More thoughts from saints of God to encourage us on to knowing God in Christ Jesus...

"A true knowledge of the Lord Jesus will reverse a good many of our ideas, and a good many of our procedures."   (T.A. Sparks)


"We don't see that the powerful change that happens in the life of a disciple never comes from the disciples working hard at doing anything. They come from arriving at a place where Jesus is everything, and we are simply overwhelmed with the gift. Sometimes it seems as if God loves us too much. His love goes far beyond our ability to stop being moral , religious , obedient, and victorious and we just collapse in his arms."
("Mere Churchianity" by Michael Spencer)

Simply Jesus - Chapter 5 "The Hurricane"

In chapter four N.T.Wright deals with the gale of Rome colliding with the high-pressure system of Jewish expectations. The third element that created a "perfect storm" in Jesus' day was God Himself, and to this "hurricane" the author devotes an entire chapter (chapter 5).

In the Jewish story God was always the "highly unpredictable element...He remained free and sovereign." Because God had promised that He would return to His people in power and glory and establish His rule on earth, they, of course, hoped and assumed "that this would simply underwrite their national aspirations...They wanted a divine hurricane simply to reinforce their already overheated high-pressure system." The prophets, however, kept warning that God would act on His own terms and that His people, as much as others, would be under judgment.

Jesus believed that He came embodying this return of Israel's God in power and glory. But it was a different kind of power and glory, and the leaders of the Jews had no clue about its implications. "The harsh wind of western empire would blast away the Temple itself, the central symbol of national identity and the building that made Jerusalem what it was, because Jerusalem and its leaders had not recognized the moment when God was visiting them, was coming back to them in person."

And so the third dangerous element in this first-century perfect storm was the wind of God, and God's dreams were not the same as the nationalistic dreams of the Jews. He had created Israel so that through Israel He could redeem the world, but Israel itself needed to be redeemed as well! All through His public years Jesus was embodying the redeeming love of God but Israel's leaders couldn't see it. "...as we watch the events of Jesus's final days unfold, we cannot simply look on and register them as an odd quirk of history...the hurricane of divine love met the cold might of empire and the overheated aspiration of Israel. Only when we reflect on that combination do we begin to understand the meaning of Jesus's death."

Wright then goes to some length to explain what was building in the Jewish mind and desire related to who should be king and what it would look like for God to be king. As Jesus was growing up there was a political/religious movement that said "it was time for God alone to be king." The people were weary of their own kings and were increasingly speaking and writing about God Himself being their king and coming to straighten everything out.

The author goes through several Scriptures to point out what the people envisioned if God were king: Psa. 145:1, 10-13; Isa. 52:7-10; Psa. 23:1-2; 80:1-2; Ez. 34:2-6, 11-12, 14-16, 23-24, 30-31; Psa. 2:1-2, 4-9, etc. The idea of YHWH being king raises many questions, such as: "what will this mean in practice? What will it look like?...would YHWH actually appear visibly and in person to take charge? How would it happen?...There was, after all, no obvious model for what it might look like, how it might happen that YHWH would do what all those psalms and prophets said and come in person to take charge, ruling the world, rescuing Israel, establishing his presence in the Temple, judging the nations..."

Ezekiel 34 and Zechariah 9 suggest that the divine king might come as a human king, and in Zechariah 9 there are echoes of promises made to David about the true king being king, not only of Israel, but of the whole world. "God will finally be in charge from one sea to the other...And what will it look like? Like a humble figure, riding into Jerusalem on a donkey."

The only movement that held together the themes of God's kingdom and a messianic king was Jesus' movement, and after His ascension His disciples spoke and wrote and sang songs about Him, not only as a healer and teacher and spiritual leader but as the "anointed One"...occupying the throne next to God Himself after His suffering. "...they also believed that Jesus had fulfilled the dreams of those who wanted God, and God alone, to be king. Jesus had lived and worked within the same overall story as other would-be kings of the time. But he had transformed the story around himself. In Jesus, they believed, God himself had indeed become king. Jesus had come to take charge...This claim can never be...merely religious. It involves everything, from power and politics to culture and family..."

The chapter ends by stating the puzzle that Jesus is, and the puzzle is summed up in two questions:
1) Why would anyone say this about a man who didn't do what people expected a victorious king to do?  2) What does it mean today to refer to Jesus as being king or "in charge"?

In Part Two Wright deals with what Jesus did, answering the first of these two questions in the puzzle. We'll start in on that with chapter 6 next time. God bless you!

