Jesus won the victory so we could talk to each other in church

The work of Jesus Christ is one event and a sequence of events. At its heart is the cross, with its cries of abandonment ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?!") and of victory ("It is finished!"). There at the Cross, the true Man committed himself decisively and finally to the path of 'obedience unto death', and in so doing overturned the act of disobedience of the other Man in whom we all died. 

But the cross, while central, is not the totality. Evangelical theologians have sometimes had less to say about the resurrection or ascension, but these are vital scenes too, as the victory is confirmed and published and rewarded. Sin and death and hell will not have the final say; Satan will not have the victory. The resurrection is the first roar of Judgement Day, God's mighty 'No!' against human injustice and all that raises itself up against him. That 'No' declares the end of sin; that 'No' announces the Judge. 

But then, the King ascends. He has the victory, he takes the spoils, and he sits down at the heart of the majestic glory. As High Priest he enters the heavenly Holiest Place on our behalf and intercedes for his people. And as Prophet, he speaks. 

Those facets of his ministry are all visible in the final once-and-for-all act of his earthly work – the giving of the Spirit at Pentecost. The one who has won the victory over sin has the right to redeem sinners from their captivity, to bring them into his victorious army, and to empower and enable them to serve. He intercedes with the Father and the Spirit is poured out. The initial chosen few begin to speak, and the last battle begins. The church makes war by the Word; the church understands, believes and speaks because the Spirit has come; the Spirit has come because Jesus Christ has won the victory. 

That is the reason for the crucial but often overlooked or skipped-over section in Eph 4:7-10. 

Paul wants to give the Ephesian believers every reason not to drift back to their former life as pagan occultists. As it is for every Christian, the most common temptation is to slide back to what they were before they met Jesus. Backsliding is generally exactly what it says – sliding back. In the Ephesians’ case, it happens to have been a life of magic, Spiritism and esoteric religion.

Every part of the letter is geared to stopping them slip back to that – to show that what they enjoy in Christ is infinitely bigger, better and more thrilling than anything they had before in their occult groups. Nowhere might that be more of an acute challenge than in the Christian meeting itself. Compared to drunken sacrifices of bulls, and to nakedness and orgies as a means of experiencing spiritual awakening, groups of people meeting to eat, pray, and to talk and discuss the Jewish scriptures must have seemed rather tame.  

It isn’t tame, says Paul. Any communication of the gospel, any pre-echo of the voice of Jesus that will be heard on the last day, any Spirit-driven word... all is the result of Jesus’ decisive victory. That applies to the once-and-for-all laying down of the definitive revelation of the gospel, through the apostles and prophets. It applies to the ongoing work of proclaiming and applying that gospel, by the evangelists and shepherds-and-teachers. And it applies to the work of every believer as all of us, in conversation and fellowship, encourage and help one another to grow in our faith.  

When Christian people meet and speak the truth – the real truth, the actual gospel – to each other, we are seeing the spoils of Jesus’ war. What we are seeing is the product of a divine invasion, an incursion. A powerful One came from outside and supernaturally intervened in a dark empire. Citizens who had been comfortable in this world were turned into rebels against this world – for they are now citizens of a new and as yet not-fully-seen kingdom. Jesus turned sinners into saints. He made the ignorant into the knowing and blasphemers into preachers. The gathering of these rebel forces is called “church”. 

The way in which this rebel movement grows is called evangelism – speaking the truth about Jesus so that other people are convinced and join up. And the way the passion and purity and power of the lives of the rebels is built up is by… talking to each other. Hearing pastors and teachers explain and apply the apostles’ and prophets’ teaching, discussing that and applying that to one another, that is the battlefield diet of an advancing and powerful army. In re-telling the gospel and its implications is nutrition and life and energy and transforming power. Mutually teaching each other the Bible is the essential basis for spiritual warfare – the battle for holiness.

