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Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information. We did also start our new series at commons with a series called at commons.
Speaker 1:And this is just a series of conversations that's intended to serve as a bit of a frame for the year, a guide for all of the conversations that will follow in season 10. And so to do that, we have taken the welcome page, The 1st page every year of the journal as our frame this year. And so almost from the beginning, the 1st page of the journal has introduced comments with The same language every year that attempts to lay out some of our core convictions that ground us as a community. Last week, we looked at the 1st line together. At commons, we are completely fascinated with this complex and beautiful collection of texts we call the bible, but we worship Jesus.
Speaker 1:And that line feels like it's trying to be a little controversial. Right? However, it really should be standard operating procedure for Christian communities. I mean, the bible is wonderful. It's fascinating.
Speaker 1:It is packed Full of wisdom and culture and creativity in life. We work really hard at commons to make sure that we have a balanced diet of bible that reckons with all the different genres and styles within the bible across any given year, but the bible is there to point us to Jesus. Just before heading into the summer, we the I series on the exodus. And as part of that, we looked at the decologue or the 10 words or perhaps better known as the 10 commandments. And if you remember, right there off the top is this warning, You shall have no other gods before me.
Speaker 1:You shall fashion no idol to replace me. And I'm not saying that the Bible is an idol, but I am saying that the Bible can become 1 if we let it. We read the Bible. We study the Bible, but we do this so that we can encounter the God revealed in Jesus. And I say that as someone who loves the bible, someone who has Studied it professionally and academically and devotionally for most of my life, but I say this, Jesus is greater than the bible.
Speaker 1:In fact, I say this as someone who is a professional Christian, Jesus is bigger than Christianity. And I will argue until my career is done that starting with that premise, the centrality of Jesus, It will draw you back to the bible with more curiosity. It will pull you deeper into your faith with more conviction. So all of our reading and our study, all of our gathering and worship, our religion and practice, all of it at its best Points us to the capital w, word of God that is Jesus. And so last week, we looked at that phrase, the word of God.
Speaker 1:A phrase found all throughout the scriptures on the pens of poets and prophets on the very lips of Jesus. We even found the early church adopting this phrasing itself, But always in the context of pointing to a larger, more expanded sense of god's work in the world, except that is when it points us directly to Jesus. And the way I framed it last week was that all through scripture, the word of god is unfolding From the words of creation to the 10 words of the decologue, to the words of the psalmist and the prophet, to the teachings of Jesus. But now, in the light of his death and resurrection, the church begins to look at the life of Jesus and say, actually, I think that was it. Jesus was god's word to us.
Speaker 1:Everything god wanted to say, No longer our words about god gathered and passed down, but actually god's self speaking in history. And ironically, I believe that if you slowly come to believe that, then I don't see how that can do anything but Draw you back to the words of the bible with more fascination for them because that's where we encounter Jesus in the 1st place. However, if we keep Jesus at the center, that is going to change how we read the story. And so that is what we wanna talk about today. But first, let's pray.
Speaker 1:God who is alive and active in us and near us, who continues to guide and mold and shape us into the people you imagine us to become. Might we never become satisfied just with Dry and dusty religion, movements and traditions and liturgies for their own sake. But instead, might we come to embrace those same patterns for how they can point us to you. Your heart and your love, your grace and peace embodied in the world through Jesus. Might our rhythms of worship, even today, create ripples of grace in our lives.
Speaker 1:And might that slowly begin to change the context in which we live. More compassion for ourselves, more understanding for our neighbor, More welcome for the stranger. Might we find ourselves here today immersed in your love? And if we come into this space, Weighed down and heavy. Might your presence here with us lift us into new places with new possibilities for generous love.
Speaker 1:In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen. Last week, we talked about the words and the word and how important it is to keep Jesus at the center of our imagination. The next question, though, is how that conviction will shape how we read the bible. So we say this at commons.
Speaker 1:The scriptures lead us to the realization that Jesus is the only exact representation of the divine And that god has always looked like Jesus even when we didn't see that clearly. So There's this kind of chicken and egg thing going on in Christianity. Right? We read the bible to encounter Jesus, But once we do and once we realize that Jesus is where the story was leading us, that changes how we look back on the story. We hear things differently because of where the story has taken us.
