reflections on the great commission: Baptism the gateway to discipleship (matthew 28:16-20, Acts 2:38-47)

These are two pains of a stainglass window at Mountainside Lutheran Church, Mt Wellington.

Baptism in water and the Holy Spirit 

Sometimes it’s easy for us to think of the great commission at the end of Matthew as a bit tacked on the end of the gospel. A bit for those who are super keen, super spiritual, super fans, kind of like the post credit teaser scene at the end of a marvel cinematic universe movie... Usually as the credits start to roll at the end of the film, movie goers get up and leave. At Marvel movies the fans sit and watch through the credits and they are rewarded with one last scene… things that let you know that this is not the end of the story… that there will be another film. Now I wrote my sermon before I went to see the Avenger’s end game, and I was interested to see what they would have as the post credit scene..  and… well… well you’ll have to see and hear it for yourself… But the commission is not like that, its not the teaser for the sequel… it is an essential part of the story.  The ongoing story of God’s kingdom…

Bible commentator F Dale Bruner states:

“Has anything like the resurrection of Jesus Christ happened on our planet? Christians do not believe so. Precisely because it is the event par excellence, it follows almost naturally that the great responsibility of those who know this event is of course, mission. The resurrection does not happen for its own sake, and Matthew’s gospel does not end, therefore with the resurrection; it ends with the great commission of world-wide mission.”

And because Jesus lives, you and I have an impelling purpose for our lives, we are celled to make disciples of all nations, weather we are or are not world travelling professional missionaries. I we are followers of Jesus it is our calling.

 Last week,  I felt a real connection with the resurrection and the great commission as we celebrated Easter by combining with Antioch Korean and having a multi-cultural celebration. We used the traditional Easter greeting “He is risen! He is risen indeed’ as our call to worship and we said it in nine different languages: English, Te reo Maori, Korean, Samoan, Tongan, Telugu (that’s the official language spoken in Hyderabad India) ,  Chinese, Russian and French. Not bad for a small congregation up a side street in suburban Auckland, at the bottom of the world. A good expression of making disciples from every nation… 

There was another connection to this world wide mission this week as we share in the sorrow and pain of our Sri Lankan brothers and sisters who were killed in terrorist attacks as they celebrated Easter like we were doing. As we wept with our Muslim neighbours in March, we know experience the pain of our own family. It does not feel as close and as real as what happened in Christchurch but in a real way ‘they are us’…

Today as we celebrate baptism in church, there is  a further connection. It links us to that ongoing commission of making disciples. Baptising them in the name of the father, the Son and the Holy Spirit… and teaching them obey all that I have commanded you.

It’s a full on service this morning but Let’s have a look at Jesus commission.

Firstly, the risen Jesus tells us that all authority in heaven and earth has been given to him. The disciples meet Jesus risen from the dead and they worship him. As we mentioned last week, for these Jewish men Jesus resurrection showed that Jesus is indeed the son of God, is Emmanuel God with us, and so is worthy of our worship and adoration. As we mentioned last week and some doubted isn’t that they doubted that it was Jesus, but that they wrestled with the fact that worship was the right response. Remember Thomas’, who was reluctant to believe without seeing, responded with ’My Lord and My God’ when he encountered the risen Jesus.

Jesus has that authority, his kingdom, the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven has been established. But even here we see that the nature of Jesus Kingdom is different than a worldly kingdom. His kingdom is not to be imposed on the world by military might, like the roman empire, or through pollical means, rather in that upside down way it is to grow and develop and reach into every nation and people group, as Jesus disciples, those who know Christ and his resurrection Go and repeat the process that Jesus had done with his first disciples… bought them into relationship with himself, walk together in a loving community, and taught them by word and deed who he was and what it meant to live in God’s kingdom and sent them out and walked with them  as they to do the same.

Jesus says that process of discipleship making involves two things. The first is baptism… Baptism is the gate way to discipleship. I don’t want to go into a deep theological exploration of baptism today. But there is so much in Christian baptism. It brings elements from the Jewish faith of cleansing and purifying, Jews have ceremonial washing for pagan who convert to Judaism, john the Baptist, called people to repent, to tun back to living a life consistent with being God’s people and the way people responded was to be baptised, it symbolised humbly wanting that old life gone and being made new and clean. What makes Christian baptism unique is that it is done in the name of the Father, the son and Holy Spirit. It is the unique understand of who God is our triune God.

In our acts reading Peter calls people to be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ. For Christians we see baptism as identifying with Jesus death and his resurrection. Dying to self and becoming alive in Christ. We call it a sacrament, because Jesus commanded us to it. It is an outward sign of an inward reality. That we have moved from death into new life in Christ, that our sins are forgiven by Christ. It is a public confession that we now belong to Christ.

The second part of the process of disciple making was to teach the disciples the followers of Jesus to obey everything

I have commanded you to do. It is the pain staking life changing, life long process of being a disciple and learning to live that life out. It’s interesting that commentators see Matthew’s gospel with its five sections of Jesus teaching being like a discipleship manual, each section teaching us how to live and be a follower of Jesus. We have Paul’s and other Apostles helpful letters to early Churches as they struggled and wrestled with how to be a new community following Jesus together. In the reading in Acts we had this morning we see that process at work as the new church committed themselves to prayer, the apostles teaching, fellowship and the breaking of the bread and how as a community they lived Christ’s kingdom out with hospitality, generosity, compassion and in their midst God was at work bringing healing and wholeness and people coming to recognise Jesus as Lord and saviour… It is snap shot for us of being disciples together, of being disciple makers together. It wasn’t perfect by any means, they had issues with diversity of cultures, they seemed happy to be inward looking and needed persecution to push them out of Jerusalem to be about the commission they had been given of all nations… even though Jerusalem was kind of like Auckland and a cosmopolitan centre, you just have to read through the list of nations that heard people speaking in their own language when the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit.

