What Did Jesus Just Say?

Jesus' teaching had a distinctive and often very surprising character. People were used to hearing debates about interpreting the Law of Moses and knew there were various points of view rigorously held Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes and their schools. But when Jesus taught, it was different: he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes (Mt 7:29). Jesus didn't join the debates but taught in a way that made legal application impossible anger, sacrifice, desire, oaths, non-resistance, loving enemies, etc. (Mt 5).

The problem is that the disciples, Pharisees, and we want rules, clear laws that we can apply. The chuch through the ages has struggled with turning Jesus' teaching into laws. Jesus speaks with irony and vast hyperbole. He gives us credit for being intelligent hearers, who can discern ironic language and figures of speech, but we're caught in legal thinking.

The Law and the Intention of God

The Pharisees ask about a person's' (anthropos) right to divorce his wife at will. That was the law as applied. Men had the rights, wives did not (Dt 24:1-4). The power structure was clear. Jesus ironically asks if they've ever read Genesis. God made the person/human both male and female. Gen. talks of a man leaving his parents to join his wife and become one flesh.

Divorce is a function of human sinfulness (hard hearts). Don't do it. The pattern of men having the right to throw away their wives (unless the marriage was immoral from the start) is an adulterous pattern. As Jesus saw men looking at a woman to covet/control her (Mt 5:27).

Jesus is calling people to a new/old way of thinking and acting. But he is not making a new law that makes divorce into adultery (a capital offense). He doesn't change the law at all but calls people to think and live by a vision of life that cannot be enforced by law courts.

Taking the Complexity of Human Life Seriously

The disciples embody people's amazement: If men lose all their power, it's not profitable to marry. Remarkably, Jesus responds that not all people have room for' this word.' (Not the disciples' dismissive remark, but Jesus' statement about God's will in Genesis.) The law was still there, and half the population women had no power to stop divorce.

But human life was also complicated even for men. As an obvious example Jesus talks about eunuchs who can't follow the teaching or men who choose not to marry (?) for the sake of the kingdom. God's will sets an ideal that disciples will take very seriously but does not define a legal requirement into which every life must fit. It was this attitude that made it possible for Jesus to call disciples to such high standards while at the same time having sinners, tax-collectors, even prostitutes come to him with an anticipation of acceptance. Jesus called everyone to perfection! But he was creating God's grace for broken sinners.

Bring even the Kids

People flocked to Jesus. They sensed his authority and holiness and wanted his blessing. They brought their little children for his touch and prayer. The disciples again don't quite get it.

They rebuke the people. Jesus welcomes them. The children stand in contrast to the Pharisees and even the disciples at this point. They receive the blessing. Jesus says God's kingdom belongs to such ones. Jesus calls people to live toward God's gracious, excellent rule.

Julie Short delivers a thoughtful reflection on Epiphany for Communion.

Lamp of the Body What do You See?

Epiphany is the celebration of Jesus' manifestation to the world Wise men, baptism, etc. But really seeing Jesus goes on calling us to see everything in a new way, to be changed from the inside out so that we learn to see reality as it is, undistorted, without self-deception. New series: Wide-Eyed Listening to Jesus,in Matthew. Jesus speaks simply, full of everyday metaphors, but when you listen, your jaw drops and eyes widen, astonished.

We live in a world with troubles all around, pushed and pulled in so many directions. It's easy to be frustrated, cynical. Jesus is a man who owns little, talking to crowds of laboring poor, often oppressed, suffering people. Yet he calls them/us to life of trust, without anxiety: Seek first God's rule and justice. God knows your needs. You matter to him. Learn trust.

Notice Jesus' strange saying about the eye as a lamp, an allusion to the typical scientific view of vision in that day: vision shining out from the eyes to see the world. He uses it as a metaphor for seeing our world, enabled by who/how we are inside. If our seeing eye is single (centered on God) there's ever-growing light to see everything, physical and spiritual. If it's distorted by an inner darkness (evil, envy, a false god like Mammon), you're trying to see with darkness; everything is distorted, and the darkness becomes ever greater.

