Tag: kingdom of God

Holy Week Meditations: Jesus Under Question. By What Authority? (1/3)

Introduction

We are going to look at three stories that fall early in the Holy Week narrative in Luke’s Gospel, all of them in chapter 20, where Jesus is questioned by the authorities. Sometimes we read these stories in isolation, but it’s important to see that they occur in Holy Week, because they are all part of the authorities ramping up the pressure on Jesus. They are all part of the campaign that leads to the Cross. 

And within that context of the opposition during Holy Week, there is one theme we must bear in mind, and that is the Temple. All of the questioning finds its source in those who run the Temple. You will remember that when Jesus is put on trial, he is accused of saying, ‘Destroy this temple and I will rebuild it in three days.’ 

Well, later in Holy Week Jesus did indeed prophesy the destruction of the Jerusalem temple. It was not an act he was going to accomplish, though: his prophecies relate to the destruction that the Roman legions would execute in AD 70, when they put down the Jewish revolt. 

And we also remember that when Jesus said, ‘Destroy this temple and I will rebuild it in three days,’ he was referring to his own body. For in New Testament terms, Jesus himself is the true temple. The temple was reckoned by Jews to be the place where heaven and earth met. Jesus, being fully divine and fully human, encapsulated that in his own being. In Jesus, heaven and earth met. Hence, he was the true temple. Moreover, his death would replace the Jerusalem temple’s sacrificial system. Again, he was the true temple. He was coming to replace the existing one. 

Jesus, then, is a threat to all who constitute the Jerusalem temple authorities. They may not know all that I have just described, but they know enough to realise that this popular preacher is a hazard to all their vested interests. He must be stopped. 

But this isn’t just a private spat between Jesus and the authorities. It is set in the context of Jesus teaching the people. They are listening to him when the temple authorities turn up and interrupt. In between the three episodes we are going to look at, Jesus addresses the people with his counter-arguments, including a parable that shows up the authorities for just who they are before God. The people represent Israel. Will they follow the Messiah? Or will the temple leaders undermine their faith in Jesus?

So with all that background laid out, let’s look at the first of these three stories where the temple leaders put Jesus under question. 

Luke 20:1-8

The challenge

How ironic it is that the authorities turn up just as Jesus is teaching and ‘proclaiming the good news’. Is it that Jesus is good news and they are bad news? Why would they want to put a stop to someone who proclaims good news? What does this say about them? The contrast is set up at the outset. 

But even the ‘good news’ would have been threatening to them. Remember that ‘good news’ was something proclaimed in the Roman Empire by a ‘herald’ (the Greek word for which became a New Testament word for a preacher or evangelist) who travelled to different towns telling the population there of some wonderful event. ‘There is a new emperor on the throne in Rome!’ ‘Rome’s army has won a great victory!’

When Jesus proclaims the good news it’s all that and more. There is indeed a new king on the throne – not in Rome but in heaven, ruling the universe. After his death and resurrection, the early church will proclaim that as good news, too, because God will have won a great victory, not by killing but by suffering. 

If Jesus is proclaiming good news of a new king, then no wonder the New Testament tells us elsewhere that he was announcing the good news of the kingdom of God. This would have been a challenge for the temple leaders who, although they were not appointed by Rome, certainly had their security in office guaranteed by Rome, just so long as they played along. If there is a different king on the throne, then that Roman backing is undermined. Is it any wonder they don’t like the good news of Jesus?

And so they come along and they try to undermine Jesus on the basis of the location, namely the temple. It’s their territory. This is where they have authority. To ask Jesus, ‘By what authority’ he does these things and who gave him such authority, they are saying, look, this is our patch, we are the ones in charge here. You are the outsider. You haven’t been properly authorised and appointed. So what gives you any right to say or do any of that stuff, especially here? 

I guess it might work if you were dealing with a mere mortal. But Jesus knows where his authority comes from, and so do readers of Luke’s Gospel. Luke has told us that Jesus was conceived under the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. The same Spirit has descended on him like a dove at his baptism, and the voice of his Father from heaven has affirmed him as his beloved Son. Jesus has laid out his manifesto under the anointing of the Spirit in the synagogue at Nazareth. And then a ministry has followed where all of this has been demonstrated. By what authority? Do the temple leaders really want to know the answer to that question? 

By what authority? It’s still a dangerous question today. We hope and pray that those in leadership in the church today are those who have the authority of the Holy Spirit at work in their lives and that also this is what the church has discerned in the selection and appointment process. Is it always true, though? Sometimes we come up with our own criteria that may sound good and faithful, but then in practice we may not sense the work of the Spirit. We who lead sometimes end up going through the motions rather than relying on divine authority. It’s not really enough for us to fall back on saying, well I was appointed or ordained by the church if we are not attentive to the Holy Spirit.

But Jesus has no such worries. His knowledge of where his authority comes from and who he is in relationship to the Father gives him a security that leads to the boldness of his ministry. He is the Beloved Son, always full of the Spirit. That’s potent. 

So is this how Jesus will respond, by setting out his credentials? Not a bit of it.

The response

It’s very rare that Jesus responds to a question, even a friendly one, with an answer. Often, he replies – as here – with another question. While there is truth in the old slogan ‘Jesus is the answer’ it’s every bit as true that ‘Jesus is the question.’ At least, here and in other places Jesus is the questioner. 

Even though later in Holy Week at his trials he will often be silent, here Jesus goes on the offensive with his question. He is still in the business of exposing unrepentant sin, and that is what he does by throwing a question about authority back at his opponents. 

And moreover – remember that the ordinary people are present in the scene – Jesus picks on an issue of authority that will chime with them, not with the temple leaders. 

That issue is John the Baptist. When Jesus asks, ‘John’s baptism – was it from heaven, or of human origin?’ it’s about more than just John’s baptism. Those two words are like an abbreviation for the whole of John’s ministry. This is a question about the entire authority behind John’s ministry: was it from God, or was it merely human? 

That makes it a huge question. John was a barometer for how people responded to the divine purposes of redemption. Not only that, but he was widely regarded as a prophet. And further, he was depicted as the one who would come before the Messiah, according to Malachi’s image of a returned Elijah heralding God’s anointed. Where you stood on the authority of John really mattered. 

And in particular, the link between John and Jesus meant that if you endorsed John’s divine authority, you endorsed that of Jesus, too. But if you denied John’s spiritual legitimacy, you not only denied Jesus, you also lost the people who was listening to Jesus, who certainly thought John was a prophet. 

Checkmate? Very possibly. That’s certainly how the religious leaders react. They don’t know what to say. They realise that any answer they give to Jesus’ conundrum puts them in a bad situation. At this stage, Jesus is too popular with the ordinary people and so they can’t alienate the crowds by denying the legitimacy of John’s ministry. But if they take the other option, then the logical conclusion is that they should end up following Jesus, and that is out of the question. He is the thorn in their side that they want rid of. 

Jesus wins this round. What was he trying to achieve? Is this an exercise in saving his own skin that succeeds here but will fail later in the week? Regular observers might suppose so. But the readers of the Gospel know, and the disciples should know, that he had prophesied his betrayal, suffering, and death. He is heading towards that destiny, even if the utter horror of it has not hit him yet in the way it will in the Garden of Gethsemane. 

