NeoZine

Understanding Disestablishment

Some pop writers are targeting Millennial-generation Christians with such a harmless concept of “revolution”, it is a wonder anyone is interested.

Watch the video below on “Everything Must Change!” for a classic case of false advertising.  It should be titled, “Nothing Changed” because this popular author imagines “Christian revolution” without the crucifixion or resurrection (primitive stories, he says).¹ The Christianity that remains a Jesus-fool who yaps too much and got himself executed. What drivel.

Students across the country are restless for a revolution with substance, something that matters, but they get slick products like “Everything Must Change” from Emergent Village, Inc. What a rip-off. These guys are slick wordsmiths with timid ideas that change nothing.

Jesus, on the other hand, launched a credible Revolution. He says, “Burn it down!” It looks like this:

…in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up. (2 Pet. 3:10)

That’s the Jesus Revolution we all know and love — disestablishment on a universal scale!

He isn’t crazy, because He’s God and He doesn’t destroy anything except to build something so beautiful and breathtaking, he calls it His Kingdom!

Take a moment to study the Jesus Revolution–this is real change, not hot air. It’s brilliant, it topples regimes and despots without armies or big budgets. To study this Revolution means freedom and transformation of the landscape. It delivers, it’s real, and it’s contagious!

The Essential Struggle

Listen to this teaching on-line:

The following scripture reads like a Handbook of Revolution, a road-map for radical Christians:

“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.. Luke 4:18-19 (NASB)

What Jesus read is called ministry in the Bible, but ministry is so institutionalized today, its biblical definition barely remains. Ministry to the poor, the captives, the blind and the oppressed sounds like social concern on the surface, like Do-Good Christianity. Most people think ministry means wearing a backward collar and talking in genteel tones. Ministry seems impotent and highly irrelevant in the face of real-world evil, much like using band-aids to patch the rip in the Titanic.

Do-Good Christianity versus the Jesus Revolution: a video about “Peace”
[flashvideo file="http://repo.neoxenos.org/videos/ThePeace_conv.flv" /]

What’s the point of Do-Good Christianity? To be helpful? Consider its weakness:

• Pagan charities do this: they care and they try to help. What is the difference?
• Hospital Churches arise from this definition of ministry. Hospital Churches cannot grow. Today the great cathedrals of Europe designed to hold thousands are now Hospital Churches filled with a few dozen old and dying Christians. (It is better than nothing, but what an impotent model!)
• Christ’s ministry was much broader than a Hospital Ministry. He helped the poor, the captives, the blind and the oppressed; but he did much, much more!

No, the Jesus Revolution is not so lame, but it is mysterious, and Jesus emphasizes this mystery:

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.. Luke 4:20

What is Jesus doing? Quite simply, He is preparing them for a bombshell:

And He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  Luke 4:21

Jesus proclaims the advent of the Kingdom of God! What joy this would bring! What promise, what hope, what relief!

But he gets the most amazing reaction:

And all the people in the synagogue were filled with rage as they heard these things; and they got up and drove Him out of the city, and led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city had been built, in order to throw Him down the cliff. Luke 4:28-29

Why such a violent reaction? What a strange scenario unfolds in Luke 4:

1. God’s Kingdom comes, empowered by love, to end human suffering.
2. People are enraged by it and reject it violently!

How does #1 cause #2? What an unlikely cause and effect! The verses we skipped make the connection for us:

And all were speaking well of Him, and wondering at the gracious words which were falling from His lips; and they were saying, “Is this not Joseph’s son?”
And He said to them, “No doubt you will quote this proverb to Me, ‘Physician, heal yourself! Whatever we heard was done at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.’ ” And He said, “Truly I say to you, no prophet is welcome in his hometown. But I say to you in truth, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky was shut up for three years and six months, when a great famine came over all the land; and yet Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” Luke 4:22-27

Notice they were not upset by his declaration that he was their Messianic hope. This is a terrible misinterpretation of the passage. They were encouraged by such a prospect: “What a good ol’ home-town boy that Jesus is!”

But Jesus said, “No, I’m not your hometown boy at all! I’m more like an Old Testament prophet, never welcomed in his home town!”

He cites Elijah, the most famous Old Testament prophet, who only healed in foreign lands among the despised Gentiles. But at home, in Israel, Elijah struck them with draught! Such renegades are unwelcome in their hometown, and so every time Elijah came back into Israel, the King and Queen groaned.

