I see that, and I agree that it’s definitely a problem. I’ve been thinking lately that it affects us in a surprising way.

See, when right and wrong get diluted, then it leaves us ripe to elevate our opinions further than we normally would. In place of moral consensus, we emphasize our own hunches about the way the world ought to be. It’s not just the moral void that’s the problem—our own tendency to fill that void by elevating our own opinions that wreaks havoc on the formation of our character. The result is we live in an age of not just pervasive relativity, but pervasive negativity as well. This is the age of cynicism.

In a world where nobody has the final say about whether or not what I do is good or not, everybody has a say in whether they like it or not—people from every stage of life, young and old, now excel at cynicism in every arena of life. Negative judgmental critiques have become our highest rated form of entertainment—the bold and aggressive cynic is indeed the true American Idol.

It seems that even in the church, people eagerly voice their judgments and shamelessly gossip their critiques of their neighbors. Gone is any hint that the critiqued man, woman or child is a creature who somehow bears the image of God, gone is any impression of their value, gone is the spirit of love that compels us to see the face of Christ on our neighbors. In the place is only what we see and judge by the standards of what we like and what we don’t, what conveniences or annoys us.

We who believe in revelation must be better than that. What we have received from God certainly forms in us boundaries of what we may morally approve, but it is just as true that it should form a boundary of what we freely critique. Just as we must freely testify that Jesus is Lord indeed, we must also give testimony that we are not lords of the universe ourselves. Our witness to what God does say cannot be diluted by assertions of our own will and judgment. In the age of cynics, may the church instead choose to be something else:

May we choose to be prophets.

Prophets who speak the word of the Lord, but who bite our tongues before they spill the poison of cynical, negative gossip.

And then, here in chapter ten, there is a startling turning point in the gospel. Like a skilled filmmaker who suddenly changes the focus of a lens, bringing what was blurred in the background of the shot into clear focus, Matthew reveals that he is not simply telling the story about Jesus, but about his disciples. They’ve been there the whole time—following Jesus from synagogue to synagogue, town to town, house to house. They’ve been watching him teach, hearing him proclaim the good news of the kingdom of heaven, and then they’ve watched him act out that sermon by healing the sick, casting out demons, and offering forgiveness. They’ve been here the whole time, but always in the background. But now, Matthew twists the lens, and they suddenly jump from the background to the front of the story.

It’s one of those moments that makes you go back and rethink the movie. Everything Jesus has been doing now becomes a rehearsal for what he’s calling them to do. Notice what he tells them in verses 7-8: “As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.” It sounds a lot like what Matthew’s been telling us Jesus did, doesn’t it? It’s a radical turning point in the story—the disciples are not just to watch Jesus or even to merely go on learning from him, but are to go out and replicate his ministry to others. The last few chapters have been a barrage of stories that demonstrate that Jesus has authority—now he gives it away. “Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority…”

This provokes a new, different kind of faith question. Up until now, all the stories have been about what people believed Jesus could do for them:

“Do you believe that I am teaching you the truth?”
“Do you believe I can heal your servant?”
“Do you believe I can protect you from this storm?”
“Do you believe I can forgive you?”

It’s a radical turning point in the story—the disciples are not just to watch Jesus or even to merely learn from him, but are to go out and replicate his ministry to others. As somebody in our small group said last week when we read those words, and were imagining what it was like to be sent on that mission by Jesus, “These are life-changing words.” Now, all of a sudden, the question for the disciples is not “What do we believe Jesus can do for us?” but “What what do we believe Jesus will do through us?” That is a tremendous difference.

But even while we recognize the difference, it’s important to recognize that even though this is a different kind of question, it’s still a faith question. It’s not a question of what the disciples are capable of in and of themselves. Jesus can’t give them authority unless he truly has it himself. There isn’t even a question of the gospel beginning at this point—this moment depends on their faith in everything that’s happened before this. Matthew doesn’t begin in chapter ten, (and there’s no Acts without Luke). Christian mission is never about what we are capable of or not—it’s about what God is capable of. It exists in the tension between what God is at work doing and what we are at work doing. But both of those work together—God is at work through us.

The challenge implicit in all of this is: “Are we ready to be agents of the gospels?” Are we willing to take on the mantle of what Jesus was doing, and take his mission to be our own? Are we content to be recipients of the gospel, or are we ready to become participants of the gospel?

That’s an important question in the gospel, one that I think is implicit in this story. And normally, this is the point in the sermon when I would dramatically hold out my hands and ask you to seriously consider that challenge…but not this week. At this point in the gospel, in chapter ten, we’re still not ready for it. This story, where Jesus sends his disciples out to replicate his ministry, is incomplete. Sure, the mission as it is would be enough to keep their hands full, and it’s full of the gospel—but it’s still an incomplete gospel. After all, the story Matthew is telling doesn’t end here, but ends in another sending story, what we call the great commission. Matthew is a tale of two commissions, or two sendings, and what happens between the two is incredibly important.

So far, Jesus’s disciples have learned about his power, but they have not yet seen him become powerless. They’ve seen him in strength, but not yet in weakness. Between the two commissions, stands the truth of Jesus’s suffering. Before they can receive the great commission, they have to follow Jesus on the road to the cross—and so do we. Because it’s on that road that we finally can  experience the full gospel of Jesus in his life, death, and resurrection—the gospel that we are called not only to receive, but to participate in.

