The Greatest Lesson I Ever Learned - Brian Booth

As I entered full-time ministry in 1995 I read a book compiled by Dr Bill Bright entitled, "The Greatest Lesson I Ever Learned". It was a collection of stories from Christian leaders. It inspired me to ask various Christian leaders in Australia that I knew (or, mostly, knew of) for their story. These have been sitting in my computer for 10 years waiting for publication, but I didn't collect enough to warrant publishing them. So, I am now posting them as blogs so the stories can get out there. I trust you enjoy them as much as I do.

Geoff

Brian Booth

Brian Booth is one of Australia’s most successful sportsmen. He represented Australia in the gold winning hockey team in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics and played for Australia in cricket - including the Ashes tour in 1960s.

Brian was a secondary school teacher until his retirement.

He takes an active interest in developing young Christians in their sport and their faith. He also assists with the Christian Businessmen’s meetings in Sydney.

THE CANCELLED DEBT

It was the Olympic Year - 1956.

I had been invited to tour New Zealand with a New South Wales Hockey team. I was keen to go as I had never been outside Australia before. Also the experience would be valuable for the Australian Championships to be held in Melbourne later in the year, when the Australian Olympic Hockey Team was to be selected. This was the first time Australia would be represented at Olympic level in Men’s Hockey. What an honour it would be if selected as a member of the “Original Team”? However, I could not afford to go, as I was committed to monthly re-payments on my first motor car ( a two door Morris Minor), and as a teacher I would be on leave without pay.

My father came to the rescue. He dipped deep into his meager savings and loaned me the money needed for air-fares. I resolved to pay him back when my finances improved. I made the tour, played in the Australian Championships and was selected in Australia's first Olympic Men's Hockey Team. I was a member of the “Originals”.

Months passed. The debt to my father was still unpaid. It nagged at me. I always seemed to have other financial priorities. A year went by. I knew that Mum and Dad were struggling financially. My father was a farmer - and a good one. He knew how to make things grow - especially cauliflowers, but market prices for vegetables were very low and fluctuated week by week. I made the re-payment of the debt a priority.

It was with a sense of relief that I drove to my parents' home at Perthville, near Bathurst, for the Christmas school vacation. In my wallet was the cheque for my father. The amount was a little more than he had loaned me, but I was glad that at long last the outstanding debt would be paid.

I arrived home and immediately handed my father the cheque.
“What's this?” he asked.
“It's a cheque” I replied.
“Yes. I know it's a cheque, but what's it for?” said my father.
“It's for the money you loaned me a year ago for the New Zealand trip”, I answered.

My father paused for a moment and then tore the cheque in half. I stared open mouthed in disbelief. Not being a “financial genius” my immediate thought was that he had literally destroyed the amount on the cheque. Seeing my uneasiness, my father looked me in the eye, smiled and handed me the pieces of paper.

I thought long and hard about this incident. As a trained teacher and through my experience of the “ups and downs” of cricket and hockey, I had learned to ask such questions as “What happened?”, “Why did it happen?” but more importantly, “What could I learn from the situation?”

As a boy I had spent considerable time with my father. He taught me many valuable lessons. Sometimes he had to get to the “seat of the problem” to make sure the lesson was understood. I had often scored a “hundred in the back yard at Mums” under his experienced observation. He had taught me much about respect for the hard work that went into earning it. But why had my father torn up that cheque? He was not a wealthy man. Relative poverty was the pattern of my parents' living, as it was for most of the people living around the village of Perthville at the time. What lesson did he want me to learn this time?

As I reflected on what my father had done, I realised that his practical action of tearing up the cheque finalised the matter. He had cancelled my debt. That money was now a free gift. I sensed his motivation was that I was his son and that he loved me. Yes, my father was a farmer and he knew how to make things grow, but he also knew how to make people grow, especially his own son! It was from his action that I learned the important lesson that “people matter more than things”. Yes, even more than money!

However, that was not the only lesson I learned from my father's action. At the time I was young and inexperienced in the Christian faith. In a far deeper sense it made me realise that when Jesus died on the Cross He cancelled my debt of sin. In the Bible, sin is not so much doing wrong as being wrong. In cricket terms it means being short of the crease, batting down the wrong line or falling short of a standard. God’s standard is Jesus Christ. I knew I fell far short of that standard. It was a debt I could never re-pay. Jesus tore up my debt of sin just as my father had torn up my financial debt. As the hymn writer says, “He (Jesus) paid the debt and made me free”, and in return offered me the free gift of forgiveness and eternal life

The most important lesson I learned, however, from my father tearing up the cheque was that eternal life is not a matter of money, luck or chance. It is a matter of choice - of taking God at His Word and resting in utter confidence on his promises.

When Jesus said, “God did not send His Son into the world to make its people guilty but He sent Him to rescue them”, He meant it. He meant that Jesus cancelled our debt for all time, not because we deserve it or because of what we had done, but because of His love and what He had done. That's God's grace to you and me.

