Life Stories

I can remember as a boy, standing next to my grandfather in church and being a little embarrassed because his voice would boom out louder than anyone else’s when we sang hymns. And when we prayed, he would turn around and kneel on one knee facing the pew and fill the silence all around with ‘amen’s’ and ‘hallelujah’s’. At the time I used to think his behaviour was a bit odd because no one else did what he did. Now as a man, I love the memory of it because I know my Grandfather loved his Lord.    

As a boy I also used to love hearing stories from both of my grandfathers. One Grandfather, my Little Grandpa… would tell me stories about being a Salvation Army officer in the days before most people had cars…

One day he was riding down the street in his horse and sulky, when suddenly heard a voice say, “Stop and visit that house across the street !” Now my Grandfather looked about for the voice and saw no one. Then my grandfather looked across the street and didn’t recognize the house, so he went to move the horse on again.

Again he heard the voice say, “Go to that house across the street”. Little Grandpa said it was then that he realised, it was the Holy Spirit who was speaking to him… so he went. And sure enough there was a widowed woman and her family who were in great need. And my Grandfather was able to help that family. My Little Grandpa said the Holy Spirit often used to prompt him to do such things.

Then I also had a Big Grandpa. Now Big Grandpa used to tell me stories about being an Salvation Army Officer during the Great Depression. One the things that made me laugh & laugh was him describing how he used to have to use strips of old War Crys as toilet paper. Then he would get serious. He would say, “In those days we used to have to pay all the church bills before I could draw my pay. Often there wasn’t enough money, and sometimes we would run out of food”. And I would say, “What did you do Grandpa?” And he would say, “We prayed and God provided the food we needed”.

Sometimes a lady from the church would come to the door and say, “I was just doing some baking and I thought of your family”. Or, another would come and say, “I was down at the butcher and I thought I should buy another leg of lamb”. Occasionally whole boxes of groceries would appear – anonymously – on the back doorstep. My Big Grandpa would always finish with, “God is always faithful !”

As an adult I find these stories from my grandparents becoming more & more important to me. I find these stories are wonderfully centering. They say, ‘this where you have come from & this is who you are’. Sometimes they even say, “This is what you must do !”

It’s interesting… as my relationship with the Scriptures develops there is also now a number of passages & stories that resonate strongly within me. And from time to time I like to check in with them to see how I am doing. They are stories that anchor me, stories that say, “God is always faithful” & this is what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.

Outwards & downwards…

Here Is My Servant In Who My Soul Delights

Traditionally Isaiah 42:1-9 describes one who is known as the Suffering Servant. There is definitely a sense of weakness and vulnerability about this figure in verses 2 and 3. “Here is my servant… he will not cry or lift up his voice or make it heard in the street”. This is one who lives among ‘bruised reeds’ and ‘dimly burning wicks’. This sounds like a subjugated person, a slave whose spirit has been broken… a man living from day to day who does what he is told.

However I also notice that this is vulnerability & weakness that has been turned on its head.

Scripture also says, “I have put my Spirit upon him”. And the suffering servant’s task is nothing less than bringing equity and justice to the nations. This is one who will redress the imbalance… And Scripture says, “…he will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice upon the earth”. Wow ! That is no small task for one who is an exiled foreigner in a strange land.

And what or who makes this possible ? v6 “I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations… I am the Lord, that is my name.”

I suppose my question here is, ‘Is this what it means to begin living life in ever increasing circles ?

It’s interesting… Abraham Heschel makes the comment that no other problem has occupied OT scholars more than the identity of the Suffering Servant. Who is he ? Is he the prophet who wrote the passage ? Is the suffering servant the whole of exiled Jewish nation ? Or is he the Messiah, the one who is to come ?

A couple of weeks ago I described the writing of Isaiah as deliciously ambiguous. This means that over time it seems to accrete more & more meaning. While a passage like this sits well within history, it is ambiguous because it also sits above history. In a sense it defies time – it is ageless.

That’s the remarkable thing about the Gospel… When people open themselves to the Spirit of God there is something remarkably consistent about the outcome. It gives people particular priorities, it evidences itself in particular actions, it inspires people with particular visions… Over time it establishes itself in ways that turns everyday experience on its head… Imagine for a moment the audacious possibility of a subjugated exiled foreigner, an alien bringing forth justice to the nations. Imagine an expat community of weakened Jewish exiles without a country being given as “a covenant to the peoples, a light to the nations”.

