A Labyrinthine Journey: Soon Coming in 3-D

For quite a few years I’ve been refocusing the lens of my preaching and teaching the gospel. I am seeing it more and more as God’s great invitation to life that is full of light and wonder. One of the implications of that reshift of focus is an internal set of translating the language of church and faith. Some I am sure would cry foul, but I find the new language liberating. So, here is a beginning (and very brief) guide to this Gospel of Invitation.

Command => Invitation

This is the basic translation. To me the whole command language sets up our relationship with God as one of servant/master, which Jesus changes when he talks in John 15:12-15 about we are no longer servants, but friends.

This also clears up for me the mixed messages of all the commands to love one another. Being invited to a life of loving one another makes a lot more coherant sense then the implied idea of “love one another, or else…”

What happens if I don’t => What happens as I do

This follows from the previous conversion. If the focus is primarily on what are the results of not doing something then we are concerned with reward and punishment. Here we come boldly in to the realm of works righteousness. Yet, if we offer the invitation to what happens in life as we follow the path of life then we are no longer thinking about linear causality of fear, but we are instead focused on the ways were a participants in God’s life as we respond to grace.

If => As

Did you catch that little translation? This is one of the first ones I noticed on my journey into this Gospel of Invitation. The word “if” has that idea of “don’t.” “If I do this” carries with the real possibility and assumption that I won’t do it. Whereas “as I do this” begins and carries with it the idea of being involved. As we forgive one another, we participate in God’s forgiveness.

Compulsion => Desire

You might notice, that a lot of these translations move away from a culture of control into a culture of participation. Compulsion and control are all external source words. The force for the action come from somewhere out there. Desire and participation are internal source words. The springs of life are planted inside us and the Holy Spirit inspires desire within us and that is what leads us to act within the imagination of God’s Grace.

Surrender => Consent

Here is another one that doesn’t seem like it needs to happen at first, but I have found myself doing this one a lot more lately. Surrender is a fear-based word. It is an act of giving in and giving up. The battle of life has been joined and we have lost. However, consent is a love-based word. We have been invited to join our hearts with God’s heart and we choose to freely give our lives to God as an expression and response to that great Love.

Prove => Witness

This is reflected in my previous blog entry about the parable of two doorkeepers. A basic assumption of the prove it perspective is that God and God’s ways are somehow understandable by our great and massive intelligences. Yet, I don’t believe that. All we are able to do is to witness to the mysteries of Life and Love. All we are called to do is to keep pointing to what God is doing in our lives. So we can stop adding notches to our belts of those we have “converted” by our eloquence as we keep proving how great God is (or have we really just proven how smart and charismatic we are). Instead a Gospel of Invitation is all about celebrating what God is doing in life. As God transforms lives we rejoice with the company of saints and keep on inviting people to “come and see.”

That’s it for now. Let me know what you think. Can you see how this moves us a God’s people from being messengers of shadow into being bearers of light? As I find myself shifting my thinking in this way my life system moves from one which is closed and feels empty into one that is wide open and spacious, fillable and filled with the fulness of God’s Spirit and Light.