quote of the week
When Christ calls a man he bids him come and die.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
the star of the morning
a light has dawned on the darkest night
two powers
There’s a massive contrast in the account of Jesus’ trial and execution in Matthew’s gospel, and it’s really jumped out at me as I’ve been reading it lately. The contrast is between the religious leaders of Israel on one side of this conflict and Jesus on the other.
Coz on the one side you have this council of learned men who’ve been seeing this Jesus figure grow in popularity, seeing their power base threatened and growing increasingly anxious about the situation – but now they have the upper hand. They stand together with their authority, their deceit, their violence, their wealth and influence (even over the Roman governor!) and eventually, the backing of the crowd. By the time the crucifixion is under way they can stand around gloating and preening themselves and egging on the mockery of the crowd who not too long ago cheered Jesus’ entry to Jerusalem.
And in the red corner stands Jesus; poor, despised, silent, peaceful, apparently weak and powerless, and all alone. He has been betrayed by Judas and abandoned by everyone else who once swore allegience to him. He’s been rejected by the Roman soldiers, Israel’s religious and political leaders, the Roman leader, the crowd. Soon he’ll hang, accursed and despised and humiliated, and cry out to his Father who had also forsaken him.
He makes for a sorry figure, except, of course that he walked into this with eyes open,easily able to prevent it. contrary to their self congratulations, the Sanhedrin had never cornered him or forced his hand. He could have left that trial a free man and they would’ve been powerless to stop him. But he didn’t.
When I read of the death of Jesus it’s so easy for the facts to wash over my brain and away. I can hold the information in my head without being affected in my heart. Because I naturally like the kind of Kingdom the Sanhedrin were into. One of obvious power and success and influence. They went out of their way to get Jesus crucified, to display him as accursed by God and covered in shame. I used to think it was just out of spite. but today i realiseed it was for the benefit of the crowd, or rather, their power over the crowd. Whoever thought Jesus was going to redeem Israel now just shook their heads. There was no way someone allowed to suffer such degradation and the divine curse could have God’s approval. He surely must be a false prophet. The Sanhedrin’s chief concern was their continued position of moral authority over people.
When they said that he should prove himself the Son of God by coming down from the cross, they didn’t understand. He proved himself the Son of God by not coming down. To have saved himself would have proven himself a son of this world.
It was this old order of things, this slavery to worldly power and authority and influence that Jesus came to overthrow, and replace with the rule of God over people’s hearts. That’s the Kingdom of God. We so often cna stray back to believing we need to make something of ourselves in this life by the world’s standards. But what life in the Kingdom actually looks like is people turning from living for their own power and following Jesus as their Lord. Following him to glory – but the door to glory stands on the other side of a hill called Golgotha, and our road takes us over it. That’s why the gospel is so concerned with us living by faith. Do we trust Jesus to bring us through? That he went to the cross, to God forsakeness and shame for us, shows that he is trustworthy. That we walk the same path shows that we trust him.
I know I have a lot of growing to do in this area, but I see setting my eyes on the cross and off the alternate ‘power’ of this world as the way forward.
a question
I have a question. I believe in a Lord who conquered the grave. Who walked into a world of guilt, shame and despair, and into my life of guilt, shame and despair; who conquered and overcame through the greatest act of compassionate grace that we could never comprehend; who overthrew the old reign of sin and brought us into the Kingdom of the living God of Love; who said ‘Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest’ ; who made me, a wretch, into a beloved child of God; who looks into the deepest part of me and sees everything but doesn’t look away in disgust; who has given us hopeless people hope.
Why, then, do I fear?
Why do I fear man, and his opinion of me? Why do I fear losing what the world offers? Why do I fear being alone, and inadequate? Why do I fear anything other than God himself?
‘I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how long and high and wide and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.’ Ephesians 3:16-19
Amen. Please make it true of us.
church jihadists
Thanks to Pete for this one.
http://www.russellmoore.com/2010/02/01/is-there-a-jihadist-in-your-church-nursery/
Well said.
quote of the week
Like a good chess player, Satan is always trying to manuever you into a position where you can save your castle only by losing your bishop.
- C.S. Lewis
living the truth
Well, college began for me today – at least orientation. The week of the move was one without much in the way of sitting down with God’s Word, sadly. My fault. but I’ve had more time the last few days and been getting into the last week of Jesus’ life before his crucifixion.
Contrary to the common picture of Jesus, his words in those last few days were full of condemnation and judgement. Judgement on Israel because although they’d been given God’s Word and Law, they hadn’t responded. They obeyed the letter of the Law, not working on the Sabbath etc, but had neglected the spirit of the Law…to live out the character of God; his justice, mercy and faithfulness before the world, for his glory.
