Book 4 - The Lost Message of Jesus – Steve Chalke published 2003 Zondervan

 

Brian McClaren observes in “A New Kind of Christian”

“Either Christianity is itself flawed, failing and untrue, or our modern, Western, commercialised, industrial-strength version of it is in need of a fresh look, a serious revision.” P 12

 

Jesus and the Kingdom

Hebrew scriptures anticipated three things

1)      Proper and full return from exile, with complete religions, social and political autonomy

2)      Rebuilding of temple so God could be fully back with his people

3)      Victorious defeat of Israel’s enemies

A good summary of N T Wright

 

However, Zealots and Essenes were groups that reacted to the situation in different ways. Zealots wanting conflict and Essenes retreating to Qumran.

Jesus’ reaction was very different:

“Jesus made it abundantly clear that he didn’t buy into any of the popular Kingdom movements. Instead his message was that the Kingdom of God was already operative through him (Matthew 11.1-19, Luke 4.16-30, 17.20-21) and that it was bigger and better than anyone had imagined. But by far the most shocking, outrageous and scandalous thing about his version of the Kingdom was that it wasn’t just a tribal God – the friend of the Jews and the punisher of Gentiles and pagans. He was the one, true God – the High God – the God of the whole earth. And his Kingdom was open to all humankind, a Kingdom of inclusion and acceptance, of forgiveness, and a new agenda for life. The heart of Jesus’ mission was simply this, “The Kingdom, the in-breaking shalon, of God is available now to everyone through me”” p 29

 

The story of the priest and the change in the boundary fence

“One of the most controversial aspects of Jesus’ message was that it moved all the fences. He redrew the boundaries of the Kingdom of God to include very definitely those who previously had been excluded. He blew away both the social and geographical limitations imposed by the pious Pharisees and other religious leaders as well as the hot-headed revolutionaries.” P.30

 

Pharisees, Zealots and Essenes

“The ideas that Pharisees, Zealots and Essenes had for the Kingdom of God were all well developed. Each group had constructed elaborate theological and social systems around their particular visions. But in the end the problem they all had to face up to was simply that they didn’t work. At the end of the day, each one was not only impotent in terms of dealing with the reality of life in first-century Palestine, but provided cold comfort for the ordinary people of Israel, for whom they offered little hope but huge burdens”. P 33

 

Jesus was creating a kingdom for the Kingdom of God now

“We live with the idea that the gospel’s chief aim is to make us fit for heaven, when in reality Jesus’ message is focused on making us citizens and recipients of the Kingdom of God today. Too often we present Christianity as a faith to die by, asking questions such as “If you were to die tonight, where do you think you would spend eternity?” However,  Jesus’ message is about a faith to live, love, work and play by today….As the Victorian preacher Charles Spurgeon put it, “A little faith will take you to heaven, but I pray for the kind of faith that will bring heaven to earth”” p.36

 

Marilyn Monroe “Money doesn’t buy you happiness, it just buys you a more expensive set of problems”

 

People misunderstand the gospel

 

“Many have understood the gospel as “God’s got a big stick and he’s on your case.” But what kind of message is that for the single parent struggling to bring up her child with inadequate resources? What kind of hope is that for the young teenager who has only known a life of abuse at the hands of those he should have been able to trust? What kind of liberation does that offer the lonely, the vulnerable, the cheated, the homeless, the forgotten, or the countless individuals, young and old, who suffer from an acute sense of failure or lack of self-esteem? What kind of good news is that for humanity as a whole? What popularly passes for “the gospel” might provide a faith to die by, but offers little hope to live by. And most worryingly of all, it bears scant resemblance to the message of Jesus” p 42

 

We need to find a gospel based on the simplicity of God’s love for us:

Karl Barth “Jesus loves me this I know, for the bible tells me so” was his greatest theological lesson

 

 

Augustine v Irenaeus – Western Church v Eastern Church

“To see humanity as inherently evil and steeped in original sin instead of inherently made in God’s image and so bathed in original goodness, however hidden it may have become, is a serious mistake. It is this grave error that has dogged the church in the West for centuries. In the fourth century Augustine developed his influential theology that the material world and everything in it was inherently evil and corrupt. This “fallenness” he said was like a virus, and in humans was passed on through the act of sexual intercourse and conception. So from the seeds of Augustine’s thinking the doctrine of original sin was born. However, the Eastern Church instead followed the teaching of Irenaeus, who believed that all people were God’s image-bearers and though flawed were, as he put it, like flowers in bud – slowly coaxed into full bloom by God’s love.

In the words of John Stott, perhaps we have been dogmatic about what we should be agnostic about and agnostic about what we should be dogmatic over” p 68-69

 

Chalke then goes into the context of the gospels

“Herod the Great – 37BC to 4 BC. Herod was never able to win popular acceptance as the true King of the Jews. He may have initiated the rebuilding of the Jerusalem temple, but he proved totally impotent when dealing with our foundational cultural, religious and economic issues facing the Jewish people – not least the continued presence of Rome in the region. In the eyes of the masses, therefore, Herod could lay no claim to be chosen by God. His power was founded on compromise with a pagan power. He was nothing but a worthless puppet of the Romans and therefore a hated man. The threat of revolution always hung heavily in the Palestinian air.

However, any power of Herod the Great paled before the might of Caesar Augustus (from which Herod derived his power in the first place). He has single-handedly turned what had become a rocky republic into the greatest and most famous empire of them all. As the establisher and sole leader of the Roman Empire (27BC – AD14) he developed what is called his “gospel” for the people, the good news according to Caesar: “Divine Augustus Caesar, son of god, imperator of land and sea, the benefactor and saviour of the whole world, has brought you peace.