McLaren & Carson Essay

Write a paper of analysis of and response to McLaren, GO, and Carson, BCEC.
Thoughtfully read the following pages in each book:
McLaren, GO, pp.70-101, and 150 pages of your choice from pp.105-297;
Carson, BCEC, pp.45-182, and 188-234.
Your paper should include the following three parts:
Describe – do not evaluate – the basic arguments and the most compelling major points of McLaren, GO, and Carson, BCEC (approx. 3.5 pages);
Evaluate the most significant similarities and differences between McLaren and Carson and your beliefs and approach to the Christian life (this is a three-way comparison and evaluation – McLaren, Carson and you) (approx. 4 pages);
Describe at least three ways in which the conclusions you draw from your evaluation (b.[2] above) might influence your personal practice of piety and/or your practice of ministry and/or the way your church engages in corporate worship and/or the way your church engages in ministry (approx. 2.5 pages).
Word Count: 3,136

Introduction
Brian McLaren’s “Generous Orthodoxy[1]” is a description of the author’s own encounter with or journey through various faith traditions. It functions as his “confession” or “manifesto”[2]. He calls others to take it up as their creed also. Identified as an influential leader within the emerging church movement, McLaren writes with warmth and insight into many issues of contemporary Christianity. He says,

“The real purpose of this book, and much of my writing and preaching, is to
try to help us realign our religion and our lives at least a little bit
more with that Someone.”[3]

It seems appropriate to point out that the emerging church movement (ECM), as represented by McLaren, has made very little impact on the Christian community in Sydney, Australia. After reading “The Younger Evangelicals” by Dr. Robert Webber[4] and McLaren’s “A New Kind of Christian[5]” several years ago, it appeared to me that the ECM was dependent on finding a significantly large community of people who identified with the Christian faith but were in some way disaffected by the current expressions of the (particularly evangelical) church. In a community like Sydney where only 3% of the population are evangelicals, approximately 3% of children attend church and 60% of the general population do not even have a friend who attends church, the ECM seems mostly irrelevant. The most popular expression of the ECM in Australia labels itself the “missional church” movement, as typified by Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost, but even it is small.

The second of the two books to be discussed, Don Carson’s “Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church[6]” is the author’s analysis and response to this movement. Carson is an influential evangelical New Testament theologian who has also written extensively on the areas of hermeneutics and post-modernism[7]. Here he summarises some of his other writing into a more popular form, then engages with two examples of the ECM and concludes with some theological and Scriptural summaries.

Generous Orthodoxy
McLaren’s most basic argument is that reality, especially the reality of who Jesus is, is not adequately captured by any single expression of the Christian religion. In Chapter 1, entitled “The Seven Jesuses I Have Known”, he describes his own journey from conversion in a conservative Fundamentalist faith tradition, through Pentecostalism, to his present “unfinished” position. Along the way he has had encounters with Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Liberal Protestantism, Anabaptists and Liberation Theology. This chapter is a good summary of his whole approach. McLaren seeks to show the Jesus presented in these traditions as different perspectives to the same answer, rather than alternative answers to the same question. The sixteen chapters in Part Two of his book follow the same approach – highlighting various aspects of each tradition or expression that he has encountered and found helpful for describing a “generous orthodoxy”.

McLaren is concerned that “orthodoxy” has been used define who is “in” and who is “out” of a particular group – including the group of those who are going to heaven. And that “to be orthodox [now] one has to have right opinions about far more things than one needed to have back then, when having a right attitude toward Jesus was about all it took.[8]” Rather than focus on where different traditions may have erred, McLaren seeks to find positive examples in sixteen different traditions that support his view of who Jesus is.

The most compelling part of McLaren’s book is where he argues that by combining the various images that tribes within Christianity hold to we may end up with a hologram: “a richer, multidimensional vision of Jesus”[9]. The warmth of his appeal is expressed in his desire to recover the “simple, integrated richness I knew of [Jesus] as a little boy.[10]”

McLaren identifies thirteen positives he would draw from these traditions: the outward thrust to the whole world of the missional tradition; the passion for making a difference of the evangelical tradition; the faithful remnant idea of the Protestant tradition; the heroism of being post-liberal/conservative; the imaginativeness of the mystical tradition; the (meta-?) narrative of the Biblical tradition; the immediate experience of God in the charismatic/contemplative tradition; the commitment to reformation in the fundamentalist/Calvin tradition; the practice of spiritual disciplines and spirituality in the Anabaptist and Anglican traditions; the spiritual formation of lay people in the Wesleyan tradition; the sense of celebration in the Catholic tradition; positive engagement with all of creation of the Green movement; and the willingness to engage with those of different faiths by incarnational Christians. He also expresses such concern at Christians’ unwillingness to repent that it makes him depressed-yet-hopeful. He has a vision of an emerging alternative understanding of the kingdom of God and the unfinished work of the coming fullness of God’s kingdom.

Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church
In contrast with McLaren’s largely personal account, Carson seeks to objectively survey the ECM and provide a “mature assessment[11]”. His approach is to develop a profile of the movement, describe its strengths and weaknesses, critique the movement, especially through analysing two representative books (one being McLaren’s Generous Orthodoxy) and then provide some Scriptural and theological context for evaluating the movement.

In an obvious effort to connect with a popular audience, Carson does disclose his own experiences and use simpler language than is usual in his academic tomes. He admits that neither the emerging church nor postmodernism are simple, uni-focal movements. Carson’s survey of the ECM relies heavily on published writings of representative leaders (making little reference to the plethora of emerging church material published on websites or blogs). Using these writings he provides a clear summary of the journey that various individuals have been through. From these profiles he identifies its main characteristic as protest against traditional, evangelical (often fundamentalist) churches, seeker-sensitive mega-churches, and modernism in general.

Carson does well in summarising the strengths of the movement: its understanding of the way the culture has changed, its desire for authentic expressions of faith, its acknowledgement of personal perspective, its strong desire to engage with those outside of the faith, and its willingness to explore connections with older Christian traditions.

Carson’s critique of the ECM’s weaknesses is this writer at his sharpest. Those who are attracted to McLaren’s warm winsomeness would be offended by and appalled at Carson’s cold scalpel. His vast academic background gives him the grounding and authority to dissect the arguments of the leaders of the movement. He summarises his criticism into three main points (with a fourth given as a particular example of the three). First, their understanding of modernism is reductionistic and wooden. Secondly, they mock the worst of those they are critiquing rather than providing a balanced assessment of the whole. Thirdly, the ECM’s assessment of modernism and the church under Christendom is theologically shallow because no viewpoint or system is all good or all bad. He also finds its assessment intellectually incoherent because it finds value in anything but modernism.

