Faithful in a little

Luke 16: 1-13

10 ‘Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. 

Today’s story is a bit of a brain teaser. Jesus is challenging us to think things through regarding wealth, its production and distribution. He is urging us to act as members of His inaugurated Kingdom. How should we treat wealth? There is a danger in all this talk of standing in solidarity with the poor and sharing in their struggle for justice and freedom as claimed by Jesus in His Nazareth sermon (Luke 4) that we fall into the trap of glamorising poverty and using it for making ourselves look religious. Poverty is the result of collectively meeting our needs our own way; it’s an assault on God’s good creation.  The fulfilled prophecy that Jesus represents is the abolition of poverty not wealth.  The teachings of Jesus when put into practice transforms those who know they are poor into those who are rich. There must therefore be a ‘righteous wealth’ that represents the fulfilment of the prophecy of the creating, redeeming and sustaining God.  Wealth that is created and used to promote the interdependent interests of people is righteous wealth. Simply loving money and the individual privilege that avarice brings results in suffering of all kinds.  Health, education, work that pays a life promoting wage, housing and social care represent the use of wealth that offers people the hope that another way of life is possible; disciples of Jesus of the Nazareth sermon surely must advocate and practice such principles. Meeting our needs our own way for individual gain creates victims of us all; we all in the end lose. Wealth that is used to end the evils of: ignorance, disease, destitution, squalor and social alienation promote the Kingdom that Jesus inaugurated and promotes the personal and social identity that is God given in His creative and re-creative acts. Disciples need to be shrewd in how they use the wealth that God has entrusted them with as stewards; we can so easily be duped into thinking that wealth is the blessing rather than the test for how we will use that wealth. We are participant builders of a new way of life; surely our wealth producing and distribution acts must be easily seen as acts that promote the Kingdom we claim to be part of. 

Welcome the rejected and lost?

Luke 15: 1-10

Now all the tax-collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. ²And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’3 So he told them this parable…..

Have you ever felt so unimportant and alienated that it’s as if you exist all alone in an infinite universe called solitude? It’s as if we have lost all connection with those around us even those closest to us seem remote and isolated from how we really are physically, socially and psychologically. In the story we are reading today Jesus emphasises the importance of the individual. We can have great churches, missions and ministries where all seems to be well but lose sight of the importance of the one person in their need that is frustrated to the point of alienation from all that surrounds them. The audience in this set of parables is of interest. There are those on the margins and those in power within the dominant regime of power. Jesus is noted to eat and associate with the marginal, those on the edge of society and those outside of it. This causes great offence because as we all know change comes from the powerful when they deem the time is right; when it’s in their interest. ‘We don’t have to live among the poor we just have to dole out our charity (Alms) to them; in fact they become the vehicle of our good works and thus we end up with the best here in this time and the time to come; sorted!’  Jesus rejects this view; Jesus identifies with the lost to: society, family, work, housing, intimate relationships and health and seeks them out to form a new inclusive community where everyone matters where ‘all of us come first’ through ensuring the needs of each other are met. The ‘common good’ can only be achieved by ensuring individual wellbeing of the most vulnerable; alienation to some extent affects us all and becoming aware of it gives us the opportunity to reassure each other of our worth and the need to participate in the community that reaches out to the individual: the community of followers of Jesus. In our story today Jesus is telling a parable; He is engaged in a form of care for others called ‘advocacy’. Jesus is advocating not for ‘food banks’ but for social inclusion and a new society where family in its diverse forms, work that pays, housing that’s safe, intimate relationships that are respected, old age that is secure, childhood that is played in in love and security, adolescence that can be lived out in exploration and discovery; this is ‘health’ that can be experienced by all and should be available to all according to Jesus. Nobody need be lost and left behind and if they are we need to reach out and find them. I sometimes wonder if we get the ‘repentance’ part of this story right. Who needs to repent?  Is it those of us excluded by prejudice and economic exploitation or those of us who exclude and economically exploit? We need to recognise our tendency to ‘victim blame’ and to see how ‘they need’ to change their lives; change is be required of all of us if we are to live inclusive non exploitative lives; we will all need to experience a little more precariousness if any of us are to experience security. This is the ‘interdependence’ of the Luke 15 parables.  

Follow Jesus....

Luke 14: 25-35

²⁷Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. 