Yet if he knows that the Cross is his destiny, why even bother to debate and outwit the temple hierarchy? Surely it is because wickedness must be exposed by the truth, whatever the cost. Think of how Jeremiah was called to a ministry where it was his calling repeatedly to remind Israel of God’s truth, even though in the short term they were not going to obey. It was still important for there to be a faithful witness to the truth in the face of evil. The people of Jeremiah’s day were without excuse. Those who exercised power during Jesus’ ministry would now also have no excuse before God for their words, attitudes, and actions. 

Does this make us think of situations today where Christians need to witness faithfully to God’s truth in opposition to great evil, and to do so at the risk of paying a great cost? Might that even happen in the USA under Donald Trump’s presidency? 

What about the leaders? They are embarrassed before the people. Their stature and authority before the ordinary Jews has been fundamentally undermined by Jesus. He had made a laughingstock of them. It is almost like the way a satirist uses ridicule to expose the wickedness of a politician and to imply that things should be better than they are. 

Are they going to take this defeat lying down? No. With their hearts hardened by their own choice to the searing moral critique given by Jesus, they are going to defend their position and their interests against all opposition, not least this upstart from up north in Nazareth. 

We haven’t heard the last of them. They will be back. 

Questions for reflection

In what ways today is the Good News of Jesus a threat to the powerful?

Is there any way in which the Good News has been a threat to you? How have you responded?

What makes you recognise the authority of Jesus?

How do you react when the teaching of Jesus shows you to be in the wrong?

What would be a Christian way of handling power today?

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Jesus Wins! (Last Sunday Before Advent, Feast of Christ the King) Daniel 7:7-14 with Revelation 1:4-8

Daniel 7:7-14 (with Revelation 1:4-8)

World War One was called ‘The war to end all wars.’ The suffering and depravity of it shocked millions of people around the globe. Despair filled Europe. One Christian leader thought he could change the atmosphere.

That leader was Pope Pius XI. He believed people needed reminding of who was truly in charge, namely Jesus Christ. And so he proclaimed a new feast, the Feast of Christ the King. He said (and you’ll have to excuse the exclusive language of his day),

If men recognise the royal power of Christ privately and publicly, incredible benefits must spread through the civil community, such as a just liberty, discipline, tranquillity, agreement, and peace.

He directed that the feast be observed on the Last Sunday Before Advent, and that made excellent sense. It is the last day of the Christian Year. What begins in Advent with looking forward to the coming of Christ, continues with his birth, life, and ministry in Lent, marks his death and resurrection at Easter, then his Ascension, followed by the pouring out of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, reaches a climax with Christ reigning over all things.

There was just one problem. Not everyone heeded the teaching. Governments in places such as Berlin and Moscow ensured that the rest of the twentieth century was filled up with even more unimaginable and reprehensible evil as they rejected the rule of Christ.

To explore the reign of Christ now and in the future, and the tension with the presence of evil in the world, I’m going to take the final two verses of the Daniel reading as my foundation:

13 “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14 He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshipped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

I’m going to interpret this, as the New Testament does, with the ‘son of man’ (NIV) or ‘human being’ (NRSV) being fulfilled by Jesus. There is much more nuance than that involved, but that will do us for our purposes today.

Firstly, let’s consider the reign of Christ now:

You may remember that Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record a conversation the disciples have with Jesus where they are in Jerusalem in ‘Holy Week’ and they point to the beauty of the Temple. Jesus replies by telling them that not a stone of it will be left standing, because Rome will come and destroy it. The disciples then ask him when this will happen, and Jesus launches into some prophetic words about the harrowing events that will come.

In that context, he quotes Daniel 7:13, about the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven, and many Christians have jumped on these words to think he is now talking about the Second Coming. If Jesus is the Son of Man and he is ‘coming’ then surely this must be his return? People who believe this then get into all sorts of knots about what Jesus says regarding people alive then who will witness this.

But they forget one important detail. When the Son of Man comes on the clouds of heaven, where does he come to? In Daniel, he doesn’t come to earth: he comes to the Ancient of Days, that is, Almighty God. It is about him returning to heaven. In other words, Jesus is talking about the Ascension. Jesus is reigning at the Father’s right hand from the Ascension onwards.

However, we live in a world where not everyone accepts this. We would rather have others in charge, or perhaps run our own lives. How does that work out? The writer James Cary puts it like this:

We say things like ‘The Prime Minister is running the country’. Could this ever possibly have been true? This is not a comment on Keir Starmer, or his predecessors or successors. I seek only to point out the insanity of the notion that any one single person can run an extremely complex and diverse society of 65 million people – all of whom seek to be their own king or queen. Premiership after premiership has ended in failure with ever increasing rapidity. Keir Starmer, impressively, has saved time by starting with failure. That’s rare but, at least, efficient.

So what’s required of us? As God’s people, we are a colony of his coming kingdom. One classic definition of the church is to say that we are a sign and foretaste of God’s kingdom. It is our calling to live under that reign and seek to bring people and all of creation under that reign, too. We see the vision of that in verse 14:

He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshipped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

We are junior partners in God’s project to usher in the day when ‘all nations and peoples of every language’ will worship Jesus Christ.

That means first of all bringing our own lives in order under his Lordship. The very fact that we have seen safeguarding scandals where church leaders were more concerned to protect the reputation of the church than the welfare of victims and survivors has had a devastating effect on the church’s witness. In the light of the John Smyth scandal, the radio broadcaster Nicky Campbell said on air that there was no way he would now ever consider the Christian faith. Campbell is on record as saying he was abused as a youngster.

But then a Christian woman came on his show and told her own story of abuse. And she told him how the church and her faith had helped her come through the experience. With great integrity, Campbell softened his position on Christianity as a result of her testimony.

We need then both to live our lives under the reign of Christ, which includes using power when we have it in a godly way, and taking the side of the last and the least in our world, as Jesus did. We also need to be inviting others to do the same.

And this links secondly with the reign of Christ to come:

I said that the Gospels use Daniel 7:13 about the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven to mean the Ascension. But Revelation 1 doesn’t. John chops off the bit about coming to the Ancient of Days and puts it with some words from Zechariah 12:

7 ‘Look, he is coming with the clouds,’
    and ‘every eye will see him,
even those who pierced him’;
    and all peoples on earth ‘will mourn because of him.’
So shall it be! Amen.

Now we do have the appearing of Christ again in view. This is the time when all nations and peoples of every language will worship him. It is the time Paul spoke of in Philippians 2 when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

We may long for that day when all will be good and true, when society will be just, when darkness in all its forms will be banished. This is our great hope. Just as God remade Jesus’ body in the Resurrection, so he will remake all things. It gives us that longing to say, ‘Come, Lord Jesus.’ And when we come to Holy Communion, our sharing in a small piece of bread and a sip of wine makes us ache for the heavenly banquet, the marriage feast of the Lamb.

Our critics would say this is classic ‘pie in the sky when you die.’ But it isn’t, if we understand it properly. Because this vision makes us restless with hope now. This hope drives us to action.

On Tuesday, one of the greatest preachers of our generation, the American Baptist minister and sociologist Tony Campolo, died at the age of 89. I heard him preach a few times when I was in my twenties and his emphasis on true discipleship involving not just belief but also committed action on behalf of the poor influenced many thousands of Christians.

On Wednesday, I watched a video of an old sermon of his from Spring Harvest.

