Losing the plot

In Matthew 21:33-46, Jesus tells a parable of a landowner who plants a vineyard, doing all the right things (he puts a fence around it, and a wine press and watchtower in it).  He then leases it to tenants and leaves the country.  At harvest, he sends his slaves to collect the produce. The tenants mistreat and kill the slaves.  He sends more slaves, and the same happens.  Finally, he sends his son, thinking, they'll respect him because he comes in my name, as my representative... That's not how it turns out.  The tenants see the heir, and kill him, thinking they'll get his inheritance.
Jesus asks his audience, 'What do you think the landowner will do to them when he comes?'  They reply, 'Put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at harvest time.'
Jesus goes on to warn that the Kingdom of God will be taken away from them (his hearers) and given to a people that produces the fruits of it.
This passage is not anti-Semitic.  I once sat in a New Testament class when this passage was being looked at.  Almost everyone in the room thought that this passage was about God 'dumping' the Jews for his new squeeze, the Christians.  However, if we look at the dramatis personae of the piece, we find that this is not at all the case.  It is true that God is the landowner. But if we read verse 45, it clearly tells us that the chief priests and Pharisees got the message: they were the tenants.  Further proof that the tenants are not to be understood as Israel, or the Jews, is given by following the reference upon which Jesus builds this parable: Isaiah 5.
In Isiah 5, God builds a vineyard, the right way: he puts a fence around it, and a winepress and watchtower in it.  He loves the vineyard, he does everything necessary for it, but instead of grapes, it produces wild grapes.  That vineyard, Isaiah tells us, is Israel.  And again, in Jesus' parable, the vineyard is God's kingdom, the ideal, or fulfilment of, Israel.  (It's also worth remembering here that when Jesus told this story, there were no Christians as distinct from Jews.)  The problem, for Jesus, isn't Israel.  It's the powers that be.  The establishment.  They're taking liberties with what God has entrusted to them.  Oppression and structural violence are their modus operandi.  And even when Jesus comes along, they abuse him.
Jesus speaks truth to power.  That's what this parable is about.  Power.  Jesus challenges those who hold it about their relationship with it.  Ultimately, Jesus will remove these people from power and entrust his kingdom to those whose lives reflect it.  The kind of people Jesu wants in power, I suggest, are those who exercise power under people, not power over people.  People who lift others up.  Who encourage, who empower, who release.  Not people who bring or keep others down.  Who discourage, who disempower, who burden.  These latter will lose the plot - the vineyard of God's  kingdom.  After all, didn't Jesus say that the rulers of the Gentiles "lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them.  But it is not so among you" he told his disciples; "but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be the slave of all.  For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10:42-45).  And in a great enacted parable, he got down from the table, took a towl and a bowl of water, and washe his disciples' feet (John 13).
So how are our relationships with power?
It's not enough to claim we are acting in Jesus' name if we are acting contrary to his will and ways.  The tenants thought they would get the son's inheritance by killing him.  How stupid.  Yet many believe that by acting counter to Jesus' kingdom - crucifying him over again - they are getting a share in his inheritance.  No.  They are losing the plot.

