In his Everyone commentary series, Bishop N.T. Wright has this to say about the parable of the sower in Matthew 13:
[N]obody would have missed the underlying meaning. Yes, Jesus was saying; what you have been longing for and praying for is really coming true. I’m here to make it happen. It’s going to be hard for you to understand, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Stick with me. Listen to me. Figure it out. Come back for more.
Like the crowds on the lakeshore that day, our task, again and again as we read scripture and think about God’s work in our own day, is to think it through and figure it out. Matthew’s gospel is designed to help us do that. It won’t always be easy. Christianity isn’t about cosy little lessons to make us feel better. It’s about what God’s doing in the world — what he’s already done in Jesus and what he wants to do through us today. What stories ought we to be telling to get people to listen? Where can we tell them so that people will be able to hear, like the crowds on the lakeshore?
I’m becoming increasingly aware that Jesus would not do ministry like the Church today does ministry. Not that all we’re doing is wrong or misguided. It probably isn’t. But like he was in his own day, everyone around him had to realize that it’s not being done the way we thought it should anymore. We’ve missed something. We’re off course. What is it that we need to do?
Far too often, though, our tendency is to provide more programs and fixes in order to modify our existing categories so that the content of those categories is correct. We’ve got our set of boxes that describe our way of thinking, and in each box (for each doctrine or practice) we have a “tool kit” from which we draw resources in order to do ministry. And all this is well and good. Godly men and women have labored long and hard to provide resources in our time, so in that way, God has richly blessed us.
What isn’t very “Jesus” about the church today is it’s affinity for the abstract. It’s more about who God is and what the Bible says about him than it is about what God is doing and how our lives can be a part of that. Bringing people into God’s Story–God’s Kingdom–is our task, our pleasure, our purpose.
Let me give an example of how this is changing in my life. For so long, television and movies were, to me, for entertainment only. They weren’t art, they weren’t reflections of humanity. They were simply entertainment. Once I realized this wasn’t true, film, art, stories, and the like came alive for me.
I’m a big fan of the now-ended TV series Friends. I never watched the show while it was airing, but I have seen all of it on DVD. Being able to watch the broader stories of each person’s life in that show gives the show depth, intrigue, and meaning. I believe the show was such a success and a hit because people found themselves in the show. They found themselves in Monica, Ross, Rachel, Chandler, Joey, and Phoebe, in part or in whole. I love to eat, like Joey; I think about family and children, like Monica; I’m such a dorky romantic, like Ross; I make sarcastic and witty jokes, like Chandler; I’m flaky, like Phoebe; and I’m searching, like Rachel did early in the show.
For Jesus to tell stories, declaring the nearness of the kingdom, and inviting people to become a part of it, is far from the ministry mindset I grew up in and was trained to do. It is far from where I believe many evaneglicals (predominantly the fundamentalist branch) tend to dwell. It’s the eschatalogical nature of our faith, and it certainly is a workable, declarable, and fruitful aspect of it.
So, like successful TV series and films, if Christians can creatively, effectively, and purposefully invite others to find themselves in God’s Story, we will be accomplishing God’s will “on earth, just as it is in heaven.”
