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SHALOM IS EASY TO SAY AND HARD TO DO

For some six thousand years, God has been waiting for His people, His Church, to simply demonstrate heaven's plan. Feeding the hungry. Drinks for the thirsty. Clothes for the naked, homes for the homeless, visits for the prisoner. Does He delay His coming until we finally get it right?

I guess there's an unavoidable flipside to the gospel question we've been wrestling with all week. On the positive side of the fence, it's become clear that kind, generous Christians whose faith in God has led them to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and visit the prisoners are on their way to heavenly mansions.

"Come, you who are blessed by My Father," says Jesus, the righteous Judge. "Take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world."

The hard half of the equation is this, then: do mean, stingy people — who ignore the poor in their midst, who mind their own business when a New York City stalker stabs a nurse 50 times while she's screaming for help — do they end up going to hell? And it appears, if we accept the transcript of Matthew 25, that the answer is yes again.

"Then He [Jesus] will say to them, ‘Depart from Me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.'"

Well, we want to stay away from Destination #2, and we'll return to the "how" in a moment. But we want to grapple today with a larger question, which is this: Why, in a Christian gospel of grace, is such an emphasis put on this story? This legalistic "cups of water" story? We've already tried to understand and accept that a true Christian, one who has real faith — not just words, not just show, not just pretend — will actually do what Jesus says. Follow His example. Obey His commandments. Adhere to the objectives and Magna Carta of His kingdom. So grace is still alive as we head toward home.

We found a marvelous story in former President Jimmy Carter's recent book, Living Faith. He relates a wonderful experience where he and others helped touch literally millions of lives for some of the truly "least of these My brethren."

The story involves guinea worm, which is a nasty parasite infecting people in India, Pakistan, Yemen, and about 19 countries in Africa. When people in poverty-stricken villages drink from infested water, the eggs from the guinea worm get inside them, incubate, and within a year are producing two-foot-long worms! Can you imagine that? These parasites then sting their victim from the inside, and then ooze their way out through the sore they create.

So of course, the suffering person wades into a cool stream to get some relief, the worm immediately lays more eggs, and here we go again.

So President Carter and others began to look around for some good neighbors. What could be done? One plan of attack is to drill what they call "borehole" wells, which are free of the infestation. There's also a chemical called Abate, which kills off the eggs. In addition, there's a fine-mesh fabric, a filter cloth — unfortunately quite expensive — which can strain out the eggs and give you potable water.

Well, Carter approached Edgar Bronfman, a major owner of the DuPont Corporation. His board of directors convened and decided to develop a fiber and donate all the cloth that would be needed. All free. Then Carter got with an executive named Lanty Smith; his company, Precision Fabrics, agreed to do the weaving of the fabric — also all free. A corporation named American Cyanamid said, "As long as everyone's in the charity business, we'll throw in a worldwide supply of this Abate chemical."

What's the bottom line? All these projects kicked in back in 1988; within seven years cases of guinea worm had dropped from 3.5 million to less than 130,000.

"I went to DuPont headquarters," Carter writes in his book, "to report on our progress, where President Ed Woolard and about 600 top managers, scientists, and salesmen were assembled under a large tent. When I thanked them for their gift and showed a brief film demonstrating its almost miraculous results, most of them were weeping — and so was I."

What do you make of that? It's a great story, but friend, is this how people get to heaven? By fighting guinea worm?

We've mentioned Chuck Colson and Nancy Pearcey already this week, and the entire thrust of their exceptional book, How Now Shall We Live?, is that Christianity is a "worldview." The Christian faith, they write, is NOT simply a plan to get you and me to heaven. I mean, it IS that . . . but it's so much more. The Calvary message saves; it promises eternal life. But the Christian message is also a blueprint for the 6,000 years we've spent on this rotten old planet. And for however many years there are left before Jesus comes to bring it all to an end.

And as we read these stories by Jesus, we discover that God's people aren't simply looking for the first spaceship out of here. We're here to also bring healing to the sick, and food to the hungry, and hope to the discouraged. We're here to be involved in politics, making bad governments better and totalitarian regimes into peace-loving, people-valuing kingdoms. We're here to demonstrate to the entire world that the Sermon on the Mount is a formula that works, that the Golden Rule is valid, that "turn the other cheek" isn't just a bit of poetry for patsies.

Here's a special paragraph from Colson's essay on the matter:

"Shalom refers to peace in a positive sense," he writes, "the result of a rightly ordered community. . . . The Bible teaches that we are not autonomous individuals. Instead, we are created in the image of the One who in His very essence is a community of being — that is, the Trinity. God's very nature is reciprocal love and communication among the persons of the Trinity." And notice this concluding line, with its shades of cups-of-water and prison visits: "We were created as inherently communal beings, and the God-ordained institutions of society make rightful, normative demands that we are morally obligated to fulfill."

Friend, I'd like to suggest that hiding in the core of this sheep-and-goats story is the powerful reality that the entire history of this planet is simply God's cosmic experiment, or demonstration, to a watching universe regarding this blueprint. God is saying: "Here's the formula. Love. Caring. Unselfishness. Generosity. Putting others first." All through the Old Testament, that was actually the mandated plan. There were rules — you can read them for yourself — about how to treat the poor. How to care for the widows. The great hero Job had it down pat. In chapter 31 of his long lament, he is able to say this:

"But no stranger had to spend the night in the street, for my door was always open to the traveler."

In the New Testament, it was the plan again. Jesus preached it over and over. The early Christian church demonstrated it. Paul, often a lonely prisoner, wrote in his second letter to Timothy:

"May the Lord show mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, because he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains."

And for 2,000 years — with many ups and downs, with many successes and many failures — the Church has continued to struggle and stumble its way through this matter of caring for others. Sometimes we've done it; sometimes we've failed. Sometimes we roll up our sleeves and help solve the guinea worm challenge and donate to Teen Challenge and help fight global warming; sometimes we look the other way and do our own selfish thing. Sheep and goats.

You know, when you get right down to it and ask the question, "What is Jesus waiting for? Why doesn't He come?", you have to point to this story. If it were just a case of Christ deciding who should be saved or lost, that would take Him very little time. He knows who are His; He knows if you're on His side, if you're loyal. But is it possible that He's waiting, waiting, holding out a bit longer so that the Body of Christ, the community of believers, can still more fully answer this question, "How Now Shall We Live?"

Go back with me to the reward phase of this story. Christian commentator R. T. France points to the tragic end of these who are lost. They enter into a fire that isn't even intended for them!

"The cursed are going to a fate that was not meant to be theirs!" he writes.

Listen, friend. Hellfire was never meant to be a destination for human beings. From the very beginning, God intended that His children would live by this Golden Rule of generosity, of caring for one another. That was the hallmark of Eden, where a man WAS his brother's keeper. You have to deliberately step outside God's plan before you end up sharing in Lucifer's retirement plan instead.

By the same token, notice how God's faithful "sheep" are rewarded.

"Come," says this proud King to His good subjects. "Come, you who are blessed by My Father; take your inheritance" — now notice this — "the kingdom prepared for you SINCE THE CREATION OF THIS WORLD!"

Isn't this an exciting truth! God has had this plan in place since before He made this world! He planned the reward for the sheep of this story before He ever created a single sheep! He began preparing mansions, heavenly homes, for those who would unselfishly share their earthly homes before Adam and Eve even had a home. He created the River of Life for you and me to drink from centuries before the first Christian ever offered his neighbor a drink. This plan of "Love your neighbor" was carved in the halls of heaven when Planet Earth was just a twinkle in the Creator's eye.

So, I say to you in closing, Shalom. Get out there, friend, and make some Shalom happen.