Some thoughts on what the signs, as described by John, mean:

"A “sign” is a mighty work wrought by Jesus that represents the revelatory and redemptive event happening in him… The theological significance of these signs is given in John’s own words:

“These signs are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” (Jn 20:31).

Signs, like works, witness to the presence and power of God in the person of Jesus (3:2) There can be no question but that the Evangelist believed the signs really happened in history; but they are not ends in themselves. Their meaning is in the revealing of the redemptive action of God in Jesus that they represent.

-GE Ladd, Theology of the New Testament pp273-4

"The signs...are moments when heaven is opened, when the transforming power of God’s love bursts in to the present world...The whole point of the signs is that they are moments when heaven and earth intersect with each other”

-Bishop Tom Wright

Any thoughts?

After a long time away from the blogosphere. I bring you the cov vineyard blog [reloaded]! This Sunday we are starting a series on "Signs of the Kingdom", exploring the Gospel of John. We will start with the first sign that John describes; Jesus turning water into wine.

In preparation, I came across this quote:

This is what eternal life means. This is what it means to be saved. It means to go about every day in the present evil Age living the life of heaven. It means that every local fellowship of God's people who have shared this life should live together and worship and serve together as those who enjoy a foretaste of heaven here on earth. This is what the fellowship of a Christian Church ought to be. May God help us to live the life of The Age to Come in the midst of an evil Age. God has already brought us into fellowship with Himself. This is the promise, the down-payment, the earnest, the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, the life of The Age to Come. This is the Gospel of the Kingdom. This is the life of The Age to Come.

-George Eldon Ladd, The Gospel of the Kingdom

Amen.

The Sunday Gathering is at Sidney Stringer Academy, Coventry. Coffee served from 10:15am.

Bearing the likeness of the man from heaven.

1 cor 15:35-58

The whole of chapter 15 in Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth is devoted to the question of what happens when we die. In this last post we ask: What is the resurrection of the dead? What sort of bodies will we have? This is a summary from a talk from our Sunday Gathering which can be downloaded here or from iTunes.

Some of the people, like today, have said: Look Paul, don’t be an idiot, dead people don’t rise.

And Paul has responded by saying that the resurrection of the dead is central to what it means to be a follower of Jesus. The whole gospel, this ‘good news’ is based around the fact that the tomb was empty. The empty tomb demonstrated that in the words of Paul, “Death has lost it’s sting”. Death itself had been defeated. And the sign of Jesus victory on the cross was the empty tomb. Paul states that without the resurrection, Christianity is meaningless.

What will our resurrected bodies be like?

We spend £500m on cosmetic surgery each year in UK, that’s the same as France, Germany, Italy and Spain put together. We are so desperately unhappy with our bodies that we will pay vast amounts to have them improved. But our bodies will be improved. But not just that they will be renewed and transformed.

The hope of Christians is the future resurrection, it’s the redemption of our bodies and the renewal of heaven and earth. Those who claim to follow Jesus believe that Resurrection is not just something that will happen in the future. It has happened already. It happened on the planet we call Earth and it happened to a man we call Jesus. Because the resurrection happened within our own world, it’s implications and effects will be felt in our own world here and now.

In Jesus, heaven invaded earth. God’s kingdom broke into our own space and time. God’s revolution of love began the overthrow of corruption and evil. What happened to Jesus will happen to us.

You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. 

Acts 3:15

 

1-2 So if you're serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don't shuffle along, eyes to the 

ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that's where the action is. See things from his perspective.

3-4Your old life is dead. Your new life, which is your real life—even though invisible to spectators—is with Christ in God. He is your life. When Christ (your real life, remember) shows up again on this earth, you'll show up, too—the real you, the glorious you. 

Col 3:1-4 The Message

Our resurrected bodies become animated by God’s spirit. Just as the Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead. The Holy Spirit lives in us. The giver of life fills us and equips us. It’s like we have a new fuel in us that not only makes us run better but also maintains the whole body. Energized by the spirit of God.

So what?