They like the church, but not Jesus

  A few years ago, a guy called Dan Kimball published a book called, 'They like Jesus, but not the church'.  The thesis was that there are masses of people outside the church who actually really like Jesus, who respect what he's about, in various ways.  I confess I haven't read the book (my wife has), but I certainly agree with the concept.  It seems there are many people who like the historical figure of Jesus, who respect and even attempt to practise some of his ethical teaching, but have no time for the church, or organised religion.  There might be others who recognise that Jesus is the only, the true, or the best, way to spiritual enlightenment, salvation, fulfilment, or some such idea.  But these people find the church to be at odds with Jesus - either it is hypocritical, or it is too restrictive to facilitate the sought-after spiritual exchanges.
  I would like to suggest that a parallel phenomenon is also occurring - a mirror or shadow version of what is happening outside the church is happening inside it too.  It is, sadly, true that there are a great many who like the church, but not Jesus.  These people may be horrified to realise that Jesus, in fact, did upset the apple cart.
  Jesus talked about stuff - real stuff, God stuff - often dealing in questions and open-ended stories, rather than polished, Hallmark platitudes or finely-tuned and unassailable doctrinal statements.
  Jesus spent more time outside his church building than in it.  (Granted, the 'church' per se did not exist in his time)  In the Gospels, Jesus spends little time at synagogue, and probably less time at the Jerusalem temple (the place to be for the seriously religious).  And some of his visits to these places ruffled feathers (literally on at least one occasion).
  Jesus met lots of people in their homes or on the street.  In their homes.  To talk about God.  Imagine...
  Jesus spent time - lots of time - with 'undesirables'.  He didn't seem to care about his reputation.  Jesus sought out the excluded, and included himself among them.  People like lepers, prostitutes, tax collectors.
  Jesus loved children.  He welcomed them, even when others thought they were noisy and disruptive.  And Jesus' care for children seems pretty sincere to me.  He didn't just see them as 'the future', an investment, an asset, a resource.
  Some people will be shocked by this: Jesus got tired.  Jesus got hungry.  Jesus wept (John 11:35, shortest verse in the Bible, it's in there!).  Perhaps worse, Jesus laughed!
  Jesus was prepared to challenge authorities: social, religious, civil, spiritual.  Jesus was prepared to speak and act on behalf of the hurting and hopeless, the voiceless and vulnerable, the lost, the last and the least.  In fact, these were his people, his brothers and sisters (that's in there too, for example, in Matthew 25:31-46).
  Jesus was prepared, for God's sake and ours, to put himself where he could get hurt, in real danger.  He risked everything.  Sacrificed everything.  For others.
  God's love and human suffering - rather than tradition or doctrine - dictated Jesus' actions.
  Lots of people who had been excluded, who didn't fit in, loved Jesus.  Lots of people who had issues - issues that were obvious and public, that they couldn't or wouldn't hide - loved Jesus.
  Lots of religious people hated Jesus.  They didn't like the way he challenged them.  They didn't like the way he tried to mix things up, to move boundaries that had been built up over a long time to protect decent people and the faith and God.  After all, isn't that what it's all about?  Looking after our own, and keeping God good, like Sunday best?
  It seems to me that not too much has actually changed.  There are still people today who like the church, but not Jesus.  They are fully paid up members of the church, but they don't recognise the Jesus you've just read about.  They wouldn't like him.  They'd find him too controversial, too difficult to handle, too outrageous to follow.  They'd probably want him out of the way, so they can get on with church business in peace.  Without fear of being challenged.  Challenged about how we do church - or where or when.  Challenged about who it's all for - who are we serving, who are we including?  Challenged about how we live our lives, on all kinds of levels.
  Trouble is, the Jesus you've been reading about is, to me, inescapably the Jesus of the Gospels.  He's Jesus.  Like it or lump it.  Like him or lump him.
  The good news is, Jesus includes everyone.  He welcomes everyone (even the kind of people who actually don't like him or find him inconvenient).  He might challenge us, but he welcomes us.  What we do about that is up to us.

Easy. Like Sunday morning?

A few weeks ago as we were driving to the Sunday morning service, listening to Steve Wright's Sunday Love Songs on Radio 2, the Lionel Richie (was that with or without the Commodores?) classic 'Easy like Sunday morning' came on. And I had a bit of an epiphany. I suddenly thought, there's something in this. Easy - like Sunday morning. It all started to crystalise when it came to the bridge:

I wanna be high, so high,
I wanna be free to know the things I do are right.
I wanna be free, just me...

This talks of a deep spiritual yearning. There's a desire to know that we're living right. We're doing the right thing. And yet, as people, we seem to miss out, mess up. We can't seem to do right for doing wrong. So doing wrong becomes habit. But wouldn't it be brilliant to 'be free to know the things I do are right'? Wouldn't it be great if it was possible to live that life of rightness, where we do the right thing without even thinking about it? If only it was that easy...

Wouldn't it be great to be free, to be 'just me' - just who we are, who we were made to be?

The Christian message of salvation and transformation by God's grace purports to deliver this. And yet, experience often teaches us otherwise. In most churches, when we turn up for our Sunday morning gatherings (or equivalent), we seem to still be trapped by this combination of fear and longing - fear that we have to live up to expectations, yet we can't, or know we won't; and longing, to do the right thing, to be good, to be better... Somehow in all of this, we lose that power that makes us free to know the things we do are right, and free to be 'just me'. We have to appear a certain way, maybe sit in a certain place, stand at the right time, act in a certain way. Easy? Sunday morning is not easy. And yet it should be. And life as a follower of Jesus should be - maybe not easy, but definitely simple.

