What is the Gospel?

This is a paper I turned in for an Evangelism class I am taking. I enjoyed writing it and was pretty impressed with the result...

The question of, “What is the Gospel?” is a challenging questions with no simple answer. Attempts to answer the question oversimplify and reduce the gospel, limiting the gospel’s vast mystery and possibly attempting to control the gospel to fit our cultural needs. The gospel effects people, it works in people and through people. This makes the gospel personal, giving the gospel its complexity and vastness. For each person the gospel may mean something different. For those who are oppressed the gospel is freedom, for the hurt and broken the gospel is healing and wholeness, for the lonely the gospel is comfort, for some the gospel is life, for others is it the belief that there is something bigger than themselves at work in the world. My simple definition is the gospel is God’s loving work, beginning at creation, carried through the people of Israel, shown fully in the life, teachings, death and resurrection and ascension of Jesus, God’s son, now expressed by the church, Christ’s followers empowered by the Holy Spirit. This work is for the restoration of creation, the bringing in of the Kingdom of God, bringing all of creation into right relations with each other, and God our creator from the bringing of time through the ends of the ages.

My working definition of what is the gospel comes from my encounters with the gospel. Like many people of the Old Testament their encounters with God are described by God’s actions. It is easier to describe God by God’s actions. We are able to see the results of God’s actions, and can easily describe these actions. For me the gospel is much the same. For the gospel is the good news of God’s redeeming love through Jesus. It is God who created the world and all that is in it. Yet humans having been created in God’s image wanted to be like God and ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge separating us from God. God removed humanity from the Garden of Eden. However God never gave up on creation, God called Abraham and Sarah to be the beginnings of a great nation who is called to be a blessing to all peoples of the earth. God continued to work in and through these people, giving them land, an identity reminding them of their purpose, being a blessing to the world. Yet every time the people forgot, God would raise up a leader to call them back to God.

God’s love for God’s creation is fully expressed through the life, teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus. God, still loving what God created, comes in the likeness of a human being, Jesus. Jesus comes to fulfill what God has spoken through the prophets and begin to bring God’s creation back to a right relationship with their creator. Through Jesus’ life and teachings we are invited to be apart of God’s kingdom on earth; a kingdom where love abounds, where justice flows like a mighty river, where our identity comes not from what we have or what we do but from who created us. This kingdom of God is in conflict with the culture that surrounds it. Jesus’ calling for a new and better way of life lead him to be tried, convicted and executed for challenging the culture, for pushing the cultural norms. Jesus teachings went against what the world was calling for. Jesus was calling for people to love their enemies, to walk an extra mile with those who were ruling over them, challenging the status quo, and celebrating the small and lowly, calling the first to be last and last to be first. Jesus was calling for a world flipped on its head. This radical living brings healing to broken, food for the hungry, love to the unloved, communion for the outsiders, hope for the hopeless, and comfort for the afflicted. It brings peace not with the sword but with acts of love. It is not just for the downcast, afflicted, marginalized or left out but it is for all people. It is this upside down world where God has invited creation to join God and to be in communion with the Creator.

It is through the God’s ultimate expression of love, the resurrection of Jesus from death to life, that we are able to truly see and experience God. Jesus bore all that afflicted humanity, setting us free from those things that hold us down, and bringing us back to being who God created us to be. We have been set free from the bondage our self-centeredness has placed us in and our culture has reinforced in us. We are free to bring the good news to all people, to help restore creation. Following Jesus’ resurrection, his followers were called and empowered by the Holy Spirit to continue Jesus mission. This mission goes all the way back to Abraham and Sarah’s call to be a blessing to all people, and is expressed in the sharing of the good news of what God is doing in the world in and through God’s people. It is through this work of restoration and love in which believers, empowered by the Holy Spirit, become the hands and feet of Jesus, continually working to bring in God’s kingdom. It is through our fumbling and bumbling encounters with those around us, we can begin to piece together what God is doing in the world.

