Tag: Gentile mission

The Building-Blocks of Jesus’ Mission, Matthew 4:12-23 (Epiphany 3, Year A)

Matthew 4:12-23

A few years ago, Debbie and I went to the cinema to see the ‘biopic’ Bohemian Rhapsody, about the rock band Queen and their lead singer Freddie Mercury. I expected the movie to end with Freddie’s death from AIDS in 1991, but it didn’t. It climaxed with the band’s triumphant performance at Live Aid in 1985. I guess it was the point that they exploded from being massively popular in the UK and a few other places to being superstars on the world stage.

If you made a biopic about the early years of Jesus, I think this is where it might end. After the amazing birth stories, the escape from Herod, his baptism, and then his trials in the wilderness, here is where it all explodes and the public ministry is launched, as he moves from Nazareth to Capernaum.

And therefore it’s natural that what we see in this story is some of the building-blocks of Jesus’ message. Tonight, we’re going to explore three building-blocks that we find in this passage and what they mean for us.

Firstly, fulfilment:

Verses 12 to 16 tell us that Jesus moved from Nazareth to Capernaum to fulfil a prophecy of Isaiah’s that the Messiah would live in ‘Galilee of the Gentiles’ and bring light into darkness.

This is a continuation of something Matthew has been stressing from the beginning in his Gospel: that Jesus the Messiah fulfils Old Testament prophecies. How does the fulfilment work here? In a couple of ways.

One is that he is now based in ‘Galilee of the Gentiles.’ Although Galilee was filled with devout Jews who were faithful to the religious Law and to the Jerusalem Temple, there were Gentile settlements nearby[1]. This becomes a foreshadowing of the later mission to the Gentiles that Jesus announced after his Resurrection at the end of the Gospel[2].

And hence, there is a hint here of what is to come: to be part of the Jesus Movement will entail not just staying comfortably with people like us but reaching out beyond social and cultural boundaries to share Jesus there. It is no good thinking we can stay with our own kind. It is no good making the church the centre and the circumference of our social lives. There is a mission beyond us, and Jesus was clear about it from the start.

The other element of fulfilment is in bringing light into the darkness. That includes light for people who are struggling in the darkness of despair. Jesus is Good News for them, because he brings a hope in him that not even death can destroy. Whatever the most dreadful of our thoughts are when we are down, Jesus still brings hope. He is the light-bringer.

Let There Be Light!! by Premnath Thirumalaisamy on Flickr, CC Licence 2.0.

But light shines into darkness in other ways, too. Most notably, Jesus shines his light onto the darkness of our sins. When we meet Jesus, we begin a lifelong process of transformation, as bit by bit he casts his light into those areas of darkness that we don’t want anyone else to see. Stage by stage, Jesus calls us to confess our dark deeds and bring them into his light. There he forgives us and begins his work of equipping us to change.

Is it any wonder that the first thing we hear Jesus saying in the passage is these words?

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’ (Verse 17)

When Jesus shines his light onto our lives, we will begin to have a list of things from which we need to repent. We need to turn our lives around.

Perhaps like me you often resist this. But it is an essential part of God’s project to make us more like Jesus. So may he grant us the grace to go along with the surgery the light of Jesus performs on us.

Secondly, following:

Red Follow Me beacon at PickPik (Public Domain)

In verses 18 to 22, Jesus calls Simon, Andrew, James, and John to follow him. They leave their fishing nets immediately.

There is something really quite radical here. Rabbis didn’t generally call people to follow them. Instead, young men (and I’m afraid it was only men in those days) would choose a rabbi for themselves. For Jesus to go to these men, who either had not looked for a rabbi or had been rejected when they had applied, turns everything upside-down.[3] What we see here is that Jesus calls some young men to follow him who would not have been accepted by any other rabbi. But Jesus wants them. They will be among his core followers.

The early church followed through with this principle. We are pretty sure that some of the early bishops were slaves. No way would a Roman religion do that! But Jesus calls everyone, including the unexpected and the rejected.

