The Way of Jesus 19.0

To have Mike Frost with us.

Mike is hails from Sydney, but he ministers all over the place.

Mike is, he has been known as a leading Australian thinker, theologian teacher

on the mission of Jesus and the Church, and in our series that we've been talking

about, uncovering the way of Jesus.

The way of mission, super important, super important to be considering, how

did Jesus go, our mission, and how do we participate in that same mission

as we seek the kingdom of God together and make a difference in our world.

if you don't know, Mike has written, I think, up to 19 books.

Is that Mike?

Is that right?

I've lost count.

He is lost count.

So if you do wanna find out more, jump on the internet, check out what he's written.

And, this is one of his kind of, this is his topic he likes to speak on, so

it's gonna be great because it's not just, he's been studying this for two

weeks, like, like a normal pastor.

He's been studying this all his life.

So I'm really looking forward to hearing, from him tonight.

And I want you to make him feel welcome because he's, heading

back to Sydney tomorrow.

And we're blessed to have him at Red Door.

Please make him feel welcome.

I might, read the lyrics, for one from, one of my favorite songs to you.

it's actually, it is actually a revolutionary kind of song.

It's a song that was sung by Mary when she discovered that she

was pregnant with the Messiah.

it comes from Luke, chapter one and.

It is intense.

There's no question about it.

so let me just read this.

This is Luke chapter one, first verse 46, down to 55.

My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my savior.

Remember, she's a, a peasant, teenage pregnant girl.

this prayer is just remarkable.

My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God, my

savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.

From now on, all generations will call me.

Blessed for the mighty one has done great things for me.

Holy is his name.

His mercy extends to those who fear him from generation to generation.

He has performed mighty deeds with his arm.

He has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.

He's brought down rulers from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble.

He has filled the hungry with good things, but sent the rich away empty.

He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham

and his descendants forever and ever, just as he promised to our ancestors.

Now folks, this is actually one of the most band songs in history.

I'll give you a couple of examples.

In Argentina in the 1970s, a military junta took over and military dictatorship,

its totalitarian regime, took over the running of Argentina and they were brutal.

They were absolutely brutal.

They were brook, no criticism whatsoever.

And whereas you may have heard of communist countries and fascist regimes.

You know when anyone criticizes 'em, they arrest them, they put them on trial,

they make up lies, they bring in false witnesses and they send 'em off to Siberia

or the salt mines or some such place.

But the Argentine military didn't wanna be bothered with any of that.

So anyone they perceived to be a critic of theirs, they would like

literally simply disappear them.

You'd be walking to work, you'd be walking home from work, you'd be walking

the dog, you'd be going shopping, and the secret police would pull up,

bundle you into their van, drive you out of the city, shoot you, and dump

you in the river or in the jungle.

Thousands of people would disappeared in this way.

In fact, today they're known as the disappeared.

Could you imagine your dad, your brother, your son, your sister,

your grandfather simply gone.

You go to the local police, they can do nothing.

They would do nothing anyway.

Never will you see them again?

Absolutely gone.

I can't imagine the terror of that.

Could you, unspeakable

1977.

I. They had pretty much, disappeared.

All the student activists, all the trade union leaders, all the, journalists

and politicians who might criticize them, they had no critics left.

They ruled with an iron fist.

But in 1977, a group of mothers women whose sons had been disappeared, walked

down to the big central square in AIS areas, which is called the plaza de.

And they stood there dressed in mourning because they were grieving

mothers, and they held in their hands framed photographs of their

sons who had been disappeared.

They didn't host a rally, they didn't yell, they didn't hold placards, they

didn't march through the streets.

There were no speakers.

These women grieving mothers stood in silent vigil wanting the

world to see their sons who had been disappeared by this regime.

Occasionally they would burst into a, a funeral dge, and regularly they

would sing an old South American hymn using the words of Luke chapter one.

Catholics would refer to this as the Magnificat.

We call it the Song of Mary.

And soon more mothers started to join them.

