Welcome to the CommonsCast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to .church for more information. My name is Jeremy, and I am part of the team here at Commons, and welcome to season eight.

We're starting a new season today but we are also starting a new series together. And of course, if you stop by and you pick up your journal, they will be available in the mailbox for the next month. If you need to and you can head to commons.church/journal right now to request a mailed out one to you. But in that journal, you will find all of our teaching schedule for the next twelve months together. All the topics and ideas that we want to cover this year, we're going to look at relearning friendship in the New Year.

Let's be honest, we've all got some work to do there. We're gonna work our way through the book of James later this fall, and we're going to explore the stories of women in the bible, both the shadow and the light of those tales next summer. But we are starting this season today with a series called The World As It Could Be. And in this series, we are looking together at Jesus parables of the kingdom. His divine imagination not just for what should be, but for what actually could become of our world if we can work to align our imagination with the divine.

But before all that, let's pray together and set our hearts and minds toward everything that we hope for this new season. God of all grace and peace, who welcomes us into this season, into our world with new renewed eyes. New imagination to see what is possible even through all that weighs on us right now. May we learn to live beyond rule keeping and finger pointing and might we be captured by your way in the world around us. A way of invitation, welcome, and grace, and transformation.

May your stories of what could be reached somewhere deep into our hearts and take a strong root so that they become slowly our second nature. And if we find ourselves short on hope these days, struggling perhaps to believe that the world can be repaired or that we could contribute to a story that is bigger than ourselves. And we ask that your spirit be near to us in this moment right now. Reminding us of our value, guiding us toward our purpose, planting within us your divine hope for all of us. May we be captured by an imagination of the world as it could be and muster the courage to then take our place in it.

In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Okay. The world as it could be, the parables of the kingdom. Today, we're gonna talk about stories and sermons and pivots and power.

But let's start by talking about parables. Amy Jill Levine in her book Short Stories by Jesus starts with the observation that Jesus did most of his teaching in the form of storytelling. And while we do see Jesus explain a couple of those stories, most of them are left up to the audience's imagination. They're they're for us to ponder and figure out for ourselves. But Levine says is that it is a very good thing that the interpretations if indeed Jesus did ever provide them have not come down to us.

The gospel writers in their wisdom left most of the parables unexplained. As open narratives in order to invite us into engagement with them. And this is a pretty fascinating take I think. That there is wisdom in a story and then there is wisdom in leaving a story as a story. That sometimes when we add an explanation, be it ours or perhaps even Jesus' own, the story begins to lose some of its power.

Now, don't get me wrong, we're jumping into a series on the parables. I'm going to offer some of my explanations over the next few weeks. If not, I'm kind of out of a job but part of the beauty of a parable is that any explanation for it is always provisional. In fact, that's kind of the point. Stories keep speaking.

Back to Levine, she writes, each reader will hear a distinct message and may find the same parable leaves multiple impressions over time. Different audiences inevitably hear different messages. Just as today a listener who is poor or in ill health may form a different interpretation from the rich man and Lazarus than a person with a seat on the socket change or extended credit from Neiman Marcus. The parable of the lost son will convey different nuances to parents than to children, to the irresponsible and indulged than to the faithful and the overlooked. And reducing parables down to a single meaning destroys their aesthetic as well as their ethical potential.

She says, the surplus of meaning is how poetry and storytelling work and it is all to the good. And by the way, this is something that I'm always trying to keep in mind as I study and I write and I prepare for these sermons. No matter what I am reading, no matter how much theological training I have, I'm always only ever going to have the eyes of a straight white Canadian man. They're all I've got. And that's okay.

I can read other authors. I can choose to find sources from women and indigenous perspectives and more. I can allow those around me, you, to enlighten me to all of the different perspectives that I don't have access to on my own, but I need to seek that out. Now, I can do my research, sure, and I can use my training to help all of us understand what the scriptures meant in their time and setting. Some of the nuance and how these images might have been heard or received in the first century, but it's together that we wrestle with what they mean for us today.

That's the point of a good sermon. It's not just one person's perspective writ large. It's a window into the way that we can think about the scriptures together. And Jesus seems to welcome that with his preaching. However, this also seems to be a strategy that he grows into with time.

This is I think one of the really interesting things about Jesus, at least for me. There there seems to be what I might call this early Jesus. This Jesus of the sermon on the mount. This Jesus who's out there dispensing wisdom and clarifying interpretations of scripture for us. He gives us context and he broadens our perspective.

