A biblical case for “reconnecting shalom” through our work
Jordan Raynor sits down with Lisa Sharon Harper, Author of The Very Good Gospel, to talk about why it’s significant that God creates with beauty and function, how a “thicker” gospel gives greater purpose to your work, and the biblical case for “reconnecting shalom” through our work.
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[0:00:05.4] JR: Hey everybody, welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast, I’m Jordan Raynor. How does the gospel influence the work of mere Christians, those of us who aren’t pastors but work as speech writers and line cooks and middle managers, that’s the question we explore every week and today, I’m posing it to Lisa Sharon Harper. She’s a speaker, an author, an activist who has studied Genesis one and two deeply.
Hence, why I invited her on to the podcast, to talk about the significance of God creating with both beauty and function, how a thicker version of the gospel gives us greater purpose for our work, and the biblical case for you and I working to re-weave shalom through our work. Guys, please enjoy this conversation with Lisa Sharon Harper.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:01:08.8] JR: Hey, Lisa. Welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast.
[0:01:11.5] LSH: Jordan, it’s so great to be with you today and hello to all your listeners.
[0:01:15.7] JR: Yes. So we are new friends but I wanted to bring you on because I thoroughly enjoyed this book of yours called, The Very Good Gospel, which is a few years old now, right? When did you publish the thing?
[0:01:27.0] LSH: It was published in 2016.
[0:01:29.3] JR: Okay, yeah. So, going back a few years, but I really wanted you to share this story from early in that book that I loved. It was about this exercise that you took these seasoned collegiate ministry staff through in this effort to really define the gospel. Can you share that story with our listeners?
[0:01:48.9] LSH: Yes, well, absolutely. I had gone through a pilgrimage experience, maybe even the summer before that for two consecutive summers and I was trying to explain to them the transition I was going through, in terms of how I’m understanding the good news of Jesus. So, after having done some wrestling for a few years, I took my colleagues through this exercise.
I asked them and we broke them down into four groups and each group had a gospel to examine. I didn’t give them a whole lot of time. I mean, they really had like 30 minutes to peruse the gospel and the thing is these are seasoned, these are actually all evangelists. They’re all people who share the gospel as part of what they do, like, this is what they do to get paid, right?
So I ask them, “Go into your gospel, whether it’s Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, and I want you to find in that scripture, what is the actual good news that Jesus himself proclaims? What is the good news that Jesus proclaims?” And they all went away looking like, “Boy, this is like so rudimentary.” Yeah, like really, we’re talking like basic but they all came back like, with eyes wide open just going “Wow.” They had never seen it.
That the actual gospel that Jesus proclaims again and again and again is, it can really, it can be summed up like this: “That I have come and I have come for the least. I have come for the sake of the oppressed and the poor.”
How does this – you know, they were bug-eyed and like, “Oh my Gosh, I had never seen this,” and they saw it in all four gospels. They saw it in all four that this was actually a main point, if not, the main point, especially in Luke’s gospel. It challenged them and it has challenged me ever since and it’s actually completely reshaped my understanding of the good news, and as a result, my life.
[0:04:15.0] JR: Yeah. I want to talk more about that in a minute but I’ve been thinking of writing about this a lot lately. You know, the gospel we preached today. Walk in any church and ask somebody to explain the gospel and they’re likely going to say, “The gospel is the good news that Jesus came to save you and me from our sins.” That is of course, gloriously true, praise God, but terribly incomplete and it’s actually recent history that we’ve started preaching the gospel in this way.
Most scholars I’ve read said, basically, in the last 200, maybe 400 years is when this abridged or as you call it, thin version of the gospel entered into our vernacular. Lisa, our listeners are not pastors, they’re not religious professionals, they’re mere Christians. They’re working as entrepreneurs and baristas and accountants, et cetera. What does it look like practically to love radically within that context, specifically within the context of work?
[0:05:16.1] LSH: So starting with our relationship with God is, how are you connecting to God? Are you connecting to God? Are you meditating, are you praying? Are you reading scripture? Are you remembering this scripture that you read in your youth and is that giving you life to remember these truths, right? That gives us direction in life.
Next one out is self. How is shame doing in your life? You know, are you someone who, like most of us actually, are ruled by shame? In other words, you know, you hide. There are things that you’d rather people just didn’t know because they may not love you, because they might think you are the worst thing you’ve ever done.
They might find out, as you believe, you are nothing. You fight shame with truth, with light, by shining light. The reality is, you are not nothing. You are somebody. As Reverend Jackson would say, “You are somebody,” but the reality is that you really are.
You really are made in the image of God, so you counter that lie of nothingness, that lie of shame with the truth that you literally are made in the image of God. That God has called you and created you with the capacity to exercise stewardship of the world, to make decisions that impact the world.
