Artie Sposaro

Somewhat recently Len Sweet and Frank Viola released A Jesus Manifesto. I appreciate what they have put together and think it integrates well with my last post, missio me. Jesus as our life, our source, center, our everything....his mission ours. Let me know what you think

A Magna Carta for Restoring the Supremacy of Jesus Christ

A Jesus Manifesto for the 21^st Century Church

by Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola

Christians have made the gospel about so many things … things other than Christ.

Jesus Christ is the gravitational pull that brings everything together and gives them significance, reality, and meaning. Without him, all things lose their value. Without him, all things are but detached pieces floating around in space.

It is possible to emphasize a spiritual truth, value, virtue, or gift, yet miss Christ . . . who is the embodiment and incarnation of all spiritual truth, values, virtues, and gifts.

Seek a truth, a value, a virtue, or a spiritual gift, and you have obtained something dead.

Seek Christ, embrace Christ, know Christ, and you have touched him who is Life. And in him resides all Truth, Values, Virtues and Gifts in living color. Beauty has its meaning in the beauty of Christ, in whom is found all that makes us lovely and loveable.

Jesus by cakeknifeharlot

What is Christianity? It is Christ. Nothing more. Nothing less. Christianity is not an ideology. Christianity is not a philosophy. Christianity is the “good news” that Beauty, Truth and Goodness are found in a person. Biblical community is founded and found on the connection to that person. Conversion is more than a change in direction; it’s a change in connection. Jesus’ use of the ancient Hebrew word shubh, or its Aramaic equivalent, to call for “repentance” implies not viewing God from a distance, but entering into a relationship where God is command central of the human connection.

In that regard, we feel a massive disconnection in the church today. Thus this manifesto.

We believe that the major disease of the church today is JDD: Jesus Deficit Disorder. The person of Jesus is increasingly politically incorrect, and is being replaced by the language of “justice,” “the kingdom of God,” “values,” and “leadership principles.”

In this hour, the testimony that we feel God has called us to bear centers on the primacy of the Lord Jesus Christ. Specifically . . .

1. The center and circumference of the Christian life is none other than the person of Christ. All other things, including things related to him and about him, are eclipsed by the sight of his peerless worth. Knowing Christ is Eternal Life. And knowing him profoundly, deeply, and in reality, as well as experiencing his unsearchable riches, is the chief pursuit of our lives, as it was for the first Christians. God is not so much about fixing things that have gone wrong in our lives as finding us in our brokenness and giving us Christ.

2. Jesus Christ cannot be separated from his teachings. Aristotle says to his disciples, “Follow my teachings.” Socrates says to his disciples, “Follow my teachings.” Buddha says to his disciples, “Follow my meditations.” Confucius says to his disciples, “Follow my sayings.” Muhammad says to his disciples, “Follow my noble pillars.” Jesus says to his disciples, “Follow me.” In all other religions, a follower can follow the teachings of its founder without having a relationship with that founder. Not so with Jesus Christ. The teachings of Jesus cannot be separated from Jesus himself. Jesus Christ is still alive and he embodies his teachings. It is a profound mistake, therefore, to treat Christ as simply the founder of a set of moral, ethical, or social teaching. The Lord Jesus and his teaching are one. The Medium and the Message are One. Christ is the incarnation of the Kingdom of God and the Sermon on the Mount.

3. God’s grand mission and eternal purpose in the earth and in heaven centers in Christ . . . both the individual Christ (the Head) and the corporate Christ (the Body). This universe is moving towards one final goal – the fullness of Christ where He shall fill all things with himself. To be truly missional, then, means constructing one’s life and ministry on Christ. He is both the heart and bloodstream of God’s plan. To miss this is to miss the plot; indeed, it is to miss everything.

4. Being a follower of Jesus does not involve imitation so much as it does implantation and impartation. Incarnation–the notion that God connects to us in baby form and human touch—is the most shocking doctrine of the Christian religion. The incarnation is both once-and-for-all and ongoing, as the One “who was and is to come” now is and lives his resurrection life in and through us. Incarnation doesn’t just apply to Jesus; it applies to every one of us. Of course, not in the same sacramental way. But close. We have been given God’s “Spirit” which makes Christ “real” in our lives. We have been made, as Peter puts it, “partakers of the divine nature.” How, then, in the face of so great a truth can we ask for toys and trinkets? How can we lust after lesser gifts and itch for religious and spiritual thingys? We’ve been touched from on high by the fires of the Almighty and given divine life. A life that has passed through death – the very resurrection life of the Son of God himself. How can we not be fired up?

