I had a gentleman write me a week or so back who was concerned because I once said
“Do not feed someone to ’share the gospel’ with them. Feed them because that is the gospel (or a big hunk of it, anyway).”
He was trying to tag me in “pin the tail on the heretic”. This happens sometimes. I responded like I always do, offering to sit down and have a cup of coffee together to discuss it. Unfortunately, he lives in Kansas and I live in North Carolina. I thought I would explain it here, because this question comes up a lot.
I think this gentleman and I have a disagreement when it comes to terms. He hears ‘gospel’ and thinks, as Billy Graham does, that “The Gospel is the Good News that, because of what Christ has done, we can be forgiven and can live forever.” (Why is gospel in upper case letters in that quote? Beats me…)
While I do not deny that because of what Jesus did and who he was we are able to be in communion with God forever, I think that is no more the gospel message than the reason my Grandfather proposed to my Grandmother was because of her blackberry cobbler recipe. At best, it is a secondary benefit. The Romans did not kill Jesus because he wanted to give people eternal life.
Read the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke & John) and then tell me that the primary message of Jesus, the gospel he was preaching was that we can be forgiven and can live forever. You just cannot do it. No, in my opinion (and in the opinion of many scholars), the gospel Jesus preached1 was the proclamation of a new age, being ushered in by Jesus. In other words, the good news is that things have changed. That God is doing a new thing. That another world is possible and all we have to do to get it is to be willing to die for it. The good news was the birth of a new way to live.
So what does this have to do with feeding people? Nothing… and everything. In this new age Jesus brought about, the Way2 that the early Jesus followers claimed, Jesus gave us a new way to deal with almost everything. Especially in how we deal with each other. John Howard Yoder said it best:
When he called his society together, Jesus gave its members a new way of life to live. He gave them a new way to deal with offenders: by forgiving them. He gave them a new way to deal with violence: by suffering. He gave them a new way to deal with money: by sharing it. He gave them a new way to deal with a corrupt society: by building a new order, not smashing the old. He gave them a new pattern of relationship between men and women, between parent and child, between master and slave, and which was made concrete – a radical vision of what it means to be a human person.3
If you think the gospel is all about heaven, then screw this world. Let’s get busy getting ready for heaven. We can ignore AIDS, victims of genocide, the hungry, the homeless and human slavery, except possibly as an audience for evangelism. In other words, we feed them to have a chance to share the gospel.
However, if you believe that Jesus came to show us how to live, a way of life that includes, as a result, communion with God forever, then sharing a meal with someone is proclaiming the gospel, and it is the gospel.
Standard disclaimer: If you have problems with how I view things, I hope you will take the opportunity to sit down and have a cup of coffee with me and we can discuss it. I think, as Jesus followers, this is the model we see for solving disputes and reconciling with each other. Please feel free to email me to set up a time.
Notes:
1) Have you ever wondered how, if the gospel is “that because of the death and resurrection of Jesus, God has forgiven you and you will live forever”, how was Jesus going around forgiving sins before his death? If the good news was a result of the death and resurrection of Jesus, how was Jesus preaching the good news in Luke 20, since he had not yet died? How were the disciples teaching the gospel in Luke 9? According to Graham’s definition, there was, as of yet, no gospel to be had.
2) It is interesting that the first name for the society that formed around Jesus was The Way. (Acts 9). Not “The Heaven Goers, or “The Saved”, or “The Elect”. No, the name focused on what they did, instead of what they believed. Hmmmmm…
3) John Howard Yoder, The Original Revolution (Scottsdale, PA: Herald, 1972) pgs 31-32