Retreat Series Week 3: All You who Labor and are Weary

Matthew 11:25-30

God and the Holy Requirement of Rest
Our congregational retreat, "In God's Presence -- Seeking Rest and Delight in Everyday Life." Meditation on the meaning of Sabbath. Why does God make Sabbath one of the Ten Commandments? We need it. Stress, workaholism, 24/7, a city that never sleeps, Wall St., technology, fear of losing ground/work, competition, desire > need for more, perfectionism, parents' expectation, inner voice we're faking, competitive leisure, getting advantage.
But in the ancient world, 12-hr work day, no society support, struggle for subsistence.

Retreat Series Week 2: Delights Forevermore

Psalm 15:5-11

The Signpost of Delight / The Problem of Pleasure
Our congregational retreat, "In God's Presence -- Seeking Rest and Delight in Everyday Life."
We began last time reflecting on the idea of Sabbath/rest planted in the very active account of creation. God rests. God gives people a rhythm of rest in everyday life. But also part of that idea: the Sabbath is not sad or ascetic, but celebratory, a time of delight and pleasure. People have always lived hard lives. God wanted a time of focused joy and delight in our lives. Likewise Jesus, as Lord of the Sabbath, called his disciple to a deep "rest for your souls."

Retreat Series Week 1: The God Who Makes Sabbath Holy

Genesis 1:31 - 2:3

Jesus and the Meaning of Sabbath
Our congregational retreat topic, "In God's Presence -- Seeking Rest and Delight in Everyday Life," began from meditation on the understanding of Sabbath in both the OT and NT.
The Sabbath, "Rest," is one of the 10 Commandments, linked to the story of creation in which God sanctifies the seventh day (Saturday). It has always had a very prominent place in both Jewish and Christian thinking. In late antiquity as the Roman empire became Christianized, the use of 'Sabbath' shifted for Christians from Saturday to Sunday as a legal rest day.

Out of the Chaos into Christ

Colossians 3:1-25

The New Life in Christ
"So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth,  for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.

Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient. These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life. But now you must get rid of all such things--anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!"

What's So Wrong with Getting Angry?

Matthew 5:21-26

"But I Say to You..."
Jesus taught in a striking, authoritative way that amazed people (7:28-29). In Mt 5:17-20 he affirmed the Law and emphasized righteousness exceeding "the scribes and Pharisees," teachers noted for rigorous obedience to every commandment -- a 'fence around the law.' The law was moral / civil / criminal, enforceable by public courts and subject of debate.
If judgment found you in the right, you were right with God. Biblical code plus tradition.
Jesus' language creates an expectation that he sets up a more rigorous fence. Then Jesus gives a series of contrasts that use that expectation but undermine and transform it. Jesus is not giving new law, rather showing us a new starting point for thought & action, a new default.

Just One Last Question

Matthew 22:34-46

The Command that Brings Focus
We are in the time of rising conflict between Jesus and the chief priests. Jesus answered the Sadducees (party of the chief priest) in their mocking question about resurrection. God is creator of life and God of the living. He can and will transforms and renew creation.
Then a Pharisee law expert asked a serious question: 'Which is the great commandment?' Jesus gives two. The first is prominent: 'Love God with all your heart, soul, mind' [Dt 6:5]. The second, Jesus picks a clause in a collection: 'Love your neighbor as yourself' [Lev 19:18].
Jesus says these really are most important. Everything else in scripture hangs on them. Really? Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Isaiah? Yes! As commands for people, this is what God wants! Both are deep, all encompassing, un-legalistic. They require meditation, interpretation. They are a filter and lens. Jesus was filtering and focusing in the Sermon on the Mount.
People Drawn into God's Life of Love
As commands they focus on the human response to God's identity/actions. God's love for his creation, opposition to all that corrupts / destroys human life, his love intervening to open a way of relationship with him through Abraham, Exodus, David, promise, even exile. His love always aims at all of humanity/creation, through calling the people Israel to his love.
The great commands reveal the heart of God and draw us into that central reality. They see at the core of us humans a love we often hide but that can answer to God's love. That love, activated, gives us the basis for interactions with others, even enemies, and all the world.
Jesus asks an Easy Question
Jesus' question to the Pharisees may seem a letdown. The ancestry of the Messiah/Christ? Jesus knows there's an easy right answer (as with earlier questions). The Messiah is David's son. But that's no mere cliché. Matthew has repeatedly highlighted significant moments in Jesus' life when unexpected people recognized Jesus as 'Son of David.' David was the great king (1000 bc) anointed by Samuel, promised an anointed descendant, Messiah, always to sit on his throne as king. The lapse of kingship in the exile (500s bc) only heightened the questions about how God would fulfill his promise to David. Now under Roman rule, many Jews longed for a mighty Messiah-king to restore independence.
After the easy answer, Jesus asks another question, quoting Ps 110:1, a well-known passage about the Messiah conquering enemies. But David calls the Messiah 'my Lord,' then how is he David's son? Jesus leaves the question hanging. What just happened? All are silenced.
A Messiah who Transforms Imagination
Jesus is striking an idea in scripture strange to his hearers, a seed planted in his disciples. They think of the Messiah as a ruler following David's pattern, maybe better. But Jesus wants them to re-think their whole understanding. He says the scripture points to a complex idea of the Messiah. Yes, David's son, but also David's Lord. How could such a thing be?
It cracks the imagination. David's Lord is God alone. David's son is a human descendant.
If the Messiah is only a human son, then he will deal with conquering human enemies. It's hard
to 'love your enemies' under your feet. He may be good but still inside the human problem.
But if he is 'God with us,' the Lord returning to Zion, then the scale of his work is vaster! He takes on human sin and death. He embodies the love that is God's heart. Just a question! Think about it as you watch the next events unfold. How do you recognize God's Anointed?

