Ancient places with new opportunities

Matthew 16: 13-20; Mark 8: 27-30; Luke 9: 18-21

Matthew 16: 15-17

¹⁵He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ ¹⁶Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ ¹⁷And Jesus answered him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.

The crossroads of decision is the intersection of the contemporary culture and the biblical story of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. It’s the place where we all stand. It’s a place that we may be aware of or it may be a place we are totally oblivious to; but this is exactly where we stand. Jesus drew this to the attention of His disciples at a town called Caesarea Philippi. ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ asked Jesus (Verse 13). The response is the first arm of the crossroads; it begins with the request of a response from contemporary culture to the teachings and practices of Jesus. The answer is always diverse and even bizarre. ‘But who do you say that I am?’ is the question directed to disciples; the Christ aware, Holy Spirit informed and those who are actively finding themselves in the story of Jesus of the Nazareth sermon. The response by Peter: ‘‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’’ is the second arm of the crossroads.  These two arms intersect at the point of salvation: that is the point where the hope of the Nazareth Sermon that is the fulfilment of the prophetic purposes of Christ meet the needs of contemporary culture. The truth and acknowledgment of Jesus as the Messiah, that is the fulfilment of the prophetic promises results in a new social order, a Kingdom, a community called the Church.  This is not just an ordinary flesh and blood community; it is a revelation of the divine community and their plan and purpose. Jesus and His disciples are in an ancient place with a new name. Caesarea Philippi was a new name given by a puppet Herod Philip the Tetrarch in honour of Caesar Augustus. It was the site of the ancient worship of the pagan god pan. There was a cave nearby associated with the ancient cult that was thought to be gates of Hades (death).  Perhaps it all makes a bit more sense? The disciples stand at the crossroads of decision; a place of ancient cultic practices but also a place where Jesus has come to announce the inauguration of the Kingdom of God. The old sites and their practices are passing away into the realm of history; the new has come in fulfilment of a promise; it has arrived and the old ways of death being practiced around them will not stop the inevitability of the consummation of the Kingdom. The rock on which the community of disciples and the Kingdom of God is built is on the assurance that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God. Today you and I stand again at the crossroads of decision. We are in an ancient place surrounded by all sorts of idolatrous worship and all sorts of competing claims. We can be the intersection of the teachings and practices of Jesus in our contemporary period if we would acknowledge and accept Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of the living God and turn His teachings into our practices.

Give us a sign to say yes to change?

Matthew 16:1-12; Mark 8: 11- 21

Mark 8: 11- 13

11 The Pharisees came and began to argue with him, asking him for a sign from heaven, to test him. ¹²And he sighed deeply in his spirit and said, ‘Why does this generation ask for a sign? Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to this generation.’ ¹³And he left them, and getting into the boat again, he went across to the other side.

Jesus of the Nazareth sermon has revealed Himself as the source of renewal: physically, socially, psychologically and environmentally. The stories we have considered together demonstrate Jesus as being concerned with our holistic experience and the impact on our experience of wellbeing. Jesus, and the Kingdom He inaugurates is concerned with the personal, communal, the political and the economic circumstances of life. His birth story, the short encounter with the theologians at the age of twelve, His baptism and ministry narratives all point to a person engaged with life in its fullness and entirety. The gospel that Jesus preached was personal and social both at the same time. It all mattered; it was and is all spiritual. The sigh of Jesus and the exasperation that it reveals is His frustration with reductionism, that is reducing the Kingdom He is announcing to one ‘sign’. In fact this reductionist way of thinking  in our passages today is seen as dangerous and self-destructive In Mark’s account Jesus states: ‘⁵And he cautioned them, saying, ‘Watch out—beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.’’.  The Pharisees reduced life to religious ritual and separation from the contamination of the gentiles and especially Rome. The Herod party reduced everything to the compromise with the powerful elites of the day and were characterised with their enthusiasm for Hellenisation and cultural syncretism. Jesus Kingdom is neither a separation nor a compromise; it’s a new and interdependent way of being in the world based on the ethics of inclusion and the recognition of the needs of holistic human beings. It is not Greek nor is it anti Greek; it is the fulfilment of the promise of the Creating, sustaining and redemptive God. Syrophoenician women are invited to participate as are centurions, the physically sick, the economically poor, and the hungry; even some Pharisees who come at night and acknowledge that Jesus is sent from God (John 3:2) are invited.  All of them state that the signs point to inclusion; we all get the invitation to participate in the life transforming Kingdom.  The sign that is being asked for by the ruling elite is really a sign that ‘conforms’ to their authority. They are asking Jesus to ‘confirm’ He and the Kingdom He is inaugurating is no threat to them. Jesus stated that this is the need of a whole generation of people; everyone wants their needs confirmed and met their way; but this is exactly the sign that will NOT be given.  It’s time for change; the time to conform is over; it’s a new age and God is demonstrating it in the works, teachings and the places where Jesus is journeying. God’s preferential option is in favour of: the poor, the captives, the blind and the oppressed. Jesus is proclaiming in His words and practices (the only signs that will be given) ‘the year of the Lord’s favour.’ And as for you and me, we are at the crossroads of decision again!