We will have new bodies in the future, but what about now. Eternal life starts now. Something of the future has broken into the present. God’s reality, His kingdom has arrived into the now. Your present bodily life is not valueless just because it will die. God will raise your body to new life. There will be a new creation. What you do with you body in the present matters, because God has a great future in store for it. To quote Maximus Decimus Meridius;

“What we do in life, echoes in eternity”

Paul states that the resurrection of the dead has now started. One man has risen from the dead. A man who died is now living and he is Lord of the World and we bear his likeness. We are to be like him in our character and our actions.

God’s future for humanity has broken into the present through the resurrection of Jesus. Gods future salvation is happening now all around us. There are signs of the kingdom happening all around you, day by day. Throughout Jesus ministry he brought salvation into peoples lives. The Kingdom was breaking in and rescuing people. These were acts of healing and rescue that Jesus started and his followers continued as recorded in the book of Acts. We act like him. Where we work, in our homes, at the shops. We act like him.

We are saved to be the people God wants us to be. To act in his character to the world around us. We are blessed to bless others. We are saved to save others. We are transformed to transform others.

Not in vain…
What you are doing for the wider world as a follower of Jesus is not in vain. It’s not empty. Your faith is not empty.

Every act of love, gratitude and kindness;
every work of art or music inspired by the love of God and delight in the beauty of his creation;
every minute spent teaching a disabled child to read or to walk; every act of care and nurture, of comfort and support, for one’s fellow human beings, and for that matter one’s fellow non-human creatures;
and of course every prayer, all Spirit-led teaching,every deed which spreads the gospel, builds up the church, embraces and embodies holiness rather than corruption, and makes the name of Jesus honoured in the world – all of this will find its way, through the resurrecting power of God, into the new creation which God will one day make.

Bishop Tom Wright

When Jesus left the tomb on the first Easter he launched a revolution that his followers would take up. On that first Easter, God initiated his new creation breaking into the present from the future.The man who would not die is now Lord of the whole world. And the author and giver of life now calls the people who he has rescued from an oppressive regime to fight against the systems of oppression with weapons of peace, love, mercy and grace.

For further reading check out Tom Wright's: Surprised by Hope.

What does the future hold?

We are obsessed with the future. What will happen to us? But we feel powerless to do anything about it. Paul has shown that without the resurrection our faith and our future are meaningless. Without the resurrection there is no hope. The resurrection is central to what it means to be a follower of Jesus. The resurrection is not just good news for each individual Christian. The resurrection is good news for the entire Universe.

How do we live in light of the resurrection? What impact does this reversal and defeat of death by one man have on the way you and I live life? Here's some points reflecting on 1 Cor 15:20-34.

Death
When I was 10 years old I died. I had an to have my adenoids removed because I kept getting ear infections and whilst under the anaesthetic my body shut down, my heart stopped and I refused to breath. For 20 seconds I was gone. The doctors brought me back by pounding on my chest and forcing air into my small lungs. The only evidence of my near permanent fatal experience were the bruises on my chest. I was resuscitated. 

One day I will die and I believe I will be resurrected.

When I was about 18 one of my best friend’s Dad died. Bob was a wonderful man. He taught me a lot about what it means to follow Jesus. He was generous and kind. He was godly and loving. And then he was dead. And my friend had lost her Daddy.

I couldn’t believe how God would let that happen. That was my first experience of how awful and horrible and painful death was.

Recently, I saw this photo:

We can decorate coffins and it may go some way to help those grieving their loss, remember the good things about when that person and what they gave to this world. But it doesn’t change the fact that they are dead. Death is still awful and death is still our enemy.

Death is not just our last enemy. It is God’s enemy as well.

His universe, which he pronounced good. His universe has been marred by the horrible spectacle of death. Death is the unmaking of God’s creation. Resurrection is the remaking of God’s Creation. It is God’s new creation and that is our hope.

The resurrection does not make death less bad. It still awful. But it is a defeated enemy. By raising Jesus from the dead God set in motion the final defeat of death itself. The Christian hope is not some vague form of wishful thinking.

