Peace: Begins With Prayer

  An opportunity for the faithful: This Wednesday, March 15, 2023 at 10am, prayer in the sanctuary. Come and join us. It is a profound experience to pray together. Can’t make it? Let us know, we will set another time. 

Why pray? Funny you should ask. Walk with me through the words that follow.

Paul’s word to the Ephesians this past Sunday was that of peace, peace for two divergent communities, those of the Jews and the Gentiles, to come together in peaceful coexistence and more, to thrive and grow, in the love and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Christ proclaimed peace among them, by His death and resurrection, He fulfilled the precepts of the law of Moses-the dividing line between these two communities exemplified by Paul in the language of circumcision-and abolished the law, fulfilled it. In Jesus came the achievement of what the law set out to do.

For the church to thrive and grow in the world, it must do so in community. It is in Jesus that the church will find the peace of Jesus for a world in need. How a congregation operates within its bounds will be a sure reflection of how it will operate if it were to cross over its threshold in the world beyond. To gain this peace, to thrive and more, this peace must be achieved.

Where does a church start? In humbly coming before the Lord in prayer. A vibrant relationship requires vibrant communication. Is the personal prayer life of the individual stressed? Is the opportunity for the community time of prayer offered? Or are the prayers of the community concentrated into the worship on the Lord’s Day?

What do we pray for? A far shorter list (nay nonexistent list) would ask ‘what don’t we prayer for?’ Pray for the peace of Christ in the church. What if we are small and desperate? How will the outreach of the church reflect anything other than that desperation unless it has found peace first? The second half of chapter 1 of Ephesians is the prayer that Paul laid down on paper for the church in Ephesus. It is a noble prayer for any community to begin with.

(Ephesians 1: 15-23)

15 I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love towards all the saints, and for this reason 16I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. 17I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, 18so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, 19and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. 20God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. 22And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, 23which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

The Great Commission: Discipling Others Starts Where We Pray Ourselves

    Matthew begins with announcing that Jesus is the Messiah, establishing where Jesus comes from with an ancestry stretching back to David and to Abraham. He ends with the Great Commission, where the disciples are commanded to go out and make disciples of all nations. It is a force multiplier, they went to make disciples, of which we are the legacy, and we are called out to make disciples in turn. This is done by baptism into the Trinitarian name of God (as revealed to us in the Bible) and in teaching obedience to all Jesus taught. 

    But we are not left alone. Jesus is there with us to the end of the age. (When He comes again).

    So how do we disciple people? Is it the stereotype of buttonholing someone into an uncomfortable demand of them knowing where their soul is headed after death? If we are looking for a place to start, how about where we pray? When we pray for others, either in need or the job of thanksgiving for what God ahs done. There is a place that I have come to Jesus as a disciple. It is a place where I am convinced Jesus will work. It is a place to share with another in need. 

    But if we are not there yet, where would we imagine, where would we hope, where would we dream that Jesus would help? Perhaps for us that is the place where discipleship begins.

    Pastor Peter 

Maybe the Oldest Struggle of the Faith…

How do we relate to a sinful world? Are we of the world? Are we above it? Do we separate ourselves from it? Do we wade into its struggles? What is the Church and what is the Culture? 

In the New Testament, the ‘church’, those who followed Jesus, began as one ‘stream of thought’ within Judaism. Jesus taught in the synagogue. Jesus’ ministry, with a few notable exceptions, was always within the boundaries, both physical and ethnically, of the Jewish people. He took the lessons of their faith and was revealing their fulfillment in Himself as the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of God.

In the early church, that began to shift. We see it in the Book of Acts. The ‘Way’, as it is described in Acts, continued within Judaism, but was being spread as the apostles began to move beyond Judea. This is in the context of the prophecy of the spread of the Holy Spirit, in Jerusalem, to Judea, then Samaria, then to the ends of the earth. As it spread, two things began to happen.

The first is that believers in Jesus were separated and eventually censured in the synagogue. The Way of Jesus was not ‘orthodox’ in the Jewish faith. Paul, before his conversion, was living proof of the persecution that started early in the life of the church. 

The second is that the “Way” found adherents in the Gentile community. This seemed to begin at the synagogue. It seems that the synagogues of the Jewish communities scattered out into the Roman empire attracted more than just Jews to their worship. There were contingents of Gentiles who found the law of Moses and the way of One God as worshiped in Judaism to be of interest to them. 

We saw this even in the gospels, of the Roman centurion that the elders of the synagogue vouched for in asking Jesus to save his servant.

But Judaism was an ethnic identity, bound up in religion, but much more. ‘Conversion’ as we understand it was something that took time and effort to accomplish. The Way of Jesus, centered on His death and resurrection, offered a much easier opportunity to become a part of the faith based community. It seems that the first Gentile converts were those who were already interested in Judaism, already participating as they could in the synagogues.

