Jesus said ‘The words I have spoken to you are ‘spirit and life’.

John 6: 41- 71 Part2

John 6: 60-61

60 When many of his disciples heard it, they said, ‘This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?’ ⁶¹But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, ‘Does this offend you? 

Today you and I stand at the crossroads of our world and the radical alternative offered by Jesus Christ. Disciples in our reading are being challenged to be obedient to the words and practices of Jesus, that is, to meet their holistic needs by being obedient to the words of Jesus. This is what Jesus offers as the explanation of what He has just taught. To eat and drink the ‘flesh and blood’ of Jesus is to hear His words and put them into practice. Verse 63 could not be simpler. The flesh is useless in and of itself. There is no teaching of humanity that can fully meet the needs of humanity. This story is not announcing our need of the transubstantiation of bread and wine to flesh and blood: (eating flesh and drinking blood is prohibited in Mosaic Law Lev 17: 10-14: Deut 12:16 and Acts 15: 29). There is no ‘bread and wine’ in this story; this is not the Passover story; this is a ‘feeding in the desert story’. Jesus does refer to His death but as a substitutionary atonement (verses 51 see also John 3:6 & 16: here the metaphor is to be ‘born again’ or ‘born from above’). The question being addressed is: how can we survive in the desert of life and inherit the Kingdom prepared for us by God? There is transubstantiation: conversion, changes and transformation being revealed here but it is that of our lives to the words and practices of Jesus of the Nazareth sermon. It is the Spirit that gives life; the Holy Spirit empowers the transubstantiation, the conversion of the human life through applying the words of Jesus to our lives. Jesus said ‘The words I have spoken to you are ‘spirit and life’. The Kingdom of God is a Kingdom of willing active participation through the obedience of accepting Jesus and His participative teaching culminating in the cross and resurrection as the substitutionary atonement. Participation is not through personal will (this is an act of ‘flesh and blood’) but by the divine gift of ‘belief and the faith’, of obedience to the words and practices of Jesus. Remember all this talk of bread is because the people listening to Jesus have mobilised the story of the feeding of the ancient people of God with manna in the desert (6: 31) as some sort of sign that they were the people of the Kingdom of God. But they only told part of the story; why then did the ancient people of God die in the desert and not inherit the kingdom? They had the bread and water of God but they lacked obedience.  Joshua 5:6 makes it clear: ‘⁶For the Israelites travelled for forty years in the wilderness, until all the nation, the warriors who came out of Egypt, perished, not having listened to the voice of the Lord.’ The process of obedience to Jesus is the evidence and assurance of eternal life. The outcome of participation is personal and communal transformation where we become one with the body of Jesus and the life giving Spirit of God which becomes the lifeblood of our new lives in Christ. We can be confident in the words of Jesus; He is not trying to confuse He is explaining exactly what He means. By the reference to the ancient people of God being fed in the desert by Manna and comparing Himself to that Manna as the gift of God that brings life Jesus is clearly stating that He is the gift of God the fulfilment of the promise: Jesus is the messiah. To inherit the Kingdom and not perish in the desert we need to take the bread, eat AND obey the words (bread) which we eat.  This is clearly what the disciples who continue to follow Jesus understood and accepted. In verses 66 to 71 Jesus asks his disciples standing at the crossroads of decision to make their choice. Peter speaks up and replies to Jesus and in so doing reveals his understanding of what has just been taught. This understanding is accepted by Jesus; Peter states: ‘You have the words of eternal life’. Participative obedience to the teachings and practices of Jesus brings eternal life.  Only this will ensure we don’t die in the desert and never participate in the culmination of the journey, namely the consummated Kingdom inaugurated by Jesus; the Kingdom of peacemakers.  

We all have a difficult decision to make; Jesus says 'The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.'

John 6: 41- 71 Part 1

John 6: 63

⁶³It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. 

