The Urgency of the Call (1987)

by Tony Campolo

"Reject Jesus if you must, but you dare not take the biblical Jesus and turn him into something that he is not."

Whatever things are noble Two thousand years ago, they nailed our Jesus to the cross. Two thousand years ago, they spiked him to the Roman gibbet. Two thousand years ago, as he died, something miraculous happened. Like a sponge, he absorbed the sins of every one of us. Like a sponge, he took the sins of the world onto himself and made them his own. Two thousand years ago, Jesus died on the cross. He who knew no sin became sin. The good news is that all who believe in him and trust in him will not be punished for their sin because on the cross he was punished in our place.

Not only that, God forgot our sins. Our sins were blotted out, says the Scripture, buried in the deepest sea, remembered no more. I don't know about you, but I would hate to go to heaven if God remembered.

Can't you just see John Kyle standing before the judgment seat and the Lord saying, "Kyle, we've been waiting for you." I don't know if they have a Kyle book, but if they open it up, I've got good news: there won't be any of the rotten, dirty things that he's done written in the Kyle book. It is forgotten.

There's one thing more. Besides taking our sin on himself and forgetting we ever sinned in the first place, he also "imputeth unto us his righteousness." That's out of the King James. I am an old King James man, and unfortunately many new versions don't have good words like imputeth. It's a great word. It means he gives us the credit for all the good things that he ever did.

I can't wait to get to glory. When they open my book, theyre going to have under the name Tony Campolo all the good stuff that Jesus ever did. I'm going to be credited for it. It's going to be imputed unto me. I wish my wife no harm, but I want her there when I arrive because I know when they start reading all the good stuff that Jesus ever did, she's going to say, "You didn't do all of that" I'm going to say, "It's his book" I can say joyfully, "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Rom 8:1 RSV).

Perhaps you're thinking, "That's an interesting theological perspective. But there are varying views on salvation. There are Buddhist views and Confucian views and Marxist views. How can you be so narrow-minded to say that your view—the biblical view, the Christian view—is the only view?"

I was on an airplane coming from California to Philadelphia. I sat down next to this guy. It was the red-eye special, one o'clock in the morning, and he wanted to talk He said, "What's your name?" I said, "Tony Campolo." He said, "What do you do?"

When I don't want to talk, I say, "I'm a sociologist" And they say, "Oh, that's interesting." But if I really want to shut them up, I say, "Oh, I'm a Baptist evangelist." Generally that wipes the guy out right on the spot. So not wanting to talk at all, I said, "I'm a Baptist evangelist."

He said, "Do you know what I believe?"

I could hardly wait.

"I believe that going to heaven is like going to Philadelphia. There are many ways to Philadelphia. Some go by airplane. Some go by train. Some go by bus. Some drive by automobile. It doesn't make any difference how we go there. We all end up in the same place."

I said, "Profound," and went to sleep.

As we were coming into Philadelphia, the place was fogged in. The wind was blowing, the rain was beating on the plane, the wings were shaking, and it looked like the whole plane was going to come apart. Everyone was nervous and tight. As we're circling in the fog, I said to the theological expert on my right, "I'm certainly glad the pilot doesn't agree with your theology."

"What do you mean?"

I said, "The people in the control booth are giving instructions to the pilot, 'Coming north by northwest, three degrees, you're on beam, you're on beam, don't deviate from beam.' I'm glad the pilot's not saying, 'There are many ways into the airport. There are many approaches we can take. There are many ways we can land this plane.' I'm glad he is saying, There's only one way we can land this plane, and I'm going to stay with it.' "

There is no other name whereby we can be saved except the name of Jesus. This Jesus who died two thousand years ago on the cross, this Savior who is the only way to deliver us from sin, is a resurrected Jesus. And he comes to us even today. He is alive, and he is personally present in this room tonight. He is here. And a lot of people here need to accept him, and a lot of people here need to surrender to him.

The Cultural Jesus

But often people are turned off to Jesus because they don't really know what he's like. In the first chapter of Romans it says,

For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator (Rom 1:20-25).

