The Centre of All Things

I enjoy reading the blogs of other people and regularly catch up with quite a number.  Some leave me pondering throughout the day and others seem to confirm something that I have been thinking for some time.  This week I read such a one by Martin Scott.  (You can see his 12 min videocast here under Pentecost as paradigm #3).  The whole idea that God works outside of the established church is not a new thought.  Although we like to think that God chooses to work through Christians, the fact remains that many times we see what seems to be God at work in a situation where there is no church.


I was thinking about Galileo who dared to suggest that not everything revolves around the earth.  We are not the centre of the universe.  He was persecuted for that thinking and was forced to recant by the Inquisition but time proved that he was indeed right.  Nowadays we know of course that the earth and all the other planets in our universe revolve around the sun and not as was thought previously that everything revolved around the earth.  It seems to me that we are living in a time when a great number of Christians who have moved outside of the established church are saying a similar thing.  Not everything revolves around us, the Church, Christians.  God does work through these means but He also works outside of us and often without us.  This is difficult and almost heretical for some Christians to accept.  If we insist that God is confined to work through Christians, then we are limiting God to our ideas and thinking.  God is bigger than anything we could imagine so surely it is possible for Him to work in some way outside of our understanding and without our help.

As Martin Scott mentions, this thinking is very biblical.  Peter was made to realise this truth when he had the dream and told to eat, re-enforcing that truth that nothing that God has created is unclean.  Later when Peter visited Cornelius, he came to the realisation that Cornelius was searching for God and truth and that God was indeed working in his life.  Cornelius was not a Christian, hadn't heard the disciples' message about Jesus and wasn't even an adherent of the Jewish faith.  He was a Roman centurion but he was a good man and searching for God.  Peter had to undergo a complete change of mindset to go into the house of a Gentile and accept that God could reach those who were not of the Jewish faith and did not need to become part of the Jewish community.  While Peter was telling them about Jesus, Cornelius and his family were all baptised in the Holy Spirit.  In the end Peter had to accept that God was at work in ways and places that the disciples knew nothing about.  Throughout the centuries God has continued to work in unexplained ways and places and in people beyond our Christian input or evangelism. 

Simon the Cyrene, a foreign visitor to Jerusalem was made to carry the cross for Jesus.  This must have had an impact on him as his sons Alexander and Rufus (mentioned in Matthew's gospel) were later mentioned among the early church followers.  We also see Philip transported to meet the Ethiopian eunuch and baptise him.  A eunuch was a man who was recognised for his sexuality - today we would call him gay.  On both occasions God meets with those on the margins of society before they have contact with (and so have no input from) those who follow Jesus.  We sing 'Jesus, be the centre'.  These are not just words that make us feel a bit emotional.  It is a truth that we need to embrace fully.  The body of Christ does not revolve around us, it revolves around the Son and the Godhead can work with or without us as He chooses among Christians or people of other or no faith.  We have to stop limiting God to our concept of Him - He is much bigger than that and works among ALL who seek Him, whoever, whatever and wherever they are, with or without our help or input.