On weekdays during Advent we are posting the daily reflection from our Abundance Advent booklet here on our blog. You can download the booklet in its entirety here.
Actor Terry Crews recently said in October, “Our deepest desire is to be completely known… and completely loved… at the exact same time. But our deepest fear is that no one could possibly love us, if they knew us completely.”
That’s exactly, for you and me, where God’s glorious “Gospel of the Kingdom” (Jesus’ phrase) comes into serious play… really, for all human beings during Advent. On the one
hand, we truly do fear being fully known—warts and all—because then we conclude we’d be unloveable. (I absolutely felt that way as a bachelor but still feel that way on social media and in social settings.) On the other hand, we might feel loved by some people who don’t really know us well… and then we conclude it’s superficial love, sort of like getting enormous affirmation from Facebook “friends” but realizing they don’t know us well. The vicious cycle continues: “If they really knew the entire truth about me…”
This glorious Gospel of the Kingdom addresses Hollywood’s (and our) “secrets” this Advent season and into the New Year: In Christ, Who is our all-knowing Creator, we’re completely known AND unconditionally loved—“at the exact same time.” The Lord knows us completely… and still loves us! This union is for eternity. He ain’t gonna divorce us! In the early 1600s this Gospel of the Kingdom captured the hearts of persecuted refugees in Europe known as “pilgrims.” Result: they engaged in Kingdom-living among Americans when:
Modeling a Kingdom lifestyle of Christian counterculture. The Native Americans of Massachusetts noticed how distinctively different these Europeans were from the merchants who had kidnapped and enslaved some of them (including Squantum). These broken but redeemed folks were the only “Bibles” the natives could “read.” What had the pilgrims read in their own Bible? That this “Good News of great joy for all peoples” made another family on the run to allow dirty shepherds to disturb needed rest (Luke 2:16)! That they could host even a strange entourage of Iranian (Persian) men to adore the Child entrusted to them (Matt 2:11). From 1st century to 17th century to 21st century!
Ministering the Gospel of this Kingdom inclusively, even cross-culturally. While other Europeans (mostly men, mostly merchants) became enemies of Native Americans, the pilgrim families embraced them—and encouraged their children to play with the Native American children during their hospitality. Likewise, while lower-class shepherds and ethnically-different foreigners were denigrated in the Roman Empire, Joseph and Mary embraced them as they sought to discover Christ (See Matthew 2 and Luke 2).
“Made Kingdom culture” for generations to come, laying the framework for God’s Redemptive Story to flourish in the future. The missional household of Jesus in the first century (by God’s Sovereign Spirit) has multiplied missional communities since then. For example, the pilgrims’ redemptive romance of young widow Priscilla Mullins and John Alden (which parallels the Biblical romance between young widow Ruth and Boaz), and their founding of an academy/resource center (which became known as Harvard College within a few years)—all while learning to speak the natives’ language—shows how we in City Church don’t have to shy away from culture. As a Kingdom counterculture, we are (God is) making culture when His Gospel—being fully known as broken sinners but being fully loved in Christ—takes root in us this Advent.
I, like Terry Crews, long for it: “Good news (Gospel!) of great joy, which will be for all…”!