2024
We’re getting John 3:16 wrong!
John 3:14-21
What if we have got the point of this whole faith thing wrong?
What if the thing we think is the most important part isn’t at all, at least not in the way we think it is? And what if because we’re missing the point we are concentrating on the wrong things?
Sam Well’s asks that very question in his book A Nazareth Manifesto. I spoke about this a bit at our recent congregational conference and I wanted to come back to it because I think this is hugely important for us all, and especially for our church.
So, I want to encourage you to really listen carefully… because this could… and probably should make you rethink a whole load of things.
Sam Wells poses a question that’s been asked throughout the centuries… Paul Tillich calls it the question of ‘our ultimate concern’. The question is simple… What’s the core of our faith? What is the most important thing? What matters most to you?
Wells suggests that our big obsession, our ultimate concern, both as a society and as individuals is mortality. Or to be more specific, avoiding the reality of our own mortality.
We spend billions of pounds on lotions, potions, diets, gym memberships, supplements, treatments, and even surgery to make us look younger. Companies will even freeze you in cryogenic storage until a remedy is found for whatever you’re about to die from and scientists around the world are researching a cure for aging.
But what does that have to do with our reading today?
When Jesus says “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” we’re absolutely in. Live forever? Oh… absolutely. Sign me up for that. It’s not an accident that John 3:16 is the most famous verse in the bible.
The next question then becomes ‘How do I get that eternal life?’ It’s THE question. It’s the question that frames how we think about faith. It’s the question that drives the church’s mission. And it’s the wrong question.
In Luke’s Gospel someone asks that question to Jesus. Love God and love your neighbour is the right answer. But that conversation ends up in a parable we call the Parable of the Good Samaritan. It’s a story about how loving God in a formulaic, ritualistic way gets in the road of loving your neighbour. It turns out that the key to this eternal life is living well now… but not as a way to earn some kind of reward where we are excused our mortality.
Seeing faith like that is a problem. If I only just believe enough…. If I only just do enough good things…. If I only just behave properly…
Perhaps we need to remind ourselves about what eternity is. Eternity is forever. All of time. Eternity is all the way back and all the way forward… and eternity is now. We are living in eternity. And that means our obsession with mortality as some kind of final end to be avoided at all costs really isn’t what we should be concerned about.
And Jesus says as much in John 3.
Jesus goes on to say ‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
The problem has been that our fixation with the mortality problem has caused us to read this in the wrong way. When Jesus says ‘condemned already’ we turn that into ‘they are already condemned for all eternity’. And that’s not what it says or means at all.
It means what it says. That people who believe are not condemned and those who don’t are… but condemned to what? We need to keep reading:
And this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.’
Jesus is talking about our response to Christ’s presence in the world. Here and now. This is a conversation with Nicodemus, the Pharisee who comes in the darkness of night to see Jesus.
Jesus is asking Nicodemus why he has to hide his visit. Why can’t he be open about a conversation? What forces is he afraid of? Who stands in opposition to Jesus and why is he standing with them?
This most famous of passages isn’t about solving the mortality problem. It’s about how we react to the realisation that the Word became flesh and moved into the neighbourhood. It’s about the implications of God being present in the world. For Nicodemus that’s a question about whether he can acknowledge that reality publicly. We will see at the end of John’s Gospel that Nicodemus is the one who asks for Jesus’ body so he can be buried before the light fades.
If the key to eternal life is to love God and love our neighbour then the next question is ‘how do we make that happen?’ The answer is only found in relationship with God and with each other. And remember, Jesus stretches the boundary of neighbour way beyond what anyone is comfortable with.
I think Sam Wells is right. Jesus came to end our self-imposed separation from God and from each other. That’s what leads to the darkness. Selfish deeds done in secret and in shame because they hurt or exploit or devalue other people.
Relationship is the key because solving the mortality question is about me. It’s about my behaviour and my belief. Solving the isolation problem is about us. It’s about what we believe and how we behave. It depends on the depth and quality of our relationships.
So, the real question, the thing that should take up all our energy and attention isn’t what the best face cream is or what fad diet I should try next. The real question that should occupy our imaginations is how we end isolation.
Too many people are lonely… and loneliness is caused by a deficit of relationship. And that’s something we can surely help to fix.
When we think that tackling isolation is the most important thing we can do then our activities and the importance of some of the things we already do should change. All of a sudden the coffee morning and the Hope Cafe and Messy Church become models for mission because they encourage people to get to know each other. Lunch after the Sunday service might just be the most important part.
