The Violence of the Christian Life #dmingml

You can imagine my surprise when Jason Clark, lead mentor for the Global Missional Leadership DMin track, asked us to listen to a sermon he gave to the Vineyard Church in Sutton, London. Clark planted the church in 1997 while he was an investment broker in London. On the surface, one can understand not seeing the connection. On the otherhand, the focus of his investments has merely changed from funds to people, from the temporal to the eternal. While there are times we naturally question the validity and implications of the eternal in our day to day activities, they don't seem as far removed as they once might have been, given the uncertainties and instability of our world.

One of the primary objectives of a mentor is to stretch his students. Clark is a master of this. I have read more widely these past six months on a range of topics that I never once contemplated I would be interested in. I have consumed both historical and modern texts related to the Protestant work ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Weber), radical community activism (Alinsky), transformational models of international development (Myers), economic and social changes of the 19th and 20th Century (Polanyi), a culture consumed with pleasure & leisure (Erdozain) and sport (Hoffman). A subtle thread (and sometimes not so subtle) that Clark weaves throughout the online interactive discussions is the concept and reality of consumerism. How it influences, intrudes and sometimes masters key lifestyle and life changing decisions.

Anyway, back to the sermon. Firstly, what strikes me is the title. One could expect an historical reflection on the 'Christian' Crusades. But no, this was not what it was about. Or, perhaps we would think that a title like this could be coined by someone trying to discredit the Christian faith, rather than entice people to intelligently consider it. Herein lies a significant truth for Clark. While he does want people to consider why a personal relationship with God is a remarkable thing, he wants people to be clear that this is markedly different from going into a supermarket and weighing up whether or not you want to buy something. He wants people to understand that should they decide they want God to be central to their lives, there are forces in our culture that are constantly at work to prevent this reality.

As we approach Easter, both the secular and the sacred are familiar with the bloody story of Christ being falsely accused, beaten, having flesh torn from his body, and then cruely hammered onto a cross and left to die. This is the epitomy of violence. But this does not represent a call to violence, but rather a recognition of violence to God himself.

Similarly, Clark holds up the example of the Apostle Paul, who prior to being stopped in his tracks by a blinding light, was on his way to persecute Jews who were giving their allegiance to Christ - who the religious leaders of the day despised! But let's press on. Clark goes on to say that the very essence of the word "persecute" is what Paul now uses in relation to how he devotes his own life to Christ. In the same way that his hatred of the Jews who had turned to Christ, had brought about an intensity and destructive force in his life, he now says, that same intensity and force or pressure he devotes to pursuing a relationship with Christ.

What Clark is wanting us to understand is, that the enjoyment of God necessitates a spiritual intensity or aggressiveness that needs to take hold of us so that whatever may distract us or prevent us from achieving this goal is absolutely and thoroughly thwarted. There is so much more to say here, but if you want to listen to the sermon yourself, just click on the link. Clark does a much better job at articulating this than me. - 

In finishing, I would be remiss if I failed to point out that we deal with forces in this world that Clark would say are violently and forcefully at work to destroy what we value. We love our children, but can see that they must content with many destructive and negative influences. Marriages become vulnerable and susceptible to affairs and addictions when unhealthy behaviours are allowed to linger. The material comforts and physical pleasures of this world have a tendency to superficially fill a void in our lives in such a way that we are convinced spirituality has become redundant, and perhaps worse, we wonder if it ever really existed.

In the same way that this Easter we reflect on the violence of the cross, Clark contends that real freedom only comes when God violently seizes us and rescues us from all that is destructive, negative and critical, and all the more when we cannot see those things because we have become blinded by the comforts and pleasures we consume. And then once we are rescued, in turn, we violently protect what we have discovered against whatever it is that would take it from us.

I hope this is the last sermon Clark asks me to listen to for quite a while. It's a little easier to pick up a text on economics! :)