The Mission Continues Part 3.2
The Jesus Mission Continues • Sermon • Submitted
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· 5 viewsPeople need a colony of heaven living congruent spiritual lives in the Messiah, not lives piecemealed together; one part, hand-me-downs from the culture, and another part, religious mumbo-jumbo.
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Every once in a while, a person says something so deep and profound, that it releases rays of light upon everything we see. It lights up what is already lit, exposes hidden darkness and calls for change. When we hear it, in an instant, we know these words are true and we spend the rest of our lives pondering them and living into them.
Socrates summed up a life of acquiring wisdom with just two words, “Know thyself.” That is, “Don’t spend your life ransacking libraries and consulting experts to get acquainted with who you are. There is no one quite like you. Start here.”
Hillel, the Jewish sage, summed up all of Jewish religion with three sentence, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole Torah; all the rest is commentary. Go and learn it.” (Talmud, Shabbath 31a) That is, “You don’t need to spend years-and-years acquiring theological education to please God, just stop being a jerk to people and be nice. It is just that easy.”
More recently, perhaps more personal for me, Emily Dickinson wrote a poem of protest against the snobbish, cold, and indifferent culture of Amherst, MA that she lived in:
If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life from aching
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
But for us Christians, those who call themselves the colony of heaven in the country of death, there is one Jewish Midrash that gives definitive focus to the way we live our lives. A midrash is a unique Jewish interpretation and discussions of the laws, customs, and rituals of Jewish life mentioned in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. Ancient sages and rabbis, would find connections between passages that most of us would miss, find explanations and meaning in words and phrases that otherwise seemed unrelated or unknown. [1]
This midrash comes from the pen of a fisherman and not a “validated” rabbi. A fisherman who walked country roads in Galilee and city streets in Jerusalem, with his friends and sinners, in the company of Jesus. The fisherman’s name was Peter. His midrash is found in 1 Peter 2:1-10.
Let’s prepare our hearts to receive God’s Word by reciting the “ha-foke-bah”
Ha-Foke-Bah
Ha-Foke-Bah
De-Cola-Bah
Ha-Foke-Bah
Ha-Foke-Bah
Mashiach-Bah
Turn it, and turn it, everything you need is in it.
Reflect on it, grow old and gray with it.
Do not turn from it.
The Messiah is in it.
1 Peter 2:1-10; 4:16
So rid yourselves of all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all slander.
Like newborn infants, desire the pure spiritual milk, so that you may grow by it for your salvation,
since you have tasted that the Lord is good.
Coming to Him, a living stone—rejected by men but chosen and valuable to God—
you yourselves, as living stones, are being built into a spiritual house for a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
For it is contained in Scripture: Look! I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and honored cornerstone, and the one who believes in Him will never be put to shame!
So honor will come to you who believe, but for the unbelieving, The stone that the builders rejected— this One has become the cornerstone,
and A stone to stumble over, and a rock to trip over. They stumble because they disobey the message; they were destined for this.
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of the One who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.
Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
But if anyone suffers as a “Christian,” he should not be ashamed but should glorify God in having that name.
When Jesus began his public ministry in the Galilee, he chose 12 men to be his companions John 1:42-43
He immediately led him to Jesus. Jesus took one look up and said, “You’re John’s son, Simon? From now on your name is Cephas” (or Peter, which means “Rock”). The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. When he got there, he ran across Philip and said, “Come, follow me.”
Peter was the first along with his brother, Andrew. Eventually there were 12. Every time they are listed, Peter is the first one name he was clearly the leader.
The 12 spent the next three years with Jesus, walking - always walking - along the shores of Lake Galilee, in the hills, and through the villages. They would spend the last few weeks of Jesus life closer to Jerusalem. But almost always, walking with Jesus around the Galilee. When you are walking, learning is more relaxed. Lessons are learned from lilies in the field. Farmers sowing seeds. A woman at a well. A mother, a gentile, pleading for the life of her daughter. A tax-collector up in a tree. There was time to observe Jesus, have dinner discussions, ask him questions, ask him how to pray, discuss with him what was going on their world and “the world” out there. Always, they were observing him, observing him in all moods and weather, observing him triumph and trials, praise and controversy.
What strikes me is that most of what we learn from Peter in his letter came by way of observing Jesus. He never actually quotes a saying of Jesus or teaching of Jesus but somehow his observations of Jesus have now reframed his understanding of the grand story of his Bible, all of it (for him that was Genesis through Malachi).