In it, he tells contrasting stories of two students he knew from the university where he taught. One went on a mission trip to a developing country and came back saying, I am going to train as a doctor and then go and serve these people. He did train as a doctor, but instead of keeping his promise he became a cosmetic surgeon. He didn’t practise the kind of cosmetic surgery that helps people who have suffered life-changing accidents: he practised the sort that only the wealthy and vain pay for. Yes, he was a lay leader at his church, and yes, he tithed his income. But in Campolo’s eyes he blew it, because he was seduced by wealth and didn’t serve the poor.

The other student went from Campolo’s university in Philadelphia to Harvard Law School, and qualified to practise law. He was offered a lucrative job with a $500,000 annual salary, but he turned it down. He moved to Alabama to defend prisoners on death row. Many of them were on death row, because they couldn’t afford good lawyers, so he didn’t charge the fees he could have earned elsewhere. For him, it was an outworking of Jesus’ Beatitude, ‘Blessèd are the merciful.’

Which one followed Jesus? Which one anticipated the everlasting dominion of Christ? I think you know.

Apart from the obvious teaching of Jesus, what motivated Tony Campolo to make this emphasis his life’s defining characteristic? He used to tell a story of how people would ask him why he was so relentlessly cheerful in a world so full of pain and injustice. His reply?

‘I believe the Bible, and I’ve peeked at the final chapter. And Jesus wins.’

In other words, his commitment to the poor of the world was driven by his vision of Christ the King. He is reigning now, but currently not everyone acknowledges it. While waiting for the glorious day, Campolo called all who call themselves Christians not to be mere believers: after all, he said, the devil believes all the right doctrines about God. Jesus didn’t say go into all the world and make believers: he said go into all the world and make disciples. And that will involve us doing Jesus-like things, such as caring and advocating for the downtrodden.

You or I may not be a lawyer or a doctor. We may not hold some socially prestigious position. But all of us have opportunities to serve the disadvantaged in some way. We do it, because on the great day when Christ rules as King without any more resistance, there will be no more downtrodden, no more disadvantaged, no more poor, no more suffering of injustice. So we prepare for it now.

Remember: Jesus wins. Let’s get ready for that day.

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Advent, The Prologue and Relationships: 2, Jesus and John the Baptist (John 1:1-18)

John 1:1-18

Isn’t it strange that just as ‘I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here’ is on our screens yet again that John the Baptist comes into focus in the church year? The man whom Matthew tells us wore clothes made of camel’s hair and lived on a diet of locusts and honey[1] sounds perfect for the bush tucker trial.

And speaking personally, I’d rather engage with John the Baptist than Nigel Farage. Which is one major reason I’m not watching this year.

But we think of John at this time due to his connection with Jesus – not simply that they were related through their mothers[2] but that they were related in the purposes of God. We talk about John as the ‘Forerunner’ of Jesus. Their relationship is important for the Advent story.

But it’s not just interesting historical detail. John’s mission of preparing the way for Jesus is also a model for the ways in which God gives us our mission of pointing to Jesus.

I’m going to explore that in two phases today.

Firstly, John was sent.

We are used in the Methodist Church to the idea of ministers being sent. I was sent to this appointment by the authority of the Methodist Conference. The Salvation Army send their officers; the Roman Catholics send their priests. (Other denominations are different and speak less of the church sending and more of God calling.)

But being sent isn’t just a churchy thing. It happens in other areas of life, too. As I mentioned to some around Remembrance Sunday last month, I am the first man in my family for a couple of generations not to go into the Royal Air Force. My Dad only did National Service, but I often thought he might have fancied a longer time in it than that. My uncle served for many years, and so did my three male cousins.

The armed services’ concept of a ‘posting’ is very much a sending, and young families are often in an area only for a short time before the next posting happens, with adverse effects upon socialisation and education. One of my cousins was awarded the MBE for work he and his wife did on RAF bases with lonely families.

John the Baptist’s sending comes not from the church or the armed services, but from God:

6 There was a man sent from God whose name was John.

And yes, John has a very special calling that we mark at this time of year. And yes, we are used to the idea that certain Christians have particular callings in which they are sent by God.

Sadly, what we forget in all that is that every Christian is called and sent by God in some respect. Being sent by God doesn’t automatically mean being sent to dark jungles to be attacked by ferocious creatures and wild savages. Sometimes, God has already sent us to the place where we are, and this is the place where we are called to be fruitful and faithful for him.

Perhaps we still have that mediaeval Roman Catholic view of being sent that regarded the only vocations worth mentioning as those where someone was called to the church – priests, monks, and nuns. At least the Reformers broadened out that sense of vocation so that Martin Luther, ever provocative in his writing, could say that were the job of village hangman to fall vacant, the devout Christian should apply.

I am not here to recruit any hangmen today! But I am here to invite us all to consider our sense of being sent. Has God sent us to the particular job where we work? The neighbourhood where we live? The social groups in which we mix?

And if we think that’s possible, how does that change our attitude to those workplaces, neighbourhoods, and social groups? Are we on a mission from God in those places? Have we been placed there to live out our faith and bless those we meet with the love of God in our attitudes and actions? Has God sent us there as a sign of his abiding truth to those who may or may not want to know about it?

And for others of us, have we become restless where we are? Is it because we have not embraced the sense that God has sent us here, or is God preparing us to take up another posting and be sent somewhere else? Is this an issue that some of us should be praying about?

Secondly, John was specifically sent as a witness.

One of the things I do when I go to preach at a new church is I always ask for an assurance from the person on the sound desk that they will turn my microphone off during the hymns. Much as I love music, I am not blessed in that area with any personal ability. I was once next to my aunt in a congregation and she said to me afterwards, “I’m glad my bad singing voice has passed down another generation in the family.”

So when my friends in the church youth group formed a band, I was the only one not to be part of it. They became quite popular in local church circles and sold out some concerts.

I talk in the first chapter of my book about some of the socially awkward ways in which I related to them. Yet one Saturday evening in December, and I think it proved to be their biggest concert ever, they involved me by asking me to be the compère.

It stayed with me, because the next morning the Advent theme was John the Baptist, and the preacher spoke about how John was the compère for Jesus. Given my rôle the previous night, that description stuck with me. Just as the compère’s job is not to point to themselves but to the act everyone has paid to see, so the rôle of John the Baptist is not to big himself up but to be ‘a witness to the light’:

7 He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. 8 He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.

This rôle of a witness is seen in some of the other New Testament models for those who speak of Christ. We have the herald, who brought ‘good news’, rather like a town crier. ‘Good news’ was a technical term in the Roman Empire for the announcements heralds made that either the Roman army had won a great battle or that there was a new emperor on the throne. The first Christians translated this to their heralding of a different good news, the good news that God had won a great battle against evil at the Cross and that there was now a new king of the universe, Jesus the Lord.

And we have the ambassador that the Apostle Paul talks about. The purpose of an ambassador is to represent the king and the kingdom that sent them to an alien land. Paul and the first Christians saw themselves as representing Christ and the kingdom of God in an alien land.

All of these images – the witness, the herald, and the ambassador – have one thing in common. These spokespeople are not drawing attention to themselves but to Jesus Christ and the good news of God’s kingdom.

This was John’s purpose in a particularly special way when Jesus came into the world and thirty years later began his public ministry. It is also our calling.