That is not a description of some preliterate society. That is a description of American society. Ours is a society that has taken Jesus and has recreated him in our own image. When I hear Jesus being proclaimed from the television stations across our country, from pulpits hither and yon, he comes across not as the biblical Jesus, not as the Jesus described in this book, but he comes across as a White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant Republican. A Jesus who incarnates what we are, rather than a Jesus that incarnates the God of eternity, is not the Jesus who can save.

When I was teaching at the University of Pennsylvania, students would say, " I don't believe in God." I would always say to them, "Describe to me this Jesus that you don't believe in. Describe to me this God you don't believe in." They usually thought that was a stupid question. But I would force them to answer it. And when they finished telling me what God was like, I would always congratulate them and say, "You're halfway to becoming a Christian because the greatest barrier to confronting and loving the real Jesus is being confused by the cultural description of Jesus that has emerged in our society."

We have in fact done something terrible. God created us in his image, but we have decided to return the favor, and we have created a God who is in our image. You have a decision to make. Which God, which Jesus, do you choose to follow? Do you choose to follow the Jesus described in the Bible, the Jesus who died on the cross for your sins, the Jesus who was resurrected and is here tonight? Or do you choose to took at another Jesus, a Jesus that is created by the culture and that embodies and reflects our values?

What Car Would Jesus Buy?

What is the difference between the two? The differences are pronounced. The Jesus of the Bible differs from the Jesus of Scripture in what he asks of you. The biblical Jesus bids you come and give everything that you are, everything that you have to him. The biblical Jesus says, quite simply, "Read my book. Read my Scripture. Come learn of me. And then in your everyday life, be like me." Let this mind be in you which is also in Christ Jesus. To be a follower of the biblical Jesus is to do exactly what the biblical Jesus would do if the biblical Jesus were in your shoes and in your circumstances.

Nothing is more controversial than to be a follower and a disciple of Jesus Christ. Nothing is more dangerous than to live out the will of Jesus in today's contemporary world. First, it will change your whole monetary lifestyle. What you do with your money will change. People ask me, "What do you mean? Are you suggesting that if I follow Jesus I won't be able to go out and buy a BMW?" You got it!

I know a lot of people who own BMWs. When they really get godly, they will repent of their BMWs because BMWs are luxury cars that symbolize conspicuous consumption instead of compassionate concern for the sufferings of the world.

Supposing that Jesus had to buy a car since there aren't donkeys on the highways anymore. If he had $40,000 and knew about the kids who are suffering and dying in Haiti, what kind of car would he buy? This is not irrelevant. This is where Christianity needs to be applied.

You've got to buy what Jesus would buy. You've got to dress with the kind of clothes that Jesus would dress in. There's no room for conspicuous consumption. This culture has in fact conditioned you to want more and more stuff you don't need so that while you are consumers of God's wealth, the hungry of the world suffer and the hungry of the world die.

It's time to repent of our affluence. Christians have lost the heart of the poor. Dr. Hestenes, my boss, said last night, "You're not a Christian in the full sense of the word until your heart is broken by the things that break the heart of Jesus." At the college where I teach I urge all of our sociology majors to go to the Dominican Republic or Haiti on study tours during the month of January. I want them there. The first time I took a group of students there, we stayed in a filthy, dirty home in a slum.

In the early morning the priest of the village invited us to walk with him. There was a flu epidemic. I had never seen anything like it. In the United States and Canada when people get the flu, they miss school. But when people are extremely malnourished and they get the flu, they die. As we wandered through the mud paths of the slum, mothers came out of their shacks that morning carrying the corpses of the children who had died during the night.

We went to the edge of the town and we dug a ditch. And into the ditch we dropped these dead kids. We looked across the ditch as the priest prayed his prayer and the women screamed as only they can scream in the Dominican Republic.

I saw one of my students who was a basketball player. He was always macho. But he didn't look macho that day. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. His fists were clenched. His chin was trembling. And I knew, I knew that his heart had been broken by the things that broke the heart of Jesus. Blessed are they that mourn.

Tony, are you suggesting that you can't be rich and be a Christian at the same time? I'm not the guy that dreamed up the line that it's harder for rich people to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. That was somebody else.

Tony, you're going to insult rich people. Do you have this world's goods? And can you see somebody with a desperate need and hold on to what you have while they suffer and die? If that's the case, 1 John 3:17-18 asks, "How then can you say you have the love of God in your heart?" That's what I'm asking.

