Identity - Shaped by the God I Serve

Jesus’ wisdom moves from Blessing (God’s kingdom breaking in) to Identity (discovering who I am in God’s realm) to Action (living actively from the Identity I learn in Jesus). Jesus shows us who we are by showing us the nature and character of God, of reality.

Identity is profoundly contested. Who am I? What is my life about? Am I defined by work, class struggle, nation, race, gender, oppression, relationships, wealth, desires, music, subconscious id-ego. Is my ‘self’ a delusion of chemical reactions in mindless brain cells. Does my life matter, now or ever? Am I loved? How do I find hope - the truth? We feel after God with human-sized gods - variations of power, sex, and money.

Within Israel’s long revelation of the One God, creator and sustainer of all, Jesus comes challenging people to know God in a new way, revealing God in life and action. As we see the vision/truth of God in Jesus, we learn ourselves within the reality he shows.

God Everywhere, Inside and Beyond

Jesus lives the scriptures: God is creator and pervades everything, but is never the same as creation, but Jesus pushes us to see differently and more. We’re in a world with God visible everywhere, feeding birds, clothing lilies. God’s love touches all people in rain, sunshine and eclipse. We learn to be creatures, vulnerable, trusting, loving.

God acts in history: His Kingdom promises are being filled up here, now: "Your kingdom come!" But God is never a distant, outside power - perhaps intervening in miraculous shows of strength (ancient and modern deism). He is our Father in the heavens, but the heavens describe his realm everywhere, in secret, our closed room, even our heart.

A God of Intimacy and Love - Even for Me

We’re often anxious and fearful about circumstances. We live defensively and try to secure life with stuff. Jesus says you are creatures, vulnerable in a dangerous world; but created, sustained and loved by God. God is the only one worthy of true fear, and he values/loves you. We are profoundly/eternally valuable as God’s creatures.

We interact with God in prayer, but he already knows our needs and cares about us. God’s aim is to woo us into a loving relationship that lets us share his own eternal life.

Nonchalant with the King of the Universe

Who am I? I’m in a strange position. A child adopted by the One God beyond all bounds. My security is only in God. But it is so great that I can let go of the security blankets and defensiveness that embody my fears. I am at home in the universe of my Father.

The whole world and beyond is full of wonders and is my home. I am something more.

A Kingdom Breaking in among the Broken

Jesus proclaims the kingdom/rule of God. People throng to him, sick, suffering, curious. He calls ordinary people to follow him. And they do. He begins teaching on a hillside. He pronounces blessings. Not ideals but naming those among whom this kingdom is breaking in. Not the religious, powerful, wealthy. Poor in spirit, mourning, meek. Among them God’s ancient promises to Israel are coming to fullness, unexpectedly.

Jesus never condescends. These are the light of the world. The cutting edge of God’s rule. He calls them to the wisdom, the life of God’s realm, beginning now in our world.

Anger and Contempt ... or Reconciliation

Jesus knew how needy and self-deceived we are, how self-centered. Our selves and our idols push out God and his gift of life. Jesus challenges us to get over ourselves.

When he contrasts true wisdom with ordinary instructions for life (law), he begins by setting murder side by side with anger and contempt - escalating judicial threats! We see our anger as reasonable. That person is a fool! Still, the anger corrupts me!

Jesus challenges disciples to outlandish reconciliation. Leave the offering. Go back home. Be reconciled first. Then offer to God. But, but, but.... Let God back in. God’s life.

Receiving and Sharing God’s Forgiveness and Grace

In teaching his followers to pray, Jesus puts special stress on asking for forgiveness as we have forgiven. Here we approach God’s heart, the center of his kingdom, the great promise of a new covenant. We want God’s forgiveness but have trouble forgiving.

Jesus speaks of debts/offenses: claims against someone that would rightly demand repayment, punishment. Forgiveness only deals with and confronts real wrongs. It doesn’t excuse them or explain them away. (Then no forgiveness is needed.)

Here engagement with God reaches deepest. Forgiveness is hard! Forgiveness is a rejection of fairness in favor of grace. We let go our fair demands. We absorb the debt, the offense. We release. Jesus is insistent! We need God’s grace: In spite of our offenses, God dies for us and welcomes us into new life. In forgiveness, we experience the joy that causes God to choose forgiveness and grace rather than revenge.

Where God’s kingdom, true wisdom, breaks in, we become people practicing forgiveness and reconciliation. God’s heart breaking into a world that disdains such grace.

The Call and The Way

We begin a series looking toward our congregational retreat: "Called to the Way - Living the Wisdom of Jesus." Jesus was not an expected wisdom teacher giving proverbial advice with a bit different twist. He called followers to learn to see a new reality and to walk that path. For every one of his early disciples it was a radical challenge to begin a journey of challenges over years. Jesus leading to events beyond imagining.