Our invitation to people might sound different too. We find it so difficult to ask people to join us at church. I wonder if that’s to do with not really knowing what we are inviting people into. Come and… well come and what? Be saved? Saved from what?
There’s a strong hint of condemnation in that kind of language, isn’t there. And more than a little judgement. When we hear Jesus telling us that God doesn’t want to condemn the world then we should probably be a bit more hesitant about using those kinds of words… and about doing that judging too.
We should perhaps heed Richard Rohr’s reminder that we “are by nature a son of God, a daughter of God, a beloved of God. That’s not obtained by any exercise, performance, fasting, praying… it is your nature. Your true nature is God’s nature.” He goes on to say that we all have to experience separateness from God in some way to be able to re-chose that nature.
I think that means that we choose isolation. We wander off into the darkness. We focus on that mortality problem and that means we actually don’t really care that much about the fate of anyone else’s souls as long as we think that we and the people we love are ok.
And then we realise that being alone isn’t what we’re made for. That being in the light is a better place to be than being isolated in the darkness.
Light is a brilliant image for what happens to us and how this works. Darkness separates us from each other. It isolates us. It hides us from view. We cannot see or be seen.
But here’s the thing… Any amount of light, even the smallest flicker, makes the darkness disappear.
But where does light come from? Jesus tells us that He is the light of the world and that God’s desire is that everyone should live in that light.
So, as we deepen our relationship with God we rediscover our light. When we enter into relationship with others then our light dispels their darkness, even if they don’t have any light of their own yet.
So maybe that should be our priority? We should embrace our true nature, not as awful sinful people, but as God’s beloved…
And that is true even when we wander off into the darkness, even when we choose separation. Our job for those who choose that is to be their neighbour too. To refuse to let them be alone.
As we learn to embrace our relationship with God and delight in it we see the needs of our neighbours as our own needs, because their need and our need is the same. We all need to be in relationship with our neighbour. How else can we love them. Their concern is our concern because we are all God’s concern. We are all God’s beloved.
2024
What’s your identity?
Exodus 20:1-17 & John 2:13-22
It is passover and Jesus has gone up to Jerusalem to the Temple. And when he gets there he is confronted by stalls and pens and cages full of lambs and pigeons and calves to be sold to the pilgrims to sacrifice. There are also money changers because you’re not allowed to take Roman money into the temple so it has to be changed into local currency… for a small commission, obviously.
And Jesus is clears them all out.
But why? People are required to present a sacrifice at the temple. What’s the problem?
Often this passage is explained as being about two things… the first is confrontation. Jesus is somehow setting himself up in opposition to the Temple authorities. We usually read this passage in Holy Week. The other three Gospels place this story there, so it becomes one of the things that just keeps piling on the pressure. But this is at the start of John’s Gospel.
The second is that Jesus is upset at what the temple has been turned into. A profit is being made from the people’s obligation to present a sacrifice.
Those two understandings are absolutely legitimate, and I agree with both, but I think there’s something even deeper going on here.
I think this is a story about identity, both Jesus’ identity and the people of Israel’s identity.
This happens at Passover.
Passover is the celebration of the liberation of the slaves from Egypt. It’s the day when a group of slaves changed their identity. They were set free. But we know that like many who have been imprisoned or enslaved, the idea of freedom can take a while to get used to. Not having structure, not having someone else tell you where to go and what to do, can be overwhelming, even if your previous circumstances have been pretty awful.
Having to work out a new identity is hard when it’s just you. Imagine what it’s like when a whole nation has to try to come to terms with their new reality.
We’re going to go all the way back to an important moment in that journey because without it none of the rest of this will make much sense…
This is what it says in Exodus 20.
God spoke, and these were his words: “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, where you were slaves.
“Worship no god but me.
“Do not make for yourselves images of anything in heaven or on earth or in the water under the earth. Do not bow down to any idol or worship it, because I am the Lord your God and I tolerate no rivals. I bring punishment on those who hate me and on their descendants down to the third and fourth generation. But I show my love to thousands of generations of those who love me and obey my laws.
“Do not use my name for evil purposes, for I, the Lord your God, will punish anyone who misuses my name.
“Observe the Sabbath and keep it holy. You have six days in which to do your work, but the seventh day is a day of rest dedicated to me. On that day no one is to work—neither you, your children, your slaves, your animals, nor the foreigners who live in your country.
In six days I, the Lord, made the earth, the sky, the seas, and everything in them, but on the seventh day I rested. That is why I, the Lord, blessed the Sabbath and made it holy.