It’s worth us remembering that Jesus still issues the call to follow him to people that we wouldn’t expect. Who would that be in our circles? Who are the people we have dismissed as potential Jesus-followers? Maybe we’ve even dismissed ourselves. Don’t do it. Jesus is calling.

But let’s also be aware that this call comes with a potential cost. Simon, Andrew, James, and John had to quit their family businesses to follow Jesus. They left their nets. They left the boat.

This was probably an act of what we would call ‘downward mobility.’ The fishermen might not have been wealthy, but neither were they peasants.[4] These young men walk out on a steady income generated from a vital profession for a life with a much more uncertain income. What did their families think?

It still happens in our generations. Someone who grew up in the same church youth group and young adults’ group as me trained to a high standard as secretary and PA and landed a job as the PA to one of the directors of one of our most famous upmarket High Street stores. But then God called her into church leadership with a new, fledgling independent congregation. Her parents were not best pleased, after all the money they had poured into her professional training. But she heeded the call.

One of my fellow ministerial students had previously been a solicitor. One day, somebody asked him, how much of a pay cut does entering the ministry mean for you?

‘I’ve knocked a nought off the end of my salary,’ he replied.

I wonder whether there is anyone here who is sensing the call of Jesus to follow him, perhaps in a new way, but that the implications are that it will be costly. You are risking financial loss, or family disapproval. Let us as a church family gather round in support of you so that you can set out on where Jesus is calling you.

Thirdly and finally, fishing:

In verse 19, Jesus says to Simon and Andrew,

‘Come, follow me,’ …, ‘and I will send you out to fish for people.’

Perhaps this reminds you of the old Sunday School chorus, ‘I will make you fishers of men,’ and maybe you now have an earworm!

The traditional way in which we have interpreted this is to think of this as a call to share the Gospel with people so that they, too, become followers of Jesus. I don’t think that was far from the minds of the early church, because one of the earliest visual images of the church was that of a boat. They saw there was a task to do of bringing more people into God’s boat.

We urgently need to release people into the ministry of evangelism, because there are so many more who need to hear the Gospel and respond. If anyone here is sensing that call, then let’s have a conversation about what we can do to train, facilitate, and support your call.

And let’s do it in a way that keeps a strong link between the evangelist and the church. The call is to fish for people, so they are brought into the boat. Too often in the past, evangelists have become disconnected from the local church. The fault has been on both sides, and we cannot allow it to continue. Evangelism is a ministry of the church.

But I want to take ‘fishing for people’ further. As I said, if you look forward from New Testament times to the early church, you end up with this application of these words to evangelism. But if you look back to the Old Testament, you see another dimension of mission, and it’s about the prophetic announcement of judgment. Here is one example from Jeremiah 16:16:

‘But now I will send for many fishermen,’ declares the Lord, ‘and they will catch them. After that I will send for many hunters, and they will hunt them down on every mountain and hill and from the crevices of the rocks.

What’s that about? The context is about God bringing judgment on his people who have forsaken his ways for worthless idols. This fishing for people is about the bad news, not the good news. It is the warning of what God will do with those who wilfully reject his truth. When Israel left Egypt, the Egyptian army tried to catch them and failed. But now, God’s messengers – his fishermen and hunters – will catch them.

Fishing for people, then, involves not only the winsome call to follow Jesus but also the warning to those both outside and inside the boat of the church to reject idolatry.

What would that mean for us today? I’ll confine myself to one example. There is only one sin that is described as idolatry in the New Testament. Greed. Colossians 3:5:

Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.

Fishing for people, then, is not only a call to evangelism. It is also a call to a prophetic ministry. This is why it is right the Church condemns so much of what is going on in international politics at present.

But we have a long way to go in much of the church to put to death the idolatry of greed, which is so widely practised in our society. What else would we expect when we follow One who shines his light into the darkness?

Conclusion

Let’s summarise these three building-blocks:

Fulfilment – this happens when we take the Gospel beyond the People of God to others, and when the light of Christ shines into darkness.

