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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. Now today, we're halfway through our series called AppCommons, and we are taking the opening page of our journal each year as a frame for the new season together.
Speaker 1:And so far, we have talked about these ideas That we are completely fascinated with this complex and beautiful collection of text we call the bible, but we worship Jesus. And that's all about what we choose to keep at the center and always driving back to the way of Jesus as our focus. We talked about how 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. And that's all about our lens and how we read the bible differently in the light of Jesus. And then last week, it was because of this, how Jesus has revealed god to us.
Speaker 1:We have abandoned the image of an angry, violent god in order to fully embrace the good news brought forward by Jesus. And Bobby did this wonderful thing for us last week in naming the complexity and the struggle and the wrestle, but also the beauty in seeing the hard edges of scripture. The ways that we have participated in and even celebrated violence throughout history. The The ways we've attributed that violence to god and then called it good and the ways that even this could not change god's character. See, scripture is this unvarnished look at all the ways that human beings have imagined god throughout history, and yet, as Bobby said, God has continued to be patient and kind and compassionate with us even when we messed things up.
Speaker 1:To quote from the book of Exodus here, The lord, the lord, the compassionate and gracious god is slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness. And that is what's so remarkable about the scriptures, that in all of it, in every word and verse and chapter and book, the story is unfolding, leading us to Jesus Because god is faithful even when we are not. In fact, if you were to Scribe the theme of the Hebrew scriptures that would probably be pretty near the top of the list. We mess up, and we misapprehend God, and we misconstrue God's grace in the world, and yet God remains faithful because that is who god is. And I think one of the things That we sometimes have to work quite hard to shake from our imagination is this base idea that god is somehow mad at us.
Speaker 1:Don't misunderstand. I'm not saying that god does not get angry. The scriptures are full of god's anger, but what happens is that Because we're not good at understanding our own emotions, I think we sometimes map all that confusion onto god. I like the way James talks about it in the new testament. He says, human anger does not produce the righteousness god desires.
Speaker 2:What does he mean
Speaker 1:by that? What's the difference between human and divine anger? I would say it's precision. Bobby pointed this out last week that when you look closely at the book of Romans, a book that is famously heavy on the wrath talk, you can see the particularity with which Paul writes, the wrath of God is being revealed against you and me? No.
Speaker 1:Sinners? No. Insert particular people group that makes you uncomfortable? No. It is being revealed from heaven against the godlessness and wickedness of of the world.
Speaker 1:So god is mad at everything that hurts god's creation. God is upset every single time we injure a child of god, including ourselves, But god is upset because god loves. I think god, unlike any other being in the universe, Can be furious at the hurt that you cause and yet still love you perfectly. And that's, I think what differentiates divine anger from ours, it's only ever forever for our good. Fact, that's the holiness of god.
Speaker 1:It's what sets god apart from our failing and flailing frustrations in the world. It's why I think we need to hold on to James' words as tightly as we can. Our anger alone will never produce the righteousness god is looking for in us. And so for this moment when you find yourselves angry, when there's something in your life that you absolutely should be upset about, in Justice or cruelty, a lack of compassion or kindness, then try to ask yourself this question. How can my anger be more precise at what is actually broken so that my love can be more expansive for everyone around me.
Speaker 1:As an example here, My daughter who is 3 has this nasty habit of starting apples and then leaving them around the house half eaten. Right? Last weekend, one day, one day, we found six Half eaten apple stashed in different rooms of our home. And that made me angry because I don't wanna waste food, and I don't want fruit eyes, and I want my daughter to learn the value and the gift of all the food that's available to us in our house, but I would never confuse my Frustration with wasted apples with my love for my daughter. And if I can do that with my children, then how much more Would my parent in heaven be able to separate my sin from my identity as a beloved child?