Here’s a preview for the sermon this Sunday.  (January 29, 2012)

Faith in the Passive Voice

On one hand, our faith is the result of God working in us. It comes as a result of God breaking into the world with a revelation, the imposition of the divine into exposition. By the Spirit, God sustains and extends the work of the initial revelation, sending the Word to us that brings conviction, hope, and the word that recreates us, just as it is working towards the recreation of the world. As that Word does its work in us, we are drawn into the story of God, formed into the image of Jesus, and are utilized in God’s redemptive mission for the world.

But enough with vagaries—this really does mean stuff in the actual world. It means that when I pray, I depend on the work of God’s spirit. If I grow through prayer, it is not because of some automatic exchange, as though I followed a formula and that just yielded a spiritual result. When I serve my neighbor, I believe that the Lord is at work in the service, that God’s spirit will work in me to create a servants heart.  When I preach, I speak believing that the Lord will speak through the sermon, that God is at work in the text and in the act of the sermon, that people may, by the work of the spirit, hear a word from the Lord. When we think about the church’s mission, we are really talking about the Lord’s mission, and discerning what God is doing through and in the Church.

Faith in Active Voice

But on the other hand, I believe that there is a very real sense in which we choose to join God and participate in his working, or not. We actually have to take on activity, we really become agents in God’s work. I actually do take physical action, string words together, and place myself in contexts in which I believe God will work.

Though it will be the Lord who makes the prayer effectual, we still pray. Though the Lord will be the one who uses service to refine us, we still choose to serve, and we still work hard while we’re doing it. Though the Lord speaks through the sermon, I still have to work hard to develop and deliver it. Though it is the Lord that is at work in the church’s ministry, the church must choose to join the Lord, must choose to participate in God’s mission or to pursue its own.

Ultimately, the tension between the two is real, but not destructive. We have to learn to speak in both voices. The passive voice of faith reminds me that I am not all on my own, that is not all up to me. However, there is also an active voice of faith, one that may never speak on its own, without being coupled with a passive voice, but which is still essential to how God’s purposes become fulfilled in the world. God chooses to work with us, to partner with us, and we must choose as well.

I leave my bag in the truck,
walk in the door
and toss my coat on the table.
Two missiles fly down the hall,
their steps not a sing-song pitter-patter,
but a building rumble,
an accelerating energy wave
that crashes into me with pent up love,
and I am home,
I am home,
I am home.

It’s a pretty live question how much possibility for self-determination really exists. I tend to think it’s different for different people. You didn’t get to choose all your circumstances, and some of those have an extremely powerful influence on the person you are and will continue to be. Even becoming fully aware of all the things that influence who we’ve become can be tough—rewriting ourselves in the midst of that can be even tougher.

But you have to try.

You have to fight for the possibility that you can grow, change, and struggle to become someone else. Sometimes you have to restructure some of the things in your life, enlist help from other people and God, and just dig into the struggle to become the person you discern God called you to be. Because while I don’t think we have absolute power over our own self-determination, the minute we give in and just accept ourselves as accidents of fate, the moment we accept the way we are as the way we have to be, we get stuck. We stop growing. And the minute any living thing stops growing, it starts dying.

It reminds me of the famous Lombardi quote upon arriving to coach the Packers: “Gentlemen, we are going to relentlessly chase perfection, knowing full well we will not catch it, because nothing is perfect. But we are going to relentlessly chase it, because in the process we will catch excellence.” That’s really the way it is: You have to be willing to chase some things that ultimately might be out of your grasp, because we humans are at our best when we’re chasing something. But we don’t have to chase anything, and there are infinite choices about what we’re going to pursue.

That’s why intentionality, the practice of making distinct choices about who we want to become and what we want to do, is so important. You don’t get to make all the choices, but the ones you do get to make really, really, really matter.

The ignorance of some is extremely lamentable; they burden themselves with extraordinary penances and many other exercises, thinking these are sufficient to attain union with divine Wisdom. But such practices are insufficient if these souls do not diligently strive to deny their appetites. If they would attempt to devote only half of that energy to the renunciation of their desires, they would profit more in a month than in years with all these other exercises. As the tilling of soil is necessary for its fruitfulness—untilled soil produces only weeds—,prettification of the appetites is necessary for one’s spiritual fruitfulness. I venture to say that without this mortification all that is done for the sake of advancement in perfection and in knowledge of God and of oneself is no more profitable than seed sown on uncultivated ground. Accordingly, darkness and coarseness will always be with a soul until its appetites are extinguished. The appetites are like a cataract on the eye or specks of dust in it; until removed they obstruct vision. (I.8.4)

It almost struck me as ironic: after all, reading John is for me now, a spiritual exercise! But he himself calls me to think about the things within me that actually need changing, particularly the restrain of my physical appetites. My devotional life should be connected to the rest of my life; my prayer should grow from and flow back into the actual living of my life,  in the awareness of how the Lord is changing me, growing and purifying my heart, words, thoughts, and actions.  Prayer cannot be only an isolated spiritual exercise, but must be accompanied by a willingness to be thoroughly changed by the Lord.

Now, to be fair, our assumption is that the reason all of those questions were important is because they affect the kingdom by affecting him and his capacity to serve the kingdom in particular ways—and I think that assumption is true. Each of those points has implications for how the education process might expand or frustrate kingdom service. However, the more I thought about it, this is the kind of assumption that we need to be in the habit of explicitly naming and considering.

I want to be in the habit of making decisions through kingdom criteria, and helping my friends do the same.