Humans are complex beings. Since the time of the European Enlightenment, from around the late 17^th century there has been an attempt to use reason, individualism and the scientific method to understand and gain meaning regarding the complexity about life and the cosmos. This method uses manageable parts of disciplined investigation and analysis to produce understanding and meaning. It is an approach that has brought many benefits to our life and culture along with disasters through its misuse and application. Gaps in knowledge can provisionally be sketched or predicted in an attempt to achieve a more complete story of life using the story of scientific investigation. From time to time the story of science has to be re-written because of some new discovery and gradually over time the scientific story of life unfolds and our understanding of ourselves and the universe in which we live grows and develops. The explaining of the complexity of life and the world around us through the telling of stories is a very human approach to the production of knowledge. It is as old as human beings; telling stories is how we make sense of the world and ourselves. Biology, chemistry and physics tell the story of the physical world; philosophy and psychology tell the story of ideas and mental events; sociology, politics and economics tell the story of the world of relationships, how to get things done culturally and the production and distribution of wealth. There are other genres  for producing meaning with very long histories for example the: arts, music and in literature. These too are very powerful means in providing sources of meaning about life and how we live and should live together.  The bible is literature; a story of the revelation of the creative, sustaining and redemptive power and consciousness known as God. The bible uses the story of the revelation of God to answer the questions of life and does so through the use of many different types of literature: ancient historical narrative, poetry, wisdom literature, prophetic writings, biography and letters. It is a story that has travelled through many different cultures and engaged with many different ways of understanding the world. It is a story that has also like science been abused and used in destructive and oppressive ways.  The biblical story has met with other ways of telling the story of life at historical cultural crossroads where there has been a mutual exchange of meanings. In Scotland we currently live at the crossroads between the post enlightenment story and the story of the creative, sustaining and redemptive God. We will consider this much more in other series. In our biblical story today we are witnessing one such crossroad interaction. Competing ways of understanding human needs and how they should be met are interacting before us; stories are being told to answer questions and answers are being interrogated by participants; symbols are being deployed and challenged; new understanding and meaning is emerging from the interaction and people are coming to conclusions and taking action based on the encounter.  This is the process that continues today. We are invited by Jesus to interact; to bring ourselves and our story to the crossroads of participation and decision. If we will come and participate we will be offered an alternative way of meeting our needs; of understanding who we are and how we got here; we will be offered the hope of a new life free from the threats and experience of oppression and death. The words that Jesus is speaking in our story are ‘spirit and life’; Jesus words are powerfully symbolic; His words, His story offer us life at the crossroads of decision. It,s time to decide.

My First AA Meeting - Matthew Strange | RHETORIC 2014

Hungry?

John 6: 22:40

25 When they found him on the other side of the lake, they said to him, ‘Rabbi, when did you come here?’ ²⁶Jesus answered them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.

Some people are persistent seekers of Jesus and the community of disciples but for the wrong reasons. It’s understandable, people have an ongoing experience of their wants and desires and they hear about the power of Jesus to answer the questions of life or they hear about a community of disciples where people of all sorts are made to feel they belong even if they don’t believe. So they seek more. However there is a problem if we continue to seek the thing that does not actually meet our needs. People end up blaming Jesus or His community of disciples for not being the answer to their need because they don’t actually understand what their need is. After the feeding of the 5000 you would have thought, after Jesus refuses to be made King, people would stop and think about what Jesus has really come to achieve. The people thought He was here to overthrow the Romans and their puppet rulers and that if they throw in their support for the overthrow Jesus will supply their physical needs by setting up a Kingdom where they don’t have to work for their food, shelter and clothing.’ In verse 26 Jesus makes it clear to the crowd that He knows even if they don’t why they are following Him so enthusiastically. There is no doubt they wanted transformed lives. It’s their assessment of personal and community need that is mistaken. Again the people are concentrating on the physical and empirical needs of life and the mistaken view that they can only be met by physical and empirical means. Jesus appeals to them to re-examine how they are meeting their needs (27). This leads them to ask the question that matters (28); what does God require? Are you and I at that point in life yet? Are we ready to ask the question what does God require for us to meet our real needs, individually and collectively His way? Jesus cannot be simpler in His response: ‘Believe in him whom He has sent.’ Jesus is asking them to believe in Him.   But the crowd still want a ‘sign’ they want a reason to believe; their real need is not enough: the teaching and practice of Jesus is not enough they want a ‘meal and a miracle’. The crowd have a view of their leaders; ‘just meet our needs our way Jesus and you’re in; we have already offered to make you our King’. It’s sad to think that God feeds us, protects us and leads us to the point of revealing who He is and we think it’s our ‘kings’ that provide for us. It is God who provides (32) always God.  His provision is not just for our physical needs but each area of our life; His provision is the ‘bread of life’ (35) the physical, social, psychological and spiritual means of life. God’s provision is Jesus; He is the ‘Bread of Life’ and we must eat. We must put into our lives His teaching and practice if we are to experience life. This is believing: accepting Jesus for who He is as revealed in scripture, accepting that we cannot meet our needs our way, turning to Jesus and seeking His forgiveness for meeting our needs our own way and we must  follow Him the way He teaches : this is saving faith.  It’s the only way to meet all our needs the way God has created us for them to be met.        

Steph MacLeod

      

Two very different views of the future.... You decide!

Videos to help us decide?

OR

Seems obvious really!

Culture Jamming in the Scottish independence referendum....

Will Scotland vote to be a peacemaker and a 

welfare for all provider?

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CND

We can feed the crowds of the hungry....

