Believe It Or Not: Faith Comes By Hearing

Introduction to the Introduction

I stand with Minneapolis. Standing there I have some considerations of what the Gospel Is and Is Not so as to bring to us the liberation that comes in Jesus Christ.

Introduction

Of course the Gospel of Jesus Christ compels us to resist tyranny and intervene on behalf of the outcast, the marginalized, the poor, the little, the least, the last, the lost. It compels us, calls us, in these days to stand up against Trumpism. I am doing my best to do so. I know I could do more. I stand with Minneapolis. That said, the Gospel is not itself resistance. It is something deeper and more foundational, something that paves the way for legal and social justice but is not itself that legal and social justice.  It is a Word from God that simply and without reservation gives God away to all comers, includes all without consideration, includes all simply because they exist. It stands not within the system of transactions and meritocracy, the system that judges all (The Law) to bring all to Order by completing and rectifying and thus satisfying the Judgment, but rather outside of that system, that infrastructure, and judging that Judgment with Mercy. The Gospel is the End of the Law, not it’s fulfillment (Romans 10:4).

How does one get such good news? How does one get such Gospel?

Listen.

Believe It Or Not: Faith Comes By Hearing

Because of humanity’s predilection to constructing a personal or community salvation story of and from Science, Technology, something a bit more amorphous called Progress, Reason, Intelligence and, of course, Religion, it is very difficult to see or understand the account of Jesus of Nazareth in any other way than as another similar salvation story, just with different characters and components. But taking Jesus in a different way than all that is exactly what sets Christianity apart from all Religion, Science and all the wholeness and healing (aka salvation) narratives.

What is humanity’s salvation story? Human Beings take agency and action through sacrifice against forces contending to bring them ruin. Science makes the sacrifices through probabilities while Religion makes the sacrifices through propitiations.

What is Christianity’s salvation story? God takes agency and action, through constitutive communication (that is to say, a telling that does what it says) against those same forces contending to bring humanity’s ruin.

The interesting thing about Christianity’s Story is that you do not have to believe in God in order to find yourself in the story, or, in other words, reap its benefits. There is no agency or action required, not even believing in something you cannot see or feel or touch. You don’t have to believe in God in order to believe the Promise of God.

 There is an account in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible where God says, insists, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy!” (Exodus 33), which means that God can do and decide whatever the hell and heaven God wants and does so regardless of all of those human probabilities and propitiations.

This is tough news for humanity’s salvation constructions until something spectacular happens. Until we pay attention. Until, in other words, we listen.

And so now we know why we are all so desperate and depressed, or at least determined to define ourselves by ourselves. Nobody is good at listening! We are all too busy coming up with our own response, not to say answers, to hear what is being spoken to us. “I will have mercy” tells us God makes all creation, including all persons, whole. Yes, we rightly might ask if we are included in that mercy, but here’s where the Jesus part comes in. After, or with, Jesus, there is no question any more. There never was any question by God on God’s part. There is this great line in the Christian New Testament Book of Hebrews: “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son” (Hebrews 1).  God has been speaking Mercy not within the Law but outside of the Law from the beginning of time. But we simply would not listen. Now, in Jesus Christ, the definitive Word has arrived. All are included. Jesus does not construct a new religion (or science) by which we sacrifice. He deconstructs, destroys, all human soul searching and constructions and without consideration of caste or creed gives away the farm. He simply flattens the playing field and gives everybody – everybody – the win.

 There is this wonderful little phrase tucked away in one of the Apostle Paul’s letters in the Christian Bible’s New Testament called Romans. “Faith comes by hearing” (Romans 10). This demolition of all of humanity’s constructions of salvation, this Jesus, is not too good to be true. It, he, is too good not to be true. Listen. Do you hear it? It’s the Promise of God, the Promise by God. It is music to our ears and the only thing that saves.