That is who you are and what you do is what you do but who you are is that. You are made in the image of God.
[0:06:55.1] JR: I want to interrupt you there for a second, Lisa, because I think you’re hitting on something really compelling. I’ve heard some scholars say that to be made in the image of God is really about the task that he’s given us to do in the world. Namely, take this largely blank canvas of creation that he set up in the first six “days” right? And fill it because that’s what he did, right?
That’s what He did, He came on the scene with this massive creative work and then appointed us as His vice regents over creation to steward that in line with His character and will. Is that how you read in the image of God, Lisa? Tell me how you read this.
[0:07:36.9] LSH: No, that’s not how I read it. How I read it is, I see that and on that first page, when God says, “Let us make humankind in our image and in our likeness and let them have dominion.” It’s all one breath, there’s – it’s all the same sentence, right? So what it means to be made in the image of God is to be human.
You can’t be human and not be made an image of God. Every human being is made in the image of God. If you are then made in the image of God, according to the text, you actually also are called to exercise dominion on the world. What it means to be made in the image of God is simply to be called to exercise agency in the world.
I wouldn’t say, I don’t understand the first page of the whole Bible, right? Genesis one, to be God passing off an empty canvas for us to paint on. That’s very poetic, I like the image of it but I don’t see that. What I see is I see God has made creation and we are created; we are not creator.
We are the created ones called to steward what God has created but you have to remember, the context. The context is the very beginning, the untamed wilderness and it is you know, all the vegetation and everything is growing up all over the place. So what God did was place us in charge of maintaining the overwhelming wellness of all the relatedness within creation.
Another space where you get to get an even clearer picture of Radha, but the word is not used, is in Genesis two because in Genesis two, God takes the human and places the human in the middle of the garden and says, “Till and keep it” but when you translate ‘till and keep' from the Hebrew, what they actually mean are serve it and protect it.
That’s what it looks like actually to exercise dominion. So what we were created for, what it means to be human is to be able to have the – to be called, with the capacity to exercise stewardship, to exercise protection of, to serve, the rest of creation.
[0:09:54.6] JR: So what does that look like on the other side of Genesis three, right? In our context today, what does it look like to steward creation in line with God’s will?
[0:10:03.6] LSH: So what it looks like today is to do everything we can on every level of life and all of those spheres that I told you about, we talked about earlier, to do the work of reconnecting, do the work of reconciling all thing to each other and to God.
So what it looks like is reconnecting us to God, reconnecting between genders where there has been abuse, where there has been neglect, where there has been exploitation. Reconnecting between ethnic groups where there’s been racialization and a hierarchy.
Reconnecting between, within families where there has also been abuse in also, where there’s been impacts of systemic abuse and structural abuse and reconnect within government so that our government system should never ever be setup only for my good because if I’m well and my brother is not well, then we are not well, you see?
That’s because Shalom by its very nature and Shalom is simply what you smell when you enter the kingdom of God, right? Shalom is what the kingdom, the rule, the reign of God requires of God’s citizens, and one of the fundamental principles of it is that there can be no peace over here without peace over there. Peace requires peace among all.
[0:11:26.3] JR: Yeah. I know a lot of Christians, and I disagree with them on this point, who believed this idea of reconnecting or reweaving Shalom is God’s job alone. The only role humans are called to play is to help other people be reconciled to a Holy God. I.E. carry out the “great commission.”
I’d love to hear you articulate a biblical case for why we human beings on this side of the resurrection are called to partner with God to reweave, reconnect, to cultivate Shalom, an aroma of the kingdom in the present?
[0:12:08.9] LSH: So we see the movement of the Holy Spirit is a movement and then of course, there’s Barnabas and the first mention of the word Christian, which comes in a multi-ethnic context because that’s now what the spirit of God is doing is breaking down all of these walls and actually creating equity between people, equity and distributions of power and the capacity to exercise dominion in the world.
I think that we see it, ultimately, we see it proclaimed by Paul in Galatians. In Galatians, Paul has and Paul makes it clear that what baptism does is actually it levels power playing fields. That’s what it means to be baptized, is that it takes these hierarchies of human belonging, Jew and Greek, male and female, slave and free, all of which were hierarchies of human belonging established by Rome and within the Sanhedrin, within the religious and civic structures in Jerusalem.
Paul says, once you’ve been baptized, when you come up out of that water, you no longer see people according to the hierarchies of human belonging that empire tells you to see them through. No, instead, what you see, all you see is the image of God in the other, and as such, it’s not just saying you see that they’re worth something, which is I think what we tend to do, we dumb it down.
