This Sunday we will look at the church – what are some of the Biblical pictures of the church? 

In Matthew 16:13-18 we read, “13 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”14 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” 15 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” 16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” 17 Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. 18 And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” 20 Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.”

The New Testament gives us a number of pictures of the church and each one tells us something different about the church, the values we should maintain, the things we should do and what we should expect of leaders.

Think of the church as a …

FELLOWSHIP

 

FAMILY

BODY

 CITY

 FLOCK

BUILDING

FIELD

.
 

What do these images, these metaphors say to us about the church?

John 3:1-18 - Are there limits to the love of God?

This Sunday as we consider what is perhaps one of the best known - and most quoted - Scriptural passages of all time, give some thought to this written by David Lose:

Hell seems to be all the rage these days. The renewed interest results, in part, because of Rob Bell's new book Love Wins. But even more, the furor stems from the reaction of many Evangelical Christians to a promotional video that Bell prepared in advance of the book in which he seems to advocate a position many call "universalism," the belief that God will ultimately redeem all people, leaving none to suffer the fires of hell.

Ironically, this same week preachers from all around the world who follow the Common Lectionary (including Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians, UCC and others) will be preparing sermons on the world's most famous Bible verse, John 3:16. In case you don't have it memorized, this verse -- which might be summarized "Love wins!" -- reads, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life."

Interestingly, the word for "world" (kosmos in Greek) everywhere else in the Gospel of John describes that entity that is at complete enmity with God. Typical is this prayer by Jesus just before his crucifixion: "I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world" (John 17:14-16).

This gives John 3:16 a bit more punch: "For God so loved the God-hating world that he sent his only Son ... ," we might accurately translate. Apparently, at least according to Jesus, God really, really, really loves the world.

This doesn't, of course, by itself address the question of universalism, as the verse continues, "all who believe will not perish but have eternal life." But the force of God's love as articulated by Jesus does raise the question of why hell is so incredibly important to so many Christians? As a theological concept, "hell" is almost entirely missing from the Old Testament and surfaces as a minor concern in the New, showing up most frequently in Jesus' parables (which, let's not forget, regularly defy a literal reading). In contrast, topics like proper treatment of the poor, good use of money, and the imperative to care for neighbor and creation all capture a strikingly disproportionate amount of the attention of the biblical authors.

So why can't a prominent Christian author even question how to reconcile Jesus' description of God's incredible, even incomprehensible love with the notion of condemning souls to eternal torment without being condemned as a heretic? I suspect there are several reasons. Certainly the threat of hell provides a motivational system par excellence. During the Middle Ages, for instance -- when doctrines of hell were most fully developed -- the desire to avoid eternal punishment motivated Christians to all kinds of supposedly pious acts, everything from donating money to build the Sistine Chapel to enlisting in countless Crusades.
But I think the importance we attach to hell today has more to do with the allure of certainty than fear of punishment. A clear sense of the rewards and punishments for having or lacking faith in Christ offers a compelling logic regarding our eternal destiny that reduces ambiguity from the life of faith. After all, and as many Evangelical Christians have argued, if you can go to heaven without believing in Christ, what's the point of faith in the first place? This certainty, in turn, lends believers a sense of authority, even power, as they have a clear standard by which to judge "who's in" and "who's out." Talk about seductive!

But as Bell notes in his video, our notions of hell don't only witness to our beliefs about the afterlife, they also speak volumes about how we imagine God. Is God primarily loving or angry, forgiving or vengeful?

Conservative Evangelicals like John Piper (one of Bell's critics) seem to want it both ways: God is loving, but also just. Therefore, while God desires that all people be saved through faith in Christ out of love, God nevertheless must punish sinners by condemning them to hell or God's justice would be moot. The trouble is, when that's spelled out in plain English -- "God loves you very much, but if you don't believe the right way you're going to suffer eternal torment" -- there's an inescapable contradiction. Karl Barth, arguably the greatest theologian of the twentieth-century, after listening to just such a message by a noted American evangelist, is said to have commented that such logic sounded like the gospel, all right, but at gunpoint.

