This evening we continued our reading of Luke's Gospel. We are at the same time getting people to pass on the Questions that trouble them. Last weekend 11 of the questions we generated during our services were agonising over the fact that so much of the violence and the terrorism in the world at the moment is linked to religion.
We made connections with the world of Jesus' day and the way John the Baptist pointed very much towards Jesus at the opening of the Gospel.
Luke’s
gospel opens with the account of John the Baptist’s birth, and of the birth of
Jesus – those first two chapters of Luke serve almost as the last bit of the
Old Testament – it is as if things are stirring once again.
The
days of the prophets are with us once more – a prophet is on the horizon.
We
catch a glimpse of the moment the child Jesus is on the threshold of becoming a
man – and we see him in the Temple listening and asking questions of the
teachers of the Jewish teachers – they are amazed at the answers he gives.
And
we last see the boy becoming a man as Jesus went back with his parents to
Nazareth where he was obedient to them.
His mother treasured all these things in her heat.
As
for Jesus … he grew both in body and in wisdom, gaining favour with God and
with people.
We
then jump 18 years.
One
thing is immediately apparent.
Luke
wants us to know what’s going on in the
world.
The
good news at the heart of the faith he wants to pass on, is not something so
spiritual that it is no earthly use. The
story he has to tell happens at a very specific moment in a world that is a
very troubled world.
Luke
gives us the detail.
It
was the fifteenth year of the rule of the Emperor Tiberius;
For
fifteen years Emperor Tiberius had ruled that part of the world.
We
are left in no doubt at all – it’s a troubled time. The Roman power is very much to the fore – it
brought with it a peace, but in that part of the world it was an uneasy peace. Augustus had died – Tiberius had taken his
place. It was now the year
Pontius
Pilate was governor of Judea,
When
Herod the Great had died he divided his kingdom among his sons – Archelaus had
been given the rule of Judea and Samaria but he couldn’t hack it. When the Jewish people showed signs of
rebelling against the Roman overlords and there was the threat of insurrection
he didn’t have the political guile to keep things in order the way the then
Emperor Augusuts required.
So
the Romans got rid of him – and sent him in exile to Gaul. And they put their own Procurator in place. By now that procurator was a name we know
well – Pontius Pilate.
and
Herod was the ruler of Galilee.
That’s
Herod the Great’s son, Herod Antipas – and like his father before him he ruled
with a brute power. One of his first
priorities was to emulate his father and big a luxurious new resort city on the
shore of the Sea of Galilee – it’s still there.
It still bears the name Herod gave it – it’s called Tiberias after the
Roman Emperor of that time.
Herod's
brother, Philip, was the ruler in the countries of Iturea and Trachonitis, and
Lysanias was the ruler of Abilene.
Philip
had control of the North East of the Sea of Galilee. And he too was keen to show he was as
powerful as his father and his brother and so he built a strong Roman City and
gave it the name of the city his father had built on the coast – Caesarea a
name in honour of the Roman Emperor.
Then he realised letters would go missing if his city had the same name
as his father;s and so being a humble sort of character he called it Philip’s
City – and he built a temple on the site of a shrine to the God Pan, to the
Emperor as the Son of God. We are familiar
with it from the Gospels as Caesarea Philippi.
2
Annas and Caiaphas were the Jewish high priests.
It’s
esay for us to miss the point. What
Herod had done was despised by many of the most religious Jews – when he came
to power he appointed the High Priests, not from the ancient High Priestly
families, but from different families.
And if they didn’t please him, he simply changed them.
The
right to appoint a High Priest then passed at his death to his son,
Archelaus. And when Archelaus was replaced
by the Emperor with a Roman Procurator, the right to appoint the High Priest
passed to the Roman Procurator.
No
wonder the High Priests and indeed so many of the Priests who kept the new
Temple Herod the Great had built going were not liked by so many o fhte people.
At
that time God spoke to Zechariah's son John, who was living in the desert.
3 So
John went along the Jordan Valley, telling the people, “Turn back to God and be
baptized! Then your sins will be forgiven.”