Everything that Jesus said and did was connected to place, just as everything you and I do is connected to place. We don’t live in abstractions. All living is local and tangible: this scratch of dirt, this neighborhood, these trees, those houses, this workplace, that falafel stand. Eugene Peterson said it best, “One of the seductions that interferes with mature Christian living is the construction of utopias, ideal places where we can live the good life totally without inconvenience.” Trying to construct Utopias is an old habit of the children of Adam and Eve. If you have not noticed you can’t actually do it.
Sir Thomas More (1477 - 1535) was the first person to write of a 'utopia', a word used to describe a perfect imaginary world. ... He coined the word 'utopia' from the Greek ou-topos meaning 'no place' or 'nowhere'. It was a pun, taking a jab at the Greek word eu-topos means 'a good place'. Many people during his lifetime were saying that Europe was a eu-topos “good place” but More was being satirical and saying no Europe is a chaotic mess and a ou-topos “an imaginary, no place.”
Here is my point we can only live our lives in an actual place, not an imaginary or fantasized place. The colony of heaven is no utopia. And, churches that try this are really just living a piecemealed life; one part, hand-me-downs from the culture, and another part, religious talk. People don’t need utopias because utopias don’t exist. People need a colony of heaven seeking to live evermore congruent spiritual lives.
Peter, of all the twelve, would be the picture next to the definition “Incongruent.” in•con•gru•ent means to be inconsistent within oneself. He could spot Jesus as being more than human but could not conceive of him surviving a cross. He could defend a King who was ready to fight but not a King who would heal his oppressor and give his life away as a criminal. He could accept being under the roof of Gentile like Cornelius but not eating a meal with a Gentile in Galatia. Terribly incongruent was Peter. So incongruent I think most would have said that internally he was a dystopia not a utopia.
I think that is why we all like Peter so much. His story and jagged line and incongruency resonates with most people. I think that his midrash in 1 Peter 2:1-10 is so powerful because I know he is speaking to us as one of us. Somebody who also has fumbled his way clumsily into this thing we call spiritual living or once what was known as the Christian life.
And Peter’s letter is addressed to people who probably have never walked the countryside roads that led him home in Galilee (Map of Asia Minor). Those roads that he walking holding fond memories of conversations he had with Jesus and his friends. There is good reason to believe Peter is writing to Jews who lived so far away from Jerusalem, deep in the interiors of Asia Minor, that they knew nothing of the land of their patriarchs. Feldman’s magisterial book “Jews & Gentiles in the Ancient World” gives us a glimpse of the Jewish religious life in Asia Minor:
Moreover, there is nothing in the Jewish inscriptions from Asia Minor of the pious Jewish sentiments so frequently found elsewhere in the diaspora; nothing to indicate love of Torah, of the holy land and of Jerusalem, or longing for the rebuilding of the temple. In particular, we find no depiction of the ark, no menorahs, so frequent in the land of Israel and in other parts of the diaspora were Torah scrolls are kept. – Jew & Gentile, p. 72f.
Most of the Jews who lived in these communities in Asia Minor would have been considered “apostates” to the Jewish religion way before they became “Christians” because of their lack of “religious identity and observance” (see, Jew & Gentile, pp. 82-83).
From a historical perspective you could almost say Jewish religious establishment in Jerusalem frankly did not care too much whether or not “those Jews” became followers of that Jesus from Nazarene.
So why does Peter, one of the most pre-eminent leaders in Jerusalem turn his gaze where no one else considers to look? Communities of faith deep in the interior of Asia Minor. He calls them dispersed aliens, foreigners, outcasts. Why direct so much pastoral attention to a group that hardly seems to want to connect?
†
Here is a plausible conjecture. For Peter, after several years as the “primary leader” of the Jesus movement in Jerusalem, things were developing around him that was impacting the rest of believers in Jerusalem. He was a target for the religious leaders in Jerusalem. He was also a political target of Herod.
About that time King Herod cruelly attacked some who belonged to the church, and he killed James, John’s brother, with the sword. When he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter too, during the days of Unleavened Bread.
Seems like the notoriety and popularity of Peter was becoming a threat to the religious and political authorities.
We know that Peter had almost a celebrity status in Jerusalem. People were bringing out their sick in droves to Peter. He was special and treated like a magical guru.
As a result, they would carry the sick out into the streets and lay them on cots and mats so that when Peter came by, at least his shadow might fall on some of them.
To one segment of the population they viewed him like a guru, miracle working healer; for another, he was public enemy number one. Like his master Jesus, he was famous whether as a rival or as the latest in vogue guru.
I think Peter wanted to escape the non-sense just like his master often did. Jesus would regularly leave the large crowds for private and lonely environments. I think Peter whisked himself away to the lonely world of Asia Minor to get away from the madness and to take the heat off of the community in Jerusalem. I am sure he told a select few (his brother Andrew, his friend, John, James for sure, maybe John Mark went with him) where he was going but it was on a “need to know” basis. And off he went into the deep interior of Asia Minor.