Speaker 1:Another way to say that is once you are a Christian and Once you begin to follow the way of Jesus, you no longer read the bible objectively. You read it through Jesus. Now that doesn't mean we don't do our work and we don't study and we don't try to understand context and nuance and set and setting. In fact, we do a lot of that work here at commons. Truthfully, I think it's one of the things that we do really well, but that does not mean we are unbiased.
Speaker 1:In fact, we are, as Christians, specifically consciously biased to look for the way of Jesus when we read the bible. Now speaking of biased readings, here's an example. My daughter is 3 years old, and she will often ask me for a kiss when I get home. And I will say, do you want a big kiss or do you want a little kiss? Putting as much emphasis as I can muster on the little kiss.
Speaker 1:However, I know that she will say, no. I want a big kiss. And I will say, are you sure? And she will say yes, and then I will give her The biggest kiss on the cheek that I can possibly muster. It's a little game we have going on.
Speaker 1:However, when I am done, she will then often turn to me and say, daddy, your beard is strong. Now I know that she means scratchy. Right? But I prefer to pretend that she means Strong because that makes me feel good about myself, and I wanna choose narratives in my life that make me feel good about myself. So my beard is strong, and I have proof of it.
Speaker 1:Point is, that is not an unbiased reading of her words. I know what she means. It's a choice to embrace the story that reinforces my hopes about myself, or at least the hopes that I want to hold on to in my life. But as Christians, we're doing the same thing all the time, or at least we Should be. We affirm that Jesus is the word of god, that the fullness of deity lives and breathes in him, that he is the only exact representation of god's character.
Speaker 1:See Colossians and Hebrews. And, therefore, we read And we search out narratives, and we interpret scripture in the light of that hope. Jesus is the north star through which we navigate our bible. And so today, I wanna look at some examples of that type of reading. 1st, one where Jesus teaches us that we can indeed trust our ability to know what is good when we see it.
Speaker 1:Second, where Jesus demonstrates a reinterpretation of scripture in the light of his presence in the world, and then finally, one where scripture reinterprets self looking back on the story of Jesus. And to do that, we are gonna talk about permission to feel and the benefits of omission and rotation and then finally, the practical implications of it all. But we'll start in Matthew, Because one of the objections that I often hear whenever I talk about a Jesus centered reading of scripture is that we just can't Trust ourselves to make those types of interpretations. First of all, I would agree that none of us should be interpreting scripture on our own. And the Bible is a very big book full of a lot of words, and the truth is you and I, we can make it say almost anything we want to If we work hard enough.
Speaker 1:So holding your interpretations with an open hand and bringing them to community, Both the local community that we're a part of together and also the historic tradition of the church that we participate in. That is incredibly important. However, once you do that, you begin to realize that there is actually a wide swath of interpreting and Wrestling and negotiating the meaning of scripture throughout Christian history. So you are in good company as you wrestle with the Bible. My advice is just don't do it alone.
Speaker 1:However, what sometimes happens is that when we read, we will eventually come across a passage that seems maybe very violent or even oppressive. And by the way, there's no point denying that those moments are in our bible. They are, and they're hard. But you come across them, and it all feels very disconnected from the way of Jesus that drew you in in the way that you're trying to follow. In fact, I've described it this way that my conscience rebels when I'm told that the nonviolent Jesus who would rather endure death on a cross would One day return wielding a giant claymore against his enemies.
Speaker 1:And so I've been told, well, you can't have confidence in your feelings. Your conscience isn't trustworthy. You Just have to accept it. But is that really indicative of what Jesus sees in us, how Jesus expects us to approach both scripture and our experience of the world. Well, I'm gonna suggest no.
Speaker 1:See, there's this passage in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus is just starting to wrap up his 1st sermon, and he turns his attention now to God's generosity. And he does this really interesting thing where he uses our goodness, our ability to demonstrate love in the world as a launching point to Blaine, god's goodness. This is what he says. Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, we'll give him a snake.
Speaker 1:If you then, even though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, How much more will your father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask? Now granted, Kind of an awkward moment. Right? I mean, he just flat out told us that we're all evil. Ease up, JC.