For the New Testament also calls us witnesses. We may not all be evangelists, but we are all witnesses. Every Christian has the ability to witness to Jesus Christ by speaking about what he has done for them and what he has done for the world.

Think of a witness in a court of law. The witness speaks of what he or she has seen or heard, or about what he knows to be true. These are the things we do as witnesses for Christ, too. We speak about our experience of Jesus. We speak about what we know about him. Sure, we are not all what the courts call expert witnesses – perhaps those are the evangelists – but if we think about it, can we not all think of what Jesus has done for us, what he means to us, and what we know for sure about him?

Conclusion

Last week we saw that the Father’s relationship with Jesus said something about our relationship with Jesus, too. This week, John’s relationship with Jesus also has something to say about our relationship with Jesus.

Last week we saw that just as the Father’s relationship with Jesus was characterised by unity, love, and light, so too was Jesus’ mission to the world. This week with John we find that we are sent by God as heralds and ambassadors of King Jesus and his kingdom of unity, love, and light.

May the Holy Spirit show us the place where we are sent. And may we depend on that same Spirit to empower us as witnesses to Jesus and all that he has done.

[1] Matthew 3:4

[2] Luke 1:36

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Seven Churches 2: Smyrna (Revelation 2:8-11)

Revelation 2:8-11

I was on sabbatical earlier this year, and when people asked what I was going to do with my time, some were surprised by one of the things I had chosen.

I had decided to revisit one of my favourite places, the Lee Abbey community in north Devon, to take a course on ‘Dealing with disappointment.’

“Why would you want to do that?” people asked me. “Don’t you want to do something more uplifting on a sabbatical?”

So I explained that I was coming to the end of thirteen years in a circuit appointment where not all my dreams had been fulfilled. I was in the latter stages of my ministry generally and as I look back I don’t see all the hopes I had for my calling at the outset fulfilled, either. I needed to process these things healthily.

Moreover, I said, disappointment is a regular pastoral theme when people talk with me. So few are living Plan A for their lives. More often it’s Plan B, Plan C, or Plan D. It’s important to have a grip of this theme.

Which brings us to that early church at Smyrna. Already facing afflictions, poverty, and slander (verse 9), Jesus tells them that suffering, imprisonment, persecution, and even death are just around the corner (verse 10). It’s not exactly the good life. So much for the old lie that said, ‘When I became a Christian, all my problems disappeared.’

Yet in these four short verses Jesus gives them a way to understand what they are going through that will fortify them for the difficult times and give them hope for the long term.

But what has all this got to do with us? We know about our Christian brothers and sisters in other parts of the world who suffer greatly for their faith. We often give thanks in our prayers that we have the freedom to worship.

I would not agree with those who say that Christians are now persecuted in this country, but I would say that it is becoming more difficult and there is increasing hostility in the public square to us. We should be prepared for days when Christianity will be costly even here.

And even if that doesn’t come our way, we shall all for sure face disappointments and injustices in life, so it’s best we prepare for facing them with faith rather than an attitude that expects everything to go right.

There are two things in what Jesus says to the church at Smyrna that help us. They are encapsulated in the way Jesus introduces himself, and they are implicit in his pastoral words to them.

How does he introduce himself?

These are the words of him who is the First and the Last, who died and came to life again. (Verse 8b)

Death and resurrection are the two themes that help us. How so?

Firstly, let’s consider death – and specifically here, I mean the death of Christ. He is the First and the Last, the agent of creation and also the One who will reign for ever and ever. And yet he died.

Whenever Christians think about injustice and suffering, the best place to start is at the Cross. Our faith is centred on the Cross. And what is the Cross if not the most unjust act in history? The eternal sinless Son of God is stitched up by both Jew and Gentile and condemned to an agonising death.

We might say that the death of Jesus was an unique event in history, and in the sense that if made possible the reconciliation of the world to God, that is true. But we might still draw a couple of lessons for ourselves.

One is that in a battle soldiers put themselves in harm’s way in order to conquer the enemy. That is what Jesus did with sin and the power of evil. We may not suffer for the sins of the world, but we do find ourselves in a spiritual battle. It is therefore not surprising if the enemy seeks to inflict damage and pain on us. It is the risk we take as soldiers of Christ.

Another is that our calling as disciples is to be imitators of Christ. I know we do that very imperfectly – well, I do, for sure – but it does mean that we are liable to be treated in a similar way to the way the world treated Jesus. Remember that he said,

If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first. (John 15:18)

So while we are not to go out and look for suffering, nor are we meant to be stupidly provocative (as I fear some Christians are), we should not be surprised when we are treated badly. In a time when more and more groups are trying to exclude Christians from the public square because they say we are hateful and dangerous, it’s par for the course. No wonder Jesus tells the Christians at Smyrna to expect suffering.

The trouble is, we have been led to think differently by living in a country where for many centuries Christianity was a major player in shaping the culture, where it has even been in partnership with the State – so-called Christendom.

But throughout history and throughout the world, this is not normal. It is more common to be reviled for following Jesus than praised. Remember: our faith is centred on the Cross.

Secondly, let’s consider resurrection – and again, we starting with the Resurrection of Jesus.

Not only does Jesus remind the church at Smyrna that he died, he also reminds them that he ‘came to life again.’

Now you might say that the Resurrection is an unique event in history, too. You would be right at present, but by the end of history as we know it you will be wrong. Jesus promises here,

The one who is victorious will not be hurt at all by the second death. (Verse 11b)

We look forward to the resurrection of the dead. The Resurrection of Christ is the first-fruits of the harvest of resurrection to come. If we follow Christ, then ‘The second death’, that is, eternal judgment, is nothing to fear, for by the grace of God we are put right with him by faith and he remembers our sins no more.

And we do see some mini-resurrections in this life. We see answers to prayer. Injustices are put right. People are healed. Those in need are provided for. Folk who have fallen out are reconciled. Wrongdoers make restitution to those they harmed. Forgiveness is given and received.

When we pray about a situation that is wrong, we do not always know whether our prayers are going to be answered in the affirmative in this life. But that should not stop us praying. If we don’t pray, then very little will happen. If we do pray, though, then there is more of a chance of seeing some divine resurrection.

So let us continue to pray and act for the sick, the bereaved, the suffering, and those facing injustice. We never know what God might do.

To speak personally, I can only think of two times when I can say for certain that God answered my prayer for someone to be healed. However, that neither stops nor discourages me from continuing to pray for the sick. Who knows when number three will come along?

Or maybe you are upset that certain close friends and relatives have never committed their lives to Christ. If so, then I remind you about D L Moody, the famous evangelist, who prayed daily for a hundred of his friends to come to know Christ. Amazingly, by the time of his death, ninety-six of them had done so.

But what about the other four? They were converted at Moody’s funeral.

Conclusion

How do we hold all this together? We do so in a framework that Christian thinkers call ‘The now and the not yet of God’s kingdom.’ Since the coming of Jesus, we are living in two overlapping eras. The first is the era of sin, and thus we continue to see injustice and suffering. This is our first category of death.

The second is the era of the kingdom of God, which Jesus inaugurated when he came. Thus we also continue to see people and things being made new in response to prayer. This is our second category of resurrection.

We haven’t simply passed from the era of death to the era of resurrection. The two are co-existing, overlapping until Christ appears again to judge the living and the dead. Thus we must expect that sometimes we shall face suffering, and on other times we shall experience restoration, and we won’t always know in advance which will be our lot.

