We all must make a choice. Either we suffer the pain of discipline or the pain of disappointment.
Of course, that assumes that we have a goal or a purpose. And most Christians do not — because we figure our purpose is to not mess up so badly we get damned.
We are one-talent Christians who bury our talent in the backyard, terrified that God might not like our investment decisions. And that attitude leads to disappointment.
(Mat 25:24-30 ESV) 24 He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, 25 so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ 26 But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? 27 Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. 28 So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. 29 For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. 30 And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
A false version of Christianity teaches that the world is going to be destroyed, nothing here matters, and at most, we should be worried about saving souls. That’s it — and that’s optional.
Most church budgets reveal less than $1,000 for benevolence and many times that for pizza for the teens. Most church members do not worry themselves greatly about the lost, and most are uninvolved in any meaningful benevolence.
Rather, we tend to see church as about regular attendance, a contribution each week, and being generally good moral people. Indeed, a long-time member who did nothing else will be eulogized straight into heaven. He was a “faithful” member because he attended the services regularly. This is what we’ve done with the word “faithful.” Sad, isn’t it?
In traditional Churches of Christ, “faithful” means having the right positions on the issues. Agreeing with the preacher makes one “faithful.” Even in quite progressive Churches of Christ, there is often little more expectation than attendance, contribution, and middle class morality.
As a result, our preaching and teaching tends toward therapeutic moralism. That is, we assure our regular attenders that God loves them and they are good people and should have no self-esteem problems because they’re loved just as they are. “God don’t make no junk.”
God damns one-talent servants. Jesus is really quite plain. Those who refuse to use their gifts to provide God a return on his investment are damned — because they fear God in entirely the wrong way.
Remember, a “talent” is a measure of silver. God asked that his money be invested at a high return. And he’ll be far more forgiving of an investment that goes badly than a refusal to invest at all. God gives grace — for those who try. But not for the man who buries his talent.
What would be a great disappointment in our Kingdom walk? In our journey with Jesus? In our home congregation?
A dead church? A denomination that wallows in legalism and refuses to change? A broken world that you’ve done nothing at all to help?
Think seriously. You’re a king or a queen. It’s your royal task to serve the Kingdom by bringing a bit of God’s righteousness to where it’s needed.
Getting started is really about nothing but discipline — enough discipline to change bad habits. Enough discipline to hear the cries of pain that are all around us. Enough discipline to do something — something — with that one talent.
We have been given unspeakable, unimaginable blessings. We’ve been placed on the throne of Jesus in heaven! We have God’s Spirit living within us to strengthen and empower us. We’ve been given spiritual gifts by God himself.
Not a one of us is really a one-talent servant. We’ve been given things far more valuable than a single bar of silver!
What self-discipline are we willing to undertake to change things? What price are we willing to pay?
It’s not our job to fix it all. But we are charged with using what we do have for the sake of the Kingdom. And there is nothing more important.
If we can’t be disappointed by our Christianity, then we have no goals, no purpose, and no ambition for our Christian walk. If we can’t be disappointed, then we’ve buried our talents.
If we can be disappointed, then we have something to aim for, to live for, to work for. Indeed, we might just help God’s mission in such a way that our work survives the purification that comes when Jesus arrives. Our works just might last — literally — forever.
Imagine the joy of knowing that you’ve served God in a way that changes the world forever, that will survive the fire of God’s wrath, and will be a part of the new heavens and new earth. That will be a piece of Eden.
What might that be? Well, every soul that’s saved easily fits in that category. But Paul also speaks of a well-built congregation — a church that lives and thrives and grows — might just never die — not even at the end of time. It’s works will live forever. The souls it saves, the brokenness it cures.
Those who help build such a church may never see most of the fruit of their labors. It may be a generation after they die that the foundation they built produces a harvest of thousands. But when Jesus returns, they’ll be greeted by the thousands they helped saved.
Imagine entering a renewed, restored heavens and earth to be greeted by a host of thankful souls, some from countries you’ve never heard of, many generations removed from you, all told by God that you were among the people who paid the price and made the sacrifices to bring them to God. What a day that would be!