The leaders and teachers and of Israel had failed and Jesus had entered Jerusalem to replace them as the leader of God’s people. Not only to command his people to live this way, but to create a people who’d live this way, through his death on the cross for us. I have been worried coming to college that we’d just get ideas thrown at us and it would jsut be all head knowledge and not focussing on a changed life. But I entered our first meeting today, and the principal gave a talk on how we evangelical Christians take for granted, not so much the gospel, but the Christian life. We must understand the truth, but we don’t understand it until we understand the implications of the truth and are transformed by it.
Jesus is Lord. That’s the gospel. And what great news it is, that by virtue of his sacrificial death Jesus has risen as Lord over sin, death and hell. But it has implications. Good implications.
It means the sinful desires for my own glory are no longer my lord. It means I don’t live to promote myself, but to show off as it were what is most excellent, praiseworthy, weighty, about God. It means that I trust in Jesus Christ and through that trust I am empowered by grace to show off his mercy, his justice, his grace, both in the fact that i, a sinner, am saved to worship him by grace, and through displaying those qualities to others.
That gives me a lot to think about – and not just think about, but work on. The good news is that we’re not under the law now. All the condemnation and judgement of God is taken from us and put on jesus, if our trust is in him. Inclusion into god’s people ahs been opened up to all who call on his name. Transformation, then, isn’t a matter of thinking deply about us, our sin or efforts, but about him, and seeing the power of his grace.
With all that in mind, an immediate application for myself which comes to mind is the sometimes blunt, unfair and graceless way I communcate ideas on this blog. At times this is due to my poor ability of expressing what i really mean (aka Republican Jesus) and other times I’m just not living out the grace I’m called to. So if you’re reading this, please accept this humble apology for certain remarks, and my request that you bear with me, and let me know if I’ve been a jerk. May his grace shape my life.
quote of the week
If you read history you will find out that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next.
- C.S. Lewis
i know i don’t live in the U.S. but…
…they do have a point.
Jesus and the Na’avu
Cardinal George Pell, Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, about a week ago called Avatar ‘old fashioned pagan propaganda’. It’s true that Avatar has a strong bent towards pantheism, and it’s also true that lots of commentators believe Avatar is propaganda – though most focus on its environmental and indigenous rights messages. The church response jumps straight to the spiritual aspect of the film but as usual doesn’t comment much on what the movie has to say about either environmental concern or concern for indigenous rights and our cultural baggage there. I’d like to see that.
What about the pantheistic worldview of Avatar (even the term ‘Avatar’ originally derives not, as you might think, from World of Warcraft games, but from Hinduism.)? How should Christians think about it and respond to it in a Christ like way? Sadly, the knee jerk reaction of condemnation to a differing belief system in the media has been the default of churches for years. I’m not saying that what you believe doesn’t matter. I do believe that the pantheistic view of the world is the wrong one. But how can we engage with the contrasting beliefs of society in a biblical way?
I have to confess that I left the cinema with an uneasy feeling. Uneasy because the wholistic, pantheistic worldview of the world of Avatar seems, well, just so nice. You’ve got an unspoilt natural world where everything is connected in peace and love and harmony. Humanity, indeed the whole world is good, not evil to the core. There’s respect for all living things, the spiritual seeps through everything and everything remains beautiful and harmonious.
Compare that with the Christian worldview of a world made good but fallen into darkness and rebellion, an angry God who will judge everyone, the bloody horrific sacrifice of an innocent man needed to pay for it and now the call for Christians to struggle and strive against their own natures in a painful world. It just seems so hard compared to nature worship.
That was my knee jerk reaction to the contrast of worldviews ‘Avatar’ placed in front of me. But the world that Avatar paints is appealing. In a lot of ways it’s a world similar to what I look forward to in heaven. The life of following Jesus now is tough. So why the hell would I want to be a Christian rather than a pagan?
But as I thought about it a few things soon came to mind. Evil exists. pain, suffering & cruelty exist in this world – and in Avatar as greedy and intolerant humans ravage the world of Pandora and its inhabitants for personal gain. It exists, it needs to be accounted for and dealt with. And it’s foolish to think that if we time travelled back to indigenous cultures pre-colonialisation we would find only harmonious and peaceful tribes who never had to deal with or were never complicit in the cruelty and suffering of this brutal world either.
