Category: Lectionary Ramblings

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August 8th 2014: Luke 22:63-71

Read Luke 22:63-71 here

“Are you the son of God?”

“You say that I am”

This is all Jesus needs to say to condemn Himself before the Jewish Council at his trial. As is His way, He doesn’t just answer a straight question with a straight answer (how often we feel like we need to do that). He has the authority and the security that comes from knowing who He is Himself, but it is truly meaningful for those who seek to condemn Him when, in effect, He accuses them of confirming His identity. For them to define a man as God is blasphemy. For Jesus to imply it about Himself doubly so. For Him to trick them into making the third side of the triangle makes it all the more scandalous.

There’s something powerful about when we bring ourselves to say “Jesus is the son of God” or “Jesus is Lord”. We’re told that “those who call on the name of the Lord will be saved”. In my own life, I’ve found that saying those words has never been simply a throwaway remark. The name of Jesus has power – to save, to heal, to free, to declare peace and hope, and it is in acknowledging the power and authority of His name that we begin to take hold of our freedom and life.

Isn’t it ironic then, that in thinking that they had finally condemned Jesus, and rid the world of Him, the Jewish leaders actually properly identified Jesus as the Messiah, the one they themselves were waiting and seeking so earnestly for, and yet they did not realise it. Don’t let another day pass without opening yourself up to the possibility that Jesus is the Son of God, the Lord, the one you have been waiting and seeking for earnestly, whether you have been doing it actively, or just with a dull, unacknowledged ache inside. Jesus is Lord. It is when we acknowledge Him as such that life can begin to be ordered rightly.

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August 7th 2014: Luke 22:47-62

Read Luke 22:47-62 here

As the earth-bound story of Jesus reaches its inevitable conclusion, we find today that all the predictions and promises Jesus has made in the recent past are coming true. He is betrayed, first by Judas, and then by Peter. He is to be handed over for trial and eventual death. Despite his earlier protestations to the contrary, Peter denies Jesus three times, just as was earlier predicted, and he exits the scene Luke builds “weeping bitterly”.

It’s tough to view this event in isolation, knowing with hindsight what happens next, and what occurs with the renewing of Jesus’s relationship with Peter over breakfast on the beach, and that the Church is built with him as its rock. However, let’s try and step inside the situation for a moment.

Peter knew Jesus was the Messiah. For Him to be the Messiah, He had to win. To watch Him lose was to have every certainty of Peter’s existence at that point (and he was a man built on surety) tested to the full. It’s no small wonder he didn’t have the minerals to side with Jesus at that point. As his world crumbled, he sought the path of least resistance, self-preservation, safety, and the opportunity to step back, reassess, perhaps even to find a way of freeing Jesus from the clutches of Rabbinic justice.

And then, it all comes back to him. Jesus said all this would happen. He knew all along. You fell right into the trap that He warned about. And what is to come next? Who knows?

What do we do at the times when our very worst fears about ourselves seem to be realised? When we let God, others and ourselves down in the most painful ways? It’s easy for us to retreat in to flogging ourselves, becoming more and more insular, isolated and self-loathing. Peter had that moment of crushing realisation. I wonder if you have too?

Where do we go from there? It’s common for us, now, to want to rush on into redemption and joy. I hope you are able to do that, to find the loving arms of Jesus open for you. At the same time there’s something important and formative about experiencing our own weakness and limitations. So if there’s a good way of doing it, don’t rush on from weakness, disappointment, anger. I have no doubt that the experiences of Peter at this juncture played a huge role in the minister for the gospel that he was to become. Maybe, somehow, your disappointments can do the same thing.

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August 6th 2014: 1 John 3:1-3

Read 1 John 3:1-3 here

We are children of God, now, today, because of the gift that God has given to us. In the light of this, and on the day the Church of England remembers the Transfiguration of Jesus, we can celebrate that we are being made more like Him, day by day. One day we will see Him, as He is, but for now, we are being changed, ever from one degree of glory to another. Whether it feels like our lives are like this, or even looks like it is happening, still the promise of God is that He is, gradually, making us ever more like Him, so that one day we might be able to receive our final, eternal destiny, to be with Him, physically, in the age to come, which is even now being prepared for us. We are children of God, adopted into His family, not to be rejected or cast aside, but instead cherished, nurtured and refined into the likeness of the one for whom we were made.