"You Will Remain" by All Sons & Daughters (OFFICIAL LYRIC VIDEO)

Tradition

Matthew 15:1-20; Mark 7: 1-23; John 7:1

Matthew 15: 6

 ⁶So, for the sake of your tradition, you make void the word of God. 

As we have been reflecting upon over the past weeks the words of Jesus and their practical application to our lives provides the disciple with the holistic assessment of human need, the explanation of that need, the plan to meet need and four levels of help required to put the plan of God into practice in our lives. We have looked at explanations of need and the frustration of need by considering the Sermon on the Mount and the three part form of the teachings of Jesus: current situation, present outcome and transformative participation in the Kingdom inaugurated by Jesus.  The four levels or domains of intervention given by the words and practices  of Jesus; the Word of God; can be direct in practice that is, we hear His word and obey it (the call of the disciples Mark 2: 13-14); we can receive intervention through others for example a disciple (the call of Phillip and then Nathanael in John 1), intervention in our lives can be ‘collective’ a form of advocacy ( Feeding Five Thousand Mark 6: 30-44) and intervention can be instructional (Parables with explanations for disciples Matthew 13).  The Kingdom becomes present and releases its transformative power through our willing participation on these four levels. They each represent an interdependent exchange of grace; through the faith of participative obedience to the words and practices of Jesus. In our passage today Jesus offers us the opportunity to learn how to avoid disempowering the Word of God. Avoid tradition! Religious disciples are just that; the offer discipline in a tradition of religion. This, on the surface appears to meet our needs but it’s a con, it’s the hand is quicker than the eye; it’s an appearance that all is well but the outcome is: self-reliance, pride and legalism. Religion interprets the words of Jesus but does not obey them. That’s why it’s so dangerous. Religion offers us something else in the place of obedience to Jesus; it offers ritual. The way we dress, the way speak with holy jargon, the way we put our money in the collection but not our lives; the way we defend the unborn child (and so we should) but refuse to speak out against war and the taking of human life once the child is born and in this world. Religious ritual is the ultimate addiction of humanity; it offers the perfect alternative to applying the words of Jesus: there is no need for living with ordinary people in community, no need to actively and personally read and apply the scriptures and religious ritual does not want us delving too deep in to the biblical story and hearing the words and seeing the practices of Jesus up close. Jesus was not a religious studies lecturer! Jesus taught us that our religious practices are the problem; we are the real problem and not the solution; Jesus taught us that our personal assessment of life must start with our assessment of the ‘Heart’ and the recognition that we are in a state of desperately meeting of our own needs our own way. Are we ready to give up our religion for the sake of a transformed life? As a movement there were no more religious and ritually pure than the ‘Pharisees and Scribes’ but it was from the teeth out. Jesus offers us a transformed heart, mind, body, relationships and community; but will we participate with Him in its fulfilment? 

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