Saturday Morning Musings

From the Gospel of Luke:

Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And there was a woman who had had a disabling spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not fully straighten herself. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said to her, “Woman, you are freed from your disability.” And he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and she glorified God. But the ruler of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, said to the people, “There are six days in which work ought to be done. Come on those days and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day.” Then the Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it away to water it? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?” As he said these things, all his adversaries were put to shame, and all the people rejoiced at all the glorious things that were done by him.
He said therefore, “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it? It is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.”
And again he said, “To what shall I compare the kingdom of God? It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until it was all leavened.” (Luke 13:10-21 ESV)

Note:

1. Jesus healed (in an instant) a person who had been afflicted for eighteen years by a crippling disability.
2. It was the kind of world where such an act might be minimalized, even objected too, by jealous and power-hungry men. 
3. Jesus, with but a few words, put the objectors to shame.
4. People rejoiced.

Now note this.  When Jesus healed the crippled woman, as momentous as that may have seemed, I think Jesus saw it as a mustard seed.  That is, what that act would germinate into was going to be bigger by far than one woman relieved of her terrible pain.

Similarly, the putting to shame of the religious police . . . a mustard seed.  Right away people are rejoicing.  Not only because of the healed woman, but because of the shamed religious busybodies.  

Think about this: when people gaze on Jesus, the rejoicing that follows is but the early signs of a great and spreading kingdom-tree in which many will be able to make their home.

Similarly, even so apparently prominent a deed as this, witnessed by many, from a world-perspective is quite unknown, like leaven in bread.  And yet it is bread that will one day feed millions.

What am I getting at? The thought that is stirring in me is that out kingdom-deeds are mostly (at least by any system of measure we are used to) small, local, even quite secret. On the one hand, the more we try to claim some leadership spotlight, the more we pine for "influence," the more in danger we are of becoming like the objectors. And on the other hand, why are we so dissatisfied with planting seeds? Why do we not trust in the leaven?

An end to Christian romanticism, please

Francis Schaeffer said that a Christian can allow himself to be worn out by Christians who turn Christianity into a romanticism. [HT: Trevin Wax]

I think I know what he meant.

I suspect that a disinterested observer (say, the proverbial alien visitor studying the earthlings) would probably explain American Christianity as an elaborate system for getting what we want from God. Here's where the "romanticism" comes in. The conversation in many churches is all about what God can and will do for us. Just pray for it and keep believing. God is faithful . . . to give you what you want. So faith is boiled down to an ongoing transactional relationship with God, in which we ask and He gives. Small groups in the church meet primarily to indulge in this romanticism.

And, yeah, it wore me out.

You think this is broad-brush generalization? Maybe. But then it's the kind of generalization that rings of truth.

The thing is, you can find all the right proof-texts in the Bible to justify this sort of practice, but at bottom it is not the burden of the New Testament. You don't see the disciples practicing this relationship with Jesus. It's not the gist of Paul's writing, nor is it the picture of the church we get from Revelation. It does describe, in some sense, an aspect of Kingdom reality, but an understanding of the Kingdom that is essentially "now" and almost never "not yet" (if we only believe) is sheer romanticism.

I've been out of the church loop all year, and I'm missing it a little. What will I be looking for? A persistent engagement with the sweeping story of God and His people, which is a lot more about hard realities than goodies from heaven.

"The kingdom of God is near," Jesus said, on the way to His cross. That phrase, then, must mean something more than "God is my servant, he gives me everything I want."

Miracle lust?

Reading chapter 1 of the Gospel of Mark this morning (when in doubt about what Scripture to read next, I often return to Mark), I noticed how after he begins his ministry Jesus routinely silences the demons (because they know who he is), and he also attempts to hush the man healed of leprosy. It's interesting to me that he does not want people to focus just now on "who he is" nor on the healings themselves. His desire now is simply to announce, rather mysteriously, the nearness of the kingdom of God. However, when the former-leper tells everyone that this Jesus had healed him (it must have been hard to keep that a secret, in any case), that's all that seems to matter to "the crowds." It's a kind of miracle lust, and Jesus is not inclined to indulge it at the expense of his message.

The ESV Study Bible note on verse 45 puts it this way:

The joy of the healed man overrides Jesus' injunction to silence and therefore Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, lest he be mobbed. So Jesus cannot stay hidden (e.g., v. 45; 3:7–12, 20; 6:31–33). Mark often emphasizes how the crowds' excessive attention to Jesus' miracles is a frequent problem, causing the crowds to miss the true purpose of his ministry (i.e., to proclaim the good news of the kingdom).

I wonder if it sometimes happens with us, too, that our desire for a miracle, a work of wonder, actually causes us to miss the core message--the kingdom of God is at hand.

Did you see the trailer? The movie's gonna be even better!

Michael Frost's new book is provocatively titled Jesus the Fool. I read and very much like his book ReJesus. Here's Michael speaking about "the purpose of the church."