I call this living life in ever increasing circles…   

From the Stump of Jesse, From the Line of King David

Sometimes I think we live in a world of broken promises, a world of good beginnings and either bad or incomplete endings… It is a world where so often the people who lead us, disappoint us. They let us down.

Martin Buber says when you look at the Scriptures, “the history of the kings of Israel is the history of the failure of the one who is anointed to realise the promise of his calling. The rise of [the idea of a messiah] – is the hope of the coming of an anointed king who realizes the promise of his anointing”.

You know the prophet Isaiah lived during the reigns of 4 kings of Judah… King Uzziah, King Jotham, King Ahaz and King Hezekiah. They were all descendents from the stump of Jesse, from the line of David.

Now Scripture records problems with 3 of the 4 kings. While 3 of them did what was “right in the sight of the Lord”, they still mostly behaved and pursued the trappings of the kings of the lands all around them. Instead of placing their faith in the help of the Living God of Israel, more often they relied on their own success. They put their faith in political intrigue and timely alliances and their own ability to make war.

Take King Uzziah for instance… Under Uzziah, the Kingdom of Judah reaches the height of its power. Uzziah develops the economic resources of the country as well as its military might. He conquers the Philistines and the Arabians and he receives tribute from the Ammonites. Scripture says he was strong and prosperous because “… he did what was right in the sight of the Lord”.

Yet Uzziah’s success & strength became his weakness. Scripture says, “he grew proud… to his destruction”. Uzziah attempts to enter the Temple to burn incense on the Alter, a privilege reserved for the priesthood only. Azariah, the chief priest pleads with him, “It is not for you Uzziah, to burn incense to the Lord but for the priests, the sons of Aaron, who are consecrated to burn incense. Go out from this place, for you have done wrong… it will bring you no honour from the Lord God”. 

Uzziah becomes angry and as his anger grows leprosy breaks out on his forehead. And Scripture says, “King Uzziah was a leper to the day of his death and being a leper lived in a separate house, for he was excluded from the house of the Lord”. 

And when things got really tough, when the Kingdom of Judah began paying tribute to the Kingdom of Assyria, King Ahaz from the stump of Jesse, from the royal line of David – even turned his back on the Lord. He desecrated the Temple & called on the help of other gods.

All of these events occurred during the lifetime of Isaiah. And as a prophet it was his duty to call people back to God. It was his calling to describe the visions he was given of God’s alternative reality. And while these visions filled Isaiah with hope, they also made him unpopular with the kings he served.

Isaiah 11:1-10 is a messianic vision of a peaceful kingdom. It is an alternate vision of a king of the stump of Jesse overwhelmed by the Spirit of God, who is both human and holy. This king is so singled minded in his zeal for God, that he realizes the promise of his anointing… he establishes the Kingdom of God… a kingdom of righteousness and justice and mercy. 

And the Wolf Shall Live With the Lamb

When I read Isaiah 11:1-10 I notice its not like other narratives in the Scriptures. While it describes an event, it is one that bursts the bounds of everyday experience. In some ways this passage sounds like a mythical epic yet I know it’s also firmly embedded in Biblical history. If I you what this passage is talking you would probably say, “This passage is obviously talking about Jesus isn’t it !” And I would reply, “Well… yes it is and no it isn’t !” And then I would say, “Welcome to the world of the prophet Isaiah…”  

I like what Paul Johnson says about Isaiah… He says, “Isaiah was not only the most remarkable of the prophets, he is by far the greatest writer in the Old Testament”. That’s high praise indeed.

However while Isaiah’s writings may be among the best in Scripture, that doesn’t mean they are easy. There is a delicious ambiguity about this kind of writing.

For example in vs1…“A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse… a branch shall grow out of his roots…” While the tree imagery is clear here, Isaiah isn’t talking about a tree.

What about vs6… “…and the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the baby goat, the calf, the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them…” Again the animal images and the child are all clear enough but Isaiah isn’t talking about a visit to the zoo.   

There is no doubting these verses are visually potent. Isaiah is describing something that he is seeing with prophetic vision. Something that is vivid and clear and evocative…

However while this passage might be clear in a visual sense, there is another sense in which these verses mean so much more. For example who is Isaiah describing here ? Is he looking 700 years into the future and describing Jesus in his glorious splendour or is he describing someone more general & archetypal?