Speaker 1:So, yes, we have abandoned the idea of an angry violent god so that we can embrace the god whose anger is even for our good. That's why we say next that we believe that Jesus came not to change god's mind about us, but to repair our imagination of God. That's our conversation for today. 1st, let's pray. Holy god, who is love and is therefore brokenhearted at all that harms us, Might we slowly come to understand the purpose of divine anger, not to pit us against each other, Not to drive us into more fear of each other, but to direct us slowly, gently back to what is good for us.
Speaker 1:Might we trust that you are a parent to us, a good parent that loves us, a creator that always has our best in mind? And from that, might your spirit remind us that you are always on our side even when our actions break your heart. May that love then slowly change and transform and welcome us into the story you have for us next. More graceful, more peaceful, more generous, more kind, more set apart from the brokenness that surrounds us so that we might model glimpses of your holiness in the world. If today, we need to reflect on changes we need to make, Speak truth to us.
Speaker 1:And if today we need to rest in the embrace of your love, speak that same truth to us as well. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen. Alright. We believe that Jesus came not to change god's mind about us, but to repair our imagination of god.
Speaker 1:And to talk about that, we need to talk about doctrine and dogma, dinner parties, a second encounter, and finally, fixing god. However, at its base, today is really a conversation about atonement. Now we've talked about atonement before, many times in fact, Earlier this year in the spring, as part of a series called disarming the bible, we did a major survey of some of the historical developments in atonement theory. We're not gonna do all that today. We want to focus in on a couple specific ideas, although You can always check the archives if you want to go back and find that series.
Speaker 1:But I bring all that up because atonement theory is a very important grounding concept. See, Christian dogma has always held that in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we are made at one with god. It's where the atonement comes from. That word atonement is the at one ment of god and creation. But the reason we call that Dogma is because it's a core Christian idea.
Speaker 1:In the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we are made at one with god. The reason we talk about atonement theory is because over the last 2 millennia, different expressions of Christianity have then developed their own Doctrines on top of that to explain just exactly how that at one mint works. And by the way, you need to know this, that when someone talks about doctrine, that's not the end of the conversation. There are all kinds of doctrines From all corners of the Christian story, a lot of them disagree with each other, and yet we're all part of the same family. So do not let anyone ever convince you that you are less Christian just because you don't agree with their theology.
Speaker 1:What makes you Christian is your trust in Jesus, your attempts to follow his way in the world, not how tightly you conform to one specific expression of the Christian faith. That's him. Theology is important. We're we're talking about a lot of it here in this series, but thoughts about god do not a faith make. Faith is when you trust yourself to someone.
Speaker 1:However, that gets hard when our thoughts and our language and our theology about god are unhealthy. And that's why sometimes we need to talk about our imagination of god, particularly when it comes to this at onement with God. And to do that, I wanna look at a story within a story. And for that, we need to turn to the gospel of Luke. Now this is a longer section, and I wanna read the whole story today, make a few comments as we go.
Speaker 1:But then at the end, we'll come back and talk about a few important ideas. This is Luke chapter 7 starting in verse 36. When 1 of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, We went to the Pharisee's house and reclined at the table. A woman in that town who had lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee's house, So she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears, And then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them, and poured perfume on them.
Speaker 1:When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, If this man were really a prophet, he would know who this is, who's touching him, and what kind of woman she is, that she is a sinner. Now, By the way, if it makes you a little uncomfortable to read this, to hear this woman spoken of this way reduced to her worst moments, I think that's intentional here. You and I, we do this far too often in our internal dialogues about people, and this story wants us to slow down and face that. We shouldn't do this. Also, I think this woman is anonymous here specifically because Luke knows how weird and inappropriate this all is.
Speaker 1:This is not Mary Magdalene, by the way. That is a centuries later conflation of different stories across different gospels. We don't know who this woman is at all. I think that's intentional here. Luke wants to keep her anonymous and protected, but let's keep reading.
Speaker 1:Jesus answered him, Simon, I have something to tell you. Tell me, teacher, he said. And so here's our story within a story. 2 people owed money to a certain money lender. One owed him 500 denarii and the other 50.
