A People "made out of" the Gospel

This is an instant gratification world. We are always looking for shortcuts, ways to bypass the processes of growth and responsibility so we can instantly get to the desired end result without any real labor. But the old maxim is true to some degree that the destination is the journey. Or maybe I'd say, "The destination is different from yet made out of the journey". 

I remember a couple of times in high school (did I go to high school?) when I bought the Cliff's Notes version of a book for English class. I got all the answers but none of the substance of experiencing the story, the well-crafted prose, didn't travel anywhere with any characters and learn imaginatively from them. I bypassed all the process, tossed cheap answers on the page and learned nothing. I was at point 'A' and the test answers were point 'D'. The book itself was points 'B and C'. But I skipped straight to 'D'. What I didn't know is in reality point 'D' is made out of points 'A,B,andC'. I may have had answers to put on the test, but it was empty learning. All the substance, weight and reality contained in the lesson to be gleaned never made any contact with my soul. I passed a test and was left utterly untransformed. 

I'm not sure of the actual quote so I'll paraphrase this: 

"Poetry, beauty and reading in themselves cannot save your soul. But they will give you more of a soul to save." 

-Donald Drew

And a friend struck me with this over lunch the other day... 

"The purpose of education is not primarily to get a job.  The purpose of education is to teach the next generation to learn to think and to learn to love that which is worth loving.  Education is for the purpose of ordering our loves, and teaches us to appreciate the true, the good, and the beautiful.  People who become more human this way turn out to be better at their jobs too, so there is an indirect affect on our vocations, but the primary purpose of education is to grow our souls."

- John Hodges  (www.centerws.com)

Throughout my life I've had, at various points, wonderful mentors. Folks who were smarter, wiser, older, and loved me. They would correct me when I was way off base and encourage me in God's way. But the best thing I ever learned from any of my 'teachers' had less to do with a list of facts and more to do with "learning how to learn". This goes against our world which sees all process as only valuable to the degree that it gets us the result we want. (Even people become means to our ends) Trouble is, if we are careless about the process the result will be empty. Because the 'result' is made out of 'the process'. 

My favorite Biblical example of this is Jesus' last meal with his disciples. That meal was the culmination of thousands and thousands of years of God's intimate, patient working through humanity. All the process from Eden to Noah, Abraham, Moses and the Exodus from Egypt, Israel's life as a nation, King David, through the prophets and Exile of God's people, then back to Jerusalem to rebuild. Then hundreds of years pass before John the Baptist shouts in the wilderness, "Prepare the way for the Lord!" God had spent so long preparing the way. All that process, all that planting and cultivating then finally the long awaited harvest of such an incredibly endured growing season - and the fruit of that labor is laid out on that Table.  

When Jesus offers the bread and wine, he is saying that those elements are made out of all that has come before. The Gospel of Jesus is not a quick fix, an easy answer, or a flippant lazy short-cut. Instead the Gospel is the long, arduous and beautiful relational process through which God transforms and teaches humanity what they forfeited when they 'cheated on the test' in Eden.  (They rejected his Presence - and presence is relational process that they didn't want to deal with. They wanted God's glory for themselves without having to process with God.)

If we'll go through the long, arduous, beautiful relational process with God we'll get more than answers to a test - we'll get transformation, we'll not just know of the Gospel, we'll be made out of It.