Judas Iscariot is infamous throughout church history as the betrayer of Jesus.
The story of Judas brings up a heap of issues such as
Did Judas have a choice? Was the life of Judas predestined for evil?
Was his betrayal necessary for the salvation of humanity? If so, should he get some credit here?
Some say the sins and subsequent suicide of Judas forever condemned him to Hell – Could the atonement of Jesus not be sufficient for someone so instrumental in history?
What was going through the heart and mind of Judas as he hung himself?
The one question I’ve been fixated on for the past month comes straight from the Scriptures. In Matthew 27, Judas goes to the chief priests and elders, repenting “I have sinned for I have betrayed innocent blood”, to which the religious leaders respond “What is that to us? That’s your responsibility”.
This one breaks my heart. I know we as the church do it all the time. People come to us wanting change, acceptance, hope… and we leave them ‘hanging’. Who has committed the greater sin here? Could the church have prevented his death? I doubt Judas went to them seeking further condemnation.
What is that to us?
What if rather than ignoring those who we might deem as ‘too sick and twisted’, ‘too messed up’, or ‘too awkward’, we welcomed them? What if we didn’t simply acknowledge them, or pray and empty prayer, but took their sins as our responsibility? And what if, a big what if, someone was ‘predestined’ to a life of sin, so that you could learn what it means to truly love another human being?
Dino what are your thoughts on inviting those who have yet to stumble into Jesus to serve along side of us? And what are some good ways of doing so without it being too weird as our intentions in serving may not entirely overlap?
Thanks for being a part of the Servolution Blog Tour. And what a great question, Lon! I’m all for it. One of the greatest ways to show people what the love of Jesus is all about is to have them be a part of an outreach.
If someone wants to serve alongside you in an outreach, there’s a good chance they’re already curious about something they’ve seen in you. Sure, there’s a chance their purpose isn’t the same as yours, but I’d guess the root of their intentions is to find out what in the world is making these people want to get out on a hot day and give away free bottles of water – no strings attached. I’m not saying you shouldn’t use wisdom – don’t put someone you don’t know in charge of children’s church.
Leadership carries with it a different requirement than simply joining you on an outreach. But by all means, I’d encourage you to take people with you on an outreach who haven’t made the decision to follow Christ yet. It just might be what draws them all the way across the line.
Join the Origins projectcommunity – A network initiated by Dan Kimball, Erwin McManus, Scot McKnight, and many others. There’s a group just for Canadians as well.
Check out Refresh Worship, a hub for events going on in Toronto
Need cool motion graphics design work? Get in touch with my friend Jeff.
Wedding and Engagement photos? See Claudia – She helped with the SolarCrash Event photography project and we’ll be booking her if/when we do a vow renewal party.
My friend Ming is organizing Project SWAP – shopping with a purpose, June 20th, check it out.
BTW, if ANYONE, has ANY contacts in the Toront District School Board, my wife is looking for a referral for just about ANY elementry school in the city, ASAP.
I’ve listened to Seth Godin’s Tribes audiobook several times over on my ipod touch these past few weeks.
The premise to the book is simple enough, a Tribe is a group of people connected to each other, to a leader and to an idea.
It’s odd that the church of Jesus Christ has the greatest leader, with the greatest story and the greatest ideas, and yet such a seemingly splintered and weak tribes people.
One fascinating insight from the book is the idea of tightening the tribe. Deepening the tribe, rather than expanding it. I wonder if after centuries of focusing on mass evangelization and conversions we’ve ruined our own tribe.
Another interesting quote was “Ultimately, people are most easily led where they wanted to go all along.”
So often it seems like the church at large tries to get people to go where they have no interest in going in the first place.
What would it look like if we were creating and leading distinct and peculiar tribes through our churches rather than maintaining programs or growing numbers?
Godin created his own triiibes network (which I was a day late on getting in before the book came out). Even though he advertises for people to join in the book, you’ll notice that it’s closed for new comers, because his tribe voted to keep it ‘tight’.
Introducing Jake Belder, a fellow Canadian living in Florida right now.
I feel that in many ways suburbia is like the antithesis of how God intended us to live. Where we were meant to live in community, we find rampant individualism. Where we were meant to give of ourselves and our resources, we find greed and consumerism. Where we were meant to serve, we find self-service and pride.
That’s just a couple of examples, but it just seems to be so polar opposite. And I think what troubles me the most about it is how much Christians have accommodated that ideology. I realize there are a lot of factors that drove people out to the suburbs (specifically economic and social issues like crime), and to some extent I suppose it is warranted, but there are also a lot of reasons people came here that are wrong (the mentality of the “other,” the We vs. Them). And Christians followed suit. Enter the whole mega-church nonsense and prosperity gospel junk.
This makes me think about how we have ‘rampant individualism’ because we can. We’re surrounded by such affluence that we don’t really need one another.
I’m critical of it, even though I sometimes take part in it. The church I attend here is lodged in the suburbs, the seminary is in the ‘burbs, and I live in them too. I can’t avoid it because I can’t afford to live down in the city and commute to school. It’s just too far. So I struggle with it a lot.
Many of my young adult friends, myself included, struggle with this. We’re aware of the trade-offs. We want the larger home but we don’t like the commute. We want to be part of this or that church, school, or group, but it’s way over there. I wonder if there are more fundamental questions we need to be asking ourselves before we even consider those options, ie. Where is Jesus in all of this?
It’s just so simple. You just don’t get involved in the messy lives of the poor and the oppressed in you’re locked up in your McMansion and your big SUV. You don’t think about it. Maybe you see the World Vision commercials to sponsor a child and send a few bucks a month to help out, but all that does is satisfy your pride. What about getting your hands dirty? Did Jesus just send money to those who needed help?
The problem of suburbia is so far-reaching that it’s going to be really hard to fix. I’ve found it really helpful to listen to the critiques of non-Christians as well because they realize too that suburbia is a serious threat to culture and community. I certainly don’t have the answers. Where do you even begin? I remember driving through Mississauga frequently when I still lived up there. How do you fix that? Just driving through it made it so obvious to me that it was wrong. But what exactly is it that’s wrong, what do we do to build and create community in a vast spread of urban landscape that was designed to avoid community?
I think this is the heart of the issue. A lot of suburbanites do care about having greater connectivity to their neighbors and to the world, but it seems like the physical and social structures surrounding them makes it so much more difficult. Where do you start?
Jake’s also got a great post on the local church and community here.
* Contact me if you’d like to write any guest blogs on Solar Crash