Simply Jesus - Chapter 4 "The Making of a First Century Storm"

In chapter three, N.T.Wright describes the "perfect storm" that is swirling around Jesus today; in chapters four and five he uses the same metaphor to paint a picture of the "perfect storm" that swirled around Jesus in His day. Understanding the world into which Jesus stepped is imperative to growing in understanding who Jesus was as a man on earth and what He was up to.

Just as in our day, the world of Jesus' day had a west wind, a north wind and a southeast hurricane all converging to form a perfect storm around Him.

Chapter four deals with the "gale blowing from the west" and with the "high-pressure system coming in from the north."

The Roman Storm
The western wind in this first-century storm was the new social and political and military reality of Jesus' time - the superpower, Rome. Although Rome had been gaining power for 2-3 centuries before Jesus' birth, it was only about 30 years before He was born that Rome switched from being a republic (with its checks and balances to prevent anyone from having absolute power) to being ruled by one "divine" ruler, Caesar. Julius Caesar, who brought this into being, was assassinated by the Roman traditionalists, but his adopted son Octavian defeated the opposition, naming himself "Augustus" (meaning "worthy of honor").

Since the name "Caesar" implied divinity, Augustus Octavian Caesar was now officially "son of god" or "son of the divine Julius". Anyone in the Roman empire who was asked who the "son of god" was would have given the politically correct answer: "Octavian."

The Roman propaganda "told the thousand-year story of Rome as a long and winding narrative that had reached its great climax at last; the golden age had begun with the birth of a new child through whom peace and prosperity would spread to the whole world. The whole world is now being renewed, sang Virgil...Earth, sea, and heaven will rejoice at the child now to be born...the point is clear: the new age, for which we have waited for a millennium is now here at last through the peaceful and joyful rule of Augustus Caesar. The message was carved in stone on monuments and in inscriptions around the known world: 'Good news! We have an Emperor! Justice, Peace, Security, and Prosperity are ours forever! The Son of God has become King of the World!'"

Augustus' son, Tiberius, took the same titles ("Son of God" and "Chief Priest"), and it was a coin with his image on it that was shown to Jesus when He was asked if they should pay tribute to Caesar. Jesus was in the eye of the storm!

The Middle East was vitally important to Rome because of the raw materials to be found there. Rome didn't have enough food for her people and desperately needed the resources of the Middle East (back then it was grain, now it's oil), so it was crucial to keep stability in the area The Roman governor's assignment was to keep the peace and suppress unrest, to administer justice and to collect taxes.

The Jewish Storm
The high-pressure system coming in from the north was the story of Israel. This was even more complex and turbulent than the western wind of Rome.

For us as western "progressive" people with a short history, it's very difficult to understand how people think who have lived within and know themselves as actors in a very, very long story that has a certain goal in mind..."Their story, like a great costume drama going on over many generations, stretched back to Abraham, Moses, David, and other heroes of the distant past. But it was all going to come to its great climax, they believed, any moment now. It was a single story, and they were at its leading edge."

The stories of the Jews which they recited through telling them to one another, through reading them aloud in public, through studying them in private, through praying them and through celebrating them in national festivals were very complex and dense with details, filled with hope...the Exodus story sums up their story: "The God who brought order out of chaos and who brought his enslaved people out of Egypt would do it again. Creation and covenant...Every time the Jewish people told the story, that was what they were thinking and hoping and praying for. It was this hope, this story that generated the second great storm wind, the powerful high-pressure system, into the path Jesus of Nazareth decided to walk. And eventually, to ride a donkey."

Added to this repeated story was the ongoing appearance in Jewish history of powerful wicked rulers coupled with the hope of the coming of God's deliverer (the "great evil empire and the coming royal deliverer"). There developed a mantra/chant in the heart of Israel - "Down with _______(whoever the oppressing government was)! Bring on the Messiah (God's deliverer)!" This continual cry over centuries was gaining increasing momentum and by the time Jesus arrived on the scene, it was close to a fever pitch, "storm force"!

Even though many Jews had survived the captivity in Babylon and had even rebuilt the temple, there was still a sense that their coming out of Babylon was not yet the "new Exodus" for which they longed. In Jesus' day the obvious world power in the Jewish mind that had taken Egypt's and Babylon's role as oppressor was Rome, and the long story of Israel was about to confront the long story of Rome.

Chapter five focuses on the "hurricane" wind that was the third element along with the western wind of Rome's dominion and the northern high-pressure system of Jewish expectations. I hope to cover chapter five in the next 2-3 days...

Letting Go of Past Knowledge of Jesus...

