In The Story

Matthew 24 is one of those chapters that has been very badly handled by literalist and dispensationalist interpretations over many years (curiously the same fate has befallen most of Daniel).

Context
The Lord Jesus is in Jerusalem, he has been teaching in the Temple (ch. 22) and has warned the crowd/disciples, Pharisees and Jerusalem (ch. 23). Leaving the Temple, city, the disciples like google-eyed tourists are awestruck by the large stones of the Temple (v. 1). When the Lord Jesus prophetically (that is before it happened) speaks of the destruction of the Temple (v. 2) this leads to two questions which shape the rest of chapter 24 and 25: when will this happen (v. 3a) and what will the signs be of your returning (v. 3b)?
The disciples, and it is not explained how, correctly connect the destruction of the Temple and the coming again of the Lord Jesus.

Endings and Beginnings
It turns out that the destruction of the Temple is one of the signs of the return of the Lord Jesus in glory. The return of the Lord Jesus is at the end of this age. There is a human curiosity about the end: when will it be, what will it be like, will I be ok when it happens? The Lord Jesus responds to the question by not speaking about the end, but about the story up to the end.
We know the beginning of the story: God created all things, humanity rebels against God, God annoints Jesus as Christ and Lord and his death on the cross is the redemption and renewal of all things. We now know something of the end: the Lord Jesus will return and God's Kingdom will be fully established.
Today we do not live in either the beginning or the ending of the story - we live in the story. Matthew 24 and 25 are designed to instruct us in how to live in the story.

Live in the story
a) live with eyes wide open. Don't be deceived by liars claiming to be Christ, or by those who say the end is not coming. Recognise this present tribulation: wars, disasters, persecution as guarantees of the end.
b) live as people of hope. God is in control, the present state of the world is not the final word and is not out with the control of our God.
c) let God be God. v. 36. There are things God has not told us and will not tell us. Do not believe liars who tell you when the end will be, even the Lord Jesus does not know. Resist your inquisitive spirit, do not pry into the things God has not revealed, there is enough to be going on with if you focus upon what he has revealed.
d) because you know the end is coming, live in the light of that end.
e) Share the story of Jesus with everyone, they too need to know that the Lord Jesus is coming again.
f) vv. 45-51. Live doing the will of the Lord, serve him and serve others.

Thank You

I've just finished reading John Stott's book 'The Radical Disciple'. This is a very easily read book and would be an excellent gift or recommendation to any Christian person.

John Stott is radical in a different way from Shane Claiborne. I find Stott's radical more balanced (one of his chapter titles), which may seem odd - a balanced radical!

We do need to be radical in our discipleship, but I always find error creaps quickly in where we are not well balanced.

In the preface Stott comments on the difference between 'Christian' and 'disciple':
Both words (Christian and disciple) imply a relationship with Jesus, although perhaps 'disciple' is the stronger of the two because it inevitably implies the relationship of pupil to teacher. ... One wishes in some ways that the word 'disciple' had continued into the following centuries [after the time of the apostles], so that Christians were self-consciously disciples of Jesus, and took seriously their responsibility to be 'under discipline'. (p. 16)

An interesting challenge about how we think and talk about our Christian living, or our lives of discipleship!

John Stott's book are always worth reading, over the years I've found his work invaluable and would commend any of his books most warmly. To a radical disciple then, let me say thank you.

The Irresisible Revolution

I've finished Shane Claiborne's book The Irresisible Revolution.

Some final quotes to share:

We live in a world of dangerous extremes. "These are extreme times," Dr King said. "The question is not whether we will be extremists but what kind of extremists will we be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love?" (p. 270)

A good question, the followers of Jesus should indeed be 'extremists for love and grace.'


I used to think that those of us who hope for things we cannot see and who believe that the world can be different than it is were the crazy ones. We are usually called that by people who spend their lives trying to convince everyone that the crazy things they do actually make sense. Now more and more people are starting to imagine that mabye another world is possible and necessary and actually imaginable. I'm starting to wonder if, actually, we have gone sane in a mad world. In a world of smart bombs and military intelligence, we need more fools, holy fools who insist that the folly of the cross is wiser than any human power. And the world may call us crazy. (p. 343)

Do we have the confidence in the gospel to believe that the whole world may be mad but believing in Jesus is the only kind of sane there is? This challenge works on so many different levels.

On the whole Shane's book is challenging, although some of the later chapters are repeating, or let's be positive, reinforcing points made earlier in the book. I can understand Shane's zeal for this kind of Christian living he has found and experienced, but, and this is a big but, he is not describing 'normal' Christian living. I'm well aware there's a huge debate about what 'normal' Christian living may be, but any one description doesn't do justice to the width and variety of Christian living.

