Why "Tell It" Doesn't Say Enough

Deuteronomy 6:4-9
Matthew 11:2-6

Eastwood Christian Church|
Nashville, Tennessee
July 10, 2011

My grandmother was a faithful churchgoer, a member of the Bloomfield Christian Church in Bloomfield, Iowa for at least 60 years.  But when she quoted Scripture, it was often more Benjamin Franklin than the prophet Isaiah or the Apostle Paul.  I lived with her off and on while growing up, so her quotations were often aimed at me.  “As the Bible says, ‘Cleanliness is next to godliness.’”  “As the Bible says, ‘God helps those who help themselves’” – which, I don’t need to tell you, is the opposite of grace. 

Grandma was still alive when I was ordained, and I remember her saying to me, “I always knew you’d be a preacher so you can ‘go tell it on the mountain,’ like the Bible says.” 

Well…no.  That’s not a verse from the Bible; but, in this case, the sentiment is right. Christians, those who confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, have received good news – very good news – that the Creator of all that is loves even us, to the point of “being born in human likeness,” in order that we might be reconciled to God and one another, our sinful brokenness healed that we might be a healing presence to others.  And those  who have heard such news simply must … tell it! 

Why, then, has evangelism, telling the good news, become practically a four-letter word in many mainline churches?  The National Council of Churches has a policy statement on evangelism which puts the matter rather baldly:  “Christians today seem to lack the facility or the willingness to exclaim with excitement, ‘Jesus loves me; therefore, I love you’”!  This policy statement was written in the 1970s, so I recently called for it to be updated and was met with not-so-passive resistance.  “Why do this now?  It will be a distraction from our agenda.”  “It will upset our interfaith partners.”  What this tells me is that we need to think more clearly about why and how we “tell it.” 

There are three things I would like us to consider regarding this assembly theme. 

1.                  If we are going to “tell it,” then we need to know what it is we are telling.  My grandmother is a pretty benign case; we can smile at her confusion.  But, in a deeper sense, she represents the tendency to fill a void left by a lack of real biblical education with culturally-shaped prejudices, often designed to protect the interests of those with power and resources.  I once had a politician tell me that, according to the Bible, religion and politics don’t mix! That would be news to the prophets, among  others.  So, no, the Bible doesn’t say that.  But those who  have most of the marbles would like us to think it does. 

I was recently at a meeting of the American Bible Society where I met the head of the Barna Research Group (whose name is David Kinnaman – no relation).  Barna had just completed another of its periodic studies of biblical literacy which found that 2/3 of American adults still believe the Bible is the inspired word of God, but 50% of Americans, including Christians, can’t name the first book of the Bible or any of the four gospels. 

I don’t mean to poke fun at anyone in particular, because the point is that all of us stand indicted.  The Bible, in our culture, is treated as a kind of icon, a sacred object, often without much knowledge of its contents – which is a dangerous combination because that’s when the Bible gets used as a club to beat up on ideological opponents.  My grandmother knew for a fact that her messy neighbors were an abomination to God, because, as the Bible says, “Cleanliness is next to godliness.” 

As followers of Jesus Christ, we need to commit ourselves to serious, sustained engagement with Scripture.  We need, in the words of Deuteronomy, to recite it to our children and write it on our doorposts – because the church will not realize its own identity or be able to tell the gospel to an idolatrous society until we reclaim the language of biblical faith. 

At the meetings of the American Bible Society, I get to know people I wouldn’t otherwise meet, including the head of a conservative denomination who said to me, “It’s great you’re here because some of us have never heard liberals (read, social activists) emphasize the Bible.”  And I wanted to scream, “Were you not listening to the language of Dr. King?”!  The Bible is a radical book that has inspired liberation around the world!  And liberation, from everything that holds us in bondage, isn’t a liberal agenda or a conservative agenda; it’s a biblical agenda.  Liberals and conservatives in the church ought to stop fighting each other long enough to recognize that our common concern is with those who act as if  “Look out for number one” or “It doesn’t get any better than this” were biblical truths.  So my first point:  If we are going to tell good news, we need to learn again together the story we are to tell. 

