Marriage matters?

Matthew 19.1-15

This passage is about a lot more than marriage! It invites us to recognise:

A. the Cosmos as it is - There is a tension between what God desires for us - what was designed and intended - and the way things are. This, before anything else, is vital to see. The world as it is not as God designed it to be, or wants it to be!
People will say, ‘how can there be a God if ......’ And we have to point out that things as they are do not reflect God as He is!

B. The relationship of Law to Christianity - the 10 commandments and all that comes with them - is about dealing with our flawed society. Conformity to the Law is expedience, not excellence. Laws work to compensate for, not solve, human sin. It’s not possible to legislate a Christian society into existence.

C. The Kingdom of Heaven -
not an ‘afterlife’, above the clouds
not a world state, enforced by ‘divine’ Law

The Kingdom of Heaven is met with and found in the process of bringing the presence and the influence of God into this world, in new and significant ways. What matters are the ‘drivers’ in our lives. Drivers that enables power and resources to find expression in purposes and results. The drivers that implement the ‘Jesus way’ in and through our lives.

What are the key drivers?

The present passage is part of a discourse about being ‘childlike’ that goes all the way back to Matthew 18.1. It is not power that defines the Kingdom of God, or is its ‘driver’. The drivers are to be:

18.1-14 Humbling ourselves:

recognising the ‘other’
doing the will of God

18.15-35 Forgiving & reconciling

It is by using these drivers that we can channel our creativity and energy, our latent skills and abilities, for service in God’s Kingdom.

Once we have established this agenda, we can talk about marriage:

1. It is good if we are not compelled by sexual instincts. Singleness is good. Singleness allows a clearer focus on pursuing the purposes of the Kingdom of Heaven. There are good things about being single.

2. Marriage recognises an explicitly sexual and social integration of a man and woman. Marriage exists as a social institution to recognise, embrace and harness instinctive desires for sex, physical intimacy and propagation. The two are to ‘become one’.

3. The invitation to live by the ‘drivers of the Kingdom of Heaven’ is upon the married couple in the same measure as it is upon the single person. There can develop a type of selfishness in marriage, as in singleness. The married Christian ‘unit’ and also the single Christian ‘unit’ are both called to walk the same path of discipleship.

A healthy Christian church will be made up both single and married people. The focus must be on living out together our calling to live by the ‘drivers’ of the Kingdom of Heaven, thereby allowing that Kingdom to touch other people around us here on earth.

A child's eye view

whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 18.4)

Humbling ourselves can only be understood when we realise what it is not. Neither a lack of self confidence nor a readiness to endure humiliation is what we have here. Jesus is not speaking of something forced upon a person, by circumstances or by others. He is talking about something a person chooses: whoever humbles himself.

Jesus speaks this way because humbling himself is something that He Himself undertakes. Paul speaks, in Philippians 2.8, of how Jesus humbled himself and became obedient to death - even death on a cross! Humility is something that takes place deep within a person. It is an inner attitude of self abasement, placing ourselves below others: so we can look up at them. Where people can in humility consider others better than yourselves (Philippians 2.3).

And because this is an inner attitude, it is something we cannot easily detect by a person’s demeanour. It is evidenced rather by its fruit in relationships. Where genuine interest in others is expressed and pursued. An inclination to see potential, not simply faults; strengths, not simply weaknesses. This is why we, like the disciples, find it so hard to humble ourselves. It is so much easier to compete and compare, criticise and complain.

To be great in God’s eyes, Jesus invites us to adopt the perspective of the least. It’s not easy. It’s not very self-affirming. It’s a bit like taking up a cross.

Painful truth

Jesus turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men." (Matthew 16.23)

Those who recognise and embrace Jesus Christ as the One in whom God meets us in our humanity are entrusted with the power of the keys, but this does not make us magicians or superheroes. To be drawn into the path of Jesus’ humanity, we are drawn into the path of suffering. It is inescapable. It is the suffering of the heart of God in the face of endemic sin, defacing and marring humanity.

Why emphasise this? Because for us, like Peter, it is easy to try and make the ‘Jesus event’ a place of escape from the pain of life. All healing and blessing and prosperity. But proclaiming and applauding such a reduced message holds the danger of creating circuses of escapist fantasy, not communities of faith. Peter, like so many, was shocked at facing the inevitable outcome of what Jesus stood for. And Jesus rebukes Him severely for this failure.

The real spiritual power of church, as community in Christ, is found when we recognise that Christ is fully involved in both the heights and the depths of human existence. He walks with us through all of this. The good and the bad. The beautiful and the ugly. Part of what God has given us is the commission to allow others to see His and our involvement in real life and all its consequences. Yes, to bring healing, health and hope of wholness. But also to recognise that there are also hurts and pains and struggles and even agony.

