We Are Called to Share The STory

Introduction

Series: We Are Called: Adventures Into The Unknown

Last Week: We Are Called to Movement

Vision/Just Cause: something so important we would be willing to sacrifice for it.

It’s resilient - can withstand cultural, technological, and social change

Invitation to anyone who wants to believe and be part of it

Is other oriented - they are the primary benefit from the vision; not the participants

People who follow a vision or just cause are part of a movement

God’s Good news where Jesus took center stage launched a movement that ended a long time of waiting hope and expectation

Jesus’ movement pushed his hearers to see things differently; get out of their cave - their religious formulas, etc where the good news won’t fit.

Hirsch: Jesus’ message to his contemporaries, and the church’s subsequent message about Jesus, never seems to fit what people expect [or what they were trained to see - NT Wright]. Often enough, it doesn’t even fit what the church itself expects. The good news seems to baffle its hearers because it is never what people think it ought to be.

To the religious: Repent - stand on a desk in order to look at the world in a different way; listen, trust do.

Today: Those of us who are part of that movement followers of Jesus/Disciples - who have been changed by it and have begun to see the world from Jesus’ perspective are Called to Be witnesses to and of him, - what we’ve read, heard, and experienced and this movement known as God’s Kingdom.

Acts 1:6–8 ESV

So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

When Is the Kingdom Coming?

Jesus' followers came together - time of political and societal church and upheaval.

6 - Disciples pick up the reference to the Kingdom of God in v. 3.

Question: Jesus, do you intend to restore the kingdom to or for Israel?

Were they asking about the centuries held political goals that God would set up world dominance freeing Isreal from their oppressors (Romans) and flip the tables: they rule over every other nation. Is it time for the rebellion to begin?

If so, they missed the point where Jesus changed that hope of the kingdom of God by purging it of its nationalistic political ideology.

Focus of the Question: How soon with the end come? Is this the beginning fo the last stage of God’s plan?

It’s none of your business

Don’t be distracted by speculating because...

You Must Focus: Be My Witnesses

What’s your favorite story

What is the favorite story of your life you like to tell? Why?

Called to Tell The Story

Tell the story of what they saw or personally experienced...

The art of storytelling

Jesus didn’t talk like someone ready to overthrow the ruling powers, or like a well-education bible scholar.

Frederick Buechner: He used pictures and metaphors that non only reveals hidden things but makes them come alive.

What is the kingdom of God? He [Jesus] does not speak of a reorganization of society as a political possibility or of the doctrine of salvation as a doctrine. He speaks of what it is like to find a diamond ring that you thought you’d lost forever. He suggests rather than spells out. He evokes rather than explains. He catches by surprise. Sometimes his hearers get it, sometimes the don’t.

Sit in a lecture: self-talk. Suspicious. Ready to challenge. Guard against any feelings we don’t want to feel. We’re often already settled on what we think about what’s being said.

Contrast that with listening to a story. When we gather around the fire to hear a great story, we’re not guarded. Things do not seem as suspicious when communicated in stories with characters with whom we identify and empathize that is also full of truth, realities that can be life changing.

Jesus’ message came in stories matched to their experience and maturity. When he was alone with his disciples, he went over everything, sorting out the tangles, untying the knots.

Getting Clear on the Story

Jesus told a story that was different than the one the Jewish people had known.

More than science, history and philosophy.

More than morality

One that is still happening

Its truth lies not in proving it but in its effect on the soul of the person who hears, reads.

The Kingdom is like…rich, fertile ground in which to plant seeds. It has to contend with weeds and deal with them at the time of the harvest.

The kingdom is like a hidden treasure that when you find it, it is put to use.

And more...

Paul -

How we can tell the story

A Western approach to the gospel is one that emphasizes the individual and the personal nature of slavation. It is framed as a logical argument explaining who fits into “true and false,” “right and wrong,” and “guilt and innocence.”categories and the transaction needed to move you from one category to another - Often feels like an investigation, interrogation, charge and bail.

Hirsch, etc: Jesus clearly taught that to be a follower and a disciple required death to self, submission to his lordship, and a decision to grow in increasing levels of conformity to his own life and teachings—a life of love, humility, servanthood, forgiveness, justice, holiness, and mercy.

The gospel is not information; it is a way of life. — STANLEY HAUERWAS

"The twenty-first century church is lacking in method and language in its articulation of God to pilgrims throughout the world."

CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien - in a conversation, through story and imagination Tolkien helped Lewis grasp the meaning of the Gospel - making it real. He wrote to a friend after the conversation with Tolkien“ I have just passed on from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ—in Christianity.

Is it possible for us to do the same thing in our telling of the story of God? To spend our time less trying to prove Christianity is the one true faith and more in growing ours and others ability and capacity to comprehend and apprehend a broader understanding of God’s reality by telling the story of Jesus as we’ve come to know and experience life in Him?

All of you for everyone

Hirsch, Mark Nelson, etc: The gospel must be proclaimed afresh in new ways to each generation, generation, since every generation has its own unique questions. The gospel must constantly be forwarded to a new address, because the recipients are repeatedly changing their place of address.

Christians in the way/pattern of Christ take ownership of the story of God’s kingdom in the way we live and talk about it.

The story of repairing, healing, restoring the world by the authority and power of Jesus in the way.

Our lives will either tell stories of individualism and self-reliance or stories of restoration and redemption—stories of ugliness or stories of beauty. We choose our way.

The question we are asking every follower of Jesus to wrestle with is this: is the story we are telling big enough, mysterious enough, poetic enough, to allow us to once again experience the reality of God beyond the clutter and debris of this world that gets in the way?