Finding My Own Heart

Jesus surrounds this saying with others about things we value: treasure, things we love. The first speaks of treasures on earth and in heaven. We tend to read that as now, this world, as over against the future, after death. But for Jesus, heaven means the realm of God, present and pervasive right now. Real but not obviously visible. The heavenly Father is feeding the birds and clothing the lilies, right now. You can watch. Delayed gratification is good, but it's not what Jesus is talking about. Rather, what's real.

We struggle, fight, oppress, invest, work for stuff that passes away as fast as we accumulate it. But we and God live in a different, deeper, higher reality. Put your treasure in God's realm. How? With a whole life. The whole Sermon on the Mount, really praying the Lord's prayer.

Jesus says when I clearly see where I am treasuring things, I find myself, my heart. But I need to realize that choices must be made. I cannot serve the temporary god of Mammon/money/ power/stuff and also be devoted to the God who calls me to self-giving love. It won't work. Mammon is a god promising to supply all we need and secure our future. But in this world we are always vulnerable. We always want more. The promise expires. We live in anxiety.

Look, Perceive, Trust, Live!

Jesus looks at the working craftsmen, farmers, fishermen, weaving women, laborers around him and says Don't worry about your life about what every one of you worries about. He keeps it basic: food, drink, clothing! Jesus knows how deep anxieties are. He doesn't tell them to stop farming, fishing, weaving. But don't trust your best achievements to secure your life. Don't deny your fears, but look at them, deal with them. Learn reality.

God is real. He is everywhere, providing, caring. God gives the gift of life. Neither I nor Mammon is in control. When I let go of the illusion of my control, know my vulnerability, and learn to trust the God who gives life and all that truly lasts, then anxiety fades away.

Putting God's rule first sets a transforming standard. God fulfills needs not for competition but for the abundance and beauty of life. He knows our needs. We learn to trust his love as Jesus did. Every day has its troubles, but God is there with us. Seek his justice, his rule, and your life is full of light, you see clearly: Jesus says, All these things will be added to you.

Sonja Robinson delivers a powerful and touching reflection on Christmas and Communion.

Boxing Day Looking at the Past in the Reality of God

The day after Christmas, Boxing Day (England, Canada, US), a day for sharing the goods of the season with others, for putting away, boxing up gifts. First day of Kwanzaa. Year end near. It is a good time for reflection and evaluation. Where are we? Who are we? What's next?

We humans are complicated and difficult, even to ourselves. We live in a complicated world that's hard to make sense of. 100 years ago, World War I had sunk into trench slaughter. But on Christmas 1914, thousands of soldiers shared an informal truce in no-mans-land. 10 years ago, we were trying to comprehend the Boxing day Tsunami, 230,000 dead.

2 years ago, people here were digging out from Hurricane Sandy. This year we've been experiencing the deep pain and anger in our nation brought to the surface in the events in Ferguson, Mo and here in New York. ChristianChronicle.org: Churches in Ferguson. But also our Arthur James, 95. Time Mag. Person of the Year: Ebola Fighters: Dr. Kent Brantly.

In our text Paul is reflecting on the losses and gains of his life. These flow from specific experiences and his responses to them. He finds that the losses and gains are the same things. He experienced a new understanding of reality and a transformation of values based on reality when he discovered Jesus. This was the opening to God's faithful love, to grasp suffering, death, hope, life. The world worked the same. But everything changed.

The Importance of Imperfection

Paul challenges his readers not to admire his perfection but to share his disconcerting, wonderful journey, in which he suffered so much loss that turned out to be great gain.

Jesus reveals the goal of life in complete continuity with our lives now but beyond what any of us can reach. It depends on Jesus' faithfulness, but calls us into full participation now. Life is thus to be lived as a continual process of growth: forgetting / straining forward; or boxing up / opening out. We know our world and the common evaluation of things, what are thought of as gains and losses. The challenge is to shift that deception into real knowledge, to see everything in the light of Jesus, to know him, gain him, be in him.