Part of gospel is engrafting ourselves into this story of God in the world, and continuing it, and adding our own flavor to it. The gospel is the good news that God is at work in this world. It is through God’s love of God’s creation that we are able to be freed through the life, teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus. This is good news that we are free to love and care for those around us because we have first been loved by our Creator.

My New Favorite Way to Evangelize

So I have seen this van all over Decatur and East Atlanta! It makes me laugh I must say! Yes there are some things on the van in which I do agree with, but I am not really sure why someone would do this. I wonder if this is their way of sharing the gospel with other people? I also wonder how effective it is? I would have to guess probably not, since I am assuming they drive like most everyone else in this city... very poorly!

When I hear the "e-word" (Evangelism) I cringe, I'm Presbyterian for crying out loud, that word scares us. When people talk about evangelism, the images that pop into my head are those people standing on street corners with a bull horn, shouting at people. I also have images of people walking up to and handing out little pamphlets about God and how life is doomed without God. Those are the images that come up to me, and this van just adds another image for me now.

I must admit that sometimes when I see people doing these forms of evangelism, I am compelled to go and talk to them, much to the embarrassment of my fiancee. For some reason I want to run up and talk to them about God and theology. Maybe I just want to push their buttons and be a jerk. But almost always my fiancee holds me back.

So entering Seminary this year, I had the opportunity to take a class about Evangelism, shocking I know! But the funny thing is it is one of my favorite classes, even more shocking! And here is the kicker... I have come to a place where I see evangelism as being an important part of the life of the church, not in the since of member management and growth. But as an outpouring of what God is doing our lives. I know I will never be the kind of person who will walk up to someone and begin telling them about God and trying to convert them on the spot, I do however feel that I will be able to talk to people and share my life and faith with them, in a non-threatening sort of way, whatever that means.

I am still processing all of this, I am still not too sure what evangelism is going to look like for, maybe it is being a good friend, a nice person in a grocery store, or being a good neighbor, I am thinking there are thousands of possibilities. These are all long term evangelism "strategies," probably more realist and possible for me.

For Good...

So I have to admit, I really really like Broadway Musicals. It is something most people do not know about me, but it is very true. Shows like Rent, Wicked, Phantom of the Opera, West Side Story have all been apart of my life, and I been engulfed by them. For Halloween night my fiancee and I went and saw Wicked. This was an amazing show. The stage transported you to the land of Oz, the special effects enhanced the experience, and the story drew you in and left you sitting on the edge of your seat!

One of the closing numbers of the show is, "For Good" and is sung between Glenda and Elphaba (the Wicked Witch of the West). This song plays at the characters' relationship and friendship. These two, who most would suspect are opposites and have little in common, are truly best friends. I know it is hard to believe, for those who have seen The Wizard of Oz, but it is true, according to Wicked. The line of the song in which Elphaba and Glenda sing together is, "Because I knew you I have been changed for good." That song and that line left me thinking about the people in my life that because I have known them I have been changed for good. I could write a list a mile long with names of people who have help to shape my life. Names like, Debbie, Mark, Jerry, Dave, Emily, Barbra and on and on the list would go.

These people have changed my life for good. They were who God created them to be and in living this way they freed and encouraged others to do the same. They also loved without expecting anything in return. I think about my theater teacher in high school, for four years my two best friends and I were absolutely awful. We pushed the limits at every turn and tried to get away with anything. For crying out load we drove a car into the school's theater and turned it around on the stage. Did our teacher notice the tire marks all over the freshly painted black stage? He had to have. Did he say anything or punish us? NO! He did however make a joke about it at the end of the year celebration during our senior year. But this man never once gave up on us, and at his funeral, his wife told one of my friends that our teacher truly loved us. Along with listing names a mile long, I could spend the rest of my life telling stories about these people, about good times and not so good times.

These people have helped me to become the person God created me to be. But how are we, who have been shaped by those around us, to respond in gratitude? I think, and I hope my response will be to pass along the gift these people have given me. Words will never be enough, but actions will be. If by my living into who God has created me to be helps someone be who God has created them to be, then I know I am adding to the God's story which those beloved saints are apart of and have contributed to.