from God

When Johnathan Edwards, Charles Wesley and others we historically esteem (including Jesus) spoke, strange things happened. The manifestations of spirit at Edwards' meetings was similar to that of Toronto and many other, current renewal/revival ministries; the emotion and radicality of Charles Finney's meetings and Jesus' followers in the gospels could be put next to what happened in Brownsville in the 90's or many Pentecostal or renewal churches today, and the similarities would be striking.

Edwards and Finney (and Paul, Peter, Simpson, Seymour) many of us "get" - though not all of us may get both (some may prefer Edwards' revelation of sovereignty over Finney's free will, vice versa, or one man's style or emotional makeup over the other). Their lives and theologies continue to impact the American experience. Entire denominations hail one man or the other at seeming saint status, yet would not be able to stomach the same manifestations in their churches today. Many esteem their theology, but leave the experiential dynamic of relationship with God as a thing to be ignore, or as just for someone "so holy". Reverence and submission to God declared without evidence, in propriety, is even prized - what Paul calls having a form of godliness, but lacking its power. Empty religion.

Perhaps we do, after all, know a little bit about what Jesus meant when he declares the evidence of being a whitewashed tomb in Matthew 23 - hailing prophets and Godly people of old, but despise the Godly and prophetic people in one's midst:

"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, 'If we had lived in the days of our forefathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.' So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets."

Then Jesus outlines to them that though God sends men and women of God and moves of the Holy Spirit in order to reconcile the world to Himself, God also sends them in order to expose the disdain many so-called followers of God have for God - that they may have a chance to be reconciled again.

Jesus, though possessing a charisma that could enable peaceful, diplomatic resolutions to conflict was not afraid to live in a way that angered anyone - even his own family! He did not live to cause conflict or try to appear sacrilegious; His life was the conflict. His being was the apparent sacrilege.

Jesus dispensed grace to the ungraceful and loved the despised, yet Mother Teresa, Hallmark moments, and even Shane Claiborne don't bring that kind of response, that degree of division. Your message, though full of love and a greater audacity than that of worldly hope, must also demonstrate the insufficiency of life as we know it. This requires power.

The lame must walk, the deaf must hear, the blind must see. Through your voice, your touch and your presence in union with God.

Jesus' life seemed as an incontrivable paradox, because at every turn it proved the religious order of that day and every other to be defunct; He laughed at institutionally inappropriate times, his words were inopportune and did not please the right people, he spoke with boldness because he spoke from God. And that paradox had a power that evidenced it - pure relationship with God through the life of Jesus Christ - as the only way.

Yet the scandal was not in what he did, who he ate with, or that it challenged perceived Jewish-ness or imperial Rome. The scandal was not age, or in being misunderstood as a prophetic voice. The scandal was that He is and all knew it. He said he was from God, and he was. Uh-oh.