If this offends you, be offended. Reject Jesus if you must, but you dare not take the biblical Jesus and turn him into something that he is not. He is the Jesus that confronts you and asks, "Are you willing to lay it on the line?" For unless a man, unless a woman, deny himself he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.

I worry about a church that has forgotten what the Bible teaches. We evangelicals work overtime proving that the Bible is inerrant, and after we do, then we refuse to accept what it says. It not only says we have to have a new attitude toward wealth, it means we have to be radical in all kinds of ways.

The Dangerous Jesus

When I became a Christian, the Korean War was in progress. It was an incredible experience because I didn't know whether or not to accept the draft. I had a conversation with a colonel, and we argued back and forth. He said to me, "What's your problem?"

"My problem is I want to do what Jesus would do."

"Could you get in a plane, fly over an enemy village and drop bombs?"

I said, "I could get in the plane. I could fly over the enemy village. But when I was about to release the bomb, at that moment I would have to say, 'Jesus, if you were in my place, would you drop the bombs?'"

And I remember the colonel yelling back to me, "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Everybody knows Jesus wouldn't drop bombs?" That colonel probably knew more about Jesus than most Baptist preachers that I know.

Tony, this is getting upsetting. What you are talking about now is getting politically dangerous. But when did Christianity cease being politically dangerous? We are looking for a new breed of Christians who will come to the Sermon on the Mount and live it out with a radical commitment. The world urgently needs people radically committed to the biblical Jesus.

The cultural Jesus will create a church very different from the biblical Jesus. The church that is generated by the cultural deity that we have dreamed up out of our Protestant imagination is an honorary chairperson of a static institution. The biblical Jesus is the leader of a revolutionary movement that is destined to challenge this world and transform it into the kind of world that God willed for it to be. If you get involved with this Jesus, you are going to become a dangerous person. If they send you to South Africa, you will not be able to tolerate the injustice of oppression that exists in that place. You will raise questions when our armies march off to war in places like Nicaragua. You will become a person who becomes dangerous because this church is committed to justice.

I am looking for a church that sends people into every avenue of life—into business, into the arts, into the educational sector, into the entertainment world—to be the revolutionary leaven that transforms the world. The task of the church is not to get ready for heaven. It's to communicate the kingdom of heaven in the midst of this world. The kingdom of this world will become the kingdom of our God.

When I read the life of John Wesley and hear about the great Wesleyan revivals (which incidently were initiated by students), I realize that Christianity can be an instrument for nonviolent change in a world that needs to be changed. When I read the stories of Charles Finney, the great revivalist of the 1800s, I realize that Jesus can be an infusing presence that transforms the world today as he did back then. The anti-slavery movement, the abolitionist movement, the feminist movement were all bom out of the revivals of Charles Finney.

This is a historic moment because God wants to raise up a generation of men and women who will enter into every sector of society as agents of change, transforming the world into the kind of world he wills for it to be. Is it always nonviolent? Yes, I believe it is. I believe we must stand up for truth and speak the prophetic word of God. That's what I loved about Martin Luther King. He came marching out of Selma, and he meets that old Bull Connors. And there they are. Bull Connors has his guns. Bull Connors has his clubs. Bull Connors has his troops. And King and his followers got down on their knees and prayed. There is nothing more vulnerable than a person on his knees in prayer. And at the count of ten, Connors and his troops marched in, and they bashed in the heads of King's followers, and I saw them battered and beaten and plastered all over that road. I knew, as I saw that on live television, that God had just won, that the civil rights movement had just won.

I know you're thinking, "How do you figure it won? They got their heads bashed in. They got stomped. They got kicked. They got killed." You're right. But we Christians have a nasty habit of rising again.

The Love of Power

I want a church that changes the world not from a position of power but from a position of love and commitment. I get scared about Christians today because they are on power trips. We think that if we get enough power, if we get enough people in office, if we take over America, we can force America to be righteous. Why didn't Jesus ever think of that? I believe that we have to change the world with the weapons of the church and not the weapons of the world. We have another style, another way. It's loving servanthood. It's giving ourselves, it's moving in, it's caring, it's loving, it's redeeming, not destroying.