Speaker 1:Soups agress. But look at the thrust of what he's actually saying here. This how much more than structure is actually a very common rhetorical device in Jesus' day. It was employed by both Greek and Jewish teachers. And the basic strategy here is to establish a commonality, Something we all agree on already, and you do that so then you can appeal to a larger truth built on that foundational premise.
Speaker 1:Here, the commonality is you know what good gifts are. You know what love looks like Because you are good to those you love. Now the larger truth on the other side is that god is that same kind of goodness, albeit Completely unhindered, entirely pure, and that's beautiful. But the starting point is you know love. In fact, in the parallel Jesus has set up, we probably would expect Jesus to say something more like this.
Speaker 1:If you know how to give good gifts To your children, how much more will god give good gifts to god's children? That's probably what he should say. Except here, he wants to expand our imagination of god's love even farther, and so he actually ends with this phrase, god's good gifts to those who ask. So Not only is God more generous than we are with our kids, God is more generous to anyone who comes in need. Still, the point being that even in our brokenness, even though you are evil as Jesus says, you still know good when you see it.
Speaker 1:You can and you do demonstrate love in your life, and not only that, your love Can be a model for you to understand the unbounded love of god. So if you, by Any stretch, any measure consider yourself a good parent. Like, not not a perfect parent or not even a parent who can get through the day without making a few mistakes, but just a good General run of the mill loving parent, then you are teaching yourself about the divine every single day. And often, I remind myself that god is at least as good a parent as I am. And I know what I would do for my kids, and that makes me feel pretty safe in god's arms.
Speaker 1:Anything less than that is a misrepresentation of god. But here's a starting point. Jesus thinks, you and I, we are capable of naming what is good and right and True and just in the world, and Jesus thinks even our flawed perspective can lead us back to god. So, yeah, When something doesn't feel like Jesus or when something doesn't seem loving, I take that very seriously. Not as gospel because I know that I can be wrong, and I am a lot, and I know that I need to learn in community, but I absolutely take my sense of what is good in the world As a valuable part of my dialogue with god and so should you.
Speaker 1:But the next question is, what do we do with that? Does Jesus model this kind of interpretive grid for us? And I'm gonna argue he does. See, even before Jesus begins his public ministry even before this Sermon on the Mount that we just read from. In his first real sort of tada moment, It comes near the start of the gospel of Luke.
Speaker 1:And Jesus has been out in the desert facing these Temptations about who he might choose to be in the world. But when he's done, he comes back into town back into his hometown, actually, And he's been teaching in these smaller settings up till now, and people are pretty intrigued by what he has to say. But on this day, he shows up in the synagogue on the Sabbath, And Luke says that he stands up to read in the service in front of the congregation. And when he does, he chooses a passage From the scroll of Isaiah, he says, the spirit of the lord is on me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind to set the oppressed free, To proclaim the year of the lord's favor.
Speaker 1:Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. Now Couple things here. 1st, this is, as far as Jesus is concerned, the good news literally the gospel. Help for the poor, freedom for the prisoner, recovery of sight, the end of oppression. Now as the new testament unfolds, we're gonna find that the gospel is even bigger, and it includes our forgiveness and our ultimate reunion with god.
Speaker 1:So it's fair to say the gospel is more than this, but the gospel is certainly not less than what Jesus claims it to be. In fact, I would argue that any real good news in the world has to start with this kind of tangible goodness that Jesus starts with. But second, Jesus ends. Jesus rolls up the scroll. He hands it to the attendant.
Speaker 1:He sits down, and then he says, today, This scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. Now that's kind of bold. Right? Proclaiming that god's vision for the world is unfolding as you speak Was always going to be a plucky, maybe even a perilous proclamation to make. But what's really fascinating here, As much as what he says about the gospel is what he doesn't.
Speaker 1:Because here, Jesus is quoting from Isaiah, and Isaiah says exactly what Jesus says he does, except Isaiah keeps going. In Isaiah 61, The passage actually says the year of the lord's favor and the day of the lord's vengeance. So here's a question. What is Jesus doing here? Like, why is he editorializing the prophet's words?