Loving the God of Life

Matthew 22:23-40

Priests of Tradition against Foolish Faith
Tensions rise as Jesus teaches in the Temple. He has challenged and condemned the priestly aristocracy that ran the Temple. He answered the Pharisees and Herodians about the tax.
Now the Sadducees, the theological organization of the leading priests, return. They opposed the Pharisees, rejecting resurrection, tradition not in Genesis-Deut., angels, etc. [Act 23:8] Temple tradition and priestly standing was all. Resurrection and judgment was a threat. It's the here and now of ritual, liturgy, temple that matter, not faith in some future life.
They bring a question to show that Moses' law [Dt 25:5-6] has no place for resurrection life. It's intended to make the idea of resurrection look silly. Just think of the soap opera!

God's Kingdom and Human Government

Matthew 22:15-22

Pharisees and Herodians Challenge Jesus
Since Jesus arrived at the Temple for Passover, Mt has described the growing conflict with the chief priests -- like the prophets' condemnation of Jerusalem leaders before the exile.
Passover was a time of intense feeling about deliverance from oppression as in the Exodus. Rome had overthrown the last independent Jewish kings, and used the upstart Herod to drive out Parthian forces and secure the region. When Herod died, they divided it among three sons. The son that they put over Judea and Samaria, Archelaus, was a poor ruler. Rome deposed him in ad 6 and took over direct rule under a Roman prefect (now Pontius Pilate). They carried out a tax census and imposed direct head tax on the population (Zacchaeus).

A Tragic Wedding Feast

Matthew 21:42 - 22:14

Temple Fortress against the Invasion of God's Kingdom
Mt is leading us into and through the conflicts that led to Jesus' crucifixion. Jesus from the start proclaimed the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God/Heaven [Mt 4:17-23], like the herald of Isa 52. But the Jerusalem temple was already under control of chief priests (Caiaphas and others), powerful aristocrats, politicians, playing powers off against each other. They have no place for a strange, army-less, money-less prophet like Jesus, defining God's rule.

Shepherding for the Kingdom of God

Matthew 10:11-18

Jason Isbell, the Children and Student Minister at the Manhattan Church of Christ, brings a message exploring the connection between fatherhood and Jesus’ self-identification as a shepherd in John 10:11-18. The sermon looks beyond a simple calling to be a “Good Father” and challenges the church body to be people, in the words of Jesus to Peter, that “feed my sheep.” This sermon was delivered on the Sunday immediately after the horrific attack on the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Jesus, the Priests, and the Temple of God

Matthew 21:23-46

The Crash of the Rejected Stone
Matthew is describing Jesus' second entry into the temple. The first as humble king on a donkey [Zech 9:9] with people crying 'Hosanna to the Son of David, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord' [Psa 118:25-26]. It led to confrontation with the chief priest [21:15]. The second begins with the sign of the fruitless fig tree. It continues with parables of vineyards unworked by those who promised to work, or held hostage by tenants who refuse to give the harvest to the one who planted it and kill his servants and his son.

When You Look at Jesus, What do You See?

