GREETINGS TO THE LIGHT SHINING PEOPLE OF CHRIST THE KING,
I wonder what God is up. People who love Jesus want to help others see Jesus, meet Jesus and experience Jesus’ love and hope for the world. I wonder what God is up to as I watch the free video series, “The Chosen” and stumble across the Asbury Spiritual Awaking. And listen to “He Gets Us” commercials. And now the movie, Jesus Revolution. I am a pastor; how can I not be curious about Jesus in the public sphere.
Jesus Revolution is a movie of gentle broad-brush strokes of a movement that began in southern California and culminated in 1972 tracing the rise of Calvary Chapel, the leaders, Hippie Lonny Frisbee and Pastor Chuck Smith and the relationship of Greg Lowery and Cathe Martin, the founders of Harvest Christian Fellowship, Riverside, CA.
I wonder what God is up to. I watched the movie with curiosity. As I studied John 9, the healing of the blind man within the faith community, scenes from the movie flashed back. I shared with the staff my experience.
Living in a faith community is difficult when God keeps creating new things and stirs us, who are comfortable out of our complacency and wets our appetite to desire the same things that God desires. Jesus spits on the ground and places this spit infused mud on the eyes of the blind man and there is a new creation and the community struggles to figure out what God is up to.
Last Sunday, in my sermon, I asked for your help to join me in conversation to think about what we need from our neighbors. Maybe it is as simple as we just want to get to know you, neighbor. Let’s keep talking and praying with good listening ears and clumsy conversation.
When Jesus visited the Samaritan Village, he entered an environment of a long stoked religious history where Jews and Samaritans do not share things in common and go to great lengths to avoid one another. This history was shattered by a simple need, a request for water and conversation flowed. Not an easy conversation but a necessary conversation that could not be contained and had to be shared. A woman who avoided her community just had to go to that same community and share this amazing conversation with those she felt outcast from. And Jesus got to know his neighbors and was welcomed into their community.
At the end of the movie, the Time magazine reporter, Josiah admits to Greg Laurie that he was reluctant to cover the assignment as he usually covered war and protest but admits that there is something here that is bringing people together when so many other things are tearing people apart. I wonder what God is up to.
Will you keep wondering with me and share with me what you think God is up to with us, this community of faith at the cross roads of Melrose and Mormon Trek. What happens when our European faith background birthed of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation meets the American Evangelical Revolution? What cup of cold water can we share and what conversations can flow from us. I wonder what God is up to.
Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,
Pastor Connie Spitzack
