BLOG 9/30/13. A PART OF SCRIPTUE WE DON’T WANT TO HEAR

BLOG 9/30/13. A PART OF SCRIPTURE WE DON’T WANT TO HEAR

 

There is a dimension of Christ’s teachings, and reiterated in Acts along with the other New Testament writings that we avoid like the plague, namely, that the word of Christ and the gospel of Christ have a divisive effect. Nobody likes conflict. Nobody relishes confrontation and rebuke. Nobody takes kindly to divisions between families and neighbors.

So what do we do with such a reality? We try to ignore these teachings as though they didn’t exist. But there they are:

 

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother in law; and a man’s foes will be those of his own household.” This passage in Matthew 10 needs good exposition and interpretation, but its point is that Jesus and his message and his mission have a totalitarian claim upon their adherents, so that: “ … he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”

 

Or, after the stern apostolic rebuke which resulted in the immediate death of Ananias and his wife Sapphira for their violation of the integrity of the community (Acts 5:1 ff.) is the understatement of the day: “And great fear came upon the whole church and upon all who heard of these things. …None of the rest dared join them, but people held them in high esteem.”

 

Then there is the warning of those who are enemies inside the church (again, needing good interpretation): “But they went out that it might become plain that they all are not of us.” (I John 2:19). This warning says that all is not always peace and joy inside the church, since there are those who are there to corrode the church from the inside.

 

Isn’t this a happy blog?

 

Does this put a damper on the fact that Jesus gives us his joy? Not at all. It simply reminds us that the church is called out of the dominion of darkness (which is existentially very real) and into the dominion of Light (God’s dear Son), so that there is always that contextual presence of alien personalities who infiltrate and have a form of godliness but deny the power thereof. Or as Jesus says: “Not every one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven …” There is too often the community formed by (what Bonhoeffer calls) ‘cheap grace,’ which preaches the promises but not the demands of the gospel. It is our obedience to the teachings of Christ with all of their transformative power that makes us instruments of Light in this dark world … and such can cause multiple tensions, conflicts, and the offense of the cross.

 

Ah! But the grace of God is greater. When the darkness seems so very dark, “ … (we) rest on his unchanging grace. In every high and stormy gale (our) hope anchor holds within the veil.”

 

We need to be reminded that we are called to engage always in the warfare between that darkness and that Light, but in so doing to always be the glory of God, i.e., “the radiant display of the divine nature,” to borrow from Gregory Boyd’s teaching. In the very midst of such painful episodes, we always need to be exhibiting the fruits of the Holy Spirit (cf. Galatians 5:22-24), to be those out of whose heart flow rivers of living water.

“But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33

About rthenderson

Sixty years a pastor-teacher within the Presbyterian Church. Author of several books, the latest of which are a trilogy on missional ecclesiology: ENCHANTED COMMUNITY: JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH, then, REFOUNDING THE CHURCH FROM THE UNDERSIDE, then THE CHURCH AND THE RELENTLESS DARKNESS. Previous to this trilogy was A DOOR OF HOPE: SPIRITUAL CONFLICT IN PASTORAL MINISTRY, and SUBVERSIVE JESUS, RADICAL FAITH. I am a native of West Palm Beach, Florida, a graduate of Davidson College, then of Columbia and Westminster Theological Seminaries.
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