We are celebrating an adult baptism today and a reaffirmation of baptism by immersion… someone wanting to affirm that while they were baptised as a child they have come to a fresh and new understanding of being a follower of Jesus and want to commit themselves to following Jesus for the rest of their lives. As the church has grown from generation to generation, they have seen baptism as a way of acknowledging their children as part of the community as well. In Acts chapter 2 Peter says this promise is for you and for your children and your children’s children… In Acts when the Philippian jailer is baptised it says his whole household was as well, which meant children as well. It ties in with the covenant in the Old Testament where Jewish children were circumcised as a sign that they belong to God’s people. When we baptise infants, as believing parents we make a commitment to do the second part of that disciple making process to teach them to obey everything that Jesus has commanded us. You as Christian parents engaged in being the primary teachers of that faith. A lot of people come to have their children ‘done’ like baptism was a naming ceremony, they say they are doing it because they want their children to have the choice to believe or not when they grow older. But I have to remind them that they are making that decision for their children, That they are responsible for bringing their children up with the benefit of a Christian home and the church.

Now for Kris and I, did not baptise our children, we wanted them to come to a point when they would own their own faith in Jesus Christ, that faith that we have taught them and at that stage they would come and be baptised.  So I’m going to get all emotional a bit later on. Because Beth has come to that point…

The gospel and commission finishes, the way the gospel began with the affirmation of Jesus as Immanuel… God with us… Jesus says and Lo I am with you till the end of the age…. The Christian life the kingdom of heaven is lived out in relationship with the risen Christ, It is lived out in Christ, through Christ and with Christ. WE are called to be a disciple of Christ, we are baptised into Christ, we love Christ by obeying what he told us to do… If you love me you will keep my commands. It is the presence and power of Christ with us by the Holy Spirit that makes this life and commission                                                                      possible.

I want to finish by saying I believe that Jesus commission is at the centre of our churches mission statement… That we are called to be an authentic, vibrant, sustainable community, growing as followers of Jesus, (being disciples) and inspiring others to join us on that journey…(making disciples)’ It’s our call our purpose. I might be moving on, called to serve in another Church, but there is that connection with St Peter’s to the resurrection and the commission of Jesus, he is alive and he is Lord and he commissions us to go and make disciples… I hope that today is a teaser scene for the future of the church here…  the first of many adult baptisms as well as infant baptisms that will mark, the church growing and responding to Christ’s call on us all to Go make disciples. 

Rise Up and Go: Jesus Resurrection and Our Commission (Matthew 28:1-20) Easter Sunday Message

The message from our Easter Sunday combined multi cultural service with subtitles in Korean for the slides. 

My mum remembers vividly what she was doing when she heard the news that Us President, John F Kennedy, had been assassinated. It was news that changed the world. I have vivid memories of September 11^th 2001. Waking up with my alarm clock set to radio sport, and Marty Devline, almost lost for words saying that it really “seemed so absurd to be talking about something as trivial as sport when some one had just deliberately flown a plane into one of the trade towers in New York”. and the world changed.

For you it may have been watching with renewed hope, a tall proud African man walking out of a prison gate. Nelson Mandela being released on the 11^th February 1990, after 27 years in prison, and the world changed. It maybe more recent and watching Kim jun Un and Moon Jae-in meeting together at the blood-stained line that has divided the Korean pinnacular for so many years. And being willing to cross that line in peace together…A  glimmer of Hope, a possibility  for reconciliation and peace, an answer to heart felt prayer on both sides of the border… there is still a long way to go…but just maybe the world will change again.

It’s Easter Sunday and we come together to celebrate an even more amazing event, a day that changed the world. An empty tomb and Jesus Christ who was crucified, dead and buried, now raised to life again.  There are no photos, no news reel footage or TV images instantly beamed around the world, all we have accounts of eye witnesses, in four gospels and the testimony of many who have been touched and changed by that event. But the impact of that day that moment still resonates and brings life and hope and transformation in the world today. Look at us here and now… from different cultures and generations and backgrounds gathered together in a small church building in a side street in suburban Auckland, bought together and unified by the affirmation… He is Risen! He is Risen indeed… Jesus is Lord!

Today we had Matthew’s account of the resurrection read out. While we are used to Matthew’s account of Jesus teaching, miracles and parables, his account of the resurrection isn’t the one we automatically think of. We are more used to the personal accounts and encounters with the risen Jesus in Luke’s gospel, and John’s or even that short and rather disturbing account in Mark’s gospel which seems to end with the women afraid to tell anyone what they had seen and heard. But today we are going to look at Matthew’s account. (Click for words)  His account of what happened, as the women came to the tomb. His account of the reaction of the high priests and religious leaders as they try and deal with an empty tomb. His account of Jesus meeting his disciples in Galilee, and what this resurrection means for them and for us.

Matthew’s account of what happened. (Matthew 28:1-10).

Matthew tells us that after the death and burial of Jesus and the enforced rest of the Jewish sabbath, that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the Tomb. In the other gospels we are told the women were still concerned with giving Jesus the appropriate, care and customary treatment for burial. But Matthew simply tells us they had gone to look and see. Again it was to simply continue to mourn and grieve for the person who had meant so much to them who they had watched die.

