In earlier years, when I thought along the lines of ‘amazing Christians’ it was some of the great missionary pioneers and leading preachers and those that had been used of God to initiate turning points in the history of the church that occupied my attention. My thinking has changed somewhat as I have grown older, not that I in any way turn away from the ‘greats’ of God’s church but I do turn away from the dramatic ‘God’s General’s’ idea more towards ‘those amazing Christians’ who bore a powerful corporate testimony to the community around about them in the world; those who by their good works and love became a phenomena in their villages, towns and cities. What does the world see, what does it say of the church? Just to give you an example I came across mention of the apology of Aristides, a native of Athens so I dug around on the Internet to find it. It was written to the Emperor Hadrian in the second century. Hadrian was the Roman Emperor from 117 until his death in 138 and his name is associated with the wall built in the north of England to prevent the Picts and Scots disturbing the peace of the Empire. He had been initiated into the rites of one of the mystery religions and from that moment began a persecution of the local Christians and this provoked at least two written responses and letters from Aristides of Athens.
[superquote]“A new people, there is something divine in them.” [/superquote]
Let me give a lengthy quotation bringing together some of his statements to Hadrian. “The Christians know and trust the True God. They placate those who oppress them and make them their friends and they do good to their enemies. Their wives are pure, and their daughters modest. Their men abstain from unlawful marriage and from all impurity. If any of them have slaves they persuade them to become Christians because of the love that these masters have toward them and when they become believers their masters immediately call them brothers without distinction. They love one another. They do not refuse to help widows. If someone is doing violence to an orphan they rescue the child. He who has gives ungrudgingly to him who has not. If they see a stranger they take him to their dwellings and rejoice over him as over a real brother, for they do not call themselves brothers after the flesh but after the Spirit and in God. If anyone among them is poor and needy, and they do not have food to spare they fast for two or three days that they might supply him with the necessary food. They scrupulously obey the commands of their Messiah. Every morning and every hour they thank and praise God for His loving kindness toward them. Because of them there flows forth all the beauty that there is in the world. But the good deeds they do they do not proclaim in the ears of the multitude, but they take care that no one shall perceive them. Thus they labor to become righteous. Truly this is a new people and there is something divine in them.”
What a description this is! And written to the Emperor of a cruel and ruthless empire. “A new people, there is something divine in them.” Amen! Would that the church bore this testimony in the eyes of the world in our day and that it could be written to government leaders who at times are outright enemies of God and His people. I am sure, that reading these words will strike a chord in your heart as it does in mine. It is all too easy to walk the Christian way and be preoccupied with other things. What Aristides wrote all those years ago has had its repeated refrain down through the centuries. Francis of Assisi immediately comes to mind and the order that he pioneered. Charles de Foucault is another, this time a man of the early twentieth century and those that joined him in the order known as the “Little Brothers of Jesus.” There have been many endeavors of God’s people to be a community of love and true brotherhood reaching out and serving one another and the locality in which they are set. Yet how easily we talk of other things as we walk the way.
[superquote]“Whoever receives one such child in my Name receives Me and whoever receives Me, receives not Me but Him Who sent Me” (Mark 9:36&37)[/superquote]
Jesus is that Person Who knows how to ask questions; they penetrate to the deepest issues of our hearts. He was moving towards Calvary, He had just been speaking to His disciples about it and He asked this question. “What were you discussing on the way?” (Mark 9:13). They were silenced by their own embarrassment. They had been discussing personal greatness, indeed, they had been arguing about it. What do we discuss as walk on the way? It may not be arguments about position and power but it may well be that we center upon what is essentially peripheral and neglect the heart of everything which is Christ and the things He said in that amazing sermon on the mount (Matthew 5:1-7:28). I notice Jesus sat down on that occasion when He taught, indeed, He usually sat and the hearers stood. When Jesus climbed the mountain His disciples came unto Him (Matthew 5:1). They climbed too, but they had to stop moving to pay attention to what He was saying. In Capernaum Jesus was in the house and asked His disciples what had been so animating them on the way and again He sat down and called those argumentative men to gather round and watch and listen. ‘He took a child and put him in the midst of them, and taking him in him in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever receives one such child in my Name receives Me and whoever receives Me, receives not Me but Him Who sent Me” (Mark 9:36&37). Christ and a child the same, can this be? Children were of little account in those days, so these words of Jesus were revolutionary. In our day people are just a utensil, a number, an object for use, cities are cruel, sad places and to them the worker must go in order to earn get a ‘good’ job with a nice tidy income and to join the ‘rat race’ as it has been called, and not without reason.
