Day three of forty…Boundaries 1

Posted by David Ward on 12/02/2016
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do-not-cross

 

[36] “Which of these three do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” [37] The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

Luke 10: 36-37

Jesus has always been a boundary breaker.

It is, therefore, a great travesty that we Christians have often used Jesus as an excuse to build barriers in life and in church. “You’re not one of us!”, “You don’t belong!”, and, “You’re just a woman, divorcee, Muslim, immigrant, gay, single, uneducated, new, wicked, not in membership… (please choose taboo) …are words that have only too often been on our lips.

Good Samaritan

I’ve heard more sermons than I can count about the “Good Samaritan”, often using the latest cultural pariah (e g who remembers a drama sketch about a Good Punk Rocker) as the star of the story. I was tempted…but you can do the work there.

So I guess lesson one is usually don’t judge by appearances. Help can come from unexpected places.

Lesson two is usually a general moral one…if you see someone in a ditch go and help them out…and not just your friends! Tom Wright reminds us that even here there is a deeper, more challenging message to be had:

“Underneath the apparently straightforward moral lesson (‘go and do the same’) we find a much sterner challenge, exactly fitting in with the emphasis of Luke’s story so far. Can you recognise the hated Samaritan as your neighbour? If you can’t you might be left for dead.”

Tom Wright, ‘Luke for Everyone’ p128.

I don’t think even this takes it far enough. Back then Jesus had a poignant message for the young lawyer about conflicting views of what it meant to be Israel, God’s people. I don’t think it would be wrong to see what lesson we can learn as the church, God’s people, from the story.

I think it has something to do with whether, as the church, we see the grace, mercy and love poured out by God as something that causes us to revel in our own sense of being the ‘chosen ones’ with all the isolated security and purity we think that brings, and therefore jealously protect our boundaries…we can’t let ‘outsiders’ spoil our church!

Or, on the other hand, we sign up to God’s greater vision of a group of people chosen to model and share a different way of living to the world, a group with committed to seeing God’s love, grace and mercy extended to everyone. As Tom Wright says:

“No church, no Christian, can remain content with easy definitions which allow us to watch most of the world lying half-dead in the road”.

Let’s find new ways to tell the story, to act as signposts to Jesus as we model the life he lived and now shares with us, to learn how to rescue, and allow ourselves to be rescued, by unlikely people.

Day two of forty…reasons to be joyful 1-2-3

Posted by David Ward on 11/02/2016
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“Reasons to be cheerful 1-2-3”

Ian Drury and the Blockheads 1979

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.”

Nelson Mandela 1994 Inaugural speech (quoting the poet Marianne Williamson)

[20] However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven .” [21] At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do.

Luke 10:20-21 NIV

It’s always risky when ordinary people discover that they’re more powerful than they ever dreamed they were. The first temptation might be to misuse that power in some way. The more subtle temptations affect the way they begin to see themselves and the world they inhabit. To what do they attribute the power they possess? Do they begin to derive their sense of purpose and security from what they can do, rather than who they are? Does their new found sense of confidence morph into an inflated view of their own importance and self-sufficiency?

When Jesus sent out 72 of his followers, two by two, on a journey of mission and preparation did he worry…were they really ready? Did they understand what he was all about? Would they know what to do and say in each and every new situation, as two worlds – two kingdoms clashed and collided? Would faith survive and grow, or would it all come crashing down.

In the end, he had to have faith in them as they had faith in him.

And it all worked out well…they came back full of what they’d done in Jesus name. Changed lives, evil spiritual powers overthrown, healing of mind and body…a group of his followers becoming in reality part of his mission, the one drawing him inexorably towards Jerusalem and his destiny, the mission to neutralise and repair the terrible grip of evil on a world God had made to be a good place.

But Jesus quickly saw that a new danger presented itself in their success. It would be all too easy to see themselves as all-conquering heroes, forgetting that all they had achieved flowed out of the new relationship that they had with him.

Luke 10b

They certainly had reasons to be joyful and Jesus reminds them that their success, their new power, their new security, their new identity have their source in the new Kingdom of which they are now part.

And then, overwhelmed by a sense of what God had shown these young, naïve, enthusiastic followers and friends he launched into a prayer of wonder and delight that the Father has given them such amazing, life-changing experiences.

Day one of forty…Cost

Posted by David Ward on 10/02/2016
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Ash Wednesday 2016

Ash Wednesday

[51] As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem….[57] As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.”[58] Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”[59] He said to another man, “Follow me.” But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”[60] Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”[61] Still another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.”[62] Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”

Luke 9:51; 57-62 NIV

“Family life is holy ground”

Northumbria Community

I am challenged to think that sometimes we followers of Jesus get a bit hung up on the sanctity of family life to the point of almost making it an object of our worship. It is possible to read the gospels with an awareness that Jesus sometimes consider family to be more of a hindrance than a help, which I find quite shocking, if a practical possibility.

I’ve always believe that if Jesus is at the centre of my life, then other relationships will fall into place, and family life will be holy ground, in the sense that it’s the environment in which my faith in Jesus is worked out. So what do we make of Jesus harsh words to the people who expressed a desire to follow Jesus.

A number of years ago the Youth for Christ  band, Alphabet, that I worked with, visited Zimbabwe where we were able to sing and speak to people about faith in Jesus.

Shortly before our visit, a well-known evangelist had visited Bulawayo and reported mass conversions to Jesus. When we arrived the local pastors told us that there was very little evidence that these new converts had ever found their way into the local Christian community.

The first time I spoke about my faith in Jesus, I think it was in a Bulawayo factory, at the end I gave people the opportunity to respond by standing if they wanted to know more or to become a follower of Jesus. I was stunned when every single person rose to their feet. This did not indicate a lack of faith on my part…I’m from the UK where people keep their bottoms firmly on their seats rather than drawing attention to themselves unnecessarily!

Afterwards a local black pastor who’d been with us took me on one side. Rather than encouraging me in my effective evangelistic ministry he delivered an encouraging education on local culture.

“You have to understand,” he explained, “that because you are a visitor people want to please you. If you ask people to stand, they will, out of respect for you, and not necessarily in response to the content of what you’ve said. They’re standing for you, and not for Jesus.”

So, from that time on, whenever I had opportunity to speak, I spent at least as much time spelling out the cost of following Jesus as I did talking about why it was a good thing!

As Jesus “resolutely set out for Jerusalem” he must have had an inkling of what sort of reception awaited him. His followers, still refreshingly naïve, seemed to have little clue about what was happening. In that context his determination to make people face up to the consequences of following seems less cruel.

This was not a jolly jaunt to Jerusalem…it was a date with a destiny that might well include death.

cost