My father died just before my twenty first birthday, and I’ve only been to where his ashes are buried five time since then, and one of those times was to bury my mothers’ ashes beside his. But for many of you here today, that trip to a loved ones grave or tomb is a significant thing, I know in Pacifica and Asian culture it is part of remembering and honouring people who have gone before, so you understand what was in the women’s minds, what guide their actions.

Matthew tells us that an earthquake happened, the ground shock and an angel of the Lord came, his appearance was dazzling and blinding, and he rolled the stone away and sat down on it. The guards at the tomb fainted dead away… which in scriptures is how most people react when an angel of the Lord appears. Matthew’s gospel seems to be the only one which talks of the earthquake and the angels in such vivid detail. Luke, simply tells us of two men dressed in white, that the women wondered how the stone could be rolled away only to find that it had been… Some people have suggested Matthew simply added these details to his account for dramatic impact, like the special effects in a b grade Hollywood movie. They use that to question the validity of his account and of course the resurrection. NT Wright suggest that maybe the other gospel writers played these elements down because they didn’t want people to laugh at the details and therefore dismiss the actual event as true. For Matthew who through his whole gospel has presented himself as a very Jewish man speaking to a Jewish audience, angels turning up and signs of theophany, always accompanied significant events. In the end like all the gospels, he does not tell us how the resurrection occurred, rather in his account we are to realise that it is a God event, a miracle.

The angel tell the women that the one they are looking for is not here he has risen just as he said he would. They are invited to go in and see for themselves.  Then they are told to go and tell the disciples that Jesus will meet them in Galilee. AS they go we are told that Jesus appears to them… perhaps here is the encounter with Mary Magdalene that John so beautiful recounts for us… One of things that speaks of the validity of this account is that Matthew a Jewish man is willing to simply give us the story of the empty tomb from the women’s perspective. In Jewish society women were not permitted to be witnesses in a legal trial as they were considered to emotional and unreliable, yet even without referring to Peter and John as with Luke and John, Matthew tells us the women’s account and we are to take it as well, gospel.

Then as a Jew Matthew moves to look at how the religious leaders in Jerusalem respond to the empty tomb. (Matthew 28:11-15)

Really, Matthew would hope that they would see this as good news, this is a validation of Jesus as the long awaited messiah, but when the guards tell them what had happened the officials bribe them to say that the disciples had come at night over powered them and stolen the body. At Jesus arrest the disciples had been full of fear and had fleed, even Peter had been so afraid of the authorities that he had denied Jesus three times, only John and the women were at the crucifixion, yet the official story was this dispirited group had reunited, conspired and pulled off a daring body heist against heavily armed guards. Of course latter they would all suffer and die for proclaiming that Jesus had indeed been raised to life again…  and who dies for an empty lie?

Matthew counters the argument which must have been the first official way of refuting the resurrection by saying the guards were bribed. NT wright says

‘what the Jewish leaders did in this story is not very different from what generations of sceptics have done ever since. Don’t be fooled by the idea that modern science has disproved the resurrection of Jesus. Modern science has done no such thing. Everybody in the ancient world , just like everyone in the modern world, knew perfectly well that dead people don’t get resurrected. It didn’t take Copernicus, Newton, or Einstein for that matter, to prove that; just universal observation of universal fact. The Christian belief is not that some people sometimes get raised from the dead, and Jesus happens to be one of them. It is precisely that people don’t ever get raised from the dead, and something new has happened in and through Jesus which has blown a hole through that previous observation.’

It is not Jesus bio chemistry, or some cosmic glitch, rather it is that God who created the universe and called Israel to be his people, is doing something new, is executing his rescue plan for the world and the instigation of a new kingdom and creation in Christ. There is logic and reason for the resurrection but in the end it is a matter of faith, coming to realise that the resurrection points us to who Jesus was and is.

That leads on nicely to the third part of Matthew’s resurrection narrative, the response of the disciples. (Matthew 28:16-20)

Matthew tells us that Jesus meet them as they were gathered together on a mountain in galilee. He  misses the encounters in Jerusalem that the other gospels speak of and focuses on this one. When the disciples see Jesus, it says they worshipped him.  Matthew is also quick to point out that some doubted, and scholars have thought this meant that they doubted that it was Jesus raised to life, and of course in John we have the account of Thomas doubting Jesus resurrection, but only because he had not seen him himself. But here it is more that they doubted that worship was the right response. As Jewish men, worship was reserved for God alone, in worshipping Jesus the disciples were acknowledging that Jesus is indeed the son of God, indeed the one true God who had put on flesh and come and dwelt amongst us, was as Matthew told us back in the first chapter of his gospel… Emmanuel, God with us. When Thomas meets the risen Jesus, and Jesus lovingly fulfils his need for proof, Thomas is the first to acknowledge Jesus as “my Lord, and my God’. 

This is the response that we are to have to the risen Jesus as well. It shows us who Jesus is , that he more than just a prophet, or a good teacher, our response is to worship and acknowledge him as God’s son, the messiah, the son of David and the son of God…

The second way the disciples were to react to the risen Jesus is not simply to worship but also to be about God’s mission. Jesus commissions them to Go into the world and to make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you”. We are given the task of responding to Christ raised to life again, by sharing that with all the nations of the world. Again, it’s Jesus upside down kingdom style. It’s not by force or legislation, but by calling people to be disciples, disciples means learners people who will learn this new resurrection life in Christ from us, Baptising them signifies that they are willing  identify with Christ’s death and resurrection, to leave their old life and to follow Christ.