4
Isaiah the prophet wrote about John when he said, “In the desert someone is
shouting, ‘Get the road ready for the Lord! Make a straight path for him. 5
Fill up every valley and level every mountain and hill. Straighten the crooked
paths and smooth out the rough roads.
6
Then everyone will see the saving power of God.’ ”
What’s
going on here?
Something
was stirring in the wilderness between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea.
God’s
word was being declared again … God’s message was being preached … once more
there was a Prophet on the loose.
And
it was troubling for the powers that be.
Because
Prophets don’t hold their punches.
They put their finger on things that are wrong in their world.
And
John was true to the Prophets of old. He
pulled no punches.
He
wanted people to turn from the wrong doing of their ways and to return to God.
7
Crowds of people came out to be baptized, but John said to them, “You snakes!
Who warned you to run from the coming judgment?
8 Do
something to show that you really have given up your sins. Don't start saying
that you belong to Abraham's family. God can turn these stones into children
for Abraham.
9 An
axe is ready to cut the trees down at their roots. Any tree that doesn't
produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into a fire.”
10
The crowds asked John, “What should we do?”
What
John stands for is the justice that was so dear to so many of those prophets of
old.
11
John told them, “If you have two coats, give one to someone who doesn't have
any. If you have food, share it with someone else.”
12 When
tax collectors came to be baptized, they asked John, “Teacher, what should we
do?”
13
John told them, “Don't make people pay more than they owe.”
14
Some soldiers asked him, “And what about us? What do we have to do?” John told
them, “Don't force people to pay money to make you leave them alone. Be
satisfied with your pay.”
18
In many different ways John preached the good news to the people.
John
really was true to the prophets of old.
He kept his most cutting message for the ruler of the day.
19
But to Herod the ruler, he said, “It was wrong for you to take Herodias, your
brother's wife.” John also said that Herod had done many other bad things.
So
what did Herod do?
20
Finally, Herod put John in jail, and this was the worst thing he had done.
If
you have been following in the Bibles
you will notice that I have missed something out.
15
Everyone became excited and wondered, “Could John be the Messiah?”
16
John said, “I am just baptizing with water. But someone more powerful is going
to come, and I am not good enough even to untie his sandals. He will baptize
you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
17
His threshing fork is in his hand, and he is ready to separate the wheat from
the husks. He will store the wheat in his barn and burn the husks with a fire
that never goes out.”
What
John did was to point beyond himself to someone else who was to come.
And
that someone else did come.
21
While everyone else was being baptized, Jesus himself was baptized. Then as he
prayed, the sky opened up,
22
and the Holy Spirit came down upon him in the form of a dove. A voice from
heaven said, “You are my own dear Son, and I am pleased with you.”
23
When Jesus began to preach, he was about thirty years old.
Jesus
took up where John had left off … and his message was in that line of the
prophets and it was a message for everyone a message of Good news, a message of
justice.
And
it was a message for everyone.
This
Jesus had come not just for the Jewish people but for all people.
Matthew’s
genealogy of Jesus went back to Abraham the father figure of the Jewish people.
Luke
takes it back to the beginning of time.
It
is as if Luke is in no doubt, Jesus is the messiah for the whole of humanity.
Everyone thought he was the son of Joseph. But
his family went back through Heli,
24
Matthat, Levi, Melchi, Jannai, Joseph,
25
Mattathias, Amos, Nahum, Esli, Naggai,
26
Maath, Mattathias, Semein, Josech, Joda;
27
Joanan, Rhesa, Zerubbabel, Shealtiel, Neri,
28
Melchi, Addi, Cosam, Elmadam, Er,
29
Joshua, Eliezer, Jorim, Matthat, Levi;
30
Simeon, Judah, Joseph, Jonam, Eliakim,
31
Melea, Menna, Mattatha, Nathan, David,
32
Jesse, Obed, Boaz, Salmon, Nahshon;
33
Amminadab, Admin, Arni, Hezron, Perez, Judah,
34
Jacob, Isaac, Abraham, Terah, Nahor,
35
Serug, Reu, Peleg, Eber, Shelah;
36
Cainan, Arphaxad, Shem, Noah, Lamech,
37
Methuselah, Enoch, Jared, Mahalaleel, Kenan,
38
Enosh, and Seth. The family of Jesus went all the way back to Adam and then to
God.