As we continue with Wright's book, Simply Jesus, I want to share part of a blog post that Frank Viola just sent out today; it expresses so well how I feel about continually moving forward in knowing Jesus which requires that we be willing to let go of how we have known Him in the past.

In the following, Viola is referring to the encounter between Mary and Jesus in the garden after Jesus' resurrection:
"He was moving forward, but she was clinging to Him. Jesus was in effect saying to her: “Mary, stop holding on to me. There’s a new way to know me that’s different from what you’ve experienced thus far. Let me go. I must move on.” 

Viola then speaks of the encounter between Jesus and the two disciples on the Emmaus road...he proceeds to say,

"These stories hold a critical insight. You cannot cling to the Christ you know today. He will vanish from your midst. Jesus Christ is an elusive Lover. Seeking Him is a progressive engagement that never ends...We all wish to cling to the Lord who we know now. We all wish to hold on to the Christ who has been revealed to us today.

"But mark my words: He will come to us in a way we do not expect—through people we’re prone to ignore and inclined to write off. Perhaps they don’t talk our religious language. Perhaps they aren’t theologically sophisticated. Perhaps they don’t use our vocabulary. Perhaps they don’t share our insider knowledge nor parrot our religious idioms.

"So we cling fast to the Lord we recognize—receiving only those who talk our language, use our jargon and employ our catchphrases—and all along we end up turning the Lord Jesus Christ away.
What, then, does Jesus do after we fail to receive Him when He comes to us in an unexpected way? He moves on. And the revelation we have of Him ceases to grow. Jesus Christ is richer, larger and more glorious than any of us could ever imagine...

"There is something in our fallen nature that, like Peter, wishes to build a monument around a spiritual encounter with God and remain there. But the Lord will not have it. He will always break free from our frail attempts to pin Him down, box Him up and hold Him in place. And He does so by coming to us in new and unexpected ways."

The entire post is well worth reading and can be found here: http://frankviola.org/2011/03/29/a-vanishing-god/#comment-46273

Simply Jesus - Chapter 3 "The Perfect Storm"

Continuing with the theme of the first major section of his book, N.T.Wright addresses who Jesus was in this chapter by setting the stage for our understanding the world that Jesus stepped into. To illustrate, Wright uses an actual event from 1991 about which a movie was made entitled, "The Perfect Storm." 

This "perfect storm" (in the Atlantic) was created by forces of nature coming from the western wind and and from a high pressure system to the north and from a tropical hurricane blowing in from the southeast; when they all converged on the fishing boat Andrea Gail, the boat was reduced to "matchwood".

The author explains how we find ourselves today in a "perfect storm" related to Jesus. "The very mention of Jesus raises all kinds of winds and cyclones today." The western wind in this storm is that of the western Enlightenment mindset (skepticism about Jesus and the gospel accounts). The northern wind is reactionary conservative Christianity (dogmatic and emotional assertions about God and Scripture in reaction to the skeptics but which are not always correct). The tropical hurricane in this perfect storm swirling around the topic of Jesus today is the "sheer historical complexity of speaking about Jesus."

After elaborating on the errors of the Enlightenment mindset (western wind) and the errors of the reactionary conservative Christian mindset (north wind), Wright spends the larger part of this chapter on the issue of the historical complexity related to Jesus (the hurricane blowing in from the southeast).

Just as today's Middle Eastern problems are very complicated, so they were in Jesus' day. Besides that, trying to piece together what we know about Jesus through the gospels and the few historical writings after His death is like someone centuries later trying to understand the iconic significance of John F. Kennedy's sudden and tragic death for Americans and many others with only 4 short books and a smattering of written material available. In such a case, "there would be plenty of wiggle room for interpretation."

This "tropical hurricane" (the challenge of writing history about Jesus) would be dangerous enough on its own, then add to it the "angry voices from the left, angry voices from the right", and we have a "perfect storm" when it comes to understanding who Jesus was. "If, trying to make things simple, we fail to recognize this multilayered complexity, we will simply repeat the age-old mistake of imagining Jesus in our own image or at least placing him, by implication, in our own culture."

To remain in the "harbor" where we keep telling the story about Jesus the way that we have learned it as western Enlightenment people would be the safe option, but that keeps us stuck in seeing Jesus as made in our image and missing a big part of who He truly is. We who have been shaped by modern western thought insist on asking questions that people in Jesus' day weren't asking..."if we are to do real history, we have to allow people in other times and other places to be radically different from us - even though, in order to do history at all, we have to exercise disciplined imagination and try as best we can to relate to those very different people..."