Matthew 14:  13-22; Mark 6: 30-46; Luke 9: 10-17; John 6: 1- 15

Mark 6:30

30 The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught…..

What kind of Jesus is it that we follow and why would we choose to follow Him? Through reading the scriptures I have come to realise that I have an in-built tendency to choose the wrong thing. Left to my own devices I will meet my needs my own way. It’s not a matter of will power it’s a matter of poor judgement; no matter how hard I try; it’s not a matter of effort it’s a matter of ability. I am powerless to do what is right; I need help. I need to see myself and the world in a radically different way.  In our story today we read about Jesus feeding 5000 men not counting women and children. It’s a record contained in all four gospels; obviously it is seen by all writers as providing some essential answers to our questions about following Jesus. This is a story that reveals the messiah that people desired to have and the actual authentic messiah revealed in Jesus. The story tells us that the fickle crowd follow because of their curiosity regarding the signs or miracles they have heard about or seen. They follow Jesus unprepared for the journey and they have no food or apparently no or little means of getting any. They follow out of a self-centred fascination and getting caught up in the crowd. They appear to Jesus to be vulnerable, leaderless and in a desperate need that they don’t recognise. This moves Jesus; He recognises that these are the ones he has come to liberate from the forces that rage against them; their inbuilt tendency to choose the wrong answer to the questions of their life. The masses are hungry what will Jesus do? Jesus feeds them; He takes a few bread biscuits and some fish paste and he makes food out of nothing. Bread and fish multiply in abundance that results in more, much more than enough being provided. Jesus of the Nazareth sermon physically feeds the hungry and the masses identify Him as the Prophet that was promised by God in Deuteronomy 18:15. This is the point where we see the messiah, the King that the crowds are seeking and they want to make Him King now!. The Kingdom of the crowd makes only a physical assessment and provision for their holistic need. They have drawn the conclusion that their only issue is that of physical need. They understand that their messiah will meet their physical need.  Let’s be clear, they do have physical needs and Jesus does meet them. But they have much more complex need than that! They want a King that will feed them and cure their illness and that’s fine but their need run much deeper. Jesus refuses the offer to be made their King. But I thought that’s why He came?  Jesus’s Kingdom meets much more than physical needs.  Jesus also meets the social, psychological, environmental and spiritual needs of people; they cannot be left unmet. If they are, it will be impossible to meet physical need in the long term. We see this every day in the news. We supply aid to the hungry and so we should; Jesus did in our story. But the people will be hungry again and again because of the refusal to address the other needs of what it means to be a human being. We have to meet all our needs the way God desires if we are to have Him as our King. The people in the story, you and I have to see our needs through the teachings of Jesus; we may not like what we see but we have to repent from meeting our needs our own way and turn and accept Jesus as King as He is revealed in scripture if we are to be transformed by participation in the Kingdom of God. This is why Jesus told His disciples to feed the crowd; they are just back from teaching about the Kingdom; they could teach the people before them what it really means to follow Jesus and the holistic transformation that following Him brings. Read the story again and hear the words of Jesus in Matthew 14: 16 ‘16Jesus said to them, ‘They need not go away; you give them something to eat.’’ 

It's a question of identity...

Matthew 14: 1-12; Mark 6: 14-29; Luke 9: 7-9

Mark 6

²⁶The king was deeply grieved; yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her.

Conflicts come in many forms: physical, social, psychological, environmental and spiritual.  In the life of Jesus and His followers there was little respite from those who had a vested interest in silencing them for one reason or another. We have tended to be told and we have tended to hear the story of Jesus in a very two dimensional way: good guy versus bad guy; saint versus sinners; God versus the devil. This grossly simplifies and distorts the biblical story of God’s revelation of Himself in Jesus. We would benefit from taking time to hear the story of Jesus in the much richer context of the first century Middle East. There is a physical conflict going on through a military occupation by Rome, there are multiple competing political and religious (a powerful way of doing politics) interests; people are torn between meeting their immediate short term interests and choosing some form of radical change; a sense of nation, land, ritual are all mixed up and there is resulting crisis of personal and community identity. If there is one thing that strikes me as I read the bible it is the diversity of interests and identities revealed in the unfolding story. In today’s story of the martyrdom of John the Baptist many of these socio-political elements come together. John challenged a powerful regional leader (King Herod the Tetrarch) with regard to how he could lead a people ethically when his personal life was grossly unethical. How can social cohesion and harmony be promoted by those who live chaotic lives? The Tetrarch was living out his identity as an administrator for Rome; his behaviour was no more unethical in those terms than any other powerful leader of his time. Rome was built on two brutal principles ‘death and taxes’: avoid the first by paying the second. Power exercised is power possessed; Herod exercised his power and in this sense he was no better or no worse than his contemporaries.  John was challenging this identity. He was challenging Herod not just with adultery but with the identity question; who has God created you to be? God is in charge; God is our King; His Kingdom has come; have you not heard the stories of Jesus and His Nazareth sermon?  Herod has indeed heard about Jesus and what been happening around the country. Could all this stuff be true? There is a profound sadness to this story; an addiction to: power, lust, saving face and a celebrity lifestyle costs two people their lives. John the Baptist is beheaded and Herod the Tetrarch saves face (his identity as a Roman Tetrarch) rather than his life and a new identity in the Kingdom that Jesus has inaugurated and is announced by John.    