“Peter… in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia..” (1 Peter 1:1) .
I think he walked some new backroads and farm-roads in Asia Minor both like and unlike his own. Not the polished sandstone of Israel but the polished granite of Rome. The textures of the foreign empire were everywhere. I think he found a people much like himself: incongruent, clumsily trying to put together a spiritual life. Piecemealed together; some hand-me-downs from culture and some familiar religious talk. I think he did what a good pastor would do, “he sought to understand before seeking to be understood.” He knew these people, he knew there faces and their names. He knew their hardships and suffering.
Peter can cut right to the chase and say:
“But if anyone suffers as a “Christian,” he should not be ashamed but should glorify God in having that name.” (1 Peter 4:16)
But if anyone suffers as a “Christian,” he should not be ashamed but should glorify God in having that name.
†
Peter was the first to ever say it, “You can suffer as a ‘Christian.” These words do not just come out of thin air. There is a context to this saying. I think by this point in the Jesus movement people knew they were kind of like “Judaism” but something different than Judaism. And, they were kind of like some of the “Philosophical” schools that were so popular, but they were something different from them. They understood they were something else, not a piecemeal of other things but something different, unique, even a mystery: a colony of Christians. But it was still very incongruent and internally they were struggling, fumbling, clumsily into spiritual life.
“So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.” (1 Peter 2:1–3, ESV)
So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
†
Peter wastes no time starting his midrashic sermon. Throw away the hand-me-downs from the culture; malice, hurting people because they hurt you; deceit, lying to keep of trouble; hypocrisy, trying to play both sides of the game at the same time; envy, wanting what they got. Peter says those “are silly cultural hand-me-downs.”
Then he says that real spirituality starts like a baby infant getting pure spiritual milk so he/she “may grow up into salvation.” Peter is brilliant he knows there is balance between the gift of eternal salvation and the responsibility of salvation, the truth of Providence and truth of responsibility. He quotes Psalm 34:8 which seems to do nothing more than to proof-text his idea.
His quote does so much more than proof text. Psalm 34 is a text that celebrates drinking God’s goodness after finding relief from acting like a drunken idiot for a Gentile King. You have to read the title of the Psalm.
Concerning David, when he pretended to be insane in the presence of Abimelech (Psa 34)
You can’t help but reading Psalm 34 and feeling the sense of euphoric relief from having escaped living like a maddened person, a drunk but now living like one who is nurtured by God’s good food.
Peter’s point is that when David was living like a pagan he was like a drunken man, fumbling about, incongruent to the max but when he fled away from that lifestyle he found relief. When we live a piecemealed life one part culture and one-part religious life we are mad! Peter says abandon this madness, and crave more of the experience of the Lord. You must deny yourself before you indulge yourself in the Lord.
“Welcome to the living Stone, the source of life. The workmen took one look and threw it out; God set it in the place of honor. Present yourselves as building stones for the construction of a sanctuary vibrant with life, in which you’ll serve as holy priests offering Christ-approved lives up to God. The Scriptures provide precedent: Look! I’m setting a stone in Zion, a cornerstone in the place of honor. Whoever trusts in this stone as a foundation will never have cause to regret it.” (1 Peter 2:4–6, The Message)
Welcome to the living Stone, the source of life. The workmen took one look and threw it out; God set it in the place of honor.
Present yourselves as building stones for the construction of a sanctuary vibrant with life, in which you’ll serve as holy priests offering Christ-approved lives up to God.
The Scriptures provide precedent: Look! I’m setting a stone in Zion, a cornerstone in the place of honor. Whoever trusts in this stone as a foundation will never have cause to regret it.
†
This is where Peter’ midrash really picks up steam. For hundreds of years the Jews considered that quote from Isaiah as prediction of the Messiah’s coming. It was almost universally agreed upon that this passage was about King Messiah. But Peter is employing more than a messianic proof text, he is employing a bible study tool called gezarah Shewa. Linking two passages together with a common theme. See Isaiah 28 is also about Israelites living like the world and being in a drunk and maddened state.
Doom to the pretentious drunks of Ephraim, shabby and washed out and seedy— Tipsy, sloppy-fat, beer-bellied parodies of a proud and handsome past.
These also, the priest and prophet, stagger from drink, weaving, falling-down drunks, Besotted with wine and whiskey, can’t see straight, can’t talk sense.