This Jesus who starts his public ministry by saying things like you have heard it said, but now I tell you. That's a formula that you hear a lot in the Sermon on the Mount, his first big public sermon. And interestingly though, whenever he says you have heard it said, he follows that with a quote from Torah. So he's quoting scripture and then he's telling us that's not enough, at least not on its own. For Jesus, knowing scripture is just the start.

Then you need to know what to do with that scripture. How to interpret it? How to read it in the light of God's grace and peace because if not, well then you can accurately quote scripture and yet still completely miss the point of it. So, initially at least, Jesus spends a lot of his time trying to correct our understandings of scriptures. He says things like you have heard it said, don't murder, but I tell you that is the bare minimum.

And actually, the way that you think about each other, the way that you dismiss or listen to each other in your story, this matters too. And specifically, Matthew five twenty two he says, anyone who says to a brother or sister, Raqah is answerable. Anyone who says, you fool is in danger of the fire of Gehenna. Now, the context here is that this Aramaic word, raka, and this Greek word moron. Well, I actually probably don't need to translate that one for you but these words were a way of dismissing someone, ignoring someone, belittling them to the point of inconsequence.

And Jesus says, look, I get it. Most of us, we have no problem making it through the day without murdering anyone. Great. But then without a thought, we will we will absolutely crush someone's spirit with a well placed word. And scripture needs to point us toward each other in love, not just stop us from tearing each other apart.

Next, he says, you have heard it said no adultery. Well, great, but I tell you that anyone who even looks at another person lustfully has already committed adultery in their heart. If your right eye causes you to stumble, my advice is to gouge it out and throw it away. And a bit much Jesus, but I don't love the translation here actually. In the NIV, they have used looks lustfully for the Greek term epithumio.

Now, in their defense, the Greek word does have a sexual connotation to it and Jesus is talking about adultery after all, I get it. But the bigger picture here is that this word epithumio is a very important word for Jewish audiences. It's one they would recognize immediately because it has a starring role in the Decalogue or the 10 commandments. In fact, it's the big finale number 10. So in Exodus twenty seventeen in the Septuagint or the Greek translation that most people would have been familiar with at the time, it says, do not covet epithumeo, your neighbor's wife or house or ox or donkey or anything else that belongs to them.

So Jesus isn't really talking about lust just in the sense of sexual desire. That's actually a pretty normal human thing and noticing someone beautiful is natural. It's okay. What he's saying is that adultery is only one manifestation of a jealousy and the greed that can drive us to actually dehumanize each other and slowly turn living breathing human beings into things to be acquired or conquered or counted like any of this list of belongings. By the way, side note here, let's notice since we're here that if this kind of objectification is a problem for you, Jesus seems to think that men are capable of taking radical action to correct our patterns rather than expecting women to do that work for us.

Ironically, expecting women to dress in a way to accommodate us is probably a lot closer to the kind of property based covetousness that Jesus is actually warning us against here. The point is over and over again, particularly in his early ministry, Jesus keeps trying to take our partial understandings of scripture and elevate our interpretations. You have heard it said, don't break your oaths. Well, I tell you, speak plainly and honestly and stop trying to obscure what you mean with fancy words. You've heard it said an eye for an eye.

I tell you to confront injustice but return violence for violence that won't work. You've heard it said love your neighbor, hate your enemy. I tell you we have tried that for years, for generations and it does not work. We need a new strategy. And look, there's some brilliant stuff in there.

The Sermon on the Mount is as David Gushy says, the single most important biblical text in the history of Christian ethics and for understanding how we should live in the world. It is the longest single block of Jesus teaching that we have available to us. And we did a series on the Sermon on the Mount a couple years ago. You can find that one in our archives if you want to dig in. There is incredible wisdom to be found in Jesus words there.

But, as you read the gospels, there is something that seems to happen between what Robert for our capon calls the plausible intervening advice giving Messiah of the Sermon on the Mount and what we might call the storytelling mystery inviting dying rising disappearing Christ of the parables. This one who wants to help us see the world differently. As you read through the story particularly in Matthew, Jesus really does seem to change strategy at some point. And he shifts from explaining the Bible to us toward telling us stories of possibilities. I think this is just really interesting.