To be fair, I can understand why classic universalism leaves many Christians -- including myself -- underwhelmed. The idea that whatever religious path you choose is as good as any other seems detached, generic, and rather anemic, hardly representative of the passionate faith of those who follow Jesus. But to assume that God cannot in God's infinite power, love, and wisdom save all persons if God desires? ... Or to assert that there must be a hell if heaven is to be meaningful? ... Such sentiments seem at the very least to underestimate the God of biblical faith.
If Rob Bell advocates that the God revealed in Jesus will not stop until all God's creation is redeemed and recreated -- and I suppose we'll know soon! -- he will not stand alone. Theologians as diverse as Clement and Origin in the third century, Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Paul Tillich in the twentieth, and countless in between also chose not to limit just how far Christ's redemptive love can reach. So doesn't the possibility that God's love will eventually win at least deserve a hearing and civil discussion in our own day? This is, after all, the God who loves the God-hating world so very much we're talking about.

Jeremiah 29 (NIV)

A Letter to the Exiles

29 This is the text of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets and all the other people Nebuchadnezzar had carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. 2 (This was after King Jehoiachin and the queen mother, the court officials and the leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the skilled workers and the artisans had gone into exile from Jerusalem.) 3 He entrusted the letter to Elasah son of Shaphan and to Gemariah son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah king of Judah sent to King Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon. It said:

4 This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6 Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. 7 Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” 8 Yes, this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: “Do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you. Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have. 9 They are prophesying lies to you in my name. I have not sent them,” declares the Lord.

10 This is what the Lord says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. 11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”

As we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the building of our sanctuary, I have been thinking about how the world has changed in 40 years. We live in a very different world to the world that existed in 1973.

Fashions have changed, cars have changed, money has devalued and the Christian faith is not the dominant force that it used to be. Tolerance has become the god of this age. As the late Chuck Colson put it in his book, The Faith:

Tolerance once meant listening respectfully to all points of view, freely discussed in our common search for the truth.  But the creed for the new god of tolerance is that knowing truth is impossible.  So everyone is free to think and act as he likes, with one exception: those who have the audacity to believe that they know the truth, particularly if they think God has revealed it to them, are not tolerated.  The result is that those who crowned the new god of tolerance have become the absolute arbiters of culture.  The new god of tolerance becomes, in the guise of tolerance, an absolute tyrant.  (p.  68).

Many are suggesting that the church in the West is a church in exile. As we read Jeremiah's advice to the Jews in exile in Babylon, what lessons can we learn as we come to terms with living as Christians in a new and different world?

Do you agree that the church in the West is a church in exile?  Why or why not?  If you agree, what does it mean for us at DPC and each one of us as we minister as a member of it?

The Parable of the Crafty Trade Union Leader

Luke 16:1-13 (NIV)

The Parable of the Shrewd Manager

16 Jesus told his disciples: “There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. ² So he called him in and asked him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.’

³ “The manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg— ⁴ I know what I’ll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.’

⁵ “So he called in each one of his master’s debtors. He asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’

⁶ “‘Nine hundred gallons of olive oil,’ he replied.

“The manager told him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred and fifty.’

⁷ “Then he asked the second, ‘And how much do you owe?’

“‘A thousand bushels of wheat,’ he replied.

“He told him, ‘Take your bill and make it eight hundred.’

⁸ “The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. ⁹ I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.

¹⁰ “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. ¹¹ So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches?¹² And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own?

¹³ “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

This parable must have sounded impossible to the first hearers of it. I am sure they were not sure what Jesus was telling them. I remember telling my mother this story once and she did not believe that it was actually in the Bible. If we were to update the parable, perhaps it might sound a little like this:

Jesus said to the disciples, ‘There was an extremely powerful trade union official who held the highest office in a major trade union federation. He was well known and widely respected of in the world of politics and and exercised influence in the whole country.  But charges were brought against him that he had appointed a junior staff member in an manner that was contrary to the rules of his organization and that he had engaged in an inappropriate sexual encounter with this person outside his marriage.  So he said to himself, “What will I do, now that they may take my position away from me?  I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg.  I have decided what to do so that they won’t be able to take my position away from me, I will call together the best of my friends and all those who owe their own high office to my power, and I will say to them, “With great care and subtlety of language I intend to refute this accusations whether what I say is true or not, and you will stick by me, no matter what is said, for I know everything about everyone one of you, and all that I know will go into the public domain if you don’t give me your undivided support.  If I fall you will fall too, so you’d better stand by me.’  And all the office bearers and friends did exactly that.

