3 Critical Truths: Note to Next-Generation Christians
Have you decided to follow Jesus? Do you understand the courage of your decision? Do you understand its magnitude?
Today, I want to try to help paint a picture for you using some insights from the first six verses of Revelation 21. For so many Christians, past and present, this reading has been both a goal and a guide.
Climate Change
But things look different now. Christians in this country experience no persecution, but there is also little expectancy in the general society of any kind of spiritual vibrancy coming from our churches, at least not that has any real impact. Beautiful buildings dot the landscape of our country, but they are seen mostly as private clubs for people who are interested in that kind of spirituality. No one expects us Christians to have anything to say worth hearing on how our faith speaks to the great issues of our day: politics, law, medicine, business, education, or even the arts.
At one time, the church was considered the country’s conscience, but no longer, not for at least a generation. No, we’re not persecuted, but we Christians have marginalized ourselves to the point of genuine irrelevancy in the terms of the way most of society thinks about us.
Oh, they want to use us. They want people to be able to say, “God bless you” in public. They still want somebody that has some faith to be elected to office (although that’s certainly in question). So we Christians are useful, but that doesn’t mean society takes what we have to say with any seriousness, much less think about its impact on the wider culture at large. In other words, next-generation Christians are living in a very different world than the world that most of us have ever known.
And it will only continue to change. The speed of change that has been accelerated in the ‘80s and ‘90s is now in full throttle. Most of us either have a tendency to want to catch up (and there’s a frenetic pace to that) or we want to just withdraw and live in the culture we create.
Next-generation Christian, neither of those options is viable. You have to learn who you are. You have to learn what you believe and stand for. And you have the extraordinary challenge of carving out a life for yourself without many helpful role models along the way, especially if you’ve rejected the role models that you’ve known in the past.
So if you’ve made the commitment to follow Jesus, you should know that this decision shapes and changes the way you think about yourself, your role in the world, and the purpose of what it means to be a Christian.
So if you’re going to live out this call, what does that actually look like?
- Everything matters.
The picture of Revelation is literally of a new heaven and new earth. It’s not just an enclave for a certain kind of believer. The whole picture of Revelation means all of creation gets redeemed, everything about it gets changed, there is no longer any such thing as sacred over here, secular over there, private faith, secular public life—everything, everything matters.
And if everything matters, God cares about both your private and your public behavior. There’s nothing in the New Testament that allows us to think about our faith as strictly a private matter that has no bearing on the ordering of our lives, the way we spend our money, how we handle our relationships, how we think about the future, or how we deal with issues.
If all of life matters to God, and if the goal is a new heaven and a new earth, that means my job as a Christian is to be salt and light wherever I am. I must be the kind of person who is willing to live out that faith with a kind of interior integrity that gives me the courage to wrestle with the inconsistencies between what they might be saying and what the scripture teaches. And that’s true whether “what they might be saying” is what I hear in the classroom, public policy from my company, or just the rules of the game in any arena.
Does my behavior, my decision, my life look like Jesus? Great. If it doesn’t, what am I to do? Why?
Because everything matters.
- There’s great freedom to live in Christ wherever you are.
One of the pictures of heaven is the holy city. And something that would have been shocking to the initial hearers is that the gates are open all the time. There are no marauders.
In other words, the statement of Revelation is this: Jesus Christ has conquered every foe and enemy. The only person who has the last word is Jesus himself. And because that’s the case, I have the courage to face wherever I am with the freedom that says, to quote Martin Luther: “Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also. The body they may kill, God’s truth abideth still, his kingdom is forever.”
In other words, I can be me, and I can be who I am in Christ, wherever I am. And if there’s pushback, if there are consequences, I should know Jesus said it would be like that from time to time. It shouldn’t come as a surprise. But I’m willing to take it.
Why? Because being faithful to Jesus is more important than anything else. And if that “anything else” takes the place of faithfulness to Jesus—whether it’s success, material possessions, people thinking well of you, you making your mark on culture and society—it looks a lot like idolatry.
Notice the contrast in the book of Revelation is the whore. The whore standing in scarlet. The whore living out a life of unbelievable, luxurious paganism. That’s the whore who looks like our culture. If you want to pay the price to the whore, you can do so, but that doesn’t look anything like what it means to be a resident of the Holy City.
And so you will have to choose. A part of what’s happening in the midst of the shifts in our culture is that there is a growing disparity between people who call themselves Christian, the people of God who are trying to live their life out according to the Christian faith, and many of the leaders in our culture. A divide is starting to take place.
Which way will you choose?
I want to encourage you to walk with freedom. To walk with courage. To walk with the kinds of winsomeness that says, “I belong to Jesus and nothing can separate me from his love.” That’s the point in the Gospel reading when Jesus speaks to his disciples, even as he is being betrayed, and says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you” (John 14:27).
Jesus gives us a kind of interior security in him, that we belong and that he will never let us go, that he will give us the ability to live with a kind of courageousness that won’t revert to anonymity. So what I would say is do not allow your Christian witness to be marginalized.
But that doesn’t give you the right to be arrogant, rude, way too confident of your own convictions so that you’re a pain in the rear end to everybody else. We all know Christians like that. And no, I don’t want to be that way, either.
There is, however, a way to walk with Christ in the kind of love and grace and mercy that looks like him. You see, it’s not just a question of message, it’s also a question of character, and of asking Jesus to form in us the character needed to be able to speak with grace and love the clear things that Jesus says.
All people are equally loved by God and people of various races are equally important.
This is a vision of every tribe, tongue, language, people, and nation. I’ve learned more from Christians of other cultures—from Ugandans, from Pakistanis, from Hondurans—that has shaped and changed my life. If the only Christians you know are Christians who look just like you, you are the poorer for it. Your discipleship is truncated, because all you have is the gospel spoken through the lens of the culture in which you are at home.
I like that culture, too. It’s the one I grew up in. But it all has its limitations. All cultures are subservient to a gospel that includes all people regardless of who they are, and they all have things to teach me that I am desperate to learn.
I would encourage you, make the time to get to know Christians who are not a part of your culture, your race, or your background, because you will learn from them things from them that you will never learn otherwise. And your relationships will begin to look more like the kingdom of God and less like a club for people who have all things in common culturally and “Oh yeah, we’re Christian too.” That’s not the kingdom.
No Turning Back
This is the vision for Revelation. Anything other than that, either for the church or for what it means to be a Christian, is in fact, just trying to find a way to fit into culture and still be a follower of Jesus. I want you to know it’ll trip you up every time. It’s a deadly way to go.
If you’re making a commitment to say, “I want to be a follower of Christ,” it will mark you for the rest of your life. It means charting a course that might be different from your peers, might even be different from the expectations of some of your family. But what you will know is the companionship of Jesus in a way the rest of us will envy.
It is a courageous thing to follow Christ, to be challenged, to look for ways to take his gospel where you live and serve in a way that impacts your neighborhood, your city, your world.
Will you follow?
Next-generation Christian or not, let me know how your faith impacts your daily life. Share this blog and your comments on Twitter and include my username, @revgregbrewer.
(This post is an adaption of Bishop Brewer’s sermon on May 1, 2016, at All Saints, Winter Park).
Unless otherwise noted, scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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