Do we really believe we are children of God? Are we hamstrung by our earthbound ideas of what it means to be a son or daughter, our experiences of childhood, which may not have been at all happy or positive? The promise of God is that we are beloved by Him, in a way that none of us have ever experienced, or got close to experiencing, whatever our earthly parents were like. The transformation that is coming, that is promised by our being children of God now, is so great, so seismic even, that “surely we will all be changed” and we will know, finally, what it is to love, and to be loved, and more than that, what it is to honour, worship and adore our Heavenly Father.

 

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August 5th 2014: Luke 22:31-38

Read Luke 22:31-38 here

This is a well known part of the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Just as Judas is betraying Him, Jesus is promised by Peter that he never will. Of course we know what happens. Jesus tells Peter that he will, in fact deny Him, three times. This scandalises Peter, and yet he goes on to do exactly this a short time later. We love the reconciliation between Jesus and Peter over breakfast which follows later too, don’t we. Isn’t it interesting, though that the betrayals of Judas and Peter are set side by side by Luke here. Having reported that Judas has agreed to betray Jesus, and taken us to the Last Supper, at which Jesus says that all of this is necessary, we see that Peter, just as he is about to betray Jesus himself, cannot believe that another would do this.

How often are we so quick to see the speck in the eyes of others that we miss the log in our own eye? It’s easy for me to look at your life and see what is wrong with it, but I should watch myself. In the instant of doing that I may well be rushing headlong in to my own disaster, born of bad decision making, arrogance or whatever else it may be. It is striking that Jesus, knowing what both Judas and Peter were about to do, tells them both, in a sense, that He understands.

When the opportunity arises today to be appalled at the behaviour of others and to look down upon them, let’s be aware that we are only ever a few bad decisions away from being much worse than we perceive others to be. And the beauty of it all is that God loved us, and them, from the first, and will do beyond the end of the world. Let’s do all we can to love like that today.

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August 4th 2014: Luke 22:24-30

Read Luke 22:24-30 here

In today’s reading, Jesus promises a kingdom to those who have stood by Him in His trials, a kingdom that comes from having served, not from achieving greatness or victory. Whether this is a promise for the disciples alone, or the kingdom conferred on those who followed Him extends to us too is open to debate. Certainly no-one could know for sure merely from these verses.

What is clear is that Jesus desires and enjoys faithfulness and honour from those who follow Him. I have a tendency to try and be funny, or clever, or flashy. Sometimes these things can be useful elements in ministry, friendships and so on, but more often, straightforward faithful, dependable service and a life lived with God as my priority is the thing that really draws people in and keeps them interested in a relationship with God. If only my life was more like that more often. If only I could learn that greatness doesn’t come from popularity or achievement, but it is given to me by God, it is His to give and His alone. In a way it doesn’t matter what I, or others, think. God’s declaration of life, hope and a future is more worthwhile, lasting and reliable than anything else I can put my trust in.

I wish I lived like that instead of trying to be the greatest all the time, that I prioritised the good of others and the growing of the Kingdom over and above my own happiness and needs. Maybe you feel a bit like that today too. Let’s see what we can do about it this week.

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August 3rd 2014: 2 Peter 1:1-15

Read 2 Peter 1:1-15 here

“….forgetting that they have been cleansed from past sins”

As with all the readings we look at here, there’s so much richness in today’s passage. I couldn’t hope to cover everything that Peter is driving at here in what I’m aiming for, bitesize chunks to make us think at the start of the day. As I’ve said before, please do return to this reading more than once through the day or during the week, and see what it might be saying to you.