I remember when I was at seminary, these kinds of passages would drive some students half crazy. They would keep trying to tie down the meaning of it and they just couldn’t.  And our wily Old Testament Professor would ask a student whose eyes were starting to glaze over, “And James, what do you think this passage is referring to ?” And if the answer came back ‘Jesus’, ‘God’ or ‘the Holy Spirit’ then you knew he was really struggling.

It’s interesting… while the passage is ambiguous, we are left in no doubt about the nature of the one it is describing. There is no sense of this one being merely a good boy or even just a really nice guy. This is a man of purpose and intention. What he sets about doing is an expression of the deep integrity of his character and his intimate relationship with God.

It pours out of him… filling the gap that so often exists between our words and our actions. 

The Old Blind Woman and the Tree of Life

You know there is a second part to the story of the five blind men and the elephant. Remember that the men are arguing and fighting over their perspectives about the elephant. They are punching off into the air and into each other as they are driving home their particular points of view.

Now this scene would have been very amusing to the casual – sighted – observer. However, the next person to happen upon the five fighting men is a wily old woman, who is also blind. In the midst of all the confusion and arguing about the elephant, the woman decides to go & find out for herself what all the fuss is about.

So she gently and perceptively begins examining the elephant. Instead of feeling in just one place, the touch of the woman moves over the whole wondrous animal, from the long sinuous trunk all the way around to the tail, which feels like a gnarly piece of rope.

Then the blind woman turns around to the five blind men and shouts, “Enough ! I have discovered the truth. I know who is right.”

Shocked by the presence of a woman and the confidence in her voice, the five blind men stop their fighting and arguing at once.

“Tell us!”, they exclaim in one voice.

“I have examined this elephant with mine own two hands,” she says, “and I have decided that you are ALL right.”

“How can this be ?”, the blind men ask. “How can an elephant be a wall and a fan and a tree and a spear and a snake?” And they are all sorely confused.

The wily old woman explains, “You see, an elephant is a wondrous creature that is like a great tree. On this tree grows leaves like huge fans, giving the most wondrous shade and a continuous breeze. Then the branches of this tree are like long spears protecting it. For this is the Tree of Creation and of Eternal Life, and a great talking Serpent still hangs upon it”.

“Unfortunately, you have not known of this tree until today because it is usually hidden behind a great wall, that cannot be reached, save by the most worthy Son of Man”.

“However, with my wisdom & great insight, I have discovered a most holy rope, by which the wall may be climbed. And if one touches the tree in the correct manner which I alone have come to know, you will gain Eternal Life.”

The five blind men all become very interested in this, of course.

And the wily old blind woman then names an extremely high price for her services – Eternal Life doesn’t come cheap you know! – And she walks away wealthy & smiling from the five foolish blind men.

How easy it is for a woman to pull the wool over the eyes of a man… How easy it is to take dimly perceived notions and turn them into some grand systematic theology. How easy it is to live in this world and to not see. How easy it is to become so immersed in our own point of view, that we become blind to truth…

Oh to live life with our eyes wide open, steping forward into a greater awareness of God’s reality moment by moment… It reminds me of Paul’s words in Corinthians, ‘Now I only know in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known’ (1 Cor 13:12b). 

Oral Bible

It’s interesting… the larger part of the Scriptures is narrative. Most of the Bible began life as oral storytelling. The very DNA of the Scriptures are narrative units designed to be memorized. 

In Jesus’ day, Jewish boys between the age of 6 & 11 yrs, would go to their local Synagogue for school and the focus of their studies was the Torah. Apart from learning to read & write Hebrew, kids would memorize Genesis through to Deuteronomy by heart. Kids who showed particular aptitude would move on to memorize the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures then the next step was the oral traditions – the Mishnah – that included the rulings of particular rabbis down through the centuries. Beyond that, gifted students would become disciples of particular rabbis. So if the memorization of Scripture was the foundation of Judaic discipleship, I’m wondering why we don’t use narrative memorization in the same way for kids in our churches ? Particularly if we want our kids to grow into mature disciples of Jesus.