The Fall of mankind in the Biblical narrative is terrible and dark. However, because of our determined rebellion against a good God whose cannot tolerate our sinand who is moved to anger, we see something wonderful. The peace and harmony of the Na’avu is nice (but fictional), but the grace, the love that God displayed in Jesus entering our fallenness and taking our guilt and condemnation on himself, giving himself, the innocent one up for us his enemies, is phenomaenal, breathtaking. And doing it not only to forgive us but to bringu su to the place where we can begin to turn around and love in the same way. In the face of a decimating mining company the Na’avu can only respond with violent retaliation. It’s understandable. But it can’t save enemies like grace does. And although the eastern mystical worldview is often portrayed as simply fulfilling and loving and warm, the reality is in fact much more isolating and lonely and burdening.
In my most selfish moments (I have a few), I wonder why God, if he loves me, doesn’t simply give me what I want – why am I called to sacrifice and serve more. The answer is the beauty of the love of Christ. Love that clings to god and so doesn’t take from others, love that gives of itself even to enemies to show the goodness of a God who loves like that, even when it hurts the lover. Like a diamond displayed against a black cloth, the beauty of god’s grace shines in the darkness, and there’s nothing in this world that can shine anywhere near as bright. I have a long way to go, it’s true. But God has called us to something beautiful. And by his grace God will destroy what is evil and cruel and restore the world to that harmonious peaceful creation – without destroying us who have caused so much evil, if we trust him. Beautiful.
Thoughts?
countdown
In a week I’ll no longer be a north coastie. No more drinking beer beneath the fading light at Eltham pub, no more walks down Main Beach at Byron Bay, no more Mecca coffees. Instead I’ll wake up in the belly of the beast, surrounded by concrete, smog and noise. Lots of noise.
Not that I’m feeling negative about it. Sydney’s meant to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and I’ve certainly experienced the other end of the spectrum. I’m looking forward to studying at Moore College, and living in Newtown. But as the final week counts down I’ve been thinking about this period of my life, not just in Lismore but at my church family at Southern Cross Presbyterian, which has been so precious and shaped me so much over the last 8 yrs. I’ve learnt so much, and I’ll miss so much. I guess i want to encourage any of my brothers and sisters who’ve grown and served alongside me over the years. What have I leant here?
• Firstly, I’ve learnt that the Bible is all about Jesus. All the Old Testament stories, all the Psalms, all the poems, all of it revolve around and point to the good news of Jesus dying on a cross and rising again. Luke 24:25-27 & 44 are important verses. And not just as theory. That’s life changing. It’s here I finally realised the gospel isn’t ‘the basics’ which we move on from to grow as Christians. We grow by going deeper into the cross of Jesus.
• I’ve learnt that the gospel can be summed up in 3 words: ‘Jesus is Lord’. I’ve learnt that the gospel isn’t about Jesus fitting into my story and making it work. It’s about the amazing and wonderful story of him that stretches from eternity to eternity, which we get caught up into. And revolve around. Jesus isn’t my buddy, he’s my Lord.
• I’ve learnt what I had always resisted for so long – that God is sovereign over all things and works everything out to his good plan – and that’s a good thing.
• And I’ve learnt and am still learning the wonder of his grace to us in all this. My sin is gone, and I am free. It’s funny how you can know something your whole life but never get it. I believe God is working on my heart even now and causing me, however slowly, to get it. And I pray that’ll continue over my whole life.
And I’m incredibly thankful to God for using such dear brothers and sisters to make his word clear to me both at a time when my faith was falling apart and beyond to the present day.
But I’ve not only loved the Biblical truth taught to me. I’ve loved the people I’ve grown up with in Jesus and served alongside. Here I found for the first time brothers who don’t put on religious airs as Christians, who are real about the struggles and difficulties of following Jesus, and just as real about standing alongside a brother who’s struggling. I’ve got to know guys and girls who’ve lapped up the gospel and been excited to know Jesus and make him known. I’ve seen guys accept Christ, and grab at the gospel with both hands, and in turn helping other Christians grow in following Jesus too. I’ve loved being in small groups that focus on encouraging each other to know God better and serve him. And there’s something to be said for just hanging out and sharing your life with people you love too.
As I said I’m excited about college and am eager to get down. I look forward to not only knowing about the Bible better, but knowing God better. I look forward to getting involved in the community, encouraging and being encouraged by brothers and sisters. I look forward to stepping towards full time, long term ministry after college, and I look forward to finally finding good & affordable places to eat.
But I’ll never forget my time and family here.
It’s all about Jesus, crucified and risen. Come empty handed. Don’t play games. Don’t be a couch potato Christian. Don’t look for something new and deeper and more exciting. Don’t try to be something for God, or people. Don’t pretend you don’t need your church family, don’t be proud and keep it inside and go it alone. Don’t believe it’s all in vain. Cry for mercy. I pray that’ll be true of me and of us all.