Slicing through their evaluation of post-modernism, Carson accuses the leaders of the emerging church movement of having labelled a whole range of social changes under the one pop-culture heading of post-modernism.

The most compelling point Carson makes about “Generous Orthodoxy” is simply that the people described by the labels that McLaren uses to head his chapters have little resemblance to the pictures he paints of them. For example, the most defining characteristic of an evangelical is not their passion. McLaren is revealed as seeking to use his own personal encounters with some (often fringe) expression of a faith tradition as evidence to support his own conclusions. Nowhere is this truer than in his depiction of the Roman Catholic Church[12]. McLaren extrapolates from his chance encounter with a woman in a garden across the whole Roman Catholic Church. But, Carson argues, he ignores the whole official teaching and doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. The expression of the church in a single Californian church garden, or even in the whole of North America does not accurately reflect the Roman Catholic Church as a whole. Carson wishes that McLaren would transcend his own North American heritage by examining both the doctrinal foundations and the expressions of that doctrine in places such as Poland (or, might I add, Sydney). Carson also suggests that McLaren could have made the same point using positive examples from conservative evangelical churches, rather than other traditions.

Similarities and Differences between McLaren, Carson and myself
Like McLaren and many in the ECM, I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian family and church (Plymouth Brethren). The five fundamentals[13] were deeply held convictions by the leaders of our church. The example of mature believers’ own personal commitment was instrumental in shaping my own faith. Their commitment to knowing the Bible, sharing their faith, and having their lives conformed to the Word of God informed the way I lived my Christian life.

Similarly to McLaren, I also encountered Pentecostalism briefly before being more thoroughly influenced by Campus Crusade’s campus ministry. My church leaders had warned me the university environment could threaten my faith and they encouraged me to join a Christian group on campus. Campus Crusade matched my values of commitment to a strong personal devotional life, taking the initiative in personal evangelism and dependence on the Holy Spirit. I became convinced of the priority of the Great Commission.

In my experience, the hard-edge of my fundamentalist church was softened by the heart of its leaders for people. Their passion to make a difference, labelled as an evangelical strength by McLaren[14], moved them progressively forward. Still, a literalistic interpretation of the opening chapters of Genesis and a comprehensive, rigid eschatological scheme made engagement with academic thought at the university difficult.

The strongest campus ministry in Sydney (AFES affiliated with IFES worldwide) is resourced mainly by Reformed evangelical churches, mostly from the Anglican[15] denomination. Their focus on expository Bible teaching, based in a sound Biblical theology, significantly impacted my engagement with the Bible. It took me a long time to reconcile their high view of Scripture with their overt a-millennial and theistic evolutionary interpretation. Carson is a regularly featured speaker at events organised by Sydney’s Reformed evangelical community[16] and so his teaching has influenced my thinking, both directly and indirectly.

However, it was not just my experience in Australia that shaped my thinking. Through Campus Crusade I have been exposed to ministries and leaders from several different nations – including India, Philippines, Korea, Singapore, Japan and Taiwan. In the late 1990’s, I had the privilege of serving with Campus Crusade at the University of Colorado in Boulder for 12 months. I was able to experience church and ministry in a culture far more Christian than my own. Therefore I consider myself sufficiently familiar with McLaren’s context to be able to assess it, while having enough external experiences to allow me an outsider’s perspective.

McLaren’s assessment of the state of much of the church in North America appears fairly accurate. He diagnoses the problems of the church – its firm attachment to a polemical expression of truth or a corporatisation of mega-ministry – accurately and from experience[17]. The disconnection between the culture of churches that focus on the Bible and the increasingly biblically illiterate, unchurched culture is the critical issue.

However, his proposed solution would create a major problem. As Carson writes, in his efforts to be culturally relevant, McLaren has buried the simple gospel message so deep that no one listening to him would be able to discern it. The gospel is a simple, yet profound message. A child can understand it and share it, and yet academic theologians can write thesis after thesis and never plumb its depths. The most personally significant thing I learnt from Campus Crusade was (using the “door to door sales techniques[18]”) how to articulate in clear and simple words the faith I had grown up with and adopted as my own. What I have learned from my study of theology has been the profoundness those simple words seek to convey.

I agree with Carson that emerging church leaders need to work harder at developing theology that is truly biblical. And I agree with McLaren that biblical churches need to apply Scripture to culture more profoundly. In contrast with both, I would also add that a significant role the church needs to emphasise is to expose greater proportions of the community to biblical truth regularly and in an ongoing way. We cannot just strengthen the theological understanding of the church in our present culture. And we cannot just seek to make the expressions of the church more relevant to the culture we are part of. We must engage our communities with the agenda that flows from our theology, not just in response to the popular issues of the day.

Carson’s emphasis on biblical theology[19] ensures that his agenda for engaging with culture is most influenced by Scripture. In contrast, McLaren’s agenda seems to be largely driven by experience. While acknowledging that each of us is influenced by our social location[20], I agree with Carson’s approach: that we cannot know anything omnisciently, but we can know truth accurately, at least that which is revealed to us through Scripture. An appropriate response to our limitations or pre-understandings is to engage with other interpretations of Scripture from outside our own culture, location or time. As we become aware of other interpretations and assess them in the light of the whole of Scripture, we will move asymptotically toward accurately understanding the truth of the Scripture.

