Salvation and Evangelism (Pt.2)

In part one of this series, I discussed the topic of salvation. The good news the church shares with the world is that the kingdom of God is here and now, and Jesus offers you the gift of Holy Spirit so that you can participate in it. This articulation of the good news is earth shattering to many of my fellow Lutherans. Rather than limiting our view of salvation through the Law-Gospel lens, we see that our vocation is inherent to the gospel itself. What we do is not merely in response to the gospel. Rather, the good news is a calling to participate in the kingdom of God.

This brings us to the topic for part deux: what the church's mission looks like when proclaiming this good news.

Let me first be clear about what the church's mission is not.

(1) We're not trying to save souls. First of all, you'd have to explain to me what a soul is, because I've never seen one. By 'soul', we certainly can't mean some sort of immortal essence distinct from our bodies. God's interested in you, in your whole person. Is there any other version of you? Secondly, if we accept the definition of "soul" in the Bible, we discover two things: (a) the Hebrew word translated as 'soul' is nephesh, meaning the life force of the whole person, or simply the whole person. (b) The Bible makes great effort to show that the force that gives and sustains the lives of our whole person is Holy Spirit.

(2) We're not offering a good deal. This deal often takes the form of a commercial for a used car dealership: "Come on down and get your ticket to salvation. All you have to do is believe and it's yours FREE." The good news is about what God is doing now to be all in all, and that doesn't rely on what we believe. God's going to keep doing it whether we believe it or not.

So this is what the church's mission looks like in sharing the good news of God's kingdom:

Rather than providing the consumer service of soul-saving and offering salvation-deals, we help people recognize God's kingdom breaking in all around them. We help people see Jesus already present in their lives, transforming them into the people God has in mind. Holy Spirit is already in them sustaining their lives; with every breath they inhale, Holy Spirit comes into them to give life again and again. Now the resurrected Jesus gives Holy Spirit in a new and ultimate way to transform their lives for God's kingdom.

We are not the good news. Yet the way most institutional churches do evangelism, you would think we are. Typically we stay in our gathered communities and designate a committee to do our advertising and outreaching to invite people to come check us out. Maybe then, they'll happen to hear the good news from the pastor. That's why congregations emphasize hospitality much like businesses emphasize customer service.

But what if congregations emphasized evangelism instead of simply hospitality? This is what evangelism looks like as the mark of discipleship called "Invite" in our "living W.O.R.S.H.I.P." covenants. We invite people to recognize what Jesus is already doing through them to reconcile all things to his Father. If a congregation should even have an evangelism committee, it would be for the sole purpose of training every disciple to be evangelists 24/7/365. Holy Spirit is unleashed; the Temple curtain is torn; the heavens are ripped open. God's kingdom is all around us.

Although the kingdom of God is not yet come completely, it is already here so that we can experience it now. In Hebraic thought, we live in the olam hazeh, which means "this world." The messiah, God's anointed king-judge, ushers in olam haba, meaning "the world to come." The gift of salvation offered by Jesus the messiah is Holy Spirit, who empowers us to participate in the tikkun olam, "the restoring of the world" from the olam hazeh to the olam haba. In other words, Jesus welcomes us into his messiahship. By being united to him in baptism, we are king-judges of the world so that we too may participate in the tikkun olam.

The olam haba is identified as the gan Eden, the garden of Eden. Our messianic vocation in Jesus' mission is to restore the garden of Eden to the world. Without the garden, the world is trashed; we're left only with the cosmic junk. God help us! Thankfully, God hears our cries for help and restores the garden to the world. Remember, that in the creation story the garden of Eden is not the entire world; it is the place in the world where God dwells. So it is in the world to come. Eden is not the whole world, but the location of God's dwelling.

Jesus is said to be the messiah, because his followers see in him shekinah , the glorious presence of God. The shekinah was thought to be in the Temple, but Jesus claims to be the true Temple. With the gift of Holy Spirit in baptism, we are joined to the true Temple; we become the Temple in which God dwells. Our vocation is to be the garden of Eden in the world so that God dwelling in us reigns the entire cosmos. God's glorious presence, shekinah, is no longer constrained to one geographic location, but now dwells in the garden of Eden that is dispersed throughout the world. When we are the garden of Eden, the world is restored; all of creation lives in peace, wholeness, and harmony known as shalom.

I have a fancy theological phrase to describe the vocational nature of the gospel by which we participate in God's reigning. I call it "collaborative eschatology." This term means that God restores the olam haba -- the world to come --through our whole lives dedicated to Jesus' mission.

Evangelism, then, means sharing the message with people: "Don't you realize Holy Spirit is your life force, so who you are is the person in whom God reigns the entire cosmos?! Come, then, and be transformed into who you really are." In other words, evangelism is helping people recognize the gift Jesus gives them so they can be who they are: dwelling in God's glorious presence and God dwelling in them for the sake of the world.

Evangelism is sharing the news that a new age -- a new world, the olam haba -- is here, and it's coming through you in the tikkun olam, the world's restoration. To use a simple illustration, evangelism is telling the good news to coworkers, neighbors, friends, party goers, and all people: "The long night is over. The sun is dawning to shatter the darkness. It is not yet at its brightest and warmest, but already we can see the sun's light and warm up in its glow. OPEN YOUR EYES! The fields are ready for us to harvest. Get with the program and join the feast."