The Hard Sayings of Jesus

Mark Twain is remembered for numerous pithy sayings on various subjects. When it came to the Bible he is reported to have said that the things that bothered him most were not those that he did not understand but those that he did understand - because the latter he would have to do something about! This is especially true of the teaching of Jesus. We might find Jesus’ sayings ‘hard’ because they challenge us to put things into practice (e.g. ‘love your enemies’) or we might find them ‘hard’ simply because we lack understanding of the culture and context in which the words were spoken. Or we might find Jesus’ sayings hard because we are be required to think; this can be very hard work when we find our contemporary prejudices and convictions challenged. The distinguished Bible scholar F. F. Bruce wrote in the introduction of his book The Hard Sayings of Jesus: “It is all too easy believe in a Jesus who is largely a construction of our own imagination - an inoffensive person who no one would really trouble to crucify. But the Jesus whom we meet in the Gospels, far from being an inoffensive person, gave offence right and left. Even his loyal followers found him, at times, thoroughly disconcerting. He upset all established notions of religious propriety. He spoke of God in terms of intimacy which sounded like blasphemy. He seemed to enjoy the most questionable company. He set out with open eyes on a road which, in the view of ‘sensible’ people, was bound to lead to disaster.”
We all find some thing Jesus said hard to understand or accept or put into practice. A recent Sunday gospel passage (Matthew 10.24-39) caused some people real difficulty. What did Jesus mean by ‘I did not come to bring peace, but a sword’ and ‘I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother’? I didn’t address the passage at the time (I had other fish to fry!) but I do intend to. I wonder if there are other hard sayings of Jesus that you would like to see addressed in a future sermon series. Please drop me a note about it (the barest details only are required) and the ministry team will do their best to throw some light on it.

Andy

A balanced spiritual life

A balanced spiritual life
An interesting phenomenon of Church History is the way that different movements have arisen emphasising different aspects of spirituality. Each has been a corrective to what the movements’ leaders have seen as a deficiency in the church of their own time. There have been movements which have focussed almost exclusively on ‘the word’ because, they argue, Jesus was very much word-centred. Others have said that we have forgotten that Jesus was a charismatic, and so they have made the gifts of the Holy Spirit the primary focus of their movement. Yet others have argued that Jesus came primarily to release captives, so it’s issues of social justice that must be paramount; still others have majored on the sacraments because Jesus was clearly a sacramentalist. Each movement or tradition has had a very important and timely point to make, and in so doing has potentially made a life giving contribution and corrective to the wider church. Richard Foster, in his book Streams of Living Water, makes the observation that today many people are coming to appreciate this fact more; they have even begun to explore traditions different from their own. For example, today there is a growing appreciation within the evangelical churches for things thought more catholic such as contemplative prayer, whilst catholic churches have been discovering the gifts of the Spirit.
Richard Foster shows that all Church movements of the past can be helpfully grouped into six different streams - the evangelical, the incarnational, the social justice, the holiness, the charismatic and the contemplative streams. In which stream would Jesus most naturally belong? The answer is all of them. Jesus embodied all these streams in a balanced way, like the well balanced wheel in the diagram. For those who wish to become better disciples of Jesus there is a need to reflect on how well balanced their own wheel is. Having thought carefully about my own wheel I can see that it has serious punctures and needs inflating in some places before it would give anything but the bumpiest ride! I am working (as a member of a Renovaré group) to put some air into the weakest parts of my wheel. How is your wheel shaping up? Happy motoring!

Andy