Christ calls us into the future

Just before we enter Lent many churches celebrate the Transfiguration of Christ with his three disciples. We can see that the disciples act as unbelieving clots when they think about saving the world by building buildings to celebrate the wonderous event that has just occurred (Matt. 7.4). This event that has initiated the ultimate change and Christ's turn towards the cross. In a manner of speaking we are just as guilty when we are confronted by difficult decisions. This is a turning point in the Gospel narrative for both Christ and the disciples. At any peak time of decision making we come to a crux, a decision point both as disciples and as leaders. Do we rest on our laurels and celebrate with protective structures or do we allow ourselves the more difficult path of facing an uncertain and difficult future?

The disciples' response, well Peter's response as the representative character, is to become not only protective but also in a conformist manner that hopes to build on what has always worked. Our first thought is to protect the territory in which we are the masters or at least that which we are familiar with. We put up walls and we wish to make sure that no one else can remove us from the land / power base / authority that we possess. These walls represent to us our limits and our inability to move forward with flexibility but rather to solidify our holding pattern. In uncertainty we prefer to ensure permanency by putting into place things that will stem the terror that is the future. It can be seen in our every day lives particularly within the Church environment. The need for something concrete to hold onto is to great for some. If it is not the position or placement of a pew it is our seat, if it is not the seating it is the building, etc. It does not matter where we start we will build a case for the structure to remain whether it is an actual structure or a way we do things. We have always done it this way or that way but sometimes if we change something we will find that we reap greater rewards. Ask Peter and he would probably have said that we need an established place of worship to understand what has just happened.

This cannot be moved and is not living

However, Christ is at a turning point in the narrative. It is at this point with the acknowledgement of God that he turns to face the road and trial of Jerusalem. The die is, so to speak, cast at this point. It is something that we to need to contemplate as we prepare for our own journey to Jerusalem and beyond. Christ does not wait to build he moves on and down the mountain. He takes up the challenge that is presented by change and his transfiguration. Instead of standing still to contemplate he moves into action. Just as Moses moves up into the cloud to meet with God (Exodus 24.12-18) it is with the understanding that an action will occur. Here is a challenge the covenant is to be written to bind the tribes to a single God and the commandments to lead them into the future. The written word is fluid and allows for interpretation to accommodate changes in society. So the law that is created must be fluid to make allowances for the future. However, the law becomes set in stone when we refuse to allow its varied nuances to shape us and allow God to move within us. If we build buildings we stagnate and do not allow ourselves to be accommodating for the future, Christ moved forward a fluidity of movement, the oral tradition became encompassed in stone but was still open for a new future.

In coming to this time of decision making we need to hold ourselves up to Christ and ask ourselves are we wanting to embrace the uncertainty of the future or are we content to live in structures which do not move or are unable to accommodate newness of life? This is the choice we make when we are confronted by Christ do we move with Christ or are we left behind living in a constricted space to worship something that is not God but our own imagination.

Not the law of man but of God

 It was all very well to suggest last week that we need to implement the Beatitudes into our lives and to walk humbly with God seeking truth and justice in the world. These lead us into new life yet, as with all pathways such as these, they are but guidelines that are meant to enable us to bring the light of Christ's light into the world (Matt 5.15). Following this easily repeatable saying from Matthew's gospel there is a hard piece of writing that enables us to deepen and brighten the light that we shine (Matt. 5.17-20).

Christ tells his listeners that he has come not to do away with the law but to, in effect, tighten its application. We must be very certain at this point what the law is that Christ is going to tighten the screws on. We know that law is a product of humanities need for some form of control or rather some way in which to order society for its benefit. The problem with this form of law is that it is subject to our own requirements and our own needs. Those who are powerful are more likely to ensure that the laws that ensure their continued control and power are maintained.  Those laws that are designed to ensure values that assist the community or a community or a minority or a despised sector are the lowest priority on the agenda. This is where we are at within our global community. We can not ensure that the powerful do not retain power nor can we ensure that laws which are detrimental to the greater good are not passed. Why?  In simplest terms because we are powerless within the building blocks of human law proposal and its enactment other than to obey or change the legislators in some way that the powerful have less of a voice.