I can understand power because everybody loves power. I love power. One day when I was coming home from the University of Pennsylvania where I used to teach, I came down the expressway, and just as I crossed Cityline Avenue, I heard this kerplunk, kerplunk. A flat tire. So I pulled over and jacked up the car.

As I was changing the tire, I was listening to the radio, which started to broadcast from the traffic helicopter. "Well, ladies and gentlemen, they're not going to get home tonight. They're backed up on the expressway all the way to Montgomery Avenue. They're standing still both directions on Cityline. The city of Phildelphia is a virtual standstill." I wondered to myself, "What has brought the city of Philadelphia to a standstill? What has frozen the fair city of brotherly love? Why has Frank Rizzo's town suddenly been paralyzed?"

Then the announcer said, "There is a brown car just west of Cityline Avenue." That's me! That's my car! Little Tony Campolo has got the city of Philadelphia standing still! Mothers can't get home. Children are crying for their fathers. Business deals are falling through. Lovers are not meeting, and I am making it happen!"

Who of us is immune to the lure of power? Who cannot be seduced by it? But the biblical Jesus is not into power. The biblical Jesus gave up power. He could have forced the world to be righteous, could he not? Instead he came and infuses people with his Spirit and calls on them to live sacrificially in love in this world.

A Hidden People

If I've been a little controversial, let me get very controversial. I have a friend in Brooklyn who is a pastor. He has a church in a dying community. Whenever I want a good story, I always call him because he always has good stories, even though he doesn't know it. I steal all his material.

"What happened last Tuesday?" I asked.

"Oh, that was weird," he said. "I had a funeral."

You see, he's a guy who makes so little that he has to do funerals to make a few bucks to keep himself going. He said the local undertaker had called with a funeral and nobody wanted to take it because the guy had died of AIDS. So he took the funeral.

"What was that like?"

"When I got there, it was weird. There were about 25 or 30 homosexuals sitting there. They sat there frozen with their hands on their laps. Their eyes were riveted straight ahead. They looked neither to the right nor to the left. I read some Scripture. I said some prayers. When the funeral was over, we went out and got into automobiles and drove out to the cemetery.

"I stood there at the edge of the grave as the casket went into the hole. Once again, I read some Scripture. Once again I said some prayers. And when I had said the benediction and turned to leave, I realized that none of these homosexual men had budged. I turned back and said, 'Is there anything else I can do?'

"And one of them said, 'Yes, there's something else you can do. I haven't been to church for years. Actually I was looking forward to the funeral because I always love to hear them read the Twenty-third Psalm. Pastor, would you read the Twenty-third Psalm?' So I read the Twenty-third Psalm.

"When I finished another man said, There's a passage in the book of Romans, and it says that nothing can separate us from the love of God. Do you know that passage?'And I read to those homosexual men, 'Nothing can separate you from the love of God. Neither height, nor depth, nor things present, nor things to come, nor principalities, nor powers, nothing - nothing can separate you from the love of God - nothing can separate you from the love of God.' And I stood there near the grave reading to these homosexual men passages of Scripture upon request for almost an hour."

When I heard that, I cried. I really cried because I knew these men were hungry for the Word of God but would never set foot inside a church because they believed that the church despised them. And they're right.

Am I approving of the homosexual lifestyle? Certainly not! All I'm saying is, When are we going to start loving the people that nobody else will love?

Somebody asked me, "If you were the pastor of a big inner city church, what would you do?" They asked me that at a press conference yesterday. I said quite simply, "I would ask the church to mortgage the building, take the money and build a hospice for AIDS victims because I think we need to say something to the homosexual community."

There are Spanish-speaking people, black people, Italian people in the inner city. I'm here to tell you there are approximately nine to ten million homosexuals, and the church of Jesus Christ has forced them to become a hidden people. It's about time that, without approving of sin, we love people.

I'm looking for a whole new mission enterprise. I'm looking for Christians who will set up Christian hospices for AIDS victims, for young men and women who will become doctors and nurses to take care of these people that some of our more secular doctors and nurses won't touch. It's time for Christians to create a daring church—a church that dares to love.

To Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before

Lastly, the cultural Jesus only asks us to be reverent and to be religious. I am not calling you to be religious. I am calling you to take your life and say tonight, "Jesus, I love you. I love you so much, I want you to take my life, and I want you to use it to do something splendid I want you to send me to those places where you need me to go. I'm here. Take me. If it's Africa, it's Africa. If it's Philadelphia, it's Philadelphia. If it's Buenos Aires, it's Buenos Aires. If it's Calcutta, it's Calcutta. I'll go where you want me to go, dear Lord. I'm yours."

The biblical Jesus wants to employ you in the place where he can use you to the optimum level. Why is that overseas? Because America is overstaffed. We have so many people coming out of colleges and universities these days that the society can't absorb them all. You don't have to go to work for General Motors. It'll survive without you. You don't even have to be a doctor in the United States, they've got enough. You certainly don't have to add to the supply of American lawyers.

What I love about "Star Trek" was the starship Enterprise skipping out into the darkness, and the voice saying, "Challenged to boldly go where no man has gone before." I'm here to call you to go where no one's ever gone, to do what no one's ever done, to be what no one's ever been. Being a missionary is hard, but most of the alternatives are very dull. If you want to be a yuppie, that's okay. It's just boring, that's all. What do they do? Work all week, come home, sit in the Jacuzzi and tell each other it's wonderful.

In the last scene of Death of a Salesman when they lower Willie Lowman into the grave, his wife says, "Bif, Bif, why did he do it? Why did he kill himself? Why did he commit suicide? Why did he do it, Bif?" And Bif says, "Ah shucks, Mom. Ah shucks, he had all the wrong dreams. He had all the wrong dreams."

If there's anything that can be said about this generation, it's that you've got all the wrong dreams. If you want to be a schoolteacher, why be in a place where they don't really need you? Why not let God take you and place you where you are absolutely essential? If you want to be a doctor, why not go where you're desperately needed? Why would anyone want to be a doctor where half of your patients aren't even sick, when you can go to the place where the life and death of hundreds of people will be hanging on you daily?

I'm with old Oswald Smith. I don't see why anybody should hear the gospel twice before everyone has had a chance to hear it once. Give your lives over to Jesus. The needs are so horrendous. If you think you can't do it, you're crazy. I was asked to be a counselor in a junior-high Christian camp. Everybody ought to be a counselor in a junior-high camp just once. If any Roman Catholics are here, you're right: there is a purgatory. We tried everything to get through to these kids what the gospel was all about. But nothing worked. Junior-high kids' concept of a good time is picking on people. And in this particular case, at this particular camp, there was a little boy who was suffering from cerebral palsy, and they began to pick on him.

They picked on little Billy. Oh, they picked on him. As he walked with his uncoordinated body, they would line up and imitate his grotesque movements. I watched him one day as he asked in his slow drawn-out speech, "Which way is the craft shop?" And the boys, mimicking his speech and movements, answered, "It's over there, Billy." And they laughed at him. I was irate. But my furor reached it's highest pitch on Thursday morning when it was Billys cabin's turn to give devotions. They had appointed Billy to be the speaker. They wanted to get him up in front to make fun of him. And as he dragged his way to the rostrum, you could hear the giggles rolling over the crowd.

And it took little Billy almost five minutes to say, "Jesus ... loves ... me... .And ... I ... love ... Jesus." When he finished, there was dead silence. I looked over my shoulder, and there were junior-high boys bawling all over the place. A revival broke out.

As I travel all over the world, I find missionaries and preachers everywhere I go who say, "Remember me, I was converted at that junior-high camp." We had tried everything. We even imported baseball players whose batting averages had gone up since they had started praying. But in the end God chose not to use the superstars. He chose a kid with cerebral palsy to break the spirits of the haughty. He's that kind of God.

Give your life to Jesus no matter what you're like and no matter what you can do or can't do. He wants to take you. He wants to fill you with himself. And he wants to use you to do the work of the kingdom.

John Kyle was the convention director of Urbana 87.

Tony Campolo, author, lecturer and evangelist, is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Eastern University in St. Davids, PA.

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The Urgency of the Call (1987)

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December 27-31, 2009