But no, what the text meant by the image of God is that, they too, all people, are called and created with the capacity to exercise dominion in the world and I think that’s why Paul caused Philemon’s master to set him free. That’s why we see women rise up and become, I mean, ye even an apostle and the person of Junia in Acts and that’s why we see Jesus himself breaking these barriers, going across ethnic barriers to talk with the Sumer and [inaudible 0:14:11.6] to talk with the Samaritan woman, who becomes the very first evangelist in the entirety of scripture.
A woman, his ethnic, an enemy and then using the Good Samaritan as an example of how to inherit eternal life. He said, be like him and what did he do? He loved without limits. He loved without limiting who he is called to love. So the scripture is replete with this. It goes, I mean, really from the very beginning, from the first page of the gospel of Luke all the way through to the gospel of John and then to Revelation. The last chapter of Revelation tells us, it brings us right back to the garden.
It brings us back to the beginning and it tells us that in the end, there is not going to be the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. No longer is there going to be the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and that knowledge is a kinetic knowledge. It is in the body knowledge because that is how the Hebrews understood knowledge. It’s not just knowing in your head, it is experiencing in your body.
You are not going to be experiencing evil anymore, and instead, the Tree of Life is going to be there in the center of the city, in the middle of the River of Life, straddling the River of Life and the fruit of that tree is going to be for the healing of the nations.
[0:15:38.6] JR: Yeah, amen.
[0:15:39.9] LSH: We don’t know what to do with that because we have no understanding of God even caring about the nations and in our – in most of our Christian eschatology, especially from the 1980s and ‘90s, we just think of, “Well, the world is going to burn with it and all we need to do is get our fire insurance. We just need to pray the prayer so we get into heaven and all the rest is going to burn.” That’s not what scripture says.
[0:16:03.4] JR: Amen.
[0:16:03.9] LSH: What scripture says is that the nations will be healed.
[0:16:09.7] JR: Amen, so well said. I’m so glad you are picking up on this theme of the Holy Spirit, this operating system that’s supposed to drive us in exercising dominion for God’s glory today because I think, you know, a lot of us who grew up in, let’s call it traditional evangelical religious upbringings have totally neglected the Spirit. For instance, John nailed it when he called the Holy Spirit the forgotten God.
How do we as believers today cultivate and not suppress the Spirit in our lives, right? Because the scripture is clear, we can shake up, stir up the spirit in our lives, right? How exactly do we do that? What does that look like Lisa, to not quench the Spirit as we go about life and as we do our work?
[0:17:00.4] LSH: Well, I mean I think we often and we talk in terms of when we come to Jesus, when we give our lives to Jesus, we invite Jesus right into our heart. First of all, Jesus never said “I want to come into your heart.” That was never one of the promises like that, you know? But it is a nice imagery, it kind of helps us, right? But I think what is more accurate is that the Holy Spirit does come and the Spirit empowers our work.
It can become the tie that exists between us. It can guide us and I think that it is really a matter of allowing ourselves to be guided by the Spirit in the same way that Jesus was. Jesus himself, there was this moment, right? At the beginning of the gospels where Jesus goes to get baptized and the Spirit comes and falls on Jesus and you hear the voice from the Father and like the Trinity is right there and the picture.
So you see the reality of all three, right there in the very beginning of the gospels and so and then we see Jesus going and setting – going apart and praying and I am setting aside time I think to be led. When we see Jesus in the wilderness, I mean time in the wilderness is necessary for all of us in terms of our spiritual formation, time where we don’t know. Space where we don’t know, where we wrestle.
Where we allow ourselves to be displaced, where we allow ourselves to be knocked off of our access and then we have to grope for God because God is all we have. We need that in our spiritual formation. If we don’t have that, if we have never had a wilderness moment then likely, our faith is probably pretty thin because it hasn’t been tested, not really and so part of what spiritual formation looks like is it looks like allowing ourselves to be displaced, even if it’s voluntarily.
Whether you are immersing yourself in the community that is not your own for a period of time or forever but allowing ourselves to be shaken because that’s when we find God and I think that when and also, I think it helps to look to and learn from people groups who have been oppressed.
[0:19:13.4] JR: Yeah, that’s good. Hey, I can’t let you go without talking about your exposition in The Very Good Gospel, on the extravagance of God’s creativity in Genesis one and two. In the book, you point to Genesis 2:9, which says that, “Out of the ground, the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food,” and really articulate in this idea that God created with both function and beauty. What should that truth mean for us today as we go about our work in the world?
[0:19:46.7] LSH: That’s interesting. I mean, I think that when we look at, first of all, I think one of the things that the evangelical church has done in the 20th century and actually toward the late 19th century as well, the evangelical church has turned its back on the arts and in large part doesn’t understand the value of beauty. In the beginning, in Genesis, there was truth, there was goodness and there was beauty.