And then brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles all standing

there largely silent, occasionally singing, holding these photographs.

Bearing witness.

Even this totalitarian regime figured it was just going too far to sweep

in and arrest grieving mothers.

And in fact, there's no law against standing in a plaza holding a picture

of your son or daughter or relative.

And so they invented a rule to try to stop this movement.

They banned the singing of the Magnificat.

Anyone sings the words of Luke chapter one, you'll be arrested

and disappeared yourself.

I tell you what folks, that part of scripture is dangerous

when dictators wanna ban it.

Being sung a generation before that in 1933, in another totalitarian

regime, another fascist regime, in fact, in Nazi Germany.

A pastor named Dietrich Bonhoeffer stood up to preach on Advent Sunday.

I'm speaking about a passage that's usually not kind of preached on

until, the end of November, but we're advanced here at the red door.

and, they, he, part of his sermon was to, to say, the following.

He says, the Song of Mary is the oldest Advent hymn.

It is at once the most passionate.

The wildest one might even say the most revolutionary advent hymn ever sung.

This is not the gentle tender dreamy Mary who we often or

sometimes see in paintings.

This song has none of the sweet, nostalgic, or even playful tones

of some of our Christmas carols.

Instead, it is a hard, strong, inexorable song.

About the power of God and the powerlessness of humankind,

and I dunno why.

Why we don't sing this song.

Where's John Dixon when we need him?

This is our song.

What does she sing about this little poor, pregnant, peasant girl?

Sings about God bringing down the rulers from their thrones, inverting,

the whole power structure of the world as we know it, and elevating lifting

up the poor and the hungry folks.

She was the most powerless person you can kind of imagine.

A teenage girl, a peasant girl.

In some far-flung country, some, some distant part of a far-flung country in

Nazareth, like she's a nobody of nobodies.

Who does she think she is filled with?

The spirit of God.

She dares to imagine.

But because of what is growing within my belly, a day will come when dictators,

where the narcissists, where the bullies, where the strong and the

powerful and the controlling and the violent are brought down, and where

the poor and the marginalized and the ignored and the hungry are lifted up.

Like she's imagining a whole new way of being human, a whole new kind of society.

These rulers will be brought down one day.

It's not a song of revolution like a French Revolution song or a

American Independent Revolution song.

It's not like, okay, take up arms.

We're marching on on the kingdom.

Like well bring the kingdom.

It's not that she's saying, we're not gonna bring them down.

God will bring them down.

God will invert the power structures as we currently see them.

And do you know something, folks within months of her singing this song.

A king, a ruler, will chase her and her newborn son desperately

trying to eliminate them.

She knew the unchecked power of rulers of her day and the utter powerlessness

of people like her, and she thought what has happened to me is the beginning.

It's the seed that will give rise to a whole new world.

Are you with me?

My friends?

We should sing about this.

We're not revolutionaries, we're not kind of, you know, woke progressive

liberals or whatever they call us.

What are we Kingdom people and what does the kingdom look like?

Freedom, justice, mercy.

The poor being filled.

The rich being sent away.

This is a whole different way of being human.

My friends, that poor family in Ethiopia being celebrated, those kind of vile

people who are the flick of a wrist or the signing of a pen sent Arby's into ruin

people's lives and destroy whole nations.

They will be brought down.

This is the Song of Mary, and then she gives birth to this one hounded out

of Bethlehem by this king who can't brook any kind of challenge whatsoever.

And eventually by the time we see him fully grown, what do we find him doing?

Well, saying exactly what was just read to us from Matthew chapter five, right?

Like everything you imagine, like all the people who are on the bottom,

they will be elevated and all of those are on the top, will be brought down.

The first shall be last, and the last shall be first.

You've read the gospels, right?

You've been doing an eternal series on the way of Jesus.

You know how it goes.

This is not the world as we know it.

This is not the way we live life.

We are called into a totally different way of being human and a whole different

kind of society again and again and again.

You see Jesus in adulthood fulfilling the song that his

mother sang over him in utero.