But whichever happens, God is still in charge of our lives. Jesus is reigning at the Father’s right hand, even though not everybody acknowledges his rule.

Here is a story I like to tell that I think illustrates what I am trying to say. Some decades ago, there was a massacre of British Christian missionaries in a far-off land, although some survived the attack.

A memorial service was held back in the UK. At it, the preacher said, “I believe that all of the missionaries were delivered by God. Those who survived were delivered from suffering, and those who were murdered were delivered through suffering.”

For we worship

him who is the First and the Last, who died and came to life again.

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Demi Lovato and the Community of Light, Matthew 4:12-23 (Ordinary 3 Epiphany 3 Year A 2023)

Matthew 4:12-23

Light.

Here is a quote that a friend of mine posted on Facebook the other day:

I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.’

(Og Mandino)

It resonated with me as I read today’s passage in Matthew 4, where the evangelist quotes the famous words of Isaiah,

the people living in darkness
    have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of the shadow of death
    a light has dawned

(Matthew 4:16/Isaiah 9:2)

We associate those words from Isaiah with Christmas. I have picked them for most carol services. For Christians, they are a prophecy of the Messiah, Jesus.

But the New Testament doesn’t connect them with the birth of Jesus. Their association with Christmas comes not from Scripture but from their use in Handel’s ‘Messiah’[1]. In the Bible, Jesus is only revealed as the light coming to the people in darkness when he begins his public ministry here.

Yet here’s the thing about Jesus coming as the great light in the darkness: he has come to form a community of light, because in the next chapter he will tell his disciples they are the light of the world (Matthew 5:14-16).

So what Jesus is doing in today’s reading is setting down the foundations for his community of light. Here are three of those foundations:

Firstly, repentance.

17 From that time on Jesus began to preach, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’

The kingdom of God has come near, so repent. At its core, the word repent means ‘a change of mind’, both in the English and the Greek of the New Testament.

But repentance is not just an intellectual change. It is such a change of mind about life and truth that our lives and conduct change, too.

Why? Because ‘the kingdom of heaven has come near.’ That is, the king himself has arrived, and his name is Jesus. Just as Roman heralds would go through the towns and villages to proclaim the accession of a new Emperor, so Jesus announces his own coming as king. And if there is a new king on the throne of the universe, then it is his will that is to be obeyed, rather than whoever or whatever we were following before – our own self-gratification, the disordered self-centredness of society, or the lies of the enemy.

For the community of light that Jesus is beginning is the kingdom of God community. It is what the great American Free Methodist scholar Howard Snyder called, ‘The Community of the King.’

When we gather on Sunday for worship or in a small group in the week, we are gathering as the community of King Jesus. We are light to the world by living out our allegiance to him, not by making the faith easier to believe as we compromise with the standards of the world. All that does by definition is expand the darkness. Being the light requires being different, and that means repentance. And not one-off repentance, but something we keep coming back to throughout our lives.

Most of us probably have a good idea about things we need to change in our lives to bring them under the rule of King Jesus. The difficulty may be in where to start! So let us ask the Holy Spirit for guidance about our next steps in repentance.

Secondly, fishing.

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

I have only been fishing once in my life. I was on a mission trip to Norway and our church hosts took us fishing in a fjord. If we didn’t catch any fish that afternoon, we wouldn’t eat that evening. Fortunately, we caught enough – although I only contributed one.

It’s the same for the church. We need to fish in order to live. We can’t wait for people to come to us. For too long we did that, and it was an act of complacency in times when people had some similarities to us and sympathies with us. Those days are gone.

It’s pretty likely that Simon Peter and Andrew heard Jesus’ vision of fishing for people as a sign that they would be sent to the Gentiles. For in the Old Testament, to be delivered from the waters was to be delivered from foreigners. There is some similar New Testament language in the Book of Revelation. And Gentiles were sometimes compared to terrifying mythical sea creatures.[2]

We need to get beyond our existing boundaries, says Jesus. It’s no good just spending time with our own kind. The Good News is for all. Matthew has already referred in this passage to ‘Galilee of the Gentiles’. In his birth stories, it is the Gentile Magi who worship, not the Jewish teachers. And at the end of his Gospel we shall have the Great Commission to go into all the world. It all begins here.

But, you say, I’m not the sort of person for that. May I remind you that neither were Simon Peter and Andrew? It was unusual for a rabbi to come and recruit disciples. Normally young men chose a rabbi to follow. The fact that these young men are not following a rabbi but out in the working world tells you they weren’t the brightest talent. But Jesus called them.

And Jesus calls us, too. He reminds us that we know people beyond the boundaries of the church who need the love of Jesus.

Remember, if we don’t do it, we starve, we die.

But how? That leads to the third foundation of the community of light, word and deed.

23 Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and illness among the people.

Now perhaps you hear that and say, ‘But I can’t preach and teach. And I’ve prayed for friends and family who are sick but none of them has got better. So how can I follow Jesus?’

Well – we don’t all have the same gifts, but the common thread is this: we take the light of the kingdom community beyond its boundaries by sharing the good news in word and deed. We may each have different ways of doing that, but a commitment to sharing God’s love in word and deed is the key principle. Although you should never write off the power of the Holy Spirit, of course!

Even though our wider society and culture turns increasingly away from Christian values, and even as it adopts a less and less friendly attitude to the church, we cannot go out into the world with our heads down. Nor as Christians can we go into the world with the thought that these people are so negative against us that we are going to curse them. We show love, even to our enemies.

A Bible passage I’m sure I’ve mentioned before to you but which is one of my favourites for understanding our calling today is Jeremiah 29. The prophet Jeremiah writes a letter to those of his people who have been forcibly taken into exile from the Promised Land to Babylon. Rather than cursing their captors, Jeremiah tells the exiles to bless them and to seek their welfare.

I think that’s one place where we start today. Here’s an example to make us ponder.[3] Last week, the Advertising Standards Authority banned poster adverts for the latest album by the pop star Demi Lovato. The album is called ‘Holy F*ck’ and portrays her in sexual bondage gear on a bed shaped like a crucifix as if she is on the Cross, like Christ. So pretty repulsive, and you can see why the ASA banned the posters for their offence to Christians.

But this is a young woman who, after becoming a child TV star, developed eating disorders and was subjected to sexual abuse. As she tried to cope with the pain, she became addicted to drugs and suffered mental health issues. A heroin overdose nearly killed her. She sustained brain damage and temporary blindness.

Her manager encouraged her to attend a church Bible study, and for a short while she felt close to God. But on the new album she sings that ultimately she felt like she didn’t fit in at church.

In our world, there are plenty of broken people who think they don’t fit in with church. Most of their stories are nothing like as dramatic as Demi Lovato’s. But they need God’s healing love showing to them and explained to them. They need the light of Christ, and his community, the light of the world, are the people to do this.

That means us. We are the community of King Jesus, not a religious club.

[1] I owe this insight to Ian Paul at https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/the-calling-of-the-first-disciples-in-matthew-4/

[2] Ian Paul, op. cit., citing Chad Bird via Peter Leithart.