Wright ends the chapter with the following challenging words:
"...a good deal of the 'methods' developed within professional biblical scholarship over the last two hundred years have been, themselves, the product of a worldview that may not have been truly open to discovering the real Jesus. The worldview of post-Enlightenment Europe and North America was determined, often enough, to see Jesus as a religious teacher and leader offering a personal spirituality and ethic and a heavenly hope. It had no intention of seeing him as someone who was claiming to be in charge of the world..."

In order to see Jesus in a fresh way and ask the right questions, we need to understand the "perfect storm" that Jesus Himself was walking into in His day. We'll take that up in the next two chapters. The Lord bless you!

The Gospel and Morality

Between and among my posts on the book, Simply Jesus, I may post quotes here and there that I believe are helpful in the journey of knowing and understanding God in Christ Jesus. Today I'm sharing a wonderful word from Jacques Ellul, a French sociologist and theologian. This comes from his book, The Subversion of Christianity:

"The revelation of God in Jesus Christ is against morality. Not only is it honestly impossible to derive a moral system from the Gospels and the Epistles, but further, the main keys in the gospel – the proclamation of grace, the declaration of pardon, and the opening up of life to freedom – are the direct opposite of morality. For they imply that all conduct, including that of the devout, or the most moral, is wholly engulfed in sin…As Genesis shows us, the origin of sin in the world is not knowledge…it is the knowledge of good and evil…

"In the Gospels Jesus…gives as his own commandment 'Follow me,' not a list of things to do or not to do. He shows us fully what it means to be a free person with no morality, but simply obeying the ever-new word of God as it flashes forth…We are as free as the Holy Spirit, who comes and goes as he wills. This freedom…is the freedom of love. Love, which cannot be regulated, categorized, or analyzed in principles or commands, takes the place of law. The relationship with others is not one of duty but of love."

Simply Jesus - Chapters 1 & 2

This week we'll cover the first two chapters of N.T. Wright's book, Simply Jesus. These chapters are part of the first section about who Jesus was.

Chapter One: A Very Odd Sort of King
After giving a short review of his own experience of Jesus in his early years, the author proceeds to share how he began to be challenged to pursue Jesus as Someone much bigger than he had known before. He tells how the popular 1960s musical "Jesus Christ Superstar" raised the question (which Wright believes is the correct question to ask about Jesus): "Who do you say that you are?"
"...Unless you ask this question, your 'Jesus' risks disappearing like a hot-air balloon off into the mists of fantasy..."

In this chapter Wright says that Christians have a choice to either 1) go on talking about "Jesus", praying and worshiping him in formal or informal ways and seeing how that affects our own lives and communities while failing to address the above question that has been in the back of others' minds for the past century; or  2) we can accept the question and attempt to answer it.

The challenge to the churches is to begin to see that the stories of Jesus in the gospels are much more than material for moralizing sermons on how to behave or aids to prayer and meditation or "extra padding for a theological picture"... 

Just as the full potential of the computer remains unrealized by most of us, so the full potential of the gospels remains unrealized by most of us: "It is we, the churches, who have been the real reductionists. We have reduced the kingdom of God to private piety, the victory of the cross to comfort for the conscience, and Easter itself to a happy, escapist ending after a sad, dark tale. Piety, conscience, and ultimate happiness are important, but not nearly as important as Jesus himself."

Wright's key point in this chapter is that the reason Jesus wasn't the kind of king people wanted in His day was that they had gotten accustomed to "the ordinary, shabby, second-rate sort" that they had experienced. Jesus came to redefine kingship around Himself and His works. Wright suggests that we as modern western Christians are the same: "We want a 'religious' leader, not a king! We want someone to save our souls, not rule our world! Or, if we want a king, someone to take charge of our world, what we want is someone to implement the policies we already embrace...But if Christians don't get Jesus right, what chance is there that other people will bother much with him?"

This chapter ends with Wright presenting Jesus as a figure of history as the starting point. He gives a brief summary of the historical Jesus and then proposes that we must get inside the gospels "to discover the Jesus they've been telling us about all along, but whom we had managed to screen out..."

Chapter Two: The Three Puzzles
"Jesus of Nazareth stands out in the middle of history. Tens of millions call him 'Lord' and do their best to follow him. Countless others, including some who try to ignore him, find that he pops up all over the place - a line in a song, an image in a movie, a cross on a distant skyline. Most of the world has adopted a dating system based, supposedly, on his birth...Jesus is unavoidable. But Jesus is also deeply mysterious...and he puzzles us still."

