What is Gospel?

By 2004, singer-songwriter Sara Groves had written and released four albums. No longer a rookie to the craft, she was preparing to work on a new record but felt discouraged over her purpose as an artist. It was a struggle to find creative footing on this project.

When there’s so much physical need in the world, why was she spending her life stringing together lyrics and melodies about God? Why not be a nurse or do something to tangibly serve people?

This gospel she had been singing about for so long—why did it matter?
This idea that we’re doomed to hell unless we agree with the right ideas—where was the hope?
Was that all there is to the Christian faith?

Her creative block stemmed from doubts and questions about the faith that was the basis of her music.

Groves' reflection on this period struck me the first time I heard it. Her story resonated deeply, as I experienced a similar reconstruction of the same ideas. Listening to her retell this period of wrestling, I heard one of the most befitting explanations of the gospel I've come across.

Like her, I learned of the gospel through an evangelical lens. While I am grateful for how the gospel has made it's way into my life and for how it's shaped me, early on I sensed there had to be more to Jesus' teachings than what I was hearing.

Coming from this perspective, I believe the gospel is most helpfully defined not in a one-line definition, but read through the lens of someone who understood it one way, and came to understand it anew.

I’ll quote Groves heavily because her words are so relevant. Starting with how she understood the gospel for most of her life:

...if you have a narrative like all of humanity is on a conveyer belt to hell, then it is going to shape everything you’re doing, and so I just had to pick up all those pieces of what are we doing here? What is gospel?

Basically, if you hear in ‘the Kingdom of God is near’… the end is nigh or judgment is nigh or you hear your escape pod from this Earth is close... But if you hear in the Kingdom of God is near, the way of God is near you, you can bring God thought, God mind, God way into your life, into your marriage, into your politics, into your problem-solving in a community, into whatever obstacle and dark corner you find, good news! The thoughts and the way of God are near you.

Then that really changes the whole dynamic of what I’m doing. And I get to participate, like Colossians says, in the renewal of all things. I’m partnering with God in the renewal of all things.

If the gospel is not an escape plan from this world, but a message drawing us deeper into it, then it matters how we spend our lives here and now. It has the power to change our ideas of grace and faith and works and our role in this universe.

We have the opportunity to be the instruments God uses to bring about reconciliation and healing and beauty in our world. Groves elaborates:

So I’m not down at the altar crying because I blew it this week or I thought this wrong thought or I had this bad motive. I’m moved to tears because the God of the universe has invited me to stand in the gap and to be a reconciler and to engage in this work that is so compelling to me…

It was no longer about getting the heck out of here and bringing as many people with me in this escape plan, but was more to look around at the world I was in and say, I believe this way of God can square off with any dynamic here.

Reflecting on her song, “Why It Matters”, she continues:

I hear differently now, “the fields are white, the workers are few.” I used to hear, there are so many people that haven’t heard this message in this way that we, as evangelicals, have made it like this is how it needs to sound and then they need to say these things back and then that’s how we know the thing has happened; the transaction is secure.

The Kingdom work we're invited into is far bigger than that:

…I began seeing the gospel and the message and especially God’s heart for justice—how interwoven it was from Genesis all the way through, and that our participating in that bringing that kind of God way to the world was a major part of the point of bringing these reconciling messages. Not just we’ve been reconciled with God, but that we are reconciling with each other, we’re reconciled with the world we live in, with the Earth. That everywhere these systems and places have been broken, we’re called to bring the God way, to bring God thought to that place...

This is what Jesus does. He leaves a perfect place, comes into our bomb crater, and we want a march, we want a military song, and he plays the gospel. He plays a song so incredibly different and other than anything we’ve ever heard: self-giving, absolutely noticing of others, attentive, elevating everyone around him. And he does this beautiful thing, and I want to be bringing that song into the bomb craters around me.

Jesus did not stay in his glorious heavenly dwelling where he belongs, but wrapped himself in flesh to step into our darkness, our pain, and our disorder to give his beauty, his restoration, and his healing to us. We have a purpose in this plan, and that is good news.

The gospel Jesus offered was not what we expected or wanted, but it is the song worth singing.

Notes
JJ & Dave Heller's full interview with Sara Groves where these quotes were pulled from. I found her story moving and worth the listen.

Check out Sara Grove's music here. My favorites are Why it Matters and He's Always Been Faithful.