“Respect your father and your mother, so that you may live a long time in the land that I am giving you.
“Do not commit murder.
“Do not commit adultery.
“Do not steal.
“Do not accuse anyone falsely.
“Do not desire another man’s house; do not desire his wife, his slaves, his cattle, his donkeys, or anything else that he owns.”
We know these as the 10 commandments. They are the rules God gave to Moses on the mountain. But I want you to hear them in a different way today. Not just as a list of things that we aren’t supposed to do, but as a statement about the identity of the people they were first given to.
It starts with an introduction. Hi. I’m God. I’m the one who freed you from slavery. I did that. Nobody else, so you don’t need any other gods. I’m the real deal. But this is about more than me. This is about you and who you are.
In the beginning I created humans. I made them in my image. You don’t need to make statues or icons or anything else to give you a clue what I look like. Just look at each other. Or look in the mirror. You are my likeness.
Imagine hearing that. Who me? I’m just a slave who doesn’t have a master any more. How can I be the creation of the God who made all things?
And God says, you’re not a slave any more. I’m nothing like your Egyptian masters. In fact, the only thing I’m going to command you to do is to have a day off!!!
Also, I want you to celebrate your heritage. Honour your ancestors. There is nothing there to be ashamed of, despite what you have been told. I made a promise to your ancestor Abraham and you are part of that promise.
All that should be enough. You don’t need to be jealous of anyone, angry with anyone or need anything. You are mine and I love you.
Can you imagine being told that?
Can you, even for a moment, wrap your head around what it must have been like for those escapees to be talked to by God like this?
Who us?
Yes. You.
Fast forward one and a half thousand years to Jesus, standing in the Temple in the capital city of the land promised to Moses and those slaves, at a festival celebrating that moment when they were set free telling them that they have forgotten who they are… and they have absolutely no idea who he is.
The Temple is important. It’s a symbol of identity. A place where God is worshiped at the very heart of the nation. So, what the problem? People, including Jesus, travelled for miles to worship in the Temple. Jesus calls it ‘my Father’s house’ so he doesn’t have a problem with the Temple as an idea. His problem is with who the people have become.
Let’s take the sacrifices as an example.
A sacrifice is something that is costly to you. It’s not a tip. It’s not a minor inconvenience. It’s something that is significant. So, there’s a big difference between when you are the one growing or breeding and feeding and looking after a lamb that you then take with you to the Temple as a costly offering than when you turn up and buy one from the shop. Sure, it costs you money, and you have worked hard for that, but it’s not yours. The cost is different.
The whole point of sacrifice is that it is a sign of gratitude. It’s a response to that statement by God that you are his and that all you have has been provided for you by him… because he loves you.
Sacrifice has become an obligation, not a response.
It’s become a business, not an act of devotion.
It’s become an imposition rather than a celebration of freedom.
Remember that amazing statement made to those newly freed slaves? You don’t need to make idols or images because I created you in my likeness. The people have forgotten that. They have gone back to thinking of God as distant, far off, locked in a room in the Temple where they need to go once in a while and make an offering so that God will not be angry with them.
How do you help people to see that God isn’t to be contained? Well, standing among them is a pretty good start, don’t you think?
Tear down this temple.
This body…
I am the temple.
And so are you!
The Temple isn’t about God being in one place and you coming to Him, although there’s nothing wrong with coming to worship God. But the lesson of the wandering in the wilderness was that God was with them wherever they went. They relearned the lesson in the years of exile in Babylon, but they have forgotten again.
This confrontation between Jesus and the Temple leaders is another one of those moments when everything the people believed about themselves and about God is turned on its head.
Tear down this temple…
This temple. This body. This place where God is.
God is there… standing among them, standing right in front of them, not locked in a room where no-one can go.
And when they ask for a sign Jesus tells them that God will show them what he always wanted for them. God will show them that sacrifice is something God is willing to embrace on the cross, but that sacrifice is not the end.
If it all ends at the cross then the whole thing has just been about God keeping us company in our misery. Which is nice. Helpful even. But that’s not all there is…
There’s more… so much more. Tear down this temple and in three days I will rebuild it.
Resurrection. The defeat of death. The end of fear. The sign that this life is not all there is.
And then there is ascension. After the resurrection, when Jesus ascends to heaven, only then is the sign complete. God’s plan is for us all to be united with Him, because we are his and he loves us.
This is who we are.
This is our identity!
And we should never forget it!
2024
Facing your Fears
What are you afraid of? Like really scared of?