For Paul: “It's resurrection, resurrection, always resurrection, that undergirds what I do and say, the way I live.” (vs. 30-33. The Message)

If there's no resurrection, "We eat, we drink, the next day we die," and that's all there is to it. Paul is saying, ”don't fool yourselves”. Don't let yourselves be poisoned by this anti-resurrection talk.

Let the resurrection shape your future.

What will happen when I finish my degree and have to get a proper job? What will it be like when I’m married to this person and share my life with them? Will I do well in my new job? If I can just get this promotion then things will be different? Why do I do this every day? What will it be like to have this new baby in the family? How can I be a good parent to my children? How can I speak to my teenage daughter? Will I have to look after my poorly mother? Will my children have to look after me?

In vs 32 Paul talks about human hopes, wishful thinking, I think what he has in mind are those who were gladiators, the night before they faced wild beasts, enjoying there last moments of existence. In the face of despair people try to numb the pain with stuff.

"Let’s eat and drink, for tomorrow we die."

To numb the pain and the despair people will turn to things which make them feel alive. What makes you feel alive?

Drinking. Eating. Sex. Shopping. Playing on the Wii. Exercise. TV. Shoplifting. Self-harming. Driving fast.

For Paul, what makes you really live life is the resurrection.

The future is what counts. You cannot change the past. What’s done is done. What was said was said. Stop living in the past. And stop living just in the now. Live in such a way to change your future. How will you affect your future? How will you live tomorrow? What choices will you make to live this life? Live in such a way to affect the future of others? Don’t let your past haunt you and don’t be afraid of the future.

If you live tomorrow, how will you live? What plans for living do you have?

What is the big deal with the resurrection?

Paul has in mind the story of creation as he talks about resurrection. Creation was good, but it always had a future aspect. God didn’t look at creation and say that “it’s perfect” something perfect cannot be improved upon. God said it was good. Now something good can be made even more good, but you need someone who has the same intention and character as God, someone who has the creative flair of the father someone made in his image.

God appoints good stewards humans to oversee and care for the creation. To work in the garden and bring the future into the present.

“Instead of humans being God’s wise vice-regents over creation, they ignore the creator and try to worship something less demanding, something which will give them a short-term fix of power or pleasure” Tom Wright.

Us human always want to reach for something fleeting to give us the high of feeling alive. The result is death. Death was always part of the living process but now it has a spiritual significance. The controlling image of death in most of the bible is found in the language of exile. The first humans are exiled from the garden.

God’s plan of restoration is to bring people out of exile and back into relationship. That is the Kingdom of God’ it’s what God wants to happen. God’s desire is that you and I would be back in relationship with him and back in relationship with the people and the world around us.

What has been accomplished by his death and resurrection?

For Paul, it’s all about the Kingdom of God.

Like all Jews, Paul would have grown up longing for the Kingdom of God to come. Most Jewish people expected that God would become king again over the whole world, restoring Israel and defeating those who were oppressing them, and after this people would live in peace again with God.

Now Paul is saying that it had started to happen but it wasn’t going to be how people imagined. Paul is saying this resurrection of the dead has now started. One man has risen from the dead. The coming of God’s kingdom was going to happen in two phases. It’s the now and the not yet. We pray “your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

Paul uses a Greek poet called Meander to make an ironic point in 1 Cor 15:33-34. The Corinthians were allowing the surrounding culture to influence the way they viewed life and their values for living. Their future was being shaped by their circumstances rather than their relationship with God.

Who is influencing your future? Does God hold your future? Is your future shaped by God and his Kingdom?

When you go into work tomorrow what will influence the way that day pans out? How will you work this week as a follower of Jesus? How will you let the kingdom of God break into where you work and affect your future and the future of others.

The point of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians is that this present life is not meaningless just because you and I will die. The point is that God will raise your life into new life. To quote T Wright again:

What you do in the present – by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbour as yourself – all these things will last into God’s future.

We don’t do these things to make life a bit nicer for everyone. We do these things to build God’s future kingdom in the present.

An Empty Message?

Does it really matter what happened to Jesus? Does it matter if Jesus' body was resurrected from the dead?