The cost of discipleship of Jesus of the Nazareth sermon appears to be very high indeed! Jesus being a Jewish teacher uses lots of narrative devices that are ways of storytelling that are drawn from His own time and culture. These can sound bit strange to us and even off-putting at times but this is because we have been socialised and taught storytelling in different ways. We use different narrative devices but they remain narrative devices to help us make a point that is important. If a politician said ‘the evidence speaks for itself….’ We would not expect anything but counter evidence from the next politician from the opposing party; we would not actually expect research based facts; we would recognise that they were using a rhetorical device in order to make a point. If truth was so easily identified by people we would spot lies, untruths and inaccurate accounts and easily be able to identify the best course of action. As humans we seem to have built in blind spots, we can be duped; it’s simply part of the dilemma of life we find ourselves in. We need a process that can help us identify the truth and act on it. In our passage today Jesus uses story telling devices to make a point about genuine, truthful discipleship. Jesus uses a device in writing and storytelling called ‘hyperbole’ to make his point. Jesus is teaching us that we can check out our commitment to Him by comparing it to the commitment we have to the most valued aspects of our lives. To claim to be a disciple of Jesus of the Nazareth sermon we have to be so committed that an onlooker will consider our discipleship of Jesus to be the most valued part of our lives. It would appear that not even the most precious of relationships could be used against us in order to make us turn back to meeting our needs our own way. To be the very best parent, child and life partner that I can be is to live out the life of following the teachings and practices of Jesus. If you want to do the best for your family then follow Jesus.  Also, even the threat of taking our very lives will not make us turn back to meeting our needs our own way; it’s as if we were carrying a cross (a tool of state execution) every moment of the day not knowing if it will ever be used against us. To be the very best citizen in the society that I live and work within is based on my following the teachings and practices of Jesus of the Nazareth sermon. Disciples bring good to the cultures in which they live; we are not to be a threat but a blessing to those we live amongst and to those in authority over us. This level of denial of meeting needs our own way is not an optional extra it is the very basis of discipleship and recovery from our life
controlling issues. Note the words of Jesus:

 ‘²⁷Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple’.  

We simply ‘cannot’ be disciples of Jesus and continue to meet our needs our own way; it’s impossible… Let us be a blessing to our families and neighbours today; follow Jesus.     

I'll meet you there....

Luke 13: 1-9

⁵ No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”  

There is a popular and commonly accepted erroneous belief that people bring catastrophe, addictions, poor health, premature death and economic deprivation on themselves and there is no shared interdependent responsibility or culpability within wider society. This is the individualist view of culture and socio political life. The smoker brings lung cancer on himself; the drug addict inflicts economic deprivation on themselves and so on. Those of us who have made the ‘wise choices’ are spared these catastrophes. Or are we? Life controlling issues and that includes the catastrophes that come our way do have an individual component but our lives are made up of more stuff than just ourselves and our own decisions. Where and when we are born the circumstances into which we are born, brought up, the streets and schools, the hopes and hates that surround us also have a profound impact on our life experience. The bible teaches that we are: physical, social, psychological and environmental, meaning making beings. We are more than the sum of our parts; we are human beings made in the image of God and that means we are interdependent individuals in one community. All of us experience life controlling issues. Poverty and riches, homes and homelessness each present in different ways the challenge of life controlling issues. The haves and the have-nots are not separate but intimately related through the invisible ties that bind us together. The ties are often oppressive; the part of town saved from the banking crises through having wealth spread over many different assets, physical and social but the less powerful, the vulnerable the young family that lose their only decent income now lose their home and hope through the same crises. We are doing ok, we are managing so we must therefore be different from the rest of the ‘less fortunate’ but Jesus says NO!  The system that that the bible describes as the ‘powers and principalities’ or ‘the world’ holds us all in its destructive grip. Some of us might appear to be doing ok but we will all lose in the end if we do not turn around and change the way we relate to each other and live together. We are all addicts to meeting our needs our own way. We all need to turn and hear the words of Jesus and put them into practice before it too late for all of us. We need the new community that Jesus inaugurated with all its new ways of relating together.  A bit dramatic you might say? Where is the Roman Empire? It’s history; where is the temple worship and the religious rulers of Jesus time? History!  They all perished because they all put their trust in the wrong thing; themselves. It’s time to make life’s healing choices and learn to be the people God has created us to be; time is short but we can still turn and join the community that lives to serve and nurture each other; this is the life and community transforming Kingdom of God that Jesus inaugurated. I’ll meet you there!  

Hillsong United - "Oceans" (Live at RELEVANT)

The division that 'good news' brings...

Luke 12: 49-59

⁵¹Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!     

