he who has eyes...

“And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” [Matthew 28:20]

I keep hearing that Obama is hope. I keep hearing that America is lost without an Obama presidency. I keep hearing that all the things that are wrong with this country — caring for the poor, the sick, the broken — these things can only be fixed by the government. Obama’s government, in fact.

/*And personally, just to clear things up, I think I’m decently happy and excited about the upcoming Obama presidency.*/

And I feel as though it’s a shame that Obama has an opportunity to cash in on America’s longing for something to believe in — someone who can bring hope and change and fix all that ills the people of this country. It’s a shame not on Obama — he’s right, Americans do need something to believe in and do need their hope restored.

It’s a shame on the Church.

When I hear words like “hope” and phrases like “caring for the poor, the sick, the broken,” I don’t think of Barack Obama or the American government. I think of Jesus.

When Jesus quoted Isaiah 61:1-2 in Luke 4, he spoke of the hope that he brought.

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
     because he has anointed me
     to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
     and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
     to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” [Luke 4:18-19]

Obviously, the religious leaders took offense to Jesus’ claim, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” [Luke 4:21].  As they should, probably.  This claim truly highlights the audacity of hope — Jesus was claiming that everything the Jews had been hoping for in a Messiah was fulfilled in his coming.

And the sad thing is, I would bet that many people would be quick to attribute this quote to Obama. I’m not kidding — he’s become that sort of figure.

We the Church have gotten to the point that Jesus is no longer the first thing that comes to mind when Americans think of Christianity. Americans think of conservative politics, boring services on Sunday, someone telling you all the things you’re doing wrong in your life, large buildings with fountains, brash, outspoken preachers threatening everyone who doesn’t agree with them… I could go on.

But the Church is actually commissioned in lots of ways to be exactly the agent of hope and change and progress that Obama is claiming to be. We need look no further than the Great Commission in Matthew 28:16-20 to see what Jesus commissioned the Church to be.

Jesus’ life was filled with examples of him caring for the poor, the sick, and the broken. He performed miraculous signs and wonders because God the Father had given him all authority in heaven and on earth — authority even over disease, even over poverty, even over mental illness. And through the Spirit, Jesus is with us always, to the very end of the age, giving us this same authority to care for the poor, the sick, and the broken.

Look at the early Church in Acts. This is what they did over and over again. Everywhere they went, the performed signs and wonders, healing the sick and casting out demons. It was an essential part of their ministry. This is what the church was doing and this is what the Church should be doing!

Jesus didn’t just give us the authority to perform miraculous signs and wonders to heal the sick and so forth, but the obligation to do so.

But it goes further than just operating in the gifts of healing to care for the sick. The Church was also supposed to go forth and make disciples of all nations.  In other words, the hope that Jesus brought — all that he taught you to do and to be and to long for — bring that to other people and teach them to be like you as you are like Christ. The Church should be an agent that not only brings healing and freedom from oppression, but also that brings with it the same hope that Jesus brought with him when he came to earth. The hope of salvation, of restoring the created order to its pre-fallen state, of receiving freedom from the things that oppress — these things are brought about by Christ and his disciples who were trained up to be Christ-like bringers of the hope of God.

And really, he didn’t just give us the authority to be Christ-like and make others into disciples just as we have been made into disciples and to bring hope to the nations, but the obligation to do so.

When I think of the Obama hype-train, these are the things I think of — caring for those who need cared for and hope. Jesus told his disciples (and therefore the Church today) to do these things. He wasn’t unclear about it. It shouldn’t require a youthful, exuberant, charismatic President to bring these sorts of ideas to the nation.

But, what separates what the Church is called to do from the Obama Presidency? Why, when it’s all said and done, do I believe that the Church when operating as it truly should in God’s power and authority is the better option to truly bring this kind of hope and change to the world?

Love.

One of the many things that Christ commanded the disciples to do (and in fact, the second most important thing behind loving God [Matthew 22:37-40]) was to love one another.  If the Church was to teach all new disciples to do everything Jesus commanded them to do, they simply could not leave out the commandment to love. “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” [John 13:34-35].

If you were to ask a random person what the one thing they think when they think of the Church, I guarantee you that they will not say “love.” Today’s church is known for many, many things — but love is not one of them. We are a divided Church that argues and bickers and is inward-focused and has become just as me-me-me as the rest of culture. Christ himself said it, “a house divided against itself will fall” [Luke 11:17]. The Church will often look at love as a great ability to put into practice when it is convenient or when it is reciprocated — but doesn’t everyone do that?

But, Christ’s love for us didn’t just give us the ability to love one another, but the obligation to do so.

I believe this obligation goes farther — we are to love the whole world just as Christ loved us. Everyone. Not your fellow church-members. Not your family. Not your friends. Everyone — your enemies, your co-workers, that annoying guy on the bus talking into his walky-talky phone (why can’t he just call the person!?).

What does this kind of love look like?

In their new book, Jesus Wants to Save Christians, Rob Bell and Don Golden talk about an interesting paradigm on communion.  When Jesus took the bread and the wine at the Last Supper, he equated them with himself — his body was the bread, his blood was the wine.  And he proclaimed that his body would be broken and his blood would be poured out for the disciples.

Now, what is interesting here is that the Last Supper was actually a Passover meal — the meal in which the Jews remembered God’s mercy on Israel when they were enslaved in Egypt [Exodus 12].  Jews throughout history had shared a meal on this day remembering the Passover, and the elements at the table were taken as physical reminders of the blood shed on that day to spare Israel from God’s wrath. And Jesus took the elements of this meal and made them about him.

At the Last Supper, Jesus was equating the sacrificial lamb of the Passover with his own body and blood.

Now, that’s cool enough, but as Christians we often take communion as a reminder of what Christ did for us on the cross.  But, what if there’s more to it than that?  If we are the body of Christ [1 Corinthians 12:27 -- notice how this follows immediately after Paul's recollection of the Lord's Supper in 1 Corinthians 11], then maybe when Christ said at the last supper “do this in remembrance of me” [1 Corinthians 11:24], the this in question wasn’t just remembering Christ’s death when we break bread together.

The this in question is that as the body of Christ, we are to be broken open for each other.

As believers, we have an obligation put forth by Christ to be his body broken for the world and his blood shed to bring about a new covenant.  We are, as Bell and Golden put it, a living Eucharist as Christ’s body.

When we as the Church begin operating in the way we were intended — not as a gathering of fellow believers who sing songs and hear a good motivational speech, but as a body of people committed to being everything Christ was to this world — the world will see Christ in a whole new way. The Church should be known by our love, which comes from Christ, as we sacrifice our own well-being for the care of the whole world. We shouldn’t just take communion as a sign that we believe in Christ’s death for our sins so we’re now okay with God again.  We should take communion as a reminder that we as the body are called to be broken for the world. Just as Christ was.

So, do this in remembrance of Christ.

Through this, the world will know true hope — the hope of God.  Through this, the world will see God caring for the poor, the sick, and the broken.  Through this, the world will truly know love.

Now that is audacious.