For me it’s heights. Actually, that’s not quite true. I’m not afraid of being up high. I’m perfectly happy sitting in a plane at 40,000 feet.
So perhaps I’m not afraid of heights… perhaps I’m scared of falling.
I’m sure there are many other things I’m afraid of but, to be quite honest, being crucified isn’t one of them. I have spent very little time thinking about the possibility because the reality is that me getting nailed to a cross is incredibly unlikely to happen. It’s just not a thing anymore.
And that’s a bit of a problem for us when we come to passages like this one where Jesus talks about his followers having to take up our cross and follow him. And not just because we don’t have any crosses handy to pick up…
It’s a pretty rubbish recruitment plan. Come and join us… and give up your life. Come and join us… and get brutally executed…. Come and join us… and have a life full of suffering.
Em, no, thank’s very much for the invitation… but I think I’ll give it a miss.
But the cross is so important to our faith. It’s the symbol of it. I’ve always thought it was odd that people wear an instrument of torture and execution as jewellery, but at least some of that comes from the importance of the cross to our understanding of who Jesus is and what Jesus came for.
In this season of Lent we’ll do quite a lot of thinking about the cross and why it is so important as we journey through the story to darkness and desolation of Good Friday.
This passage from chapter 8 of Mark’s Gospel is an important step on that journey. We should give it our full attention but we should also be a little bit cautious about it, and especially where we put our emphasis.
We need to talk a bit more about the idea and strategies of empire if we are to be able to make sense of this strange and often troubling passage from chapter 8 of Mark’s story of Jesus.
But before we do that I want to say something really important about what this passage is NOT about. The idea of taking up your own cross has been misused to justify all kinds of things for centuries. It has been boiled down to something like ‘well, everyone has problems so you just need to put up with it’. People were basically told to stop complaining and just accept illness, abuse and discrimination without complaint because, well, because everyone has a cross to bear. That’s absolutely not what Jesus is talking about here. In fact, it is pretty much completely opposite.
So, let’s find out why we’ve been sold this lie that we should put up and shut up because it’s what Jesus wants.
Jesus is in Caesarea-Philippi. It’s a city of the empire, in every sense a Roman city with temples and amphitheatres and columns and statues. And it’s built in the middle of occupied Israel.
That’s one of the things you do if you want to occupy another country… you import your culture and privilege it above the native one. That can take all kinds of forms, from banning local languages, religious gatherings, introducing a new currency, making people work in different ways, imposing new laws and enforcing all of this with a very harsh system of punishment.
And that’s exactly what the Romans did.
They operated a very sophisticated carrot and stick system. They made massive improvements to sanitation, water distribution, roads and farming. The Monty Python sketch that asks ‘what have the romans ever done for us?’ is funny because of all the eras in history the Romans might have made the biggest impact across most of Europe and north Africa.
But compliance was required. And the stick was one of the most brutal forms of torture and execution ever devised… crucifixion.
We don’t ever talk about the reality of what that is, so I’m about to. It is unpleasant so if that’s something you might not want to listen to then skip ahead a bit…
It takes a long, long time to die on a cross. You hang there with just enough support to keep you there but also to allow gravity to do the work. The strain is agonising and eventually your internal organs collapse. But not for hours, sometimes days.
Crosses were erected along the main roads and near the gates of cities so that to get anywhere you had to walk past them. It was horrific. And it was effective. It wasn’t a way that anyone wanted to die.
So, when Jesus suggests that people should take up their cross, it’s not hard to see how it is easy to jump to the idea that he must be talking about suffering. That’s what crosses are all about. But I don’t think that he is.
We also need to be really careful that we don’t read ahead and impose our understanding of the cross and Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection onto this conversation quite yet.
This is a bit of a leap… but have you ever seen the Disney Pixar movie, A Bug’s Life? It’s about a colony of ants who are bullied by much larger grasshoppers. The ants are forced to collect grain for the grasshoppers and if they don’t collect enough the grasshoppers do what bullies do… they threaten violence.
It’s a brilliant example of how empire works. There are only a few grasshoppers and thousands of ants, but the whole thing works on fear. One ant could never take on a grasshopper. They are just too big and too strong, and they can fly. But 100 or 1,000 ants… that’s a different proposition altogether. But for that to happen something has to change. The ants have to no longer be afraid. And that’s what happens. It starts with one ant exposing the lie that the grasshoppers are stronger.
I’m going to use the words Government and Empire interchangeably for a few minutes. I know they are not the same. Not every government is also an empire, but our’s is.