After all, isn't this the very heart of Jesus' own call to discipleship - to a scholarship as his student, an apprenticeship to him:

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
(Matthew 11:28-30)

Being a disciple of Jesus should not be so burdensome. It should be free and freeing. It's about the easy yoke. The yoke was, first of all, a harness used to control beasts of burden (and maybe slaves), to allow them more easily to move their burden. But yoke also came to be understood as a term for wisdom or teaching. For example, a text written between the times of our Old and New Testaments (found in the Apocrypha), says:

I opened my mouth and said, Acquire wisdom for yourselves without money.
Put your neck under her yoke, and let your sould be receive instruction; it is to be found close by.
(Sirach 51:25-26)

And so, Jesus' invitation to follow him and his wisdom, his teaching, is not an invitation to the kind of straitjacket that the world of 24/7 media, money-makes-the-world-go-round, 2 cars on the drive, infeasibly large TV, calls us to. It's easy.

Nor is it and invitation to the kind of 'performance', look right, act right lifestyle of organised religion.

Jesus calls us to 'be free to know the things [we] do are right', to 'be free, just me...'
By following Jesus in his way - not the world's way, our church's way, or our own way - we can know that freedom. As we are shaped by him, by his teaching and by his example, we will more and more behave habitually like him - without having to think about it. We can know that the things we do are right, because we will be right; and out of our character flows our behaviour. Easy.

Paul, a follower of Jesus, recognised that the change had to occur in our character first, and that trying to 'do the right thing' just doesn't cut it. He said that we shouldn't conform to the world around us - blending in without thinking, by habit - but must be transformed (changed from one form to another) by the renewing of our minds: to have the 'mind' or the character of Jesus Christ formed in us (Romans 12:2).

Paradigm Lost

The church (and in particular, The Salvation Army?) is at a crucial juncture in its existence.

Perhaps the problem is that the church (and in particular, The Salvation Army?) is operating in an old paradigm. It carries on - or tries to - as though the world has not changed in the past century. Trouble is, it has. The world is changing, and if it hasn't fully arrived in a new paradigm ('postmodernity'), it is certainly approaching it, on the cusp of it even. Thus far, the church has steeled itself against the onset of any such paradigm shift; it has denied it, preached against it, and finally battened down the hatches...

However, the emerging generation of leaders within The Salvation Army (and most probably elsewhere) have grown up immersed in this emerging paradigm. They are fluent in contemporary culture. They breathe change like air, and find themselves like fish out of water in a structure which tries to preserve and perpetuate a lost paradigm.

I dare to suggest that the Bible has an answer. Jesus once spoke (in Matthew 9:16-17) of repairing an old cloak with an unshrunk piece of cloth. His illustration makes the point that "the patch pulls away from the cloak and a worse tear is made." He goes on: "Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; otherwise, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved."

The results of putting an unshrunk - new - patch on an old garment is a worse tear - and perhaps a lost patch. The patch won't fit. But before we can accuse the patch of 'just being awkward', Jesus follows up that illustration with the one about the wine.

It's almost as though Jesus acknowledges, even respectfully doffs his hat, to the old wineskins. They have clearly been well used and have done their bit - with distinction, perhaps - in the past. But Jesus is clear that to pour the new wine into old skins is not only pointless; it is destructive. But destructive of what? First of all, the skins burst; second, the wine is spilled; third, the skins are destroyed. So the wine is lost, ruined, useless; and so are the wineskins. The solution is to put the new wine into fresh wineskins, "so both are preserved." If our emerging leaders are being poured into an old paradigm, old structures, old wineskins - won't all be at risk of loss, of destruction?

Of course, in the original context, Jesus was most probably referring to Himself and to the 'new' availability of the Kingdom of God, and the 'old wineskins' of the Judaism and domination systems of his day, or the existing understandings of God and His way of doing things. This latter had to be reimagined, reshaped - reborn - to 'fit' Jesus and the Kingdom of God.