Peter, Andrew, James, John, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Matthew, Simon- Jesus is profoundly personal. God is personal, creating diverse, specific people, loving all. Jesus calls to "follow behind me," warns/promises transformation. They leave everything and follow. They leave behind an old self, to find their own lives/souls.

Why Does Jesus Say Something so Obviously Wrong?

In grasping Jesus’ Wisdom, it’s important to allow ourselves to feel how unexpected and disconcerting it is. Not wisdom that fits our normal ways of thinking in any way. We want to make it practical, utilitarian, a new law. But it powerfully resists all attempts.

Everyone with any normal moral sense knows that when Jesus says, "Do not resist the one who is evil," it’s just wrong. It can’t be right. And the Cheek, Coat, Borrowing!? Loving neighbor and hating enemy is surely our normal mode (except for some neighbors). What kind of wisdom is loving your enemy when they’re still an enemy?

Jesus doesn’t say this is easy. You leave everything, even self, behind if you follow him. He knows the power of evil to control us, define us, even by resisting it. Pharisees, Zealots, so many were defined by the evil they fought. Jesus’ way to disempower evil is not to play its game of making me violent, possessive, exclusive, greedy by reaction.

Managing our Evil or Living a New Identity

Normal wisdom and law and most good advice are ways of managing our evil and the evil of society. It’s necessary for what it does in society at large. But Jesus says that it never brings you to your real self, given by God; to God’s life, to eternal life. It blocks you from being real children of the God of such great generosity and love.

Jesus call us to learn a new hard/easy, disconcerting/delightful reality, that he would ultimately bring to full view in his death-resurrection: You united with God’s own life.

Amy Bost Henegar preaches on the power of story as a witness to Christ.

Yahweh as Israel’s God and God of the Nations

The book of Jonah is a remarkable story. Probably written about 400 bc in the period when many have returned from exile under Persian domination. After Ezra and Nehemiah. A time of great uncertainty - Job, Ecclesiastes.

The story looks back more than 350 yrs earlier, before Amos and Hosea, 775 bc in time of Jeroboam II. Jonah was referred to as a prophet of expansion (2 Kg. 14:23-29).

Assyria was the evil, terrorist empire. Nineveh became capital about 75 yrs after Jonah but then was seen as center of the destruction of Israel (Nahum 3:1-7).

Jonah is a serious, funny, ironical, tragic parable to help Israel see itself and God. Out of exile, who is Israel? A light to the nations (Isa. 42:1-9) or a closed, holy community. The same question continued into Jesus’ time and beyond.

God calls Jonah. He flees. We watch. Pagan sailors. Enchanted world of storms caused by people. God can speak that language. Jonah wants to treat Yahweh like a pagan god that he can escape. Yahweh can outdo Marduk or Poseidon, throwing storms. But not because he’s offended but he wants to deal with a people outside Israel. Into the sea, the big fish. Death is salvation. Like exile.

Jonah prays at his best. Already delivered. God is about steadfast love and Jonah knows it. Still ironical. Jonah fled the presence of God who encompasses Sheol.

They’re Going to be Destroyed! Oh no, They Repented!

Jonah goes to the giant evil city. One word of warning. No mention of God. But the message from God is astonishingly effective. Even the evil king is changed. They show extravagant repentance, even animals. They turn. Maybe God will turn?

Jonah had predicted doom, but God relents/repents. God does not stick by his prediction but by his love for people, even those in evil empires.

Jonah is angry. He is different from those honoring vain idols with violence. God saved him but shouldn’t be so merciful, as he revealed himself to Israel (Ex 34:6).

God pushes Jonah, Israel to think. Like Jesus in Nazareth speaking of outreach to Gentiles. We want sharper borders to define us as God’s people. God is not worried about being too gracious. The NT plays out the story of Jonah.

Prophecy in Future Ruins

The early written prophets take us mid 8th cent (750) bc. Time of Homer and Rome’s founding. David was as long ago as the American Revolution is to us. Kingdom divided: Israel, north; Judah, south, since Solomon nearly 2 cent. In the north a strong king, Jeroboam II (784-47 bc). The empire of Assyria was in inner turmoil and Jeroboam expanded territory, brought trade, prosperity.

Israel’s worship centers at Bethel and elsewhere were prospering. Both Yahweh and Baal Hadad and other gods were worshiped. The very definition of good religion. Religion was always a bargain/contract with the gods. Offer sacrifice and pay vows so that the gods will bless you with fertility, prosperity, victory. That was the language of most religion, Canaan, Greece, Assyria, even Israel.