Kids learn & think initially in very concrete ways right up into their teens. The type of Bible teaching that seeks to draw out underlying principles for personal application is much more abstract & suitable for adults. My teaching experiences over the years have taught me that narratives stick much better than principles. Kids seem to get clever at reading truth into stories at a surprisingly young age.

New Tribes Mission pioneered the oral storytelling method as a way of introducing the Gospel to animistic tribal groups. They would begin with the Old Testament and over the course of six months, up to even a year, they would move through to Jesus & the Gospels. The idea was to imbed Jesus’ story in God’s much bigger story that we encounter in the broad sweep of the Scriptures. 

Similarly, when my wife & I were working in Africa, we worked among a people group who were mostly illiterate. That meant they were oral learners & as we discovered over time, truth imbedded in narrative is very important to learning and holding important information to these kinds of people. One of the questions I started asking myself was, “What if we gave people an oral Bible instead of a written one ? What narratives from Scripture would it need to be made up of to capture the broad sweep of the Scriptures & the kernel of the Gospel ?”

As the stories of Scripture become a rich part of our psyches, they flavour our imaginations, our actions and thinking a lot more than our traditional deductive styles of teaching. I wonder if that is why Jesus taught using parables.

He trusted people, with the help of the Spirit of God to come to truth & insight by themselves.

Walking On Water

There is a narrative whose presence in the Gospels leaves me feeling slightly off balance. Its like a splinter in my imagination…

6 times the story of Jesus and his followers out in a boat on wind blown waters at night appears in the gospels. In each telling some elements of the story remain the same – the disciples, a boat, the wind, their unbridled fear – yet the identity of Jesus is elastic and ambiguous !

In some instances Jesus is in the boat and in other instances he is out of the boat walking on the water. The disturbing thing is that when Jesus is in the boat up close and personal, those who know him best are left asking the question, “What sort of man is this ?”  Out of the boat he appears at distance like some kind of ghost or phantasm and the disciples cry out in fear and terror. Neither option brings relief.

As the boat moves out onto the water, away from the crowd and the safety of the known, it is as though it slipped through a crack between the worlds. The disciples took Jesus out in the boat ‘as he was’ yet out on this margin Jesus expands and intensifies. In sleep his dreams evoke the restless, primordial, creative possibilities of Genesis – the storm like ‘a wind from God over the face of the waters’ – pregnant with change & newness. Likewise his prayer alone on the mountain evokes Moses and encounter with holy Otherness – the storm moving before him like ‘the voice of the Lord… over the waters… the God of Glory… thundering’ – powerfully declaring the One who walks on water.

John captures this ‘holy otherness’ when he tells the story. In his telling, Jesus doesn’t calm the storm. He instead reveals himself to them as ‘I am – do be afraid’ & when the disciples try to take him into the boat, they instantly arrive at the their destination. What happens in-between happens on Jesus’ terms. And Jesus will not be contained or domesticated.

Follow That Salmon

The discipline of moving against the flow… This is a practice of discipleship that seeks to redress a very natural tendency that we have as individuals and as communities.

That tendency is to become settled, comfortable and even self-satisfied. The is problem is that over time we accumulate, we build things – buildings, traditions, even stories we like to tell ourselves of who we are and where we have been. It’s as though we get into the habit of going a particular way and given enough time, it becomes our way of seeing the world. I wonder if that is the meaning behind the words in Scripture that say, “They shall eat the fruit of their way…” (Prov 1:31).

It’s interesting… when I read the Gospels, Jesus is always moving about from place to place – encountering people where they are. His home is on the road – betwixt and between. The lifestyle Jesus chooses for himself means that he needs to travels light.

Apart from disciples and a reputation for being a trouble-maker, Jesus didn’t accumulate very much. 

If all Jesus left behind for us were his yolk, his disciples and his instruction to go and make more disciples, then the challenge for us as disciples is to work out what that means for us in the church today. That’s a work in progress – a intentional act of translation… discipleship always is !

The discipline of moving against the flow starts with us. It begins when we deny ourselves, when we turn our back on ourselves and leave ourselves behind. Karl Barth says that this is conscious the decision of each new day…..

The Whole Torah

The Golden Rule. You know Jesus wasn’t the only one to commend the Golden Rule in his teachings. Hillel the Elder – a leading Rabbi of his Age – who was an old man when Jesus was just a boy – was once approached by a non-Jew and asked, “What is the defining essence, the kernel of the Jewish faith ?” Now the learned & wise man could have responded eloquently and long on the deep mysteries of Jewish thought and law. Hillel could have insisted that it would be an utter insult to reduce so profound a system of faith into one brief statement.

