Back to Basics (Again)!

 Back to Basics (Again!)

 

‘The kingdom of God has come near.
Repent and believe the good news!’ (Mark 1:15)

 
According to Mark and Matthew, these are the words with which Jesus began and continued in his public ministry.  No doubt this is a short summary, so let’s take a look at the three parts to the message of Jesus.
 
It starts with a declaration about the Kingdom of God or, as Matthew puts it, the kingdom of heaven.  More particularly, the kingdom has “Come near.”  We need to note that Jesus did not say “coming soon.”  It had already come near.  We often refer to this as already having come yet still to come. 
 
This would have been good news for his Jewish audiences as, at that time, they were living under the dominion of Rome, paying large amounts of taxes to Rome and with Roman soldiers maintaining order on their streets.  Where was their national pride as God’s favoured people!  They are living in the hope of something better God had planned for them. This anticipation is reflected again in Acts 1:6 when, after the resurrection of Jesus, his disciples ask, ‘Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?’
 
Luke also records a conversation about the kingdom between Jesus and some pharisees. The words of Jesus as recorded in Luke 17:20,21 (originally in Aramaic but recorded here in Greek) have been the subject of serious misunderstanding.  Some English translations have Jesus saying that the kingdom is within you, but others say among you.  My own free translation would be to say, “It's already under your noses.”  Here, again, the Pharisees were looking for a political kingdom. Jesus’ answer was that the kingdom was already present, but not as they expected or were able to discern.  The apostle Paul refers to this as the “mystery of the gospel” (Ephesians 6:19).
 
When God sent his Son into the world, the liberation to which the Jews were looking was not going to be a violent overthrow of the might of Rome by the violence of God.  Rather, the deliverance would be a revolution of sacrificial love.  A kingdom of servants serving the world as they followed the Servant Saviour.
 
So, the first part of the message of Jesus was a wake up!  Like the first cracking of an egg as a chick breaks out of its shell, the Kingdom had begun.  It had begun in the self-denial of Jesus, who would one day wash his disciples’ feet, and for us all, surrender his life to the cross.
 
The second part was a call to repent.  The Greek word used in the verse we are considering, means to change the attitude of mind.  To the Jewish understanding at the time this meant turning and returning to God.  When John the Baptiser began his ministry, it was a call to Jews to repentance.  We know that John preached against hypocrisy and expected to see the fruit of repentance - a more godly and righteous life.
 
Those who recite the Creed do so jumping from the moment that Jesus was "born of the virgin Mary” to the moment when he “suffered under Pontius Pilate.” But throughout the years of public ministry, between these two events, Jesus continually called people to turn and return to God.  Like John who baptised to symbolise repentance and washing, the disciples of Jesus also baptised people (John 4:1,2)
 
So, the first two parts of this threefold message that Jesus preached were to porcelain the breaking in of the new world order under God’s reign, and the need to turn and return to God.  The third part is to believe the gospel (good news). Believing is more than mental assent.  You could stand at the edge of a frozen lake and say you believe the ice could support your weight, or you could really believe by walking on it.  In the case of believing in Jesus for salvation, there are crowds of people ‘safely dancing on the ice.’
 
But we need to pause and ask what the good news is.  Since this was describing a situation three years before the crucifixion of Jesus, there must be more to the good news. The context takes us back to the introduction of the kingdom of heaven. That in turn takes us to the sermon that Jesus preached at his home synagogue in Nazareth.  See Luke 4: 16-21.  If we turn to Luke 7:22 we read a description of Jesus’ ministry (fulfilling the Isaiah prophecy).  We even find reference within the Magnificat (Luke 1:40-55).
 
The good news is that God is against oppression and tyranny.  He is against the arrogant and proud.  He humbles those who set themselves above others and raises up the humble.  He acts with compassion on the poor and the sick.  He delivers the oppressed. To this Jesus adds his teaching about love - even for enemies, hope for the hopeless, help for the helpless, repentance and forgiveness What he teaches and practises creates the pattern for his disciples whom he then sends out into towns and villages as his ambassadors to do the same.
 
The death and resurrection of Jesus brought to the first disciples another perspective of salvation, which we tend to emphasise which then eclipses the good news that Jesus taught and preached.  Yet the sacrifice of Christ on the cross is the ultimate lived out act of love and self-denial.  As Paul wrote to the Christians in Philippi, he laid aside his majesty and became a servant, humbling himself even to death on a cross
 
Believing the good news means embracing a call to work for the benefit of others: the poor, the oppressed, the sick and the marginalised.  it means accepting the call to self-denial.  Giving away all that this world calls wealth and status to be part of a kingdom that turns the values of this world upside down, is what it means “to step out into the ice,” to really believe the good news.
 
So, going back to basics means living the Jesus way.  It means allowing the extraordinary loving generosity that Jesus showed in his life and death, to become the blueprint for our lives.   And as we do so the Kingdom of God becomes “at hand” again.
 