As a parent, I know all about changing strategies. With our one year old, it is a constant game of tactical transitions. Is she hungry? No. Does she need to be changed?

No. Do her teeth hurt? Maybe does she miss mom well? Almost definitely. But as a parent, you learn to watch and adapt and try new things until you find the one that clicks.

By the way, little is different with the eight year old in our house. Changing strategies remains a functional necessity of parenting at least this far into the game. Those of you with teenagers send tips. But you can watch Jesus through the gospels go from a brilliant, but in a lot of ways conventional teacher correcting our thinking and slowly become this enigmatic figure that seems to believe that sparking our imagination about the world is actually the highest calling. So this teacher who begins his career saying things like, you have heard it said, but now I tell you, well now he starts to tell stories about seeds and weeds and fields and treasures and nets.

Instead of trying to clarify what he means by them, he actually intentionally leaves them ambiguous for us to wrestle with even today. And I like to think about this in the terms that Martin Luther used. He talked about what we call right handed and left handed power. Now, am right handed like I assume most of us. My wife on the other hand is as most of the truly creative people in the world left handed.

But Luther means by right handed power is the kind of power that most of us in the world immediately think of when we hear a word like power. We we think of strength and numbers, right? Military and might and money and the ability not only to get what we want from the world but to force people to do what we want them to do. And I I mean that is power, right? The kind of power that the Roman Empire had over the lands of ancient Palestine and they had won that power by defeating the Greeks who had won it by defeating the Persians who had taken it through the conquest of the Babylonians.

And since it's the kind of power that most of us have been conditioned to pursue for most of our lives, it's also the kind of power that we tend to assume that God is interested in as well. I do what I want or you will be in trouble. Luther though, he describes an alternative what he calls left handed power. And he describes this as the power expressed in love and grace and forgiveness and sacrifice and all of those nice things that we talk about when we talk about God. What's important here is that Luther is not saying that God is graceful and powerful.

He's saying that God's power is grace. I've said it this way before, when you have a little bit of power in your life, you start to want more of it. When you have a lot of power, you begin to desperately want more of it. But when you have infinite power, when everything from sun and sand to stars and supernovas are equally at your disposal to do what you want with. If that's all that's everything that's yours, then all that's left for you is to give it away.

And honestly, a God that is obsessed with right handed power makes absolutely zero sense to me. What's the point? Which is perhaps why Jesus remains so compelling to me. This image of the divine who would die before kill and heal before punish and invite instead of ever coerce. Now it's cool and all you might say, but what does that have to do with the idea of stories of the kingdom of God?

Well, I I think about it this way. Imagine your God for a moment, that might be harder for some of us than for others, but that's fine. But imagine you have been crafting a narrative through all of human history to slowly guide your creation, all of humanity toward the moment you would reveal yourself in full to them. When you do, you come as a baby. The most helpless, dependent thing you can think of.

You literally put yourself in the hands of humanity and you trust us to look after lunch. But then you grow and you learn and you allow yourself to be shaped by your own creation and then you begin to teach. And you begin to help us understand our history and our own stories of God with more clarity. You correct some of our misunderstandings particularly the ones that seem to disadvantage those already in a tough spot. But then at some point, you have to pivot because the goal wasn't just to fix what was misshapen about our interpretations, it was to fundamentally bring about a new way of being in the world.

Not just another kingdom or another empire or another expression of right handed power to dominate the world around us. This time something completely different, something from the bottom up, something that intrinsically transforms our concepts of what is possible. Perhaps something that in the end looks less like a kingdom for a king and more like an expression of divine love. I mean for that, you would need a lot more than just a better set of rules. You would need a people captivated by what is possible.

And this is precisely why I think parables become so important for Jesus specifically as he moves closer to the end of the story. Because he doesn't just want to tell us what to do. He wants to help us become the kind of people who intuit how to live well. There's a section at the end of the book of Matthew. And it's right after Jesus tells all of his kingdom parables which come in Matthew 13.

But Jesus asks his friends, his disciples what they think about him. Who do you really think I am? And they list off some of what the crowds are saying. Jesus is John the Baptist returned or Jesus is Elijah back from his flaming chariot ride to heaven or Jesus is Jeremiah speaking truth to power and all of these are pretty intriguing comparisons. But Jesus pushes them a bit farther and you, what do you think about me?