[superquote]The kind of love I mean is the kind Jesus had in mind when He said, “love one another.”[/superquote]
The result of years spent chasing the god of materialism is disillusionment, broken marriages, estranged children and heart break on every side. And cities are the breeding grounds for the worship of materialism. Yet the church must bear her testimony in the midst of all this, but should she put on the emperor’s clothes, the masquerade that says ‘I am wearing a beautiful new suit of clothes’ that does not exist and fails to cover the nakedness? What is the church discussing on the way? The question scours our hearts. What am I discussing on the way. Am I in the centralities of what Jesus spoke in His Sermon on the Mount or arguing non-essentials? I read another challenging quotation today, not from the second century this time but from recent days. This paragraph comes from a little book with the title ‘Off The Sauce’ and is by Lewis Meyer. It captures what should be true of God’s church. “If one could use only one word to describe the feeling of an AA meeting, it would be love. Love is the only word I know that encompasses friendship, understanding, sympathy, empathy, kindness, honesty, pride and humility. The kind of love I mean is the kind Jesus had in mind when He said, “love one another.” Shoes might be shed, attention might be diverted, but there is a close-ness between AAs, closeness you seldom find anywhere. It is the only place I know where status means nothing. Nobody fools anybody else. Everyone is here because he or she made a slobbering mess of his or her life and is trying to put the pieces back together again. First things are first here…. I have attended thousands of church meetings, lodge meetings, brotherhood meetings, yet I have never found the kind of love I find at AA. For one small hour the high and mighty descend and the lowly rise.
[superquote] “Have this mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5-11) says Paul. [/superquote]
The leveling that results is what people mean when they use the word brotherhood.” Some reading this will not realize that AA stands for Alcoholics Anonymous and this organization would not claim to be Christian but from what Meyer says its meetings have many marks that should be constantly present in the communities of God’s people but alas, so often are not. In our discussions along the way I have noticed how much we are occupied with the trendy, there is a crisis in the churches of the Western world (and what prevails there spreads to the churches of the rest of the world) and it is essentially a crisis between what Paul calls “the flesh and the Spirit” (Galatians 5:16-25). We always come to a time when this crisis is upon us. In another place Paul speaks of the mind of the Spirit and the mind of the flesh (Romans 8:5-8). When everything is stripped away it inevitably comes back to what mind we are thinking with. “Have this mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5-11) says Paul. And we should note that the ‘you’ is plural, so, this mind of Christ should be the mind that we have among ourselves as a community. Nowhere did Jesus express that mind so fully as the words recorded for us in those three chapters of the gospel of Matthew (5-7). There He endeavors to force us to choose between God and mammon. The word mammon is a Semitic word that means money and possessions. That these are the gods of our day cannot be denied. They drive the world as its strains after the comforts obtaining material goods will provide. The spirit of competition runs rampant and the pursuit of profit so blinds the eyes of the heart that it does not matter who goes to the wall in that driving madness. Let there be no mistake in our thinking, those that obtain great riches always do so by making others poor. Where is the community of God’s people in all this? As they walk along the way do they discuss bigger and better buildings, a more acceptable music ministry or a more dynamic and charismatic CEO preacher? If so, this is madness and not wisdom. The quote from Aristides focuses us on the real dynamic and transforming power of God’s church in the midst of the community. There is a profound sense of cooperation there and not competition.
But is this not what Jesus taught in His sermon? Christian business people and bankers should be spoken of in their cities as those who care for their employees, pay above the minimum wage and are not forever driving the best deal possible with the maximum profits. Foolishness? If measured by the mind of the flesh, yes, it is folly, but, if we realize that it gives God opportunity and room to honor those who are honoring Him then it is wisdom indeed and not only wisdom, but speaks louder than a thousand topical sermons. If we take the words of Jesus at the end of the sermon He speaks of healthy trees and those that are diseased (Matthew 7:16-20). From what He tells us we should judge growth by the fruit. If the tree is a ‘love’ tree, with roots going down into God then its fruits will be love, not driving competitiveness and greed for more possessions. Should we consider whether the church tree is a healthy or diseased one? And if we do that, we must include ourselves, for we are part of that church tree. If we are healthy we will be growing in love, as a community, in grace, as a community, in humility, as a community, growing in forgiveness and reconciliation, as a community; growing in obedience to the Lord’s word to serve Him in the world He has set us, as a community. I have repeatedly emphasized the words ‘as a community’ because it is must emerge there in the churches and not just in isolated individuals. These are among the good fruits that will be evident. We are the children of God now. He has and does pour His Spirit into the midst of His community. None of us must put out the Spirit’s fire by refusing Him when He challenges us as to the carnality of our thinking. Do we think according to the Lord’s mind, do we pray for those who despitefully use us and choose to think and say the best things we can about another person or are we living on the negative ground of pointing out the mote in another’s eye? When it comes down to it, it is a battle for our minds and hearts; we are in the crisis of choice, the mind of Christ or the mind of the flesh. We must choose, either the way those amazing Christians lived about whom Aristides so boldly wrote or the superficial ‘believism’ that is increasingly evident and that allows for dubious moral behavior on the grounds that God is full of grace. We must be for His glory, and if we are, then it shall be written of us “they are a new people, there is something divine in them.”
