Jesus, for these first Christians, was the ultimate exposing of what G.o.d has been up to all along.

This is, of course, a mystery, which is exactly the word they used for it.

In Ephesians 1, Paul writes that it's a mystery "G.o.d has made known to us . . . according to his good pleasure."

What a great word there, "pleasure." This mystery begins with G.o.d's pleasure. And this pleasure comes from G.o.d's purpose, which is "to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ."

Unity.

To all things.

G.o.d is putting the world back together, and G.o.d is doing this through Jesus.

In Colossians 1, Paul writes, "G.o.d has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery."

This use of the word "Gentiles" is significant, because for many of Paul's Jewish tribe, whatever G.o.d was doing in the world G.o.d was doing through, and for, them.

Their tribe, their people, their faith.

The ones who believed and lived like them.

Us, not them.

We, not you.

But Paul's insistence here is that what G.o.d is doing in Christ is for everybody, every nation, every ethnic group, every tribe. Paul uses the expansive word "Gentiles"-a first-century way of saying "everybody else."

Something hidden that is now being revealed.

Something G.o.d has been up to all along that is now being made known.

It's a mystery that Paul, in Romans 11, doesn't want us to be "ignorant of," and in Colossians 2, his desire is that people "may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of G.o.d."

Now, Paul is very clear that this mystery has existed from before the very beginning of everything. He writes, in Romans 16, of "the revelation of the mystery hidden for the long ages past, but now revealed and made known," while in Ephesians 3 he writes of "the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to people in other generations as it has now been revealed."

There is a mystery, something hidden in G.o.d, something that has existed and been true and been present with, and in, G.o.d since before time, and that mystery is a someone . . .

Christ.

Jesus.

___________________.

As obvious as it is, then, Jesus is bigger than any one religion.

He didn't come to start a new religion, and he continually disrupted whatever conventions or systems or establishments that existed in his day. He will always transcend whatever cages and labels are created to contain and name him, especially the one called "Christianity."

Within this proper, larger understanding of just what the Jesus story even is, we see that Jesus himself, again and again, demonstrates how seriously he takes his role in saving and rescuing and redeeming not just everything, but everybody.

He says in John 12, "And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself."

He is sure, confident, and set on this.

All people, to himself.

In John 6, speaking of his own life, his own body, he says, "This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."

He takes this very personally.

He is willing to die for this, "for the life of the world."

Jesus is supracultural.

He is present within all cultures, and yet outside of all cultures.

He is for all people, and yet he refuses to be co-opted or owned by any one culture.

That includes any Christian culture. Any denomination. Any church. Any theological system. We can point to him, name him, follow him, discuss him, honor him, and believe in him-but we cannot claim him to be ours any more than he's anyone else's.

Access to him can actually function in a strangely inverse way.

Imagine a high-school student whose family is part of a Christian church. She belongs to a Christian youth group, has only Christian friends, reads only Christian books and has to attend Christian chapel services, because it's mandatory at the Christian high school she attends.

That student can potentially become so anesthetized to Jesus that she in unable to see Jesus as the stunning, dangerous, compelling, subversive, dynamic reality that he is. She has simply sung so many songs about Jesus that the name has lost its power to provoke and inspire.

Her "nearness" can actually produce distance.

At the same time, there are Christians who have raised support, gathered supplies, traveled thousands of miles into the farthest reaches of the globe to share the good news of Jesus with "unreached people," who upon hearing of Jesus for the "first time," respond, "That's his name? We've been talking about him for years . . ."

As Jesus says in John 10, "I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen."

This should not surprise us. The gospel, Paul writes in his letter to the Colossians, "has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven" (chap. 1).

Every.

Creature.

Under.

Heaven.

As wide as creation.

Including everybody.

The whole world.

This is crucial for how we understand the current state of world religions, with its staggering number of religions themselves, let alone the mult.i.tudes of splinter groups and subgroups and denominations and factions and varied interpretations.

Religions should not surprise us. We crave meaning and order and explanation. We're desperate for connection with something or somebody greater than ourselves. This is not new. This has not caught Jesus off guard. Jesus insisted in the midst of this ma.s.sive array of belief and practice that G.o.d was doing something new in human history, something through him, something that involved everybody.

John remembers Jesus saying, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (chap. 14).

This is as wide and expansive a claim as a person can make.

What he doesn't say is how, or when, or in what manner the mechanism functions that gets people to G.o.d through him. He doesn't even state that those coming to the Father through him will even know that they are coming exclusively through him. He simply claims that whatever G.o.d is doing in the world to know and redeem and love and restore the world is happening through him.

And so the pa.s.sage is exclusive, deeply so, insisting on Jesus alone as the way to G.o.d. But it is an exclusivity on the other side on inclusivity.