Here is the full scenario:

1. God’s Kingdom comes, empowered by love, to end human suffering.
2. But first, he expects people to sever their attachment with Home Sweet Home—or no help!
3. It is the heart of Fallen Man to resist the coming of God’s Kingdom, and to embrace their manmade kingdoms, even with violence.

God places only one condition on those who would enter the joy of His Great Work: leave your kingdom!

This passage depicts the struggle between the heart of God and the heart of fallen mankind. It’s not about helping people who need help, per se, but a much broader picture which goes beyond “Do-Good Christianity”:

1. It is the heart of God: He loves His creation, and moves into it, no matter how broken it is. This is foundational for understanding God’s Kingdom, God, His work, and His motivations. It describes what God is doing in this Present Age, and it must be very, very important.
2. It is the heart of Fallen Man to resist God’s Kingdom, even with violence.

To receive God’s healing means to come out and leave Home Sweet Home. It isn’t a cruel demand. It is a necessary precondition, because God’s Kingdom is utterly at odds with human kingdoms.

Here is the essential struggle: God moves, but Fallen Man squats! God’s presence is expressed in great, phenomenal movement, in a great struggle with Counterfeit Kingdoms.

The Necessary Disestablishment

This is why “The New and Living Way” (Hebrews 10:19) stirs so much controversy wherever it goes. God’s Kingdom brings healing, but it necessitates great upheaval.  The promises of God’s Kingdom is accompanied by Disestablishment.

Observe how God manifests Himself: by kindness and severity, by comfort and upheaval.

Behold then the kindness and severity of God! Romans 11:22

Isaiah 40 is a study in this duality. First, He proclaims the kindness of His Kingdom:

“Comfort, O comfort My people,” says your God. “Speak kindly to Jerusalem; And call out to her, that her warfare has ended… Isaiah 40:1-2 (NASB)

God loves His creation, and moves toward it:

A voice is calling, “Clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness; Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God.  Isaiah 40:3 (NASB)

But now, look! As God’s Kingdom comes, what upheaval comes with it:

“Let every valley be lifted up, And every mountain and hill be made low; And let the rough ground become a plain, And the rugged terrain a broad valley;
Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed, And all flesh will see it together; For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
Isaiah 40:4-5 (NASB)

All the great and powerful kingdoms of man are so very frail and easily-crushed by the eternal rock of God’s Word, he says:

The grass withers, the flower fades, When the breath of the Lord blows upon it; Surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, But the word of our God stands forever. Isaiah 40:7-8 (NASB)

Our kingdoms are pretty, but so flimsy and trite:

Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, And are regarded as a speck of dust on the scales; Behold, He lifts up the islands like fine dust…All the nations are as nothing before Him, They are regarded by Him as less than nothing and meaningless…As for the idol, a craftsman casts it, A goldsmith plates it with gold, And a silversmith fashions chains of silver. He who is too impoverished for such an offering Selects a tree that does not rot; He seeks out for himself a skillful craftsman To prepare an idol that will not totter.
Isaiah 40:19-20

Yet God’s Kingdom is so vast and beyond containment or challenge:

Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been declared to you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in. He it is who reduces rulers to nothing, Who makes the judges of the earth meaningless. Isaiah 40:21-23

God’s Kingdom is outside of all human kingdoms. These two kingdoms cannot co-exist. They are fundamentally incompatible:

• God’s Kingdom is full of momentum: always forward, towards creation and creating life.
• Human Kingdoms stagnate, by necessity: they are established within clear boundaries that shut out uncertainty. Although some kingdoms may expand their boundaries, they still must erect boundaries around themselves. Kingdom boundaries can only expand until its boundaries collide with another kingdom’s boundaries.
• God’s Kingdom is life: He creates and grows life everywhere He goes.
• Human Kingdoms are systems: organizations, bureaucracies, rules and machines. These are the things we make naturally. All day long we work to make things in exchange for things.
• God’s Kingdom grows by love: a widening network of inter-dependant relationships between loving human beings.
• Human Kingdoms are governed by rules and all our glorious red tape. God calls it “works”, or “the Law”, and it’s a different governing principle.
• God’s Kingdom is built with small seeds stuck deep in the heart (see the sower in Matthew 13).
• Human Kingdoms are built with massive organizations, budgets, plans, and resources (see the parable of the mustard seed in Matthew 13).

Thus, the coming of God’s Kingdom necessitates the uprooting of human kingdoms.  This is the summation of Isaiah 40:

Lift up your eyes on high… Isaiah 40:26 (NASB)

The Living, Growing, Moving Kingdom of God

No matter what condition creation falls into, and no matter how creation moves away from God, He still moves toward it.