Speaker 1:Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more? Simon replied, I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven. You have judged correctly, Jesus said. Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, do you see this woman?
Speaker 1:I'm gonna pause here. This is really important. The word here is in Greek, and it means literally to turn around. So understand this, Jesus does not gesture Cheer to the woman while he's speaking to Simon in this moment. Jesus physically turns not just his attention, but his body toward this woman before he continues here.
Speaker 1:So the image that this woman enters, and Jesus knows that all of the eyes in the room are on her, so he turns to her, makes eye contact with her while he keeps speaking to Simon. Jesus is making it very clear here with his body language who has his attention and who this moment is really for in his mind. And that's important because all of this It may be a teachable moment for Simon, but for Jesus, that's all bonus material. Like, you and I, if there's anything that we get Out of this story, reading it millennia later, it's all icing on the cake. What Jesus is primarily concerned with here Is this woman that she knows she's not a distraction?
Speaker 1:She's not an interruption? She's not even an object lesson for a powerful man to learn from? She is a beloved child of god who does not deserve the scorn heaped on her by disdainful eyes. So picture the scene. Jesus turns his body away from his host toward this woman.
Speaker 1:He makes eye contact with her, and he continues to speak. Do you see this woman? Because I do. And I came into your house, but you did not give me water for my feet. She wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.
Speaker 1:You did not give me a kiss, but she, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but She has poured perfume on my feet. Do you see this woman? I tell you, her sins have been forgiven as her great love has already demonstrated to Everyone here in this room, but forever has been forgiven little, loves little, and that is a shame. This is a great moment.
Speaker 1:By the way, I love here the particularity that Jesus wants to throw shade because that's what he's doing here. Let's be honest. But when he throws shade, his primary intent is actually not to pull Simon down, it's to lift this woman up. And god, I love that instinct, which is a prayer, by the way, because I want to be the kind of person that sees beyond just what is broken to what can actually be fixed in any given moment in the way that I choose to treat people. But whatever you get from this today, I hope you can hold on to this, that sin is an important category for all of us to face in our lives.
Speaker 1:We have all caused damage in the world, and we all need to make amends just like this woman. But if the voice of god for you in those moments has sounded more like shame and condemnation rather than freedom and healing from what hurts, then it was not the voice of Jesus. Because we know how Jesus responds in these moments.
Speaker 2:And this is
Speaker 1:what he does. He turns to her and says, your sins are forgiven. Yeah. The guests begin to grumble, and they say among themselves, who is this who forgives even sins? But Jesus says to the woman, if they think that's a big deal, wait till they get a load of this.
Speaker 1:Your faith has saved you. Go in peace. Now, again, great story, but there's a couple things here. 1st, We don't really know any of the backstory to this moment. As mentioned, we don't know who this woman was.
Speaker 1:We don't know what she did to deserve her reputation. In fact, we don't even know if she did anything to deserve this reputation. We just know what people think about her. John Nolan in his commentary on Luke argues that the phrase, or in the city, together with the title sinner, in Greek, It's actually best understood as a Semitic idiom that's been translated over into Greek and lost a bit of its meaning. So instead of A woman in the city who lived a sinful life, which is granted what it literally says in Greek, he argues that the intent for a Hebrew reader would be Something more along the lines of a notorious woman.
Speaker 1:Now to be clear, that probably is meant to indicate that she is at least suspected of being a prostitute, dude. But the phrasing here is actually less a judgment on her and more a commentary on how people in the town have come to see her. I think that makes a difference. Right? Oftentimes, our sense of self has more to do with what others say about us than about who we Actually, are.
Speaker 1:I think that too is part of what Jesus has come to heal. But there's another piece here. Because scholars also tend to assume that this moment here at the table is a second encounter Jesus has had with this woman. So somewhere before this scene, off the page and unrecorded, Jesus has met her before. And the reason we tend to think that is because of the story Jesus tells within the story.