But today, new leaders are emerging who are passionate about Jesus and His Kingdom, who are committed to a radical life of discipleship and its expression in mission - in short, people soaked in the new wine of Jesus, people through whom the new wine of Jesus can flow into a world dying to taste Him - to taste the authentic, refreshing, invigorating, challenging, life-changing, society-transforming wine of Jesus. But if these people are put into old wineskins... oh dear.

So, does everything need to change? Yes and no. The Salvation Army, and the church, need to be reborn, or resurrected. This is not about getting rid of everything. It is a journey of transformation, a transfiguration - like the caterpillar, into the chrysalis, into the butterfly. All are made of the same 'stuff', but are quite distinct. It is the same creature, but radically different. The Salvation Army must change its form, its appearance, its shape, its self-concept - but keep its original DNA. It must recapture its original purpose, and reimagine its expression for today.

The UFO Model

Does your church follow the UFO model? That's right, UFO as in "Unidentified Flying Object". You may not have heard of it, but it's more common than you might think.

Is your church building a strange object which apparently landed in the middle of the community from another planet or time - perhaps from "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..."?

Is it filled with aliens? Christians are often perceived as weird, otherworldly creatures, with little or no grasp of the actual realities of planet earth here and now...
And, of course, many of the people in the church are aliens to the community in which the UFO finds itself, as they don't live anywhere near...

And perhaps most sinister of all, the mission of many churches appears to be "The Fourth Kind" of encounter: Abduction. They seek to pluck innocent bystanders from the surrounding community and bring them back to the mothership for experimentation and preparation for departure to the far off alien land known as "Heaven"...

Shouldn't we change this model? Church should be organic. It should grow from among the local community. Church should be about people planting paradise where they live, part of God's "invasion" of the here and now, working towards His perfect forever.

The Beatitudes

Matthew 5:3 - "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

Notably, Matthew uses the term 'kingdom of heaven', not 'kingdom of God'. Perhaps this is to avoid offending the sensibilities of Jewish readers - his audience was probably heavily Jewish (perhaps Jewish Christians living in 'exile' in Syria) - they might not have liked Matthew using God's name...

'Blessed', of course, is more than 'happy'; perhaps it's more like in a position of God's special favour? Does this mean the poor in spirit are in the kingdom, or that they are the kingdom, or that it belongs to them in a unique (or exclusive?) way?

'Poor in spirit' - 'those who know they're a mess'; the 'anti-Pharisees', with a humble opinion of themselves, perhaps. Just as God apparently has a special interest in the physically/materially poor, it seems He also has a special interest in the spiritually poor. Is this like coming as children (Mt 18:1-5, et al.)? Is this the tax collectors? The prostitutes?

Is the poor in spirit like a spiritual bank account thing? Like the Pharisees, who keep a close eye on their spiritual account. The poor in spirit don't have much in there, they haven't been working at earning points. Is Jesus using the Pharisaic language against them?

Is Jesus talking about in-grouping and out-grouping? Are the poor in spirit 'in'?
I suspect Jesus isn't in/out-grouping here. I think this is about the Revolution of God. Who's 'in', who's 'blessed', according to the Pharisees? They are - the 'righteous', the good Jews, the strict and particulars. In fact, some say that the Pharisees believed that their own Torah observance would precipitate the Messianic kingdom, so the poor in spirit were really messing things up as far as these guys were concerned.
But Jesus says, 'Not on my watch'. You're not cutting these guys out. This is for them too. The poor in spirit are in, they have a part in the kingdom, it's theirs. Revolutionary stuff.

Every day's a school day...

I often say that every day's a school day because, if we look and listen, then every day we learn something.
I believe that Jesus is my teacher, that's what being a disciple of Jesus means. It means one who learns, from Jesus. And, based on Richard Burridge's idea in 'Four Gospels, One Jesus?', I want to explore some of the teachings of the 'human face of Jesus', the Teacher, as presented in Matthew.
This comes in five blocks - very Jewish, as we might expect from Matthew - look at Torah (the Pentateuch, or 5 scrolls: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy) or the Psalms, presented in 5 books. The first, and perhaps most famous, of these blocks is the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5-7. Whether or not it actually happened as a solid, one-off sermon is not make or break; what's important is what it says and that Jesus said these things at some point or another.
So, in instalments, let's look and listen and learn from Jesus the Teacher...