(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for Going Viral, originally shared on January 25, 2021. It was the eighty-fourth video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
Bad news travels fast. So do viruses. How
can we make the Good News go viral?
Our regional celebration, virtual of course,
of the international Week of Prayer for Christian Unity in the LA area was
broadcast yesterday afternoon. It was hosted virtually by the Saint Andrew
Russian Greek Catholic Church in El Segundo, and most of those with leadership
roles read from their homes. My wife, Rev. Sally Welch, a UCC/Christian Church
(Disciples of Christ) clergyperson in active retirement and our son had
leadership roles in that service.
Last year, we went to a physically present week
of prayer service at the Church of the Good Shepherd Roman Catholic Church in
Beverly Hills in the afternoon. That morning, I had lead worship and preached
at Solheim Lutheran Home in Eagle Rock. I checked my phone after the service
and found the shocking news. Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna and seven
other people had died in a helicopter crash that morning.
People at the week of prayer service were
just getting the news when we got there and you could feel the shock and grief
of the City of Los Angeles and well beyond starting to descend. It was January
26th, and we will mark the anniversary tomorrow.
The story spread quickly. It went viral.
We will tell the story of a man who lived and
exemplary life. We will grieve and mourn the lost possibilities of that life. We
will rightly tell the story of where we were when we first heard the bad, bad news.
Two thousand years ago, a promising young
rabbi with extraordinary gifts was killed not by accident, but by as the result
of a conspiracy among the best of us. He was tortured and executed by people
who believed that they were acting for the common good, and maybe a little bit
for their own good as well. But, as it turned out, that young rabbi didn’t lose
his life. And, it wasn’t taken away from him. He gave it, as the final
sacrifice. His blood drained out to restore the relationship with God for which
humanity was created, to take our well-deserved punishment unto himself, to
bridge the gap between God and humanity for a living faith with the one true
living God. He was God, fully God, and he was a human being, fully human being.
We tell that story, the story of the violent
death of a promising young man as the good Good news. He gave his life out of
love for the world, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life
starting now and continuing in the world to come. He was fully human, and he
was fully God.
Jesus told this parable about how the Good
News of God’s already and not yet reign goes viral with this story:
*Matthew 13:1-9
In Jesus day, in an agrarian economy,
everyone had or had seen seed being sown. It wasn’t planted the way it was
today. It was thrown onto the ground from a bag at the sowers hip outward, in a
sweeping motion. It was cast, broadly, or broadcast, like this episode.
What would happen to the seed, it would
depend on the media on which it fell, open ground where they got eaten by
birds, rocky ground, thorns, or good soil.
What would happen to the seed that grew in
good soil? It would yield more grain, some of which could be eaten, some sold,
and some used to grow more grain.
How much grain would depend on how much seed
was saved for planting.
Maybe you’ve heard the story of the
invention of chess? It’s been told in many varieties in many cultures. The
story goes that when the inventor brought the game of chess before a great
king, the king offered to give the inventor anything he wanted.
The inventor laid out the chess board and
placed a grain of wheat on the first square. “All I want is this grain, plus
two grains on the second square, four on the third, eight on the fourth, and so
on. Doubling with every square.” That’s all you want?, said the king. And he
ordered it done.
As the king’s servants started loading the
grain it soon spilled over the board and then the throne room and then the
palace. Until the king said enough. Today, it’s estimated that the number of
grains, doubled 64 times, needed to fulfill the king’s promise would be 2,000
times the world’s entire production in a year.
That’s how thing go viral. Like the world-wide
coronavirus pandemic. The curves for coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and
deaths have all been going down in LA County. They are all still way up there,
but the numbers have been going down. Our main concern now is getting the
vaccine and being sure there will be enough of it for the second shot.
Do you remember the Pantene shampoo
commercial where a woman’s face appears on the screen and she says, “I told
someone”, then there are two of her on the screen and the faces say, “And I
told someone”, then there are four faces on screen and they say “And I told
someone, until the whole screen is filled with little pictures of the same face?
That’s viral.
And that’s how we bring the gospel message
to the world.
This isn’t just mathematics. As we all know,
not everyone comes to a living faith in God just because we share our. But
nobody comes to a living faith in God if we don’t
People have to open their hearts, not just be
open to it that’s too passive; but open their hearts as a fertile place to
receive the seed of faith that God gives.
Here’s how Jesus explains the meaning of the
parable of the sower a few verses later in Matthew 13:
*Matthew
13:18-23
Here it’s the “Why?” questions that matters,
not the “How?”.
The answer to the “Why?” questions is the
mighty works of God, the presence and person of the Holy Spirit.
The answer to the “How” questions can only
come because the same Holy Spirit has opened our sinful hearts to receive the
gifts of God.
We invite someone to come and see the real
thing. And they tell somebody. And they tell somebody. That’s how the message
of the Gospel goes viral.
Some people say, “I don’t talk about my
faith. I live it”. And, that’s good. We need people to live what they believe. And,
that might work. People might sometimes connect the dots between what you do
and Jesus Christ by themselves.
But it’s unlikely that you are showing your
faith, you’re only showing people that you think you’re a good person. But
that’s not enough because, (A.) no one’s good but God. And (B.) no one’s good
enough to earn heaven. Only a relationship can do that. Only faith can do that.
Only the faith that produces good works can do that. Don’t let the cart get in
front of the horse. Putting the cart in front of the horse gets nothing done.
People only come to faith when they see your why before they see your what.
At some point, we have to connect the dots.
We have to name the name of God in order for people to come to a living faith
in God, and not a standard of good works by which they feel only the burden of
never being sure they have been good enough.
How do we make our message of redemption
viral?
First, we can’t change human nature. We
can only appeal to a better one.
Second, we can only pronounce a work of
healing when people pronounce a word of their own dis-ease.
Third,
we have to name the name of Jesus and invite people to know Him. Someone you
know, a friend or a relative, might be ready to respond right now.
One of my favorite stories is a classic
stewardship story from Garden Grove, in Orange County.
Rev. Robert Schuller was raising money for
the construction of The Chrystal Cathedral. The building was reportedly going
to cost $16,000,000.00, a huge some of money then, and a staggeringly large
amount then, especially for church construction.
One morning, the pastor of a Lutheran church
in Garden Grove opened his paper and read that a member of his congregation had
given $1,000,000.00 to the Crystal Cathedral Building Fund.
He called the member and asked if he could
meet him for lunch.
After some small talk, the pastor asked,
“You know, you’ve been very generous to our church, and I’m very grateful and
appreciative of your generosity, but I saw in the paper this morning that you
gave a million dollars to Rev. Schuller’s church, and you’ve never given
anywhere near that amount to your own church, and I wondered “Why?”
The man looked a little surprised and said,
“Because he asked me.”
It often works the same way with sharing our
faith.
There are likely people that you know right
now who just need to be asked, who want a story to tell, and who would respond
to your invitation and to your story. They just need to be asked.
They need your invitation to come to their
epiphany. We’re still in the Epiphany Season in the Church, a season that we
celebrate the manifestation of God.
Encourage someone you know to get out of
God’s way and give their heart, their inner self, to God. Get out of the way
and receive the manifestation of God, the Epiphany, in a transformed life, a
gift from God.
That is how the Good News of Jesus Christ goes
viral.
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