From there, the faith continued to spread, gradually transitioning away completely from its Jewish foundation. It would spread across the Roman Empire, finally rising to become the predominant religion of the land under Constantine. It would eventually become the instrument of suppression of the other religions. 

As the Roman Empire dissolved into chaos, the Church was the one functioning ‘international’ organization and stepped up to maintain ‘secular’ organizations within the ‘sacred’ structure as the political world fell apart. It gained much power, and that use of political power has never been completely shed.

If there is a lesson for this New Year, for considering Jesus as our King and High Priest, for considering the place of the church in the world today, I challenge us to consider what the relationship is to church and state, to the power of God to the power we humans claim in God’s name. How do we do that without falling into the pitfalls of temptation and sin that surround us? History shows that we, as a faith, have fallen hard and horribly into the kinds of behavior that no Christian of good conscience could ever condone, much less claim as God’s will.

Who are we in Christ Jesus?

Pastor Peter

Jesus: Priest and King

In the Old Testament, the roles of High Priest and King were separate from one another. It seemed to be the division of ‘church and state’, if we were to use language from today. The King led the people in the Name of God. The High Priest led the Worship in the Name of God. Melchizedek brought these two roles together into one person. As we have called him, a Mystery Man in the Bible.

One very significant difference we need to recognize between people of the Biblical times and ourselves is that we have set things up today very differently. The ‘state’ is secular, that is, beyond religions in how it runs things. The ‘church’ maintains its sacred role in our lives, but as something we have deliberately separated from the running of the state, the running of government. In the time of the Old Testament, the King ruled on God’s behalf. The High Priest led worship on God’s behalf. 

So when Jesus is following the pattern of Melchizedek, He is taking on what had been the roles of two different people in the Old Testament. Bringing them together is what Jesus does as our Savior. 

Perhaps the best known Title for Jesus is “Christ”, so well known that it is often mistaken for his family name, Jesus Christ. But it means ‘the Anointed One’. It refers to Jesus’ anointing by the Holy Spirit when this comes down from God in the form of a dove. This moment is recorded in all four gospels. In the Old Testament, both King and High Priest were also anointed to their positions before the Lord, as a way of being set apart for divine service.

It is probably easier for us to relate to Jesus as King, not that we have a king, but because we recognize the position and the role of someone with temporal authority over us. In the United States, our leader is the President. These powers are tempered and balanced by the Congress and by the Court system, but there is one person ‘in charge’. Jesus, being the Son of God, being without sin, is the ideal as our Ruler, operating only from love, not from power, nor from the corruption that comes from it.

The High Priest is out of our direct experience. The role of the priesthood in the Old Testament was marked to a great extent by the performance of the sacrificial system that was the mode of Restoration and Redemption, beginning in the time of Moses. What that means is that the people then had sin in common with us today. We recognize the need to ask for God’s forgiveness for our sins, that we have in common with the people of time of Moses. But in the law of Moses, they required a blood sacrifice, blood for blood, to pay for their sins.

We do not recognize that as an ongoing system, because this system was fulfilled in Christ. Jesus was the final sacrifice. By his death and resurrection on the cross, our sins were paid for and our relationship restored with God. It emerges from and culminates the system that was laid out in law under Moses. Jesus takes things further. He is the Final Sacrifice, but He is also the High Priest who oversees, who runs the sacrificial system. 

So there is a lot of history that finds itself fulfilled in Jesus. It is inclusive of the ‘ruling’ authority of the king and the ‘religious’ authority of the High Priest, but it is not something new. Even these roles been drawn together is seen in the figure of Melchizedek.  

Pastor Peter

Jesus and Melchizedek

While the Gospel of Matthew seems to be written with a Jewish audience in mind, connecting to the Old Testament in a deliberate manner, it is not the only book in the New Testament with such a focus. The other is the book of Hebrews (aptly named). While the gospels focus on the life and ministry of Jesus, Hebrews has a different point of view. It is written in the form of a letter that explicitly lays out the connections of Jesus to what came before, what came in the Old Testament. It might be better described as a theological treatise.  

In the book of Hebrews, Jesus is explicitly “a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” It is not simply a leap from Genesis to Hebrews, but comes to us by way of Psalm 110, where David speaks of ‘the victory of God’s Priest-King’. David himself was ‘just’ a king. There was another serving as the high priest to God in his kingship. These roles were not blended. In fact, it was when King Saul blended these roles, offering the sacrifices to the Lord that were the purview of the priesthood, that he fell afoul of the Lord. 

But in this Psalm, David is looking forward to someone more powerful than himself, someone who will bring these two most powerful roles in the kingdom together, a priest-king in the order of Melchizedek.