And if this is true for Jesus, it is also true for those who would walk His way with Him. So it is that the declaration of the via crucis - ‘the way of the cross’ - is here made. As Jesus will inevitably suffer, so too will His disciples. There is a losing of our life to be experienced. In order that the full life of Christ be entered:

Then Jesus said to his disciples,
If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.
(Matthew 16.24-25)

Something Different

"But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?" Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." (Matthew 16.15-16)

People were wondering about Jesus. He was not fitting into their preferences and prejudices. His way of life, His attitudes and His actions didn’t conform to categories that people were used to or even wanted. He not only brought relief to people who suffered, but spoke of justice and the need to care for the poor. He didn’t play ‘power politics’ or side with the right people. He was different.

What was special in Peter’s declaration, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of God’? We’ve got used to speaking about Jesus as ‘the Son of God’ as if it were an admission of His status. This is because divine status became a big issue in the 4th - 5th centuries AD, when Christianity was being explained in terms of pagan philosophy. It came to mean, ‘Jesus is really God’. But what we read here is from the 1st century AD. So what did it mean for Peter?

The Expression, ‘son of God’, is not one we find in the Old Testament. But the expression ‘sons of God’ appears in Genesis 6.2-4, where it refers to a time when people were remembered as special in the abilities they had. And here is the key. Peter is recognising there’s something different about Jesus, something that defines Him in terms of God and God’s agenda. Yes, He is different. But He’s different in a way that reflects what God is about.

If you and I are different, what makes us so? Is it because we’re religious or pious? Is it because of peculiar opinions? Or is there something about us that speaks of God and His agenda, His purpose, His presence? This is what marks people as the Sons of God: followers of the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth. Something of the smell of God.

Dear Father, today help me to keep my eye on the ball. Not to be obsessed about my savings. Not to be preoccupied with my preferences. Help me to look on others with your love. Let me carry hope and healing to them, through your presence in my life. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Fragile beauty

He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you?

To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God

(Micah 6.8)

It’s so easy to get disgruntled with others. It happens when we get ‘out of sorts’. We start to project our own dysfunctionality onto them. Our pathologies become, as we see them, their ‘problems’ that ‘they’ need to deal with.

That’s why it’s so much easier to approach church as a consumer commodity. Somewhere people go to have our needs met and our religious sensitivities soothed. Always keeping our distance from others. And there are people who can work in such a setting.

For me, there is no future in this. I have tasted community. Both its fragility but also its beauty. Like orchids. And therefore I have turned my back on church run as organisation and institution for religious consumers, constantly searching for new ways of commodifying the Gospel so that people will decide to believe. No. I have seen what the challenge of community does for people. I have chosen community over against commmodity. Discipleship over against decisions.

Being faced with Christ’s demand to forgive and be reconciled in the face of conflict and competition changes people for the better. Where humility is honed and love is learnt. This can only happen when we approach church as community: the discipline of gathering together, seeking out each other with sensitivity, in Christ’s name.

But note this. To sustain ourselves in a journey into humility and love we first need to learn to be alone before God. To face ourselves and all our fleshly appetites, and then to yield not to them but to the God who would pour out His Spirit upon us.

So this weekend, take time to be alone with God. So that you might go on Sunday to embrace the community of Christ in humility and love. And be changed for the better.

The path to success

If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector. I tell you the truth, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them. (Matthew 18.15-21)

This morning I delighted in listening to Keith Jones, the rector of IBTS, preach from this passage. Because he preached it in a way true to Christ. I’ve heard people talk about ‘binding and loosing’ as if it was about how to get spiritual. But Keith, as always, brought us to focus on how the spiritual is only truly such when it is profoundly physical and ethical.

The Christian life is not believing about Jesus. It is believing like Jesus. Without forgiveness and reconciliation leading into life together that expresses love to others, there is neither Christian message nor mission.

To ‘bind on earth’ is to bring into concrete expression the love of God in human lives, thus bringing the presence of heaven to earth in a way that makes sense and that really affects the lives of those around us.

Has someone offended you or caused problems in any way? Seek them out. Don’t run away. Be reconciled and go forward in love. This is the way of Christian discipleship.

Investing the past for the Future

So Elisha left him and went back. He took his yoke of oxen and slaughtered them. He burned the plowing equipment to cook the meat and gave it to the people, and they ate. Then he set out to follow Elijah and became his attendant (1 Kings 19.21).
Jesus replied, ‘No one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.’ (Luke 9.62).

I am here in Prague, where we are have students gathered from many countries, from as far away as the Americas and SE Asia, as well as Europe and former Soviet Asia. Their research studies are divided among the departments of Biblical Studies, Baptist and Anabaptist History, Missiology and Applied Theology. These people are mostly mission workers, theological educators and pastors, some serving in dangerous places. Why are they all here?

At the heart of what we are about in the seminary is the task of examining and applying the legacy of our Christian knowledge to the present, to help serve the purposes of God now and into the future. As Christians, we look to the Bible and the interpretations of it over 2,000 years, seeking to root the understanding of our faith now in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ in a way that is true to what the Bible tells us.

But there is a paradox in this. For while we need to past to define our present, we cannot go forward in service by holding to the past. We have to look to our heritage and then, investing our energy into God’s future, move forward. So let us be thankful for what has been passed onto us by previous generations; and for the opportunity to invest it sacrificially for the future.