In the complexities of our contemporary setting we have to keep focus on our identity as followers of Jesus and as participants in His life transforming Kingdom.  The physical, social, psychological, environmental and spiritual conflicts that we will face as individuals and as a community of disciples are very real. Each of these conflicts has to be viewed and  resolved through the ethical teachings and practices of Jesus if we are to live out the freedom from violence and oppression that Jesus said He had come to inaugurate. No more beheadings are necessary; no more revenge is necessary; simply hear the words of Jesus and put them into practice. This is our identity in the presence of ongoing conflicts. 

Which way to the road to recovery?

Matthew 8: 18, 23-37; Mark 4: 35-41; Luke 8: 22-25

Mark 4: 38b

‘…‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’…’

How is the spiritual inventory going? You’ve not been doing it? Well, today is the day to restart. If there is one thing today’s passage tells us it’s this; we can be surrounded by the very best of teaching and teachers but unless we apply these teachings to ourselves and put them into practice we remain in the same old desperate, anxiety ridden lives. The Road to Recovery principle 4 reads:  ‘Openly examine and confess my faults to myself, to God, and to someone I trust. “Happy are the pure in heart.” (Matthew 5:8)’.  We have to examine our life practices and our response to life in the light of the teachings of Jesus of the Nazareth sermon. This process of self-assessment reveals our deep rooted commitments; it reveals our habitual behaviours based on what we really believe and therefore reveals the reasons for our behaviour.  This process reveals our faulty values, attitudes and beliefs that lead to faulty responses to life and its challenges. We have been created to respond to God and each other in love through peace-making practices. But something gets in the way, that is, we meet our needs our own way, the Bible calls it Sin. We need to become part of a New Creation so that we can respond by meeting our needs God’s way. Perhaps for the first time you are beginning to experience this transformation or indeed you may be getting back to living the way you know you should?  All people and especially disciples, who experience the absence of Jesus in life, that is, as an active guide in our life, we feel that in times of trouble that we are perishing. Today’s reading tells the story of a journey that Jesus initiated to the other side of a lake. A storm gets up and the disciples in the boat, in the middle of a storm panic; they did not feel they were going to the other side of the lake. They felt as if they were going to the bottom! They told Jesus how they felt: they come clean with Jesus; ‘…‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’…’ These are the people who have seen the miracles, the healings, heard the teachings and were in the very presence of Jesus and yet they feel they are perishing. Jesus calms the storm not because they were going to the bottom; if Jesus says we are going to the other side of the lake that is where we are going! He calms the storm to remind them who He is; He reveals to them His identity again and this calms the situation. Perhaps the reason we stop doing our inventory, identifying our needs and the way God wants us to meet our needs is because we get overwhelmed by feelings that we are perishing and we panic. We forget who Jesus is. Jesus has made us promises; He promises to journey with us our whole life long, to be our example and guide, to never leave us or forsake us. If we will participate with Him in living out His Kingdom teachings He promises to transform our panic and anxiety into assurance and faithful living; even in the storms of life. The disciples got one crucial thing RIGHT!  They admitted to themselves, to Jesus and to each other that things were not right between them. Restoration of relationships followed the confession. The transforming practice revealed in the story is in times of trouble we can panic, meet our needs our own way and end up feeling that we are perishing. We relapse! However, we can come to Jesus and admit we have a tendency to meet our needs our own way and recommit to put into practice His teachings. He will reveal Himself again to us as the Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer that He is. Anyone for the Road to Recovery?

See you at the Fountain Lesmahagow tonight at 7

The Kingdom of Heaven is like....

Matthew 13: 24-35; Mark 4: 26-34

Matthew 13: 24

24 He put before them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; 

We have considered that Jesus, His teachings and practice are the taught and lived expression of the announcement of the inaugurated Kingdom of God announced in the Nazareth Sermon (Luke 4: 16-30). We are putting into practice a commitment to take the words of Jesus seriously and apply them to our lives. His teachings and practices are normative for us in our decision making. Therefore, when Jesus makes the statement in Matthew 13 ‘³¹ …. “The kingdom of heaven is like …’ we pay particular attention. Jesus claim is a radical one; the claim is that He the fulfilment of the prophecy of the One that inaugurates the Kingdom here in our time and space. The Kingdom has come and is still at the same time coming. The Kingdom of God is a present and eternal reality yet at the same time is a process of increasing transformative, personal and community participation.  Jesus says it best:’ it’s as if a man should scatter seed on the ground….’ (Mark 4:26), And then again, ‘it’s like a mustard seed…’(Mark 4:30) and how about; ‘like treasure hidden in a field…’ (Matthew 14: 44).  The point I want to emphasise here is this. The Kingdom of God is! There is a Kingdom in which we are invited to participate. The transformation of our lived reality depends on it. Jesus describes the Kingdom for us: it is made up of diverse people from all different backgrounds and it is the most precious of life transforming choices. The Kingdom is invisible at times and apparently without effect on the world and at other times it appears to be the refuge of the masses. The reality is this; it is all these things and more all at the same time.  If we find all this too challenging to consider Jesus simplifies the process of participation for us.  In Matthew 7: 24 we hear these words from Jesus ‘“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock…..’  The wise are the Kingdom participants who are engaged in the ongoing transformative process of ‘hearing and acting’. I feel another description of the Kingdom coming on: The Kingdom of God is like a diverse community of disciples who hear and act on the teachings and way of life of Jesus their teacher. The challenge for us remains the 2000 year old challenge: will we hear and act in obedience to the teachings of Jesus of the Nazareth Sermon.    