In Melchizedek is something greater, more powerful than in David-who was not only king, but the most powerful king of the People of Israel. Jesus is of the line and family of David, he is of the Royal Line, born in the Royal City of Bethlehem, but there is more to who he is in the understanding of the Old Testament. In addition, Jesus is the High Priest, the only one who is able, once a year, to stand in the presence of God in the Holy of Holies to make atonement for the people. He who has the most power and he who stands closest to God. Such is the Order of Melchizedek, such is our Lord Jesus.  

So, if we were to look to the Mystery Magi, these strange harbingers of God who pop in and out of the life of Jesus as Melchizedek popped in and out of the life of Abraham, could God be providing to us, through Matthew, an even more significant hint at the birth of God’s only Son as to who Jesus is going to be? The Magi have power, consider not only their gifts but their ability to mount an expedition to the east to follow a star. They also have a closeness to God, being able to interpret that the star means something divine. I rather like that idea.

Pastor Peter

The Wise Men: Connections to another Mystery Man?

    In the book of Genesis, God calls Abraham from the East to settle in the land that God promises to Abraham and his descendents. A large section of the middle of Genesis is devoted to Abraham and the foundation of what will become the nation of Israel. But, as with Jesus, there is an episode that brings a mystery man into the life of the Father of God’s people.

His name is Melchizedek. He is named as the king of Salem, and also as a priest of God. Salem is generally considered to be Jerusalem, which David shall conquer as the capital for Israel and the place where the temple of the Lord will be constructed. But prior, it is referred to as a Jebusite fortress-the Jebusites being one of the peoples of Canaan that will be driven out as God brings God’s people into the Promised Land. It was the Jebusites that David drove out.

But in this moment, Melchizedek  just shows up. Abraham has just gone on campaign against certain of the Canaanites to rescue his nephew, Lot. He is successful and, on his return, this mysterious priest-king is there to meet him.. He praises Abraham in the name of God and Abraham, in response, gives him a tithe. The tithe, the granting of one-tenth, is the gift that is offered to God from the fruits of what God has granted. So Abraham is recognizing in Melchizedek the authority of God. 

Melchizedek drops into the life of Abraham for less than 5 verses. This authority of the Lord in the life of God’s Chosen One. 

It feels to me that there is a parallel to be made between Melchizedek and the Magi of Matthew 2. They come, they bless, and they disappear. Led by God and led away just as quickly. For Matthew, the gospel ‘to the Jews’ as some have called it, this is an echo of the Old Testament in a manner that is different from simply quoting something that has been fulfilled in the life and ministry of our Lord. 

Maybe this is also something of a reversal of roles. In Genesis, Abraham (Abram here as the Lord has not yet changed his name), comes from the East and receives the blessing of God in Melchizedek in the Promised Land. Jesus comes from the Promised Land, born in the City of David, and receives the blessing of God from the Magi who come out of the East. 

Cannot say for sure, but it feels right to me. Tomorrow, we will look at what Melchizedek means to Jesus in the words of the New Testament.

Pastor Peter

The Wise Men: The Mystery Magi of the Bible

  It has become such a part of the lore of Christmas that we do not even consider how odd the story of the Wise Men is in the birth of Jesus. These Magi, Wise Men from the east, unnamed, never to recur in the Biblical record, that just show up. What do we know about them?

We know they were people of means, given the gifts that they brought with them. It was enough to allow Joseph to take his family to Egypt before the Slaughter of the Innocents

.

We know they were people of some kind of importance, given that they were entertained by King Herod when they arrived in Jerusalem.

We know they were astronomers and astrologers (those two were intermingled) of some kind, interpreting the signs of the sky.

We know that, unlike pretty much every creche scene anywhere, they did not arrive with the shepherds at the stable to find Jesus in a manger. Rather, they told Herod they ‘saw the star at its rising’. I have always interpreted this as the angels rising up from where they sang to the shepherds. So there was some time lapse before they arrived. We know that, on questioning them closely, Herod went after every male child two years and under in an attempt to rid himself of this rival to the throne of Israel, which seems to give us a sense of the time gap.

We know that Mary and Joseph were living in Bethlehem. It might have been that they considered Jesus too young to travel with, or it might have been the result of the taxation. Joseph returned to his own city, to Bethlehem. The expectation might have been then that he remain there. 

There is something else we know about the gospel of Matthew. It is the gospel with the most explicit references to the Old Testament. For example, when the Wise Men returned to their land by another road, the Lord warned Joseph and Mary to flee to Egypt ahead of Herod’s retribution. This is to fulfill Hosea 11:1, where God says, “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.” Unpacking that is going to require its own posting.

More directly, we know that the Wise Men coming to Jerusalem lead Herod to direct his own scribes to dig up the reference to Bethlehem, where the king of the Jews is to be born, as found in Micah 5.

With this backdrop, do we have more that we can say about these mystery men, these mystery magi of Matthew 2? Were they simply a foil to allow Matthew to draw out these references to our Lord Jesus? Or do we find a forerunner to their presence in the Old Testament? Tomorrow, a theory..

Pastor Peter