Indeed Hillel’s contemporary, the Great Rabbi Shammai, was infamously known for furiously driving away a man who asked a similar question with a stick.

However seeing the man really wanted to know, Hillel responded to the man’s question thoughtfully, saying,

“What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour: this is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary; now go and study !”

The Rock From Which You Are Hewn

God’s story woven into lives of ordinary men…

There’s an interesting word of encouragement that the prophet Isaiah gives the Jews when they are in Exile, when they were poised between the choice of assimilation and despair. It says,

‘Listen to me you that pursue righteousness, you who seek the Lord. Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he was but one when I called him and I blessed him and made him many’. 

I like what Walter Brueggemann says about theses verses. He says that Isaiah is saying if you want to seek God, look to the oldest, most embarrassing beginning we ever had. He says firstly, remember Abraham. On the one hand, he is the strange, impressive father of the faith who leaves his home at God’s command & goes out on a long journey. On the other hand, Abraham is also a pitiful figure – often helplessness and filled with fear.  Two times he gives his wife Sarah away to other men to save his own skin. Despite God’s promise of a child with Sarah, he sleeps with Sarah’s servant Hagar, to get an heir.

Often Abraham appears so confused, so unsure, so barely faithful.

And when you are done reflecting on Abraham, remember Sarah your mother. Sarah is the beautiful woman who other men desire. She is also the mother of Isaac, the promise carrier. However, when you remember Sarah, remember her oldness, remember her barrenness, remember her mocking laughter in the face of God when He promises her a son.

Yet when you remember Sarah, remember that this old and pitiful woman now laughs a new laugh – an Easter laugh. God uses her very barrenness to create newness. Sarah is the example for all barren people, who have within them no gift of life, no capacity for faith – yet God does something new and unexpected in the face of all the evidence.

What impresses me about this foundational story of Scripture, is what it says about the way God’s story is unfolding among us. Abraham and Sarah are people we can identify with because they are fragile and tentative, often moving forward with fear & hesitation. These are people just like us.

You know, God’s story often isn’t in the grand epics of history, the stories told by the winners. When I read the large sweep of Scripture, it seems to me that God’s story is mostly unfolding quietly, below the radar, twisting and turning – always with the very real possibility of failure. Yet when we remember this story of faith, remember that it is told and retold through the same fragile stories of other biblical characters. Remember the scheming of a timid Jacob, the stuttering of a reluctant Moses, the paranoid actions of a bipolar Saul, the treachery of a wife stealing David, the depressed and suicidal Elijah…

The very wonder of God’s story is that he achieves his purposes in the world through broken ordinary people, just like us.

Bruggemann says we remember these stories because they model faith and they invite faith.

We remember these stories because when these fragile people centered their stories in God’s story, they lived life BIG – filled with purpose, newness and imagination.

Living Life BIG !

The Sermon on the Mount… I’ve been turning it over again and again and it has been tough reading. I’ve been trying to get a sense of why these words are so exacting.

Then I was reading a story in the newspaper last Saturday and things started to become a whole lot clearer.

In April 1979, under the cover of darkness, Samir Kuntar, along with three other men travelled by rubber dingy, from Lebanon – 5kms into Israeli territory. They came ashore onto the beach at the town of Narhariya. Keep in mind, Samir Kuntar was only 16 yrs old at the time.

It was close to midnight. At random the four – who were members of the Palestinian Liberation Front – chose an apartment block where a young Smadar Haran lived with her husband & two young children.

Amid gunfire & exploding grenades, Kuntar and his accomplices stormed the flat and seized Mrs Haran’s husband, Danny and their four year old daughter. Kuntar forced them down to the beach, where he shot Danny and threw his body into the ocean. The little girl – Einat was forced to watch her father’s die. Then with the butt of his rifle, Kuntar smashed little Einat’s head against a rock until she too was dead.

Back in their apartment, Smadar Haran was hiding in the attic, with a neighbour – cradling her 2 yr old daughter, Yael. Fearing her other daughter’s cries would alert the terrorists, she covered Yael’s mouth with her hand. She accidently suffocated her own child. By night’s end, Smadar Haran’s entire family was dead.

