Living the Radical Gospel

In his autobiography, Brother to a Dragonfly, Will Campbell recounts the experience that confronted him with the radical implications of the gospel of reconciliation. His friend, civil rights worker Jonathan Daniels, had just been gunned down in cold blood by volunteer Deputy Sheriff Thomas Coleman. Will was livid with grief and rage over Jonathan’s murder.

In the aftermath Will’s agnostic friend P.D. East reminded Will of a conversation they had years earlier. P.D. had challenged Will to give him a definition of the Christian faith in ten words or less. Will defined it this way: “We are all bastards, but God loves us anyway.” P.D. now challenged Will’s succinct definition of the gospel.

P.D. tore into Will: “Was Jonathan a bastard?” Will commented on how Jonathan was one of the sweetest, most gentle guys he had ever known. P.D. pressed: “But was he a bastard?” His tone almost a scream. Will knew P.D. had him cornered. Will finally conceded, “Yes.” P.D. came firing back: “All right. Is Thomas Coleman a bastard.” That was easy. “Yes, Thomas Coleman is a bastard.”

P.D. said: “Okay, let me get this straight . . . Jonathan Daniels was a bastard. Thomas Colman is a
bastard. . . . Which of these two bastards do you think God loves the most? Does God love that little dead bastard Jonathan the most? Or does he love the living bastard Thomas the most?”

The truth of the gospel hit Will with such force that Will describes the encounter as something of a conversion experience. Will was overcome with emotion. He found himself weeping and laughing simultaneously. He told P.D.: “Damn, Brother, if you haven’t gone and made a Christian out of me.”

The gospel of reconciliation is a radical gospel; it is offensive to conservatives, moderates, and liberals alike. To think that God loves the Thomas Colemans of the world as much as the Jonathan Daniels’ is hard to take, isn’t it?

I have no doubt this is why so many liberals have equated the gospel with a social cause and so many conservatives have reduced the gospel to going to heaven when we die. Institutional Christianity on both the right and left has a tough time with this radical gospel of unconditional love and grace.

Paul says in his correspondence with the church in Corinth that God was in Christ reconciling the world to God’s self, not counting their transgressions against them (2 Cor. 5:19). All are loved and forgiven. Thomas Coleman and Jonathan Daniel; Hitler and Mother Teresa. All are God’s children.

How do we live this scandalous gospel? It’s not easy. I know I cannot do it on my own. It’s easy to identify with the victim, but to love the perpetrator of abuse or violence takes more love than I am capable of. I need grace. I need to “know” at the deep, core level of my being, beyond my intellect, the love of God that passes all understanding.

Only through fresh encounters with the Divine Love that pervades and sustains all reality—that we Christians believe became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth—can we find the faith, strength, courage, and hope to love the Thomas Colemans of the world.

Comments

  1. AnnegwJune 8, 2010 at 9:19 AM

    And that's the way it is and should be. Very good.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Getting to the Heart of the Matter (A sermon from Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23)

It is clear, I think, that this Gospel text is a denouncement by Jesus of the way many Jewish religious leaders in his day used their religious faith in harmful, life-diminishing ways. That much is obvious. However, this is a text, in my judgment, that has been too often misread and misapplied. Some Christians use this text to draw, in my opinion, an inappropriate distinction between scripture and tradition. They generally lock on to verse 8 where Jesus is purported as saying, “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” They argue that human tradition is bad, while the commandment of God, which they tend to identify as scripture as a whole is good.  So they make this rigid distinction between tradition and scripture The problem with that explanation is that the mention of “human tradition” in verse 8 is not a reference to all tradition. It’s a reference to the particular way these Jewish leaders were interpreting and applying that tradition. Scriptur...
Read more

Going Deeper (A sermon from Luke 5:1-11)

The story I read earlier from Luke 5, which is today’s sermon text, is Luke’s account of the call of Peter to be a disciple of Jesus. It’s different than the other two versions in the Gospels. In Mark’s account, which is followed by Matthew, Peter and his brother, Andrew, are by the seaside, apparently attending to their nets, when Jesus calls them to follow him. They immediately leave their nets and follow Jesus. That’s one version of the call of Simon Peter given by Mark and Matthew. In John’s account, Jesus calls Andrew first, who was not at the seaside fishing or attending nets at all, but with John the Baptist at the time. In John’s version Andrew is a follower of John the Baptist. He heeds the call, then goes out and finds his brother, Peter, and brings him to Jesus. Now, the reason I call attention to this is to remind you that we are not reading historical reports. There are echoes of memories in these stories, but these stories function more like parables crafted for the purpo...
Read more

Fruits of Joy (a sermon from Luke 3:7-18)

We are wired in such a way that we find our greatest joy when we become a blessing to others. We are created in God’s image. We are stamped with divine DNA. And because God indwells us, because we share in the divine life and divine nature, we will never find true happiness apart from consciously living out of our oneness with God. We are at our best, and we are most joyous and fulfilled, when we allow God’s Spirit to flow through us – when we allow God’s love to fill our lives and overflow into the lives of others. When we bless others, we bless ourselves, because we are doing what we have been created and called to do. Whatever happiness we may have as a result of self-serving actions is always fleeting and temporary. And once it runs its course it leaves us feeling empty, because it’s not real happiness. It doesn’t reflect who we really are. Repentance then, is a realigning of our actions and attitudes and desires with who we really are as God’s children and that brings joy.  ...
Read more