They are so drunk on the world they mock God’s message through his prophet:
“Is that so? And who do you think you are to teach us? Who are you to lord it over us? We’re not babies in diapers to be talked down to by such as you—
‘Da, da, da, da, blah, blah, blah, blah. That’s a good little girl, that’s a good little boy.’ ”
And because they will not sober up God talks back to them as they wish:
So God will start over with the simple basics and address them in baby talk, one syllable at a time— “Da, da, da, da, blah, blah, blah, blah. That’s a good little girl, that’s a good little boy.” And like toddlers, they will get up and fall down, get bruised and confused and lost.
But to those who crave spiritual sobriety and congruity he says:
Therefore the Lord God said: “Look, I have laid a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation; the one who believes will be unshakable.
For hundreds of years there was great Jewish teaching about the Cornerstone being the Messiah but what Peter does is brilliant. He sees the connection between Psalm 34 and Isaiah 28 and he focuses in on salvation as a way of life. You, just like Israel, can become maddened and drunken when you live like the world. God’s words will fall on drunken and deaf ears. Your spiritual life will be incongruent, a dystopia internally and externally; until you deny the world and indulge the Lord. And when you do you will say like the women to the man in the Song:
“Your mouth is like fine wine — flowing smoothly for my love, gliding past my lips and teeth! I belong to my love, and his desire is for me.” (Song of Solomon 7:9–10, HCSB)
your tongue and lips like the best wine. Yes, and yours are, too—my love’s kisses flow from his lips to mine. I am my lover’s. I’m all he wants. I’m all the world to him!
†
Peter insists that everyone is affected by the coming of Jesus, positively or negatively, depending on whether or not they have “sobered-up” or are “stumbling” about in a drunken stupor.
(1 Peter 2:7–8, HCSB; cf. Psalm 118:22; Isa 8:14)
So honor will come to you who believe, but for the unbelieving, The stone that the builders rejected— this One has become the cornerstone, and A stone to stumble over, and a rock to trip over. They stumble because they disobey the message; they were destined for this.
Peter is riding the edge of the finely sharpened theological knife that understands God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. God is not forcing people to stumble, people stumble because they are drunk and stupid, you are destined to stumble when you are drunk. It is not a matter of if but when you will stumble.
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of the One who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
†
Peter connects and ends his gezara Shewa. After reflecting on the shameful stumbling and destruction of those who live a piecemealed life of culture hand-me-downs, Peter returns to his Christian readers who want to “sober-up”, marking the change with an adversative: “But you,” he writes, are (1) a chosen race, (2) a royal priesthood, (3) a holy nation, (4) God’s special possession, (5) those who have been constituted the people of God by God’s remarkable mercy. The language in these verses is drawn from Exod. 19:6; Isa. 43:20–21; Hos. 2:25.
Christ is laid across the path of humanity on its course into the future. In the encounter with him each person is changed: one for salvation, another for destruction.… One cannot simply step over Jesus to go on about the daily routine and pass him by to build a future. Whoever encounters him is inescapably changed through the encounter: Either one sees and becomes “a living stone,” or one stumbles as a blind person over Christ and comes to ruin, falling short, i.e., of one’s Creator and Redeemer and thereby of one’s destiny (Goppelt 1993: 144, 146).[2]
But if anyone suffers as a “Christian,” he should not be ashamed but should glorify God in having that name.
So when Peter said “But if anyone suffers as a ‘Christian’…(1 Peter 4:16). He was saying, life will not be easy for you when you sober-up. People would prefer that you just stay “maddened” and stumbling as you live like the world.
Or maybe he was saying something even more poetic:
“A lily blossoming tall among the thorns — that’s my gal among the other girls in the village.” (Song of Solomon 2:2, Michael Vowell Translation)
†
This was the critical insight. All that time Peter spent with Jesus. All those fumbles along the way. He learned that he stumbled hardest when he leaned in the most to the culture’s way of living. But he was at his spiritual best when he was rooted and anchored in his relationship with God through the Messiah. A truly experiential relationship. One where he “tasted” the Lord.
†
But why didn’t Peter take this teaching back to Jerusalem? This is great stuff! Maybe it is because in Jerusalem most people were so close to holy ground they really, really maybe over understood they were chosen, a royal priesthood, a special treasure. Maybe they were on the opposite end and were more prideful in it.
Remember, all living is local and tangible: this scratch of dirt, this neighborhood, these trees, those houses, this workplace, that falafel stand. One of the seductions that interferes with mature Christian living is the construction of utopias, ideal places where we can live the good life totally without inconvenience. Jerusalem was a false utopia to many also.
