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Matthew’s Gospel ends, and Acts begins, with Jesus telling his disciples to go out into all the world and invite people to come join the fellowship of the Spirit created by God’s Good News! Jesus says it is God’s desire that they begin welcoming people who they never expected to share life with at all as equals into fellowship.

We who are trying to follow Jesus have often taken Jesus’ commandment to “Go” into all the world as proof that many in the world need to be “converted” to a new trust in what God has done through Jesus and to a new way of life. Without denying that this was, and is, one implication of Jesus’ instructions, I would like to mention a more commonly ignored implication of Jesus’ instructions.

I have been struck recently with an added perspective—reinforced by reading Willie James Jennings commentary on Acts and by my pastor’s sermon in which she raised the question “Who needs to be converted?”

In Acts 8, Samaritans respond with delight to the invitation to trust in Jesus, but will they accept the leadership of the Jewish apostles? An important question? But it is easy to miss an equally important question. Will these Jewish apostles accept the Samaritans as equals at Jesus’ Table? After all, they have considered the Samaritans to be religious heretics, political enemies, and racially inferior?

In Acts 9, Saul (Paul) who is persecuting followers of Jesus suddenly is prepared to join them. But, will Ananias, and then other followers of Jesus, accept Paul into equal fellowship in their circles? It apparently took many of them almost 10 years to do so, and they only began to do so then because Barnabas worked out a way to get Saul involved far away from the Jerusalem and its “elite” Christian leadership (Acts 13).

In Acts 10, the pagan Roman Centurion Cornelius, a leader in the enemy’s occupying army, quickly responds to God. He asks a Jew (an enemy of his people) to come tell him about Jesus. Peter on the other hand, argues vehemently from the Scriptures that he should not go to Cornelius home, eat at his table, or accept him as an equal. Then, in Acts 11, Peter has to argue with the rest of his fellow leaders in an attempt to convince them that he did not commit a grievous sin in deciding to treat Cornelius and his household as equals when he stayed in their home and ate at their non-kosher table for several days.

Acts 15 is all about the same issue on a larger scale. Now many Gentiles are joining the fellowship circles at Jesus’ Table in various parts of the Roman Empire. Are they really to be considered welcome and equal?

In Acts 16, Paul has a vision of a man beckoning him to come to Macedonia. He and his team ultimately conclude that this was a message from God telling them to change their plans and go. But, when they arrive, they are welcomed into the lives, not of a man, but of a wealthy female Gentile God-fearer and her household. Would they have gone to Macedonia at all if the dream had been that of a Gentile Woman beckoning them to come? And, how difficult was it for Paul to accept that she was God’s chosen leader of this new housechurch fellowship? “When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. ‘If you consider me a believer in the Lord,’ she said, ‘come and stay at my house.’ And she persuaded us” (Acts 16:15).  It sounds like it took some persuading for Paul and his team to move to where the Holy Spirit had already moved far out ahead of them.

In every case that I just mentioned in Acts, the “outsiders” to the fellowship of the Spirit were much quicker to cross the barriers that separated than were the leaders of the early church. So, what “conversions” do we who claim to be following Jesus need in order to cross the barriers Jesus would love to cross? In our local church? In our branch of “Christianity?” As followers of Jesus in the United States? As part of the world-wide community of Jesus followers? In what areas may we not be seeing who really needs to be converted?

I would love to hear your thoughts.

JESUS’ GOD WANTS US TO BE “ONE.” DO WE?

That John’s Gospel emphasizes a relational oneness that exists between God and Jesus is often emphasized in sermons, teachings, and theology books. Less emphasized is Jesus’ prayer that those of us who follow him would experience the same relational oneness—with God, with Jesus, and with one another.

John 17:21 – I pray they will be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. I pray that they also will be in us, so that the world will believe that you sent me.

This tells me several things about Jesus’ God.

(1) Most of us haven’t even begun to plumb the depths of the relationship Jesus’ God wants to establish with us.

(2) Only rarely have Jesus’ followers experienced this oneness with one another that Jesus wanted for us—look at the reality of Christian’s attitudes toward one another today.

(3) Our relationship with God, Jesus, and one another mattered a lot to Jesus if he prayed about it only a few hours before being arrested and executed.