And Jesus said, ‘So I tell you, take full advantage of the power given into your hands so that you may be able to stand against the accusations of your enemies.  For it is better that you wield power, even with dishonesty, than others take that power from you.’

What do you think?

A Lost Son, a loving Father and a Bitter Brother

The Parable of the Lost Son

11 Jesus continued: “There was a man who had two sons.12 The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.

13 “Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. 14 After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs.16 He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

17 “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! 18 I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ 20 So he got up and went to his father.

“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

21 “The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’

22 “But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. 24 For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.

25 “Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. 27 ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’

28 “The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. 29 But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’

31 “‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”

We return this Sunday to the story in Luke 15:11-32, traditionally called the story of the Prodigal Son, but which should, perhaps, be called the story of the lost son, the forgiving father and the bitter brother. This story has been the source of much art, particularly in the Renaissance, where both Protestant and Roman Catholic artists presenting artistic interpretations of the story. 

 “The return of the Prodigal Son to his father was a popular subject in seventeenth-century Christian art,” Hornik and Parsons write. “The [Roman Catholic] Counter Reformation embraced it as an example of forgiveness and healing between family members; Protestants viewed it as a return to God the Father despite their break from the Roman Catholic Church.” 

The first image below is Guercino’s painting; the second, is Rembrandt’s painting which illustrates a Protestant interpretation.

In Rembrandt’s painting, the light falls on the father’s hands, which “are disproportionately larger than the other parts of the father’s body,” Shiell notes. The father offers welcoming, noncontrolling love. In contrast, “the older brother stands to the far right, dressed like a Pharisee (ironically) with his hands and arms folded. Another man sits with his arms pridefully folded. They are afraid to love as the father does.”

Guercino emphasizes the father’s and son’s hands in a different way. They “are entwined in a classic gesture of reconciliation and…positioned at the centre of the composition.” Hornik and Parsons say, “The classicizing elements of the composition create a painting less of emotion and passion than of recognized rhetorical gesture of reconciliation.”

In his very famous book on the Rembrandt painting, Henri Nouwen writes,  

“Often I have asked friends to give me their first impression of Rembrandt’s Prodigal Son. Inevitably, they point to the wise old man who forgives his son: the benevolent patriarch.

“The longer I look at ‘the patriarch’, the clearer it becomes to me that Rembrandt has done something quite different from letting God pose as the wise old head of a family. It all began with the hands. The two are quite different. The father’s left hand touching the son’s shoulder is strong and muscular. The fingers are spread out and cover a large part of the prodigal son’s shoulder and back. I can see a certain pressure, especially in the thumb. That hand seems not only to touch, but, with its strength, also to hold. Even though there is a gentleness in the way the father’s left hand touches his son, it is not without a firm grip.

“How different is the father’s right hand! This hand does not hold or grasp. It is refined, soft, and very tender. The fingers are close to each other and they have an elegant quality. It lies gently upon the son’s shoulder. It wants to caress, to stroke, and to offer consolation and comfort. It is a mother’s hand....

“As soon as I recognized the difference between the two hands of the father, a new world of meaning opened up for me. The Father is not simply a great patriarch. He is mother as well as father. He touches the son with a masculine hand and a feminine hand. He holds, and she caresses. He confirms and she consoles. He is, indeed, God, in whom both manhood and womanhood, fatherhood and motherhood, are fully present. That gentle and caressing right hand echoes for me the words of the prophet Isaiah: “Can a woman forget her baby at the breast, feel no pity for the child she has borne? Even if these were to forget, I shall not forget you. Look, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.”

The Cost of Non Discipleship

Luke 14:25-33 (NIV)

The Cost of Being a Disciple

²⁵ Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: ²⁶ “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. ²⁷ And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

²⁸ “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? ²⁹ For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, ³⁰ saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’

³¹ “Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? ³² If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. ³³ In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.