To put it in a question: What was the engine, or the accelerator, of the Lord’s amazing life? What was the taproot or the headwaters of his outward behavior? It was this: Jesus lived by an indwelling Father. After his resurrection, the passage has now moved. What God the Father was to Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ is to you and to me. He’s our indwelling Presence, and we share in the life of Jesus’ own relationship with the Father. There is a vast ocean of difference between trying to compel Christians to imitate Jesus and learning how to impart an implanted Christ. The former only ends up in failure and frustration. The latter is the gateway to life and joy in our daying and our dying. We stand with Paul: “Christ lives in me.” Our life is Christ. In him do we live, breathe, and have our being. “What would Jesus do?” is not Christianity. Christianity asks: “What is Christ doing through me … through us? And how is Jesus doing it?” Following Jesus means “trust and obey” (respond), and living by his indwelling life through the power of the Spirit.

5. The “Jesus of history” cannot be disconnected from the “Christ of faith.” The Jesus who walked the shores of Galilee is the same person who indwells the church today. There is no disconnect between the Jesus of Mark’s Gospel and the incredible, all-inclusive, cosmic Christ of Paul’s letter to the Colossians. The Christ who lived in the first century has a pre-existence before time. He also has a post-existence after time. He is Alpha and Omega, Beginning and End, A and Z, all at the same time. He stands in the future and at the end of time at the same moment that He indwells every child of God. Failure to embrace these paradoxical truths has created monumental problems and has diminished the greatness of Christ in the eyes of God’s people.

6. It’s possible to confuse “the cause” of Christ with the person of Christ. When the early church said “Jesus is Lord,” they did not mean “Jesus is my core value.” Jesus isn’t a cause; he is a real and living person who can be known, loved, experienced, enthroned and embodied. Focusing on his cause or mission doesn’t equate focusing on or following him. It’s all too possible to serve “the god” of serving Jesus as opposed to serving him out of an enraptured heart that’s been captivated by his irresistible beauty and unfathomable love. Jesus led us to think of God differently, as relationship, as the God of all relationship.

7. Jesus Christ was not a social activist nor a moral philosopher. To pitch him that way is to drain his glory and dilute his excellence. Justice apart from Christ is a dead thing. The only battering ram that can storm the gates of hell is not the cry of Justice, but the name of Jesus. Jesus Christ is the embodiment of Justice, Peace, Holiness, Righteousness. He is the sum of all spiritual things, the “strange attractor” of the cosmos. When Jesus becomes an abstraction, faith loses its reproductive power. Jesus did not come to make bad people good. He came to make dead people live.

8. It is possible to confuse an academic knowledge or theology about Jesus with a personal knowledge of the living Christ himself. These two stand as far apart as do the hundred thousand million galaxies. The fullness of Christ can never be accessed through the frontal lobe alone. Christian faith claims to be rational, but also to reach out to touch ultimate mysteries. The cure for a big head is a big heart.

Jesus does not leave his disciples with CliffsNotes for a systematic theology. He leaves his disciples with breath and body.

Jesus does not leave his disciples with a coherent and clear belief system by which to love God and others. Jesus gives his disciples wounds to touch and hands to heal.

Jesus does not leave his disciples with intellectual belief or a “Christian worldview.” He leaves his disciples with a relational faith.

Christians don’t follow a book. Christians follow a person, and this library of divinely inspired books we call “The Holy Bible” best help us follow that person. The Written Word is a map that leads us to The Living Word. Or as Jesus himself put it, “All Scripture testifies of me.” The Bible is not the destination; it’s a compass that points to Christ, heaven’s North Star.

The Bible does not offer a plan or a blueprint for living. The “good news” was not a new set of laws, or a new set of ethical injunctions, or a new and better PLAN. The “good news” was the story of a person’s life, as reflected in The Apostle’s Creed. The Mystery of Faith proclaims this narrative: “Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again.” The meaning of Christianity does not come from allegiance to complex theological doctrines, but a passionate love for a way of living in the world that revolves around following Jesus, who taught that love is what makes life a success . . . not wealth or health or anything else: but love. And God is love.

9. Only Jesus can transfix and then transfigure the void at the heart of the church. Jesus Christ cannot be separated from his church. While Jesus is distinct from his Bride, he is not separate from her. She is in fact his very own Body in the earth. God has chosen to vest all of power, authority, and life in the living Christ. And God in Christ is only known fully in and through his church. (As Paul said, “The manifold wisdom of God – which is Christ – is known through the ekklesia.”)

The Christian life, therefore, is not an individual pursuit. It’s a corporate journey. Knowing Christ and making him known is not an individual prospect. Those who insist on flying life solo will be brought to earth, with a crash. Thus Christ and his church are intimately joined and connected. What God has joined together, let no person put asunder. We were made for life with God; our only happiness is found in life with God. And God’s own pleasure and delight is found therein as well.