I'll give you one quick example.

In Luke chapter eight, there's a story about a guy called Jairus

who was a religious leader.

He was actually the, leader of a synagogue, so kinda like a pastor,

like a part of the religious elite.

We don't really know whether this was the case, but we could hazard a guess that he

was probably part of that elite who are continuing to hound and criticize Jesus.

I wonder that as a leader of a synagogue, he might have said to

his congregation, Hey, hey, hey, don't go running after this guy.

Jesus, like, he's from Nazareth.

He can't possibly be the son of David.

he, he's not educated.

He's not the kinda right kind of person.

He eats and drinks with sinners and tax collectors.

He doesn't keep the Sabbath like, whoa, whoa, woo up.

You know, don't go following this snake oil salesman.

I know they talk about he could do miracles and all that kind of

gis, but don't get carried away.

Stay the course.

Don't go following all these kind of fake Messiahs.

Did he say such a thing?

Maybe?

Chances are he did.

But desperation makes fools of a soul, does it not?

And what we discover is that Jairus has a daughter who is not dying.

She's at death's door.

And having heard these stories about this fake Messiah healing

people, Jairus humiliates himself.

And rushes out into the streets and says to Jesus, my daughter is dying.

Would you come with me?

Now if it were me, I'd be like, yeah, but dude, you've been talking all this

bad stuff about me and smack talking me and saying I'm this, and I'm that.

What does Jesus say is Jesus?

Right?

So what does he say?

Take me to her.

And then I imagine.

It's my A DHD kind of imagination.

But I imagine that, jarris like grabs his hand 'cause we're told that the crowd

was thick and heavy, grabs Jesus' hand and is pulling him through the crowds,

desperately trying to get to his daughter.

'cause time is of the essence, but they only take a few steps.

And Jesus wrenches his hand from Jairus, turns to him and says, I'm coming.

He says, but who was that that just touched me?

The disciples like literally say, take your peak, dude.

Like people are jostling us and bumping us, like there's so many people here.

And he's like, no, no, no, no, no, not not a jostle or a bump.

Someone touched me with the touch of faith.

Who was that?

And then it says in Luke chapter eight, they all denied it.

Which to me, like, it's like a Monty Python episode to me or something.

It's kinda like a I didn't, did you, did you?

I didn't.

He, they're all denying we didn't touch her with the, with the touch of faith.

And then Jesus says, probably what your, you know, year seven teacher once said

to you, alright, well no one's leaving here until whoever touched me owns up.

And he's forcing the issue.

And then in the midst of this crowd of mainly men, this

little voice squeaks and says.

I touched you and the crowd parts, and we encounter probably the

saddest, most pathetic character in all the gospels, and there's a lot

of sad characters in the gospels.

This woman we're told, we don't get her name.

Luke managed to get Jairus's name, but he didn't get this woman's name.

They call her the bleeding woman or the hemorrhaging woman.

Or the woman with the issue of blood.

We are told that she has been bleeding between her legs for 12 years now,

friends, you probably know that in this time where Jesus was in

the Middle East, when a woman was menstruating, she was considered unclean.

We know there's nothing unclean about it, but it was considered unclean.

It was considered disgusting.

And so a woman could not enter a synagogue or a temple.

No way, a pagan temple or a Jewish temple.

A woman could not lie with a man during her menstrual period.

A woman in many strict communities couldn't even go out into the marketplace.

It was like once a month, you are excused from human society only then

to return again when you're clean.

This woman is not menstruating, but she's been bleeding for 12 years.

Could you imagine this?

This is not just a physical complaint.

That would be bad enough.

This is total being a total outcast, humiliated, set aside,

not fit for human interaction.

She can't go to the temple.

She can't go to the synagogue.

She couldn't go to the synagogue that Jairus runs.

She can't go to the marketplace.

No man would put up with this.

She's alone.

We're told that she has spent all of her money on remedies.

She's poor, she's destitute, she's anemic, she's dying really, really slowly.

She's refuse.

