Lance Armstrong, the Kingdom of God, and Rocks that Sing
As part of my transition from Wordpress to Tumblr, I’m going to be importing the top 10 posts from mrcrowder.wordpress.com into this blog. Here’s #6:
October 18th, 2008:
If we don’t sing, if we don’t shout then the rocks and the stones will cry out….
I was once part of a congregation that often sung a song with these words.
Throughout my youth, I also had the experience of going to youth group in an extremely traditional church. The only time we even saw a guitar in a worship service was that one, glorious time each summer when we trekked down to Panama City Beach for a week of youth camp. I can remember falling in love with the emotional and ecstatic worship; with the simple, repetitive songs and attractive female vocalists (I was a teen, give me a break). In college I began working “D-Now” weekends with local churches where I either preached or led a group of age-bound students through a series of Bible studies in a host home.
In both of these settings I often heard young, hip, contemporary worship leaders hold up some amalgamation of the following thoughts:
“God tells us that if we don’t sing to him, even the rocks will cry out.”
“You don’t want the rocks singing for you, do you?”
“I don’t want the rocks to sing in my place. How shameful would that be?”
You’ve probably heard a similar evocation used. No doubt the words to the aforementioned song as well as these well-meant quotes are rooted in Luke 19:40, where Jesus tells the opposition that the very stones will cry out if he told the Disciples to stop spreading the Gospel of the Kingdom of God.
My only problem with such usage of this passage is this: Jesus. means. so. much. more.
Read each of these words carefully.
Because there’s no way Jesus was speaking to “crying out in worship” in a way only those of us born in the past 50 years could even understand. Ecstatic, “Spirit-led”-type worship has only been around half a century. So then one wonders: what did He mean?
There are several examples I could use to describe this, but one could be particularly piercing:
You wear one of those Lance Armstrong bracelets? Don’t you know he’s an atheist?”
I heard one “Christian” student say this to another “Christian” student at a college ministry gathering a few years ago, when those yellow bracelets were all the rage (right before every organization in America created their own versions of such accessories—-a WWJD for a postmodern generation, perhaps). One student couldn’t get their brain around how a Christian could support an atheist; at the same time, the other student couldn’t wrap their mind around how supporting the organization was a bad thing.
I side with the second student. Why?
Because if we, as followers of Christ and agents of the Kingdom of God/Heaven, don’t do the right thing—-God will use whatever means necessary to make it happen.
It’s 2008, and God has proved time after time that His Kingdom will break through. We see traces and hints of it everywhere, as did the Disciples of Christ. He sent them out to take part in it and to talk about it, to point it out to all people. “Look, you see that love and forgiveness—-those are the things of God.” “That healing…. that truly was miraculous.” “Hundreds and thousands of people coming together to help their global brothers and sisters….who would have ever thought it?”
God did. God knew. God knows. And that’s why Jesus told the people that if His followers didn’t talk about the people of God, then it would not matter.
The evidences are everywhere. Rocks are crying out. The salvation of God is bringing hope to the world, and it can’t be stopped. When proclaimed followers of Jesus refuse to get their hands dirty, then Lance will. Am I ok with it? Not really. Will I call it what it is? Sure.
Let’s not let the rocks cry out in our place.