[0:20:13.8] JR: Amen.
[0:20:14.6] LSH: And all three are present and all three are present when God says, “This is very good.” When God says, “This is what I want. This is what I did” and so what it looks like then for us to build shalom, to be among God’s partners in the world rebuilding shalom, is it looks like actually reconnecting people to each other, reconnecting us to the rest of creation, reconnecting to God, reconnecting to self, reconnecting between nations and ethnic groups and also the systems that govern us.
That in itself is not only good but it is also beautiful. That is art and then art itself, when we actually look at the thing we normally call art, it is a reflection. It gives and shows us, it’s meant to show us the possible and also to reflect back to us how we are missing it. The ways that we’re missing, we’re coming just short of the connection that is possible, that’s what art does.
Art reflects us back to ourselves and reflects the possible. When we look at what it looks like for us to walk with God as stewards of what God created, it looks like not only building things out. It looks like maintaining and rebuilding the overwhelming wellness and beauty of all.
[0:21:44.8] JR: Yeah, that’s a good word. Hey, Lisa, that’s a good word to end on but before you go, three really quick questions I ask every guest. Number one, which books on the whole do you find yourself recommending or gifting most frequently to others?
[0:22:00.5] LSH: I love that question and I’ll tell you right now, one of those books is my last book. I mean, my last book is the book, Fortune and it’s called, Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World--and How to Repair It All, and I just simply think that Fortune is right in the pocket of what the world needs right now. I would say another one that I’m really recommending to everybody right now is called, Becoming Rooted by Dr. Randy Woodley.
Becoming Rooted is a 100-day devotional guide, just reflections from an indigenous world view, a Christian indigenous world view actually because he is a Christian and a theologian actually and he is asking really, really good deep questions but that whole question of how do we become reconnected, that is the whole point of his book.
[0:22:48.2] JR: I just saw on Goodreads the other day that my assistant is reading Fortune.
[0:22:53.7] LSH: Oh fabulous.
[0:22:55.4] JR: How about that? I haven’t talked to her about it yet but I am excited –
[0:22:57.8] LSH: That’s so great.
[0:22:58.3] JR: – to get that perspective on your new book. Hey, Lisa, who would you most like to hear on this podcast talking about how the gospel influences the work that mere Christians do in the world?
[0:23:09.3] LSH: I would like to hear Dr. Randy Woodley on the podcast. I think that he would be a really great person for you to have. Another person I think would be awesome for you to have would be Reverend René August, who is also one of our team members but she is based out of South Africa and works for the Tear Fund in the UK and she has been a part of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and now, the democratizing movement in South Africa and so I would highly recommend that you talk with her, René August.
[0:23:41.6] JR: I like that, it’s a great suggestion. Alright, Lisa, one thing from today’s conversation that you want to reiterate before we sign off?
[0:23:49.1] LSH: I want to reiterate that the gospel, the good news as we understand it, if it is not considered or be received, if it would not be received as good news to the least of these, to the thirsty, I am thinking now of Mississippi and how in Jackson, Mississippi, the people there have no water and have had no water for nearly a week.
If it is not good news to the hungry, if it is not good news to the people starving right now in Ukraine because they have no ability to get grain out into their cities. If it is not good news to those who are the immigrants. So, if we are not putting our gospel to the ears and the sensibilities of the asylum seekers, the immigrants, or the prisoners, those who have too much interaction, intersection with the justice system or political prisoners or the least desiring actual criminal and to the sick, to those who are diseased as that word means.
To those who suffer from diabetes and heart disease and high cholesterol and Crohn’s and all the things, cancer, if we are not concerned, if our gospel would not be good news to them, then maybe it is not Jesus’s good news.
[0:25:22.5] JR: That is a great word to end on. I love leaving our listeners in suspense to that question to really consider whether or not the gospel we are preaching in our church isn’t building our lives and work on is the gospel, the kingdom, rather than just the gospel of individual salvation. Lisa, I want to commend you for the thoughtful and deep work you do every day for the glory of God and the good of others.
Thank you for helping us catch a bigger vision of God’s good, truly good, very good news and what it means for our work. Thank you for reminding us of our call to partner with God to reweave shalom in our offices, our neighborhoods, and our communities. Guys, if you want to learn more about Lisa and her work, you can do so at lisasharonharper.com. Lisa, thank you so much for joining us today.
[0:26:15.7] LSH: Thank you, Jordan. It’s been wonderful.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:26:18.9] JR: I love bringing in guests with diverse perspectives and opinions to help us unpack how the gospel, this thick gospel shapes our work. Guys, I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. I’ll see you next week.
[END]