Strictly by the book or by the Spirit

Christ wants us to take something that we have control over in our lives and live knowing that we do so not as a result of an external enforcement but as a result of us taking them to be part of our lives. We cannot look at the laws that Christ is talking about and place them on a parity with human laws. The laws that Christ will have us adhere to so strictly that we are better than those who suggest that they are obeying as opposed to what they seek to put in place for humanity, and you can discern that by all the laws that they in their power enact. The laws that God has placed on our hearts and has expanded in the Ten Commandments as well as its shorter derivative are the ones that Christ demands strict adherence to. Not in the human enforcement but in the spirit that is embedded within each. Isaiah calls out the Jewish population and the priests about behaviour in chapter 58 for just this type of behaviour that comes with legalising the commands of God. The commands that are embedded within our faith and are, or should be, the basis upon which we form community.

It is not the law that we enact but the law that God enacts within our hearts, the words of wisdom the Paul speaks of (1 Cor. 2.6). It is not the wisdom of the world but the wisdom of God and those of faith who follow and adhere to those things that build community, justice, peace, love, etc. All of these things are impossible for us to fully grasp which is why we have difficulty with God's laws and their enactment. We need to try and understand what these concepts mean and as we delve into their meaning we begin to bring to the surface our own thoughts to impose on others, etc. God's requirements and law do not require interpretation they require us to do, to act, to be as Christ to our neighbour.

To walk humbly with God

 The Christian life is not an easy one. More often than not churches, parishes and individuals all feel as if there is no hope and are flapping their arms in despair. We can only see the darkness around us and not the light that is Christ. Like a Zen master we often stand around berating and striking our followers to bring them to experience the light of Christ as we become frustrated with the apparent lack of understanding being shown. Or else we fall back to erudite words to inspire and bring hope which only bring fleeting highs in a place of overwhelming darkness. We believe these highs to be the real deal and like an addictive drug continue to seek them rather than Christ's light. Paul writing to the Corinthians points out in his hymn to the cross as the foundation of our lives (1 Cor. 1.18-31) whilst Matthew's Gospel shows us the how (Matt. 5.1-12). However, in a single verse of pure poetry Micah spells out the essential attitude (Micah 6.8).

In Paul's first letter to the Corinthians there are some amazing pieces of rhetoric that reflect deep thought and understanding. In his hymn to the cross, Paul uses an understanding of both the Jewish faith and the Greek funeral oratory system of his era. In linking them within this passage he cuts through the ties of ethnicity that create division and seeks to build a magnificent edifice on the weakest foundation of the world at that time, a man crucified on a cross. In our day to day misunderstandings and our fears can we like Paul and the Corinthians lay our differences aside and start to build? The foundation, just as in Paul's time, is a foundation not of strength but of weakness. The Christian faith has been battered by the tides of rationality and a culture that sees only profit for profit's sake. If we think clearly about these things we are in a position that is no worse and no greater than found in Corinth. Paul's oratory appeals to both intellectuals and those who are faith believers not because they are beaten at their own game but because Christ offers a fresh approach. It is like being given two options both of which mean death and suddenly finding a new path that is inconsistent with everything that has been thought possible before. The cross turns everything upside down.

Is it possible to build on a weak foundation in the midst of nothing?

Christ gives us a way to live that life at the beginning of the classically named Sermon on the Mount at the beginning of chapter 5 of Matthew's Gospel. The Beatitudes are perhaps at first glance somewhat unusual and topsy turvy. The poor are blessed, the sorrowful are blessed as are the hungry, the gentle and the peacemakers. A far cry from reality one would think and does this mean that we have to become these extreme low end, despised people. Can't we be rich and free from hunger? Our rational and interpretive scholarly minds try to finagle our way out, putting spin on to interpretation so that we can be at ease. Yet, as Christians these are our living instructions these are our way of building on the weak foundation of the cross. Just to give some examples as to our own interpretive slant to these instructions.  Instructions, if you will, given not to erudite learned people but to the poor and the hardworking women and men of rural society. Who are the sorrowful? What are they sorrowful for? We automatically, I think, start with those who are mourning death but perhaps they are sorrowing / mourning something else entirely. Perhaps the mourning is not death but the recognition of sin and wrongdoing and so we are mourning what we have / have not done as a people?  In recognition comes understanding and an ability to stand in hope for our lives as we turn away from sin to embrace Christ. In doing so we build our lives centred on God and so we become blessed by God. We begin to think in terms of others and so seek after righteousness, more rightly translated as a just community. This becomes an action that is lived out into the world around us.

Micah sums this all up in the simplicity of one verse describing what God wants from us as we grow into his presence and take on a Christlike personna. We begin to give to God a contrite heart as we walk with a humbleness (poverty of heart) before God seeking to do justice and mercy with the loyalty expected by those who have formed a covenant with God, as we have through our baptism.