Visions of the Kingdom

From Herman Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics:

“Just as the caterpillar becomes a butterfly, as carbon is converted into diamond, as the grain of wheat upon dying in the ground produces other grains of wheat, as all of nature revives in the spring and dresses up in celebrative clothing, as the believing community is formed out of Adam’s fallen race, as the resurrection body is raised from the body that is dead and buried in the earth, so too, by the re-creating power of Christ, the new heaven and the new earth will one day emerge from the fire-purged elements of this world, radiant in enduring glory and forever set free from the ‘bondage to decay.’”

HT: Tony Reinke.

Praying for the Kingdom of God

In this recent post I talked about how the Lord's prayer, as it is called, provides a format for intercession that keeps us from being self-absorbed in our prayers. Now I want to say something more.

When I pray, I try to pray in this format, starting out by focusing on the kingdom of God, thinking about the kingdom and longing for it to come at last in fullness and glory; and then, with some sense of kingdom-wonder lingering in my thoughts, I move on to the second half of the Jesus format: personal provision, forgiveness, protection from temptation and the evil one. Sometimes I focus more on one of these than the others, but I try always to start with the kingdom.

When we pray "may your kingdom come," we're praying for the biggest most momentous event we can ever imagine happening. We're praying that today, in our presence, Revelation 21 would happen. Here's just a sample of what that will be like:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”

Folks, this prayer is not about having a good day, getting along with your boss, getting good grades in school, or getting over your sore throat. It's a prayer for ultimate things, and when it comes, we will be on our faces in holy fear. When you begin here, you move on to other things with a certain sense of "perspective."

But maybe the prayer for ultimate things will not be answered today. Maybe the New Jerusalem is still not yet. Maybe today will be like all the days that have come before. Well then, short of the kingdom of God in fullness, what should be our deepest desire for today? How about, at the very least, a foretaste of that kingdom. An inkling. A sense of what the Holy Spirit of God is doing around you. Paul mentions this in Ephesians 1:13-14, where he speaks of the Spirit as a guarantee of our inheritance. That is, a down-payment today of the kingdom-fullness that is to come.

What does that look like? Well, I believe it looks like "daily bread." and it looks like an ongoing attitude of repentance and forgiveness. And it looks like temptation overcome and protection from the lies, slander, and threats of the evil one. In other words, the rest of the Jesus prayer is a prayer for a little more of the kingdom now until the not yet finally comes in fullness.

So the Jesus prayer is a prayer for the kingdom from start to finish. It's an awesome prayer, a prayer for things far above our full understanding, a prayer for beauty and light and every tear disposed of and hopelessness obliterated and all sin done away with. The lamb is on the throne, and a river of life runs from there to all the nations. But it is also a prayer that positions us on the cutting edge of what God is doing in his world. It's the prayer, in other words (and I can't emphasize this enough), of a disciple.

On putting the kingdom first

I've been thinking about the prayer that Jesus taught the disciples to pray, recorded in Matthew 6. It occurs to me that we almost never pray this way, at least when we pray in groups. When I was a small group leader, we always had a prayer time, and I always asked people about their "prayer needs." Putting it that way is practically an invitation to think of prayer as self-absorbed pleading before God. And that's what we did. We prayed for healing, for jobs, for relationships, for emotional health, for safety on journeys, for communication skills, relief of stress and on an on.

None of that was exactly wrong. That is not my point. But notice how Jesus teaches us to pray, and then think again about how we prayed in our small group. Here's the Jesus prayer:

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.

There are ten lines in this little poem-like prayer. The first five embody a longing for the Kingdom of God. That's what the whole first half of the prayer is about. Only then does the prayer turn to immediate personal needs of the one doing the praying, and I would add they are as much spiritual needs as temporal.

Note: the prayer is not an encouragement to self-absorption. It is not a litany of personal needs. More importantly, it puts first things first. The need above all other needs, the supreme subject of prayer, we might say, is the Kingdom. "Your kingdom come." The personal prayer requests (such as "daily bread," which is a far cry, by the way, from praying for prosperity) come after, and within the kingdom context.

I learn to understand my real need, when I see this prayer aright. When "your kingdom come" becomes the primary point--the overarching context--of my prayer, I will long for that coming whether I have a job or not, whether I'm sick or well, etc. I will readily pray for work and health, of course, but not apart from the prayer for what truly matters--God's kingdom.

In our small group, we rushed right to the second half of the prayer, with hardly a thought for the kingdom of God. My guess is that if we will set our minds on the kingdom, it will change the way we pray for ourselves.

What say you?

Pardon me, can you direct me to the nearest community?

Picked this up from Michael Spencer's Facebook notes:

The effect of this journey (looking for the right church) on me was different. I didn’t find a stopping place. It eventually became clear to me why so many people leave the church completely. It wasn’t just because of their experiences. It was because Jesus was leading many of them out of the church as it currently exists. There was no “solution.” There was, and always will be, constant, Spirit guided evolution of the movement that Jesus started toward the Kingdom that Jesus promised.