Overwhelmed by the immense tragedy, Smadar Haran faced two choices – to live or to die. Smadar chose life. She trained as a social worker, she remarried a psychologist and today has she two teenage girls.

For the past thirty years the terrorist Samir Kuntar has been a prisoner in an Israeli jail. This last week the Israeli cabinet decided to release Samir Kuntar in exchange for two Israeli soldiers who were taken prisoner two years ago in Lebanon & who are probably dead.

As much as Smadar Haran wanted to escape the ties that bound her to Samir Kuntar, she could not. Now there is an extraordinary twist to the story. The family of one of the abducted Israeli soldiers – Ehud Goldwasser – lives around the corner from her in Narhariya. The two families are close family friends and Smadar Haran even attended the abducted soldier’s wedding.

This last weekm the Israeli cabinet wanted to know how Smadar Haran would feel if Samir Kuntar was released from prison, in exchange for Ehud Goldwasser.

Smadar Haran took a while to answer…

Finally she said, “It’s so delicate and I can’t close my eyes to other people’s pain and I can’t close my heart… Sometimes the best interests might not be my interests, maybe.”

This last week she wrote to the Israeli cabinet freeing it’s members from any guilt they may feel, “Kuntar is not and never was my own private prisoner”.

 “Turn it over and turn it over again, for everything is contained in the Scriptures. Regard it, grow old in it and never abandon it, for there is no greater virtue.”

The teaching of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount seems so demanding because most of us live life within a fairly narrow bandwidth… comfortably, safely ! We are careful with our relationships, associating mostly with people like ourselves.

Yet when I look at the gut wrenching, shattering life experience of Smadar Haran, whose family is murdered and who in fear and terror, suffocates her only other child, a watered down, less demanding version of the Sermon on the Mount just doesn’t cut it.

Jesus says don’t let anger be your response to the world because anger distorts your judgement, anger gives way to bitterness and shuts us down emotionally, even to the ones we love. Jesus says don’t strike back in revenge but give and forgive those who wrong you because revenge hardens hearts and sets up cycles of violence that take on a life of their own. Jesus says love your enemies because love even allows a poor widow to powerfully protest and transcend institutional evil and the selfish, conflicted ways of men.  

The Sermon on the Mount. These words of Jesus are life, abundant, generous & open. They create the space for us to live life BIG, even when the storms of life come.

He Who Saves One Life, Saves the World Entire

Living life naked and exposed in the presence of God himself. I think this is what Jesus has in mind in his teaching of the Sermon on the Mount… why it is so demanding. We are not merely talking about Jesus giving new order to the parameters of Jewish religious life or even temple worship, but the Spirit of God being granted access and transforming all areas of life. Anything that has God in such close proximity is deeper, wider and higher than ordinary living.

You see when we dwell in close proximity to the Scriptures, when we turn them over again and again, when look back over their writing down through the ages – something becomes very clear. God has priorities. God desires some things more than he desires others…   

Like the time Jesus calls Matthew the tax collector. Jesus is sitting eating a meal openly with a number of tax collectors and other social outcasts. Some Pharisees are walking by and they ask Jesus’ disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with those kinds of people ?” And Jesus, hearing what they are saying, turns to them and replies, “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy not sacrifice’”. 

Jesus says this because as a good Jew who had memorised the Torah, word for word – Jesus knows God’s priorities. God desires mercy more than he desires sacrifice. God desires compassion more than he desires contemplation. God desires our hearts more than he desires our intellectual ascent.

Why ? Because the goal of life isn’t purity and holiness – that’s a by-product. The goal of life is an intensity of living, a fullness of life, concretely focused into habits of action that help to repair the brokenness of a hurting world. It’s like the Jewish Talmud says, “He who saves one life, saves the world entire.”

Really Turning the Other Cheek

“You have heard it said, ‘You shall not murder’ and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment’. But I say to you that if you are angry with your brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment…”.

“You have heard it said, ‘An eye for an eye…’. But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also…”.

 “You have heard it said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…”.

 

I really feel the stretch of Jesus’ teaching in these passages from the Sermon on the Mount. When I reflect on how my own life measures up to the Sermon on the Mount, I have a sense of missing the mark, of failing daily. In my darker moments I would be sorely tempted to just… give up !