Or imagine entering the new heavens and earth with the smell of smoke clinging to your clothes, knowing that all you did and all you worked for burned up in the fires of gehenna.
(1 Cor 3:15 ESV) If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.
It’s not damnation. It’s better than being caught in the fires yourself. But how sad to watch your labors burn into nothingness.
Paul was speaking of a congregation — the sadness of building a congregation of straw, a congregation that dies when it could have lived forever.
It’s all about choices — and discipline. Do we play politics, keep the members happy, assure them that they are emotionally sound and deserving of their self-esteem, while all around us the world is turning into a bonfire — and many of us with it?
Or do we make the hard decisions, discipline ourselves to look further on down the road, and make a difference that will last forever?
When speaking of having our works disappear in smoke and ash because they lacked eternal significance, Jay suggests that Paul was speaking of a congregation — the sadness of building a congregation of straw, a congregation that dies when it could have lived forever.
But I would suggest that perhaps the idea of preserving our congregation is one of the main obstacles to facing the realities and grasping the calling that Jay so strongly speaks of in the rest of his post. It is not our congregation’s works which will burn up… it will be yours, or mine. Individuals, not organizations, answer for our works in the eternal. But we are spending much of our time propping up our organizations, trying to find more people to serve “the church” when that organization is supposed to be serving us, and our community, and most of all… Jesus. The tail is wagging the dog, and in fact, has convinced many of us that it is the entire dog.
We are like the owners of an automobile. We bought this machine to help us get from point A to point B. But now we have become its servant. No matter how badly it runs, no matter how much money it takes in upkeep, no matter how unsuited it becomes to our travels, we cannot scrap it. The reason we can’t is that over time we have changed our objective in having the car. We once were trying to get to point B, and driving the car was a help in getting there. Today, we believe our objective is to drive the car, so keeping it in repair becomes our necessary priority. If it takes us to point B, all well and good, but it has been so long since we even looked at point B, we are not certain just where we are along the road. And even if we admitted that the car were actually slowing us down, we could not leave it, for the car itself is now more important than the journey for which we purchased it. The car now owns us.
We have invented an artificial relationship. Not the relationship of a member to the Body, but of a service provider to an organization. The raison d’etre of the local congregation is one thing and one thing only, to which all other needs and missions and callings must be sublimated. More than anything, our congregation must continue to exist. Believers can come and go. We can even get rid of the whole lot and replace them with new members, but the organization itself must stay in business. To do less is to fail. And what does it mean for our congregation to continue to exist? It must continue to hold church Sunday services. We can lose anything else, even, in extremis, the building itself, but once we stop holding Sunday morning services, they have pulled the sheet over us and we are ready for the autopsy.
Brothers, the real battle is not over what we do in our church services, nor over what doctrinal distinctives we might embrace, nor even over sin in the camp, or the ongoing stench of dead religion. The real battle is over who we are. Nothing less than our very identity is what the enemy has tried to steal from us, by replacing it with identifying ourselves with something, anything, which is less than Jesus himself. We can associate among ourselves in a thousand ways, but we can only draw our identity from one source. No man has two fathers. When we see ourselves as the servants of Main Street Church, as members of Main Street Church, and as people who seek the prosperity and success and eternal life of Main Street Church, we have lost much more than a doctrinal argument or a moral debate. We have lost ourselves.
I leave you with the words of the Springfield Presbytery, who declared in part something which appears to have become a practical impossibility for us today:
“We will, that this body die, be dissolved, and sink into union with the Body of Christ at large; for there is but one body, and one Spirit, even as we are called in one hope of our calling.”
Believers in most all denominations have been deceived into believing that the church relationship that they have holds the power of their salvation. You say, surely not. Just listen as they proudly proclaim their allegiance to their particular organization in opposition to any other organizations that Christians have built in the world. Most times they will state we are Disciples of Christ through our organization. For instance, I am a CoC Christian, a Baptist Christian, a Methodist Christian or Pentecost Christian. Just attempt to get some of these professed Christians to drop their ties with the organization and accept that they are members of the body of Christ in the world, or that all the believers in Christ that they meet are their brothers and sisters. I believe that you will notice that the organizations are given more honor than Christ.