10. In a world which sings, “Oh, who is this Jesus?” and a church which sings, “Oh, let’s all be like Jesus,” who will sing with lungs of leather, “Oh, how we love Jesus!”

a Rembrandt depiction of Jesus

If Jesus could rise from the dead, we can at least rise from our bed, get off our couches and pews, and respond to the Lord’s resurrection life within us, joining Jesus in what he’s up to in the world. We call on others to join us—not in removing ourselves from planet Earth, but to plant our feet more firmly on the Earth while our spirits soar in the heavens of God’s pleasure and purpose. We are not of this world, but we live in this world for the Lord’s rights and interests. We, collectively, as the ekklesia of God, are Christ in and to this world.

May God have a people on this earth who are a people of Christ, through Christ, and for Christ. A people of the cross. A people who are consumed with God’s eternal passion, which is to make his Son preeminent, supreme, and the head over all things visible and invisible. A people who have discovered the touch of the Almighty in the face of his glorious Son. A people who wish to know only Christ and him crucified, and to let everything else fall by the wayside. A people who are laying hold of his depths, discovering his riches, touching his life, and receiving his love, and making HIM in all of his unfathomable glory known to others.

The two of us may disagree about many things—be they ecclesiology, eschatology, soteriology, not to mention economics, globalism and politics.

But in our two most recent books, From Eternity to Here and So Beautiful – we have sounded forth a united trumpet. These books are the Manifests to this Manifesto. They each present the vision that has captured our hearts and that we wish to impart to the Body of Christ— “This ONE THING I know” (Jn.9:25) that is the ONE THING that unites us all:

Jesus the Christ.

Christians don’t follow Christianity; Christians follow Christ.

Christians don’t preach themselves; Christians proclaim Christ.

Christians don’t point people to core values; Christians point people to the cross.

Christians don’t preach about Christ: Christians preach Christ.

Over 300 years ago a German pastor wrote a hymn that built around the Name above all names:

Ask ye what great thing I know, that delights and stirs me so?
What the high reward I win? Whose the name I glory in?
Jesus Christ, the crucified.

This is that great thing I know; this delights and stirs me so:
faith in him who died to save, His who triumphed o’er the grave:
Jesus Christ, the crucified.

—

Jesus Christ – the crucified, resurrected, enthroned, triumphant, living Lord.

He is our Pursuit, our Passion, and our Life.

Amen.

the mission by Adelaid @ deviantart.com

Missio me is the Latin + English way of saying, “the mission of me.” This is of course an indirect referencing of the popular Latin expression, missio Dei – the mission of God. This saying has always made me think… “What is my life’s mission and how is it related to God’s? or Jesus’?

I have discovered that missio me (and you) uniquely integrates with missio lesus – the mission of Jesus.

Isaiah (chapter 61) prophesied about the mission of Jesus and hundreds of years later Jesus reads the account aloud in the temple claiming Himself to be the mission’s agent. Luke 4:18-19 expresses the messianic mission in the following way:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.” And He closed the book, gave it back to the attendant and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

The missio lesus is individually and corporately our mission. Sure, this statement came at a specific time, to a specific people in Isaiah and Jesus’ case, but the activities of the mission are central to what we know of God’s character and eternal purpose. The living Jesus still works in this world carrying out the missio Dei. As He accomplishes His mission in us, this same mission is accomplished through us.

Closely related to this, I find myself extremely encouraged and a little concerned about the recent thrust of the church toward missional living; less rigid mission programs, more community partnerships, less church-building, more kingdom-building, etc. Missional living means more natural, embedded lifestyle & community ministry. Missional communities are externally focused and devoted to compassion ministry in their surrounding communities. They assertively engage issues like poverty, social justice, education, etc. Missional activity becomes a way of life.

This excites me in that communities of faith are more serious about compassionately engaging the community in broader and more real-life contexts. More and more churches are moving beyond treating people as projects to truly caring. The church at large is actually embracing its redemptive role in the community. This being said, my concern surrounds missional living being limited as the new trend in outreach. It can be understood as simply the new strategy to suck people into Christianity or the local church. If so, it will last about a decade or two…maybe. This would be incredibly unfortunate because I think the missional approach reflects the living out of our true identity in community within the scope of Jesus’ mission…and specifically the mission statement in Isaiah 61. Living missionally is the natural fruit of walking by the Spirit - moving in the missio lesus. To consider missional living an “effective strategy,” the new outreach, is short-sighted and counterproductive.

Our identity in Christ is missional. Christ in us, through us, lives missionally...period.

The components of Jesus’ mission directly reflect missional living - caring for the poor or downtrodden, helping people recover vision/sanity, advocating for the captive and oppressed, and compassionately offering favor/hope through the gospel.

To fully appreciate the missio lesus and its connection with missio me we need to unpack Jesus' mission statement. We don't have space here for a thorough consideration of all the components, so I will only consider the basics.