Diversity in the Kingdom...

Matthew 13: 24-30

²⁴ He put before them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; ²⁵ but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. 

There is a misguided desire for us to be part of pure communities where we all believe the exact same thing and live the exact same way; to be a community of clones not disciples. This stifles creativity, suppresses diversity and denies inclusivity. The authentic community of disciples will have people and practices that challenge our commitment to diversity; Jesus advises us that the practice of tolerance, compassion, forgiveness and inclusivity does not mean we will be overcome by heresy or false teaching; it means we will demonstrate to the surrounding culture that it is possible and indeed desirable to live in peace with those we don’t agree with and find challenging. The present expression of the Kingdom of God is a diverse place; one day when the Kingdom comes to full maturity all that is worth keeping will be obvious to all of creation; these practices and principles will last, the rest of our practices and misunderstandings will simply slip into history. As we meet in community today, value diversity, celebrate inclusion and look forward to the hope of being transformed by the teachings and practices of Jesus of the Nazareth Sermon.   

Prayer: Loving God and Father teach us to value your word and the people you have placed in our lives and teach us how to live as faithful disciples of Jesus your Son through the power of your indwelling Holy Spirit and for your glory.  Amen

Putting down roots...

Matthew 13: 1-23; Mark 4: 1-25; Luke 8: 4-18

Matthew 13: 18

¹⁸ ‘Hear then the parable of the sower….’

Have you ever felt that you don’t understand the word of God, that since becoming a follower of Jesus you haven’t really put into practice what you’re struggling to learn and that trouble seems to stalk you? Most of us would admit to these experiences from time to time. It’s a dangerous place to be and Jesus advises us that we won’t survive as followers of Him unless we make a series of important choices to protect our discipleship. Firstly, Jesus advises that we find out what the word of God actually means and demonstrate that knowledge by putting it into practice. This can be achieved by being a participant in a community of followers that teach, explain and apply the word of God in everyday life. The teachings of Jesus need to become normative practices in the life of His followers. Secondly, by putting down roots in a community that practices and not only teaches what it means to be a disciple allows us to draw on and give support to the community of disciples; we step back from relapsing into self-destructive habits. We witness and become witnesses that following Jesus actually works and we can grow in confidence by observing others model discipleship practice.  Thirdly, putting the word of God into practice and being part of a committed community of disciples gives us resilience in times of trouble and stress and it keeps us focussed on the new possibilities of life;  meeting our needs individually and communally the way God created us for them to be met. Being a follower of Jesus is an individual responsibility but a communal practice. To be ‘good soil’ means actively seeking to understand and practice in community the teachings of Jesus. Trouble will come, persecution may come but being part of a Christ centred community will be the source of strength we need to live as authentic followers of Jesus. This is Jesus answer to the question, the story He told to answer it, the symbols He deployed and the practices He taught.  

Parables

Matthew 13: 1-23; Mark 4: 1-25; Luke 8: 4-18

Matthew 13: 3

³ And he told them many things in parables, saying: ‘Listen! 