Gen. 1 – “In the beginning, the Spirit moves across the face of the deep, filled with the chaos of rebellion…”

• He moves to recreate from the ashes of death and rebellion a world teeming with new life.
• He creates moving things of all sorts…
• He gave humans the authority to create and move (Gen. 1:26f).

The Pentateuch: His throne, the tabernacle, is always moving.

The Prophets: Men “moved by the Holy Spirit” (1 Pet. 2) were brought into the secrets of God and saw the future coming of Jesus Christ.

He stretched out the form of a hand and caught me by a lock of my head; and the Spirit lifted me up between earth and heaven and brought me in the visions of God… Ezekiel 8:3 (NASB)

Re-Creation in the New Testament: it is The Spirit which moves across the surface of the earth.

“The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going;” John 3:8a

He is busy creating a “new humanity.” You can see the Holy Spirit’s presence when you see “the wind blowing,” Jesus says, in the lives of people:

“…So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” John 3:8b

The Prophets of the New Testament: God pushes and pulls and directs (Acts 13, 15, Macedonian vision).

• He commands movement from His people: “Go! Make disciples…” (Matthew 28:18)
• He spreads fires of freedom and breaks down restrictions: “for where the Spirit is, there is liberty…” (2 Corinthians 3:17)
• He moves into people’s lives (Rev. 3:20).
• The walk of faith is a commitment to move forward, out and beyond the familiar: “we are not of those who shrink back to destruction…” (Heb. 10:1)
• Body Life is a movement of people in and out of your house (Acts 2:42ff).

In Discipleship and Love

Discipleship means growing beyond the current Cell Group and small group of friends.

• Jesus was always moving, and “foxes have holes, birds have nests, but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head.” Was he complaining? Not at all! He was inviting: “Are you ready for this? It’s crazy-fun, the ultimate Rave, all over the place!”
• The first lesson in ministry for his disciples: “Take nothing with you…” (Matthew 10) And how excited they were when they returned!
• Love means moving beyond our tribal barriers: “Love…does not seek its own” 1 Corinthians 13:5.
• It is “the way of Life” (Jeremiah 21:8) and “The New and living way” (Hebrews 10:15).

The History of Immobility

Contrast God’s Kingdom with human kingdoms. Our desire is to stay and die.

• The Tower of Babel: the first example of rebellion against God’s injunction to move out. They clumped instead.
• The Jerusalem Church: they huddled around their home, resisting God’s efforts to reach the Gentiles. When Titus leveled Jerusalem in 70 ad, no doubt they wished they were elsewhere!

Human-controlled kingdoms are defined by clumping:

• Nations (and companies!) are either great or insignificant, and how is this measured? Square mileage, population, wealth, and conquest.
• Church history: the “one, True Church” controlled by Roman Emperors.
• Success lies in claiming land, buildings, members, wealth, resources…

“You say, ‘I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,’ and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked.” Jesus Christ, in Rev. 3:17

Kosmos-values adopted by the church: the Jerusalem church was influenced by its culture, and could not reach beyond their “dividing walls”.

• The first one to realize this was Stephen, whose background as a Hellenistic Jew undoubtedly made it easier for him to see. But Acts 7 is, from beginning to end, a diatribe against the many dividing walls the Jews created: their temple, their land, their people.
• Ironically, the man who killed him was drafted to take his place, and Paul became a great spokesperson for Stephen’s cause: breaking out of the Jewish culture & geography defined Paul’s ministry.
• Peter moved out (finally!) after much prodding, pushing and pulling…

Tear It Down!

This is Revolution, pure and simple: stampeding across the empire, it stirred confusion, it incited a backlash of persecutions and filled the Coliseum with martyrs.

The Revolution tore down the Dividing Walls of human kingdoms and brought freedom to helpless people trapped in the prisons of the Roman Empire.

But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall. (Eph. 2:13-14)

By the thousands, they emerged: dazed but elated from dark, social prisons erected by the elite dynasties of the Kosmos. They entered God’s Kingdom where God denounced the sacred rules of the culture. Slave or master, male or female, Greek or Jew, these distinctions were despised by God.

The Movement of Defiance

The Great Mystery of Christ means social defiance: we are the recipients of God’s radical blueprint for Revolution, and it begins in the Heart. God’s Kingdom, the Ekklesia, spread through Revolution prophesied long ago:

“And those who are far off will come and build the temple of the LORD.” – Zech. 6:11

Paul brings these words into the New Testament, talking about the Ekklesia:

“But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” – Eph. 2:11

How does God gather far-flung, divided people? In Zechariah’s prophecy the person is Jesus Christ:

AND HE CAME AND PREACHED PEACE TO YOU WHO WERE FAR AWAY, AND PEACE TO THOSE WHO WERE NEAR…So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household…” – Eph.2:17-19

Such is the fulfillment of Zechariah’s prophecy – “Those who are far off will come and build the temple of the LORD!”