She's a non person and the crowd parts, and it's her who has touched

Jesus with a touch that actually some power went out of him.

Do you know what, what she was thinking?

There's nothing magical about Jesus' clothing.

Have you learned that already?

Like there's no verse that said, just touch Jesus' clothing, and

like the world changes, like there's nothing special about his clothes.

But during that time, it used to was a superstitious belief that if you could

touch the hym of a holy man's, that cloak, that there was supernatural power in it.

Now the Pharisees actually used to preach sermons against this.

They'd say, oh, that's nonsense you.

That's not the way it is.

But you know what they also used to do?

They would tie long tassels onto their clothes to kind of tempt people like you.

Maybe I am a little bit holy here.

And so this woman is under the misapprehension that if she could

touch Jesus cloak, she would be healed.

It's not true Touching.

Jesus cloak doesn't do anything for you.

And she's also conscious.

She can't bowl up to him and say, hi.

Excuse me.

I need to touch your cloak.

The way Jairus walks up to him and says, I need you to heal my daughter.

This woman can't speak to a man.

This woman probably couldn't even really be in that assembly, that

gathering, she's snuck into that place.

She's there to steal a miracle from this holy man.

She doesn't walk up to him.

No one sees her within the crush of the crowd, or maybe even all on all fours.

Like an animal.

She reaches out and she touches Jesus under the misapprehension

that this will heal her.

And what does God do?

God heals her.

It's kinda like God's like, actually that's not the way it works, darling.

But still you are healed.

That's grace upon grace.

Don't you think?

Like we're so good at telling people, no, don't do it that way.

Do it this way.

But for for Jesus, it's kind of like.

You're doing it all wrong.

It's a superstitious belief, but I will heal you.

So she's healed.

The moment that she touches him healed, the deal is done.

So what is Jesus doing?

Jesus insists that the crowd part that we see her.

Jesus insists that she acknowledge what she has done.

And I think the reason he does it is so that he can say what he says next in

this assembly of men with Jairus standing right next to him, this poor cowering

woman thinking she's in big trouble.

Jesus lifts her up and says, it's your faith that made you well.

This everyone.

This is a hero of faith.

Now, folks, can you see what's going on in this story?

I mean, I know you've heard this story before, right?

But you know what's going on in this story.

Jairus proud sanctimonious,

part of the elite.

For him to meet Jesus, he must humble himself and go out into the street

and ask Jesus to heal his daughter.

But this woman, almost like human refuse, abandoned, marginalized,

starving, dying, she is elevated.

Do you remember Mary's song?

Rulers will be brought down and the poor and the hungry will be lifted up.

And for me it's just like this moment where between.

Jairus and this woman, Jesus stands, both of them are at the same plane.

This is Mary's song actually happening.

My friends, this is our task as well, is it not, not to be revolutionaries

and to usurp governments, but it's to say a time is coming.

When rulers, when the sanctimonious, the bullies, the narcissists, their

power will leach from them and they will be humbled before the king of kings.

And where the marginalized and the poor and the abandoned and

the persecuted are elevated.

And in this place things are set right.

And our task, my friends, is to be committed to that.

Uh the best definition of Christian mission I've ever come

across was from a South African missiologist called David Bosch.

He said this, he said, the mission of the Christian Church is to alert

everyone everywhere to the universal reign of God through Christ.

It's such a good definition.

I've actually memorized it.

I haven't memorized the whole Bible like Paul has, but I have memorized this much.

The mission of the Christian Church is to alert everyone everywhere to the

universal reign of God through Christ.

That's why I really love that song we were singing, declaring the reign of

God, declaring the kingship of Jesus.

Now you can say it, Jesus is king, but you don't only just have to say that.

You also have to say, here's what his kingdom looks like.

It looks like justice.

It looks like healing.

It looks like mercy.

It looks like joy.

It looks like a whole new kind of Christian family.

Not the, not the, not the nuclear family, not like, like clans or tribes.

