Tag: Jesus

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2014 Lectionary Ramblings Lectionary Ramblings

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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2014 Lectionary Ramblings Lectionary Ramblings

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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2014 Lectionary Ramblings Lectionary Ramblings

July 23rd 2014: Luke 20:1-8

Read Luke 20:1-8 here

This morning we return to the chronology of our previous story, and find Jesus teaching about the Kingdom of God in the Temple. He is challenged by the Teachers of the Law – what authority does He have to be teaching here and in this way? We should remember that this is the same Jesus who has already claimed that the power to grant freedom to captives has been given to Him. The Pharisees know who they think Jesus thinks He is. They are trying to trap Him in to blasphemy so that they might capture and silence His troublesome ministry. Jesus, in His own enigmatic way, is far too clever for them, rhetorically running rings round them, keeping Himself alive and free (for now) to speak the truth of the Kingdom and, I would imagine, impressing His audience with the speed of His mind and wit.

We live in an age which is obsessed with rights. What gives us the right to do this or that? What gives the government to look here or demand this of us there? We know that Jesus’ authority was clear and special – He was God, come from God to complete the task that the Father had set before Him, and He would not be denied. This was victory on a cosmic, eternal scale, not merely an earthly one, played out before the eyes of an unsuspecting and uncomprehending world. These days it seems to be much the same. What right do we have to believe that God exists, that He is love, that He’s worth taking notice of and, more than that, that we think everyone should take note of Him and the life offered in Jesus? It’s an easy time to be spiritual. An easy time to be dogmatic, to spring to judgement, as society, each one of us, consistently colludes in remoulding and reshaping the moral codes by which we live in such a way as to make ourselves feel as superior (or even just adequate) as possible. Check yourself and how you think today. We all do it, I promise.

But here’s the exciting thing for today. Jesus knew who He was, what He had been called to do, and that He was going to complete the task set before Him, so when He was challenged, He answered without answering. Our commission to go and make disciples is not from this world, it is from Heaven. As we love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, love ourselves and love our neighbours, let us constantly make sure that our first priority is God and the families and communities He has placed in to our care. With this focus in mind, questions like the one asked of Jesus here become a lot less important or powerful. We have all the authority we need. You have all the grace, mercy, love and peace you need, available to you today. Go out in to all the world and share it. I dare you

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2014 Lectionary Ramblings Lectionary Ramblings

July 22nd 2014: Luke 8:1-3

Read Luke 8:1-3 here

Today, thanks to the vagaries of the Lectionary, our gospel reading jumps from the rather exciting Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem of yesterday to the beginning of Luke 8, and the pre-amble to the parable of the sower. In 3 verses, we’re told quite a lot:

Jesus is travelling from village to village proclaiming the Kingdom of God.

There are a lot of people with Him, including some women who have been cured/delivered of all sorts of things.

These women are supporting the men from their own means.

What is the meaning of the women supporting the men of their own means I wonder for us today? I think it speaks of the way that ministry in whatever form or sense, is a team sport. Jesus and the Disciples were the ones who were, perhaps, up front, but without the crowds who followed and supported them, continued ministry, perhaps even existence, would not have been possible. In all the fashionable arguments we find ourselves involved in about the validity of ministry of different sorts by different people and social groups, it is easy for us to forget that we need each other for this task of partnering in the growth of the Kingdom of God, the task with which we have been entrusted. In the diaconal role taken on by the women in this passage, we see Jesus turning upside down, as usual, the social conventions of His time and His culture. What a shame, if we as contemporary Christians become so pharisaical about our traditions and wonts that we forget the simplicity of giving our lives to, literally or figuratively, to travel from village to village proclaiming the Kingdom of God.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring?!

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2014 Lectionary Ramblings Lectionary Ramblings

July 21st 2014: Luke 19:28-40

Read Luke 19:28-40 here

“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” Today’s reading gives us a stark picture. Jesus has his disciples steal a colt (it seems) as He and His followers come in to Jerusalem. No-one seems to mention whether or not this is morally ok!

Jews knowing prophecy might well have perceived His entering of Jerusalem on a donkey as fulfilment of prophecy (Zech 9:9). It’s likely that the crowd who cried “hosanna” were expecting a powerful political or militaristic saviour to wrest control of Jerusalem from the Romans. The disappointment and resentment the Jewish authorities were able to stir up a few short days later as Jesus was handed over to Pilate may well stem form the subverting of expectations which Jesus’s “triumphal” entry in to Jerusalem almost certainly would have been. Jesus came not as an all-guns-blazing political usurper, but as a servant king. Even though this was not what Israel wanted at this point, it was what it, and the whole world, needed. Jesus “failed” in order to succeed. He did so whilst remaining in complete control of Himself and what He was doing, and trusting His Father with His life.

Sometimes it is easy for us to demand of God that He show the strength of His arm, that He gives us victory, superiority, vindication or anything else. Jesus was due these things and more as the perfectly righteous God-man. And yet. And yet, He chose to give Himself for us all. God has given us everything we could possibly need. We are not called to run society, not given the right to be heard, to be powerful or anything else of that ilk. We’re called to serve, to humble ourselves and put the needs of others before ourselves, as Jesus ultimately modelled for us in the final week, which begins with this story. As we begin a new week, let’s ask God to bless us with the courage to humble ourselves and serve, so that He might be served and glorified.