In his popular book Flickering Pixels, Shane Hipps draws the following conclusion:If God's chosen medium for his message was the person of Jesus Christ, and the church is the body of Christ, that means God has chosen the church to extend his revelation in a special way...If the medium is the message, the message of the gospel is conveyed by the medium of the church's life in the world.
You cannot separate the medium from the message. The church is simply an expression of the Gospel. The church is sent to be - not just to proclaim - a message of healing and hope to the world.
We are the message.
But how does this shape how we understand the message? That is, how does it shape how we see what the Gospel is?
A good way to consider the answer to the questions above is see how this shapes what the
Gospel is not. By seeing the "is not" will help to then arrive as the "is"....
First and foremost this means that
Tweet: the Gospel is not something that can be passed from one person to the other like a package #mediatheology.
Too often the Gospel has been treated like this. As if it can be passed by anyone, anywhere, by any means to anyone else. But this is an illusion. Yes there are the anecdotal stories where someone's first contact with the Gospel is with it as an isolated piece of text, etc. But this is no reason to dismiss that the Gospel must be connected ultimately back to the Church - a body of faithful Christians who are prepared to engage with those who respond to what they read or hear. If we truly believed that the Gospel does operate best as an isolated message then we'd just set up loudspeakers wherever we could blaring out an audio recording of one of the Gospels. Which leads to the second thing the Gospel isn't.
Tweet: The Gospel is not "magical". Yes, it is powerful. Yes it is convicting. Yes it is a work of the Holy Spirit as people respond. But "magical" it is not. #mediatheology.
If we treat the Gospel like a package, then it is far too easy to treat it like some sort of magical package that when some open it they will see it in its sparkling glory and for others it is just bland and dusty. And whichever they see has nothing to do with those who bring the message. But the Bible makes it pretty clear that part of the power, conviction and work of the Holy Spirit in the Gospel message is in the medium - the Church. The Holy Spirit is given to the Church and works through the Church as she is faithful to respond. Even the great apostle of the faith, Paul, only came to see when Ananias faithfully responded to God's call on his life and went to visit a man who was one of the most likely men in the neighbourhood to have him killed. Whilst we can never know, perhaps Paul would have just been a confused and blind old man if Ananias had not been prepared to be a medium for the message. And this is where often we get a little confused again on what the Gospel is, thinking that it is the Gospel that is in danger - rather than us!
Tweet: The Gospel is not something that is in danger. And this can make us feel really uncomfortable. Particularly as we see so many different perceived attacks on the "message". #mediatheology
As soon as we start to get all worried about protecting the Gospel we have lost sight of what it really is: medium and message. When we understand that the Gospel is not just the message of Jesus, but also the person of Jesus himself, how could we think that the King of Kings and Lord of Lords needs us to save him from danger. To need to defend the Gospel from danger is to declare that we don't trust the King. We fail to see the power of the vulnerability that triumphed over the powers of evil and darkness. Jesus was and is not afraid to travel through the world and meet people where they are and transform them by his marvellous light. And that is the risky journey he asks us to join him in as his followers - which can be a dangerous one.
We need to remember Jesus harshest words were always towards those who were arrogant enough to think they had it all right, true and correct, and were most interested in protecting that and themselves. In the end they couldn't see the Messiah they were looking for and crucified him instead. It was the bumbling disciples who deserted him who got to bring the Gospel alive. Which brings us to the final thing the Gospel is not.
Tweet: The Gospel is not something you can own. It's doesn't belong to any one person, nor any one flavour of the Church. It didn't even belong to the disciples. #mediatheology
Each of the four Gospels and all of the letters of the New Testament throw different lights onto the diamond that is the Gospel. Different nuances and subtleties are drawn out and cast before us. It's complex and beautiful and alive with wonder. It is confusing why so often we want to distill it down into an easy to get four to six piece message and then claim "THIS is the Gospel". Don't get me wrong, simple ways communicate the message have their place - but they should never be substituted for a lifelong journey of faith. The most horrible part about when we start saying "THIS is the Gospel" is that we are being the hand saying to the eye "I don't need you". We are saying if you have anything other than THIS then you have it wrong, and therefore you are not a part of what we are a part of. Our "message" is actually working to isolate us from the medium and this is contradictory to what the Bible shows us. There are not bodies of Christ. There is one Christ, the head of one Body, the one Church. One, one, one, one, one. When we treat the Gospel like it is just a message that we have the blueprint for we want to take the place of the King as the Judge at the end of days. We want to decide who makes the cut. We want to establish the boundaries of grace and the measures of faith. And our biggest worry isn't those who've never heard of Jesus, but those who have, but we know they have got it wrong. We throw labels and vitriol. It's self-harming abuse of the body of Christ. It is damaging and creates wounds that take forever to heal because they just keep getting picked at.
So how's that...a whole spiel on what the Gospel isn't without even touching on the content of the message. And that is the point. We get focussed on the content because we forget that in the first place God didn't drop a book out of heaven called the Gospel....he sent his only Son, Jesus.
Let me know what you think....do we spend too much time trying to settle the "right" content of the Gospel and ignore the medium that is called to carry it?
And in the next post we'll explore what this perspectives shows us about what the Gospel is.
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