What
is apparent to me is that the Gospel of Jesus as far as Luke is concerned
speaks right into the everyday world of the people of that time.
The
Gospel of Jesus today speaks very much into the world we live in.
That’s why I have been asking people to ask questions – not so much to hear my answer, as to explore together what the response God is making might be.
11
of the questions that were shared last week were in the context of the acts of
terrorism that had been committed in Paris.
Why is religion so involved?
When
religion plays a part in such atrocities one very understandable reaction is to
give up on religion and say, a plague on all your religions.
I’ve
had it said to me in no uncertain terms in the last couple of weeks.
I
have no hesitation in saying, that’s not the response I want to make.
Far
from it.
It
drives me back not so much to the religion I am very much part of, but to the One
who is at the heart of that religion.
Much
as I value seeking an understanding of the historical background to these
atrocities, and an understanding of those other faiths, and of what’s going on I find myself drawn more
and more to come at those questions from quite a different direction – I want
to cut through all the debates those questions give rise to and go straight to
the fount of Christianity, Jesus.
Jesus
is someone you can get to grips with.
You can dig away at the history in the Gospels and a real person begins
to emerge. The more you do that the more
you find he is a real person who can make a real difference in the living of
your life.
It’s
not so much that Jesus puts a shape on religion: instead, he gives a shape to
the whole of life. The shape he gives to
life has at its heart love: love for God, love for your neighbour whoever that
neighbour might be, and most radically of all, love for your enemy. That’s what we need to hold on to now. A love that sees people as people and refuses
simply to label them.
It’s
not so much that Jesus puts a shape on religion: instead, he gives a shape to
the very idea of God. The shape he gives
to God has at its heart love. One of his
followers who was so very close to the heart of Jesus came up with the
definition of God that is opened up for us all by Jesus: God is love.
It’s
not so much that Jesus puts a shape on religion: instead, he gives a shape to
the place God has in your life and in my life.
The God we come to know through Jesus is the God who comes as close to
us as the most loving of fathers and the most loving of mothers to the most
loved of all their children.
It’s
not so much that Jesus puts a shape on religion: instead, he gives a shape to
love itself. Taking up the words of that
closest of followers of Jesus, this is love: it is not that we loved God, but
that he loved us and gave Jesus as the means by which all our failings, all our
inadequacies, all our shortcomings are forgiven.
Drawn
back to Jesus I say without hesitation that I am not prepared to say, a plague
on all your religions!
It’s
at this point, however, that I see a danger.
A very big danger.
If
I don’t say, a plague on all your religions, and turn instead to Jesus, it’s
very tempting for me to say a plague on all those other religions, and
especially a plague on the religion of those gunmen.
That’s
a temptation that’s even more important to resist, especially at this moment.
I
want to enter into the debate and see what happened as a criminal act by the
gunmen involved that needs to be responded to as such. I want to enter into the debate and see what
they stand for and the ideologies behind IS and the like are an aberration of
the Islam that I have read about and known through Muslim friends. I want to enter into the debate and say that
for Christians to say ‘a plague on Islam’ is to do exactly what those committed
to terror want us to do.
I
want to resist that temptation for a much more important reason. I want to go beyond the debate.
I
want at that moment to go back to Jesus, the fount of Christianity. He is the one who shapes the response I need
to make. And he does that in these
words.
Love
your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you and pray
for those who ill-treat you.
Do
to others just as you want them to do for you.
Be
merciful just as your Father is merciful.
Looking to Jesus
Look to Jesus and
you won’t find the shape of religion
Look to Jesus and
you will find
the shape he gives
to
the whole of life
the idea of God
the place of God
in your life
love - all it
means and all it does.
Look to Jesus and
find
the love of God
in the love of
others.
Look to Jesus and
be transformed
by the God who is
Love.
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