A whole new way of being human, which like slave and free, rich and poor Jew and

gentle male and female, all those kind of indicators are no longer important to us.

We are made one in Christ.

Some have been brought down, some have been lifted up, but we are one in

Christ, a whole new way of being human.

This is our task.

My friends tell people about this and then show them what this looks like.

That you are the Song of Mary people.

It's actually happening.

It's working its way out.

Now, among this little group of people here in Perth, the

reign of God is unfurling.

Now, folks, I I did leave that story without telling you the end

'cause I did have a point to make.

But you know how it ends, don't you?

Jairus is like, can we keep going?

And so Jesus and Jairus head toward Jairus's house, but a

long way off from Jairus's house.

They hear these women wailing at his home.

It's a beautiful Middle Eastern tradition.

Somebody dies in a home.

All the women gather in that home and they sing this kind of wailing dirge.

It's kinda like a siren.

So that everyone in the community will know tragedy has

been visited on this family.

So he would've heard it a long way off.

It would've been like a knife in his guts.

Oh, too late.

And people come out from the home and they say, send this guy away.

Jarris.

You're making a fool of yourself.

Your daughter has died.

And then Jesus says, I'm sure she's just sleeping.

I teach at a theological college and we train pastors.

Now, I don't teach the pastoral studies area, but I'm pretty sure the

people who do will tell ministers when someone's died, don't use that line,

but Jesus knows what's coming.

He pushes past the mourners and he sits on the bed with this deceased child

and he says, arise from your slumber.

She breathes life into her lungs.

What does the kingdom of God look like?

It looks like the poor being lifted up.

It looks like real rulers being brought down.

It looks like justice and mercy and peace, but you know what else it looks like?

It looks like life coming to the dead.

It looks like new beginnings, forgiveness, new life.

This is our task, friends, to speak about this and to

demonstrate what this looks like.

To be a new kind of human.

You know what, I dunno about you, but for the most part, when people find out

I work for a church, I'm a Christian, or something along those kinds of lines,

mostly what I get is people telling me how much Christians suck, how much they

just want their money or their pedophiles or they've, you know, all the scandals

they've heard about from various leaders.

And I think to myself, that's the exact opposite of what we are meant to be.

They're meant to think Christians.

Ah, right.

They're the ones who are committed to elevating the poor, defeating the hungry

to serving, the lost, to committing to joy and justice and healing and power.

Is that, is that them?

Is that the people you are part of?

Yes.

That's the people I'm part of.

And we need to find lots and lots of opportunities to demonstrate

to people what that looks like.

Because when you do, people are really, really impressed.

And well and truly open for you to talk to 'em about who Jesus is.

Let me kind of wrap it up with this story.

Do you remember when Australia used to have a policy of

mandatory offshore detention?

We would take families who had landed on our country by boat,

and put them on islands in the Pacific, Manus Island and Nauru.

in telling you this story, I'm gonna say.

I certainly did want boats to stop sailing across the East Timor Sea.

I did want lives to stop being lost, and I do not believe in open borders,

but I'll tell you what I also believe.

I also believe it is utterly heinous to put families on a island in the

middle of the Pacific and offer them no hope of ever building a life.

We saw what happens when you take hope away from a person's soul.

They literally psychologically and physically collapse in on themselves.

It's cruel and unusual punishment, shame on us as part of a movement

that was lobbying to try to end mandatory offshore detention.

And I remember the time when the Guardian newspaper leaked

the medical, reports from Naru.

They're all being redacted with names and what have you.

But we started to read about what was actually going on on that island.

which had been, off, off limits to any kind of journalism or anything like that.

I read a story from the Guardian paper about a woman who had been traumatized by

war and by rape, and was now struggling with such chronic depression and anxiety.

She could get barely move a teenage girl who just couldn't get out

of bed and didn't bother eating.

Her life had seemed utterly hopeless.

A little girl who was wandering around the exercise area compulsively

swallowing stones, thinking if she filled herself up with stones, she would die.

What little girl has to think of such a thing?

I was outraged.