After the decision of the political and religious leaders to make plans to kill Him (Matthew 12:14), Jesus, for the rest of His Galilean ministry, only teaches the fickle crowd in parables. The crowd will be needed by the authorities to approve of the getting rid of Jesus and Jesus will on a Human level need to be careful how He teaches to ensure He completes His creating, sustaining and redemptive work.   Parables are common in Judaism with the Greek word for parable occurring around 45 times in the Septuagint; the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. The people would not find parables strange as a form even although they may not understand them.  Parables are extended analogies. Analogies have been previously used by Jesus many times before this in for example the Sermon on the Mount;  see the ‘Salt and Light’ and ‘Wise Person builds’ narratives. A parable is an extended analogy which takes the form of a parallel story that answers a fundamental question for the participants or at least as we will see some of the participants in the story and by implication the reader. Parables answer questions through encoding the problem and solution in common signs as symbolic representations.  The reader or hearer is set the task of decoding the story and finding themselves and others in the narrative.  The form: question, story, symbol and practice is deployed as a vehicle for setting the stage for the answer to the question to be finally realised. Jesus explains the parables to His disciples but not the crowds. The crowds appear stuck in views of themselves and their society in such a ridged way that they cannot conceive of an alternative way of being in the world. They are conservative in their following of conservatism or liberalism, they a zealous as zealots and enthusiastic tax collectors. They don’t seem to get the possibility of the radical change that Jesus is offering, the progressive revelation and the Kingdom of God as a place where God renews and perpetually does the renewing thing. For those who refuse Jesus as the fulfilment of the promises of God to set them free form the powers that rage against them the parables are confusing and problematic.  The crowds and their leaders prefer: ‘signs and wonders’ a ‘trick and a treat’; a free meal with a miracle.   Jesus refuses to offer them signs (Matthew 12: 38-42), and begins to teach in extended analogies. We will examine some of these parables. But first, we need to get the form: question, story, symbol and practice. What are the questions we bring to the text? We have to be prepared to hear the words of Jesus as a first step. We have to be willing to consider the possibility of giving up our self-centred ways of meeting our needs and for free food and miracles. The words of Jesus have to be taken seriously; recognising our part in the story, decoding the symbols and acting upon Jesus teaching. We have to be the good soil that is capable of taking the seed of Jesus teaching and planting it in our lives and providing the medium for the fruit of this seed; that is, we must put the teachings into practice. Our lives are at stake; it’s all about whom we are; what kind of soil we are and what is available for the seed of the word of truth.  We are about to discover who God has created us to be.

Amazing unbelief!

Matthew 13: 54-58; Mark 6: 1-6

Mark 6:6a

⁶And he was amazed at their unbelief. 

In today’s reading Jesus is back home in Nazareth for the last time. Jesus was the famous son of a local couple and brother to well-known young people around the town. After a busy time around Galilee being home in familiar places and among familiar people should have been a time of rest, building up and preparation for the rest of the work that is ahead.  However it was not to work out that way. The people of Nazareth and especially those who attended the local synagogue could not accept that someone who shared their humble circumstances, belonged to a family that was rumoured about and who earned his living in a modest occupation could be the fulfilment of the promises of God, for liberation and freedom from all the social, economic, political and personal forces that raged against them. The people of Nazareth internalised and acted out the social conditioning that they were exposed to by the powerful forces at work in their culture. They accepted the plethora of prejudiced beliefs articulated about them. They accepted the narrative that people like them could not achieve great things; they accepted their allocated part in the story of life that their family origins defined and mapped out their future and level of achievement; they accepted what they have been told about themselves: socially, psychologically and physically. Any other telling of the story of life was rejected in favour of the contemporary dominant social and economic narrative. They were victims of the hegemony of ideas and power exercised by the Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots and don’t forget Rome.   

When Jesus challenged these assumptions He was rejected by them time and time again. Jesus and His teachings were not just rejected by the powerful and vested interests of His culture but by the ordinary people of His own social class and those He came to liberate. Jesus was amazed that they didn’t get the story He came to tell; that a different world was not just possible but that it had arrived. The Kingdom of peace has arrived; it’s fulfilled! It is a challenge to us to today ask ourselves the question about what story of life we are willing to participate in. Is it the dominant narrative of our culture with its religious and faith commitment to secularism and socio-economic determinism? Do we claim to be disciples of Jesus yet live by other principles, priorities and ethics? Do we accept our place and what is said about us by the powerful social and economic forces at work in our culture and turn our back on the practical expression of the teachings of Jesus? Remember Luke 4? Jesus read and then reflected:

¹⁸ ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
   because he has anointed me
     to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
   and recovery of sight to the blind,
     to let the oppressed go free, 
¹⁹ to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’ 
²⁰And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. ²¹Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ 

We are called by Jesus to be participants in the practice of good news to the: poor, the captives of oppressive discourses of power, those blind to the possibilities of the teachings of Jesus and oppressed by the practices of dominant ideas that there is no alternative to the current social, political, economic and psychological status quo. Jesus came and fulfilled the promise of a new Kingdom that is practical, achievable and beneficial to all of us who share a common humanity and are prepared to accept and apply the teachings of Jesus.     

Domestic violence must stop...

The need for Celebrate Recovery has never been greater: 

Check out the article below.  

The Independent

Yes the person and time has come...

Matthew 11: 2-19 & Luke 7: 18-25

Matthew 11:

 ⁴Jesus answered them, ‘Go and tell John what you hear and see: ⁵the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. ⁶And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me.’