For me, today, a key element of this passage is the part of a verse quoted above. Peter is exhorting us to desire the fruit of the Spirit, in ever increasing measure, so that our knowledge of God, in the holistic, rather than merely academic sense, might increase. It’s powerful rhetoric. We are foolish and without true faith, he argues, if we do not see increase in our knowledge, wisdom, love and hope. But in the middle of it all is the key bit, and the key pastoral message for us today, I think:

It all comes down to whether we truly believe that we are a forgiven, free people, or not. Do we really think that we have been forgiven of past sins to such an extent that God has forgotten them? We struggle, many of us, to forget sins we have done, or things done against us, so how can God forget? But if He does not count our wrongdoing against us, we can live in the positivity and hope of abundant life, knowing that we are secure. We don’t need to doubt, to question, whether we really are forgiven, whether the work of the cross truly applies to us. We can hold to it with confidence. And then we can, gradually, gather the strength and wisdom of God that He gives to us, so that we can focus on our primary task, to love God, our neighbours and ourselves, with everything we have, and to seek justice, care for the poor, widows and orphans, to be the radical world-changers that we are called to be.

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August 2nd 2014: Luke 22:14-23

Read Luke 22:14-23 here

As the story of Jesus’ betrayal and suffering draws on inexorably. we are faced with the odd scene of the Passover meal among friends, after which Jesus knows He will be handed over to His death, and the mysteriously, powerfully symbolic with hindsight utterances commanding the disciples, and us, to eat and drink in remembrance of Him. As seems to have been the case with Jesus more often than we like to admit, what He says during this meal, and how He says it must have been quite perverse to those who heard/ Why didn’t Jesus just say “it’s Judas, he’s going to betray me”? Why didn’t He say “When I say it’s my body and blood, I mean that it actually is/spiritually is/is meant to signify the sacrifice I’m about to make and all that it means”? It would certainly have been a lot easier for us who followed after Him. I wonder though if that isn’t something of the point. Here, in the midst of the fear of oncoming death, in the middle of the most real, crucial event and undertaking in the whole of human history, Jesus doesn’t lay it all out in easy, bitesize chunks. Rather, He does what needs to be done, and doesn’t feel the need to elaborate or explain further.

So often, we want to break faith down in to easy, approachable elements. We want to make it seem attractive. We want to minimise the sacrifice we feel called to undertake in order to be faithful. We want to understand everything, to live it all day by day, and still to enjoy our comfortable, “successful” lives. I’m sure Jesus, in a sense, wouldn’t have minded doing that either. You only have to watch The Last Temptation of Christ to be able to see what a strong drive their might have been to follow that path rather than the crushing one set before Him.

The thing is, He took it anyway. I wonder sometimes if He truly knew what He was getting in to, the gravity and severity of the pain, the separation, and how it would feel to die an undeserved death on behalf of others who would reject Him continually. I have very little doubt that He knew it was needed and that the benefits to Him and to all would ultimately be enormous, but still, I wonder, how in control of things was Jesus at that point? And yet, He did it anyway.

Often, for me at least, unless the risks are minimised, the way is clear, the steps are logical and sensible, I’m not willing to move on in my faith and life. My trust in God only extends to the limits of my intellect. In which case it is no trust at all. I’m trusting myself and calling it trusting God instead. How can we live in such a way that we might be so obedient that, whatever the consequences to us, we follow God, His ways, and live, love and hope for the coming of the kingdom, today?

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August 1st 2014: Luke 22:1-13

Read Luke 22:1-13 here

As Jesus’ story moves towards its conclusion and He and the disciples enter Jerusalem for the Passover, it might be easy to focus on the betrayal of Judas, and how this parallels our own betrayal of Jesus in our day to day lives. This, however, would be cheap, and would take away from the power of the narrative. We do, all of us, have a tendency towards living our own way, falling short of the glory of God, and the glory set before us in Christ. However, something else has grabbed my attention this morning:

The priests and scribes sought to find a way of killing Jesus “because they were scared of the people”. I’d not noticed this before when reading this passage. The priests, societal power-brokers and gate-keepers, weren’t scared of Jesus himself, they were scared of the impact He, and His message, were having. This indicates that the message was finding traction, that it was causing  a stir. The fear exhibited here also indicates some were worried about the upsetting of the status quo, the debasement of the truths of faith which they held dear. Placed in this context, in spite of the fact that there were dozens of “Messiahs” active in Israel at the time of Jesus, it is perhaps obvious why something needed to be done. Silence the leader and the rabble will go away.