Carson focuses on the central failings of the ECM to critique culture and stand for Biblical truth. But he fails to address the underlying motivation for those engaged in the movement – to create authentic expressions of missional community in our contemporary culture. The lone exception is when he holds up Redeemer Presbyterian Church (RPC) as a positive example of a church that has effectively engaged with a post-modern generation and multiplied itself in church plants[21]. But even then he admits that RPC would not identify itself with the ECM.

While disputing over some key issues, Carson misses the main point. We now read the Bible from the perspective of post-Christendom, informed by the issues of mission to pluralistic communities, community formation with increasingly broken individuals and kingdom-thinking amidst tribal globalism. Its own meta-narrative provides the drive for the formation of missional communities. For example, God’s design for a creation stewarded by responsible human beings, who are commissioned to extend order across a chaotic, untamed world, is the impetus for those missional communities who see their mandate as more holistic than saving individuals from a future hell. Similarly, Jesus entrusted the witness of his unique and universal act of redemption to a community of believers. The effectiveness of the ECM to form missional communities – that faithfully extend the transformational good news of the kingdom to the world – must be the main point to be assessed.

Influence on Practice
McLaren’s description of his experiences through various faith traditions confirms my commitment to self-awareness concerning my own pre-understandings and the biases that come from my own background. In evaluating where these life experiences have impacted me most, I need to subject them to the scrutiny of Scripture. I need to actively seek out and genuinely engage with those whose background is different to mine, to see how their experience informs mine. The access to different opinions and experiences is virtually limitless via the internet. Intentionally seeking to humbly interact with ancient commentators, developing world believers and Christian leaders of different traditions will only further my own self-awareness.

Beyond previous life experiences, any present non-rational engagement can influence my thinking about God and the Bible. McLaren models this with his story about the conservation of turtles. My influences may be positive or negative. I am pre-disposed to endorse the music I enjoy. I am more likely to affirm the views of people with winsome personalities than of those with fractious personalities. The beauty of a sunset may move my heart to worship God. I will seek to be aware of how non-rational influences shape my awareness of God’s truth, and how I may legitimately incorporate them into my ministry. An example of this is found in 1 Peter 3:1, where the apostle admonishes wives to influence their unbelieving husbands by their deeds – without a (rational) word! Another is Paul’s own example in 1 Corinthians 9 of identifying with various cultures in order to win them to Christ. An example from my own life was a visit to a cemetery to reflect on the brevity of life.

Finally, the awareness of the shift in culture from Christendom to pluralistic, globalised post-modernism should influence my ministry and church to be intentionally missional. McLaren presents a diagram where, “[Jesus] creates the church as a missional community to join him in his mission of saving the world. He invites me to be part of this community to experience his saving love and participate in it.[22]” No longer is mission something done by people sent overseas, supported from a home church. Rather, it is the experience of each Christian every day. The vast numbers of unchurched people in my community will never be reached by holding slicker, fancier, better resourced Sunday services. The question we must wrestle with is, “how can we support the average, quiet Christian in their everyday activities, so they can be an effective witness for Christ wherever they go?” Part of our answer will include the training and encouragement of individual Christians. However, our answer must also include propagation of the building block concepts of the gospel throughout our society through the use of the media, creative arts and academic world so that people are prepared to hear the gospel shared by average Christians.

Conclusion
McLaren’s book reflects his personal journey through and encounters with various faith traditions. His major concern is that dogmatic presentations of the Christian religion by conservative fundamentalists do not reflect the reality informed by our new cultural context. He proposes a new “generous orthodoxy”. Carson evaluates the emerging church movement, and McLaren particularly, in light of historical understanding, cultural analysis and, ultimately, Scriptural truth and finds them lacking in objective analysis and theological development. He exhorts the leaders of the emerging church movement to be more balanced – less critical of the conservative evangelical church and more critical of post-modernism.

In life and ministry, the impetus for engagement with this new cultural context must be driven from the Scriptures. Those Scriptures must be understood in the context of a whole world of perspectives. Still we can know truth accurately, if not completely. The mission of God must be expressed by the people of God through missional communities who holistically engage the whole world with good news of the kingdom.

ENDNOTES
[1] McLaren, Brian D. A Generous Orthodoxy. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004. [GO]
[2] GO, back cover.
[3] GO p.26, where the “Someone” is identified something in the church that he loves, i.e. Jesus.
[4] Webber, Robert. E. The Younger Evangelicals. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2002.
[5] McLaren, Brian D. A New Kind of Christian. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001.
[6] Carson, D.A. Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005. [BCEC]
[7] For example, Carson, D.D. The Gagging of God. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996.
[8] GO, p.33
[9] GO, p.74
[10] GO p.73
[11] BCEC, back cover.
[12] BCEC p.172-177
[13] GO p.220
[14] GO p.128-130
[15] Anglican is the equivalent to Episcopalian. The Anglican Diocese of Sydney is one of the few thoroughly Reformed evangelical Anglican dioceses in the world. Their seminary, Moore College, produces many works in the field of Biblical theology.
[16] Two of Sydney’s leading evangelical writers, Philip D Jensen and Tony Payne, feature in “Telling the Truth – Evangelizing Post-Moderns” edited by Carson, published by Zondervan 2000.
[17] Carson probably agrees with McLaren’s assessment of many fundamentalist churches and other expressions of so-called “evangelicalism”, yet he never admits as much.
[18] GO p.132
[19] Carson DA, “Systematic Theology and Biblical Theology” in New Dictionary of Biblical Theology Downer’s Grove: IVP, 2003 p.89 provides an example of Carson’s particular emphasis in biblical theology.
[20] BCEC, p.51
[21] BCEC, p.55-56.
[22] GO, p.118.

Hungry in the Desert - Part Five

When the disciples reached the other side, they had forgotten to bring any bread. Jesus said to them, "Watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees." And they began discussing it among themselves, saying, "We brought no bread." But Jesus, aware of this, said, "O you of little faith, why are you discussing among yourselves the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive? Do you not remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many baskets you gathered? Or the seven loaves for the four thousand, and how many baskets you gathered? How is it that you fail to understand that I did not speak about bread? Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees." Then they understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
[Matthew 16:5-12]

Here we go again. Jesus and his disciples retreat across Galilee to a desolate place. Robertson’s “Harmony of the Gospels” suggests that this is the fourth trip recorded. (Thomas & Gundry’s Harmony doesn’t specify the number). Whether there were four trips, or more than four trips, there is clearly a pattern that develops. When ministry becomes too intense, Jesus takes his disciples away until things calm down.

And ministry had been intense. Just prior to this trip, Jesus fed the four thousand in a desolate place with seven loaves and a few small fish. And the Pharisees and Sadducees had demanded a sign from heaven!?!?! His popularity, and the accompanying opposition, required him to withdraw. Why? Because neither those who praised him nor those who opposed him understood his mission. That should not surprise us, because neither did his disciples.

Jesus’ disciples were concerned with getting through the day. Amidst a busy schedule, it is easy to forget the basics. Like the plate spinner, we can begin to focus on the thing that is wobbling, without taking time to step back and see what is actually the priority. It is easy to make things complicated. The secret to success is to make the complicated simple.

There has been a running joke within our ministry about my idea of what it takes to run a conference. With conferences of hundreds of students turning up, the issues are quite complex and there are many, many details to keep track of. With the way we run our Mid Year Conferences, an error in the budget of a dollar or so per student can be the difference between breaking even or making a huge loss. But I have said for many years, the key to a successful conference is to have a good venue, a good speaker, and to have students turn up. Keeping the principles simple allows us to make good decisions about the details.

The disciples were worried about the “here and now”, but Jesus had brought them on retreat in order to train them for future ministry. So, he gives them a warning, but it goes straight over their heads. He is warning about dangers posed by outsiders, they think he is pointing out their own failing. (I have done that too – taken a general comment as a personal criticism).

Why warn his disciples about the Pharisees and Sadducees? The religious leaders looked like the good guys. As one commentator put it, no one needs a warning that the guy coming at you with a knife is dangerous. But the Pharisees and Sadducees were the “good guys”. They were religious. They taught the Bible. They sought to honour God with their whole lives. In many ways, the differences between Jesus and the Pharisees, at least on paper, were quite subtle.

The big difference was in their picture of what God was doing in the world. Their teaching, which is what Jesus warns about, reflected their understanding of how God was working and how he was going to work. It was in direct conflict with Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom of God.

How we view God and his work in the world directly impacts our thinking and our actions and our emotions. The challenge Tom Wright poses is,
“If we are beginning to understand what Jesus’ mission was all about, and to make it the foundation of our faith and hope, do we understand what he is doing right now, not only in our lives, but in our world?”
Tom Wright “Mark for Everyone” p.105

We need to get our big picture of God and the kingdom right if we are going to make wise and godly decisions about life and ministry in the detail.

One illustration of this comes from the business world. Many companies have moved, over recent decades, to a more flat organisational structure. The employees on the “frontline” – at the retail store, or on the factory floor – have been given more and more responsibility to make decisions that used to rest with middle management. Now there are two ways of helping those frontline employees make the right decisions.

The first way is to think of every possible scenario that they might face, decide ahead of time what the best response would be (from an organisational point of view) and develop a system – a training program or a manual – which would then empower those employees to respond appropriately. The weakness of this high control approach is that it is well nigh impossible to anticipate every possible scenario. And the multitude of scenarios and variations result in manuals that are like a series of phone books that no one can really absorb.

The second way is the impart a clear and compelling vision of what the whole organisation is working towards, and a set of values that the organisation wants expressed as it works towards that vision, and then release the employees to make up their own responses within those parameters. This is incredibly motivating for employees who are given real power to make real decisions. The greatest challenge for the organisation is to keep the vision fresh and at the forefront of everyone’s minds.

Some people, when warned to watch out for the teaching of the Pharisees, want to go through the details of their “training manuals” and query whether each proposed solution was right or wrong. But what I think Jesus is doing here with his disciples is warning them that the Pharisees’ whole vision and values were coming from a wrong place. If the disciples followed the details of the Pharisees teaching it would eventually lead them to adopt a wrong picture of God and how he worked in the world.

Now let’s return to the moment when the disciples took Jesus comment as a personal criticism. Obviously it was because they were focussed on the here and now issue of the bread. And Jesus rebukes them for that too. Over and over again he has taught them not to worry about their physical needs. Twice now in Matthew’s gospel he has turned a few loaves into enough bread to feed thousands, with basketfuls left over. And still the disciples are concerned that they haven’t adequately provided for themselves.

We experience anxiety when we fail to recall God’s previous acts of provision. How many times, and in how many ways, has God provided for you? And yet with each new challenge, do you immediately respond with anxiety and fear? One of the things I admired about Dr Bill Bright (founder of Campus Crusade) was his faith. As I read his biography it became clear to me that he was not born with an amazing faith. It was not bestowed upon him in a unique moment by a benevolent God. It was like a muscle that he exercised. God called him forward into the unknown and each step was an adventure into the unknown that required faith in the God whom he did know. His first efforts at fundraising were for thousands of dollars, but within a few years of launching the ministry they needed to acquire a headquarters that meant raising millions of dollars. No one sets out initially to raise millions of dollars. You have to build up to it. As you learn to trust God to provide a little, he will then challenge you to trust him for more.