What a glorious movement it is, and you and I are part of it:

…you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit. – Ephesians 2:22

It means God is moving in a direction that Disestablishes our comfortable kingdoms. We get uprooted.

It means movement outside our manmade “Dividing Walls” which are nothing but prison walls. Older Christians who develop the maturity to love and sacrifice will crash through geographical, racial, socio-economic, and political dividing walls.

Observe how rebellious churches grow self-enclosed, complacent, and finally spiritually dense! These are Christians at odds with the leadership of Jesus Christ, living in a crisis of Laodicean proportions:

“You say, ‘I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,’ and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked.” – Jesus Christ, in Rev. 3:17

The Laodiceans were trapped inside their little Dividing Walls of personal peace and affluence, blind to the real world, spiritually impoverished by their materialism. The American Way is built upon the formidable Dividing Walls of social status and material gain, so that far too many Christians identify themselves as Americans and Republicans or Democrats, but not as Christians.

There is no such thing as a Christian Democrat or a Christian Republican. We are all members of a new race of humanity. To die to the old identity rooted in old-world geopolitics was the scandalous outcome of the Jesus Revolution for Gentiles and Jews (far more sharply-divided  in the 1st Century than Republicans and Democrats are today).  So Paul says:

in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace. Ephesians 2:15

This is why God says, “Come out from among them!” He wants us to escape the prisons we know as “my comfort zone.” Until this happens, spiritual growth is lethargic and incomplete.

Disestablishment

Returning now to the original discussion about ministry: the biblical definition of ministry does not resemble the lame vocation called “ministry” in today’s world. Biblical ministry means Revolution, to use a modern term.

With the benefit of hindsight we know the scope of Jesus’ ministry and his later descriptions of it. From Luke 4 he read a list of the victims of the World System who were to be liberated by his Ministry of Revolution:

• The poor are those who “are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:3) The World System is flooded with spiritual poverty, and Jesus came “to preach the good news” to those “poor in spirit”. For those who know their poverty, “theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” So ministry disestablishes the economics of poverty by raising poverty-consciousness and bringing poverty-relief.
• The captives are those “who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives” (Hebrews 2:15; see also 1 John 2:17). The Kosmos runs on the Economy of Death, fueled by the fear of death! Desperate consumers try to purchase their way out of the depressing onset of death! But Jesus brings “good news” and “release to the captives”. Revolution disestablishes the economy of death-fear because Revolution is anti-fear. The fears of legalism are counter-Revolutionary, so legalists either find ministry distasteful or become terribly ineffective at it.
• The blind are those “in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds” of everyone (2 Corinthians 4:4). Revolution is so difficult because the World System steals “that which is known about God,” and that which “is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.” (Romans 1:19). But Revolution disestablishes the Economy of Deceit which drives Madison Avenue advertising, and so ministry brings “recovery of sight” for the blind.
• The oppressed are the countless victims of the Economy of Oppression which benefits the rich in the World System. The Jesus Revolution waged war against the powerful and greedy: “I will put My Spirit upon Him, and He shall proclaim justice to the Gentiles” (Matthew 12:18). “The Gentiles” were outsiders to the religious institutions of Israel, “without God and without hope.” (Ephesians 2:12) His Revolution was popular among the oppressed, so the oppressors conspired to kill him.

The Ministry of Revolution is a spiritual war against the Kosmos-Economy with its components of poverty, death, fear, deceit and oppression. The Jesus Revolution brought a whole new economic reality, as Paul says:

He made known to us the mystery of His will…with a view to an economy suitable to the fullness of the times…  Ephesians 1:9-10

Without the component of Disestablishment it is difficult to understand the Ministry of Revolution.

Through Disestablishment we can actually live what Martin Luther King only dreamed about. His famous speech actually came straight out of God’s Word. It was a prophecy given about Jesus, announcing the upcoming Revolution that would bring great Disestablishment:

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
- Martin Luther King, quoting Isaiah 40

Footnotes:

1. See the NeoZine article, McLarenism, which has a a fascinating recording of McLaren’s renunciation of the Christian doctrine of the crucifixion during a recent visit to Ohio. [↩]

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