Both government and Empire work on the same principles… people are either satisfied enough that making trouble is too much hassle or they are too afraid to bother… or not enough people join in to make it effective. Governments all over the world still spend their days working out how much their citizens will put up with. Will they pay this much tax? Will they wait this long for treatment? Will they put up with this much unemployment and this much benefit support? How many children need to be living in poverty before people start to bother? Will people pick up the slack through food banks and charity?
It takes a lot to change the mind of a government.
But Jesus isn’t inciting a riot. Far from it. So, what is he doing? Because he’s absolutely talking about what we might now call regime change!
Empire is one kind of kingdom. One system. But there’s another way. An opposite way. Jesus calls this other way ‘the Kingdom of God’ and it is in complete contrast to the Empire.
The kingdom of God is based on love, not hate. Joy, not fear. Peace, not violence. Sharing, not greed. Compassion, not selfishness.
But that seems so far away from the way things are. How do you make the change from one kingdom to the other?
Well, the question Jesus poses is this… what is that you are afraid of? What’s the worst thing that could happen? The answer is simple. You could end up nailed to a cross.
The cross is the thing that hold power. It is the symbol of fear, or suffering and of oppression. It’s the symbol of Empire. It’s not for us. Now the cross symbolises something very different. But to make the switch people need to not be scared of it anymore. They need a way to embrace the cross and to take away their fear.
And Jesus gives them it…
Life.
So, when Jesus says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” he’s talking about leaving behind the selfish system of empire where the measure of the wellbeing of a society is the profit it made and the increase in wealth.
When Jesus says “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it” he means that our lives as we know them will be completely different. We will step away from our self-destructive ways of living and regain the life that God intends for us. Jesus is talking about life and death, or rather living and dying.
He’s talking about the things that matter. He’s talking about the life that God wants for us.
This is a call to embrace life. To not be afraid of the systems of death and destruction but to step away from them and live a different way.
But that has consequences.
People will point and stare.
People will call you mad or weird or dangerous.
because the system doesn’t like rivals.
People will call you all sorts of names.
People will undermine you and accuse you
because the system can’t stand when someone points out the lies that it is based on.
Jesus will eventually find himself nailed to a cross by the empire.
But in that moment,
even in that darkest of moments,
Jesus show that he was telling the truth.
The cross has no power.
Death is not to be feared.
Life wins because love wins…
love wins every time.
This isn’t easy. I can’t even stay off the chocolate for lent or get myself out the door for a run, even on a sunny day. How on earth am I going to completely change the way I live?
Perhaps by having an example. A role model. Someone to follow who has been there and done it all.
I said earlier that the people hearing Jesus say this didn’t have our knowledge of how the story ends. But the readers of Mark’s Gospel did. The people who believed and started to follow did.
The cross was transformed by Jesus’ life and death and resurrection from a symbol of torture and oppression and death into a symbol of hope, of forgiveness, of life.
Why would you not want to take up that cross, and in doing so step into the life God has prepared for each of us.
2024
Start!
Mark 1:9-15
In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptised by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’
And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.
Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’
Sermon
Sometimes, when we have trouble getting to sleep we listen to one of these sleep meditations on an app called Headspace.
It always starts the same way… Here we are, where the ocean meets the land. A lovely beach, surrounded by rocky cliffs… and in moments we’re asleep. Well, I’m asleep. The calm voice and the repetition with a breathing exercise thrown in seems to be enough to soothe us to sleep. It’s become almost a bit of a joke. I’m asleep before the end of the first sentence. Avril wants to stay awake to find out what happens next!
Repetition… familiarity… they can cause us to relax and that can, of course, be a good thing. But we can also become so familiar with something that we take it for granted.
So, here we are again… Back at the same verses of chapter 1 of Mark’s Gospel for the third or maybe fourth time in just a few weeks. I’ve said before that there are 10 sermons in every passage, but this is really starting to put that theory to the test. We’ve spoken about Jesus’ baptism, about John and ideas around confession and forgiveness. We’ve also spoken about Jesus’ mission. So, what’s left?
It’s the first Sunday in Lent so we have this reading again because of 2 verses. 12 and 13. “And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.”
We always get readings about the temptation of Jesus on the first Sunday of Lent. I’m guessing that’s because we have had four whole days of giving up chocolate or crisps or alcohol or whatever you might have chosen to go without for Lent and we all know that making it beyond the first few days is the hardest part. So, we get Jesus, alone in the wilderness for 40 days, surrounded by wild animals, with nothing to eat. I think that’s maybe supposed to be encouragement? Look, Jesus managed 40 days with nothing, so step away from the M&Ms!
And of course there is something in all of that. We fast in lent to help wake us up from our regular pattern. The grumbling tummy is supposed to point us back to the purpose of fasting… to help us focus more on God. For us, the constant battle where we unconsciously go to the fridge and the voice that reminds us that we have given up the thing we are going for is supposed to have the same effect. Oh… I’m not eating this… and that’s because I’m supposed to be focussing on God… and now I am. At, least that’s supposed to be how it works.
And that’s all fine. In fact it’s good. Anything that reminds us to think more about God must surely be a good thing.
The other thing that’s missing is an account of the three temptations Jesus faced. You need to look in Matthew and Luke’s gospels for those. Mark, as usual, takes a much more sparse approach. So, to boil these two verses down to giving up crisps would be to miss out on more than a packet of cheese and onion.
As usual Mark packs an amazing amount into just two sentences in verses 12 and 13. Although I think he cheats a bit with the second one with all the semi colons, but still… his economy with words is impressive.
Mark tells us that immediately after Jesus’ baptism “the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.”
Drove him out.
This wasn’t a decision by Jesus to go on a silent retreat. He was driven by the Holy Spirit, out into the wilderness.
But why? Why not just get on with his ministry? After all, God has just said that he is pleased with Jesus.
Perhaps Jesus is a bit like an athlete? You can be fit, but not quite competition ready. In football they call it ‘match ready’. Jesus has been preparing for this his whole life, but now is the time for that final preparation.
The wilderness is a place of huge significance. It’s where Moses and the Hebrew slaves became the nation of Israel, God’s people. But it took them a while to work it all out. 40 years of mistake after mistake until they finally realised that God was serious about them. But they didn’t leave behind the slavery of Egypt without some persuasion.
The story tells of the angel of death killing the first born Egyptians and as the Israelites crossed the water they were chased by an army. They were driven into the wilderness too. There was no choice. No going back.
It’s not a place you would choose to spend any length of time, never mind 40 days! Jesus didn’t pack for the trip. We don’t hear that he pitched his tent, set up his camping stove and settled down in his down-filled sleeping bag to enjoy a good book.
He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.”
Forty days. That’s the biblical number for ‘ages’. Longer than a month. Longer than the time it took for the moon to complete a full cycle because out there in the wild that’s pretty much the only thing to mark the time. Day after day after day of… well… days.
They say the devil makes work for idle hands so perhaps it’s no surprise that Jesus was tempted by Satan, The Accuser. Unlike the other gospels with their three big moments of temptation for Jesus to turn a stone into bread, to jump and let the angels catch him, or to bow before Satan and rule all the kingdoms of the world, we only have this short mention that he was tempted but it seems that the temptation lasted the 40 days. Which for me seems more likely. Temptations aren’t often one time only things, are they? If I was to give up chocolate then every time I saw the bag of M&Ms chocolate with peanuts sitting on the table I’m going to be tempted. And sometimes that temptation will be stronger than others. But unless I throw it out it’s still going to be there… with its bright yellow wrapper and delicious chocolate filled with crunchy peanuts…
But I don’t think chocolate was Jesus’ problem. He was there with the wild animals.
This is where we really start to miss stuff. Yes, there are wild animals in the wilderness. Lions and wild dogs and even bears. So on one level, their mention is just an acknowledgement that they are there and the wilderness is a dangerous and unpredictable place, but there’s more.
Mark’s Gospel is linked closely to some other writings in the Bible and those links might also give us some hints about what could be going on here.
Mark quotes the prophet Isaiah just a few verses earlier and Isaiah paints an amazing picture of what’s known as the peaceable kingdom, where the lion and the lamb will lie down together. So, Jesus, sometimes called the lamb of God, could be literally living side by side with the lions, in harmony. It’s a sign of the coming of the new kingdom where peace and harmony will reign. After all, Jesus is the Word who was with God at the creation of all things.
Mark’s Gospel is most similar to the book of Daniel in the Old Testament. They are both what we call apocalyptic writings. And remember, apocalypse doesn’t mean the end of the world in some disastrous fashion. It means revelation. These books reveal something important about God.
If I was to ask you what story about Daniel you remember I’m guessing it’s Daniel in the lion’s den, the story where a man faithful to God was put in a lion’s den, but no harm comes to him. So this mention of wild beasts in Mark’s gospel could be an echo of that story, showing us that God is with Jesus, protecting him.
But the wild beasts might also be a metaphor for the world. Mark has already set out his challenge to the empires of the world from verse 1. The dangerous beast and wild animals could be the kingdoms and rulers of the world who Jesus has come to challenge with this radically new way of thinking in the kingdom of God which has come near.
The final part of the puzzle is that the angels waited on him. That’s the same thing we are told about Simon Peter’s mother in law when she is raised up from illness and the same way Jesus will describe his own ministry… a ministry of service.
John the Baptist called on people to repent and believe. Repent means to change your way of thinking. To have your mind blown! These two lines of wilderness temptation are conformation that the empires of the world have been given notice. Things are about to change.
But how will that happen?
How could such powerful nations, such powerful ideas, be overcome?
Our usual response to something dangerous is to either run away or avoid it or to kill it. Jesus isn’t about to take either approach. He will confront the empire head on… with love.
So, repent and believe because Mark, once again, in just two sentences, manages to blow our minds with an idea that is at the same time wonderful and terrifying…
The kingdom of God has come near… so hold on to your hats!!!
2024
Jesus’ true identity revealed!
This is the last Sunday in what we call the season of Epiphany. Epiphany itself is the 6th of January, the day we remember the Magi visiting Jesus in a house in Bethlehem after looking for him in the royal palace in Jerusalem. A discovery that Jesus wasn’t that kind of king. We keep going with that theme of discovery, revelations, these little glimpses into who Jesus is and what that means for us until we get to Lent and Lent begins on Wednesday.
On this last day of Epiphany we remember a strange event with a name that before Harry Potter we might not have been that familiar with… transfiguration. That just means when the outward appearance of something changes. So in Happy Potter that means turning into a cat or a frog. That’s not quite what happens in this story about Jesus though.
Jesus takes Peter, James and John up a hill, and there on the mountainside Jesus is changed. Transfigured. But instead of being changed into something else, what happens here is that Jesus’ true nature is revealed. He is, I think, in this moment the same Jesus that the other Gospel writers will describe Mary meeting at the tomb on Easter Morning, and the same Jesus the disciples will meet in a locked room. He is, in this moment, the eternal Christ revealed.
One of the things that always amazes me about this whole happening is that these three disciples are invited to be a part of it. We have often seen Jesus wander off into the wilderness alone to pray, to rest and to spend time with God. But this is different.
Over the last weeks we have been invited to catch these glimpses, these little epiphanies, helping us to piece together just who Jesus is. That’s how the disciples had to do it too. Jesus didn’t sit them down and lay it all out for them. He invited them to follow him and see for themselves. And they did.
They saw healings and miracles. Jesus fed 5,000 people and then later another 4,000. He has walked on water and calmed a storm. He has healed people in public and in private, he has exorcised demons and he has told these strange stories called parables.
They heard Jesus teach and transform the way they thought about God, and the world, and their place in it. They heard Jesus’ radical reimagining of how the world should be and he has openly challenge the religious authorities and the empire.
And they were the good guys. They had a ringside seat to all that had happened and was about to happen.
Peter thought he had worked it all out. By the time we get to chapter 9 Peter had made his declaration about who he thought Jesus was. You are the Messiah.
But it’s one thing to know something and something very different when you actually experience it.
We all know that. Having to endure your friend’s holiday snaps and hear all their stories about wherever they have just can get pretty boring if you’ve never been there. It’s nice for a while, and you’re happy (and maybe a little bit jealous) that they have had a great time, but the photos and the stories are never going to sum up what it’s like to stand on a glass shelf 153 stories up in the Sears Tower in Chicago
or to cross the Golden Gate Bridge
or look across the Grand Canyon
or come face to face with the space shuttle.
Mark’s story of Jesus is what’s called apocalyptic writing. We have come to use the word apocalypse to mean the end of the world, usually is some kind of disastrous fashion with an action hero trying to save the day, but apocalypse actually means something quite different. Apocalypse means an uncovering or discovery of great knowledge. Apocalypse is actually very close in meaning to epiphany, just bigger!
So, as Mark’s story unfolds there are these apocalyptic moments, events that reveal something much bigger. Something huge and important.
The first one is Jesus’ baptism when God speaks. “‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased”. Bits of information don’t really come much bigger than that, but at Jesus’ baptism we are never quite sure who hears these words from God. Mark suggests that the experience is Jesus’ experience alone. In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptised by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven…. An apocalyptic moment for Jesus… Confirmation of who he is. And now an apocalyptic moment for us through the retelling of the story.
But I want to suggest something about this story we call the transfiguration. I think it’s in the wrong place. And once you realise that, and why it’s in the wrong place the whole thing makes much more sense.
Have you ever watched a film or read a book that starts with the final scene and then explains how we got there? I think this might be what Mark is doing here. If you have a Bible handy, if you flip to the end of Mark’s Gospel you’ll find that there are two endings. A short ending and a longer one. The short ending stops before anyone meets the risen Jesus. And that’s just odd… Why would you do that? That’s obviously what everyone else thought and so there is a longer ending that is an account of the risen Christ meeting the disciples. But what if there is already an encounter with the risen Christ in the story? What if that encounter is somewhere else? Like in chapter 9… right in the middle.
But why?
One of the strange things about following the lectionary, the readings for the week, is that when the church year changes we bounce about the story. We have spent the last few weeks working through chapter 1. All that stuff has happened in just one chapter so just imagine how much has gone on by the time we get to chapter 9.
Jesus has been healing and teaching and has started to talk about the end… It’s all getting pretty dark. He speaks about how he has to suffer and die and how his followers have to take up their own cross to follow him. It’s the only way. But the disciples aren’t listening.
Or rather, they don’t want to listen.
This isn’t what they signed up for.
Why can’t we just keep doing the healings and miracles and having everybody love us? Love you… we mean love you!
Is that how we feel? The journey to the cross is one nobody would choose to make.
It makes sense then for Mark to present us with the risen Christ here at the transfiguration in the middle of the story before taking us on that road to the cross.
We’ve spoken before about how the joy of Palm Sunday and Easter Day are hollow without the darkness of Holy Week. Mark, I think, agrees.
Mark is writing to a group of people who are most likely in Rome, right at the heart of the Empire, and who are and will continue to be hated and persecuted, tortured and killed for their faith, so for Mark it is hugely important to show his readers that this suffering is part of what Jesus calls us into. Jesus tells his followers to take up your cross… leave behind all that you know… sell all that you have and give the money to the poor.
Mark’s gospel is a hard and painful journey that leaves us much closer to the foot of the cross where Jesus dies, screaming in agony, wondering aloud why God has forsaken him. Peter himself will travel to Rome and will be crucified upside down there by the empire.
So, when you look at this strange transfiguration story as an encounter with the risen Christ, the universal christ, the Christ who was and is and is to come, it all starts to make much more sense.
Mark tells us this story to show Jesus’ place in things, in the Kairos of God’s time rather than the chronos of our time, by placing him there on the mountain with the other major figures of the faith story, Moses and Elijah.
Moses, the one, who despite all his misgivings and lack of confidence, led his people out of Egypt to the threshold of a new land and along the way met God on the mountain where God passes him by, just like he did with Adam and Eve in that story of the paradise of Eden. And Elijah, the prophet who spent his days holding the king and queen to account for all that he had done wrong, who after lying down under a bush and wishing to die because it was all just too hard, was cared for and restored to health by God and then met God on a mountain, not in the noise and fury of fire or wind or even an earthquake, but in the overwhelming silence, taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire. These are the greatest of all the prophets, who the stories say will return when the Messiah arrives…
The disciples are terrified. Who wouldn’t be?
Peter blurts out something about making shelters because, perhaps, there in the wilderness Moses had built a tent, the tabernacle, where God would come and meet them. But he calls Jesus Rabbi. There, presented with the Christ, the Messiah revealed in all his cosmic glory, Peter tries to put Jesus back into his ordinary box… rabbi. Teacher. One of many rabbis. Just a man. I can cope with just a man, even if he’s a man who does all kinds of stuff I don’t understand… but this… I can’t cope with this.
And in the middle of this apocalyptic moment where the disciples are full of doubt and wonder in equal measure, God speaks. ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!’
This is who Jesus is, the son of God. The disciples heard it straight from God. The disciples can’t un-see of un-know it. This moment will travel with them way beyond the things that are recorded in Mark’s story.
But what of us? Are we left with the snapshots and second hand tales of an experience we might never have? Only three disciples went up that mountain. The other nine, just like us, didn’t share in that moment. But they, like us, still encounter this Jesus. This universal Christ who doesn’t only live on the pages of a book.
We meet him every day,
in the wonder of creation,
in the eyes of a friend or stranger,
in moments of compassion,
in a word of consolation.
Nobody ever said that following Jesus would be easy. Jesus himself said it would be difficult, costly even. But when the whole point is to completely transform the world then what would we expect?