When you are surrounded by plenty, you don’t need to trust God. But God’s vision and values for the world invite you to engage with something much bigger than the resources you currently have, or can access yourself. That’s the life of faith. If you are living within your current resources – time, money, influence, ability, knowledge – and if you think that is all that God expects of you, I wonder if you have accepted some view of God that is not the one revealed in the Scriptures. Faith means living out trust in God. If we are relying on ourselves, we aren’t trusting God. If we aren’t trying things which are beyond ourselves, we are relying on ourselves. But the reed will splinter in our hand. We need to, and we are called to, trust in God.

And what about those times when we try to trust God and it all falls flat?

Firstly, consider whether we are still in the desert. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be satisfied” was Jesus promise. But when will they be satisfied? Unlike the crowds who had a bit of a tummy rumble as the sun was setting, Jesus endured 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness and he was HUNGRY! I’d hate to last 1 day or 7 days or 39 days in the desert, and then conclude that God wasn’t going to provide and give up.

Secondly, consider what provision we are hungering for. What is “righteousness”? JP Moreland describes two contrasting views about the goal for our lives. He begins,

“From Old Testament times and ancient Greece until this century, the good life was widely understood to mean a life of intellectual and moral virtue. The good life is the life of ideal human functioning according to the nature God Himself gave to us… the successful person was one who knew how to live life well according to what we are by nature due to the creative design of God…. So understood, happiness involves suffering, endurance and patience because these are important means to becoming a good person who lives the good life.”
[Love Your God with All Your Mind, JP Moreland, P.35]

Then he continues,

“According to the modern view, the good life is the satisfaction of any pleasure or desire that someone freely and autonomously chooses for himself or herself. The successful person is the individual who has a life of pleasure and can obtain enough consumer goods to satisfy his or her desires.”
[Love Your God with All Your Mind, JP Moreland, P.37]

Let me finish this part with one final quote, from Tom Wright. In Mark’s account of this episode, Jesus quotes from Jeremiah 5:21 saying,

“Having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear?”

Tom Wright says that the Pharisees and Sadducees in Jesus’ day reminded Jesus of the people of Jeremiah’s day,

“People were so caught up in their own concerns, and so unconcerned about injustice and wickedness in their own society, that God had no alternative but to abandon them to their fate at the hands of foreigners”
[Tom Wright, Mark for Everyone p.105]

Hungry in the Desert - Part Three

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?

And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

"Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
Matthew 6:25-34 [ESV]

I couldn’t write about Matthew’s thoughts on hunger and overlook this passage. In these verses, Jesus unpacks for us one of the major stumbling blocks we face when hungering and thirsting after righteousness: fear or anxiety.

But this section begins with the word “therefore”, which directs our thoughts back to the previous verses. Earlier in the chapter, the focus on Jesus’ teaching was on the practice of spiritual disciplines, or the “practicing of righteousness” (6:1). The first thing he says is “when you give…”, and then “when you pray…” and thirdly “when you fast…” (Notice it is “when”, not “if”. Even for fasting). The goal of these practices is not to accumulate wealth on earth, which is vulnerable, but to store up treasure in heaven, which is secure. After instructing his followers in the three “practices of righteousness”, Jesus concludes each with the promise “And your Father in heaven who sees in secret will reward you.” (Matthew 6:4, 6, 18) So the challenge Jesus issues just prior to our passage is clear: “You cannot serve God and money”.

Anxiety (“μεριμνατε”) comes from the root phrase μεριζειν τον νουν (“dividing the mind”). Many of the older commentaries focussed on the question, “what does this mean about planning for your life?” This is an important question, and the simple answer is that this passage does not preclude planning or ambition, it addresses worry or anxiety.

Anxiety is the result when you try to control or manage things beyond your power. In ministry, this is the world I live in constantly. There is no way that I can control who gives money to support us. I cannot control who or how many will respond to the gospel. I have no power over students to make them grow in their faith, to make them turn up to meetings or Bible studies. Anxiety is a constant threat in ministry. I can try to compensate by over-controlling other areas of my life, or imagining situations where I am powerful and in control. But becoming a control-freak or imagining a fantasy life is not pursuing righteousness. They lead me into the desert - a wasteland of broken relationships, half-baked ideas, distractions and self-indulgence. The answer is not fantasy but faith.

Faith is the only responsible response because it is responding to the reality of the one who really has all the power and who really is in control. Jesus provides three reasons for placing my trust in God.

Firstly, he is the one who gave me life and who made my body (v.25). His power was not exhausted by the act of creation. His power is limitless. His love is boundless. Surely the God who gave me these greater things, my life and body, will also provide me with the lesser things to accompany them - food, drink and clothing. It reminds me of one of my favourite verses, Romans 8:32, where Paul talks about sanctification following justification,

“He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?”

We have not exhausted our Father’s generosity, his grace. Just as he gave us life, he wants to provide food, drink and clothes for us. Just as he has saved us, he wants to make us righteous, mature, godly, competent fellow-workers in his kingdom.

Secondly, Jesus compares our situation with the seemingly ridiculous situation of the birds and the flowers (v.26, 28-30). I am fascinated by the behaviour and beauty of the birdlife in Sydney. It is so diverse. The sounds, the colours, the quirks of so many different species just grab my attention. Just yesterday I was walking through the bushland behind our place and saw a sulphur crested cockatoo poking its head out of its nest in a hole in a gum tree about 40’ off the ground while others from the flock circled around squawking raucously. And as I get older, I am gaining appreciation for the aesthetic beauty of flowers in the garden. I even planted bulbs! Jesus says that these displays are the result of God’s providential activity. And we are worth more to God than these lesser creations.

