“Well I would walk 500 miles, and I would walk 500 more, just to be the kind….” As I write those lyrics, you may remember them as the one-hit wonder “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” by the Proclaimers. For whatever reason, the Scottish duo’s band name has stuck in my head – the “Proclaimers”.
Our red letter challenge for this week makes us into proclaimers. In it, Jesus says to us, “Proclaim the Kingdom of God.”
But proclaiming the Kingdom of God might seem to us to be something that is as difficult as coming up with a one-hit wonder that lives in people’s heads…at least to do it in a way that makes sense. We’ve all seen ways that proclamation hasn’t made much sense: the guy at the corner with the sign that says “repent!” or the street preacher on campus. While I guess all of those are technically proclamation, and perhaps are more ardently holding to God’s commands than what I have the courage to do, I still wonder about how effective that proclamation is.
After all, we don’t just want to be people that sing on the street corners, we want to be like the Proclaimers. We want our song of Law and Gospel to ring in heads for ages, to take up permanent residence there just like “500 Miles” might still be ringing in your head. Of course, that’s not all up to us. The Holy Spirit determines the effectiveness of our proclamation, but He also gives us brains and hearts that He wants to use in proclamation.
There’s no real easy answer here. I can’t give you a 5-step program to effectively proclaim the Gospel any more than I can give you a 5-step program to come up with a Billboard top 10 hit. But I can perhaps point in the right direction. A proclamation of the Kingdom of God will be one that convicts with the Law but assures with the Gospel. It’s going to be one that comes from the hard work of reading Scripture and letting your own life become moved by the Word of God. It’s going to be one that has integrity and humility. And as we live out that life, we simply proclaim about the God who has come more than 500 miles to be with us.