Speaker 1:Remember, she comes in with a gift. She anoints Jesus' feet and kisses them. By the way, that's all coded pretty erotic in Jesus' world. I don't know if that's because of this woman's background and her occupation and whether that has colored how she expresses gratitude in her life, But I do know that Jesus is not thrown off by it. He understands that it's not intended as sexualized, and so he just simply accepts the moment with a lot of grace.
Speaker 1:But look at the story he tells. Who is more grateful for what they've received, the one forgiven much or the one forgiven little? As far as Jesus seems to be concerned, this moment isn't a transaction where this woman is looking to buy forgiveness. She can't afford it anyway. This moment is a response to the forgiveness she's already received somewhere in her life.
Speaker 1:I think that's really important to this story. 1st, because it humanizes, a story that can kinda feel a bit like a set piece. Right? I mean, if if we read through quickly here, it's just a woman with no name in the background of a conversation between Jesus and the very powerful man. But if you read closer, you see how Jesus directs his attention, our attention toward the woman away from Simon, And you see that she is responding to something that's already happened in her life somewhere.
Speaker 1:There's a relational history that's just not for us. But you can imagine her, right, bursting into the room full of nerves looking for Jesus. She's heard that he's here, and she sees him sitting in the corner. She makes eye contact, and he smiles gently, and she realizes that he remembers her. And she bursts into tears, not because she's begging for forgiveness, but because she's overwhelmed with gratitude.
Speaker 1:And, honestly, I bet I bet she bought the perfume and plan to give it to Jesus as a gift, but now in the moment, she's like, forget that. Let's bust it out. I mean, what would you rather do? Right? Drop off a bottle of wine for your friend or Sit down and uncork it together.
Speaker 1:Right? Liar. All of this together is such a beautiful image of how Jesus Slowly begins to repair our imagination of god. First of all, God's forgiveness is not a transaction. You can't buy it with perfume.
Speaker 1:You can't get more of it with your good deeds. You earn it by thinking the right things. A good theology won't get you forgiven. Though Jesus moves to the world, an image of god with forgiveness left everywhere in his wake with everyone he encounters. And some of us, because of that, like this woman, choose to respond with extravagant gratitude.
Speaker 1:But when Jesus says to her, your sins are forgiven, that's not Jesus pronouncing forgiveness in that moment as if he's creating it right there. That's Jesus announcing the grace of god. Again, affirming what she has come to know about herself in meeting Jesus earlier. Remember, she is there expressing gratitude for grace already received, not trying to pay back a debt that she can't afford in the 1st place. At least that's how Jesus seems to tell it.
Speaker 1:Second, I think the story helps us to see Exactly who Jesus is here to heal often in a lot of our images of the cross, That at one mint we talked about earlier, the underlying implication is that Jesus somehow fixes something about god. Like, maybe god wants to forgive, but god just can't. There's something stopping god from doing it. And, sure, god created time and space in the universe with a word, and theoretically, god should be able to do anything. But god just simply can't forgive unless Certain ritualistic obligations are met, and so Jesus fixes that for god.
Speaker 1:I've actually heard pastors, preachers argue That when Jesus tells people they are forgiven, like in this story, it's true in a sense, but they aren't yet fully forgiven. Because Jesus hasn't died on the cross, to appease, the more technical term would be to propitiate god's wrath. So sure, Jesus might say you are forgiven, but that's more like a placeholder until he can straighten things out for god so that god can actually forgive her later. And one that almost completely obliterates any meaningful sense of trinity in Christianity, Reducing Jesus down to a pawn for god to use rather than the self revelation of god for us to encounter. But 2, do you see how that bifurcates god in our imagination?
Speaker 1:Like, god used to think one way about you, but now Jesus is here, so god looks at you a new way. Or god used to be angry with you, but Now god is happy or god used to be on fire and brimstone, but now god is puppies and cotton candy. In fact, it's actually pretty close to the Marcian that emerged in the few centuries of Christianity where this guy, Marcion, flat out claimed that there were actually 2 gods in the universe, Like, the mean old god of the Hebrew scriptures and the nice new god in Jesus. And one, that has some uncomfortably anti Semitic undertones to it, and It was rightly rejected by the church, but, no, Jesus does not represent a new god. And, no, Jesus does not change anything about the old god.