That commission is book ended, at the books end, or surrounded by two affirmations about Jesus. Both as a result of his resurrection… Firstly, that all authority in heaven and earth has been given to Jesus. That he is exalted to the right hand of the father, and the other is that he is with us to the end of the age. We can go about that commission to Go that we have been given because Jesus is both sovereign and is with us by the Holy Spirit. those two things make that commission possible. We are witnesses to that resurrection life lived out by the apostles and those who have gone about doing that work of making disciples in the power of Christ, with the presence of Christ. God’s faithfulness with and through his people from generation to generation. The fact that we are here from all over bears witness to that.

There are days that change the world, Easter Sunday and the resurrection is foremost amongst them. Jesus is risen from the dead, he is alive forever more and the world has changed It’s not that we remember where we were when we heard that news, although like many I can tell you the day it changed my life, and if you here and you haven’t acknowledged Jesus as your Lord and saviour your world can change today...as you meet the risen Christ…  But it’s not remembering back then as a historical event rather it is that we remember it today and every day, where ever we are now and wherever we go… in how we live and love… in witnessing to it in word and deed… He is risen! He is risen indeed.  

at cross purposes reflections on the cross through the lens of Matthew's gospel (Matthew 27:11-66, Psalm 22)

I’m an amateur photographer. It’s my hobby. I’m starting to take my camera where ever I go.

In fact the image that has been on the service sheet and on the screen is one of mine. I came into the church one morning last year and as I opened the door I noticed that the light through the spire was shining on the cross up the front here. But the rest of the church was in shadow. I got out my camera and walked to different places to take different photos. It’s a digital camera and I thought that black and white really captured the moment well.

But also I found myself thinking about what I was seeing through my lens in terms of who I am my faith and my role as a minister of word and sacrament. This particular photo really picked up Holy Week. In the darkness there was the light shining on the palm tree, which got me thinking of Palm Sunday and then the cross being caught in the light… But also (spoiler alert here) the light itself like a light shining from an empty tomb. Matthew talks of an angel who rolled the stone away being like a blinding light. That event the empty tomb shines light on the cross and the whole of the gospel and allows us to see Jesus,  for who he really is… the Son of God…  

One lady who has become a friend on facebook, sent me a message on Tuesday saying that she really enjoyed my photos, that she thought I had a great eye. I’m not telling you that to blow my own horn, but rather it got me thinking about Matthew’s narrative of Jesus crucifixion. Because Matthew as a first century Jewish man presents us with Jesus life and his death through the lens of the Scripture of the Old Testament. His favourite saying is “this was done to fulfil the words spoken by the prophet”… Some people have used that to question the historical nature of Matthew’s narrative, But just because he has seen the whole thing through that lens does not make it any less true. Because of who he is, he has a great eye for seeing what is happening and capturing the truth that lies behind the surface.

On one level you see the story of Jesus on the cross as the story of political expedience and cowardice leading to an innocent man being condemned to death on a roman cross. It is a story of oppressive regimes and corrupt human systems, and injustice everywhere.  I’ve been listening to Bob Dylan’s greatest hits recently and the song ‘the hurricane’ which is the story of  black American boxer Rubin ’hurricane’ Carter who was  framed, tried, condemned, and imprisoned for a triple murder he did not commit… and its was part of the struggle to see him released and compensated for the decades he spent in prison. But Matthew presents us with a narrative of what happened to Jesus, that says that God was working at cross purposes that the cross is the story of God’s grace and our redemption.

I just want to reflect on three aspects of that cross purpose that comes out in Matthew’s narrative.

The first is Pilate offering to release one Jesus to the crowd… Jesus Barabbas, what we might call a terrorist these days, who had carried out violence against the roman occupation, the other Jesus, the messiah, whom Pilate believed innocent, and wanted the Jewish authorities to take responsibility for his condemnation and death.

Pilate offers the crowd the release of one prisoner to celebrate the Passover. You don’t get to be a governor of a Roman province particularly a troublesome one like Judea, without a proven track record of brutality and ruthlessness. But Pilate obviously wants to show some mercy at the big festival, which would have been a time of heightened nationalistic fervour. It helps him get rid of the Jesus problem… but really it shows a lack of being just and moral backbone.

The crowd wiped up by the religious authorities clamber for ‘Barabbas’ they bay for Jesus blood. Barabbas the criminal, goes free and Jesus, the innocent man dies in his place.

This story as well as showing us that Jesus was indeed innocent unjustly condemned also shows us the reality of the cross. Barabbas represents us all, guilty deserving of punishment and death because of our fallenness, but Jesus dies in our place and we are offered forgiveness and set free.

We find the echo of Isaiah 53 we had as our call to worship today…

But he was pierced for our transgressions,
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
    and by his wounds we are healed.
⁶ We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
    each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all.

It was Passover and here Jesus shows himself as the Passover lamb, sacrificed in our place, so that the wrath of God would pass over us.

In the middle reading we had of Jesus, brutal treatment by the soldiers and his being taken to the cross, we see again cross purposes. The Roman guards, not only scourge Jesus, which was a way of   weakening a person before crucifixion. They mock him as well, it like the whole of crucifixion was designed to show Roman rule was absolute, to quote the borg in the star trek universe, who conquer and assimilate all the planets and species they encounter… ‘resistance is futile’.

He is But Matthew shows us this as being like a coronation for Jesus. In the upside-down kingdom that Jesus had been teaching about, we see its victory when it looks like defeat. In fact Matthew’s description show that Jesus lives out his Sermon on the Mount.  He is struck, but he turns the other cheek, Sion the Cyrene is forced to carry his burden, as was Roman law, the law we know by Jesus words that we should go the extra mile.  His love for his enemies, not returning their hatred and mock but by dying for their sins as well. Overcoming evil with good. Luke in his narrative brings it home more with Jesus saying “father forgive them they no not what they do.