Therefore it is a statement of political dynamite when the God of Israel sends his messenger Gabriel to announce that the true saviour of the world and the bringer of real peace, the shalom of God, is now present on earth (Luke 2.11,14) and that this is genuine good news for all the people. Both Matthew and Luke are making it abundantly clear that the birth of Jesus is a paradigm-shifting event. The gauntlet has been thrown down. From that moment there was a new contender vying for the title Saviour of the World!” p.72

 

There had been attempts to usurp the Roman rule before, for example if 164 BC

“The closest the people of Israel ever came to freedom was in 164 BC when on December 25^th Judas Maccabaeus and a zealous band of accomplices ousted the tyrannical Syrian leader Antiochus Epiphanes and liberated the temple, cleansing and re-consecrating it. For nearly one hundred years Israel enjoyed independence under the rule of the Hasmoneans (the Priest King). But tragically even this turned out simply to be a mere historical blip – a rare breath of freedom. By 63 BC Rome had moved in, crushed whatever stood in their way, and seized power. Judas Maccabaeus, it turned out, was not the Messiah after all.

 

Chalke focusses on the Beatitudes as example of the new inclusion his kingdom is there to represent

“So why were the people in these categories blessed? The answer is simple: they were blessed because of God’s generosity. Put bluntly, the blessing of God comes to them not because of their condition but in spite of it. The beatitudes form a list of the categories of those who knew what it was to be shunned by the establishment. They were the spiritually destitute, not the spiritually capable. For them, Jesus’ message was a revolution in the truest sense of the word – from now on, these “lasts” would be counted as “firsts” ahead of those who were far too certain of their “righteousness” and religious credentials….If Jesus preached his Sermon on the Mount today, who would he add to his list? “God bless you who are lonely, ugly, old, anorexic, bullied, infertile, displaced, over-worked, redundant, underpaid, homeless, unemployed, abused – God’s Kingdom belongs to you”. And if he did, would the Church love him or hate him for it?” p 93

He writes about how he encountered a lesbian who felt that no church would welcome her p.94

 

God accepts us as we are, it is acceptance before repentance

“God accepts us as we are, without judgement or condemnation, and gradually, through his love and acceptance, draws us ever closer to our understanding and living out his shalom in our lives. In other words acceptance precedes repentance – not the other way round.” P 99

 

The Temple

“Although the temple was supposed to be a “house of worship for all nations” (Isaiah 56.7) and a place of inclusiveness and welcome for all, it had become the exact opposite. It had become a symbol of Jewish exclusiveness and discrimination – and as such it had to go!” p 107

 

The Prodigal Son parable also has deeper meaning

“The point Jesus was making is startingly clear: God’s attitude to the prodigals of Israel (the “sinners”) was completely different to that of the religious leaders (the older brother). The spittle of forgiveness was free and available at any time, for all who came seeking it. And though the parable of the Prodigal Son makes the point as plain as daylight, Jesus’ constant offering of “free forgiveness" out on the streets, and in the episode at the temple, said it louder than ever.” P 110

 

Chalke then spends a lot of time on the subject of non-resistance, quoting Gandhi and taking the illustration of Rosa Parkes. This is because he does not like having “violent” theology of the cross.

 

We need to be less judgemental about who is and who is not a Christian and where the dividing line is

“Fifty years ago in his classic work Mere Christianity C S Lewis wrote “The world does not consist of 100 per cent Christians and 100 per cent non-Christians. There are people who are slowly ceasing to be Christians though they do not yet call themselves so. There are people who do not accept the full Christian doctrine about Christ but who are so strongly attracted by him that they are his in a much deeper sense than they themselves understand. There are people in other religions who are being led by God’s secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it.” P 141

 

Many people moving towards Christ who might not even be aware that they are

“Many people who would never attach the label “Christian” to themselves are actually in the process of moving through the crowd closer to Jesus. The Church may have huge difficulty in even recognising that this process is taking place, but all the same, God is slowly and surely transforming their lives. Therefore the Church’s task is to pick up on this process and work with it rather than ignore it – to offer acceptance rather than rejection” p 145

 

We don’t know when we actually cross over the border from England into Wales or from non faith into faith

 

Being Born again need not be a conscious experience

“Dallas Willard makes the point that because we have all been born once we should all understand the universal and obvious truth it teaches, but the truth is that none of us can remember anything about it. Birth is real, indeed essential, but it is a process that begins long before it is complete, it happens without our conscious effort and, what’s more, it is some time before any of us is aware what has taken place.” P 149

 

Importantly

“We don’t hear another thing of Nicodemus until the end of John’s Gospel. Had he rejected Jesus’ challenge? Had he accepted it? Had he slipped through the net? Why doesn’t John tell us? Because for John, being born-again wasn’t the crisis we have made it. He knew Jesus was referring to an ongoing process – the journey of life that began much earlier and would continue over the years to come.” P 149

“The problem we as the Church have got ourselves into is that we have turned a perfectly valid way of becoming a Christian into the only way of becoming a Christian. The gospel has been reduced to a proposition – “Do you want to go to heaven when you die? Then take these simple steps and you will be guaranteed that desire”. Perhaps we need to take our fingers off the panic button and learn to value meaningful conversations about Jesus and his agenda for life rather than simply looking for conversions” p 152

 

He is more into a Christus Victor view of the Cross than a penal Substitionary one and his emphasis is more on the resurrection