This is where we get Peter's famous confession, right? You are the Messiah. The one come to change the world to fulfill the story, the son of the living God. Of course, that is the right answer and Jesus says bingo, but then he says this, I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

Now, there's a couple interesting things going on here and for both of them we need just a little bit of understanding of Hebrew history. First, let's talk about these keys to the kingdom. This is actually a reference to Isaiah 22. That's a prophet that Jesus refers to frequently. But if we go back to Isaiah, this is what we read.

In that day, I will summon my servant Eliakim and I will clothe him with your robe and fasten your sash around him and hand your authority over to him. He will be a father to those who live in Jerusalem and to the people of Judah. I will place on his shoulder the key to the kingdom of David. What he opens, no one can shut and what he shuts, no one can open. What's interesting here though is that the keys Eliakim and by proxy the ones that Jesus is handing over, these aren't the keys to the city gates to let people in or to keep them out.

These are actually the keys to the grain store houses of David's kingdom. In other words, Eliakim is being given the responsibility to look after the people of Israel. The scholar, RT France, writes that the traditional portrayal of Peter as porter at the pearly gates deciding who gets in depends on a misunderstanding of what these keys to the kingdom are about. But then second, Isaiah says what Eliakim opens, no one can shut and when he shuts, no one can open. And Jesus repeats that in a way, right?

But he changes it. Instead of talking about being open and shut, he uses the terms bound and loosed. Now, the parable is close enough, it makes sense and we get it. But what we may not understand here is that binding and loosing are actually very specific technical terms in the emerging rabbinic movement. See in Torah, there were 613 identified rules or mitzvot that everyone had to follow.

They all agreed upon. These were the rules that Jewish people had to follow like don't work on Sabbath for example. The problem came when everyone tried to figure out what work meant. Can I go for a walk on Sabbath and how far is too far and does a work out relaxing walk but I drop something off at the office on my way home? Is that work or is that just convenient?

I mean, need rules. And so, even before the time of Jesus, the terms binding and loosing had become a way of talking about the interpretation of these specific teachers. If a teacher thought that resting on the Sabbath meant no walking farther than one mile, then you as their student, well, you would be bound to that interpretation of the rule. And if your friend followed the way of another teacher and that teacher said, well, look, rest. Obviously, that means enjoyment and relaxation and freedom from measurement or worry.

Then as their student your friend would be loosed from the more strict reading of Torah. Both of you follow the rules, but how you do it differs. What's really fascinating here is that immediately after finishing a series of parables about God's kingdom, stories to spark our imagination of what is possible, Jesus pulls two surprise moves. First, he says, I will build my church and I will give you the keys not to decide who's in and who's out, but so that you can open the doors and use everything I have given you to care for your neighbor well. And then he says, won't be easy.

And new situations will arise, and one day there will be a respiratory pandemic, and there won't be any playbook to follow, and you'll have to decide for yourself what to do. To bind or to lose, to decide what to hold on to and where to let go of things, but as long as you remember what all of that authority is for, never to close the gates, but always to care for each other well then not even death and Hades will stand in your way. This is precisely why parables are so important to the Christian story. Because God isn't interested in the kind of right handed kingdom that we are, the kind with rules and gates and people left on the outside. God is interested in helping our imagination of what could be become so deeply formed by the way of Jesus that we stop looking for rules to tell us what to do.

And we start using our keys, whatever it is that's available to us to do what is good and right and generous and kind in the world. And if that sounds a little scary to you, a world without rules, it's okay. It should. Because love was always going to be the far more dangerous way. But if we can allow Jesus to guide us, and if we can trust him to be our way in the world, if we can take his stories and allow them to inform our imagination of what could be, then we could scarcely imagine how beautiful this world could become.

Let's pray. God, thank you that your investment in us extends beyond just the rules to tell us what to do in this situation or that, but that you trust us to be able to be formed in our imagination of the world to the likeness of your son. To have stories grip our hearts, to have them inform the ways that we move in the world, the path that we take, the decisions that we make. Not because everything is right or wrong, but because there is a way that is good, and a way that is true and beautiful. The closer we come to your son, the more we lean on your spirit for guidance.

The more we will be able to bind and loose and make decisions about how we open the doors wide to welcome everyone into your table in grace. God may what authority we have been given each of us in our lives, may we use that only to serve those who are near us. And in that, may we follow your way in the world. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen.