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!
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Last week we learned how we are made for work – when God created (his work) the world and us, we were meant to engage in work with him. But it didn't take long for humans to rebel against God and his plan for us, and now everything is not as it should be…including work.
We went off the metaphorical train tracks we described last week - God had given us a good context, direction and plan for life, but we decided to strike out for ourselves. We are now missing the context for our lives, and life is no longer integrated.
This is what happened after that rebellion from God, in Genesis 3:17-19
And to Adam he said, ...cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
God was stating the natural consequence of humanity's departure from him and his care - life will now be painful labour. It can take everything out of you - if you have ever tried to start something new, grow food, win a game, or lead people well, you know this is true. Things are never as easy as they should or could be. Something is broken in us.
We can also see this in our frustration with the little things. Things that should be easy can be really hard.
What followed is that humans clothed themselves in an act of self-protection, which we also see in them is trust and anger we regularly have for other people, especially those we work with.
The humans also started to blame each other, the rest of creation, and God. Sound like your workplace?
So how does work end up being broken today?
At one extreme, we can live for work. We can be driven by a goal, but the problem is those goals are always fleeting - the goal itself never lives up to its hype. We are always finding we arrive somewhere, only to be driven ahead by something more, or something better. The product never matches what was in your head.
Or work becomes pointless, running after something with no real value, simply because it’s the "logical" next step in a career path.
Or work becomes selfish, all about becoming famous, wealthy, or powerful, rather than producing or generating a good for society. We can start to break rules, hide things, or violate some ethics because we are so driven.
We always need to come back to the question of why – why am I working? Why has God put me here? Given me these resources, these skills, this power, this place?
Question: Why do you work? Whatever effort you exert – why do you do it?