Speaker 1:Is he overruling Isaiah? Well, the short answer is sort of. Yeah. I think Jesus is absolutely reinterpreting Isaiah on the fly for his audience. You have assumed that god's favor and god's hatred were equal and opposite forces in the universe, and that is not true.
Speaker 1:But in some sense, I also think he's trying to reframe Isaiah for his audience. So if you go back and you read Isaiah in Full here. You're gonna read, to proclaim the year of the lord's favor and the day of vengeance of our god, but it doesn't end there either because he continues To comfort all who mourn, to provide for those who grieve, to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ash, oil of joy instead of mourning, A garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. So vengeance is this kinda heavy word. Right?
Speaker 1:Like, it sounds scary. Probably should. But in Hebrew, there are 2 distinct forms of this word. There's nakam and nakama, and those two forms Describe divine or human vengeance. They're different ideas in Hebrew.
Speaker 1:And as we see, if you look at the context in Isaiah, The day of god's vengeance isn't self contained. It doesn't self fulfill itself. It has a purpose beyond itself. It has this sort of Restorative bent to it. What happens on the other side?
Speaker 1:Divine vengeance directed at what is broken in the world and in us Comes for a day precisely so that years of favor and blessing and healing can flow. That that's what Isaiah is saying. But unfortunately, after years of the kind of oppression that Jesus says he wants to see, and that narrative has gotten a little more pessimistic, and People are starting to hope that maybe god's vengeance is actually equal to god's favor. And then maybe god is interested in Retribution, the way that they are, because maybe that's what they want to see for their enemies. And so Jesus says, I think we need a reset.
Speaker 1:And maybe we need to start to read scripture selectively precisely so that we can better hear what scripture is really trying to say to us. For today, maybe we need to be reminded of god's favor, and at least for now, we need to set aside god's vengeance. We'll come back to it. Here's what I would say. If you were to imagine what makes God angry and you find that it's always about someone else, then you should probably set it aside too.
Speaker 1:It's not good for you. And if you reach a point where you start to understand that maybe god's anger has something to do with Something that's broken in you that god wants to remove so that you can flourish and thrive in the world, then maybe you can come back to it then. Because it's not just the words on the page that matter, it's the lens through which we read them. And okay, you might say, but that's Jesus. I mean, he gets to do that.
Speaker 1:Do we? And for that, I wanna show you one more passage today, this time to see how the church itself starts reinterpreting their own words about god In the light of the word of god. And for that, we're gonna have to go back to the book of Revelation. Now I know we did a lot of Revelation last year, and I promised myself after my last book came out, I was not going to touch Revelation for at least a decade. But I just really like this example, so here we are.
Speaker 1:Sorry. In Revelation 19, you get this climax, and the armies of kings of the world are lined up against God for the battle of Armageddon. It's the big cosmic showdown, good versus evil, all that stuff. Except right when it's about to go down, before the battle can even break out, this rider on a white horse appears. And his name is, quote, the word of god.
Speaker 1:That's the other direct reference to that title, and, again, it applies only to Jesus in scripture. But he is bloody and victorious, and he's waving a huge sword around conquering the nations. Here we go. Right? Like, this is Rambo Jesus, the one we've always been waiting for.
Speaker 1:No more yellow sweater vest. This is Jesus jacked. Remember that day of vengeance he left out in Luke? It's go time. Except that's very clearly not what's going on in Revelation 19.
Speaker 1:Now you can go back and check out our upside down apocalypse series from last year if you're interested. But there, we talked about how Revelation uses This very popular 1st century literary genre called apocalypse, specifically to upend a lot of our violent fantasies about god. And here, John is doing that very specifically. Jesus is not splattered with the blood of his enemies here. Instead, he shows up at the battle already wearing a white robe that's dipped in blood.
Speaker 1:That's his blood. Right? That's an image of the cross. It's a picture of the god who would rather die than kill. Okay.
Speaker 1:But Jesus wields a sword. I mean, that sounds kind of scary. But, again, John very clearly says that that sword comes from his mouth. That's the weapon that he wields. So this is not a circus act.
Speaker 1:It's a very common biblical image. In fact, Isaiah himself says that the words of the messiah will cut like a sharpened sword. So the sword from his mouth in Revelation 19 is an image of Jesus' testimony, his words, His nonviolence that disarms even our very real weapons that are pointed against him. This is how Jesus overcome. As John says, not with warfare, but with righteousness.