Don’t be taken in by the suggestion that words are peripheral – whether to evangelism or to the life of the church. If Francis of Assisi really said “Preach Jesus – if necessary, use words!” he was no saint – but then, he never said that! Don’t be taken in by the idea that images or actions are central to our meetings. Words are. In the Salvation Army we rejected the two officially sanctioned faith-feeding visual actions early in our history; ironically the resultant vacuum has made us so hungry for the visual and physical and so inventive of secondary symbols and sacraments that the word has been at a disadvantage among us ever since. I don’t know if we will ever be able to reinstate baptism and the supper as catalysing co-workers of the word; I don’t doubt that the dethroning of the word is one of the things that is killing us. As a church we are dying of starvation. The Salvation Army is rejecting the gifts that its Saviour paid for!

The Authorised Version used the word “conversation” to describe something much broader than “talking” – it was the whole lifestyle of believers. And yet the word made a profound link between word and life: a church in its living will never rise above the quality of its talking. You have to walk the talk, but you can’t not talk. Jesus died and rose and ascended so that we could talk in church. Never underestimate the wonder of that. The Christian meeting is the counter-cultural, subversive, perturbing sign in this present world of his victory won – and of his coming return. 

See you on Sunday! 

Doctrine versus practice?

Mark 3:20-35 NIV

²⁰Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. ²¹When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”

²² And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, “He is possessed by Beelzebul! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.”

²³So Jesus called them over to him and began to speak to them in parables: “How can Satan drive out Satan? ²⁴If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. ²⁵If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. ²⁶And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. ²⁷In fact, no one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up. Then he can plunder the strong man’s house. ²⁸Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, ²⁹but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.”

³⁰He said this because they were saying, “He has an impure spirit.”

³¹Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. ³²A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.”

³³“Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked.

³⁴Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! ³⁵Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”

Mark chapter 3 gives us a first watershed moment in the tensions that surrounded Jesus early on in his ministry. Teaching and miracle-working are not neutral activities; people will want to own you or disown you, and both reactions are dangerous. In this passage – a typical "Marcan sandwich" – we see the family of Jesus coming to "take ownership" of him, followed by a section on the official teachers' opinion of him, and closing with the actual arrival of Jesus' relatives. The final words, "Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother" are seen by some as a strong call to correct practice as over against the sterile theologising of the intellectual authorities in Jerusalem. Is that right? 

The passage is, of course, a notorious one for its central difficulty: the teaching on blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. But it is that difficulty that gives the lie to the idea that "it's not what you think or say, but how you live, that matters."  

Jesus' family think he's mad. That may have its roots in genuine concern for his wellbeing, as his life seems overwhelmed by so many demands that he and his inner circle can't even eat. However, the language of "madness" and of "taking charge" shows a mix of lack of understanding and a paternalistic sense of ownership. Perhaps there is also a desire for the kudos that comes from that ownership being seen and admired. Whatever their motives, they are not 'reading' Jesus right. They have not understood, and are acting/reacting in ways that reveal their non-understanding. 

As for the teachers of the law from Jerusalem, their opinion is just perverse, as Jesus shows in his sequence of 'kingdom' and 'house' sayings. When they say that Jesus is possessed by the devil, they are deliberately, obtusely, wilfully, wickedly refusing any openness to the most obvious explanation of Jesus’ ministry: he is the Strong Man from God who has come to destroy the Evil One and all his works. Such a deliberately obtuse refusal to countenance the truth about Jesus is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit; it is a locking of the door against the gospel and against any hope of salvation. 

When Jesus is told that his family has arrived outside the building, his reaction seems cool, even harsh. This is not the only time that he reacts with apparent coldness or rebuke when people close to him get things badly wrong about who he is or about his purposes. "Who really is my family?" he asks. 

And he looks at those sat round him and says, "Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.” And out of context, that might seem to say that right living is all there is to it. But how do we do God's will? How do we understand it? How do we hear it? 

The key is to see who he is speaking to. The Greek construction is so emphatic and repetitive it is almost funny – he looked around him at those seated in a circle around him. Here are the people who are recognising him for who he is, and having recognised him, are soaking up his words. They are physically close to Jesus, gathered round him, because they have seen something in him, love him and want to hear him. And of course, when we take that emphasis on the “gathered circle” seriously, Jesus’ words at this point are a breath-taking statement of who he is. “Who is my family? Those who do God’s will – which starts with listening to me!” He is either appallingly insane, arrogant, or the revelation of God.

Here is a world where those who should know better through the closeness of family life or the depth of theological training and privilege are dismissing Jesus as mad or demonic. But in that world some people recognise him for who he is and are listening to his every word. Recognition of Jesus as the Strong One who comes from God, and therefore careful attention to his words as being the revelation of the will of God – these are the prerequisites for doing the will of God. Doing God’s will is essential – it is the mark of the Family – and it starts with truth about Jesus. Obedience to the will of God starts with right thinking about his Son. Right thinking makes us listen to Jesus in humility as he describes himself and his work, and thus how we should live. Being in Jesus’ family IS good theology being worked out in practice. And as the gospel of Mark goes on, right living is spelled out in ever stronger and clearer terms – and always in relation to the person of Christ and the nature of his death as a ransom.

There is a tide of hatred towards orthodox thinking that loves to pit doctrine and praxis against each other. Such talk has the aim of preserving Christianity and carrying it forward in the post-modern and post-post-modern generation. But it is as wrong-headed and destructive as “He is mad!” or “He is of Satan!” No one can truly love and live for God and despise the Son he has sent or the work that he achieved through him. Doctrine and life are twins – Siamese twins – inseparable and interwoven. Despise either and you will kill both.

Recognise Jesus, love his person, his words and his work, walk in his ways, and you can be assured: You are part of his family, now and forever!

Whole lotta shaking going on

It is arguable that the UK is now in its biggest mess since the last World War. The difference being that then we were, by and large, united. This time the mess is in the disunity. The Tories and Labour are both torn apart, with the opposition in particular disarray and carrying the can for what was really a Tory row. People say that they don't know who they can look in the eye in the street. Families are divided, with the traditional alliance between teenagers and their grandparents under special strain. And immigrants and transients feel insecurity and fear as at no point in most of their lifetimes. 

The most striking thing to me is the degree of disruption that has also occurred in relations between Christians, and church leaders particularly. At a General Election, very few ministers come out strongly and publicly in favour of one or other party. Still less is there an attempt to theologise the vote, in the sense of bringing arguments that claim a biblical basis for a particular choice. This time though, between a sudden attachment to, for instance, "the biblical concept of the nation state" and the discovery of the "vital role of the EU in preserving freedom for gospel work in Europe", we were pushed this way and that by strongly worded claims. It was all too easy to imply that, ultimately, only a Leave, or only a Remain, vote would have God's approval and blessing.

And strongly-worded we were. At a time when we were undoubtedly being lied or spun to by politicians on every side, Christian ministers were also going for the jugular, and the strain in relationships was and is visible. Some have had to get out of social media. Others have dropped or blocked brothers and sisters in Christ. To the best of my knowledge, the only friend I have lost was a Christian woman with whom I remonstrated for her apparent willingness to let anger turn to physical assault on a public figure. It's been rough, hasn't it? 

It is time to calm down, breathe deeply, look at ourselves, and deal with some issues. Above all, we need to think biblically and in a way that sees the Kingdom and the power and wisdom of God in all of this. 

1) God rules over the nations. He directs the heart of the king as a gardener directs the hose onto his prize roses. He does that for voters too. This referendum has surprised and shocked a lot of people - including, it would appear, some of the victors! Our sovereign Lord wasn't surprised. If you are happy with the result, don't let your happiness simply flow from a sense of "we did it."  Give thanks to God. And if you are unhappy, or very unhappy, let your unhappiness be tempered by the awareness that God is sovereign over this mess too and he has his purposes in it. 

2) Christians are to submit to the authorities. In this case, in any democratic process, that means submission to the will of our fellow voters, unless we are being forced along a path fundamentally inconsistent with our faith. That is surely not the case here. The issue was important, but not actually one where Christian faith itself was at stake. So, submission must now be our principle. We argued hard beforehand precisely because we knew that every individual's mind mattered and we wanted to win minds. I can tell you, whinging after a vote has gone against you ain't going to win any minds. The only way to change things is through proper democratic process - we are at liberty to work within democratic mechanisms to effect change, but I don't see that we are at liberty to simply refuse to submit to the decision as taken. 

3) The Kingdom of God is the real and lasting kingdom. Essential to our understanding of it is that, while nations, alliances, empires and civilisations come and go, Jesus' kingdom will endure and grow and dominate at last the entire created order. And the other kingdoms HAVE TO come and go for that to be seen. Think about the rise and fall of empires as seen in Daniel's prophecy. Think about the smoke of Babylon rising for ever in Revelation - and the fact that the smoke of destruction is the subject matter for a neat little worship song. Think of every knee bowing at the name of Jesus. It of the essence of Christian faith that the British empire (like all the others) did not last for ever!

We are citizens of another kingdom, and the mighty hand of God lifting up and casting down countries and politicians is to be a reason for praise, not fear. We need to take into account the possibility that God is actually in the process of dismantling much of what we have regarded as normal. The preservation of that "normality" or even its transformation in a direction that we want cannot be our highest priority. 

4) The biggest issue facing all of us as individuals, and the root cause of the spiritual bankruptcy in our society is our citizenship, or lack of it, in that kingdom and our relationship with its King. In the light of that overriding issue, I have been alarmed by the level of passion applied by Christians in arguments re Brexit. The question certainly has arisen - are we as fervent in persuading when it comes to the good news of Jesus? It has staggered me that gospel ministers of maturity and repute have weighed in so heavily on social media when talking to complete strangers of whose spiritual standing they know nothing. One suspects they may not be used to talking to people who actually think differently from them. I felt I had to write to one prominent conservative evangelical leader who had been arguing in a thread on my Facebook, just to give him a heads up regarding some of the people he was talking to. I received no reply and I saw no change of tone in the argument, still less any use of the moment to communicate anything related to the kingdom of Christ. 

When people bump into strangers on the Internet, they often get into heated arguments. We all know what social media can do to usually mild-mannered people. But a Christian must not hide in the anonymity of the internet. We are going to give account for every idle word. And there is no such thing as a "random stranger", for Providence is behind every conversation. There is no one who we will never meet again, for one day we will all give account at the judgement seat of Christ. All will meet there. Every internet conversation forms part of our story and of the story of those we "meet" in this life. How will we give account for our passionate persuasion re Brexit and our indifference to people’s ignorance of God, his commands, his judgment and his grace?

5) The referendum has both revealed the frustration, disenfranchisement and anger that already affected a vast number of people in our country, and has increased the division, turmoil and uncertainty that our society faces. We are in an appalling mess. 

At the political level that tells us that we had better be listening, talking and engaging in real conversations with struggling people who feel that an elitist system has let them down. There has never been a better time to get involved, but it had better be with a genuine, honest open-handedness and readiness to help people. They will know if it isn't. 

And at a spiritual level, we are seeing a meltdown of the things that people have relied on. There is a great shaking happening - within our nation, and between nations. Things are very disorientating. Where can people turn for any higher certainties and values than the dross of false promises and dashed hopes that have come from politicians? At such a time, the church needs to be united, loving, understanding and clear in its proclamation of grace. 

I am accustomed to the fact that some liberals have drifted from the urgency and overriding priority of the eternal, eschatological gospel; I am really disconcerted when conservative evangelicals let a political agenda usurp the place of the gospel in their conversations. 

For my part, I apologise for any and every interaction where I have failed in balance, kindness or understanding over the last fraught weeks. I want to appeal to you, especially to gospel preachers, to make a conscious effort to examine yourself, put right any relationships that words and attitudes have strained, and do all that is within you to preserve and demonstrate the unity we have in the Spirit. This is for our good as individuals, for the good of the church, and for the good of a hurting, lost, blind and fragmented world. 

I am strangely excited about the present situation. Not because I have come round to thinking Brexit was a good idea politically, but because I can recognise that in uncomfortable times, God is at work. I think that a much more radical breakdown is entirely possible, with potential for terror and violence on an unprecedented scale. I can also see Islam going through death throes, with a new openness to the grace of Jesus Christ already being seen amongst many who have fled from (let's face it) persecution by other Muslims. No wonder they are open!

 

But I can also see new waves of hate, and more readiness to show it. If British streets run red with Muslim blood, will you and your church be ready to stand between the immigrants and the mob? Will hospitality and love to strangers be the hallmarks of your religion? 

If the post-modern tide reaches its peak and the church really is persecuted, will you stand firm? Or if an anti-post-modern, anti-political-correctness backlash should take hold, will you be ready to stand equally against that tide and with the newly-oppressed? 

We don't know which of those futures it will be. But we do know who holds the future, and we know that he has work for us to do still. Let us plead with him for his Spirit to be poured out again, for his church to stand firm again, for holiness and love to mark us out, and for an as yet unimagined harvest to be brought in. The hope for Europe isn't the EU, or Brexit, Dexit, Frexit or any other Exit. It is God, in Christ, reconciling people to himself by the Spirit's power. 

The quiet bloke at the back

He came most weeks for about a year. About 2 out of 3, anyway. Mornings only. Used to arrive pretty tight for time, sometimes during the first hymn, and would slip away pretty quickly afterwards. Smiled and seemed friendly enough, but made no effort to involve himself in church life. Seemed to know the songs though, or most of them, and how to find his place in the Bible. But no one asked him about himself; I guess they sensed that it wasn't wanted. Then, quite suddenly, he stopped coming, and has never been back. 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

I went to Longmeadow Evangelical Church most Sunday mornings for about a year. I was spending weekends with a lady in the area; it was she who made me go back to church in the first place - "You won't be sorted until you get the God thing sorted" - and took me to the CofE in her village. It wasn't really my scene, but we went together for a while. Then, one Sunday, she had to work, and I was late for the Anglicans, so I went to Longmeadow. I knew that this was what I needed, but sadly for her it was a bridge too far. She never went once, but still pushed me to go. 

I was at home because the Bible was central. Most of the songs were equally familiar at the CofE, and the liturgical stuff there went deep, but the preaching did not. Suddenly I was back listening to scripture being expounded. I sat through a lot of Genesis with David Power. Ministry that was faithful, relevant and challenging. 

When I was in pastoral ministry, I remember the phenomenon of the quiet bloke at the back. The people (mainly men) who came regularly but not constantly, who shot off quickly after the service, who didn't seem to want to talk much, and, to be honest, to whom I never knew quite what to say. 

I discovered I had become one of those blokes. I was an anonymous, uninvolved, uncommitted but attentive churchgoer. I had a backstory, but nobody ever asked, and I didn't really want to talk about it. There was even one guy there who I thought I recognised from university CU, but I avoided him especially and I'm not sure he was who I thought he was anyway. Sometimes I was shocked or disappointed that people didn't speak to me more, but then I remembered those other quiet blokes at the back, and remembered the aura of "ask me nothing" and I understood. 

Gradually the drip drip drip of the Word and the Spirit started to erode the stony cladding my sin had put up around what was in reality a heart of flesh. I was a backslider, a prodigal who had travelled miles away, and God would not and did not let me be. He used my year as a quiet bloke at the back to bring me home. I finished seeing the lady, and Longmeadow has not seen me since. 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

The reason I write is that in your meetings you too may have a quiet bloke at the back. He won't have the same backstory as I did, but he is there for a reason. Not least, he is there because he wants to be. Be friendly, but don't push him too hard. Pray for him and let the Word do the work. 

You never know what God is doing.