Wednesday - Change It - The Night That Changed The Religious
We saw yesterday how the religious experts who read prophecy day in day out, still got it wrong when it came to Jesus. They missed that one of the ancient prophecies about the Messiah was happening before their eyes.
So what did they miss? They missed grace and hope.
Religion at its worst can be about building a ladder to heaven, trying to make ourselves acceptable to God under our own power.
But what Christmas means is that God has come to us. No ladder required.
Two weeks ago, we contrasted grace and law as part of our Becoming Like Family series.
Grace means we have hope. It’s not primarily about what we do for God, it’s about what God has done for us, and everything we do is a way to say thanks.
The problem is if you’ve invested a great deal in self-help, you may not recognize or accept true help when it comes. You can be so sure of your hard work that you brush off help saying “I’ve got this!” when you really don’t.
Who would have expected God to come as a baby, much less a homeless baby born in questionable circumstances, with the most common name at that time, Jesus?
But people didn’t just call him Jesus, he called himself God, and others came to do this as well.
Yes, Jesus claimed to be god. That is a claim that no other leader of a major world religion has made.
Jesus didn’t go around standing on street corners shouting “I am God” in language that plain and simple, but when you look at what he taught and claimed, he was conscious of, and claiming to be God in some more subtle ways.
And he was subtle for good reasons. In the culture of his day, saying he was God would have been considered blasphemy – a crime punishable by death.
So he showed it in all sorts of interesting ways:
He spoke of himself using “I AM” sayings – a deliberate hint to the Jewish name of God – Yahweh, which means “I am”. He also said,
he was one with the Father
he was the Son of God.
he had the power to forgive sins
he was greater than the temple – the most important place of worship for the Jews and God’s presence on earth
In the gospel of Mark, Jesus is asked directly by some religious leaders “Are you the Christ (anointed one), the Son of the Blessed One ?” Jesus said “I am …”
Jesus was making an incredible and dangerous claim to be God incarnate—which means God in the flesh
One of the central truths of Jesus’ religious context was that there is only one God. When Jesus started to talk in this way, it was dangerous, but it was also life changing. He wasn’t claiming to be a new God, a second God, even a demigod. He was claiming to be the God, their God – the God who created, and then stayed with the Israelites through their history, there with them in an entirely new way.
Question: Do you know people who change when their boss, or parents, or another authority figure enters the room? How would the world change when God entered the room?
Reminder: We have a great Christmas event coming December 14th, 2013: The Original Christmas Party. Hope you’re coming!
Read the Bible in Sync Today
Loading Content...
Share a Link to this Message
The link has been copied to your clipboard; paste it anywhere you would like to share it.
When people ask you how you’re doing – have you every included the word “busy” in your answer?
One NY Times article called “The Busy Trap” that went viral commented, “It’s become the default response when you ask anyone how they’re doing: “Busy!” “So busy.” “Crazy busy.””
Notice it isn’t generally people pulling back-to-back shifts in the I.C.U. or commuting by bus to three minimum-wage jobs who tell you how busy they are; what those people are is not busy but tired. Exhausted. Dead on their feet. It’s almost always people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed: work and obligations they’ve taken on voluntarily, classes and activities they’ve “encouraged” their kids to participate in. They’re busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety, because they’re addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in its absence.
Yes, for most of us, busyness is a choice, and we kind of like it!
But what are its consequences?
One psychiatrist listed a few:
It is so easy with cellphones and BlackBerrys a touch away.
It is a kind of high.
It is a status symbol.
We’re afraid we’ll be left out if we slow down.
We avoid dealing with life’s really big issues — death, global warming, AIDS, terrorism — by running from task to task.
We do not know how not to be busy.
There are many, but we’ll focus today on the consequence for our neighbours, since Jesus said this was so important.
When I first moved to Ajax, it naturally took a little time to meet all our neighbours. Most memorably, two distinct families said the same thing when they met us. One said, “I’m really sorry we’re just meeting you, I had made cakepops for you guys, but then got too busy to bring them over.” Another said the same thing, “my wife was going to bake a pie to welcome you, but we got too busy.”
It’s heartbreaking – firstly because I could have had some excellent desserts, but also because it’s obvious how hectic our lifestyles can be, and how it inhibits forming lifegiving relationships.
Question: On a scale from 1 to 10 how busy is your life right now?