Except it didn’t turn out like that, did it.

We live in a culture today where it’s ok to believe pretty much anything, except that Jesus is Lord. There is a societally-driven moral code which is pre-disposed to the expression of outrage, distrust and so on. It can also often show great compassion and care for the “other”. We like, though, to be right, to show our compassion from a position of strength, and to keep those we disagree with where we can see them. I’d go as far as to say that if you disagree with the prevailing cultural norm, on whatever issue, there’s an undercurrent now of a wish that you, and your opinion, would go elsewhere, or better still not exist.

Isn’t this how Jesus and His disciples were treated? Most people who aren’t Christians think the whole thing is preposterous nonsense. Perhaps they’re right (I don’t think so) but it’s amazing how the minutest inkling of a fear that it might be true motivates whole swathes of culture to continually seek, with increasing desperation, ways of proving that it must all be bunkum. If you are a Christian, you’re silly. If you’re a Christian you lack the common sense, faculties of logic, fortitude etc to rise above the crass set of beliefs which must have been forced upon you anyway.

Or put it another way, society is actually scared of you. What if your belief is right? If your God exists? If Jesus is real and He did do what He said He would do? What then? If you believe today, stand firm and confident.

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July 31st 2014: Luke 21:29-38

Read Luke 21:29-38 here

Jesus continues in full parabolic mode in today’s reading, telling his listeners to be on their guard, ready for the coming end of the current age and the inauguration of the age to come. There’s plenty to get stuck in to here, but as I’ve read the passage again today, something else, something I’d never seen before, has reached out to me: Jesus withdrew.Jesus is,as we’ve seen recently, in a phase of much teaching and ministry. He is busy, seemingly taking every opportunity to declare and evidence the coming of the Kingdom. Anyone who’s undertaken a prolonged spell of public ministry will know how demanding it is, in every aspect of life. It seems that Jesus found it no different, He withdrew, by night, to the Mount of Olives, presumably (and I am presuming here) to rest, refuel, and to communicate with His Father as to what was coming next.

In our lives, whether we are in full time public ministry, as some of us are, or our lives themselves are our ministry (this is true for all of us), where is our Mount of Olives? Where do we go, in the midst of it all, to talk to God? To focus on Him? To hear from Him? To be fed by Him? This doesn’t necessarily need to be in silence, in fact it might well be better if it isn’t. It might not be possible for you to drop everything and disappear up a real or metaphorical hill every night to sit under the stars and talk to God, but maybe all of us need to build in to every day the time to stop what we busy ourselves with, and simply “be” with God. I don’t even mean reading scripture, doing a service or office, or any other form of active stuff necessarily, just being with God. That’s all. Jesus, the man, needed it. As we follow Him, so do we.

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July 30th 2014: Luke 21:20-28

Read Luke 21:20-28 here

“When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

It would  be crass, I feel, to continue drawing contemporary political points out of the readings that we are presented with this week, suffice to say that it is interesting that the Scriptures, in spite of being laid down in a somewhat arbitrary reading pattern for us, seem to speak across time and context like nothing else.

“these things’ could well mean the fall of Jerusalem, it could well also mean the fall of known society, the breakdown of life as we know it, the persecution of the faithful, and lots else besides. Following from our previous discussions this week, the key point for me is that we are, whatever we are going through, to “lift up our heads” and set our faces towards the Lord. it’s hard to trust God. It’s a bit of a nebulous thing to do. How do we know when we are trusting Him and not trusting ourselves or something else? In the end, I think it is for us to look to our coming King. As we’re told that people will “faint from terror” in the days of violence and uncertainty to come, the only hope we can have is in Jesus.

With every day that goes by, our redemption is drawing nearer. Let’s be people who point to Jesus, to the truth of the Gospel, work for peace. Let’s not be people desperately seeking to justify violence, hatred and injustice on the basis of a skewed picture of scriptural “truth”.