First, and most significantly, the mission begins with the presence of the Spirit of the Lord. Jesus says the Spirit of the Lord is upon him. In the presence and power of the Spirit, Jesus carries out His mission. This was true throughout Jesus’ ministry. He spoke and acted at the direction of the Father in the power of the Spirit. Our living by the Spirit’s presence, power, and guidance is essential.

The first action mentioned in missio lesus is the preaching of the gospel to the poor. Jesus comes telling the spiritually bankrupt….the soul paupers…the emotionally burdened… the mentally anguished…the physically exhausted…and the financially broke the good news. He comes bearing good news, saving grace that only the humble can hear. Come to me for rest and a real life...a fresh second, third, etc. start. In doing so, those who have no spiritual currency whatsoever take on abundance.

Jesus proclaims release to the captives. The original text here presents the idea of a messenger shouting a declaration - "All are to be set free! Be released!" This announcement immediately brings to mind two significant questions. Who is captive, and how are they captive? We are all captive in a sense. We search ourselves and the world over for meaning, love, and identity. There seem to be as many solutions as there are people. The missio lesus offers a message of freedom from self-made identities, performances, and the world’s captivation. Jesus offers himself, the Logos - divine life, as the solution.

Jesus’ mission statement continues with the announcement of the recovery of sight to the blind. Again, a question arises. How are we blind? Oftentimes, we simply cannot see the truth. Life can be confusing to say the least. The Bible suggests not that Jesus is the truth and he gives us eyes to see truth. God provides clarity.

Next, Jesus announces freedom for those who are oppressed. The word oppressed can also be translated downtrodden. The downtrodden are those who have been thrown to the ground and trampled, literally and figuratively. They are everywhere in our world. Jesus removes the giant thumb pressing souls to the ground.

The last component of Jesus’ mission is the proclaiming of the favorable year of the Lord. I immediately think…so…which year was it or is it? 33? 2000? 2010? I believe this statement refers to the era of new covenant…God’s agreement with humanity through Jesus. Jesus refers here to the era of the Anointed One…the messiah…Himself. The favor of God is fully granted to us in Jesus. We live as favored children of God in a favored era called the new and everlasting covenant.

The missio lesus has become missio me. The Spirit of missio lesus lives in us and empowers us. Each of us has the constant call and opportunity to creatively and uniquely participate in Jesus' continuing mission . In God's rhythm we share the good news of God, declare freedom and favor for everyone, assist others in seeing clearly, and fight oppression.

Making this a strategy is like creating a program to be yourself. That's nonsensical..and schizophrenic. Carrying out our missio me is not about strategy or trend, but surrendering ourselves to our true identity and destiny. It's about tuning and re-tuning into the Spirit.

We have an indelible missional identity and energy. We are missional freedom fighters by nature.

"keep the flow" by vhm-alew at deviantart.com

Many of you know I recently finished a big project. This project was born out of ten years or so processing my faith (and lack there of) and more recently a ton of research and reading. I wrote a book currently titled Sacred Flow: Discovering Life in God's Rhythm.

The book actually started writing itself a little over ten years ago when my life was rocked and rolled. As a result, I stumbled into the beauty of God's grace in a way I hadn't before. My life hasn't been the same since. Very shortly after this (re)awakening, through too many circumstances to explain here, I connected what I was experiencing in my faith with the psychological concept called flow - the zone. You know...that experience you have when you are so engrossed in an activity that time, effort, self, and other things slip away, fade, and your awareness becomes insanely acute. Movement in this space is smooth, fluid, rhythmic. I fully acknowledge that connecting Christian spirituality with this flow may sound wierd, cheesy, or may not mean anything to you whatsoever. That's ok, I understand.

Reconsidering the life of Jesus, I began to recognize Jesus as someone who flowed with and from his Father. He moved when the Father led, the Father did his works through him, he spoke when the Father initiated, taught the Father's teaching. Essentially, the Father flowed through Jesus. This did not make Jesus less Jesus or the Father less the Father. It demonstrated the ultimate intimate relationship.

Not only this, but it illustrated to us redeemed, reconciled relationship and what it means to be a real human, a human with focused faith in the Father. Jesus modeled flow - sacred flow. I came to...and I am still coming to understand this is what "Christian" living is all about - living in the sacred flow of God. To flow is to walk in step with the Spirit.

Christ lives within us and desires to live through us uniquely. God's Spirit is a smooth, rhythmic divine life within longing to empower, guide, teach us in each moment. This is not simply ethereal mysticism, it's pragmatism. Authentic mysticism leads to trench-living pragmatism. Healthy Christians are what I call pragmystics.

Enough for now...As I continue blogging on this topic I will be dropping in bits and pieces from the book and other worthy pieces that were cut from it.