Karl Barth wrote that the “suffering of Jesus Christ, this revelation of man’s revolt and of God’s wrath, but also of God’s mercy, did not take place in heaven, nor on any distant planet, nor in some world of ideas; this took place in our time, in the midst of that history of the world in which our human life takes its course …. The fact that the Word became flesh signifies that the Word entered time and entered history”. He entered out history that we might have life and have it too the full. Jesus is called the pioneer of life. His life is the light of men and so this life, the life of Christ that is our life, and the life that He gives must be proclaimed and preached and shared. The mercy by which God brings us to life must be shared. The life that we live in the flesh now we live by faith in the son of God who loved us and gave himself for us and so the “must of missionary proclamation”, as Martin Franzmann calls it, must go on until the end. The church that wraps itself in worries about roof repairs and parking lot paving are missing the boat when it comes to the way we are to spend our time.