(4) Not every prayer—even those by the most faithful that are fully within the will and desires of God can be answered “yes” by God. God’s ability to say “yes” often depends upon how we humans respond to God’s desires. As the prophets often said, we can limit God’s ability to do what God would like to do for us.

(5) I’m not sure why some of us seem to think God should always say “yes” to our prayers—of if God doesn’t then something is either wrong with God or with our prayers—when God has not very often been able to answer “yes” to this prayer voiced by the most faithful human who ever lived.

(6) We should keep joining Jesus in praying this prayer that is so dear to his heart and so dear to the heart of the God to whom Jesus prayed. No matter how frustrating it is, it is the right prayer.

I would love to hear your thoughts about Jesus’ God and our prayers as well as about the “oneness” that Jesus and God want for us.

https://www.ronaldsimkins.com/605-2/

Several times, Jesus proclaimed that the God he worshipped and served could be with us in any given place if we make ourselves available. Here are a couple of examples:

John 4:19-23: ¹⁹The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. ²⁰Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” ²¹Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²²You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. ²⁴God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 

Luke 17:20-21: Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom-reign of God would come, Jesus replied, “The kingdom-reign of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom-reign of God is within (or “among”) you.”

I have been working to become more conscious of inviting God into the places I am going, not just the events (time) I am planning. For some of you this may be basic, but I have tended to think in terms of time not place. Practicing this different way of inviting God to be present and to reign has made me all too aware of how easily I forget that every place can be holy. I have little doubt that Paul would gladly remind me that I am a babe when I should be much more mature (1 Corinthians 3:1-2). Oh Well . . . .

God even made a place of execution—the cross, the lynching tree of Jesus’ time—into God’s holy place. I have a lot to learn about asking God to make every single place I go—each room in my home, a restaurant, my neighbor’s home, a bar, a coffee shop, a church building, my car, a rec center, a town hall, the park—a place where God is ready to dwell. God is ready to make it a “holy place.” Do I want it to be? Do I really trust that it can be?

Surely, this constant consciousness of welcoming and maintaining an open and vulnerable relationship with God in every place is a major characteristic of why Jesus is described as the one whose “faithfulness” allowed God to save him from death (Hebrews 5:7-8). And, in saving Jesus from death also allows God to save us from ourselves as well as the death and destruction that is all around us (Hebrews 5:9).

Where do you want God to be present today? What place do you want to invite God to “make holy” by being there with you?

Isn’t it fascinating that the clearest description of God’s character in Genesis 1-3 is that God is a communicating God. “God said” runs throughout Genesis 1. Then in Genesis 2-3, God is busy communicating with his new human creation.

I have never counted myself, but I have read that some form of “God said” or “the Lord said” appears over 3800 times in the Old Testament.

So, it isn’t too surprising that Jesus’ conception begins with God speaking to Jesus’ mother. Then, Jesus begins his ministry with God speaking to him—“You are my beloved son in whom I am well-pleased.” This guidance from God is claimed throughout the Gospel’s descriptions of Jesus’ ministry. I would love to know more about how Jesus “heard” from God day-to-day. We really aren’t told too much about it. But, we are told that Jesus often went away to pray and that Jesus was always listening and looking for God’s activity.

So, how is God speaking to you and to me today? What are you hearing? I would say that what I am “hearing” most in my inner spirit is “Pay more attention to me being in your spaces. Open the eyes and ears of your spiritual sensitivity—open your heart. I am communicating a lot more than you are hearing and seeing.”

How about you? What are you seeing and/or hearing?

Like most of us, I have been conditioned to think mainly in terms of time, not place. For this reason, I have always been drawn to the translation rendered “the reign of God” more than “the kingdom of God.” Time is important to God and should be important to us. And, certainly, understanding that as the Psalmist says, “God reigns” is very important! The important reality that God reigns was definitely a major part of Jesus’ constantly reiterated message that “the kingdom of God has come upon you,” and “the kingdom of God is here” and “the kingdom of God is within/among you.”

