Impractical

Jesus did not set out to be successful, certainly not by doing what is usually considered practical. Instead, he was resolved to be true to his Father’s love and to show everyone that we are loved by a tenacious God who will not give up on anyone. This was the healing good news that he proclaimed about God’s reign.

Practicality, on the other hand, is most often determined by tangible results. Jesus would likely have been far more successful if he had attempted to be the messiah that people were looking for, or the one they wanted. But wait, what is impractical about talking about love?

Here’s the problem: saying that everything comes down to love, and love isn’t love until we love our enemies, is not what anyone wants to hear. In Jesus’ day the self-righteous did not want to accept sinners, and Jews didn’t want to to love Samaritans and gentiles. But that was the kingdom into which all were invited.

I suspect many people today would suggest that I am positing a false choice, that we can proclaim his message and still be practical. The church can be what people want, meeting their expectations, while also staying true to Christ in the ways he was impractical. We should not be surprised by the suggestion because compromise is practicality’s sibling, and Jesus was not practical nor compromising.

Still, one might argue that Jesus was ultimately successful. A person might point to the number of Christians in the world today and say that his approach has proven to be practical, not impractical.

Really? What do we see today? Do most Christians love all people including their enemies, or do many accept, if not advocate, violence, war, and the abusive treatment of others for practical reasons?

Too often the church today has made common cause with worldly powers and their methods. We have tried to suppress Jesus’ own obstinate, prophetic, impractical, and uncompromising stance on love, so that we might have influence and power in these worldly systems. We have agreed to bless the present powers in their ungodliness if they give us space in their kingdoms.

The choice to be expedient, altering the radical and impractical love that Jesus actually modeled, in order to be more successful and acceptable to other lords and masters, is always tempting. But hope still exists, because the Spirit Jesus promised continues to be an ultimately unsuppressable fire in our bones. We can only quench its fire for so long. Our finite efforts to still the restless Spirit of the infinite God will finally give way to revival again.

The hope of the church is not in its institutions, its numbers, its seat at the table with the world’s powers, or the number of elected officials giving lip service to a Lord they do not attempt to actually follow. The coming of the Kingdom of God remains certain because our God is a consuming fire (Hebrews 12:29).

If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire. Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? 1 Corinthians 3:15-16

The God of love is present in the unrelenting flames of the Spirit which will burn away all our foolish chaff. The church, despite its sin of doing what is expedient, can be saved nonetheless. The Fire which is the Spirit within us, is the hope for our salvation. The holy ashes will be a testimony to God’s persistence.