The One Thing is the way of thinking, living, valuing life shown in Jesus. It is a call ever higher that continues through the whole journey of life. It is a realization that however far we've come, God is continually calling us to greater heights and depths, more beauty and love. It helps us see both the delights and sufferings and evils of life through a new lens.

The Community of Individual Journeys Maturity

It's important that this way of Jesus combines both a strong sense of community and a delight in individuality. Paul was building communities that broke down barriers and brought people together in the Messiah, united by love, into one new humanity.

But in the Messiah is a very big place in the creator who delights in the diversity of his creatures. Paul knows we'll have different journeys from his own, with shared elements.

We each are taken hold of by Jesus (v 12). We each begin the process of translating that experience into the world of our life and possibilities. Paul can't do it for us, nor we for each other. We're in a rich web of relationships, but we are also individual, loved by God.

Paul says maturity is not a fixed state of holiness but living in this process of learning Jesus. It trusts in God's living interaction with us and transforming love God's Holy Spirit. The more we open to Jesus, the more we learn, grow, mature. Each year/day is new delight.

Love Seeing the Whole Story of Jesus

After reflecting on the great themes of Advent, Hope, Peace, Joy, we conclude the series with love. Surprisingly, the narratives of Jesus birth don't talk much of love. There's much more of expectation, anticipation, joy. No one could know what the infant Messiah would be like. Many expected a military hero and king. Jesus himself had to draw together the strands of scripture and God's new action to reveal a messiah of fulfillment and surprise.

Thus Jesus gives one of the greatest Advent statements to Nicodemus in Jn 3. It is God's Love that causes him to give/send his unique Son (God's very own self) for the people of this world, so that we can believe/trust God as he shows himself in Jesus, lifted up on the cross to take on all that would destroy us and to give us his own eternal life.

Throughout his ministry Jesus called people to see the heart of God in love (rather than in rigorist purity and obedience or in ethnic identity). He even says, Love your enemies.' In his last conversation with his disciples he challenges them to love as he has loved.

Jesus' own teaching provided the disciples with the frame for making sense of the horrible and astonishing events of crucifixion and resurrection. The whole NT takes up the task of interpreting life that flows from the one who loved me and gave himself for me.[Gal 2:20]

Loving Each Other Knowing God

1Jn 4:7-19 reads as an interpretation and meditation on Jesus' words to Nicodemus. What is the life that flows from trusting God's love? What does it mean personally, theologically? John spirals around God's love and our love, probing the deep connection and meaning.

He starts from the close community. Loving people who are faulty and present, not abstract. Why should I? Not for good order. Rather because of our longing for something more than self-interest, greed and power. We seek the transcendent in life. We seek God. That transcendent one has shown himself to us in Jesus and thus defined God's nature as self- giving love (), engulfing and reshaping all that we thought we knew about God.

This self-giving love gives! It flows into God's creation into everyone truly touch by God. Thus is the deepest, most basic sign that even a tiny, mortal creature like us has been adopted, re-born a child of God and that the new life/relationship/knowledge continues.

God is transcendent, hidden. But as we trust Jesus and love one another we become a center of his revelation to the world. The aim of his love to give life is brought to completion. We abide (live) in God and God in us (!) through God's Holy Spirit living in us.

This is what it really means to confess Jesus as Son of God. God is there in all he did and suffered and thus the hidden God becomes known in the love seen in Jesus. Out of this flows a confidence, intimacy, and ease with God and all the world. Fear is broken.

Celebrating the Beginning

When we celebrate Advent we are looking back through all that astonishing meaning to the first moments when this loving, beautiful face of God, God's self-giving love broke in.

It is possible to know about it without knowing it, abiding in it. But if you trust him, know him, you will be changed. You learn to love. You learn confidence. You share real life.

