them see how God’s “upper story” connects with their “lower story”, and when that happens it is life-changing.
While we were on retreat Rob went “off script” from his book and expanded on the perhaps familiar quote from the Lausanne Covenant which includes the phrase “Evangelization requires the whole Church to take the whole Gospel to the whole world.” Whole Church. Whole Gospel. Whole world. How and when and in what ways do we do this? Through our whole lives. As followers of Jesus, we are called and invited by God to “live out” the Gospel in such a manner that others will see and want for themselves what we have found, or again better, the One who has found us, and we can use every aspect of our lives to do that!
So, what do we mean by the “whole Gospel”? Certainly it doesn’t mean sitting someone down and reading Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to them, beginning to end. So what does it mean?
Rob used the four fold image of: Creation – Fall – Redemption – Reconciliation as a framework of the Gospel message. This is the Gospel, the Good News, of how God is and has been at work throughout human history, but more specifically, in our lives. This is the “upper story.”
Creation: We read the opening verses of Genesis which announce, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” and everything in them. As we read those opening chapters we come to an understanding that God created out of love, and that all that He created was good and right; there was peace and harmony; call it paradise. From the beginning, we were created to live in reconciliation, right relationships, with God and one another, with the creation itself and even with ourselves. This is the idyllic world God designed and created and desires for us. This is life as it was intended to be.
Fall: But something went wrong, didn’t it? Through human disobedience and hubris the harmony of that idyllic existence was broken; relationships were fractured; our ancestors were cast out of the garden and life became difficult, and it remained that way for a very long time. All as a result of the Fall.
Redemption: But that is not the way God intended His people to live, in broken relationships with Him or others, so God acted to restore those relationships, to heal that brokenness, to bridge that chasm which existed between God and His people, and He did it by sending His one and only Son, who by His death and resurrection, was able to redeem and restore this fallen creation, “making peace by the blood of the cross.” (Eph.2:13)
Reconciliation: So, as we turn to Christ in faith; as we submit to Him as Savior and Lord; as we in humility accept that He has done for us something which we could never do for ourselves, that is, forgive and redeem us, we are reconciled with God once more, restored to our original, “fresh out of the box” condition, and that reconciled relationship with God impacts every other relationship in our lives: our relationships with others, with the creation and even with the way we see and think and feel about ourselves. No longer do we need to hide in guilt and shame; rather we can see ourselves as God sees us, as children of the Heavenly Father, dearly loved.
And that is the 30 second, or two minute, “elevator” speech of the Gospel: Creation – Fall – Redemption – Reconciliation. In First Peter we read, “Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence.” Friends, this is the hope that is within us, and all of it points to and is fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
You know the old joke, what do you get when you cross a Jehovah’s Witness with a Presbyterian? Someone who is willing to knock on your door, but then doesn’t know what to say. This gives us something to say about what God has done, and is doing still.
But I can hardly imagine any of us actually giving that little speech, nor should we lest it sound canned and disingenuous. But given that this is the hope that is within us, we can use this four-point structure of the “upper story” to share something about the way God is at work in our “lower story”. As we “come alongside” someone we can help them see how God’s story relates to their story.
With some we can talk about the “new work” that God is doing in us and around us. We can talk about the various ways we see God at work in the “everyday” of our lives and invite them to do the same. Those conversations are often filled with joy and excitement – births, engagements, weddings, new job opportunities and the like. Together we can celebrate the goodness of God and give Him the credit.
Those would be conversations which speak of God’s on-going work of “creation”, but I find that many of my faith-sharing conversations emerge out of times which better reflect “the fall”. As people share their pain and sorrow and struggles in which the “Where is God in all of this?” question is often the unspoken “elephant in the room”, which we can then name, not so much by giving answers, and certainly not by glossing over their struggles with glib Hallmark theology, but with responses which reflect the Biblical truth that we live in a broken and fallen world, that pain and suffering and injustice are real, but that that is not the way God designed or desires it to be, and He has done something about it in Jesus Christ.
The reality of “the fall” in their lives, and in our own, leads us to talk naturally and candidly about the redemption God has won for us in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Brokenness does not have the last word with us, God does, and He has secured the way of peace and restoration and reconciliation. This is God’s promise and so our hope.
Can you hear how these great Gospel truths can be woven, naturally, genuinely, in our stories? How God’s “upper story” relates to our “lower story”? As the Good News of Jesus Christ is shared in this way hearts are opened and lives are touched and changed. We don’t need to beat people up with the Good News, we simply need to share it with them.
We get a glimpse of that kind of changed life, not just in a few individuals but in a whole community, in our lesson from Acts 2. This story comes right after the telling of the story of Pentecost, the day God poured out the Holy Spirit on new believers. The Apostle Peter shared the Gospel message with an international crowd and that day 3000 people came to faith. But that ecstatic, evangelistic, revival experience was not the end of the story; it was just the beginning, as new believers began to translate the Good News in to the way they lived their everyday lives.
Listen again to the way Luke describes the first-century Church:
“They devoted themselves to the apostle’s teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, because many signs and wonders were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.”
There are so many aspects of that passage that we will have to explore another day, but suffice it to say, this faith of ours is not intended just to be believed, but to be “lived out” in our everyday lives. William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, when asked what translation of the Bible was his favorite, answered, “I want to see a translation of the Bible into the hearts and conduct of living men and women. It is of no use making correct translations of words if we cannot get those words translated into life.”
We hear in this passage how those early believers “came alongside” one another. They worshiped and prayed together; they shared meals and resources with one another; they did life together; and we are told the world around them sat up and took notice as “day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.”
Put what they were doing in to the language of our Vision Renewal statement here at Tab and we hear, “Greater faith through deeper relationships building stronger communities.”
“The whole Church sharing the whole Gospel with the whole world.”
That’s what I want for myself and for you and for us together. There isn’t an aspect of life that isn’t touched and changed by the Lordship of Jesus Christ. May this be our prayer and commitment. Amen.