However, “place” is important to God as well. Beginning with the Creation of our world, God has been busy making a place for us to dwell in and call home. And yet, the mobility and transferability of our modern world has caused many of us to identify more loosely with specific places than the humans who lived prior to the European conquests of other lands, and even other continents and seas, beginning in the 1400’s. This mobility of conquest of “other lands” brought us into the beginnings of what is often called “the modern world”—a world where “place” tends to be a good bit more fluid. So fluid, that some of us humans even inhabit little globes orbiting the earth for months at a time—living in a space smaller than a living room and yet traveling at 1000’s of miles an hour and never in one single place for even one minute at a time.

I invite you to experiment with me in your prayers and thoughts. I am going to try to be more aware that one part of God’s revelation to us through Jesus is that each and every space we move within and into is a place that God claims as destined to be “God’s space, God’s kingdom.” This includes my physical body, and your physical body. It includes our house, our car, our living room, our bedroom . . . . It also includes the block you live on, your town, your nation, and the entire earth.

It also includes the “community of faith/faithfulness”—ie, “the body of the Messiah.” So, yes, it includes your church building, but it equally includes your rec and tv room. God desires to live with us and through us in all of our spaces—to include them in “the kingdom of God” until someday “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah” (Revelation  11:15).

One part of me says, of course I know all of this. Another part of me is honest enough to say that in many ways thinking like this, and really understanding the power of this reality, is pretty foreign to my reflexive ways of thinking. When I go for a walk, I may thank God for the beautiful world, but I do not reflexively think of it as God’s Temple that I am walking through. When I visit my friends’ home, I may well thank God for the wonderful relationship with my delightful friends, but I do not reflexively think of myself as sitting in “God’s house” as we visit in their living room.

So, would you join me in experimenting with being more intentional about inviting God to claim all of these spaces that rightfully belong to God? And, would you let me know what experiences this has brought about for you in the past? Or, what new experiences this brings about for you going forward?

Even when I was young, and mostly disinterested in God, I was often touched by someone telling Jesus’ story of “the prodigal son.” It could well have been because I easily, sometimes even proudly, identified with that son. For many years, I thought that was the main point of Jesus’ great story.

Then, Kenneth Bailey helped me see that the story crescendos with a missing final statement – did the older brother decide to go into the Father’s house, or did he choose to stay outside and nurse his frustrations with his brother (and his Father)? Not that I haven’t done my share of being self-righteous—I have—but, I never identified quite as much with the self-righteous brother in the story.

Then, Helmut Thielicke helped me see that even though the story is certainly about “the prodigal son” and about “the self-righteous son;” it is really about the God that Jesus knew better than any of us. It is about the vulnerable “Waiting Father.” It is Jesus telling us that God is the Father who values both sons, and wants both sons to know how valuable they are. This Waiting Father also wants each son to know how valuable his sibling is. It is about the God who is the Father who watches and waits every day for the “wasted son” to choose to come home. It is about the Father who can’t wait to give the son a big hug and welcome him “into the Father’s house.” It is about the God who is the Father who waits out in the yard while all the invited guests are inside wondering what in the world is going on out there! What is going on? The Father is begging the arrogant and self-righteous older son to come on in, renew his role as oldest son and brother, and participate in the gloriously gracious “family life.”

Of course, once I saw this, then I saw that Jesus’ other two short stories in Luke 15 were about this same audaciously wonderful and vulnerable God. The God who would leave the 99 sheep to go find the 1 lost sheep. This seems to be a strange act for those who consider themselves part of the 99, but an amazingly gracious act for those who know they are the 1 lost sheep who needs to be found. And, God is the Woman who loses 1 of her 10 coins, and sweeps and searches every inch of the entire house for the 1 lost coin. She wants it to be back safely in her keeping where it belongs.

And, in all three stories, Jesus knows that God is the God who is—the shepherd who can’t afford to lose even one sheep, the peasant woman who can’t afford to lose even one day’s wages, the well-off father who can’t imagine losing even one son. Jesus knows this vulnerable God is waiting, but can hardly wait, for the moment of joy when one of us who has wandered away, and lost ourselves, is “found” by realizing that God is searching for us, is waiting for us, and loves us more than we dare imagine.  Then God can say, “Let’s get the party started! It is time to rejoice!”

May God help us, help me, experience more fully, what Jesus knew, and knows, to be true about God.