[3] What follows is based on James Emery White at https://www.churchandculture.org/blog/2023/1/19/a-prayer-for-demi-lovato

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Kingdom Culture, Luke 14:1-14 (Ordinary 22 Year C, 2022)

Luke 14:1-14

Meals out are a bit of a theme in our family at present. We had a large gathering of relatives in a pub recently to mark my wife’s big birthday. We are about to have another family meal before my sister and brother-in-law move away from this area.

Then a week or so ago, Debbie and I went for a Chinese before seeing a film at the cinema. Who was on the table behind us? Eamonn Holmes. It appeared we had happened upon one of his regular haunts.

We know that in the Gospels lots of important things happen around a meal table with Jesus. He even turns one of them into the central way that we remember his death for us.

And a meal table is a place where we see lots of protocols and cultural habits. In our case, they might range from not putting your elbows on the table to waiting for everyone to be served before beginning to eat.

There were certainly protocols and cultural values aplenty at the home of the Pharisee where Jesus dined in today’s reading. Yet what this story shows us is that the culture of God’s kingdom is often the reverse of the diners Jesus was with.

So today we’re going to examine what we see here about the culture of God’s kingdom and ask whether there are ways in which we need to reverse our values, too. Each of the three episodes in today’s story has something to tell us.

Firstly, in God’s kingdom, rules are interpreted by love.

I’m thinking of the first six verses of the reading here, where we learn that the meal is happening on a Sabbath, and people watch to see whether Jesus heals a sick man (just as he has done on a Sabbath in a synagogue). Sure enough, he does.

Jesus does not dispense with the rules. He honours them. But he will not apply them woodenly. He lives by the Law of God, knowing its intention for good. As he explains elsewhere, the Sabbath was made for the benefit of human beings, not vice-versa.

So here he makes it clear that of course you can and you should do good on the Sabbath. Any use of the Sabbath to prevent that would go against the spirit of God’s intentions about his Law.

If on the other hand all you do with the rules and laws is apply them literally and woodenly without any love, who benefits? The people who are in power.

And who doesn’t benefit when laws are interpreted woodenly and unlovingly? Those in need.

Jesus won’t have this. He has come to bring good news to the poor. God’s Laws must be interpreted in the spirit of love so that those in need receive good news. God never provided his Laws just to buttress the position of the wealthy and the powerful.

It’s something we need to bear in mind in the church. We have our own set of rules by which the church is governed. They contain a lot of wisdom. They should not be dismissed. But at the same time if all we do is enforce them rigidly and harshly, what good does that do? Who does that help? Only the rule-makers.

It isn’t being faithful to Jesus to ditch the rules – and especially not God’s Laws – but it is the way of Jesus to interpret them with love and compassion for those in need.

Secondly, in God’s kingdom, status is replaced by humility.

We come now to verses 7 to 11, where Jesus tells dinner guests not to take for themselves the seat of honour, in case their host demotes them, but rather to take the lowest seat, from which they may be called up higher.

In Jesus’ society, honour and status were everything. They determined your work, your income, your friendship circles, and who you could marry. This was given visual demonstration at meals. Therefore, in order to get on in society, people strove for higher status and greater honour. But

Jesus’ teaching here not only undercuts the importance of status; it also sees status and standing as something that is given, not something that is gained—a gift from another (specifically God), not something accrued by one’s own effort.[1]

People still lust after honour and status today. But why? It is selfish and self-centred. Not only that, it doesn’t necessarily last. A loss of income or the onset of a serious disease can take it away quickly. Why settle for something temporary and selfish when an alternative is on offer that is eternal?

But to have eternal honour and status in the kingdom of God requires a different approach. It requires being like Jesus, who had more status and honour than any other human being, but who laid it aside to be born into poverty and obscurity, and who laid down his life for the salvation of the world.

The best honour and status, then, is out of our hands. We humble ourselves and leave things in the hands of God. But we do so knowing he is full of mercy and grace. He does not habitually raise up the rich, the powerful, and the celebrities, he exalts the humble.

Some people will not like the idea that their status is out of their hands. They will not like such powerlessness. But our aim as Christians is not to exalt ourselves, it is to exalt Jesus Christ in our daily lives. If we have done that, then that will satisfy us.

Too many people in the church still get obsessed with rank and status. It’s time we put all that to bed. As Wesley’s hymn ‘Captain of Israel’s host, and guide’ puts it, ‘Our end, the glory of the Lord.’ Let that be our ambition  and let us be content to leave any elevation to him, putting aside our toxic pride and jealousy.

Thirdly, in God’s kingdom, giving is all about grace.

We come to the third and final section of the reading in verses 12 to 14, where Jesus tells meal hosts not to invite people to meals in order to get a return invitation, but rather to invite them who have no chance of being able to reciprocate. We are not to give in order to be repaid in this life, says Jesus.

This was revolutionary teaching. In the ancient world, you gave a gift to somebody because you considered them worthy of it. You didn’t give many gifts, but those you did tended to be lavish.

How was someone deemed worthy of a gift? It might be to do with their ethnic background, their social status, their sex, their moral qualities, their success in life, or their beauty. For ‘gift’ in the ancient world you might want to think something more akin to a ‘prize’ in our society.[2]

Now Jesus comes along and says that God’s approach to giving is utterly unlike this. It has nothing to do with the person deserving it, nor is it decided by the ability of the recipient to give back in return. Giving, according to Jesus, is an act of grace. God gives to people who neither deserve it nor can repay him. God invites people to his table on the same basis: the invitation goes out even though people do not deserve to be there, and even though there is no prospect of them reimbursing him.

That is why we are in the family of faith. None of us deserved to receive the invitation. None of us can pay God back for all he has done for us in Jesus Christ. But God in his grace said to each one of us, ‘Come to my feast.’

We cannot give back to God in equal measure of his gift to us. But we can show our gratitude, and we can pay it forward. For just as we have received the grace of God’s gift, so we can in grace give to others without expecting recompense, and we can invite those who could not possibly invite us.

After all, how else will the world know about the transforming grace of God in Christ unless we not only speak about it, we demonstrate it?

I have always loved a story that the American preacher and sociologist Tony Campolo used to tell. He would recount how when he was driving on a toll road, he would come up to the toll booth where he needed to pay and give the attendant twice as much money as he needed to.

‘That’s for me, and that’s for my friend in the car behind,’ he would say.

Of course, he didn’t know the person in the car behind at all, and he would drive off slowly watching in his rear view mirror with amusement as the toll booth attendant tried to explain to the next motorist that they didn’t need to pay.

So – our reading leaves us with three challenges this week. They are simple to state:

Firstly, how can I keep the Law of God lovingly this week?

Secondly, where do I need to let go of my desire for status and humbly leave my life in God’s hands?

And thirdly, how can I show the grace of God this week by giving to someone who cannot pay me back?

[1] Ian Paul, https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/jesus-the-kingdom-and-the-politics-of-the-table-in-luke-14/

[2] Op. cit., quoting John Barclay, https://www.psephizo.com/reviews/the-subversive-power-of-grace/

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Resurrection People: Restructuring Imagination Luke 24:13-35 (Easter 3 Year C)

Luke 24:13-35

How do you see the world? For me, it’s through a pair of glasses.

In my case, the menu for a new pair of glasses contains a number of elements. The lenses are varifocal, so I can have distance vision through the top, I can read through the lower part, and I can do middle distance vision such as computer work through the middle. Sometimes I need an astigmatism correction. Then there are the helpful additions such as anti-reflective coatings and anti-scratch, since I rely on them everywhere except bed and the shower.

