NYWC Cincy Big Room 2: Tony Campolo and House Band

By Patti Gibbons on October 31 2009

Confession: I went into this session with a bad attitude. Tony Campolo generally finds a way to take something I believe and make me feel angry or guilty about it.  Challenged, always, but not something to which I was looking forward. I was completely wrong in my assumptions as it related to tonight’s message.

Tonight, Tony gave us timeless truth. Literally, relating the science of time to the theology of the cross and to abundant life.  Tony gave us expansive language about our omnipresent God, and helped us to enter into the moment, every moment.

A few notes:

• Einstein changed everything with his theory of relativity. Other scientists scoffed because they said that the theory wouldn’t work in a world that not infinite.
• Newton advanced the idea of a three story universe. Einstein proved that there was something beyond space/time/matter.
• In the E = mc2 formula time is related to motion.  There will come a time when time will be no more. At the speed of light, if we could travel that fast, all of time would be compressed into one eternal now.
• Take the example of the cross. Jesus as a man died at a particular moment in time. Simultaneously God, who experiences all moments in one now. In his divinity all of time is the present tense. “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.” God dwells in the eternal now.
• You, here and now, are part of his eternal now. He can reach across time and space to absorb our sins and cleanse us – from the moment on the cross and our present. In the very moment you are sinning, Jesus is suffering on the cross – it is the cross that drives us to repentance.
• (Eastern Orthodox thinking) Jesus became all that is wrong about us, so that we can become all that is right about him. You shall become the righteousness of Jesus, right here and right now.
• Now is the most important time in your life. St. Augustine: “I am present in the now, but now does not exist in time.” Now is the non-existent point where the past meets the future.
• How alive are you right now? Two things keep us from being alive, guilt and anxiety. Guilt keeps us focused on the past, anxiety keeps us focused on the future. Jesus keeps us focused in the now, freeing us from the past/guilt, and holding the future.
• Most of my life has been meaningless passing of time, with only moments of being fully alive. “I came that you might have life and have it to the full.”
• God can draw straight lines with crooked sticks.
• The only time people come to Christ in our preaching is when they connect with him in the here and now; when they experience forgiveness and cleansing. Live life to the full in the here and now.

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