Hope, Peace, Joy

The traditional themes of reflection around Jesus' birth are closely related. We saw the pattern when we followed the idea of Hope through Romans and we listened to angels singing Peace on earth.... What is the particular contribution of the idea of Joy. We associate Christmas with happy times, generosity, etc. Perhaps that is our idea of joy.

C. S. Lewis called his autobiography Surprised by Joy (1955). For him joy was a pointer that carried him through a long period of atheism. A sense of longing, an inbreaking of a momentary experience of something more in life. A newly discovered letter of his from 1945 (soon up for auction) focuses on Joy that shocks one awake one second of joy is worth 12 hours of pleasure. Lewis puts his finger on the importance of joy in scripture.

Joy is related to hope and peace, but points to the intensity and surprising character of God's work in us. When we focus on Jesus' incarnation, we are looking at something that happens within our ordinary, very broken world (poverty, kings, taxes, armies, corrupt priests, homelessness), but that event says that brokenness is not all there is. It is a larger reality that breaks in unexpectedly and sends a thrill of joy and anticipation though us.

Light Shining into Darkness

Isaiah 9 shows how God's promises can break in like light in darkness. Celebration of harvest when all was thought lost. Oppressed by overwhelming force (Gideon and Midianites, Jdg 6-7), we survive battle, celebrate victory, inaugurate peace. A child, God with us, joy.

So also with Elizabeth and Mary: a childless woman and a girl. Both have experienced signs of God intervening in their situations at the bottom of society to give new life in the world. They come together, the only two people who could understand. Elizabeth's baby kicks, leaps! She feels it and prophetically interprets it. The thrill of joy. Hope long dying has sprung to life. Promises thought impossible are coming to realization. God is with us, not in the Herods and aristocratic high priests, but his power flows into two women. Mary sings about the joy that has seized her spirit. God has revealed a transformed world.

Surprised by Joy

The experience of joy continued as the story unfolded in Jesus and his followers. Who could have anticipated crucifixion? And Jesus' resurrection! Sorrow turned into a dance of joy.

Communities of believers formed, breaking barriers, a new humanity, spreading in spite of persecution. Peter writes to those undergoing trials. What started with Mary lives in the inexpressible joy they feel in their faith and love for that child, their life, their glory.

From Augustus to a Feed Trough

The Gospel always seeks to open our eyes, renew our minds, to help us see the truth that the world at its deepest, most important level is far different from what we're often told. Advent is the story of a coming, an invasion of a baby, a heavenly army, a new/old story, a new paradigm of reality. It's a story that's exhilarating, depressing, tender, horrific, full of symbolic elements and gritty reality. It challenges us to look and listen.

We start with the song of the invading angel army: Peace on Earth... Great joy for all people. We set those words beside Jesus' surprising warning: Don't think that I came to cast peace on the earth.... Both are given to us. What's going on? What can we see?

Luke's narrative from the very beginning challenges us readers to see the paradox of events. Place yourself back in the Roman world of the 1st cent. when Luke first was read. You didn't grow up with Christmas carols but with public celebrations of the emperor. Caesar Augustus was past like Lincoln, if Lincoln had served 12 4-year terms, and died in office. He was the great peace-maker, benefactor, savior, god, origin of Good News.

Here he defines one of two contrasting stories: The Roman controllers, taxers, governors, who can send everyone scurrying. Power, money, violence. All the stuff we love to celebrate in our movies. All the stuff that's real, that really matters. Or is it unreal and passing?

Then the other story: Joseph and Mary, betrothed, 9 months pregnant, scurrying to pay tax in a village on the edge of empire, Bethlehem. The baby comes, the anticipated son (Lk 1). She wraps him tight and lays him in a feed trough, the best available cradle.

God breaks in with his Good News, not to Caesar but to shepherds. The world's Savior is born, the anointed king, the Lord. His sign is the feed trough where he lies as a baby. A vast angelic army breaks in, singing God's glory and Peace for people because God favors them.

What is Peace?