Thirdly, worry is unproductive because we are powerless to make significant changes anyway (v.27). We cannot make ourselves taller. We cannot delay death for a day. I wrote back in part one that we use our (God-given) creativity and capability to mask our true dependence on God. As soon as I wrote that we cannot delay death a day my mind started arguing with the statement. What about healthy living? Regular exercise? Modest diet? Life support? But these are trivialities compared the great overarching truth that we do not determine our birth or our death. Those control points should, like wandering through a spiritual desert, remind us of our constant dependence on God.

But in our Western society we have isolated ourselves from those control points. Once upon a time, a whole family lived under the same roof and went through all of the stages of life together. Children were birthed in the family home, not some sterile maternity ward. Grandparents grew frail and forgetful amidst the hustle and bustle of family life, not in some retirement village or nursing home. Children grew up seeing birth and death regularly. Most of the young adults I know have never seen a dead body or had anyone close to them pass away. We have lost the accompaniment to the rhythm of life. We become soloists rather than members of a full orchestra. We depend totally on our own skill for the end result. Yet the Psalmist is able to write:

"O LORD, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days;
let me know how fleeting I am!
Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths,
and my lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath!
Surely a man goes about as a shadow! Surely for nothing they are in turmoil;
man heaps up wealth and does not know who will gather!
[Psalm 39:4-6]

To fail to trust God, to choose instead to anxiously pursue our own power and control, is to act like the Gentiles – those who do not know God. In other words, we may say we are following Jesus but in practice we are living like atheists. The life of faith requires faith, not just a commitment to an alternative lifestyle. Faith may be lived out in the alternative lifestyle (i.e. support-raising may be done as an expression of faith in God, or by following a system that “works”) or it may not. It may be lived out in the mainstream lifestyle (e.g. employment), or it may not. Only an atheist would deny that God is the source of their ability (mental, physical, etc.) and opportunity to earn money through their occupation. Yet as followers of Jesus it is all too easy in our materialistic, humanistic culture to attribute any success we have to our own capability and creativity, and to ignore God.

A friend of mine shared recently that a new role he had at work was beyond his ability to perform or to meet the expectations placed on him. He confessed that he was praying for God to enable him to do what he needed to do. I have had a similar experience as I have taken on new roles in ministry over the years. Initially it is very easy to feel inexperienced, lacking capability and to express dependence on God. But when the competence and experience comes, then my awareness of my dependence on God also waned.

Still, Jesus is commanding us to be single minded in our pursuit of the kingdom of God and his righteousness, not dividing our attention between God and money. Our divided mind comes when we fail to acknowledge reality, when our beliefs fail to lead us to faith.

What are we to believe?
Firstly, that the God who created us – gave us a body and life – values us sufficiently to provide everything else we need.
Secondly, we are powerless to control so many of the outcomes we become anxious about.
Thirdly, that God the Father knows everything we need, and is committed to providing it.
Do you accept these points as true? Do they frame the foundation of your life? How do they affect the way you live? How do they affect your prayer life? How do they affect your ideas about your career?

As the nation of Israel stood on the verge of entering the Promised Land, God renewed his covenant with them. He began by reminding them of their journey out of Egypt and said,

I have led you forty years in the wilderness. Your clothes have not worn out on you, and your sandals have not worn off your feet. You have not eaten bread, and you have not drunk wine or strong drink, that you may know that I am the LORD your God… Therefore keep the words of this covenant and do them, that you may prosper in all that you do.
[Deuteronomy 29:5-6, 9]

When we think about God promising to provide for our food, drink and clothing in Matthew’s gospel, how can we not recall his amazing provision for Israel during their 40 years of wandering. His purpose was to shape them into his covenant people, a people who would know him, follow him, be blessed by him and be a light to the world. The example of the Israelites should be both an encouragement and a warning to us. Do not be anxious or have a divided mind. Instead, pursue God’s kingdom and his righteousness.

Hungry in the Desert - Part Two

Part Two:

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”
Matthew 5:6 (ESV)

"Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied."
Luke 6:21 (ESV)

While teaching the beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus refers to hunger. This is not a physical hunger, but a strong desire for righteousness that is best described by the gnawing ache we have for something without which we cannot live.

The beatitudes are a list of wonderful promises. The poor, the starving, the destitute will have their longings fulfilled in the kingdom that Jesus is inaugurating. There is a promise of satisfaction.

There is a battle between different Christian traditions as to whether the beatitudes refer to material satisfaction (i.e. justice for the poor and oppressed) or to spiritual satisfaction (i.e. for the spiritually poor and needy). I don’t know if we have to choose between the “freedom for the oppressed” interpretation (which usually relies on Luke’s account of the beatitudes) and the “saving our souls” interpretation. With our “now but not yet” kingdom of God, I think there is room for both meanings.

Some have also suggested that the desire for righteousness, or justice, is limited to the poor and oppressed who do not have the power to demand (political, economic) justice in this world. I think, however, that Jesus is referring to our desire for spiritual righteousness, which is also definitely beyond our power to obtain by ourselves. But is that righteousness, which can only come from God, the righteousness of being justified by faith (i.e. the rightness of God received, even though we are not perfect) or is it the righteousness of a totally transformed, sanctified life? I don’t think anyone who has been truly justified can be satisfied by anything less than total transformation – of themselves and of the world.