If you have been following this series you will be aware that the purpose we set ourselves is to match up our lives with the life taught and practiced by Jesus of the Nazareth sermon. There are many different portraits of Jesus; physical, social, psychological and so the list goes on. We have been interested in letting the bible as forms of literature speak to us. This has meant having a look behind the text to the culture of the authors, we have looked into the text and its language and we have stood in front of the text to hear what the text may be saying in our day and time. We have recognised that the bible tells a story of the revelation of the creating, redeeming and sustaining God and that He is revealed in His Son Jesus the Messiah. We have tried to take the words and practices of Jesus seriously. When He spoke in Nazareth regarding why He had come we decided to seek the fulfilment of that claim in the rest of the story of the gospel narratives. In other words we have tried to understand the life of Jesus through His claim to the fulfilment of the promise of God to set all humanity free from meeting its needs its own self destructive and imprisoning way.  We have seen Jesus as the source of liberation from the powers that oppress us and that use us in the oppression of others. This has meant we have had to break away from our old socialisation, challenge ourselves to think in new and inclusive ways through finding ourselves within the narratives of Jesus life and His story of restorative Justice. If we have done this we will have found it a source of challenge and change. Our story today is about the results of that change. The cheap sale of the story of Jesus in recent times has resulted in Jesus being portrayed as a ‘sweet and gentle everything works out in the end’ stereotype with little to offer in terms of the actual problems we face in the 21^st century. However, there is another ‘costly’ approach to the teachings and practices of Jesus; one which we have attempted to adopt namely, the teachings and practices of Jesus if adopted are transformative. That is, if the practices of Jesus are implemented they change me and those I come in contact with. The teachings of Jesus make a difference; there is ‘right and wrong’ and it’s important to find out what’s right and put it into practice. This is the division that Jesus brings; He divides His followers and separates them to stand by the side of the oppressed, the poor and the exploited. To be transformed is to give up the life of privileged, self-seeking independence and participate in the transforming power of putting Jesus words into practice in interdependent communities. This is how we and the world will be changed. If we are finding the path of discipleship costly and divisive, we may just be being challenged to recognise that our lives are in the process of being changed and transformed though putting the practices and teachings of Jesus to the task for which they were designed.    

Care changes everything and transforms everyone....

Luke 10: 25-37

29 But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbour?’ 

The question of who is my neighbour is one that has been asked from the very beginning of human culture. Am I my brother’s keeper? This is the ancient variation on the same theme. The story today does not only tell us who our neighbours are but teaches us how we are to treat them. In the end when all the arguing and fighting has worked its course we will be faced with this singular truth; all of humanity have a common creator, are made in His image and have the mark of the divine namely life itself. This life is precious; it’s to be treasured and respected through the care and valuing of other precious lives. As disciples of Jesus we are instructed to look beyond the social labelling of our present culture and look into the core of common humanity and there find life, like our own precious and God given life. Each person we meet is an invitation by God our creator to show who we consider to be our neighbour and we are invited to do this through the transforming power of care. If we do not care for each other we cannot be Jesus disciples; care changes everything and transforms everyone.    

If you continue in my word...

John 8: 31-59

31 Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; ³²and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’

Freedom is high on most people’s agenda. Jesus said in His sermon in Nazareth at the beginning of His public life that the priority of His life was to bring freedom to those deprived of it. So far so good, our agenda and that of Jesus appear to be the same. So what’s the difficulty?  We appear to have an aversion to the means of our freedom namely hearing the words of Jesus and putting them into practice. We have a tendency to find all sorts of reasons for why it’s impractical to take the words of Jesus seriously. That’s why we need so many theologies and doctrines; they are invented to get us round the demands of obedience to the word of God, Jesus. Denominations and cults of all sorts emphasise what they consider the truth to be and entrap us all in roles and positions based in an addictive way of thinking that justifies ourselves and condemns others who disagree with us.  In our story today some people claimed that they followed a historical figure Abraham and to them that meant they were right to reject Jesus and His teachings. We do the same today, we often hear people claim: ‘I’m a Baptist, a Presbyterian, Brethren, an Evangelical, a Catholic or an Anglican’ and we retreat behind these labels as a security against our perceived threat of each other and the world around us. The Truth about Jesus is much older than any of our conceptions of His Truth. Jesus Truth existed before Abraham. Jesus teaching and practices are eternal and therefore inclusive and liberating. Freedom; physical, social, psychological and environmental freedom is a process of participation in the transforming power of hearing, accepting, applying and continuing in the eternal words and practices of Jesus. This is the Truth that sets us free.