Let us go out to Him, outside the camp, bearing His reproach.”
(Hebrews 13:13)
I hate having my picture taken. Maybe its the pounds (the camera adds ten, you know). Maybe the wheelchair is too, well…too. Perhaps it’s the contrast between me and just about anybody else in the photo. Pull out a camera
at a party and I’m either looking for a place to hide or pretending its not there. I’ll bet if I don’t look at it, it won’t look at me. All kidding aside (was I?), there is one photograph I’m angling for. I’m living in such a way as to be captured in God’s lens and placed in His portfolio under the heading of “Kingdom Man.”
The fellowship of saints I have been called to pastor is considering together what we would look like as Kingdom People, as those living “outside the camp.” Think of it: an entire modern-day western church, going outside the camp. Together. At the risk of over dramatization, this Word has been akin to thunder on the summit of Sinai for us and the blow from a shofar, rallying us to mobilize and ready ourselves for something quite unlike anything we have ever known.
In the message of this past Sunday (click here), I said whatever is out there, outside the camp, it involves dying. It involves laying down our lives. It looks like humility, not false piety. It means putting aside and walking away from. It involves separation. Hardship. Loneliness. Mourning and grieving. It can mean martyrdom. Then I paused and looked over the flock and said, “Who wants to go?” Despite the truthfulness of truth and intentional lack of “sweet by and by,” many hands went skyward.
Having considered this “outside the camp” metaphor for a few weeks now, we are getting a clearer picture of what it entails. But let me stop here for a moment. The picture we see coming into focus is just that. A picture. It is like we are looking in someone else’s photo album and we are not actually in any of the photographs. It’s our desire to not just look at glossies and wonder but to one day see ourselves in them as a people fully vested in the “Sermon on the Mount” lifestyle.
Perhaps we might look a lot like these guys…