Any doubts about Jesus, His identity and the purpose of His ministry were answered the day John the Baptist sent his disciples to ask Jesus if He was the Messiah or were they to look for another.  It is tempting for us in our day and time to have similar doubts especially when things are not going according to plan. The teachings, the practices and the deeds of supernatural power are all ‘signs’ and pointers that the Kingdom has been restored in and through a person: Jesus of the Nazareth sermon. The writer of Marks gospel is clear and emphatic in chapter 1:14 “Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, ¹⁵and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’” It’s time, history has reached the point of the provision of the promise of the Messiah; participation and transformation of our views regarding the physical, social, psychological and environmental worlds we inhabit is invited as the first step, in the ongoing process of the coming of the Kingdom. Jesus is seen clearly by New Testament writers as the fulfilment of the promised liberation and return from exile. However the vested religious interests do not accept either John or Jesus. according to them: one is a religious madman the other a drunk and a glutton but to those with ears to hear, usually the ordinary people and those on the margins, the time has at last come to work together with all likeminded people for a time, place and practice of peace and interdependence.  Our response to those who reject the good news? Love our neighbours and enemies alike. The discipleship practice of compassion, prayer, forgiveness and the fasting of oppression and violence is the ongoing invitation to participate in the Kingdom where Jesus is Prophet, Priest and King.

What are we sharing our life with? It's time to get help...

Celebrate Recovery Scotland

Foxes, birds, dead people and burials?

Matthew 8: 18-22

18 Now when Jesus saw great crowds around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side. ¹⁹A scribe then approached and said, ‘Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.’ ²⁰And Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’ ²¹Another of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’ ²²But Jesus said to him, ‘Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.’

It can be easy to get carried along with the crowd. We see it when we attend large public events and we begin to join in activities that we would normally not do. Mass participation without any real personal commitment is a phenomenon that can be manipulated and abused and has been seen both inside and outside the church. Jesus was very cautious about accepting vulnerable people and their expressed desires in these situations. In our passage Jesus is moving on and two people have a word with Him about coming along.  Desperate people do desperate things to have their frustrated and personally unmet needs satisfied. There is a cost to discipleship namely, an ongoing and relentless transforming of life’s practices. Costly changes to life and its priorities come with discipleship. It should not be entered lightly or as part of the enthusiasm of being part of a crowd. In our passage today Jesus is teaching us that if we take the words and practices of Jesus seriously and put them into practice, bit by bit and day by day we might find ourselves ‘homeless’ but meeting our social responsibilities in radically new ways. The scribe in our passage belonged to a social group with a strong identity and high social status. They were ‘at home’ in the rigorous disciplines of practicing the personal disciplines to keep themselves pure for their exacting work as scribes. They experienced certainty and predictability if they just kept to the rules. Jesus calls the scribe to give up all the false, unsatisfactory certainty of ‘scribal-ism’ and embrace the ‘homelessness’ of following Jesus and His teachings. This may include actual physical homelessness!   The other person in the story is trying to have the best of both worlds. Contrary to some explanations of this passage, Jesus is not teaching that His disciples have no responsibility for their families. That would be inconsistent with the overall teaching of Jesus. Jesus is calling us to meet our family and indeed other social needs in a radically new and life transforming way. He uses a local saying ‘let the dead bury their own dead’ to present the reader with a socially unacceptable and indeed impossible suggestion in an attempt to teach that the excuse of ‘family / social commitment’ for not following the teachings of Jesus is ridiculous. The Romans, Pharisees, Sadducees and Zealots were all dictating how family and social needs should be met and they all resulted in the ‘death’ of the individual, the family and the communities they form. Jesus is offering a radical alternative (read the Sermon on the Mount) which will lead to a new life for family relationships and rich diversity of family forms and expressions. Jesus is not teaching abandonment of responsibility but the meeting of our responsibilities in new life giving ways; life for the individual, the family and the community.  Jesus is offering a path of transformation through participation in His Kingdom values, attitudes, beliefs and practices. The offer is a good one and is still being made today.  Are we ready to give up the old certainties and ways of meeting our needs our own way? Don’t get caught up in the fashion of the fickle crowd; the teaching of Jesus offers us a realistic and radical alternative way of life that values individual diversity and social responsibility. Will we participate and have our lives, families and communities transformed in the process?                  

No return to the old ways...

Matthew 8: 1-17

¹⁷This was to fulfil what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah, ‘He took our infirmities and bore our diseases.’