2.                  We usually speak of evangelism, of “telling it,” in terms of what we say – verbal proclamation.   But I suspect it is clear to everyone here that we “tell” the good news of Jesus Christ not only by what we say but by what we do.  

The best example I can think of is the Amish community’s response to the murder in 2006 of their school children in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  Do you remember it?  By reaching out to the killer’s widow, they proclaimed the word of God’s radical forgiveness far better than a thousand sermons.  

But, again, it is important to get the story straight.  Remember our reading from Matthew 11:  Go and tell John what you see and hear that God is doing: Through the power of God, the blind can see, lepers are cleansed, the poor hear good news.  We proclaim what God is doing, and we demonstrate the credibility of our proclamation by actively participating in this mission of God.  Remember Psalm 146:  God executes justice for the oppressed.  God gives food to the hungry.  God watches over strangers.  God upholds the orphan and the widow.  And we declare this good news by making God’s agenda our own. 

But let’s push this further.  I want to suggest that we tell the story of salvation not only by what we say or by what we do, but also by what we are, by the way we live with one another as the body of Christ. 

This, or course, is the very heart of the ecumenical movement in which Disciples have played such a major role.  I’ll put it in the form of a question:  How can Christians proclaim with a straight face that Jesus is the Prince of Peace when we are so often at war with one another?  The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said that he might believe in their Redeemer, if only Christ’s followers looked more redeemed!  The world might believe that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, if only his followers looked more reconciled. 

The church is called in Scripture to be an embodied message, the body of Christ in the world.  And the fragmentation of the church, whether we intend it or not, declares to others that the love of Jesus is not strong enough to hold us together across the divisions of human society. 

3.                  This brings us to my third point, and the toughest issue – our relationship to interfaith neighbors.  The first thing to say is probably obvious to most of you:  Our Jewish and Muslim and Hindu friends want us to be who we are.  Last Sunday, I was speaking at the convention of the Islamic Society of North America (which, by the way, brings together some 35,000 Muslims each year for education and fellowship); and, as always, they made it clear that they expected me to tell boldly what I believe.  If we don’t come to interfaith dialogue as committed Christians or Muslims, why bother?

The issue, of course, is how we tell it.  As those who have nothing to learn or as witnesses to the one who is always greater than we can grasp?  I love the way that the great missionary/evangelist, Lesslie Newbigin, once put it:  “There is something deeply wrong when Christians imagine that loyalty to Jesus requires them to belittle the manifest presence of the light in the lives of men and women who do not acknowledge him…. If we love the light and walk in the light, we  will also rejoice in the light wherever we find it” – and leave questions of who is saved “to the wise mercy of God.” 

The World Council of Churches wrestled with this issue for decades and finally offered the following statement:  “We cannot point to any other way of salvation than Jesus Christ; at the same time, we cannot set limits to the saving power of God…We appreciate the tension [between these claims] and do not attempt to resolve it.”  As I read Scripture, it also lives with this tension – as has our Disciples tradition.  To rewrite our historic claim:  “We are God’s people only, but not God’s only people.”   

Martin Marty, well known church historian, once wrote that the problem with the church in this country is that those who are committed aren’t civil and those who are civil aren’t committed.  I hope we will go from this service, from this General Assembly, determined to prove him wrong!  It may be the greatest challenge we face as church:  to be passionate about a faith that isn’t exclusive.  We have good news to tell – not that God loves only us, but even us.  We have good news to tell – that God is God and we aren’t, that we worship and follow the One who is far greater than we alone can ever tell.  This is very good news; and I pray that we will tell it from our doorsteps to the ends of the earth.

Michael Kinnamon
General Secretary
National Council of Churches