Matthew 20:29 - 21:16

Why Do People See Jesus so Differently?
When you hear people's opinions about Jesus, you hear variety. Many are ok with God, with spirituality, but Jesus? Exclusive. Narrow. Who was Jesus? A myth, revolutionary zealot, a man with a wife and kid who loved the divine feminine, a village philosopher, a corrupter of humanity teaching a slave mentality, a world-denying ascetic, a good pharisaic rabbi?
Matthew is leading us into the final, most crucial part of his Gospel, the end of Jesus' story, and beginning. He draws on many memories written and oral, but his aim is to help us to encounter Jesus. He's writing the past history of a living person. The challenge is not so much getting a set of facts right as helping us actually to meet the living Jesus. Mt takes us into the throngs. Helps us hear questions. Gives us resources to see ourselves and Jesus.

Jesus and the Spirit of Life

Romans 7:21 - 8:6

The Spirit of Life -- Where Jesus' Life Meets Ours
Today is Pentecost (fifty days after Passover/Easter) the feast of Weeks. Acts 2 stamps it forever as the day of the coming of the Holy Spirit, the new beginning, the "power from on high" that Jesus promised. Jesus' new resurrection life, so startling to his disciples, now began to invade their own lives as the Spirit of God became part of them. Jesus was not calling people to be generally 'more spiritual.' He poured out God's own Spirit, new life, new power, that brought Jesus' work to fulfillment and changed everything.
The New Testament is filled with this. Luke tells the story in Acts. John describes Jesus anticipating the coming of the Paraclete/Advocate. Paul focuses on the Spirit in Rom 8. The Spirit is the presence of the one God, given to us, continuing God's work in Jesus.

We have Met the Enemy, and He is Us!

Romans 7:6-25

Who are We in the Story We're in?
We want to be heroes in our own story. We like victory. But sometimes it's not so simple. Oliver Hazard Perry's naval victory over the British on Lake Erie, 1813: "We have met the enemy and he is ours!" Echoed in a Pogo cartoon of 1971 (2nd Earth day, Vietnam war): "We have met the enemy and he is us." Paul's analysis of the human situation is closer to Pogo than Perry. But also more complex than either. God steps into that complexity.
This text poses challenging questions. It starts from us "released from the law" to live "in the new way of the Spirit." That raises serious questions about the whole story of scripture and the Law of Moses. What are you saying? Is God's Law sin!? If it's good, did it bring about evil, even death? Paul writes to a community of Jewish and Gentile believers, but only the Jews in their identity share as he does in Israel's story and in the Law/Torah.

Mary of Nazareth & Her (Un)Ladylike Faith

Scriptures Readings on Mary:

Matthew 1:16
... and Jacob was the father of Joseph, 
the husband of Mary, 
of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Christ.

Luke 1:27
The virgin's name was Mary. The angel came to her and said, "Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!"

Luke 1:35
The angel answered her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High 
will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy--the Son of God. 

Dead Law and Living Spirit

Romans 6:20 - 7:6

Recognizing Life and Death
Paul is leading us readers/believers to reflect on a deep level what has happened to us in the event of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection. We might say, 'Nothing happened to me personally. I wasn't there.' Paul responds, 'But you were!' Because of who Jesus is, as both God and us and Israel's Messiah, he calls into himself every person who trusts/ believes in him to share in his death and resurrection/eternal life and in his Spirit.
But its hard to get our minds around this experience. We're still living very ordinary life.
We are like Israel after the Exodus, idealizing Egypt compared with hardships faced in freedom. We romanticize the 'freedom' of the destructive life called 'sin.'

God's Grace and the Choices We Make

Romans 6:12-23

You’re Alive and Free! – Act that way!
Paul, a Roman citizen raised in a Greek city with a strong identity as a Jew, called as an emissary by Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, but both crucified and the embodiment of God. He watched the Good New of what God has done in Jesus do astonishing things in the lives of both Jews and pagans, but he knows that the transformation is a real challenge. It means new identity, new creation, death and resurrection. Not easy! The change is personal and communal. Easy to ignore, dilute with other beliefs, turn into religion.

Baptism and a New Reality for Everyday Living

Romans 6:1-19 

From What God Does, to What We Do
Paul has announced the Good News of Jesus in marketplaces and synagogues many times. He knows that people often find it hard to grasp the impact of it for their lives. Or they resist its meaning. Thus the questions (6:1,15). OK, sounds like God’s done a good job. It’s a level I’m not used to dealing with. Why don’t I just continue as is and let God do it? In church history, the reformation so emphasized faith over against the works practices of medieval Catholicism, that sometimes any sort of human freedom/action was seen as dangerous. All was predestined. In reaction, some said the Gospel is only human reform...