But there’s one other element I always pay for. I am a blue-eyed boy – literally – and like all blue-eyed people I am more sensitive to bright light. In my case, I’m particularly sensitive to things like bright sunlight. And so I have photochromic lenses, the ones that darken in bright light.

Now one of the things about photochromic lenses is that whether you have them in their grey version or their brown, they make the colours you see more saturated. If I take off my glasses, the world looks rather washed out in comparison to the way I am used to seeing it.

I even process my photos according to this way of seeing the world. Their colours are brighter and punchier than other photographers would make them.

What about Cleopas and his companion (who may well have been his wife and may have been called Mary)? How did they see the world? Well, they had been seeing it through the lens of believing that Jesus, whom they took to be a prophet (verse 19), ‘was the one who was going to redeem Israel’ (verse 21), but he has been crucified by the authorities (verse 20) so that’s all gone by the board. And now they are confused by reports from women friends that his body is no longer in the tomb (verses 22-24).

They don’t know how to see the world anymore. And that’s a bleak place to be.

All their hopes for this miracle worker from Nazareth had come to a climax when he had ridden into Jerusalem a week earlier signalling himself to be the Messiah, and acclaimed like a new King David, yes, surely he would set Israel free from the Romans and she would no longer be an exile in her own land.

And that hope, that imagined future, that vision of how things were to be, came crashing down in a matter of days. No wonder they’re despondent.

Sometimes we allow ourselves to see life through a vision that appears good and honourable, but which lets us down. It might be about our aspirations for our career, our family, or our children, only for work or a family member to take a wrong turn. I wouldn’t be the first minister to enter this calling with a vision for renewed and growing churches, only to be disappointed.

But the encounter that Cleopas and Mary have on the Emmaus Road with Jesus gives them a new way of seeing life. It’s a vision that won’t let them down. It’s a vision that will sustain them through joy and sorrow. It’s a vision that will inspire them as disciples of Jesus.

Firstly, we see life beating death. The ultimate enemy of the human race and indeed of all beings is conquered. We believe the gospel promise that Christ’s conquest of death in the middle of history guarantees ours at the end of history.

For Christianity, the essence of death is separation. The separation of the deceased from the living; the separation of the soul from the body. The essence of resurrection is reunion: the reunion of the soul with a new body animated by the Spirit of God, and the reunion of those previously parted by death.

That’s why at the funeral of a Christian we have this mixture of grief and hope, not just grief. We grieve our separation from the deceased, but we anticipate resurrection where we will be reunited and our bodies healed as the Spirit of God gives life to them. When we commit that person’s body at the funeral to be cremated or buried ‘in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life’, this is what we are anticipating. Not just life after death, but a a new quality of life after death.

In this life, it means we face the darkest of challenges with hope. Not that we go rushing after death and martyrdom, but we know that sickness, injustice, and tyranny will not have the final word.

So we don’t become cavalier about Covid, because this life God has given us is precious, but we do know that at its worst it cannot wreak  ultimate destruction.

And right now our Ukrainian Christian brothers and sisters do not become reckless about their lives for the same reason, but they face the shameless violence of Vladimir Putin in the knowledge he cannot ultimately win. Either the events of this life or the resurrection of the dead will mean final defeat for  account to Almighty God for his deeds.

So that’s our first new way of seeing that the resurrection brings, and it’s utterly transformational: we see life and death in a new way.

Secondly, we see hope beating despair.

In 1984, a painter named Gottfried Helnwein created a piece of art called ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams.’ It depicts four famous people in a diner. Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart are a flirtatious couple, James Dean is another customer, and Elvis Presley is the bartender. The theme is ‘emptiness’, because all four could have been said to have died senseless deaths: Presley from alcohol and prescription drugs, Bogart from alcohol, Monroe from drugs, and Dean from a tragic motoring accident. If the sort of dreams I described earlier have let you down and you feel empty, then the victory of hope over despair in the resurrection is for you.

We’ve talked a lot about the need for hope in our society over the last couple of years in the wake of the Covid pandemic. To a large extent millions of people have put their hope in science, and we are grateful for the remarkable work on vaccines. I certainly am: I am sure my recent bout of Covid would have been far worse without my three vaccinations.

Yet the hope our society has clung to in the face of the virus, while good, has not been ultimate hope. For that we need the resurrection, which shows that even death, the strongest of all the forces arrayed against us, does not have the final word.

And whether it’s Covid assailing us or the visions and dreams we’ve lived by letting us down, the only ultimate antidote to the despair they bring is the hope of the resurrection.

As I said earlier, I have known broken dreams as a minister. Church life has not generally become what I hoped and prayed it would. I guess my dreams were about some form of religious ‘success’, but of course that is not guaranteed to us and it is therefore not the solid hope that the resurrection is. Indeed, we might say that putting our hope in any vision and dream that is less than the resurrection is some kind of idol.

So what has kept me going when the experience of my calling has been dark? One Bible verse. It’s a verse that Tom Wright keeps coming back to in his wonderful book ‘Surprised By Hope’, and it’s the final verse of the Apostle Paul’s great chapter on the resurrection, 1 Corinthians 15. The climax of his argument about the resurrection is to say this:

58 Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labour in the Lord is not in vain.

The resurrection means that our labour in the Lord is not in vain. In the eternal economy of God, all that we do in the Lord’s service counts. We may not be able to see how it does right now, but the resurrection means those acts of faithfulness are not wasted. They are invisible building blocks in the cause of God’s kingdom.

So the resurrection says to us, keep going! Keep doing the Christian thing. One day we will see what God has built with it.

Thirdly and finally, we see the kingdom of God beating the empires of this world.

When God made Jesus’ body new in the resurrection, it was the sign that one day he would make all things new. It was the promise of the new creation, the new creation we begin to experience in ourselves when God begins to make our lives new when we come to him. And it climaxes in the great promise of Revelation 21 that God is making a new heaven and a new earth, with a new Jerusalem at the centre.

So that is where all this is heading. A new creation where there will no longer be any suffering. There will be no sickness, there will be no sin, whether personal immorality or social injustice. Relationships will be whole. There will be harmony among people. Everyone will have enough. This is the new order promised by the resurrection.

But what are we supposed to do? Some Christians particularly of past generations would have simply seen us as rather passively waiting for it to come about at the end of time. No wonder Christians were accused of ‘pie in the sky when you die.’ That is not the way.

No, this great vision of the fulness of God’s coming kingdom that we see in the resurrection inspires us to act now. Of course the kingdom of God has not yet come in all its completeness, but it is coming. It is on the way. Jesus said it had arrived with his coming.

And this is why it’s important to keep doing the faithful stuff, as I said in the last point. Each prayer for healing, each act of care for the sick, each action in support of transforming the lot of the poor, each act of reconciliation, each deed of compassion, each drawing of someone into the love of Christ is all part of the coming kingdom and a pointer to it.

It’s the resurrection and all that it promises that is our inspiration to live this way.

So – like Cleopas and Mary – may we allow the resurrection to change the way we see life. May we then live by that vision – where life beats death, hope beats despair, and the kingdom of God conquers the empires of this world.  