For many people, that evolution will be toward a kind of spirituality that does not take the form of the church as they’ve experienced it. It may take the form of another church, a new church, an alternative expression of church or even, for some or for a season, of no recognizable church. My mistake was assuming that Jesus was running a franchise operation. No, he was creating and bringing a Kingdom, and doing it entirely on his terms.

This describes the way I feel.

I don't ever want to be a lone-ranger just-me-and-Jesus Christian, but I'm not sure anymore that the only other alternative is to settle down in a church and essentially "experience" the Christian life nearly exclusively through that church's prism. The alternative to lone-ranger Christianity is community (that oft-used and probably oft-abused term), but perhaps the church model we're used to is not as "communal" as we thought. Perhaps Christian community is possible and preferable in other settings and other forms.

I'd been intending to kind of float around on Sunday morning this summer, but for various reasons that has not been the case. The main reason, old friends who had moved away dropping in for a visit and wanting to "go to church" at the Vineyard. But this week my son and I (my son Nate, who blogs--though not nearly enough for my taste--at The Jesus Paradigm and also occasionally at Mt. Jesus) are going to the local Missio Dei church, so that should be interesting.

BTW, met another fine Christian blogger over the weekend. Erin Cook, whose blog is entitled Metanoeo. Check it out.

Processing the Kingdom: Blessed are Those Who Mourn, part 2

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

I want to understand why Jesus should have said, in his first recorded discipleship training session with the twelve, that those who mourn are blessed.

I'm speculating, just for the sake of mulling things over, that this beatitude goes beyond a promise of comfort to those who mourn, but honors the mournful with blessing because the heart of the mourner is in some sense even desirable.

Why do I say this? Well, simply because I take that to be the sense of the other beatitudes that surround it. There is a quality about being “poor in spirit” that God honors. Meekness is quite possibly like this also, and certainly hunger and thirst for righteousness, peacemaking, and all the others are as well. Why should this one beatitude be otherwise?

Okay, that's a thought, as they say. But does this mean that God prefers us to go around sorrowful and burdened all the time? What could possibly be so valuable about mournfulness?

It would be good to remember at this point a simple rule of thumb: all the promises of God are delivered to us through Christ. Got that? Let's just set it off in a blockquote for good measure:

All the promises of God are delivered to us through Christ.

But let's make that a tad more specific:

All the promises of God were purchased for us by Christ at the cross.

So whenever you see a promise in the Scriptures, think to yourself, that promise was purchased for me by Christ with is very lifeblood.

OK: so here is Christ speaking to his disciples, and kind of enumerating some of the major blessings of the kingdom—the kingdom he's been proclaiming from the very start of his ministry, saying it was near at hand—and among those blessings are comfort for those who mourn. But remember, the disciples don't understand (yet) what we understand—that Christ himself will deliver on that promise of comfort by taking the wrath of God at sin upon himself.

To put it another way, then:

The cross comforts those who mourn.

But I started this post by saying that there was something about mourning, even as there is something about, for example, hunger and thirst for righteousness, that God will honor. In other words, mourning may reveal a quality of heart that is receptive to the blessings of the kingdom.

Maybe so, but why? I would say because it helps to position us to carry our our calling as ambassadors of Christ in a broken world. I suggest that God has a kingdom purpose in aligning his children with the broken-hearted. Remember, the beatitudes are a part of a training-session for Christ-followers. The kingdom comes to such as these: the poor in spirit, the broken-hearted, the meek, the hungry for righteousness, the peacemakers, etc., and then, as kingdom representatives, they offer the kingdom to others. When we, not standing aloof but entering into the brokenness of the world as broken ones ourselves, but holding out the word of life, the light of the Gospel, we are then true to our calling as disciples.

Processing the Kingdom

After Jesus had gathered together a small group of devoted followers, he went about "proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people." [Matt. 4:23] It must have been something--healing every affliction! And you can be sure the disciples were with him during this time, hearing his message and witnessing the incredible healings.

I wonder how they "processed" all this. I think that when he takes them up to a high mountain to teach them a thing or two about this "kingdom" he's been talking about, he's out to sweep away skewed preconceptions and pride-induced misunderstandings. And so he sits down with them on a hillside overlooking the Sea of Galilee (wouldn't you like to have been there?) and he says something that is shockingly powerful and cleansing of mental drek:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

That's worth repeating.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

I'm going to spend some time here at Wilderness Fandango "processing" the teaching on the mount in Matthew 5 through 7. I hope you'll join me in allowing the words of Jesus to read your very heart.

A few simple thoughts for now, and then a question. Jesus' basic message here in the early days of his ministry had been, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." And he healed many as a demonstration of that kingdom. Each of these "afflicted" came to Jesus in dire need, and in receiving healing they received a powerful foretaste of kingdom reality. Health! The lame walked. The blind saw. Those burdened by mental illness received understanding and clarity of mind.

And then Jesus turns to his disciples, and he draws them aside to teach them quietly, preparing them for the mission he will one day send them on (Matt. 28:19-20), and he says,

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

My question: Am I poor in spirit? Have I ever been? Do I really desire to be poor in spirit? In what way does my lack of this condition keep me from enjoying foretastes of the kingdom now?