Here is how Paul argues his point in 1 Cor 15:12-19
12But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

Six points:

1. Many people agree that Jesus was a good moral teacher. But to say any more than that and you’re going to start offending people. The resurrection declares Jesus to be unique. The resurrection of Jesus Christ distinguishes Jesus and distinguishes Christianity from all other religions. Jesus is different than every other religious founder because of his resurrection. The bones of every significant religious leader who ever lived are still buried in the ground. Christianity is about entering a relationship with a person who was dead and who is currently bodily alive because he is resurrected from the dead and his name is Jesus Christ.

2. If Jesus did not rise from the dead than our message. The message of the Kingdom of God and ultimately all of the teaching of Jesus is futile.

3. If you say that Jesus was not raised from the dead, then you are forced to say that the apostles, and all the writers of the New Testament, were liars when they claimed that Christ was resurrected. The apostles ran around the Roman Empire claiming to be eyewitnesses. They said they saw Jesus die, with their own eyes. And then they said they saw with their own eyes, Jesus, having been raised from the dead, in a glorious, transformed, incorruptible body.

4. All of us have done things which we know have hurt others. Far too often we hurt others knowingly, we’ve said things, or done things which have harmed others. Every one of us here can probably think of something we’ve done and feel guilty about it. The only people who don't struggle with guilt are the criminally insane - psychopaths and sociopaths. Normal people all feel guilt about things we have done wrong. That is why we defend ourselves so vigorously. That's why we feel the need to make excuses for our behaviour. How do you deal with your guilt? What do you do with it? The Bible says that the person we have ultimately sinned against is God. That when we de-humanise another human by our treatment of them, we insult the one in whose image they have been made. The Bible says we can take our sins to the cross - that Jesus' death on the cross fully pays for our sins. The Bible says that the way we know that Jesus' death on the cross really did take care of our sins is the resurrection. The resurrection is proof that Jesus did not die for nothing.

5. The philosopher, Bertrand Russell, says that death is omnipotent. Death has the final say. Taking from us our loved ones and ourselves, cutting the string, turning us all back into various bits of matter that fertilizes the ground. If Christ is not risen, that's all there is. If there is no resurrection then the best we can hope for is either; complete anhialation which in the words of Dylan Thomas causes us to shout to those dying, “Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage, against the dying of the light”. Or reincarnation, hoping that we can have another go and do things better next time to eventually be assimilated into some mighty consciousness.
What do you say in the face of death? Our answer, without the resurrection has to be, stay alive as long as possible. Eat right, stay fit, have surgery cheat death. But no scientific breakthrough can save us from the inevitable. You and I will die.

6. What do you say to those who have sacrificed so much for Jesus ?
If Jesus isn’t raised, then all the people who have given up good jobs to work amongst the poorest of the poor are imbeciles. If Jesus isn’t raised from the dead, then the people we should admire are the manipulators and those who can step on others and get ahead and look out for Number One. If Jesus isn’t raised, then if you can get away with it in this world, go for it.
Exploit others, there is no ultimate justice. As Tom Wright puts it:
In a world of systematic injustice, bullying violence, arrogance and oppression, the thought that there might be a coming day when the wicked are firmly put in their place and the poor and the weak are given their due is the best news there can be.

East of Easter: Part 1 

The Message of Hope and Grace

What happens when the sun goes down after Easter Sunday?

How do we live life in the light of Easter?

What difference does the resurrection make to how we live life?

Like Mary, on that first Easter Sunday morning we don’t stand in the moment dumbfounded. The moment with Jesus in the dawn of the new creation moves us. It propels us into action. There is work to be done. There is a message to be announced. There is good news to proclaim. The one who was dead is alive.

How do we apply one particular chapter (1 Corinthians 15) to our lives?

Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas (Peter), and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. Whether, then, it is I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed. 1 Cor 15:1-11(TNIV)


What is the gospel?

A gospel is a declaration of the good news of a new reality. At the time Paul was writing to the church in Corinth, the world was ruled by the Roman Emperor, probably Nero at this time.

In the context of the world of Paul and the church in Corinth, Caesar’s gospel was, “Rome is here! Caesar is now your king! Now you can be under the rule of the greatest government, military, and economy in the world! Does anyone have a problem with that, because if you do we have weapons of mass destruction and crucifixion to make you comply.

One popular statement of C. Augustus was this, there is no other name under heaven by which you can be saved than that of Caesar.

The disciples went around saying “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name given under heaven by which we must be saved than that of Jesus." See Acts 4:8-12

The good news that Jesus proclaimed, was centered in Jewish expectations of return from exile. When Jesus came proclaiming the good news he said:

"The time has come," he said. "The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!" Mark 1:15

For Jesus, the good news was a proclamation of an inbreaking reality (the kingdom of God is near) and a summons for people to revise how they were living their lives by placing their confidence in Jesus and his way (repent and believe).

For the apostle Paul, he would claim: “God is king! Jesus is the Messiah hoped for by Israel and therefore, the Lord of the whole world! Now you can be citizens of a kingdom that will outlast even Rome!”

Essentially both Jesus and Paul were saying, “look there is hope for the situation you find yourself, there is a solution to the oppression and evil that you face, there is a freedom to the slavery you are experiencing”.

If we view our hope as christians as “going to heaven” or as “salvation” from this world and new life away from this world then any sort of hope we have for the existing world will be unrelated and minimised. If we see ourselves as people who are going to check out one day from this disappointing and grimy motel of a world and check into the luxury mansion hotel we call heaven. Then our attitude towards the world around us and the people who share this space and time with us will be tinged with a sense of despair and sadness, and life in the words of one biblical writer will be meaningless. (Ecclesiates 1:2)

The good news of the Kingdom of God is the solid ground on which we stand and base our lives on. And this is what Paul wants to remind the church in Corinth. This is the gospel by which they were saved, but saved from what?

Salvation starts as we live in present. The point of the cross isn’t forgiveness. The point of the cross, the victory of Jesus death on the cross is more than forgiveness. It’s restoration and it’s reconciliation. Salvation comes for a reason. Being saved from our sin is just the start. It’s about God restoring us. Making us into the humans he originally had in mind when he first made us. Salvation starts at the cross but it leads us to become more and more the people God wants us to be. More loving, more generous, more compassionate, more merciful, more human.

For Paul, he understood that death was not the end. The central element of Jesus message is that death is not the end. This life is not all there is.


What is the resurrection?

For Paul and his listeners the word resurrection, never meant simply, “life after death”. It wasn’t used to describe ideas about what happened to people after they die. It was a specific term which described how people who were already dead would be given new bodies, and would them have a new embodied life similar to what they had had before.

What Paul is describing is the life we will have after the new state of existence we find ourselves in after death. He is describing a life after life after death. In this resurrected life people will be given new bodies, empowered by God’s spirit and would have a new life with a new body, yet similar body, to live in God’s new heaven and earth. (more on this later)

As Tom Wright puts it: “If Jesus has been raised, that means that God’s new world, God’s kingdom, has indeed arrived; and that means we have a job to do. The world must hear what the God of Israel, the creator God, has achieved through his Messiah.” (Simply Christian, 2006, p98)


What is our response?

For Paul, the death and resurrection of Jesus changed his whole life. Hi response was to spend his whole life on living and communicating the beauty, hope, grace and love of the Kingdom. He too became an announcer of the message, convinced that Jesus was alive. The grace of God compelled him to rethink his life and share the message of the good news of the kingdom.

The grace of God is never to be earnt, we cannot earn it, but because of the grace given to us, there is effort on our part. Remember that quote from Tom Wright: “…We have a job to do. The world must hear.”

Those who have not heard about the grace and hope of the message of the kingdom of God need to be told. The grace of God causes us to change how we live our lives and the sort of people we are becoming. The grace of God makes us wake up from our sleep and become people of action. And it is the resurrection of Jesus that lies at the heart of God’s grace and love for humanity.

I wonder what is the message you believe?
I wonder how will you share the message of the good news of God’s kingdom to others? Can you do that this week?
And I wonder: Are you changing on the inside as this message of hope and grace grabs hold of your life?