Peace is a challenge. It's the end of conflict/war. That's hard, perhaps impossible. It's people getting along, respecting each other, treating each other fairly, honorably. It's Shalom, wholeness, when people are true to God, caring for their neighbor, creating justice. It's a fruit of the Spirit, a deep God-given reality, peace that passes understanding, guarding us.

But Peace is also a human word that's slippery and deceptive. We want peace in our family our way, peace with in-laws, peace in our group allied with Roman power, or peace in our group our own we fighting fiercely against the Romans. We are defined against them. We have our stories in which we are peace-makers. Someone else is the cause of trouble.

Jesus warns his disciples that he's casting a sword, slicing through that world. Cutting through natural structures (Micah), calling to a new love! Whoever doesn't take up... the sword(?) ... his cross! That baby in the feed trough was the sword. He disturbs, messes up the order and identity of our lives. If you've already got it, you'll lose it. But if you've lost your life, your identity, your us vs. them, your base of security and power for his sake, you will find it!

We live in a world of trouble. It matters whether you live in the story of Augustus or of the baby in the feed trough. Every good structure, good relationship is also corruptible. Again and again we are called to self-giving love, to take up not the sword but the cross, to create the way of peace, with equity, honor, love. We are called to live the story of Jesus.

Abounding in Hope! (Romans 15)

Advent speaks to a way of living, marked by the coming of Jesus, past, present, future. We live in the flow of history in a world engaged with God, who is both creator (physicist and father) and sustainer (lover, life-giver, judge). A God engaged on all levels, in relationship.

We live in a brief moment of that vast story. We see much that's beautiful but also know our own brokenness and failure and the suffering of the world. We could see life with despair as meaningless. The Biblical message including the Gospel says that both the beauty and the awfulness are real and important. But God is involved with us, focused in Jesus, to bring blessing to his whole creation, to all people, by, astonishingly, becoming one of us. Jesus' birth, brought to fulfillment Israel's long time of waiting, for those who could see.

Hope is the result, not as a faint glimmer, but a powerful confidence. Paul in Romans, explores the story and brings his message to a climax praying for us to abound in hope (15:13). The reason is God's faithfulness in Messiah Jesus, fulfilling his promises for all the world, (reaching back across history to Abraham and to Isaiah's anticipation of fulfillment) welcoming us into God's glory, calling us to faith, and the working in us by the Holy Spirit. All through Romans Paul develops the story/life of this open, powerful, purposeful hope.

Living in a Groaning, Waiting World (Rom 8)

Part of hope is realizing that we live in a broken world. Jesus was born into poverty and died on a cross. Each of us has our own story of pain, problems, suffering, and sin.

We see and experience the suffering in our world on all levels: Ferguson Mo. (racial conflict), Syria, Iraq (war, religious conflict), Liberia (disease), many places poverty, growing wealth disparity, oppression, conflicts over immigration in US and Europe, destruction of our ecosystem, climate change, etc. Paul describes the whole creation groaning in bondage.

The depth of the suffering, alienation, sin sets the character of God's intervention and our hope. We wait, but we also already experience God's renewed promise and his powerful presence in the Holy Spirit. We're called now to foster life marked by the values of God's justice and peace, and also to join with God's spirit in prayer for the fulfillment of hope.

The Faithfulness that Creates Faith and Hope (Rom 3, 5)

That might seem whistling in the dark, but that in Jesus God has come into our suffering world. That is the Gospel. God has been pointing forward in promise throughout history. Now in Jesus his faithfulness reaches an astonishing intervention to touch life at its depth. He doesn't just change systems (which always get re-broken), but brings us into direct relationship with him to trust in his faithfulness and experience his deep love.

We are changed: Trust/Faith, Peace with God, Grace, hope of God's glory. We can even grow through sufferings, be tested, strengthen hope. Experience the Love that is the heart of God. Because in Jesus, God has come among us, and in the Holy Spirit lives with us.

Kathy Groh delivers a powerful testimony during the Communion meditation on her struggles and triumphs of running the NYC marathon. Spirit filled words of God's hope in the midst of struggle and sin.