he who has eyes...

Talk given at Multi-Ethnic Intervarsity large group at the University of Illinois – Chicago on January 27, 2010. Audio of the talk not available (because I failed at operating a computer — too bad too, it was my best talk yet). Here are my slides to compensate.

Boy, time flies. It seems like only just a month ago that I was sitting amongst you all out there (for those of you who don’t know, I was a volunteer here until about that time.. so.. uh.. I was sitting there a month ago). Not that I’m a student here at UIC, I’m actually a graduate student down at the University of Chicago in physics. And, as a physics grad student, one of my recent money-making schemes has been teaching the physics section for an MCAT preparation course offered at the U of C — despite the fact that I’ve never taken the MCAT, nor do I know anything about medical school. But I know physics and so I can teach it anywhere, right? Well, this last Friday I was asked to teach a section of the course on general chemistry — which sounds as if it should be easy enough. Problem is, I haven’t taken chemistry in almost a decade, so what on earth would make me qualified to teach it?

That’s how I feel right now with tonight’s topic of evangelism, which should make you immensely comfortable. “Oh boy! We get to learn from a guy who has no idea what he’s talking about!”

Of all the things I might excel at in my life and in my relationship with Christ, evangelism is not one of them. I struggle with this constantly. And, the easiest thing for me to do with this struggle is to write it off by saying something like, “Well, maybe I’m not ‘called’ to evangelism.”

You’ve heard this before right? “Not everyone is called to evangelism.” It’s such an easy escape and an easy excuse. When I struggle with sharing how Christ has transformed my life and how I long to have him transform others lives, I just think it’s a natural struggle, and I can chalk it up to the fact that this isn’t the place and gifting God has called me into. So I focus on the other areas of my life where God has gifted me, and it’s all good.

Well, there is a small truth here, surrounded by a ton of self-deception. It is true that evangelism is something people can be particularly gifted in. Look at Paul. Everywhere he went, people came to know Christ. Same with Peter. Same with Billy Graham. But, to look at my own experiences, determine I’m not gifted in evangelism, and then not focus on doing this is a mistake.

In what will be the first of a whirlwind tour of Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, we see in 2 Corinthians 5,

And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. [2 Corinthians 5:19-20]

Whether we are “gifted” in evangelism or not, we are certainly called to it if we’ve been met by Christ at all. God puts it all in our hands. We are Christ’s ambassadors!

So, what is an ambassador? She is an official representative of another. Whatever the ambassador does, she is reflecting her sender.

Therefore, whatever it is that we’re doing in our lives each and every day, since we’re representing Christ, it is evangelism. We are all evangelists. You are an evangelist if you’ve encountered Jesus and profess to follow him at all. It doesn’t matter if you’ve signed up for that or not, whether you’re gifted in it or not, you get the opportunity, the pleasure, and the honor of representing your Savior. That’s sort of cool right? It doesn’t matter what your credentials are. You just get to be an evangelist, a representative, an ambassador.

Now, as I’ve said, what comes before our employment as ambassadors of Christ is that we’ve encountered God and have chosen to follow. When we’re hit with God, it should create in us a natural response to share what we’ve encountered with others. The reason for this is because when we encounter Him, we encounter His goodness and all that He has to offer. And what God has to offer is exactly what we need. When we experience exactly what we need, shouldn’t that make us want to share it with others? Shouldn’t that fill us with love and admiration?

That video we watched just a minute ago is a monologue representation of what the woman in the following passage might say to Christ. You see here so clearly how this woman finds exactly what she’s looking for, and she’s filled with adoration which leads her to run screaming about it to everyone she knows. Let’s look at John 4.

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?”

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

“I have no husband,” she replied.

So Jesus pulls some psychic judo here.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”

The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

Then Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am he.”

Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”

Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?”

…

Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. And because of his words many more became believers.

They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.” [John 4:7-29, 39-42]

Do you see what happens here? Christ meets this woman (a disreputable woman) right where she is — in her outcast shame. The reason for her drawing water at midday is because all the smart, respectable women who draw water do so in the morning when it’s cool. She’s been shunned by these people, and in her shame must draw water when no one else is there. And in this outcast place in society, Jesus meets her. And he offers her new life — the living water. In her joy, she runs to the town because everyone has to know about this.

She encounters Jesus, the Messiah of the world, she is changed, and her response is to share this good news with others. And in this case, it’s not just passive sharing either (that she’s representing Christ in her everyday actions). It’s active sharing — practically screaming it from the rooftops.

Our natural inclination to encountering God should lead to our transformation, our outpouring of what we’ve received, and our inviting others to experience what we’ve experienced from the Source.

That is what it looks like to have the urgent desire to share what we’ve received with others. That is what it looks like to long for more people to know and represent what it is that we represent. That is what it looks like to be an ambassador.

So, if encountering God more is what we need to be a better representative of Him, if it’s what we need to provide us with the desire and the passion to share His love and our adoration of Him with the world, then how is that we’re encountered by Him and how do we make that happen more? I mean, if I can be crazy active with being an evangelist and talk about God everywhere I go, that’s great. But, how do I position myself in such a way that my very being just oozes evangelism? How do I ensure, even in a passive sense when I’m not even trying to tell someone about God, that I’m being a trustworthy ambassador and a true representative of Christ? Well, let’s go to the Bible and find out what these encounters look like.

