Two weeks ago my wife Lynn, our friend Janette and I went to Saint Simons’ Island to a Methodist Conference Center, Epworth by the Sea.  The purpose of our visit was to attend the seventh annual January Adventure of Emerging Christianity.  The speakers were Barbara Brown Taylor and Brian McLaren, two of my spiritual heroes.  The both spoke about what it means to be a Christian in today’s world and particularly about the importance of the kingdom of God being “on earth as it is in heaven.”

It was exciting to be around 700 people who believe that God is so much bigger and much more inclusive than most of us believe and to have two speakers who challenged us to see God and humanity in new and different ways.  Both speakers believe that while Jesus came to save the world,  that he came to save the entire world, not just the members of one faith. This is quite a concept in a world in which most people of faith believe that their faith has all the truth and all other faiths are incorrect.  Jesus spent most of his time teaching people to “do unto others as they would have others do unto them,” “to love the Lord their God with all their heart and mind and soul and strength and to love their neighbor as themselves.”  This truly represented the kingdom of God, come on Earth as in heaven.

Perhaps Jesus’ greatest sermon, one I believe he preached over and over again, is the one we call the Beatitudes, found in Matthew 5:1-12 and in Luke 6:20-23.  In both of these passages, Jesus taught his followers what the kingdom of God was like: the hungry, both physically and spiritually would be filled; the mournful would be comforted; the meek and lowly would inherit the earth; the pure will see God and the peacemakers will be called the children of God.  Jesus cautioned that when they did these things some would be persecuted, but that as many as were persecuted, they would inherit the Kingdom of God.

I believe Jesus is telling us that the kingdom is bigger than we are.  That people will be included whom we would not allow in on our own.  Then Jesus gets more personal and tells his hearers and us that we are blessed when people revile us and persecute us and utter all kinds of evil against us falsely on His account.  That we should rejoice and be glad, for our reward will be great in the kingdom.  The fact that as Christians we may be persecuted does not keep Jesus from calling us into partnership with him.  It should not prohibit us from doing the things he calls us to do.

A young evangelical, Shane Claiborne, wrote in a recent article in Esquire Magazine: “to those who have closed the door on religion – I was recently asked by a non-Christian Friend if I thought he was going to hell.  ‘I said, I hope not. It will be hard to enjoy heaven without you.’  ‘If those of us who believe in God do not believe God’s grace is big enough to save the whole world… well, we should at least pray that it is.’”

Blessings and Peace,

Ben