But in Israel, something more was always pushing into that traditional language. Prophets come into Israel’s ideal religious world. Hosea from Israel. Amos from Judah. In the midst of prosperity that shows religion is working, both challenge Israel’s failure at the core. Both foretell a coming disaster nobody wants to hear, Israel’s destruction by Assyria in 722. Why!? Israel’s worshiping God/gods.

Knowing God and Idolatry

Israel’s faith was always supposed to point to a reality fundamentally different from the gods of religion. The prophets called them idols, not just because they had images, but because they are at most beings/forces within the world. You serve them like a great emperor that you need to keep happy, benevolent. Modern gods are power, money, pleasure, nation, race, control, security, etc.

But Yahweh is not one of the gods. God is creator beyond all creation. He needs nothing, gives everything, existence itself. The aim of worship is to change, refocus human life, not meet God’s needs. But Israel’s corruption and injustice showed that they knew nothing of Yahweh, beyond all human manipulation.

Amos focuses, for example, on the "Day of Yahweh." You don’t know Yahweh! He is not a human-sized bargaining God. He wants you, manifested by your actions of justice and concrete care for others. He hates religious acts that manipulate.

Hosea saw that the fundamental crisis was not knowing God as God. Manifested in corruption. God’s character of steadfast love is humanity’s goal. God is better.

The God of Steadfast Love

Hosea 6:6 was one of Jesus’ favorite passages. He had meditated and grasped the meaning of these prophets and embodied it. He challenged the religious leaders of his own day to simply learn the meaning of one verse of Hosea.

It would overturn so much emphasis on form rather than substance in religion. Today, it’s easy to reject form, what’s challenging is embodying substance.

Paul saw the drama of these prophets as showing the deep human brokenness that the Torah brought to clarity and focus. The varied corruptions of the nations were brought to a point in Israel. God healed them through defeat (exile) and in his grace taking all our sin on himself in Jesus. Grace reigns for life!

Patriotism, Authority, Rebellion

It’s 4th of July weekend. Memorial of the beginning of rebellion, 241 yrs ago, 1776. The colonies rejected "the Powers that be" (Rm 13:1 KJV) and began a war for independence. US history is long and complicated, with great advances and profound problems that we still wrestle with. It’s one of many nations, empires, colonies, people groups across history.

Christians live within all nations, under all authorities, in tension with all. We all experience patriotism, connection to the land of our birth or ancestors or ethnic group or home.

A modern nation like US is not like ancient Israel: tribal/royal, under covenant with God. Nor exactly like the Roman empire. But it’s more like Greco-Roman pluralism than like Israel. Our texts all try to make sense of life under Rome in language from the scripture of Israel. Paul, Peter strive to find a way to live at the bottom of empire that can be hostile power. Today’s church lives in a pluralist society open to faith (as private opinion) and non-faith. Strong civil religion, materialism, individualism, and freedom. Religion is a marketplace.

Church and Power

Church leaders, like others, have long felt the lure of power, control (to do good, of course). Rom 13:1-7, influential in history. King James saw it as the divine right of kings. It was written by Paul whose back was bloodied by Roman rods and Synagogue whips. Why write this: to help believers live by their values within a society with hostile destructive power. It’s abstract, affirming authority, not Nero as emperor. Under God’s universal sovereignty. Paul often went against authority and received its wrath. But he knew that the rulers were not absolute, had a task to support right and punish wrong, for which they’d be judged.

Peter uses scripture images for believers as a "holy nation" living in exile scattered among the nations. They submit to emperors in order to live exemplary lives. They’re free, but honor everyone, even the emperor, in order to live the life of love to which they are called.

As Rome persecuted the church, the evils of the empire became more central. John saw a vision of God’s judgment against Rome/Babylon. Against its web of power that involved other nations, against its economic web of trade that treated humans like commodities. It is a call to believers not to commit themselves to a particular power, which will fall.

None of these could imagine a truly Christian government. Nor has there ever been one.

In spite of such warnings, the leaders of the church, structured their power as a hierarchy like Rome. With Constantine, Rome did not become Christian, but the church was coopted by the empire. Jesus’ command about greatness was swamped by the lures of power.

Living within the Empire

Jesus contrasts the power of human rulers to a different kind of greatness rooted in service and self-giving love. Our faith is a testimony to the truth that at its deepest level the universe is not based on the power of law, imposed will, and violence but on the power of love that is the heart and character of God. Any government leaders are capable of corruption, sin, injustice, like any of us. More so under of the corrupting effects of power. In our society we as citizens are part of "the Powers that be" and must take responsibility.

As Christians (aliens and exiles) our aim is not a theocratic state. No coercion, ever! But God is profoundly concerned about justice in society, about how the poor and vulnerable are treated, overcoming oppression and treating all people as God’s creatures with honor.