First, there is exclusivity.

Jesus is the only way. Everybody who doesn't believe in him and follow him in the precise way that is defined by the group doing the defining isn't saved, redeemed, going to heaven, and so on. There is that kind of exclusion. You're either in, or you're going to h.e.l.l. Two groups.

Then there is inclusivity.

The kind that is open to all religions, the kind that trusts that good people will get in, that there is only one mountain, but it has many paths. This inclusivity a.s.sumes that as long as your heart is fine or your actions measure up, you'll be okay.

And then there is an exclusivity on the other side of inclusivity. This kind insists that Jesus is the way, but holds tightly to the a.s.sumption that the all-embracing, saving love of this particular Jesus the Christ will of course include all sorts of unexpected people from across the cultural spectrum.

As soon as the door is opened to Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and Baptists from Cleveland, many Christians become very uneasy, saying that then Jesus doesn't matter anymore, the cross is irrelevant, it doesn't matter what you believe, and so forth.

Not true.

Absolutely, unequivocally, unalterably not true.

What Jesus does is declare that he, and he alone, is saving everybody.

And then he leaves the door way, way open. Creating all sorts of possibilities. He is as narrow as himself and as wide as the universe.

He is as exclusive as himself and as inclusive as containing every single particle of creation.

When people use the word "Jesus," then, it's important for us to ask who they're talking about.

Are they referring to a token of tribal membership, a tamed, domesticated Jesus who waves the flag and promotes whatever values they have decided their nation needs to return to?

Are they referring to the supposed source of the imperial impulse of their group, which wants to conquer other groups "in the name of Jesus"?

Are they referring to the logo or slogan of their political, economic, or military system through which they sanctify their greed and l.u.s.t for power?

Or are they referring to the very life source of the universe who has walked among us and continues to sustain everything with his love and power and grace and energy?

Jesus is both near and intimate and personal, and big and wide and transcendent.

One of the many things people in a church do, then, is name, honor, and orient themselves around this mystery. A church is a community of people who enact specific rituals and create specific experiences to keep this word alive in their own hearts, a gathering of believers who help provide language and symbols and experiences for this mystery.

When we baptize, we lower people into the water, and then bring them back up out of the water.

The water signifies death; being raised up out of it signifies life.

Lowered like Christ in his death, raised like Christ in his life.

When we take the Eucharist, or Communion, we dip bread into a cup, enacting and remembering Jesus's gift of himself.

His body, his blood, for the life of the world.

Our bodies, our lives, for the life of the world.

These rituals are true for us, because they're true for everybody.

They unite us, because they unite everybody.

These are signs, glimpses, and tastes of what is true for all people in all places at all times-we simply name the mystery present in all the world, the gospel already announced to every creature under heaven.

He holds the entire universe in his embrace.

He is within and without time.

He is the flesh-and-blood exposure of an eternal reality.

He is the sacred power present in every dimension of creation.

___________________.

So how does any of this explanation of who Jesus is and what he's doing connect with heaven, h.e.l.l, and the fate of every single person who has ever lived?

First, we aren't surprised when people stumble upon this mystery, whenever and however that happens. We aren't offended when they don't use the exact language we use, and we aren't surprised when their encounters profoundly affect them, even if they happen way outside the walls of our particular Jesus's gathering.

People come to Jesus in all sorts of ways.

Sometimes people b.u.mp into Jesus, they trip on the mystery, they stumble past the word, they drink from the rock, without knowing what or who it was.

This happened in the Exodus, and it happens today.

The last thing we should do is discourage or disregard an honest, authentic encounter with the living Christ. He is the rock, and there is water for the thirsty there, wherever there there is. is.

We are not threatened by this, surprised by this, or offended by this.

Sometimes people use his name; other times they don't.

Some people have so much baggage with regard to the name "Jesus" that when they encounter the mystery present in all of creation-grace, peace, love, acceptance, healing, forgiveness-the last thing they are inclined to name it is "Jesus."

Second, none of us have cornered the market on Jesus, and none of us ever will.

What we see Jesus doing again and again-in the midst of constant reminders about the seriousness of following him, living like him, and trusting him-is widening the scope and expanse of his saving work.

His disciples want to shut down a man healing in his name in Luke 9, but he says sharply, "Do not stop him, for whoever is not against you is for you." He praises the faith of a Roman centurion, a "sinful woman" wastes a ton of money on perfume and he calls it worship, and when he encounters a despised tax collector, he wants to have dinner with him.

Whatever categories have been created, whatever biases are hanging like a mist in the air, whatever labels and a.s.sumptions have gone unchecked and untested, he continually defies, destroys, and disregards.