And when we do go to Scripture, we find that there are literally hundreds (thousands?) of examples of how people are encountered by God and what change this encounter elicits. To go over all the ways in which encounters lead to transformation and representation would take hours (days?). In fact, when we encounter God, everything should change. But, everything is a big idea. So, in lieu of that, let’s focus in and continue the promised whirlwind tour of Paul’s letters to the Corinthians.

In 2 Corinthians 3, Paul talks about one of the heroes of the Old Testament, Moses, and how he once got to see God. The experience was so transformative to Moses that when he came down from the mountain upon which he beheld God, he freaked out the Israelites because his face was radiant from the experience. Moses was physically transformed by his encounter with God’s glory. To keep the freaking out to a minimum, Moses wore a veil to shield his radiant face from his people.

Here in 2 Corinthians, Paul talks about how we as followers of Christ have beheld the Lord’s glory through the Spirit, analogous to how Moses viewed God’s glory. We should be bold and not shield our faces.

We, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. [2 Corinthians 3:18]

When we encounter God and experience His glory, we are transformed into His likeness and reflect His glory. To understand this more clearly, think of yourself as a mirror. Our mirror-selves reflect what we’re facing. If we face our own image, we reflect ourselves. If we face an idealized self, where we have the good grades and the beautiful significant other and the well-paying job and the family with 2.5 kids, we reflect that obsessive view out to others. But, if we face the Father, we reflect Him in all His glory.

Our first point is then this: encountering the Father’s glory leads naturally to our transformation into His likeness and our reflecting His glory to the world.

And, whether you appreciate this for what it is or not, this is evangelism. As a God-facing mirror, the world sees God through us. We are being very true and honorable to our job as Christ’s ambassadors.

Venturing on, we come to Paul’s recording of the Last Supper in 1 Corinthians 11. Here, Jesus speaks to his disciples about how the food they are eating is a representation of what is about to go down (his death and resurrection).

The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. [1 Corinthians 11:23-26]

Now we generally (and quite correctly) view this passage as giving us instructions on how and why to take communion — we have bread and juice or wine, we take these elements as symbolic to what Christ offered, and we remember the price he paid to give us our new covenant. This is how we “do this in remembrance of” Christ.

But, look at the very next chapter as Paul goes on speaking to the Corinthians.

Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. [1 Corinthians 12:27]

I want to suggest that maybe Paul had a point with placing these two passages next to each other — one about Christ talking about his body being broken for the world and how we should “do this” in remembrance of him, and the next about how we are the body of Christ.

Maybe the “do this” that Jesus referred to and that Paul is alluding to is that we, as the body, should continue being broken for the world in remembrance of how Christ did the same.

So, my second point is this: encountering the Son’s sacrifice leads naturally to our desire to sacrifice for others, thus representing Christ’s humility to the world.

Now, don’t worry too much, this probably doesn’t mean that we are going to have our bodies literally broken for the world, as Christ’s was. We live in America. We’re very tolerant of religion here, and I can’t imagine facing this sort of martyrdom in our daily lives. However, in a figurative sense, a daily dying to ourselves for Christ and for the world is mandatory for followers of Christ. Read the Bible. It’s in there. A bunch. And, in actually acting this out (be it in sacrificing all the comforts we could have so that others can have comfort, or food, or whatever), we are being beautiful representatives and ambassadors of the kind of life that Jesus lived.

So, we have that encountering the Father’s glory leads naturally to our transformation into His likeness and our reflecting His glory to the world and that encountering the Son’s sacrifice leads naturally to our desire to sacrifice for others, thus representing Christ’s humility to the world. Finally, let’s look at 1 Corinthians 2.

We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. [1 Corinthians 2:12-13]

Here, Paul is counteracting a very Greek idea of wisdom in a very Greek city of Corinth — saying that the wisdom of the world isn’t all that helpful at all. Where true wisdom comes from is the Spirit of God. In a city obsessed with the newest thoughts, trends, and ideas of how to live life and, quite literally in the Greek ideas of stoicism, become a better you (sound familiar?), Paul is suggesting that when we’ve encountered the Holy Spirit, we’ve encountered the greatest form of wisdom that everyone in that age (and in our current age) were longing for. And, once we’ve encountered this wisdom, we can then turn in back around and speak to the world out of what we’ve learned.

And this is my third and final point: encountering the Spirit’s wisdom leads naturally to our education on the actual truths of this world and in our speaking these truths to a world starved for them.

If we can become people who seek this wisdom more and more voraciously, we become not only truth-seekers, but truth-bringers to a world that needs to know the truth of God. And we get to then represent the spiritual nature of this world for what it is and be an ambassador of the spiritual realm of the Kingdom of God.

Encounter the Father and his glory to better reflect this glory to the world. Encounter the Son and his sacrifice to long to sacrifice for the world. Encounter the Spirit and his wisdom to learn how to share the truths of this world with those who long to hear it.

Evangelism is then honed most fully in this: living our lives as a series of constant encounters with God so that we can best represent Him to the world in our everyday living and thus be Christ’s ambassadors in the best possible way. It’s not just being a bold proclaimer of who He is and how He’s changed you (although this is certainly a huge chunk of evangelism!), it’s being a person who’s been changed by the love experienced through encounters with God so that everything you do reflects Him in some way. If we are encountering God so regularly, trust me, we’ll have no other desire than for other people to know Him — just as the Samaritan woman at the well ran immediately to her town so that everyone could meet who she just met.