Speaker 1:Thing is that image in Revelation 19 doesn't just Come from John's imagination, at least not fully formed. John is being very creative here, but the image itself, the root of it actually comes from Isaiah. See there in Isaiah 63, just after that day of vengeance, we get an image of what we call the divine warrior, the one who returns after confronting god's enemies. Sound familiar? This is what we read in Isaiah 63, though.
Speaker 1:Who is this coming from Edom, from Bozrah, with his garments stained the crimson? Who is this robed in splendor, striding forward in the greatness of his strength? It is I proclaiming victory, mighty to save. Why are your garments red like one of those treading the wine press? It is because I have trodden the wine press alone.
Speaker 1:From the nations, no one was with me, so I trampled them in my anger. I trod them down in my wrath. Their blood Splattered on my garments, I stained all my clothing. It was for me a day of vengeance. Yikes.
Speaker 1:It's the first 4 verses of Isaiah 63. And that is the image John is playing with in Revelation 19 when he narrates his tale about when Jesus actually finally confronts the nations. It's an image of the day of vengeance that was missing way back in Luke 4 when Jesus started. Except, What does John do with that old, old story now in the light of Jesus, in the light of the nonviolence of Jesus, in the light of the cross of Jesus? He says, oh, I get it now.
Speaker 1:We thought god's vengeance would look like violence and splatter and weapons and warfare. We thought god might look for revenge the way that we might, but now I see it wasn't that at all. I see what Jesus was doing when he misquotes Isaiah. I see what Jesus was doing when he said that a seed has To fall to the ground and die in order to multiply. I see what Jesus was doing when he said, father, forgive them.
Speaker 1:They're addicted to violence. They don't know what they're doing right now. Because it never was the blood of God's enemies. It was always the blood spilled in loving sacrifice. It was never the weapons of war.
Speaker 1:It was always the story of god's love embodied in the nonviolent Jesus that turned the tide of history. John says, looking back through the lens of Jesus, I see now that Armageddon was never God's vengeance against To us, it was always god's self giving victory over everything that harms us. And for the early Christian community, Isaiah's divine warrior enshrined in their scriptures looked very different because of Jesus. Once, they saw through a glass darkly, but now they are seeing god clearly through Jesus, and that changes everything for them. And look, I get it.
Speaker 1:This might be interesting to you depending on your interest in academic theology. It might be a little academic depending on your lack thereof. But as Christians, this right here is also, I think, the most practical application of our faith possible. Because if you and I, if we aren't careful and we don't constantly recenter Jesus in our reading of scripture, If we don't teach ourselves to constantly interpret and then reinterpret in the light of his way demonstrated in the world for us, Then we will slowly find scriptures that will allow us to remake god into our own image, And we will make god violent and fearful and content with the status quo, consumed with profit, or concerned with ourselves and our own rather than the foreigner and the stranger. We will slowly turn god into a bigger picture Sure of us unless we keep Jesus as the guide that we use to navigate our way through the bible.
Speaker 1:But thank god, The word of god is there to help us interpret all of our words about god well. Because that word, We lived and died and lived again. That is the way that we follow, and that is the way alone that we trust to lead us all the way back to god and to learn from all of the scripture that has been gifted to us. Let's pray. God of grace, for all the ways that we have slowly, Perhaps unintentionally remade you in our image.
Speaker 1:We've imagined that you are fearful or violent or greedy, that you are as insecure as we are at times. For all of this, we are sorry, and we repent, And we lay those images down. But we do that so that we can then pick up the images Embodied in the Christ who walked through this world to reveal your heart to us perfectly. And in that god, may our imaginations be reshaped. May our eyes be opened so that we can look at scripture, so that we can see your beauty through it, so that we can see the whole story unfolding on its way toward you.
Speaker 1:And then from that, that we can actually begin to follow your footsteps in the world, enacting your way, Helping your kingdom to come on earth as it already is in heaven. More grace, More peace, more generosity, more welcome for everyone we encounter. May everything that takes us away from that good be slowly burned away so that only your gracious heart remains in us. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray.