In our Christianity Explored group last week, we were discussing Jesus' predictions of Peter's denials, and of his own suffering, death and resurrection, as a prelude to a very good session on Jesus' resurrection.
One of the members of the group asked a question about a detail that I had never noticed before in Mark's text:
Back in February, we looked at the story of the baptism of Jesus in Matthew's gospel. ("We", as in "Kemsing Church").
We noted that we don't need to work out how to understand what went on there. God himself explains it for us. He does so with a sight (heaven opens and a dove alights on Jesus) and a cry ("this is my beloved son"). So the baptism shows us Jesus as the Son that God the Father loves, the one on whom the Spirit rests to achieve God's purposes on earth.
As we reach Matthew 27:45-50, we are at the end of Jesus' public ministry. Here again, we have a sight and a cry.
There is a real danger that we are so familiar with John the Baptist fulfilling Isaiah 40:3 that we lose sight of the staggering implication this has for Jesus.
So France (paid link) comments:
R T France (paid link) is characteristically helpful as he discusses what the phrase "kingdom of God" (Mark and Luke) or "kingdom of heaven" (Matthew) means:
Jesus warns the 12, as he sends them out in Matthew 10, that if they speak to others of him they will be opposed. The warning is given in the context of their mission during Jesus' earthly ministry, but many of the details in there make fuller sense in the period after his ascension. Jesus taught them with the deliberate intention of preparing them for more than just that one mission, and Matthew recorded those words with the Great Commission at the end of his gospel in mind.
Jesus... born in a manger.
From Peter Leithart's blog post entitled "Oxen and Mangers"
Yahweh appears to Job in a whirlwind and challenges Job by reminding Him of His infinite creative power. “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” He asks. “Who set its measurements? Where were you, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” (Job 38:1-7).
Yahweh’s infinite liveliness and power continue to energize everything. “Do you know the time the mountain goats give birth? Do you observe the calving of the deer?” He points to the most powerful herbivores He can find: “Who set the wild donkey free?” and “Will the wild ox consent to serve you? Can you control him so that he spends the night at your manger?”
Yahweh can, and He has in the incarnation of the Son. Israel is a wild ox. He has the strength of an ox to break the bones of his enemies. Joseph is a wild ox, with horns that push the people to the ends of the earth. Jesus is born as the true Israel, the new Joseph, the untamed wild ox, who spends the night in the manger.
This is the Christmas gospel, the good news of an infinite and infinitely uncontrollable God, who has been domesticated in a manger.
Many of us have been taught many times over that the gifts of Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh pointed respectively to Jesus royalty, his priestly role or his divinity, and his forthcoming death and burial.
R T France (paid link) would caution us here, and helpfully allows the rest of the Bible to tell us what they signify. Letting Scripture interpret Scripture is always a far safer bet than guessing or importing symbols from elsewhere. So here is what he suggests:
Helpful words from R T France (paid link) on the visit of the Magi. The star's role changes as they leave Jerusalem for the final leg of their journey to Bethlehem:
“Whereas hitherto Matthew has described them as travelling to Jerusalem because they saw the rising of the star, not as actually led by it, his words here indicate that the star now first moved ahead of the magi and then stopped … in a position which indicated the location of the child. What sort of phenomenon gave this impression to expert observers as they travelled south from Jerusalem must be a matter of conjecture. They already knew from Herod that Bethlehem (a mere five or six miles from Jerusalem) was their destination, so that they did not need the star to tell them that; their extravagantly expressed joy is hard to explain unless the star somehow indicated the actual house rather than just the village as a whole. It seems, then, that the star’s movement gave them the final supernatural direction they needed to the specific house ‘where the child was’.” (Page 74)
Yesterday, I quote from John Stott (paid link) on the Sermon on Matthew 5:38-48. It may seem impossible that we live in the way Jesus teaches.
Here is Stott again:
“It had been written of [Jesus] in the Old Testament Scripture: ‘I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I hid not my face from shame and spitting.’ And in the event first the Jewish police spat on him, blindfolded him and struck him in the face, and then the Roman soldiers followed suit. They crowned him with thorns, clothed him in the imperial purple, invested him with a sceptre of reed, jeered at him, ‘Hail, King of the Jews,’ knelt before him in mock homage, spat in his face and struck him with their hands. And Jesus, with the infinite dignity of self-control and love, held his peace. He demonstrated his total refusal to retaliate by allowing them to continue their cruel mockery until they had finished.” (page 106)
John Stott, in his magnificent commentary (paid link) on the Sermon on the Mount, makes these remarks on 5:38-48:
“Our duty to individuals who wrong us is not retaliation, but the acceptance of injustice without revenge or redress.” (page 105)
Jesus then gives 4 example of what this looks like in practice.
“Each introduces a person (in the context a person who is in some sense ‘evil’) who seeks to do us an injury, one by hitting us in the face, another by prosecuting us at law, a third by commandeering our service, and a fourth by begging money from us.” (page 106)
All 4 of those example feel very contemporary, with the possible exception of the third (conscription). But, look at the cultural situation in which Jesus said this, and:
The third example “could be applied today to any form of service in which we find ourselves conscripts rather than volunteers.” (page 106)
In summary:
“In each of the four situations, Jesus said, our Christian duty is so completely to forbear revenge that we even allow the ‘evil’ person to double the injury.” (page 106)
Whet your appetite for more? Why not join us this coming Sunday morning in Kemsing church at 9.30am.
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