For many people, the church has not shared or offered good news. It has been persistently judgmental, accepting only people who fit a certain idealized “norm,” too moralizing, and too demanding. Churches often require adherence to inconsistent behavioral standards, affirmations of beliefs that must be accepted as unquestionable, promote values which sometimes are at odds with Jesus’ own words, and often seem focused on people only for supporting, funding, and serving the organization.
One might say churches can strain at a gnat and swallow a camel, can be whitewashed on the outside and inside full of bones, and bind heavy burdens on people. In other words, churches today can have all the problems Jesus identified about the religion of his day.
We must remember that the good news was never about the church as an organization, an institution. The person of Jesus is central to the announcement of the gospel, and his news is that the One he knows as his loving and merciful Father is near to his children. He claims that the eternal life of God, the reign of heaven, has come to earth.
Within this divine economy, judgment is forbidden, acceptance of one another is mandatory, and belief is about trusting the love of the Father, not about believing a set of propositions. Jesus gives rest rather than heaping burdens upon his followers.
All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:27-28
Jesus said that only he himself knows the Father, no one else. Is he exaggerating? Did not the people of his day, who had centuries of tradition and their sacred writings, even more Hebrew Scriptures than we have Christian ones today, know God? How could they not know the Father?
Still, this is his claim. No one knows the Father except Jesus, and those to whom he desires to reveal him. To whom does Jesus want to reveal his Father? Anyone and everyone willing to hear the good news!
It is no accident that in these two verses the very next words of Jesus are his invitation to come to him, the one who can reveal the Father, so that we may receive rest. Relief from religious institutions and traditions that are judgmental, exclusionary, and accept only those who behave the best. Release from organizations which make demands on their members in order to stay in the good favor of a God who is not at all like the Father Jesus knows and reveals. This is rest indeed for those wearied by religion!
We don’t need more church, we need more Jesus! We don’t need more religion, we need more life! We need more of the gospel of freedom and participation with God in and through his love, not more obligations which increase the number of things we need to do when we are already overwhelmed. We need more of the rest Jesus offered from lifeless religion which conceals the Father, rather than reveals him.