Following – let’s be open to surprises in who God calls but be ready for the fact that when he does, there is usually a cost involved.

Fishing – for people – this is both the evangelistic call to join the boat of the church and putting the fishhooks of God’s judgment into those who wilfully reject his ways.

How far are we reflecting the fundamental elements of Jesus’ mission?

[1] Craig S Keener, The Gospel of Matthew: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary, p146f.

[2] Matthew 28:16-20

[3] Keener, p150.

[4] Keener, p151.

0

The Good Shepherd, John 10:11-18 (Easter 4 2024)

John 10:11-18

The story is told about a group of tourists on a coach in the Holy Land.

“Oh, look,” said one excitedly, “There is a flock of sheep on the hillside. Doesn’t that make you think of all those lovely Bible passages about the sheep and the Good Shepherd?”

“Yes,” replied another, “but why is the shepherd following them shouting at them and beating them?”

The tour guide interjected. “That’s not the shepherd,” he enlightened them, “that’s the local butcher.”

On this Fourth Sunday of Easter, the Gospel reading is always a part of John 10, where Jesus says he is the Good Shepherd. The Lectionary being a three-year cycle and with us currently being in Year B, we get the second of three chunks this year, so we’re not picking up the passage right at the beginning.

Of course, this chapter is much loved, and over the centuries Christians have taken much comfort from knowing that Jesus is the Good Shepherd. I have, for one, not least when I was struggling with the pain of the neck injury that prevented me from taking my A-Levels.

But although it is comforting, it is not entirely cosy. As well as the comfort, there is also challenge in these famous words of Jesus.

Firstly, the Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep:

11 ‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. 13 The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.

We are used to hearing that Jesus died for us, as he says here. But have you noticed how this is different from other New Testament passages? This does not couch things in terms of Jesus dying for our sins – there are plenty that say that – but as Jesus dying to protect us.

Why? The sheep need protection from the wolves, and a hired hand will not stand in the wolf’s way.

And why would Jesus say this? Because he knew there were plenty of wolves in his day, and plenty of religious leaders who would only act as hired hands who did not care for the sheep.

Indeed, you only have to go back to John chapter 9 to find wolves or hired hands in the form of those Pharisees who objected to Jesus healing a blind man on the Sabbath. They would rather sling the healed man out of the synagogue than accept that they had created rules which went beyond God’s commandment to honour the Sabbath.

In fact, you could probably say that the expression ‘Good Shepherd’ was a polemical one. It had good Old Testament precedent in Ezekiel where God says that he himself will shepherd his people, because those who were supposed to do so were not. Jesus aligns the leaders of his day with those whom God condemned six centuries earlier.

Today, some wolves are easy to spot, like millionaire TV evangelists telling poor people that their way out of poverty is to give to them in order to be blessed financially by God.

But others are less easy to spot. Like those who alter our doctrines or undermine the Scriptures, while sounding plausible and intelligent, but falsely claiming that only their view is intellectually credible. At this point, true shepherds have to protect the flock, even if it is costly.

Jesus the Good Shepherd laying down his life for the flock specifically protects his people from the wolf-like claim that lusting after power and force are the ways to change things for good in the world.

What is this like? I turn to someone who, if you know little about him, might seem an unlikely source. Many of you will remember the 1960s folk singer Barry McGuire, most famous for his membership of the New Christy Minstrels, his song ‘Eve of Destruction’, and his association with the Mamas and the Papas – the line in their song ‘Creeque Alley’ that said ‘McGuinn and McGuire were just getting higher’ was about him and Roger McGuinn of the Byrds.

Well, a few years after that, Barry McGuire found his freedom not in drugs but in Jesus Christ. And in one concert, he talked about the death of Jesus as being like a shock absorber, absorbing human lawlessness. He then said that when Christians experience the shock of evil in this world, we have two choices: we can either get mad, or we too can absorb the shock to protect others.