Speaker 1:Jesus reveals god fully. As Paul says, As human beings, we see god through a glass darkly, but face to face with Jesus, in the end, we see god clearly. So there's this doctrine called the immutability of god. It just means that god doesn't change, and it comes from passages like James 117, every good and perfect gift is from above coming down from the father of heavenly lights who does not change like the shifting shadows. Or it may be Malachi 36, for I, the lord, do not change.
Speaker 1:So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. By the way, I really like that one because the context here is that the descendants of Jacob have not lived up to their end of the bargain. God comes along and says, nah. Not even that can change who I am. Hold on to that.
Speaker 1:You and your mistakes simply do not have the ability to change anything about God or God's love for you, you just don't have the power to do it. The theologians will argue about what immutability means exactly. Does that mean that god knows the future? God doesn't change. Does that mean god can't change god's mind if god wanted to?
Speaker 1:Does that mean god is dispassionate? Because god's emotions can never change. And regardless of where you land on those big philosophical questions about immutability, I think the clear thrust of these passages is really that god is trustworthy. Right? God is unchanging because god is faithful because god's character is unshakable.
Speaker 1:And that means that whatever we see in Jesus, whatever we are seeing on the cross, it is not a new god, And it's not a fixed god or a turning of god. The cross is not god changing God's mind about anything or enabling god to do anything god couldn't do before. The quasi is god demonstrating the lengths which god would go to tell you that you are perfectly and wonderfully loved, That you always have been, that you always will be, and that nothing in the universe, not life or death, not angels or demons, neither Neither the present nor the future nor any powers, neither height nor depth nor anything else in all of creation will ever be able to separate you from the love of god that is Christ Jesus. So Jesus came not to change god's mind about us because god is love. All the way down, that's the point.
Speaker 1:Jesus came because our imagination of god has always been Just a little bit short of god's goodness. And so in his life and his death and his resurrection, Jesus shows us a god that does more than just expect our allegiance or demand our best perfume. Jesus shows us a god that is actually worth giving everything to. That's why we say we're saved by faith. Because in Jesus, we see a god that is actually worth Completely trusting ourselves over to a god that loves and cannot be persuaded from it.
Speaker 1:And once we do that, Once we give everything to that god, once we trust ourselves to that god, of course, we're saved. We're saved from our greed In our selfishness, from our anger and our violence, from our mistakes and our failures, we're saved from our transgressions and our sins. We are saved from it all by the god who Gives god's self away over and over and over again up until the Point of the cross when god says there is nothing that could separate you from me, because that's who I am and I can't be shaken. Jesus doesn't fix god for us. He never needed to.
Speaker 1:Jesus is healing us So that we can know God perfectly the way that he does. And that is our at onement with the divine. Let's pray. Good god, who has given us so many gifts, The stories and scriptures told over time, passed down, and preserved for us, these narratives that lead us to you, To your incarnation and your steps through the world that demonstrate finally, fully, and clearly who you are, That you cannot be shaken, that you are love all the way down, and that you are willing to go to any depths for us to know that and to receive your forgiveness. God, in this moment, in the next moment, in the weeks years to come, we pray that that Story would somehow take purchase in us, that we might slowly come to see ourselves the way that you see us, As beloved children, full of all kinds of mistakes and failings and sins and yet fully loved and welcomed home.
Speaker 1:And once we know that we are welcome at your table, might we then do our best to pick up our cross, whatever that is, and to Follow the way of Jesus all the way back to you. That everything we do would express more goodness, more kindness, more compassion, in more generosity, more grace, and more peace in the world, trusting that today Can look more like heaven than we believe. May everything we do contribute to your imagination for tomorrow, and may our todays be part of that story. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray.