sometimes you’ve got to be a little bit naughty?
a sermon text on Mark 2:23- 3:6 - Jesus as Lord of the Sabbath....
So we’re on to Week 5 of JSP themes - Prophetic challenge - and I begin thinking about this enormous, challenging and important topic with a clip form Matilda the musical...
Why?
If I’m honest its because I think kids probably get this idea much better than we do as adults.
Ever been with a child when they’ve not understood something?
Ever been with a child who’s loudly proclaimed ‘thats not fair!’?
And if it’s not right…… you’ve got to put it right…..
Children almost instinctively want to know and understand, and they almost instinctively seek out justice (at least they do within the realm of their experience and world view - even if they are still in that face where the world effectively feels to revolve around them!)
Kid’s get prophetic challenge better than adults.
This most mysterious and incredible Spiritual gift, the spiritual gift St. Paul says we are to long for prize above all others, and somehow, I do think children are actually more eager or willing to engage with it with than many more ‘mature’ believers.
Prophesy is the God-given ability to speak the voice of God into a given situation, often challenging, but also sometimes encouraging, upholding and empowering. It’s the gift Paul prizes so highly because it is the gift which challenges, raises up and calls the whole Church to her true vocation in God. (1 Cor. 14:5)
And yet it’s often unpopular.
It can be especially unpopular in ‘successful’ Churches.
It was unpopular when Jesus exercised this gift towards the pharisees in this morning’s reading, when his prophetic actions questioned the much loved laws of religious purity and appropriate behaviour - or at least questioned the motives of those enforcing them.
According to Mark, it was so unpopular that this questioning was the very act which led the Pharisees to begin their plot to destroy him, such was the potential they saw of Jesus to disrupt the status quo.
So it’s important we understand Jesus’ question - because like so much Jsus does, it wasn’t JUST about the eating of the corn or the healing of the man’s shrivelled hand. It was about the prohibition to engage in those acts simply because of which day of the week it fell on.
It was about using the rules to prevent the underlying command to love God and love neighbour.
Jesus’ big question is more about how his father’s law has become an object of control rather than of freedom?
And he’s only able to ask this question, because he’s able to see this reality.
He’s only able to see this reality because he’s so unbelievably focused on his Father and his mission that he’s able to see past all the religious infrastructure which is SUPPOSED to be promoting that.
In a similar way, Prophetic challenge for us begins with a commitment to close relationship with God above all other concerns, and a willingness to look at our own world, experience, culture and context through objective eyes. - What St Paul calls the ‘renewing of our minds’ which connects us to the vision of God’s will. (Rom. 12:2)
[sidebar - culture - Church as the fish who’s only known water - how can it describe or critique that water which so shapes and enables its very life and existence - it knows nothing else? - Similarly can Church leaders always recognise the church culture which surrounds them?Sometimes we ALL need to be willing to challenge our faith traditions as well as the world outside the Church - looking at Jesus’ example it may be even MORE important to challenge within the Church than outside it]
And that can cause us to ask some pretty difficult questions of that world, culture and context - as we try and engage with the questions Jesus might well have been asking if he were walking our streets?
Or the people he might be speaking up for - as he did for the disciples and the man with the shrivelled hand.
He might ask us how his Church has gone from a radical community of obedient and repentant disciples to sometimes become an uncritiqued bastion of ‘nice’ people and polite and ‘proper’ behaviour?
He might well sometimes ask me how I’ve done the same, inclined as I often am to leave all apple-carts un-upset.
So a reading of these stories, as well as encouraging us to think about the elements of our culture we should be speaking out against, must leave us also asking who is Jesus would be speaking up for.
Prophetic challenge asks us who’s voice are we - am I - willing to stand up for? How and for whom am I seeking to go beyond the accepted norms in the in interests of justice, healing and reconciliation for all God’s creation?
Prophetic challenge also calls us individually to an ever increasing connection to God and to the values we’re proclaiming within our own behaviour challenging ourselves first above all others (and thus removing the planks from our own eyes before the specks from our brothers and sisters) - because we see in Jesus that his words have power because they’re in keeping with his actions - he’s already been healing the sick, proclaiming healing and reconciliation, even forgiving sins. He has SEEN the needs of the people, and he’s been responding.
Which brings us back to where we said prophetic challenge begins - with seeing things differently.
So my final question is this; What do only you notice - both in Church and in the world around us? What is it which you see as in need of God’s prophetic challenge, healing and reconciliation?
And following on from that, What is it you are called to do in living out Jesus’ prophetic challenge and Call into healing and reconciliation?
‘cos if it’s not right…… you’ve got to put it right…..
Some other thoughts to reflect on:
Kids - relentless questioning as a contemporary outworking of Jesus’ exhortation to accept the Kingdom of God ‘as a little Child?
Jesus’ every act either proclaims or enacts the Kingdom of God (Brian Zahnd) - wouldn’t it be amazing if we could truly say the same about ourselves and about Church - if we can’t say that who are the voices willing to ask the difficult questions about why not?
Jesus’ challenge works because of authority - which comes from authenticity - he’s been living out this proclamation of freedom already.