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Discovering God 7— God's Blitz

II Corinthians 10: 1 - 11

Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 26 Sep, 2004

TRANSNATIONALS, NATIONS, Institutions, Corporations, Partnerships and individuals: all are fallen away from God; all need redemption, all must be restored to God’s control..

  Many Christians are unaware of the scope of redemption. When we have too small a conception of what is included in God‘s vision for the world, we will have too small a conception of what is included in God’s vision for our own lives.
  This will be the last in this series of talks on discovering God, but, after my holiday, we will complete the overview by looking more closely at the cross and by looking at the Holy Spirit and, the last of the series, we will look at final things.

  Today, we see that God does have a plan, an absolutely radical plan.

  I have been thinking lately about the Iraq situation. I have been thinking of the over 1000 US soldiers killed there since Bush declared that the war was over. I have been thinking of the hostages killed. And I have been reflecting on the similarities between Hitler’s attack on Poland and the Coalition‘s attack on Iraq. Although, as you know, I am strongly opposed to that war, and consider it illegal, what I am talking about is the tactics involved.

  Hitler had a theory of Blitzkrieg, of lightning war. He was not the first to think along these lines. But he tested the theory out and gave it an exciting name.
  Hitler’s idea was to strike hard with up–to–date weaponry, to limit casualties, and to shock the people into a full capitulation. He said that they would be overawed by the force and speed of the attack and would give in.

  Hitler tried shock and awe in Poland and Czechoslovakia, and it worked. It worked because neither country had strong defences. It worked because the governments were weak. It worked because the world abandoned these two countries. And it worked because there were many people in both countries who saw the Germans as the liberators.

  When the Germans tried Blitzkrieg on England, they found out the reality. They discovered that Blitzkrieg mostly stiffens people’s resistance. The harder they struck, the more the British turned against them.
  If the Nazis had succeeded, the English were very ready to fight them on the beaches and in the streets.

  Shock and awe is a great theory, but it rarely works.

  Someone once pushed me out of doing something I really wanted to do. I protested, and the person said, “I wasn’t holding a gun to your head!”
  If someone does hold a gun to your head, it’s easy. You can see exactly what the terms and conditions are, and you can decide what level of risk you are prepared to face. It’s the same with the tactics of shock and awe. You can see the terms and conditions and decide the risks you will take.
  When it comes to restoring his control over a fallen and rebellious world, God doesn’t use the tactics of shock and awe.

  And God never will use the tactics of shock and awe.

  Even on the Day of Judgment, he will not use shock and awe: he will use absolute justice. He will be surgical in his precision. Nothing will be done en masse. Each will bear his or her own responsibility.
  When Jesus arrived in Galilee proclaiming the Kingdom of God, he was so far away from the tactics of shock and awe that people just couldn’t believe him. When he announced that God’s kingdom age had begun and that God was beginning to regather the scattered from the ends of the earth, people wanted to know, “Where is his army? What mighty deeds will he do? How will he drive out the Romans and give the land back to God’s people?”

  And when they saw that he had no army, when they saw that his mighty deeds were deeds of compassion, not of vengeance; when they saw that he raised no rebellion against the Romans, they began to abandon him.

  Judas may have executed the betrayal, but he acted on behalf of the nation which rejected their Messiah.

  The people of Jesus’ day were just like us, They looked at the world’s problems and they demanded that God should wage war as the world does, fighting with the weapons of the world. They wanted the ultimate Blitzkrieg. How could they believe a claimant to the title of Messiah who was not going to destroy their enemies?
  And it’s the same today. People didn’t believe Ghandi, who peacefully resisted evil. They believe George W Bush, who takes the name of the Messiah and uses the tactics of the Assyrians.

  Last week, I referred to what Paul wrote to the Ephesians (1:8ff). He said,

...[God] made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, 10 to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.

  God plans to reunite everything in heaven and on earth under a single rulership. He plans to bring everything into unity under Jesus as the head of all of creation.

  In today’s passage we saw,

...we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

  God’s plan includes even winning the minds of every creature and bringing every thought under Jesus’ control.
  But you don’t do that by Blitzkrieg; you don’t achieve it through the tactics of Shock and Awe.

  Last week, we looked at the fact of God’s plan to restore his universal rule through Jesus his appointed Messiah; today we look at the method or strategy of God’s plan.
  It’s breathtaking in its simplicity. It follows God’s age–old plan. It works in all weathers. And it is almost undetectable while it keeps working.

  I could have got us all to read some of Jesus’ Kingdom parables, but in Paul’s controversy with the Corinthians, we see Paul putting the same Kingdom strategy into place.

  You see, whether it is a multi–national corporation or an individual, the aim and the process is the same.

  The same God who, at the beginning, created us humans for fellowship with himself, is the God whose plan works individual by individual behind the scenes.
  He works by bringing every thought into obedient captivity to Christ.

  Maybe you are like the people of Jesus’ day. Maybe you think that shock and awe is the way to go.
  But think about it. If I were to determine to win two people to Christ and, within a year, disciple each of them to win two and disciple them, then, by the end five years, I have built a group of 63 people, and, at the end of 10 years, it’s 1055. Without any of us ever doing more than winning those two people, one person has built a good little church.
  Multiply that by our 20 regulars, and we have a church of over 1200 people in five years, or over 21 000 in ten years.
  1200 determined and disciplined people can dramatically impact a community. The core of Al Quaeda is smaller than that!

