The Ventriloquist's Gospel

Recently I attended an event sponsored by a para-church organization that was aimed at evangelizing children and their parents.  The main attraction was a ventriloquist.  He was a skillful ventriloquist and his schtick was pretty funny.  By the end of thirty minutes, he had most of the audience on his side.

If you’ve ever been to this kind of evangelistic event, you will recognize what happened as his routine began to wind down.  Slowly he became serious.  It was time for the illustration, the connection between ventriloquism and the gospel.

“I speak for my ventroliquist dummies,” he said, “but before God, no one can speak for me or for you.”  He continued with the dilemma: “God is perfect and he can only let perfect things into his heaven.  But if you’ve done even one wrong thing, you aren’t perfect.”  Then, the product / solution:  “Now, God sent Jesus to die for you and so he has done everything necessary for you to get into his heaven.  But he has left one thing up to you — only you can do this one thing.”  And, the pitch:  “You need to accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior.  Only you can do it.  Your parents, your grandparents, your church — they can’t do it for you.”  Finally, the close:  “Let’s bow our heads and close our eyes while we pray.  Maybe you want to pray these words….”

I don’t use the language of sales — dilemma, solution, pitch, close — to demean this man’s character.  He seemed to be, and I think he was, earnest and sincere in his desire to share the gospel.  Yet this language fairly describes, I think, the techniques that were employed.

Maybe “techniques” aren’t so bad.  All communication employs some methods, tropes and techniques.  But what if the drive to simplify the technique distorts the message?

Driving home from the event, I reflected on the message distilled into this exercise of technique.  

“Only perfect things can get in to God’s heaven.”  How distant is the idea of “getting in to God’s heaven” from the Bible’s vision of creation and new creation, of God’s purposes for the “very good” of each person and this world, of the physicality of the Resurrection!  The Gospel is good news precisely because — and only when — it unveils God’s transformation of this created world.

“God left one thing up to you….”  How vastly alien to the Biblical Gospel!  You and I on our own have gotten it all wrong.  We have bound ourselves to the addiction of sin.  The Gospel is good news precisely because — and only when — we realize that God did everything because we could do nothing. 

“Only you can do it — not your parents, your grandparents or your church.”  How utterly foreign to the Biblical ekklesia, the “body of Christ,” the authority given to loose and bind, the great cloud of witnesses of the saints through the ages!  Yes, God calls each of us to respond with  repentance, faith, worship, and good works.  But it is not all about you or me as individuals.  It is all about participation in Christ through participation with the Church.  The Church is the bearer of the Gospel’s good news precisely because — and only when — the individual sinner is enfolded into the community that is engrafted into the vine of Christ.  

This is the Gospel:  new creation!  This is the Gospel:  God did it because you cannot.!  This is the Gospel:  Christ lives in and through the Church because you cannot do this yourself! 

This is the invitation:  you are invited to participate in the Church, joined to Christ by the Grace of God, in the life of the new creation.