The coronation is complete as Jesus is crucified under a sign that denotes his crime by saying ‘King of the Jews’… again meant to be mocking of Jesus and the religious leaders, but in God’s purposes the assertion that ‘The Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near.’

Finally, as we look at the crucifixion itself, we notice Matthew does not focus on what happens to Jesus. In fact the crucifixion itself is handled in a single simple line and after they crucified him… Matthew is not squeamish about the gory details, as crucifixion was a common event in that time and place… he isn’t like some preachers I’ve listened to intent on letting us know how much Jesus loves us by going blow by blow through how crucifixion slowly and painfully kills a person… rather Matthew’s eye is fixed on how everything is done to fulfil the scriptures.  Unlike at other times he does not say that straight out, but he allows his eye to be guided by Jesus own words on the cross ‘ Eli, Eli, Lema sabachthani’ which means ‘my God my God why have you forsaken me’. it is the first line of Psalm 22, which was our Old Testament reading today. Weather Jesus simply meant it as a cry of anguish as he went through the spiritual pain of feeling separated from God, and identified with humanity in the midst of suffering, or he meant to quote it as it is a psalm that finishes with an assertion that even in the midst of all this suffering God can be trusted to bring salvation. In fact it finishes with the words that John quotes Jesus as saying in that last cry Matthew records as undistinguishable. ‘It is Finished’… an assertion that God has done this…

We are invited to see, the offering of Jesus of poison to drink, the mocking of the crowds about not being able to save himself, the if you are the son of God which echoes the devils taunt in Jesus temptation in the wilderness, the guards gambling for his clothes, the offering of a drink, his thirst, his dying between two criminals, his being buried as an act of kindness in a rich mans borrowed grave. The fact that his legs were not broken, which John mentions, all this points us to the fact that this is not simply an accident, a tragic injustice, rather it is Jesus fulfilling the prophets and the law, it is God in control. This is God’s rescue scheme…

Mathew of course as Jewish man is also not adverse to speaking of aspects of theophany as well, he speaks of an earthquake and other strange occurrences, like people coming to life again, which the other gospel writers do not mention, maybe to avoid having their accounts  written off because of these more spectacular occurrences. That detract from the central story. The curtain in the temple is ripped in two. Showing that here Jesus is making a new way for God and humanity to be together.

For Matthew all this leads us to join with the centurion, a gentile in exclaiming that truly this is ‘the Son of God’…

Not only Matthew and us with our eyes able to look through the lens of scripture and for most of us our Christian faith, but this hardened gentile soldier without that background looks and sees that there is something special and important about this innocent man who had died on a roman cross…  we re to see the cross purpose and the purpose of he Cross, Jesus kingdom come through his sacrificial love, this kingdom overcoming injustice and violence with love for enemies, our freedom won through the death of the innocent man, and God’s purposes and plans worked out in His Son Jesus Christ.

Matthew leaves us set for the amazing end to the story. Not a tomb with the stone across the entrance and guards set just in case the disciples decided to steal the body away, but well… you’ll have to come along on Sunday as we continue and complete our journey through Easter…

The Humble King who Fulfills the Law (Matthew 21:1-11, MAtthew 5:17-20)

Matt Woodley tells the story of observing a baseball match one day. Where one of the coaches gets angry when the umpire’s call goes against his team. The coach gets into a heated argument with the umpire as only they can in baseball…complaining bitterly that the umpire has got it wrong… He gets right into the umpire’s face…but the umpire will not budge…finally in frustration the coach yelled “that’s just your interpretation of the rule”. To which the umpire replied “Interpretation!  No, I wrote the rule book!”… the coach went quite, headed back to the dugout, turned to the crowd and said ‘get a hold of that guy. He wrote the rule book’ and reluctantly but calmly got on with the game.

Commenting on the passage we had read out from Matthew 5 today Woodley states …”Jesus is saying when it come to the Old Testament, he wrote the rule book.’ Jesus..” claims to offer the only correct interpretation of the Hebrew scriptures… and either this man is pomous and ludicrous on a scale unknown to the Jewish people, or he is none other than the long awaited Messiah, God’s mouthpiece. Either this man must be stopped, or we must stop everything …and follow Him.”

Today I’m going to finish my series on Jesus Introduction to the Sermon on the Mount. We’ve looked at the beatitudes, that great pronouncement of kingdom blessing and welcome, last week we looked at Jesus calling his disciples salt and light, that the kingdom life they possessed would have a profound affect on the whole world. Today we are finishing off with Jesus saying I haven’t come to do away with the law and the prophets but to fulfil them. The law, the torah, the first five books of the bible and the prophets is how the jew’s referred to heir scriptures, what we call the Old testament.  This saying leads into the body of Jesus sermon. When I planned this year, we were not sure that we were going to Whangarei, so I had planned to continue through the Sermon on the Mount after Easter… but this seems a good place to stop.

Also, today is Palm Sunday and we remember and celebrate Jesus entry into Jerusalem, and we had Matthew’s account of that read this morning.  The two in my humble opinion dovetail nicely together; ‘the humble king who fulfils the law’. Palm Sunday points us to Jesus as the messiah, God’s chosen king, humbly coming to Jerusalem, to inaugurate his kingdom, not with a grand coronation, amidst fanfares and festivities, but given a crown of thorns and dying on a roman cross, amidst ridicule and rejection. This upside-down kingdom, is the kingdom that Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount, tells us how to live out… even in the face of such opposition and violence. We are going to explore that and then tie it together with some thoughts as to how it relates to us today… and there is sermon bingo… so It’s kind of crazy.

Matthew as a first century Jew sees Jesus, the messiah, as not only fulfilling the law and prophets in his teaching and embodiment of that teaching, but also in his life itself, what happens to him..   Matthew’s favourite words seem to be ‘this was done to fulfil what was said through the prophets’ and right in the middle of Matthew’s account of Jesus telling his disciples to go and find a donkey tied up with its colt… Matthew tells us that this and Jesus riding that donkey into Jerusalem, was done to fulfil the scriptures. To show us that Jesus is the messiah, God’s chosen king. From Zechariah 9:9 ‘Daughter Zion, see your king comes gentle and riding on a colt, the foal of a donkey’.

The actions of the disciples reinforce that. The disciples had an expectation that Jesus was the messiah. They threw their outer cloaks on the road in front of him. This was a custom which is mentioned in 2 kings 9 when Jehu is anointed king of Israel, his soldiers and commanders, throw their garments before him. Maybe we catch something of that in English history, with sir Walter Raleigh, supposedly laying his cloak before queen Elizabeth. Palm branches reflected the royal psalm and were placed before judas Maccabee when he triumphantly came to Jerusalem 200 years previously after defeating the pagan forces that occupied the city and land. Which was the last time there was an independent Jewish state till 1949. These actions were accompanied by words from Psalm 118 that express that messianic hope ‘hosanna’ save us God! Which we used for our call to worship this morning.

 Both, Jehu and Judas Maccabee were seen as messiahs freeing Israel from dark times and pagan worship. But Jesus shows us that his kingship, his messiah ship is different. He didn’t come as a warrior on a mighty steed The donkey was a working persons animal, a peasants beast not a kings… AS NT Wright puts it ‘ they wanted a prophet, but this one would tell them this city was under God’s imminent judgement, they wanted a messiah, but this one was going to be enthroned on a pagan cross, they wanted to be rescued from evil and oppression, but Jesus was going to rescue them from evil in its full depth, not just the surface evil of roman occupation and the exploitation by the rich.” They wanted a messiah who would over throw this worlds system ad replace it with God’s Kingdom, but Jesus Kingdom would come through sacrificial love and radical obedience.

The book of Deuteronomy foreshadows a time when Israel would want a king. in chapter 18, it says before the king is crowned he is to write out the law on a scroll, which he is to keep and read all the days of his life, so that his rule and reign will be a living out of God’s law for the people of Israel. The writing of the law means that he had time to study it, understand it and for it to speak to his very heart. The problem is that even David was unable to keep it fully… But Jesus the coming King kept it and fulfil it his kingdom. Both the law and the prophets as they had applied the law in a timely manner to their time and place.

That leads us back to what Jesus had said at the start of the sermon on the mount.

So Jesus says hey don’t even think that I’ve come to do away with the law or the prophets, rather I’ve come to fulfil it.  Jesus reaffirms that by saying that not even an iota, which was the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet, or a jot, or dot, which were accents used to distinguish between letters that looked alike. For my grammatically astute friends, diacritical marks, used to distinguish between similar looking and sounding letters. They are the dots in red in the Hebrew verse from genesis behind me on the screen.

Jesus goes further to say, that if anyone does not keep the least commandment of the law they will be the least in the kingdom of God. In fact our righteousness needs be greater than the pharisees and the scribes of the law. The people in Jesus day who were the rock stars of righteousness when it came to keeping the law.

See we need to look at this and look at how this applies to us. I want to make three points.

The first is that Jesus is telling us that the Hebrew scriptures the law and the prophets are important and essential for Christians, for his followers. I’ve often heard it said well that’s the Old Testament, we live by the New, or that the Old Testament is somehow redundant, particularly the law. But that is not how Jesus saw it. There is a consistency and continuity in the story of God’s dealing with humanity through history, which is important. I remember Ian Grant, the head of YFC in New Zealand saying the Old Testament gives us the God frame, the big picture that allows us to understand Jesus, his person, his life and his grace. It tells us of a creator God, committed to reconciling fallen humanity to himself,  a God faithful to his covenant relationship with his people, a god who seeks justice, and calls those who are his people to live that out, but shows mercy and patience, the god who is sovereign in history, and working out his plans and purposes… As we’ve been looking at the beatitudes, we see that Jesus imagining of the kingdom of God is very much the fulfilment of the prophets hope for a restored Israel. The law sets out for us how we are to connect with God and with one another.

The difficulty for people down through the ages has been how to make that connection, what does it mean for us, what does it mean about Christians and the laws? Paul talks of grace not law? The first Christian controversy and council wrestled with those very questions, how Jewish did gentiles have to be as they became followers of Jesus. In the reformation, salvation by faith alone, rather than good works, and right rituals. Even today how do we look at many of the old testament passages in a changing understanding of the world and what it means to be human.  Big questions?

Secondly, in this passage Jesus gives us the key for how to understand the scriptures. They are to seen and understand through Jesus, the messiah, the son of David in which they are fulfilled. We look at them through the lens of Jesus, his person and his teaching. the sacrificial law do not apply to us anymore because Jesus himself fulfilled the requirement of paying the price for our sin.  We do not come under the need for circumcision because Jesus has bought us all into God’s family through faith, not physical lineage, the food laws do not apply to us because we are ingrafted into God’s family by Christ beyond those rules, the moral laws still form the basis of our ethical living, but as you see in the sermon on the mount Jesus pulls them away from many of the interpretations and misunderstandings that had been built around them. Ho we live it out has been shown to us as Jesus has embodied them in sacrificial love, generosity, grace and integrity.