Secondly, the Good Shepherd knows his sheep:

14 ‘I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me – 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father – and I lay down my life for the sheep.

What makes for a true sheep-shepherd relationship? Mutual, personal, intimate, knowledge.

It is thus not enough for us to say we are religious. All sorts of people believe in God – even the devil, as the New Testament tells us. And we know that religion can be co-opted by politicians and others who use it to cultivate influence and power for themselves, rather than knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Similarly, it’s not enough to be a churchgoer. It’s possible to participate in religious practices and rituals without having a personal connection with Jesus the Good Shepherd. The outward form only has meaning if there is an inward reality.

To know the Good Shepherd means to recognise that he knows us just as deeply as he knows the Father (verse 15) – as one song puts it, ‘You know me better than I know myself.’

And in response, we engage with him, and we listen to him. As far as we know how, we put aside the existing filters we place on the world to hear him for who he is, rather than squeezing him into our preferred mould.

This becomes particularly important when we are considering the ethical implications of knowing the Good Shepherd. If we lean politically to the right, we may hear more Jesus’ call to personal morality. If we lean to the left, we may more easily hear his call to social justice. But Jesus gives us no such either/or options. It’s both/and.

Therefore if we want to draw closer to the Good Shepherd – and why wouldn’t we want to be nearer to the One who repeatedly said ‘Peace be with you’ after his Resurrection? – we need to invest in the spiritual disciplines. Prayer and Bible reflection in church, in small groups, and alone. Making sure we put into practice what we have heard. Reflecting on how we are progressing as disciples. The sacraments. And so on. All these help us to know more closely the Good Shepherd who knows us better than we know ourselves.

Thirdly and finally, the Good Shepherd has other sheep:

16 I have other sheep that are not of this sheepfold. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. 

Now before anything else let me knock on the head the idea I have often heard about this verse, namely that Jesus is opening up the possibility that there are many ways to God, in its most crude form the notion that all religions lead to God.

This is not what he is saying when he says he has other sheep not of this sheepfold. We can see that from the fact that he goes on to say that he wants to bring the other sheep into the one sheepfold under him, the one shepherd.

It would also be crazy to suggest that Jesus advocates a multi-faith route to God from a verse in John’s Gospel, where elsewhere he says he is the way, the truth, and the life, and that no-one comes to the Father except through him.

Sure, the Gospel may present as many different facets of one diamond, but ultimately there is only the one Gospel: that there is a new king or Lord of the universe, his name is Jesus, and he reigns in love and mercy, not by brute force and power.

So no: by bringing the other sheep into the one sheepfold under the one shepherd here, Jesus is anticipating the Gentile mission. Gentiles will be ‘grafted in’ to the people of God, as the Apostle Paul put it in his Epistle to the Romans. The population of the sheepfold is going to increase, because Jesus has made that possible by laying down his life as the Good Shepherd.

But how was the Good Shepherd going to bring other sheep into the sheepfold? That was going to happen after Pentecost, when the Gospel would be preached in Jerusalem, in Samaria, and later to the ends of the earth. The responsibility is delegated, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to those who draw close to him.

A legend tells of Jesus returning to heaven at the Ascension and being quizzed by the angels.

“Master,” asked one of the angels, “what happens to your mission now that you have returned here to heaven?”

“I have left that in the hands of my followers,” replied Jesus.

“But won’t they mess it up, Lord? Won’t they fail you, won’t they lose courage, won’t they forget what they’re meant to do? What is your Plan B?”

Jesus replied, “I have no other plan.”

In conclusion, perhaps what sums this all up quite well is the thirteenth century prayer of St Richard, Bishop of Chichester. I’m sure you know it or will recognise it:

Thanks be to you, our Lord Jesus Christ, for all the benefits which you have given us, for all the pains and insults which you have borne for us. Most merciful Redeemer, Friend and Brother, may we know you more clearly, love you more dearly, and follow you more nearly, day by day. Amen.

0

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com

Up ↑