For the messages I was speaking at different youth and cell groups in our last Asian location I borrowed a lot (probably all) of my notes from sermons given by my young adults pastor Jeff Bucknam (you can listen to the podcasts at sola.com). Hopefully he takes that as a compliment and doesn’t try to sue me. What follows is a condensed version of what I found myself sharing:
How did 12 men, in only 400 years, change the entire Roman empire and, as a result, the entire world? This is the (paraphrased) question that the sociologist Rodney Stark asks in his book ‘Rise of Christianity.’ In it (I’m told) he attempts to answer this question through a sociological study of Rome. After all the information is laid out and the different arguments presented, he eventually comes to the conclusion that all the sociology in the world won’t answer the question, because the basic fact was this – Christians lived differently.
See, the Romans believed in gods that didn’t care one bit for human life, in gods that would as soon strike a man with lightning for kicks as show any kind of kindness. As a result the Romans didn’t care much for human life either, pitting people in life or death battles against each other or vicious animals in the arenas or even flushing their baby girls down the sewer because they wanted a son and didn’t want to raise another child. But here are the Christians preaching a loving God and asking to care for those unwanted children, valuing every life as a precious one. And on top of all that, there’s the way they handled possessions: All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had….There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need. Acts 4:32, 34-35
The early church members got the gospel in a way that I think we’ve lost touch with today. They understood that the God of the universe – who spans the heavens with a single hand’s breadth, commands the seas that they come this far and no further, who calls every star out by name, who SPOKE LIGHT and LIFE ITSELF into existence – gave up ALL of that control and power to become a baby that couldn’t control so much as a bowel movement. He placed Himself in the care of a 14 year old virgin for food, clothes, personal hygiene, all of it, because He loves you that much. Then He lived a life of servitude and died a horrible death in order to restore a relationship with you that had been lost since man ate the forbidden fruit in the garden. The early church understood that THAT was the level to which God loved them. So when Jesus said ‘Love each other. As I have loved you, so you must love one another,’ it set one heck of an example to strive after. What is a field or a house or a car or an ipod or ‘future planning’ when compared to following God with absolutely everything I’ve got? They are perishable, mortal, rotten nothingness.
How did 12 people change the Roman empire and the known world? By living differently. By making their community their testimony. By standing out. Living for each other showed the world what unconditional love truly was, and people needed that then as much as they need it today. If you truly want to start changing this world, we all have to start living for each other the radical ways God commands us to, and it’s really hard to do it. But it’s also a fire that doesn’t get put out easily once it gets going.
The last time I shared that message, I suddenly clued into why it was so important for my particular audience and started challenging people to step up and create the community God calls His people to be. It’s the first time I’ve ever had my audience start tearing up during a message. See, all those things that the Romans did are happening to some degree or another right there in that country I was in. Children are tossed out and abandoned by their families, there is no value set on life or a higher power, and as such everyone is merely living for themselves. If the Christian community would start living the way they are called to live (and this applies to everywhere in the world today), they would stick out like a white guy in rural Cambodia. And when that fire gets started and a country of a billion people start seeing what God’s unconditional love really looks like in His people they’ll start asking the right questions about life. And then we’re going to see what it was like in the Roman Empire 1600 years ago:
The world will irreversibly change forever.