  Now...
  Imagine if each of us follows the same pattern throughout each of those five years, instead of giving up after winning two people.
  In 10 years, the 20 of us have won 46 480 people if we all pitch in.

  And that’s how God’s plan works: exponential growth. Of course we are human, we have different gifts, we are successful to varying degrees.
  But the same Kingdom principle applies: a very few people can win a large number in a fairly short time. And the more we win, the more people will become winnable. If I change, the person next to me can’t stay the same.

  This fits exactly with the other Kingdom principle, that it takes very few people to have a large influence.
  The world wants to use force and make people comply. It wants to create the big crowd scenes. But it took 120 people on the Day of Pentecost to put Christianity on the map forever.

  Do you remember when the State Government was closing hospitals? Eversleigh at Petersham was in the cross–hairs.
  Together, our church and the May Murray Neighbourhood Centre organised the opposition.
  The high–ups from the Department of Health came out. They just planned to tell us all what was going to happen, and then send us all home.
  We surprised them. We had questions worked out. For about an hour, little old Greek grannies and Lebanese labourers and Baptist church members tossed question after pointed question at the panel. We got them on the run. They decided to close the discussion, and I managed to get the final question.
  I came to the microphone and moved a motion of no confidence in the community group appointed by the Government.It was unrepresentative, it was unelected, and it wasn’t committed to the community’s wishes.

  There was uproar! This was what the crowd wanted. Voices everywhere seconded the motion. It was put, and carried without dissent.

  It stirred up a hornets’ nest. I was quoted in the local newspaper. A Liberal backbencher phoned me and tried to bully me into publicly retracting my objections. In the end, we didn’t win. But we learnt about changing the world. And it certainly put our church on the map!

  Tony Campolo did much the same with the help of 10 sociology students.
  They had been doing a field placement in Santo Domingo, and had been horrified at what they saw of the plight of the peasants who now grew mainly coffee and sugar for Gulf+Western.
  As Christians, they talked over what 11 people could do to change one of the world’s largest companies, a business with an economy bigger than Belgium’s.
  They bought 11 shares, which gave each of them 5 minutes to speak at the Annual General Meeting.
  For 55 minutes, they described what they had seen. They showed how Gulf+Western’s policies directly contributed to poverty, malnutrition, endemic disease and lack of education. And they called on Gulf+Western to repent.
  They could have had an army picket the AGM, and no one would have listened. But they heard what 11 of their own said, and they acted.

  Gulf+Western’s AGM directed the Board to look into what had been said; the Board talked to Campolo and the students, and not only decided to treat their workers fairly, but also to undo some of the damage they had done. And they took out a full page ad in several US newspapers outlining what they had done wrong, what they were going to do right, and apologising to the people of Santo Domingo. They even declared that the Company was repenting of what it had been doing.

  A recent film suggests that, if most corporations were human beings, they would be diagnosed as psychopaths. I suggest that it is because they have no conscience. Their consciences are in the mobs on the streets, protesting at the corporations’ misdeeds. But the only working conscience is the one within.
  What Campolo and his students achieved, what we tried to do here about hospital closures, both illustrate God’s principles at work. The biggest and most lasting changes are brought about when even one person brings God’s plans into the midst of a group and builds the relationships that God wants built.

  It’s an incarnational principle. Jesus came into the world, not as an overwhelmingly powerful Word of God, accompanied by the armies of heaven, but as a man, building relationships for the sake of his heavenly father’s rule.

God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.

  And that began the process of change.

  The Kingdom of God is in our midst. The Kingdom of God is transforming society as a little piece of yeast transforms a barrel of flour.
  Jesus was the one who first brought God’s Kingdom into our world. He was the Kingdom of God in our midst.
  He says,

In the same way as the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.

  God’s Blitzkrieg is not about shock and awe. It is not about overwhelming and outgunning us. It is about the totally unexpected arrival of the promised Messiah and about a process of transformation through changing individuals and using those changed individuals all the way up the chain.
  As Paul said

2CO 10:1 By the meekness and gentleness of Christ, I appeal to you—I, Paul, who am “timid” when face to face with you, but “bold” when away! 2 I beg you that when I come I may not have to be as bold as I expect to be toward some people who think that we live by the standards of this world. 3 For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4 The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

  We do not wage war as the world does. We do not use the weapons of the world, because our master is meek and gentle and brings every thought into obedience to himself.

  The founder of the Quakers, George Fox, used to call on people to “...sit down under Christ your teacher, and learn from him.”

  Christ wants a relationship with us. He wants to he heard and to be able to hear us.
  Turn to him — you’ll find life!

  I want to challenge everyone this morning. If you believe in your inner being that Jesus is the Lord and died for you, but if you haven’t yet declared that faith in baptism and other ways, you will always be like a defacto leading a conference on marriage. You will not be fully part of God’s plan of transforming everything, starting with one person.

  When I get back from my holiday, I want to start baptising again. I call on you to declare your readiness to follow Jesus in this way.!