And this leads us to think about what is meant by righteousness. It is more than just fulfilling the legal code, the Law, as the Pharisees aimed to do. It is more than fulfilling the moral code. Righteousness is about right-relatedness. It is about being in right relationship with God and with each other. To hunger and thirst after righteousness, then, is to hunger and thirst for a right relationship with God – not just to begin the relationship, but a “whole of life” relationship. It is also about being in a right relationship with those around us – which means we must treat them honestly, fairly and lovingly. Who is our neighbour? Jesus’ response is, “Anyone in need”. Therefore it is appropriate to talk about righteousness in terms of political or economic justice in the here-and-now, because it flows out of a right-relatedness with God in the hear-and-now.

To hunger and thirst for righteousness means, then, that we recognise at the core of our being our own unrighteousness, our wrong-relatedness to God and each other, and we set out on a quest to find what we are missing. And as I reflect on my own culture, I see a desperate lack of awareness of our own unrighteousness. The dominant deception is that “I’m an ok bloke” or “she’ll be right”. The quests people are on at the moment are for increased consumption – the fleeting satisfaction that comes from a new TV, or a fancier car, or a better job. They are looking for greater security. Amidst the fast pace of life, it is easier to skip over our failures – our failures to keep our word or to live in healthy relationships or to examine our morals. In Part One we considered Jesus’ model of stepping away from the hustle and bustle and seeking his Father. In such periods of reflection, we should not be surprised to be confronted with our failures and weaknesses and our sin. That is the true “us”. And we should be especially aware when we are in close proximity to the totally perfect and Righteous One. Hungering and thirsting for righteousness must lead us to the Righteous One.

The first time I remember responding to the gospel was when I was 8 years old. I remember standing with a few other children after Sunday School being led in a prayer by a teacher. But as important as that moment was, and has been, there were other times through the years I became aware of my sinfulness. I remember, as a teenager, crying out on my bed to God saying that, if I didn’t really surrender to him when I was 8, then I was doing it now. It wasn’t until I joined Student Life that I was taught about assurance of salvation, and how to deal with subsequent sin in my life. Each time I become aware of my unrighteousness, rather than run from God, I now know I should turn to him, ask for his forgiveness and commit to following him again.

The focus of the beatitudes is on being “blessed”. This picks up the Old Testament theme: from Yahweh’s promise to Abraham (Genesis 12:3), and to Israel through Moses (Genesis 27). God’s people were “blessed” by being the objects of God’s affection and favour. Being blessed is more than just being happy. It is a whole sense of well-being that comes from God’s favour.

Blessing comes through having these needs, these longings for right-relatedness satisfied. The promise of satisfaction comes through very strongly in each of the beatitudes. Yet the method of satisfaction is not mentioned.

I should note here that the phrase “will be satisfied” is future tense, passive voice. In other words, it is something that will happen to those who “hunger and thirst”; it is not something they do for themselves. In the context, it is God who satisfies those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. No one can satisfy themselves out of their own resources. Only God, the Righteous One, can give us righteousness and make us righteous. The question becomes, how can we put ourselves in a place where God will cause us to be satisfied?

The beatitudes are not the whole sermon. The whole sermon, known as the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, goes for 3 chapters. Its focus is on life in the new reality of the kingdom of God. Jesus talks about his follower’s relationship with the outside world, the place of the Law, spiritual disciplines, dependence on God, relationships with others – especially fellow believers - and finishes with a warning about building to withstand a storm. Luke’s account is briefer, it only goes for one chapter, and covers only some of the material in Matthew – loving your enemies, judging others, and building to withstand a storm.

Is there to be found in these sermons a method of blessing or satisfaction? I think the common conclusion to these sermons is the key. Let’s reflect on Luke’s account of Jesus’ conclusion:

"Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord,' and not do what I tell you? Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great."
Luke 6:46-49 (ESV)

This is the more confronting version of the parable (compared with Matthew’s version). But there are three simple actions that Jesus spells out as being necessary to survive the storm:
1) coming to him;
2) hearing his word; and
3) doing his word.

May I suggest that those of us who want to satisfy a hunger for righteousness follow these three steps?

Firstly, we come to him. We don’t look elsewhere for our needs to be satisfied. We focus our attention on him. We acknowledge his supremacy. We don’t look to others to satisfy our hunger, although we need to be open to whatever God uses to satisfy us. Our attention must be on him. Our first priority is to get our relationship with God sorted out. And that is not a complicated or long process. It simply means that we humble our hearts before him, admit to our failures, brokenness, sin, pride, and selfishness. Our only source of true righteousness is from God the Father through Jesus Christ. The righteousness of God was proven when Jesus died in our place – he dealt with sin once and for all. When we are united with Christ, we receive his righteousness. As Paul says in Romans 5:17,

If, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

Secondly, we hear his word. Jesus’ word reveals to us the reality that God created, the reality of the emerging kingdom of God. And as we listen to him speak we realise that he places demands on us – on how we think, what we say, what we do. Our priorities are challenged. We have choices to make. We have to choose to align ourselves and our lives with the reality he reveals to us. This battle for the will is not a once-for-all experience. We need to keep hearing Jesus’ word (by which I mean the whole Bible), keep listening to him, and keep choosing to live in light of his word. As Paul says in Romans 5:15,19:

What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! … For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.

Finally, we do his word. This supernatural life is the normal Christian life. It is only possible because we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, who seeks to live Jesus’ life through us. Satisfaction comes when we choose to live in light of this new reality, this emerging kingdom. That is when we experience the blessings of being a Spirit-empowered Christ-follower. We learn to side-step the errors of sin which cause us and those around us so much pain. We learn to practice the disciplines that bring healthy bodies, minds and relationships. We experience the blessings in the here-and-now and into eternity. But do not think that such blessing is only comfortable and pleasurable. Take heed of Jesus’ last line in the beatitudes:

"Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Matthew 5:11-12 [ESV]

Compare this to Paul’s words,

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Romans 5:1-5 [ESV]