Mark's and Matthew’s summary of the message of Jesus could so easily be understood too simply.  It was radical and revolutionary.  It is about a new world order with an entrance door with a sign above it is saying, “change the way you think and behave here.”  Selfishness must become self-denial. Discipleship means servanthood.  Progress is an alien concept, as there is no one who has superior standing to others.  But if it had any place, it would be achieved through humility.
 
‘The kingdom of God has come near.
Repent and believe the good news!’

Barry Osborne 28th July 2022

The Myth of One Church

 

The theme of this week’s reflection is perhaps, more theological than about mission.  However, it is a subject that I feel does need airing, so I hope that you will read on carefully.

 After I had spiritual awakening in 1963, I soon came under the influence of a certain kind of evangelicalism that I can only describe as narrow minded.  I do not mean that they were not sincere and dedicated Christians. Indeed, in many ways they were exemplary.  However, certain general beliefs and attitudes were presented for others to adopt without much thought.  One area in which this was true was ecumenism.  In the mission organisation I had become involved as a teenager we declared ourselves willing to work with anyone “who loved the Lord Jesus”.  However, we did not define what that meant, and it became a different way of expressing that they were evangelical.  Ecumenism, on the other hand, was seen as erroneous and unbiblical.  We tended to keep away.

Understanding and attitudes have tended to change with time, as indeed, what is often now meant by “Evangelical” and “Ecumenical”.  The former could mean very right-wing conservative and literalist, or it could mean Pentecostal and Charismatic, or a range of beliefs and practices in between.  In 1963, many in the church I attended and the mission organisation I had joined would have understood ecumenism as a steady march back to the Roman Catholic Church.  Today, it is more generally understood as a common pilgrimage and a road shared by different travellers who might enjoy and learn from conversing together.

Behind both misunderstood topics is the theology of “Church”.  Twice in Matthew’s Gospel the Greek word ekklesia appears in his text (Matthew 16:18 and 18:17).  At the time that Matthew wrote his gospel, the term was commonly used to describe the called-out assembly of citizens of a city-state, all of whom had rights to determine the affairs of their local community within a direct democratic system, as compared to an elected representative democracy such as we have in the UK.  It is generally understood that synagogues were similarly democratic.

Matthew has presented the words of Jesus as if they had been spoken in Greek.  We have no knowledge of what they were in Aramaic.  What might Jesus have meant when he used the terms Matthew has translated and we have in English as “my church” and “the church”? We need to remember that at that time it meant a called-out assembly of citizens.  Matthew includes fifty-five references to the kingdom of heaven (elsewhere called the kingdom of God).  So, in using ekklesia it would seem Jesus is referring to those who are citizens of that kingdom, called out from among the general population.

Also, at the time of Jesus on earth, people whose behaviour was inappropriate, and where the person refused to repent and respond to reasonable attempts to bring about a change of behaviour.behaviour would be brought before the synagogue congregation if a  In this sense in Matthew 18:15 Jesus is either using the term metaphorically or else referring to synagogue discipline.  Given his audience at the time, it would be logical that he meant the congregation of their local synagogue and not a Christian ecclesial system of governance.

Our contemporary understanding of “one church” does not have a clear and unambiguous basis in the New Testament.  As early Christians were scattered from Jerusalem, and later through the missionary work of those sent out from Antioch, both the record of Acts and the letters in the New Testament do not support the concept of a single organic entity.  As more and more gentiles were converted to become followers of Jesus, guidance was sought by the church at Antioch from the church at Jerusalem on the matter of keeping the law of Moses in order to be righteous before God.

The church at Jerusalem responds by stating first that those who had been leading the Christians at Antioch astray had not been sent to them from the church at Jerusalem, as it seems they had claimed. They then go on to provide some basic essentials for “doing well”.  This was clearly not a set of rules.  Later, Paul also writes on the subject.  So, the apostles and the whole church at Jerusalem are giving guidance on a controversial subject but are not exercising any authority over the church at Antioch.

 Antioch did not need permission from Jerusalem to send out Paul and Barnabas or Silas and Mark.  Their missionary endeavours led to the planting of churches rather than extending the church at Antioch.  The letters of Paul that we have in the New Testament were sent to and for Christians in specific locations.  They were not written to an imagined universal church.   So, their contents should be read as guidance tn those specific churches, from which we might also gain some understanding.  But we should not rewrite history or redetermine Paul’s intentions.

 Now, I will leave it to you to continue reflecting on first century Christianity, while I explain one reason the concept of “one church” causes me concern.  It leads to thinking that somehow the church has failed to live out the great commission.  It is not the fault of us as individuals or local churches.  Somehow there is a collective responsibility that lets us off the hook.  But the New Testament makes clear that it is each individual church and each individual Christian within them on whom the spotlight should fall.

 Responsibility and autonomy should be given to each individual and to each local church to do something to change the world.  We should stop thinking that someone should do something about it.  Imagine what the world would begin to look like if every Christian assumed responsibility for living the Jesus way and proclaiming the good news of salvation and the kingdom of God to the relatives, neighbours, and friends.  Imagine what our local communities would begin to look like if every church accepted responsibility for enabling and resourcing its members for the mission of God.  We need to think local when it comes to responsibility.