I was watching a video the other day of a young car salesman, pitching the merits of a particular Ford. What’s worth noting is that as he describes the Ford, he doesn’t say that Foonman Chev-Olds sells garbage, or that Chrysler is a hunk o’ junk; he tells you all the good things about that Ford and makes you want that car.
Isn’t that the essence of selling something? Emphasize the good points, and don’t attack the competition. And isn’t that what Jesus is doing with His parables? He doesn’t attack other religions or ways of life. Even when He talks about how hard it is for the rich to get into the Kingdom of Heaven, He doesn’t say it’s impossible: He says it requires a shift in priorities. The only ones He attacks are the hypocrites — the ones who should know better, who act religious, talk religious, and spend their time putting down others less righteous than they.
Jesus talks about the Kingdom of Heaven in a number of different ways, appealing to pretty much every person with every different concept of value. It’s a “pearl of great price”, that a person would sell everything in order to buy. It’s a treasure, hidden in a field, and someone wants that treasure so much, they buy the entire field, just to get it. It’s like a mustard seed — tiny at the beginning, but which grows into the biggest herb in the garden. It’s like a tiny amount of yeast added to flour: it doesn’t take much to change everything in your life — and because bread gets its texture from that yeast, makes it delicious to taste.
And, as I said before, Jesus describes the Kingdom of Heaven as ruled by someone who will drop everything and turn the whole place upside-down just to find one missing ingredient — namely, you.
Oh, yeah: it belongs to those who make peace — not war. Think about it: it takes a certain type of person to be a warrior, but anyone can be a peacemaker if they choose to be.
Isn’t that something you would want more than anything else?
After 2,000 years, wouldn’t you think pretty much everyone in the world would be following Jesus to get to that Kingdom?
Yet, the default in human nature is to put down others in order to gain the upper hand, and as Christians, our zeal often pushes us into that default. Not only do Christians attack those with other beliefs, but different Christian sects denigrate other Christian sects. What’s more, we focus on things we hate — because God says He hates them — and then identify the person with the action, so that we wind up hating them, in the process.
Is that how Jesus approached things? Of course not.
Jesus calls us to focus on the good things in people and draw attention to the fact that we’ve all sinned, none of us is “qualified” for the Kingdom, but with His help, we’re all equally qualified. Jesus calls us not to judge one another, or else the same measuring stick that we use will be used to hit us over the head. Jesus calls us to make everyone else greater than we are. Jesus calls us to spread that good news to everyone, everywhere, regardless of who they are and what they’ve done to that point.
Jesus “sells” the Kingdom of Heaven in that way, and “closes the deal” by saying that anyone who makes following Him a higher priority than anything else — even family and making a living — will receive blessing not just in some airy-fairy “world to come” but in the present time.
The thing is, we look at this age, which more and more appears to have abandoned God in favour of “creating one’s own universe”, reducing Jesus to a Nice Guy Who Said Nice Things, and react by piling on the criticism and the hatred towards those who are simply going with the flow. But isn’t the reality that, if our forerunners had preached the goodness of the Kingdom, rather than the badness of the world, this current madness might not be happening? Are not the protests, angry articles and complaining about persecution simply “white noise” to cover up the fact that we’ve dropped the ball when it comes to spreading the Gospel the way Jesus did it?
We can, of course, repent and seek the Lord for ways of reaching out to people in love and grace. In short, we need to sell Jesus. If that young man can get people to want to buy a Ford by describing its good points, how much more should we be able to sell Our Lord and Saviour?
Two Minutes for Cross-Checking! 