Now, I also balance this with the tension of experiencing God’s grace, of my sense of assurance that the blood of Jesus covers my sin, that before the throne of God I am already declared pure, holy, acceptable, with a righteousness that is not my own. The freedom of it allows me to enter boldly into the presence of God Himself.

While the grace of God releases me from the overwhelming sense of guilt that comes from working hard for salvation, I also wrestle with the tension of scriptures like Mt 5:20, that says, “unless our righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, we will never enter into the Kingdom of Heaven…”. What about John 14:12 where Jesus says, “The one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and in fact will do greater works than these…”. 

Words like these create tension, they create discomfort and uneasiness within us about the teachings of Jesus. I wonder if the anxiety & dissonance is Jesus’ intention, indeed God’s intention for Scripture in general ?  You see I think God can work with us in those places. He wants access to all areas of our lives. I think these are the teachable moments, the places where Jesus teachings can be translated into meaningful action that flavours our total response to living. 

Rather like a wise man who builds his house upon the rock….

 

Turn It Over & Turn It Over Again

There’s an ancient Jewish proverb from the Talmud I have grown rather fond of. It goes like this, “Turn it over and turn it over again, for everything is contained in the Scriptures. Regard it, grow old in it and never abandon it, for there is no greater virtue.”

During the week I have been reading through the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel. I have been turning it over again and again, I feel have been regarding it to the point where it has grown rather old. Thankfully, I didn’t abandon it.

For me the Sermon on the Mount has been personally demanding reading. It has made me feel contrite & reflective about the quality of my discipleship; even the integrity of my walking with God.

You can’t read very far into the Sermon on the Mount without starting to feel the weight of God’s glory, the light of his holiness pouring into all the nooks and crannies of our mixed intentions… even filling the yawning gap that exists between our words and our actions.

Like John Calvin before me, I notice that these series of teachings read more like a dense compilation of many teaching sessions, rather than one singular occasion. There doesn’t seem to be that logical, sequential development of an argument that one would expect from a master teacher, delivering his message.

Instead each topic appears like its own particular teaching, concentrated & hard-hitting – complete in and of itself. 

Tower of Babel, Translating Genesis 11

”What happens when mission comes home ?”

The story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 captures for me the essence of the answer to this question. It begins with the Shems. Long ago, they came to the great plain of Shinar and they settled there. Now the Shems were an industrious people. They were clever & resourceful and they said to each other, “Come let us make some bricks and fire them in the fire…”. So the Shems got working and in time they built a safe and a functional town with a wall all around.

The Shems took great pride in what they were able to achieve together. Their confidence grew and so did their vision. They said to one another, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches up into the skies”. So they got working. And as each building was completed, the Shems grew in learning and wisdom and civic pride. Finally, they had the courage to begin working on the centrepiece of the city – the Great Tower. Day after day they worked on the foundations. Then, they began working on the tower itself and soon the tower was dwarfing every other building in the city.

Spurred on by their ever-expanding vision, the Shems grew bolder still. They said to one another, “Now that we have our city and our tower, let us make a NAME for ourselves, so that we are not scattered over the face of all the earth.”

In this moment the Shems came to the particular attention of God. God descended from heaven and God saw their handiwork. Heisenberg’s principle says the act of observing a phenomena changes it. God saw the city of the Shems, with its tower reaching up into the skies and God discerned the future. He said, “This is only the beginning of what they will do… soon nothing they propose will be too hard for them”.

So God acted. He said, “Come, let us go down and confuse their speech so they will no longer understand each other”. God drew near to the city, he confused the speech of the Shems and they stopped building their tower. God confounded the words of the Shems and he scattered them over the face of the earth. That is why the city is named Babel – ‘City of Confusion’ and why people speak with such a diversity of languages.

I really like that this narrative makes abundantly clear what happens when the Spirit of God comes near to a group of people who have become self-satisfied, complacent and who have closed the circle. It’s a missional story because this is what happens whenever people allow themselves to be overwhelmed by the Spirit of God.

Traditionally we tend to view God’s scattering of the Shems as punishment. Yet for me, this idea of the Spirit of God drawing near and breaking open the circle… this image of tremendous energy and diversity being released; of the Shems moving outwards, speaking a great diversity of languages… all of this sounds like an amazing outpouring of God’s blessing. It sounds like Pentecost in Acts 2.

This is what happens when mission comes home.