Wright goes on to say that there are 3 reasons why Jesus puzzles us:

1. His world: the people in his day and in his land thought differently and explained their world through stories in ways different than we do. We have to try to get into that world if we are to make sense of Jesus.
2. His God: "Part of the reason why Jesus puzzled the people of his day was that he was talking about 'God' most of the time, but what he was saying both did and did not make sense in relation to the 'God' his hearers had been thinking of."
3. His behavior: he spoke and acted as if he was in charge! "He behaved suspiciously like someone trying to start a political party or a revolutionary movement. He called together a tight and symbolically charged group of associates (in his world, the number twelve meant only one thing: the new Israel, the new people of God)." This kind of behavior by Jesus and his followers' talk about him later was very dangerous and got them all in trouble.

What would it look like for Jesus to be in charge both in his day and today??

We'll continue next week looking at who Jesus was as a man on earth. Grace and peace to you this week!

Simply Jesus - Preface

This week we'll begin working through N.T.Wright's book, Simply Jesus. Though there are many wonderful books about Jesus that I could have picked from, I chose this one in particular because I wanted to see through the eyes of a follower of Jesus who doesn't look at Him with exactly the same lenses that we American evangelicals do. From what I have read and heard about N.T.Wright, I understand him to be a true man of God who has wrestled with many issues related to the New Testament and Jesus.

Because I was formed and discipled in the American evangelical/holiness/charismatic stream of Christianity, much of my view of Jesus has been limited to seeing Him as my personal Savior and Sanctifier. While I am very grateful for that understanding, I now realize that Jesus is so much more, and this is impacting my mindsets in significant ways! As Wright says in this book, "We (the churches) have reduced the kingdom of God to private piety; the victory of the cross to comfort for the conscience; Easter itself to a happy, escapist ending after a sad, dark tale. Piety, conscience, and ultimate happiness are important, but not nearly as important as Jesus himself."

Again, if you want the book for yourself, it's available at amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Simply-Jesus-Vision-What-Matters/dp/0062084399#reader_006208439.

In his preface, Wright explains how the attempt to approach the subject of Jesus simply is not simple. He gives the illustration of someone who pulls up to you in a car to ask directions to Glasgow. You could give him simple directions like, "Keep heading west and a bit south, and you can't miss it," and that would be true. But because the roads aren't straight, he could easily go wrong somewhere along the way. Telling him about landmarks and obstacles and towns, etc., that he'll go through will pay off when he's actually on the way, and he will then appreciate a little complexity in your instructions.

"I set out to write a 'simple' book about Jesus. But Jesus was not simple in his own time, and he is not simple now."

Wright outlines the book as follows:

• Part One (chapters 1-5) - explaining what the key questions are, why they matter, and why we today find them difficult to answer.
• Part Two (chapters 6-14) - what Jesus' public career was all about, what He was trying to accomplish, and how He went about it.
• Part Three (chapter 15) - what does it all mean for us now?

God bless you this week!

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who's the Greatest...?

When I read this blog post by Frank Viola today (http://frankviola.org/2012/04/30/measuringyourself/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wordpress%2Fviola+%28Beyond+Evangelical%29, I thought of the little ditty from Snow White: "Mirror, mirror on the wall; who's the 'greatest' of them all?" (my version). I was so impressed by Viola's post that I decided to send it out on my blog with my comments on it here.

The reason I was blessed by this is that there have been many times that I have considered not continuing with this blog, and I always come back to this: as long as I sense that the Lord wants me to continue, I will. So with Frank's post in mind, I thought I'd share why I continue to write:

First and foremost, it's an issue of simple obedience to what I believe the Lord is saying to do. That's enough for me. Having said that, now that I have done this for several years, I am seeing some side benefits to it, which are:
1. It's good practice for me as I age, keeping me alert and "exercising" my mind and heart.
2. It keeps me exploring books in different genres, causing my heart and mind to expand in love and understanding.
3. It's a good way to continue practicing putting shape and form to my thoughts and feelings.
4. By writing random thoughts from time to time, it's a lazy way to write a disjointed, unorganized "book" in fits and starts and bits and pieces.
5. I believe that even if no one reads what I write, putting this out in the blogosphere is a way of adding my voice to the choir of countless voices of adoration and praise to Jesus the King and Lord of the nations.

If once in awhile someone is encouraged along the way or challenged to rethink Jesus and His kingdom, I'm very grateful. The day that I believe I should no longer write in this way, I will not continue. Meanwhile, I do it with joy and love for Him!