Missing the point

I'm still enjoying Rob Bell's book - Jesus Wants To Save Christians.

Writing about exodus and exile as the background into which the Lord Jesus came in a section on the Emmaus Journey (see Luke 24) we read:

whatever the stranger on the road taught these disciples from Moses and the Prophets, they got it. Their eyes were opened. The suffering and death and crucifixion of Jesus made sense to them.


In a couple of hours, using nothing but the Hebrew Scriptures, this man converted all of their despair to hope and a vision of a new future. p.90.

Where this really bites for me is just a few sentences later:

In Jesus' day, people could read, study, and discuss the Scriptures their entire lives and still miss its central message.
In Jesus' day people could follow him, learn from him, drop everything to be his disciples, and yet find themselves returning home, thinking Jesus had failed.
Which is a bit like walking with someone for hours,
only to discover that you had missed who they really are the whole time.
Because the stranger is, of course, Jesus. p. 90

I certainly know too many scholars, some of the finest intellects I've ever met, who've studied the bible their whole working lives and never met Jesus, and don't know what it is to follow him. But what strikes me is not where this affects others. No matter how faithfully, passionately, skillfully I read and study Scripture I must confess that I will and do get it wrong, I miss the point - worse I can walk beside Jesus and not recognise him.

We can have great confidence in Jesus and in the Scriptures, of the Old and New Testaments, Jesus can and will use them to open our eyes to his grace for us in the cross and empty tomb. That I get it wrong does not mean I need to abandon the gospel or the bible. Rather, in all humility, however much I think I know I need to come again and walk beside Jesus and hear him teaching the gospel from Scriptures until my heart burns within me.

And if you'll forgive me, I think you do also.

More Total Church

Some final thoughts from this wonderful and highly commended book.

On discipleship and training:
Others should learn truth not only from preaching but from lives that display the truth that has been preached!
Keep saying the obvious or people will forget.

On spirituality:
"Biblical spirituality is not about contemplation; it is about reading and meditating on the word of God. It is not about detached silence; it is about passionate petition. It is not about solitude; it is about participation in community. ... It [biblical spirituality] is centred on the gospel and rooted in the context of the Christian community." (p. 137)
Yes, a necessary corrective to too many forms of spirituality which are self seeking and self serving. See also Peter Adam 'Hearing God's Words', Apollos (IVP) 2004.
Union with Christ is the beginning of Christian spirituality, not it's goal!

On prayer the suggestion is made that we should prioritise prayer with others over prayer alone. So long as we are not saying that one is better than the other, there is truth in our learning to pray together, and our times of prayer shared with others encouraging and strengthening our times of prayer alone.

On theology:
"Theology must be in the service of teh church and its mission. Authentic theology must be shaped by what we might call a missionary-hermeneutic. Theology divorced from this context is essentially barren, self-referential and indulgent." (p. 152)
There is no theology apart from or outside of the community of faith. This position, while true, needs to be rigorously defended today.

On apologetics: (I really like this comment)
"The rejection of revelation is only a symptom of an underlying problem. ... The underlying issue is not a rejection of the possibility of revelation, but a rejection of the actuality of revelation. In other words, the underlying problem is not revelation per se, but what is revealed - our need for a Saviour." (p. 161)

An accurate analysis of the malaise afflicting the church in our days. This surely is what Romans 1:18ff is about, the rejection of God, the rejection of the gospel because we don't like it.

On a theology of the cross:
"We begin to see the relevance of the theology of the cross when we start to consider what forms a theology of glory takes today. Liberalism can be labelled a theology of glory, for it argues that God is known through human reason. Sacramentalism claims we encounter God through the symbols and rituals of the church. Creation spiritualities can also take the form of theologies of glory whether it is the sentiment expressed in 'nearer to God in a garden' or the more developed theology of someone like Matthew Fox. Power evangelism, too, looks for the revelatino of God in acts of power, arguing that miracles are an essential part of effective mission. And mysticism says that God is known through spiritual experiences or contemplative exercises." (p. 167)
Against all this, we know God through the message of the cross. Human wisdom does not recognise divine wisdom.

I think it is good that my last word on this great book is on the cross of the Lord Jesus, which so powerfully and clearly shapes and influences the authors and their experience of church. If only the cross were more clearly at the centre of our church life.

I'm re reading N T Wright's Jesus and the Victory of God. If you haven't read it then give it a try, it is well worth it.

His section on Burton L Mack (and the Question of Q) pages 35-44 is interesting as it connects with a post on reading the bible I made earlier.