I called a bunch of friends.

I said, what can we do?

We, we'd done various pro protests and so on this occasion, we decided why

don't just a bunch of ministers go to the office of the then prime Minister

who was Malcolm Turnbull, and just pray through the guardian reports.

Just pray for those people.

And so Catholic Nun and a Catholic priest, a couple of Sydney Anglican ministers,

uniting Church, Hillsong people, all turned up all wearing their uniforms.

You know, all the other religions have got good uniforms, right?

Like at collars and vestments and all that kind of, I just had a black t-shirt on.

It's like us Baptists really suck when it comes to the uniform thing, but.

We walked into the office of the Sydney office of the Prime Minister.

It was a gorgeous building in the eastern suburbs.

Walked through this big atri through these big glass doors, and

then there's a huge waiting area, and then a, a counter over here.

And as soon as we arrived, the one behind the counter was

like, oh, no, no, no, no, no.

Like, as soon as a whole bunch of clergy show up, it's kinda like

she knows what's gonna happen.

And we dropped to our knees in a circle and we started to pray.

We would read these reports out and pray.

I prayed with tears running down my nose.

I sobbed crying out to God.

Just relieve their suffering, Lord.

Obviously the people behind the counter called the cops.

So the police showed up, they walked in, they took a look around.

I don't know if they thought the bald guy, the black t-shirt's gonna be a

big problem, but they did not wanna arrest that nun, I'm telling you.

'cause I heard them saying the, the media is outside, there's,

there's television cameras.

We don't want to carry a nun out of the office.

So they said, look, they're just praying.

They're not doing anything terrible.

I heard this cop say, how long can you pray for?

But if on the off chance they're still here at five o'clock

tonight, yeah, give us a call back.

And that's when I realized, oh, I'm gonna be praying here

until five o'clock tonight.

Now, I didn't know some of these ministers, I, we didn't do any chitchat.

How you going?

Where you from?

None of that.

All we did was pray all day.

We sang a little bit, the Sydney Anglican guy called his wife and she bought kind

of communion for us bread and wine.

So we celebrated communion, but by and large we just

prayed and prayed and prayed.

And then at 10 to five, five to five, whatever it was, the uniting Church

minister said, well, I, I suspect that the police will be here soon.

So she said, it's been like a really beautiful privilege to

pray with you guys all day.

Why don't we finish our time by singing amazing Grace.

Now I'd sung a couple of songs during the day that I'd never heard of before,

so I was just like doing the kind of the lip moving thing without actually

singing, but I like, oh, I know.

Amazing Grace for sure.

And so on our knees we started to sing Amazing Grace As Sweet The

sound that saved a wretch like me.

We got halfway through the first verse and those big glass doors blew open.

And in came what looked like a SWAT team to me, like it was the riot squat.

So they came in with like body armor, tasers, guns, like the whole thing.

And I was like, seriously, the nun is not gonna give you that hard of a time.

I, as they burst in, I found this just one of the most beautiful little

moments actually in my ministry.

One of the most beautiful moments.

They burst in the doors, all bristling and ready to arrest us,

and they hear us all singing and they all stopped and they all go.

They'll take a step back, kind of surrounded us and we sang through the

first verse, and you know how it goes.

There's half a beat between the first verse and the second verse.

So every time we would stop, they'd all kind of step forward and get ready.

And then, you know, here comes the second verse and then they'd

be like, they'd step back again.

And this went on and on.

I thought there was only four verses to Amazing Grace, but someone,

the Catholics, the Uniting Church, or someone, they've written like

a hundred verses to this song.

They just kept seeing it and the police would not arrest

us while we're at worship.

Like it's kind of, let's say something about those kind of values are

still present in our culture today.

It felt to me 'cause I ran outta words.

So I was just observing the scene.

Like we had this bubble of grace over us, like literally a bubble.

'cause you could pop it like that.

We couldn't hold the police at bay, but this bubble kept them at bay until finally

the Uniting Church ran out of verses

and then the police stepped in, gave us this routine that we're under arrest.