Then lastly, Jesus tells us our righteousness should be greater than that of the pharisees and the scribes of the law. Now he’s not saying that because they set a low standard they didn’t they set a very high standard. So much so that they built a whole structure around the law, what they called a hedge so that people would stay away from even coming close to breaking the law.

That greater righteousness, however, does speak about how we live out the ethical requirements of the law and our faith. The pharisees were known for the outward keeping of the law, cleanness of hands, but Jesus was looking at a cleanness of heart. In the Old Testament the prophets talk of God dealing with the problem of the heart by giving us a new heart, and Jesus is speaking of living that life out of that new heart. Not just the letter of the law, and remember the purpose of law is to limit evil, but rather the spirit behind the law: which is reflecting the love and character of God in all we do. Paul talks of the spirit behind the law as the Holy Spirit and our walking with that spirit  it as the fruit of the Holy Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.  It’s not the limiting of evil by the law it’s an explosion of goodness as we encounter and come to know God in Christ by the Holy Spirit.  John Wimber in the introduction to the book riding the third wave says the church is full of people embrace legalism, that replace external law to replace heartfelt obedience to God’s Word. 

What Jesus is calling us to is a radical internalisation, it is as we come to know the one who wrote the book and his forgiveness and mercy that we want to live that out in life… It is why the sermon on the mount starts with God’s blessings of welcome and inclusion… It is why  in his sermon Jesus will go on to speak of six areas of the law which have been misinterpret and turn our thinking and our hearts to what God wants sacrificial love, for even our enemies, faithfulness and integrity in relationships, generosity born of trust in God’s provision, a spirituality that comes out of deep knowing of God, not simple ritual and rite.  He will conclude that sermon by saying that Kingdom living is about hearing Jesus words and putting them into action in our lives…9clcik for words to come up on the screen)  to get hold of this guy… he is God’s humble king and saviour who loves us so deeply…  ‘get a hold of this guy because he wrote the rule book’... 

You... Yes You are Salt and Light (Matthew 5:13-16)

When I left school my first permanent job was working at the Bank of New Zealand on Queen street. For three years I worked in the customer service department, doing various things. After three years I left. I handed in my resignation at the beginning of December. At the departments Christmas party, they were handing out joke gifts to people who had done good or bad things during the year, and I got called up to receive a gift because I was leaving. The woman from new accounts, who was giving out the gifts, presented me with a little child’s plug in night light. You plugged it into the socket and it gave off this reassuring glow. I don’t think she was a Christian but she said…they were giving me this gift because…”we know Howard that you will be a light where ever you go”…wow… I think I actually blushed… and not Just because it was accompanied by a big sloppy kiss on the cheek…

I hope and pray that it had been the case, that people glimpsed amidst my flaws and foibles that Kingdom of heaven love and care and grace, that light and salt. Anyway, thirty-five years later it makes a great introduction to Jesus talking to his disciples and saying You are salt… you are light… yes you… you…wherever you go. Which is the passage in Jesus sermon on the mount in Matthew’s gospel that we are looking at today. ‘You are’, says Jesus, ‘the salt of the earth and the light of the world’… you… yes you!’

And that ‘You-yes You’ is a good translation of the second person plural pronoun used in the Greek by Matthew, it’s as emphatic and intense as if we’d all been handed a little night light. It’s what as I re-read this passage for this message really stuck out to me and was most challenging, You yes You are light and salt. Matt Woodly says we shouldn’t be surprised by this as “that’s the essence of the Kingdom of God: everything gets turned upside down, which is really right side up… little people, ordinary, flawed, even weak and preposterous people, become the beautiful, God-appointed heralds of a brand new world… and apparently Jesus could say this with a straight face because the disciples, despite their faults and limitations, were bound to Him.” It is the and Low I am with you to the end of the age that makes it a possibility for us.

For the past month we’ve been looking at the beatitudes (the blessed problem) , Jesus great welcome into the Kingdom of God, and the nature of the blessed life in his kingdom. Now with these two amazing metaphors from everyday life Jesus focuses on his disciples and tells them how they will impact the world with this kingdom life they possess. This admission of spiritual poverty, this hunger and thirst for righteousness, this meekness, this showing mercy, being a peacemaker even when they suffer for it, will change the world…  

So let’s unpack what Jesus meant by salt and Light…

Firstly, Salt, and while we are talking of salt I’m going to pass around a couple of bags of salt, and Invite you to just to pour some of it into your hand, maybe taste it, or smell it, just to help you think about it.

Of course the big question is what did Jesus mean by salt. What of its many uses is the one that will help us understand what Jesus was telling us.

The obvious use that we have today is taste and flavour. When I cook at home, I’ll often get Kris or Beth to have a taste just to let me know what is missing, often what is missing is enough salt… People often see Jesus talking of bringing flavour to the world. If that is the case that flavour is Jesus flavour. It is the characteristic in the beatitudes and as we see in the rest of the sermon on the mount, sacrificial love, even of enemies … integrity…generosity… care for the least and lost.

Until recently a big use for salt was preservation. Before refrigeration, people used salt to preserve meat. Are we called to be preservative to keep the world from going off. You often see that reflected in Christians bemoaning how the worlds standards have changed and our need to defend good Christian values. While there is a need to stand up and be counted on issues. It leads to seeing the use of political means and even force to achieve those ends… where as in the end Jesus way of salting the earth seems to be through people who meet Jesus having transformed lives and that permeating into the rest of society.

