Christianity as Movement

An excerpt from this past Sunday's sermon on Luke 9:28-36

Like my evangelical friend, Peter wanted to freeze the moment in time --- the transfiguration. That mountain top experience for Peter needed to be contained, so that it was not lost. The call of Jesus to come and see, to come and follow is a one of movement not of stagnation. What if Moses and the Hebrew slaves having crossed the parted sea simply decided to stand still on the other side? What if the freed slaves had decided that God’s miraculous parting of the sea was just enough for them, “we’ll just skip the wandering in the desert and just bask on the coast for a while”?

What if the Civil Rights Movement had just stopped at the end of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech? Or what if the Women’s Rights Movement simply stopped when women gained the right to vote? Wasn’t that enough for them? Why should they bother running for office too?"

A few years ago a professor at my seminary encouraged me to sign up for her class by describing it as a "movement" class. I wondered what movement she was talking about --- the Civil Rights Movement, or the Women's Rights Movement? What did she mean? She replied to my questions,"The Jesus Movement". When the class started I found that we were reading and listening to music by Christian people who were involved in those and many other movements as well. What would happen if we were to think about the many movements for social change, equality, ecology, justice and peace as part of a larger movement connected with the person and work of Jesus?