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Last Sunday Before Advent, The Feast of Christ the King (Year B)

John 18:33-37

I feel sorry for Pontius Pilate. This was the man who should be in charge – well, on behalf of the Roman Emperor, of course. But he doesn’t know what to do with Jesus, this supposed King of the Jews. Pilate should be decisive, he should be acting powerfully, but he isn’t.

Why? He’s a lame duck ruler. We’ve sometimes seen lame duck Prime Ministers in the UK when the ruling party has lost its majority in the House of Commons and no other party will enter into an arrangement or a coalition with them. And we’ve seen lame duck American Presidents when their party has lost its majority in both Houses of their elected representatives.

Pilate is at the mercy of the Jewish leaders. They might be speaking as if they are soliciting a favour or pleading with him, but they have him round their little finger. For a few years previously, Pilate had sent Roman soldiers into the Temple in Jerusalem, where some of their acts had scandalised Jewish religious sensibilities. The Jewish leaders had sent a deputation to Rome to protest, knowing this kind of unnecessarily offensive behaviour was against Imperial policy. As a result, Pilate was on a final warning from Rome. One more mis-step and he would be exiled.

So we have this dreadful, ironic situation before us. Pilate, the man who has all the human power and authority, is weak. The Jewish leaders, who should have been kept in check by a better political operator, can play the system. And the One who looks weakest of all is the One hailed as King.

King of the Jews

33 Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’

It’s a Jewish title being applied to Jesus. Never in the New Testament is Jesus called ‘Emperor’ in contrast to Caesar. No: when the Gospel gets thoroughly into the Graeco-Roman cultures the title the early church appropriates for him there is not ‘Emperor’ but ‘Lord’, corresponding with the divine claim that Roman Emperors made for themselves. That was used to claim not merely Jesus’ right to reign and rule, but his divine status. He is more than an Emperor.

But ‘King of the Jews’ – now that’s a problem. The Jewish nation had longed to have a king again since losing their monarchy at the Exile in the sixth century BC. And it was a threat to Rome, because of Jewish aspirations to have a leader who would topple the occupying Roman forces. Jesus could be a threat to Pilate, even if previous pretenders had usually been summarily arrested and executed.

Pilate would not be alone in finding the title ‘King of the Jews’ problematic. It was an issue for the Jewish leaders, too. It had become clear that Jesus didn’t conform to their ideals and not only that, he was fiercely critical of them. Whichever group of Jews they belonged to, Jesus had a largely unfavourable critique of them.

So if you were a teacher of the law but taught it rigorously without factoring in love for God and love for neighbour, Jesus had something to say to you. If you were a Pharisee with a passion for faithful, orthodox religion but had held that in such a way that you had become harsh and judgmental, Jesus would point that out. And if you were a Sadducee, believing as little as possible and all the while being in cahoots with the occupying forces who gave you a privileged position in society, then Jesus wasn’t going to be your biggest fan.

And none of this is merely interesting historical detail, because there are similarities and parallels in our lives today. If Jesus is King, then we need to look at our lives and attitudes.

For he threatens to topple our personal authority and autonomy. We think we have the right to run our own lives. In the title of a popular play many years ago, we ask, ‘Whose life is it anyway?’ Or we sing along with Billy Joel, ‘Keep it to yourself, it’s my life.’

But Jesus says no, it’s not your life, you were bought with a price. You belong to me. I am king. We have some re-ordering to do.

Or we apply our faith in Jesus harshly, looking down on others, casting aspersions on them, acting as if only they are the ones who have things to put right in their lives, because we hold to the true and pure faith. But many a passionate Christian has turned into a Pharisee over the centuries, and it’s still happening.

And others of us would rather hob-nob with the powerful of our society, feathering our nests and hoping that some of their glory brushes off on us. But Jesus the King will tell us that this is a highly disordered way to live, and will call us to account, not least when our attraction to power is bad news for the poor.

My kingdom is not of this world

36 Jesus said, ‘My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.’

Well, maybe here is where we’re let off the hook? If Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world, if it’s other-worldly and all about heaven, then perhaps we won’t be too challenged by it after all?

And for all their strictness, that’s the sort of line that cults like the Jehovah’s Witnesses take. Because Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world, we should not get involved in the things of this world, such as politics or economics. We can avoid getting messy with them.

And some Christians construe a version of faith that is a little bit like that, where Jesus is interested in their private, personal morality, but not about the rest of life. His kingdom is not of this world.

Except – there’s a problem. It would be better to translate these words ‘My kingdom is not from this world.’ You can see the intent from the rest of the verse, where Jesus says, ‘But now my kingdom is from another place.’

So it’s not about the limitations of the kingdom, it’s about where the kingdom originates from. The kingdom over which Jesus rules originates from heaven. It originates from the One who is the Creator of all things. And therefore, when Jesus says his kingdom is not from this world, he is distinguishing it from earthly kingdoms and empires, but not by limiting it. In fact, he’s expanding its reach.

If Jesus is King, then, he’s going to affect my personal morality, but he’s also going to affect my politics, my economics, my working life, and everything else. Many years ago, the late John Stott said that you can’t have Jesus as Saviour without having him as Lord, and if he isn’t Lord of all then he isn’t Lord at all.

As Christians we are recognising Jesus as King now, before the great day when every knee shall bow at his name and every tongue confess him as Lord[1]. We live in the knowledge that he is reigning now, before the day when all his enemies, death included, will be put under his feet, and there is no longer any rebellion or contesting of his rightful place.

We recognise Jesus as King now, because he is reigning already. That’s what the passage from Daniel 7:9-14 is about. When the one like a son of man (which in New Testament terms we understand to be Jesus) comes on the clouds of heaven it is not him returning to earth in glory in the Second Coming, for we read that at that time he comes to ‘The Ancient of Days’ – that is, Almighty God, and reigns there. This is a passage that foretells the implications of the Ascension.

At present, people ignore, disregard, oppose, or reject the reign of Jesus as King over all. But we know that day is coming, so as Christians we live as subjects of the King now. And in doing so, we witness to the world about what is coming.

The great twentieth century church leader Lesslie Newbigin once said that the local church is what he called ‘The hermeneutic of the Gospel.’ Now that may be high-falutin’ theological jargon to you, but the word ‘hermeneutic’ simply means ‘interpretation’. In other words, then, the way the local church lives interprets the Gospel to the people around it in society. If people want to know what the Christian message is, it’s not simply that we should be able to tell them what it means in our lives, they should be able to see what it’s like to live under the reign of Christ from the way we live.

I wonder how the local community looks at our church. Does it see a colony of Christ’s kingdom, living by what he says? Or does it see something else?

The Feast of Christ the King

And that is really what this Sunday is all about. I am reluctant to call it ‘The Last Sunday Before Advent’, with rather sounds to me like everything is petering out but don’t worry, everything will get going again next week.

I would rather call it by its positive title, ‘The Feast of Christ the King.’ This is where we have been heading for all of the church year since we began last Advent. We anticipated the coming of Christ and celebrated it. We marked his life and ministry, his death, resurrection, and ascension. Then we recalled the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost and the mission of God in which the Spirit-empowered church shares.

All this leads up to today. We are looking to the great day when Jesus reigns without any opposition, unlike now.

Therefore, it’s the climax of the Christian Year. This is where we’re heading. This is where history is heading.

Our calling is to live more faithfully like that future is here already, and to do so as a witness before the watching world.

[1] Philippians 2:10-11

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