We all got assigned a police officer.

They took our arms and lifted us up, and then the officer in charge said,

don't just take 'em out, hols bolus you.

There's press out there.

We just want to get 'em out and quick and into the wagon so they

don't get to talk to anybody.

So line 'em up, get 'em ready to go, and then move quickly.

I was nearest the door, so this guy grabs my arm.

We're at the door and we've gotta wait for all the others to kind of get organized.

And he says to me, I came here this morning at 10 o'clock.

I said, yeah, I know I saw you.

He said, have you been praying

all day?

I said, yeah, no, no.

And he says, you've been saying prayers like all, all day.

I said, we have.

He said, wow.

I guess if you don't ever pray at all, all day sounds pretty crazy, doesn't it?

And he said, wow, why?

I said, why?

I said, because I don't know what else to do.

'cause I've visited my local member, I've marched, I've signed

things, I've posted things.

I've done everything I could possibly do to alert my country to the fact that

this is cruel and unusual punishment.

And I actually serve a God who sent his son to show us a

different way of being human.

Way of justice and mercy and joy and kindness and healing, and I'm actually

so committed to these kinds of values.

It just offends me when I see them being flagrantly ignored because Jesus

taught us how to be a different kind of person, a new kind of society.

He severed the power of sin and darkness in our lives by his death

and then by his resurrection.

He empowers us to be those kinds of people.

And he walks with us.

He's not far from us.

He's right here.

Wherever two or three are gathered, he's here in this room.

Praying with us, yearning for this same world where rulers are brought

down and where the poor and the hungry are lifted up, and I'm going for it.

And by this stage, he's led me out across the atrium and out down

the stairs and quickly bundled me into the back of the police wagon.

And as I'm the first one in.

So as I, he puts me in, he goes, you wanna know something?

He said, I'd, I'd like to live in a world like that.

And I said, well, get in here with me.

And he said.

Oh, I don't want it that much.

And I thought there's stacks of Christians in church that

don't want it that much either.

There's lots of Christians where church is their hobby.

I know they love Jesus.

I know they believe Jesus died for their sins, for sure.

But this thing about inverting power structures about a whole new way

of being human, about the values of the kingdom, alerting people

to a different way of being human.

Not so much that night.

I got home, got outta the car and my neighbor across the road,

who's a real Aussie bloke, he's a Tyler, he saw me pull up and he

came bounding out of his house.

He said, I saw you on the news, dude.

You got arrested.

Like, what?

You, you're crazy.

What, what were you doing that for?

And so I sat in a gunner with him for ages talking to him about the kingdom of God.

When people see the values of Jesus taking root, it's intriguing, it's beautiful.

It arouses their curiosity.

They may not want to come to your church.

I don't know.

Maybe they do, maybe they don't, but they do want to believe there's

another way to be human because all the strife, all the polarization.

All the violence, all the cruelty, all the wretchedness and hopelessness that

people see all the time in our world.

They realize we can't find it ourselves.

We need some supernatural way of being a different kind of person.

And I say to them, I know how you can do it.

You bend your knee before King Jesus.

He comes into your life and starts to renovate your soul.

And turn you into a different kind of person.

Do you follow?

This is our mission.

Alert everyone everywhere to the universal reign of God through Christ.

Lemme say a prayer.

Father, I thank you for the hospitality of this church and the

grace and all those open faces and nods and smiles as I was speaking.

I thank you for their kindness and ask Lord that you'd continue to inspire

them to walk in the way of Jesus to discover again and again and again.

Their passion and their joy and their excitement about being the

kind of people you intended us to be.

To see rulers brought down the poor and the hungry lifted up a new kind

of society, emerging, a society of justice and mercy and joy and healing.

A new kind of family, a real intimacy with you right here in our midst.

Give us strength and courage to stay the course.

Fill us afresh with the spirit of Jesus, and use us to alert everyone everywhere

to your beautiful, sweet, gorgeous, good rain of God through Christ.

Amen.