SPU School of Theology Commissioning

SPU SCHOOL of THEOLOGY
COMMISSIONING SERVICE                           

NATE BERENDS
8 JUNE 2009

I am interested in recalling a Chapel service that took place in February in which our own Dean, Dr. Doug Strong and Pastor Mark Abbott from First Free spoke together on purity of heart.  They settled on the idea that, at least in the Beatitudinal sense, purity of heart was to want one thing.  Almost a purity of focus, or a singularity of attention.  Pastor Abbott closed his remarks by rephrasing the Beatitude. 

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for it is amazing where they see God.”

This year, in the Office of University Ministries, we’ve been exploring the idea of The Kingdom and The Gospel, and we’ve had an extraordinary time doing so.  Because we as a group seated here today are called to be kingdom builders, it is my hope that we can take the next few moments to explore what that means for us this afternoon.

Of any book on my shelf, G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy is far and away the most read, re-read, highlighted, underlined, bent, tattered, and torn.

At one point in the book, he makes an extraordinary statement that is worth our considering.  He is speaking here about the proper way for a Christian to regard the world:

No one doubts that an ordinary person can get on with this world: but we demand not strength enough to get on with it, but strength enough to get it on. Can we hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing? 

Can we look up at its colossal good without once feeling acquiescence? Can we look up at its colossal evil without once feeling despair? 

Can we, in short, be at once not only a pessimist and an optimist, but a fanatical pessimist and a fanatical optimist? Are we enough of a pagan to die for the world, and enough of a Christian to die to it?

Chesterton will go on and explain that perhaps the worst thing that could happen for a Christian is for the colossal good and the colossal evil of the world to simply neutralize one another into what he calls a mild boredom.

A mild boredom, as if we come to a point of saying “Well, you know, it’s not all good, but at least it’s not all bad… Whatever.  It is what it is.”

Chesterton and Pastor Abbott would be horrified at this idea of “it is what it is.”

I’d like to propose an alternative.

Instead of throwing our hands up in resignation that “it is what it is,” perhaps our anthem should instead be this: “it can be what it is not now.”

That is the transformative nature of this kingdom message.

Friends, this is the true nature of Christian hope.  The notion that tomorrow does not need to be like today—that things can be better tomorrow than they are right now.

As kingdom people, we have all seen glimpses of heaven being made visible here on earth.  But as kingdom people we have all also seen glimpses of hell being made visible here too.  And so as we go forth, by the grace of God, we have but one choice.  Will we let the two cancel each other out and give in to this mild boredom, a sort of whateverism, or will we use our training here at Seattle Pacific University and our sightings of the kingdom over the last few years as a foundation to say “I have seen glimpses what is possible, and we are called to something better.”

Glimpses of what is possible…?  

Let’s go back to Pastor Abbott’s paraphrase of Matthew 5:8.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for it is amazing where they see God.”

If we are able to begin finding God, our creator, in all corners of this created earth, what will that begin to do to the way we see the world around us?

As we step forward from this, our present home, we must not forget what these last few years have been, and we must not loose sight of the bigger story of which we are a part. And it is my prayer, that by the grace of God we not loose hope; that at the end of the day, we might be able to say “it can be what it is not now.”

Because friends, as we think more and more about the world in which we are called to minister, how can we not get excited to consider the idea that “things can be what they are not now?”