Matthew’s Gospel offers a simple sentence summary of Jesus’ message: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (or “is at hand”). Some Jesus scholars think of him as a Jewish apocalyptic prophet announcing the imminent arrival of God’s rule of peace and justice imagined by the Hebrew prophets. Others see Jesus primarily as a Jewish mystic and the kingdom primarily as a spiritual reality that followers of Jesus experience by faithfully assimilating and embodying the values and virtues of Jesus. Personally, I see no reason to choose. I think he was both a prophet who envisioned God’s dream for a world of justice and peace, and a mystic who believed the Divine Presence was both without and within pervading all of life.
I see the call to repent as an invitation to change our priorities, adjust our thinking, nurture compassion, and embody divine love so that we can experience the Divine Presence (“Abba”) now and participate in God’s will which God wants done on earth as it is in heaven. Participation in God’s will confronts and challenges all the destructive “isms” we get caught up in — racism, sexism, militarism, nationalism, materialism, exceptionalism, and egotism. The call to repent is nothing less than a call to allow the Divine Love to permeate our mind, soul, heart and body so that our lives become channels and conduits through whom the Divine Love can flow.
I define religious conversion as the divine-human process that transforms one into a more loving person. I define Christian conversion as the divine-human process that transforms a person into someone who loves like Jesus. The only difference between religious conversion in general and Christian conversion in particular is that Jesus is our reference point and goal. We Christians see in the life of Jesus a definitive revelation of God’s love. So our goal is to love like Jesus. But any good, genuine conversion is always about nurturing and developing our human capacity to love. A good conversion is about loving better and loving broader.
By loving better, I mean that we are able to love the people we already love with greater intensity, passion, sacrifice and loyalty. By loving broader, I mean that we are able to extend and expand our love beyond our little circle of family and friends or our kind of people. The broadness of Divine Love is hinted at in the very text that gives us this summary of Jesus’ message. Matthew’s Gospel tells us that Jesus goes to the “Galilee of the Gentiles” to preach the gospel of the kingdom in fulfillment of Isaiah (Matt 3:15). Gentiles make it into the genealogy of Jesus in chapter 1 and in chapter 2 Gentiles described as magi from the east come bearing gifts to pay homage to the infant Jesus. Though Jesus’ primary ministry was to his own people and nation, it is clear that he did not exclude others. He intended his people to love outside their limited boundaries. So when we come to the end of Matthew’s story the risen Christ charges the disciples to take the good news to all nations and peoples.
A powerful illustration of what it means to love broader comes from an experience Will Campbell recounts in his autobiography, Brother to a Dragonfly. His friend, civil rights worker Jonathan Daniels, had just been gunned down in cold blood by volunteer deputy sheriff Thomas Coleman. Will was livid with grief and rage over Jonathan’s murder.
In the aftermath of that tragic event Will’s agnostic friend P.D. East reminded Will of a conversation they had years earlier. In that conversation P.D. had challenged Will to give him a definition of the Christian faith in 10 words or less.
How would you define the gospel in 10 words or less? Will Campbell in his colorful way defined it thusly: We are all bastards, but God loves us anyway. That’s what he said to his agnostic friend. His friend now decided to challenge Will’s succinct definition of the gospel. P.D. tore into Will: “Was Jonathan a bastard?” he asked. Will commented on how Jonathan was one of the sweetest, most gentle guys he had ever known. P.D. pressed on. His tone almost a scream: “But was he a bastard?” Will knew that P.D. had him cornered. So Will finally conceded. “Yes,” he said. P.D. came firing back: “All right. Is Thomas Coleman a bastard?” That was easy. “Yes, Thomas Coleman is a bastard,” said Will. P.D. said: “Okay, let me get this straight … Jonathan Daniels was a bastard. Thomas Colman is a bastard. … Which of these two bastards do you think God loves the most? Does God love that little dead bastard Jonathan the most? Or does God love the living bastard Thomas the most?”
Will says that the truth of the gospel hit him with conversion force. It was a “coming to Jesus’ moment. Will was overcome with emotion. He found himself weeping and laughing simultaneously. Will says to P.D.: “Damn, brother, if you haven’t went and made a Christian out of me.”
What was Will saying when he said that? He was saying to P.D, “You have helped me to see what it means to love like Jesus.” You have helped me see how deep and wide, how better and broad is the love of God. God’s love even extends to those who have nurtured hate instead of love. It extends to murderers and terrorists. To those driven by their prejudices and biases. God doesn’t give up on any one.
God keeps reaching out to all of us — to turn us away from our hate and greed and egotism. God keeps trying to convert us, to win us over to love and grace and compassion. God keeps fishing for people hoping to catch some with the net of divine love, and God calls us to go fishing too (Matt. 3:19). We are the lures God uses to draw people into God’s net of love. Follow me, says Jesus to every would-be disciple, and I will teach you how to catch people with love.
The gospel of the kingdom is a gospel that challenges those of us on the left and on the right. For those on the left the temptation is to reduce the gospel to social causes. Now, make no mistake, the gospel is about the healing of our world in its totality. It’s about social change so that the structures and systems of society become more just, fair and redemptive. Of course, our systems and structures are only as good as the people who run them. And it may be easier for some of us to invest in some social cause than it is to love well the people right in front of us, especially those who are against our cause.
For those on the right the temptation is to make the gospel about some judicial arrangement to magically remit the penalty of our sins and offer heaven in its place. If that’s all the gospel is then why even worry about the hard task of loving others and working for the common good? Why even worry about justice for the downtrodden or lifting up the oppressed, if the gospel is just about believing the right things and going to heaven when we die.
The gospel of the kingdom, the gospel of Jesus is about love. It’s about loving God and loving all of God’s children, which includes our enemies as well as our friends. It’s about loving better the people we know and care about, and it’s about loving broader so that we extend this love to people we may not like and those we don’t even know.
This conversion to love is never ending. We never arrive. It’s a process and a journey that is ongoing. It’s an adventure in growing and learning how to love better and to love broader. It’s all about learning how to love like Jesus.