Following Jesus is not easy – and anybody who thinks it is has, clearly, not tried it. Dallas Willard, in his book The Spirit of the Disciplines, wisely notes, “It was right to point out that one cannot be a disciple of Christ without forfeiting things normally sought in human life, and that one who pays little in the world’s coinage to bear his name has reason to wonder where he or she stands with God.” Willard adds, “The cost of non-discipleship is far greater – even when this life alone is considered – than the price paid to walk with Jesus.” Jesus himself tells us that “his yoke is easy and his burden is light,” and the apostle John tells us that “God’s commands are not burdensome to us.” Seldom do we consider what we would lose if we abandoned the life that Jesus offers. Willard again: “Non-discipleship costs abiding peace, a life penetrated throughout by love, faith that sees everything in light of God’s overriding governance for good, hopefulness that stands firm in the most discouraging of circumstances, power to do what is right and withstand the forces of evil. It short, it costs exactly that abundance of life Jesus said he came to bring.”

The language of salvation “by grace through faith”, for so long the hallmark of the churches that come from the Protestant Reformation, can be misinterpreted to mean that because grace is free, it is also cheap. In 1937, Dietrich Bonhoeffer published The Cost of Discipleship to remind us that while God's grace is a free gift, it is not cheap since God paid the ultimate price - the life of Christ - to demonstrate his unparalelled love for the world and to allow us to have access into a relationship with him. 

As people who follow in Christ’s footsteps, as those who pick up our cross daily, we are called to chose to give up the comfort of living for ourselves and chose to give ourselves for others.

v  What does it mean for you, today, to pick up your cross and follow Christ?

Courageous Christians

At our recent Weekend Away, we introduced a new program, Courageous Christians. Over the last number of weeks, we have been unpacking this and it has been moving through our Small Groups. Over the next couple of posts I am going to put some of the thoughts out there from the Courageous Christians booklet for information and comment. You can also get information about this from our website, www.dpc.org.za and via the Facebook page. 

What is the vision of Courageous Christians? Courageous Christians is a challenge through our congregation,  to help people to live their Christian lives more intentionally where they are.

There are issues that affect our fruit – the products that flow from us as Christians and as a congregation. But if we are going to bear fruit for the kingdom, then there are some specific root issues that we need to address.This is what Courageous Christians is all about. Courageous Christians are called to be both salt and light.

Light and Salt

Matthew 5

Salt and Light

13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. 14 “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven

As a congregation of Courageous Christians, we are called to be a light on the hill called by God to shine the gospel in a dark world (Matt. 5:14). Thus, our community life, our ministries and outreach programs are a communal witness of the coming of the Kingdom of God in our community. The congregation is also a means by which the love of God is communicated to a hurt and broken world. The congregation must be a community where God’s grace is shown through our communal lifestyle.

As Courageous Christians in the world, individuals are called by God to be the salt of the earth (Matt. 5:13) wherever we live and work and socialise. We have to be transformed so that we can live out our faith in our daily lives. Courageous Christians are those who have made a commitment to practicing their Christian faith both inside the walls of the church (and so to be the light of the world), and outside (as the salt of the earth).

The Scriptural paradigm is found in Luke 10:25-28 (NIV) The Parable of the Good Samaritan

25 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

26 “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

27 He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’”

28 “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

Courageous Christians are Christians who strive to live their faith to the full in all areas of life. Where most of the courses we offered in the past in the church were intended help in specific learning areas, the Courageous Christians program focuses on who we should be as Christians where we live and work and play. 

A simple illustration to describe what Courageous Christians is all about comes from the IT world: the difference between a piece of software and an operating system. A specific piece of software (e.g. a word processing or graphic design program) enables a computer to perform specific tasks while the operating system of the computer itself (e.g. Windows 8 or Vista) creates a platform from which the software programs can operate. The purpose of the Courageous Christians program is to help people find a different spiritual operating system, to create a platform from which all the other aspects of the Christian life can operate. Where the specific ministries of the church are anchored in the different gifts of the Spirit, which all believers of the Spirit share (1 Cor. 12:7-11), Courageous Christians is an expression of the fruit of the Spirit made fully visible in the lives of all believers (Galatians 5:22-23).