I often wondered about this mystical solution that doctors would use on wounds to clean it out and ward off infection, something called saline solution, I think Kris pointed it out to me that saline meant salt, and this miracle substance was salt water. Boy Did I feel dumb… In our modern society we use salt as a purifying agent. Charles Quarles, says that salt in the Old Testament is used in a ceremonial way to purify things. It was put on to an offering to both make it holy but also a reminder of God faithfulness to his covenant with Israel. In fact legal binding agreements were sealed by eating salt or bread with salt on it. It symbolised the purity and faithfulness of parties entering into that agreement. Quarles says that this best fits Jesus use of salt as a metaphor, that as we reflect the very characteristics of God in our Kingdom of heaven living, then it can transform and change the people and societies we come into contact with, it purifies them as people respond to Jesus.

I was speaking to  a friend about preaching through the sermon on the mount, and her response was a “humph, it’s all so negative”, they were doing it at her church at the moment, and she was saying that it was  an exploration of Christian morality, pornography is bad, don’t look with lust, divorce is bad… Don’t get me wrong I think those are issues we need to address and deal with, But I wondered if that was that preservation mentality, a sort of pharisee-ism, we are right you are wrong… whereas the purifying saltiness looks at the sermon on the mount and sees the kingdom of God virtues of not treating people as objects, having a genuine love for others, fidelity and integrity in relationships, faithfulness, that is the saltiness. 

Other scholars, simply say that these different uses of salt while helping us to reflect on what Jesus are saying, need to be part of seeing the overall picture of the importance of salt itself. As Matt Woodly puts it Jesus is saying that we are salt, and salt is both good and different. It has unique properties that make it good and essential for life, and things that make it different. It is as we live that good and different kingdom centred life that we do what Jesus is calling us to do, that we are effective and useful and essential to the world. But when if lose that goodness, that difference, that saltiness well as Jesus says it is not good anymore and so should be thrown away. 

Jesus asks… Can salt loose its saltiness? Salt blocks were used to insulate the ovens of Arab bakers, after a period of time, and heating and reheating a chemical reaction would happen that would change the properties of that salt, and it would not be useful anymore, what made it good had changed, so they would have to throw it out. In Israel most salt was sourced by evaporation form the dead sea, and some times it would be mixed with other minerals like gypsum which looked similar but did not have the same properties. So it was useless for cooking or preserving or anything else really. Only good to be thrown out on the street, which was the usual way of dealing with organic trash, or was used to stop weeds growing on pathways because it killed off all the weeds. It is a challenge to us, about living lives with a mixed and divided focus, that stops us having that goodness and difference that makes us salty and to do what it is supposed to.

You are the light of the world, again I’m going to hand out a basket of small candles, and I just invite you to hold it in your hand just to reflect and think on, as we explore this metaphor… I hadn’t thought what you’d do with the salt, maybe it’s a metaphor for the fact that being salt and light is  a real hand full, and only able to be a reality because Christ is with us and within by the Holy Spirit.

But I think we really do understand light as a metaphor more than salt.

Jesus himself used the metaphor to talk of himself in John’s Gospel… Jesus is the light of the world. The main use for light is to push away the darkness. Maybe we get a good understanding of what it means that both Jesus and we are the light of the world, when we look up at the night sky. For our world the sun our star is the source of light, at night the lesser light, is the moon, it is not producing light in and of itself it is reflecting the light of the sun shining on it to us. As we are filled with Jesus the Light of the world, we reflect that light to the world around us.

Jesus uses two metaphors to further illustrate  what he means. The first is a city on a hill cannot be hidden. He may be speaking of Jerusalem, or in Galilee apparently the city of Tiberius was very visible at night. I always think of driving hope from Wairoa to Napier, going through the winding dark rural road, occasional being able to look down the coast and there would b a glow in the distance and then as you come down and along the sea just before Bayview there was Napier hill lit up and welcoming. And you knew you were home. Maybe we catch something of that city trying to be hid when you think of the blackouts in London and other cities during the second world war, and the great relief and display of lights again when it ended.

The second is of a lamp. In Jewish days that was a small oil lamp with a wick, and in most Jewish homes of the time they would put them on a lampstand so they could provide illumination for the whole house. It would silly to put that under a basket to hide the light.

Both say the purpose of light is to shine... Jesus is saying that the transformed kingdom light is to be lived in such a way that people will see our good deeds, that they will shine forth, and will give glory to our father in heaven. Again it’s good to remember its not so we earn God’s favour, but it is the reflection of the light we have received in our lives in Jesus Christ, reflecting out in kindness, sacrificial love, integrity and dependability, generosity, love for one another and for the least and the lost.  It shines in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control… the fruit of the Spirit, the light of God, at work within us. 

That light says Jesus is to shine in the good deeds we do., so that people will give glory to our heavenly Father. In that wonderful summary of the first church in Jerusalem after Pentecost in Acts 2, we catch a glimpse of that, there devotional life, their communal life, their generosity and care, being agents of God healing and transformation resulted in them having the favour of the whole city, and people gave glory to God because of what was happening. They were the salt in the land, calling the Jews back to being God’s people, they were the light for the nations, that was the start of the church and its spread throughout the world.  We need to allow our light to shine like that. I love

the book on evangelism called “out of the salt shaker” by Rebecca Pipette, because it picks up the metaphor of being salt as well, and encourages us to let that saltiness out of just a church setting and into our everyday lives and our communities and neighbourhoods and workplaces. She goes through some simple ways people can do that through hospitality and caring for others, and other stuff.

When I left the BNZ they gave me a gift, a simple night light and told me Howard we know you’ll be a light where ever you go.” Jesus does the same thing to all of us, saying because you know me and my grace and love… you’ll be salt and light where ever you go. Today I’ve given you both salt and light and I want to finish by saying…” I know you… yes you will be salt and light where ever you go.”