Only the Creating, Sustaining and Redeeming God can instantaneously cure the sick. The writers of the gospels were in no doubt; Jesus is the Creating, Sustaining and Redeeming God. Jesus is God with us (Matt 1:23). However, the question remains: is it possible for us to live out His teachings, there related practices of the Sermon on the Mount and be transformed by them? Perhaps these teachings are a set of high ideals that we strive to attain but we have little hope of being transformed by them. Or, perhaps they are for a time to come; a time when there will be no choice in the matter we will live by them because the transforming power of the Kingdom of invitation and love of enemies will be displaced by a benevolent dictators rule and his authority to enforce them. Will love inspired transforming participation be displaced by a return to a gentler oppression and violence?  At the end of the Sermon on the Mount the writer of Matthew presents us with three ‘Healing’ stories and one summative generalisation about the crowds that followed Jesus which again demonstrates that Jesus has inaugurated the Kingdom of God; the Kingdom has come and is in the process of being wholly established through seeking our participation and transformation; but it’s here and elicits a response from us. These three stories again present us with three elements of the: current cultural practice, current cultural outcome and the transformative practice of the inaugurated Kingdom. Illness and the life threatening frustration of physical needs, the loss of health has not only physical but psychological and social effects. A leper (2), a desperate Roman centurion (5) and a family referred to as Peter’s house (14) are suffering the effects human needs being unable to be met with life devastating outcomes. Physical, social, psychological suffering and death are presented in these stories and is reversed by Jesus. The writer underlines this by stating that through His practices (His teachings have just been presented in the Sermon on the Mount) Jesus is fulfilling the promise of God in Isaiah 53:4 for renewal and freedom from the forces that rage against Him and against us.  Jesus seeks those who experience this renewal to follow Him through obedience to the Word of God (4) and live out the new Kingdom reality practically that is to be a witness in and through our lives. Those who have their lives renewed by Jesus are to let the community see there has been a transformation by living out the Kingdom values of inclusion: lepers, centurions and families are all welcome in the Kingdom. Jesus renews family and community relationships by addressing fears, and suffering; He meets family and community needs as an invitation to hear His words and put them into practice. Jesus of the Nazareth sermon, explained in the Sermon on the Mount is demonstrating the fulfilment of the Kingdom promises among the precarious people meeting their precarious needs and vulnerabilities. It is possible to live out the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount and be transformed in the process but it will mean serving precarious people like ourselves in precarious places like the places we live and we too will become the fulfilment of the prophecy through participation in a renewed humanity.   

Writing our part of the story....

Psalm 105

God’s Faithfulness to Israel

¹ O give thanks to the Lord, call on his name,
   make known his deeds among the peoples.
² Sing to him, sing praises to him;
   tell of all his wonderful works.
³ Glory in his holy name;
   let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice.
⁴ Seek the Lord and his strength;
   seek his presence continually.
⁵ Remember the wonderful works he has done,
   his miracles, and the judgements he has uttered,
⁶ O offspring of his servant Abraham,
   children of Jacob, his chosen ones. 

It’s Sunday; for the community of disciples this is a special day when we meet together and re-tell the story of God in Christ to each other; the liberation story of the fulfilment of the promises of God in and through the work of Jesus. This retelling of God’s story has been the will of God from the beginning. In Genesis 3:15 God told the story that salvation from meeting our needs our own way would one day come. God the creator revealed Himself as God the Redeemer.  In the story Noah God the Redeemer saves humanity by providing the means of escaping the flood of disasters and promises to sustain humanity until the age to come. The Creator, Sustaining Redeemer reveals Himself over and over again in scripture. In our day and time He continues to do so through the Lord Jesus Christ and His New Creation, Sustaining and Redeeming work.  In today’s psalm we get an insight into the psalmist’s commitment to telling the story in His day and time. We stand in a long line of liberation story tellers. As we gather in community today be conscious of the long history of faithfulness  and witness that we have an opportunity to contribute to and in so doing write our part of the story.  

Different kinds of unity.

Do not judge?

Matthew 7

7‘Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. ²For with the judgement you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. ³Why do you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? ⁴Or how can you say to your neighbour, “Let me take the speck out of your eye”, while the log is in your own eye? ⁵You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye.

We draw conclusions about life continually. We are convinced we can count and we do count; two plus two is always four.  We have confidence in and trust our perceptions and draw conclusions with ease. Jesus teaches us that we should not be so confident in our own ability. He teaches us that we as disciples have an ongoing and ever present tendency to see the world through our own eyes and in our own interests. Jesus teaches that we need to transform our view of the world, the people who inhabit it and so transform the view we have of ourselves. Failure to do this is described as throwing pearls before swine. We don’t like to think of ourselves as people who are not in the position to benefit from the teachings of Jesus. But that is what is being suggested here. We need to adopt the viewpoint of Jesus; see ourselves and the people around us through His eyes. We need to do a personal inventory for ourselves, identify our own needs and implement and be transformed through the application of the teachings of Jesus to ourselves. If we don’t we will simply destroy ourselves through trying to apply the teachings of Jesus to other people while we see others through our own distorted self-righteous self-perception. The key to achieving justice for all; the key to transformation as we have already discussed is; generosity (5), prayer and forgiveness (7-11) and fasting (12) as taught by Jesus. So how do we appear to ourselves, how do the world, our neighbours and our community appear to us? We need to see ourselves as in the same light and need as our neighbours; we all have the profound need of the Grace and transforming love of God in Jesus. Jesus calls us to apply His teaching to our own lives as the means of getting a wise perspective on the world around us (13-24; 24-29). Any other teachings are misapplications and distortions of the Law and Prophets and will not produce the fruit of justice, mercy and peace-making; the false prophets simply perpetuate alienation from God and the life of blood, sweat and tears ‘East of Eden’ (15-23).