Wright suggests that Mack has allowed his antipathy towards late 20th Century American Christianity colour his reading of the gospel of Mark in a major way. Mack reconstructs a Jesus who resembles a 'Cynic sage, spinning aphorisms designed to subert his hearers social and cultural worlds' (p. 37) Mack achieves this by excluding from his consideration of Jesus any material that is apocalyptic or eschatological. Well if you leave out half the gospel material no wonder you end up with a view of Jesus quite different from that presented in the gospels!

In my earler post - On Bible Reading, Sat 7 March - I was challenging that way of reading the bible which ignores passages or material which the reader doesn't like, or doesn't want to submit to. One of my Professors, the late Bob Carroll, was fond of saying 'Read the text', all of the text. If at the end of an exposition there was surplus text left lying on the table Bob would be hugely critical. (And those who knew Bob would not know him as a conservative Biblical scholar!).

We simply cannot read the parts of the bible we want to read and ignore all the rest and then claim to be scholarly, or historical, or whatever. This is not to exclude the valuable work of textual criticism which highlights for us passages we should rightly be suspicious of, e.g. the endings of Mark's gospel. What the Church has always needed is a commitment from her members to the whole word of God: to read with faith and reverence, to study with all the tools and ability God has given us, to obey in lives given to following this Jesus who is both Christ and Lord.

The Jesus Way and the world's way

On the final pages of The Jesus Way I found this quote from Peterson. He is writing about the uniqueness of following Jesus,

"It is like nothing else. There is nothing and no one comparable. Following Jesus gets us little or nothing of what we commonly think we need or want or hope for. Following Jesus accomplishes nothing on the world's agenda. Following Jesus takes us right out of this world's assumptions and goals to a place where a lever can be inserted that turns the world upside down and inside out. Following Jesus has everything to do with this world, but almost nothing in common with this world."

This connects with so many things I've been thinking about.

The life of the citizen of God's Kingdom, a follower of Jesus, is counter every culture of this world. However, Peterson's final sentence here won't allow us to escape from the world into some other-worldly kind of existence. Following Jesus is done in this world and engages with life as it is lived in this world (or as Qohelet would have it 'life under the sun'). But the values, the patterns, the means of this world are rejected by the follower of Jesus in favour of the values, patterns and means of Jesus. Living Kingdom lives now will turn the world upside down, for the blessing of all, Gen 12:3. Peterson's final sentences in this must read book,

"But in every generation a few do follow Jesus. They deny themselves, they take up their cross, and they follow him. They lose their lives and save them - and long with their own, the lives of many, many others."

24

While just about everyone else is watching season 7 via Sky, we don't have Sky, or cable, or channel 5! We've had to resort to rewatching season 5 on dvd.

Krish Kandiah has a really interesting post on 24, this link will take you there - Krish on 24.

We've watched all six seasons, and the film Redemption on dvd. I really like the concept of the show, the events happen in real time in and around LA, this generates its own tension and energy as the clock ticks round.

My favourite is still season 1, not wanting to spoil the plot if anyone hasn't seen it, but the tension is kept very high right up to the final minutes and through each episode Jack really struggles between getting the job done and doing the right thing.

From season 2 on Jack becomes much more focused on getting the job done, and in my opinion, some of the things he does to get the job done would have been better not done - even if that meant the operation failed.

There is a real issue about ways and means. This is the major theme of Eugene Petersons, The Jesus Way, another really excellent book from Peterson. Jesus is concerned about the way, what we do and how we do it matters just as much, if not more, than getting the job done. Indeed, sometimes the way we do things is the job that is to be done.

I'm sure when the dvd of season 7 of 24 comes around I'll watch it and get caught up in the action. But the ways and means adopted by Jack Bauer can't be the ways and means adopted in Christian discipleship.

Which culture?

At the CWW re-energise 4 conference a minor theme that came through was the enslavement of the gospel to a modern, rational culture. The challenge was given to free the gospel from this cultural slavery and re-engage with the gospel.

I've only got two problems with this.

1. Even the presentations asking us to free the gospel from a modern culture were at best asking us to locate the gospel in a different cultural expression. We are all creatures of our culture and it is difficult, if not impossible, to wholly step outside our culture. Perhaps the best we can do is be aware of our cultural preferences.

2. The Kingdom of Heaven, which is the theme of the preaching of the Lord Jesus, is counter-cultural. It is not counter one culture, e.g. a modern culture, and at home in another culture, whether ancient or post-modern. The Kingdom of Heaven is counter-every-human-culture. The life of a citizen of this Kingdom, as described in the Sermon on the Mount, cuts across every human cultural pattern and expectation.
The call of the Lord Jesus to live as citizens of his Kingdom is a call to a radical discipleship that will have us live against the grain of our received culture or any new culture we may adopt.

The way is narrow and the road is steep.