Christians have the right and responsibility to engage. Enter the fray with others for political and social improvements in society. Our society is important, but so also the larger story.

All People made One as the Outcome of God’s Story

God has given us scriptures that are remarkable and challenging to understand. He engages our minds to understand and discern. We receive the whole OT. The Gospels tell Jesus’ story in four different ways. The letters are real letters written on a particular day to a distinct situation, set of problems. No systematic theological treatises or law books. There is built-in flexibility, diversity, and interpretation.

In Gal 3 Paul looks broadly over the whole story in the context of deep disputes about the OT law and the Gentiles. God’s ancient promises come to fruition in Jesus’ faithfulness as Messiah and our faith/trust in him. He is one person who is both Israel and every human, but also God so that every person can become part of him.

All the deep, ancient barriers are broken down. Humans are given a new reality by God, united not by virtue but by what God has done in Jesus. Jesus actively breaks down religious, ethnic, class, socioeconomic, gender, relational barriers, back to creation. All of these barriers were set both in custom and in Roman law, city laws, and Mosaic law.

The Challenge of Implementation in a Divided World

But actually breaking these barriers was an explosive challenge. Jewish communities didn’t want to lose their rights by blurring their ethnic distinctiveness. Paul and Silas were in stocks in Philippi for interfering with someone’s slave. Respectable women belonged to their fathers or husbands by law and were always to be silent in public.

But God’s Spirit interfered, making prophets of Gentiles, making slaves into brothers and sisters, empowering women with gifts of prayer and prophecy to build up, exhort, and encourage the community of believers. The disciples didn’t set themselves the task of overturning Roman law, but in spite of law and custom they had to be true to the Gospel.

There grew a range of challenges. The Gospel of the cross was already offensive. Breaking these barriers could cause deep offenses that kept people from even listening to the Gospel. Paul tried never to cause unnecessary offence, for the sake of the Gospel. The central importance of the word of the cross, creates a situation requiring judgment.

The Challenge of Reading a Letter when it becomes Scripture

The letters are vibrant and take us into the life of the early church. But when we later Christians are seeking to find regulations and laws for church life, they pose problems.

God did not give a book of laws, but we tend to look for items that can be turned into laws. The more explicit and generic, the easier a statement becomes law. "Let women be silent."

A letter is written to a specific situation. We easily miss what was at stake in a passage. We no longer understand the significance of silence, the relation between wife and husband, the reaction of potential converts. We need as much as possible to understand both the NT culture and our own to translate the meaning of a text.

It is especially difficult when a NT practice went out of use with the passage of time. The churches struggled with how to evauate prophecy and revelation. It was already problematic in Corinth; often problems in 1 Cor. seem to derive from prophecy.

When we hear as clearly as possible, we see the remarkable new freedom given to women in a very constricting society. We see that the text assumes women’s free use of their spiritual gifts of all kinds, that the breaking of barriers of Gal 3 was in full force.

Jason Isbell, the Children and Student Minister at the Manhattan Church of Christ, preaches on wisdom for Father’s Day.

What is God Doing?

Acts looks back to Pentecost - a remarkable beginning. Not careful planning and strategy. Not insight by Apostles. Yes, they were prepared by Jesus. But they were carried along by God’s intervention. God waited till Pentecost for the meaning of the feasts. Passover: deliverance. Pentecost: Covenant, Community, Giving of Torah - God breaking in.

God intervenes in power and symbol in the language of Israel’s story: ‘Wind’ of creation, ‘Fire’ of Sinai. Human voices. Understanding. Babel is reversed. A light to the nations.

What does it mean? Peter quotes from Joel 2 - God’s promises to Abraham and David expand to new fullness, inclusiveness in God’s Spirit. Men - Women, old - young, even slaves are included. All can call on the name of the Lord to share this new Exodus, Sinai.

What has God Done?

God’s actions were present in human Jesus. You know it. But we were blind, self-destructive. God’s people joined pagans in killing Jesus, nailing him up. But in God’s longer story, he was taking human sin, betrayal, injustice, abandonment, pain, death into himself.

God raised him up. Death holds everyone! But he broke death’s unbreakable chains. David’s language anticipates God’s reality. God filled his promise to David with action beyond imagination. We saw it. Resurrection life. Now pouring out God’s Spirit. Lord and Messiah.

How do We Participate?

What do we do? Change mind and action to fit a new recognition of reality. Engage with God in being baptized into Jesus. Receive gifts: Forgiveness of sin (breaking death’s power) and God’s Holy Spirit, an ongoing, universal promise. Join in the community of new life...

Devoted to Apostles’ teaching (deep change), shared community of support and experience, breaking bread (enacting Jesus in shared life), prayer (a living, growing life with God).