Perhaps that far away from Jerusalem and the Holy Land, these Jewish Christians in Asia Minor thought they could create a utopia if they just piecemealed their lives with cultural hand-me-downs and a bunch of religious mumbo-jumbo. They could avoid all the inconveniences, if they just…you fill in the blank. To this local context Peter gives three great statements:
Sober-Up (1 Peter 2:1)
Grow Up (1Peter 2:2-8)
Because This is You (1 Peter 2:9)
I think it had taken Peter all these years to figure this out. For his imagination to be fully infiltrated with the word of God. It took time for him to see himself as the fulfillment of such grand prophecies and noble titles. No one feels like they deserve them. It took some time for Peter to see that his incongruency were directly proportionate to how many cultural hand-me-downs he had accepted. He also say that spiritual congruency is directly proportionate to denying yourself the world drink and taking pleasure in the Lord Himself. Peter says “those who believe will never be put to shame.
Can you think of any other way God could have made it easier for us to have a spiritually congruent life? To know him? To meet with him? To taste him? To follow his ways. Sober, unmixed, faith in Jesus.
But for many, maybe most, it is just easier to keep on drinking what the world is offering. To believe the intoxicating lies that emerge deep from within.
†
You would think this would be enthusiastically embraced as good news, unqualified good news. But when it comes right down to it, I would rather the easy escapism that comes from being drunk on the world’s ways of doing things; rather than having to call up my mother tongue of prayer. Sipping from an invisible cup of God’s goodness that can satisfy my thirsty soul. Denying myself before I get pleasure from the Lord.
It turns out that a lot of us, more time than we like to admit, aren’t all that excited about a spiritually congruent life that is built upon the Cornerstone, Jesus. Measured from Him. Stone upon Stone.
We have our own ideas about what we want our spiritual lives to be like. We keep looking around for a kind of religion that puts us in control, gives us some promise that the world is oriented around me and that I can be in control of others (malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy).
When the know-it-all Serpent first met our parents in the garden he got them drunk on a promise, “I will make you like god” (Gen 3:5). You can be sure they were sober before that moment but after that moment they were maddened. And that cunning serpent met Israel’s great King and said, “What are your numbers” (1 Chro 21:1). He was sober before this but his drunkenness brought great trouble to Israel. He did try it with the greatest son of David, Jesus, and Jesus stayed sober though I imagine that to many he appeared mad: refusing food, a kingdom, and social standing. But, most, chose Satan’s elixir over the pure milk of God’s word.
How do you get drawn in? I hate conflict, so Satan always presents “peace” in the form of “people-pleasing” to me. In reality, it is the very “deceit” Peter said we need to sober-up and away from. I imagine you don’t have to think too long or too hard to figure out what hook he has got in you. Just look back on your last 3 to 5 decisions you really regret, and you will see.
The old term for this was “being a Carnal Christian.” It is without question the easiest form of religion to grab a hold of. It is a hand-me-down kind of religion. Pieces of culture woven into a bunch of religious slogans and principles. By far it is the most popular in America and it has always been this way. In previous generations it use to be hiding that drinking problem from the preacher, agreeing that slavery made lives better for black folks, or women were good for nothing but babies and housekeeping.
Today, it is more sophisticated. There is now therapeutic notes given to patients that prescribe private touching of oneself. I know a man who once asked me for such a pastoral prescription to ease the tension in his marriage. I know a man who got a doctor’s note requiring his wife to satisfy his urges several times a week for the sake of his health. Both stories are true. It is not that people aren’t forgiving they are just enforcing boundaries. It is not that people don’t want the truth they just want the truths that they like and see any other truth claims as “power plays” and “manipulations.” It is somewhat more sophisticated today.
But carnal Christianity/religion in general always backfires, Y
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord!’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of My Father in heaven.
You would think we would have learned by now.
As we work with the Holy Spirit to create this colony of Heaven called Beth El Shalom, we are not trying to build some spiritual/cultural utopia where everything just works out for you: favor here, favor there, favor everywhere. This kind of a piecemealed life; one part, hand-me-downs from the culture, and another part, religious talk will not produce disciples of Jesus who know the Father’s will, nor can it offer genuine salvation to the people God will bring here. People don’t need utopias piecemealed together by hand-me-downs from the culture. We don’t need religious utopias either, not in this world. People need a sober colony of heaven, growing up into salvation, seeking to live evermore congruent spiritual lives.
I want to live this way, the Jesus (Yeshua) Way. And I want to do it with you.
Amen
[1] Joyce Eisenberg and Ellen Scolnic, Jewish Publication Society, The JPS Dictionary of Jewish Words (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 2001), 106.
[2] D. A Carson, “1 Peter,” in Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI; Nottingham, UK: Baker Academic; Apollos, 2007), 1029.