What was unusual was that we stopped to notice them.

It was clear that Sterling and Sophia were destitute and I suspected that Sophia may have had some experiences with illegal substances given her shakiness on her feet, her missing teeth, and her glazed eyes but I believed them when they told us the money would go to food and shelter.  (That was also unusual for me because I confess that I am the biggest cynic when it comes to giving money to people on the streets.) 

Then, out of nowhere, I asked how we could pray for them.  That behavior was so unusual for me (at least when it comes to total strangers and seemingly random people on the street) that I felt as if I had floated outside of my body and some other force was taking over me – putting the words in my mouth, asking questions and offering encouragement. 

Sophia asked God to forgive her “bad” choices and for the encouragement to know that God will strengthen her to make better choices.  Sterling asked for wisdom and to remember that God will provide and God is sovereign. 

I couldn’t believe my ears.  I hate to admit my expectations were so low but to hear these two so clearly desire to cry out to God for forgiveness, healing, and redemption was incredibly moving to me. 

I didn’t want to just store up their prayer requests for the next time I had quiet time.  So, right there, on the corner of 16th and Mission, in broad daylight, Andrew and I prayed with them. 

We prayed out loud and we prayed boldly that God would provide, that Sophia and Sterling would know and experience the power of Jesus’ love, that they would know that Jesus’ death brings them forgiveness, grace, and redemption so that they would be strengthened to make better choices. 

And then we exchanged big hugs and Andrew and I left them in God’s hands. 

Another unusual thing?  Right before Sterling and Sophia approached us, they reached out to two other people who had also prayed with them!  As Andrew and I walked away, we could hear Sterling exclaim excitedly to Sophia, “Two prayers in a row, back to back?  Can you believe that?”

Looking back on the experience, I realize more and more that all of the seemingly unusual events that came to pass could only be explained by one person: God.  Our God is living, breathing, real…and He wants to be in relationship with each and every one of us.  He wants to love us, in and through each other.  It is AMAZING that we can pray to God, thanks to our Lord Jesus Christ, and that God HEARS us, thanks to our Lord Jesus Christ.” 

From Andrew: Please pray for Sterling and Sophia and the thousands who are in similar places.

Betty and I talk a lot about what it means to live more radically for Jesus and how we can live out the gospel in our everyday circumstances. Here, she lived this out. Where is God calling you to practice gospel incarnation, in both word and deed?

Sometimes it seems people mean it to be a very narrow and concrete set of ideas.  Other times, it is as if the word is used to refer to “everything truly Christian.”  Is the entire Bible “the gospel?” Is each discrete section of the Bible “the gospel?”  What exactly is “the gospel?”

My suspicion is that many an eye has glazed over while listening to the preacher proclaim an ill-defined gospel.

Working through the myriad appearances of the term in the New Testament, some interesting things become apparent.  In the majority of the cases, the term is not defined at all.

On one level, this makes me feel relieved when I think of my own definitional failures.  And yet, I doubt the New Testament writers chose not to define the term with every use so they could keep it a mystery (Eph. 3:6 notwithstanding).

That the gospel is so commonly spoken of and not usually defined indicates that it was a fabulously common term and that the New Testament church would have been expected to have known what it meant.  The early church leaders must have explained it well to them.

And, given the New Testament data, it appears they did so in three principle ways.  Briefly, they are as follows:.

• In the Synoptics, the gospel is characterized as the “coming of the kingdom.”

• In Paul’s writings, the gospel is defined in two ways.  Either it is the life and message of Jesus Christ with particular emphasis on the death and resurrection (i.e. 1 Cor. 15:1-8) or simply, “the grace” of Christ or of God (Gal. 1:6, Col. 1:6).

• There is a possible fourth definition in Acts 10:36 where Luke speaks of the preaching of the “gospel of peace through Jesus Christ (he is Lord of all).”

The three primary uses of the term overlap, interrelate and mutually reinforce one another.  In fact, I’m struck not by the diversity, number and breadth of definitions but by their clarity and limitedness.  In other words, the gospel is not “everything” (although its implications may affect “everything”).

In our use of the term in the church, we would do well to reflect the biblical usage.  As such, we ought to be careful not overly to broaden the definition of the gospel and make it to mean “everything Christian,” as we might be tempted to do.  The impulse behind such usage is good: the intention is outwardly to acknowledge the centrality of the gospel in all things Christian.  The end result, however, can be a diminishing of the most important aspects of the gospel (kingdom, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and grace).

If everything is the gospel, I may be satisfied that I have proclaimed it when in fact I may merely have told a nice Bible story or talked about an aspect of the Christian faith.

Perhaps a good way forward would be to say that the gospel is (somewhat) narrow in its meaning (stick to the three definitions) while at the same time boldly insist that the implications of the gospel reach to transform all things.

I’m just re-reading The Fall, by Albert Camus, the early 20th C. French Existentialist.  Since High School it has been on my shelf of “great books.”  A recent church leadership team discussion had us grappling with how we share our faith with someone who’s content, successful and seemingly doing fine “without God.”  The story of The Fall is about just such a person. Jean-Baptist Clamence is a model human being, a lawyer given to serving the poor without pay, a man who never misses an opportunity to help someone in need.  He is well liked, attractive, winsome and successful in every area of life.

But a momentary failure causes him to look a little deeper into his own soul and he discovers that under the veneer of contentedness lies a deep-seated selfishness.  This realistic self-evaluation leads to the unraveling of his confidence.  Lacking any hope of resolution, he winds up spending his life in the local dive telling the story of his “fall” to unsuspecting tourists.  Inevitably, and this is his intent, as these victims ponder the fall of one so obviously well put together, they begin to consider their own circumstance.  The self portrait he holds out “becomes a mirror” revealing the secret motives and imperfections of his listener.  The knife cuts deep.  By the time it is over, the bar floor is littered with the tattered shreds of the tourist’s smugness and pride.  Then Clamence departs leaving his victim destroyed and without hope but feeling himself personally triumphant.

The Fall gets it partly right.  Realistic self-evaluation is painful and few embrace it because it leads to a scary precipice of self-destruction.  Camus portrays this dynamic masterfully.  And he shows us how one person’s uncompromising transparency can expose another person to a more exacting version of God’s law.  This is a technique we might do well to employ with those  who seem “to have it all put together.”  Of course our aim is to bring about repentance and redemption through Christ rather than Clamence’s personal destruction.

All this will require us to expose aspects of our character that we might prefer not to expose.  Then again, Christ didn’t enjoy hanging on the cross for hanging’s sake.  There was a greater purpose and being transparent about our failures is part of how we fill up the sufferings of Christ.  Our transparency will help those around us recognize their need.  In the words of Clamence, we might say to the “perfect” people around us, “Search your memory and perhaps you will find some similar story that you’ll tell me later on.”

Rumors are that Camus himself found forgiveness in Christ while on his death bed.  It is impossible to know for sure.  But it is certainly clear that he understood the first part of the journey.