Religious exclusivity

We were looking at Matthew 21:12-19 yesterday and it is a striking passage. As “Jesus entered the temple courts”(12) the King is coming to his house. It’s a fulfilment of Malachi 3:1 where the people of Israel are asking where is the God of Justice and God’s answer is; “Then the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple…” And what does he find? Jesus finds that there is a gulf between God’s expectations and the Jerusalem reality.

It’s a bit like the Queen returning to Buckingham Palace expecting tea in the gardens only to find a car boot sale in full swing. Things are not as they should be.

Jesus stands in the courtyard of the Gentiles and the expectation is that it should be a place of prayer. That doesn’t mean a nice quiet meditative space with just the right ambiance. It means a place where Gentile God fearers can come and call on God. Jesus expects to find a place where the nations can come, where they can see God worshipped rightly, where they are welcomed and where they can enjoy relationship with God. That’s what the quotation from Isaiah 56 tells us(13).

Isaiah 56 is a call for Israel to worship God rightly and for Gentiles to be able to do likewise, for all those who choose to follow God to be able to do so. But the reality Jesus finds is a million miles away from that. He finds dove sellers and money changes clogging up the court of the Gentiles, it is more like a market than a place of prayer. And Jesus rebukes them in the words of Jeremiah, partially because of the oppression of the poor that is going on but mainly because the temple has once again become the sole preserve of the Jews.

Jeremiah rebuked the people of his day from the gate of the temple for trusting in the temple for their security. Their reasoning went like this we have the temple therefore we enjoy God’s favour. They gave no thought to living rightly or to obeying God. The temple which was meant to be a place of inclusiveness and a place the nations were drawn to became a symbol of Jewish elitism, exclusivity and discrimination and an idol in itself. So much so that God removed it.

God is disappointed with the worship he finds in the temple. Jesus anger is because it has become once again a symbol of elitism and religious rigmarole rather than a place where true worship takes place. Jesus anger shows us the gap between God’s expectation and reality.

What counts is relationship not religion. That’s what the temple was designed for, it was to be a place of access, it was to be a place the nations looked to, flocked to when they realised the goodness of God and instead it had become the very opposite.

Do you see the gulf between Jesus expectations and the worshipping reality? I wonder what would Jesus say about our worship? What would Jesus say to our churches, if he walked in through that door what emotions would we see cross his face? Would he find religious rigmarole, would he find us going through the motions?

What about in terms of those we exclude? Are we as inclusive with the gospel as he is? Do we welcome everyone, do we take the gospel to everyone? Or are there people we right off, does the way we do worship exclude some just as the Jews were doing? It may not be Gentiles but have we in Britain made it the gospel of the middle class for the middle class? Have we abandoned sharing the gospel with those of other faiths? Who do we exclude by the way we deliver the gospel, by the way we conduct our worship, by our venues?

Easter is about inclusion, it is about the possibility of salvation for the world. Do we dare limit who we take the gospel too?

What is worship

Last week we used this video on Sunday morning, click on the link to watch it again. Click here.

Why religion is never enough

Do you think of yourself as religious? My hunch is that actually we could all do religion pretty well, it would look different from person to person but we could all do religion. We like rules and laws from a young age and religion can provide us with those things.

What do you expect Jesus to say about religion? Luke 11:37-54 gives us a bit of a jolt! Jesus says religion is not enough. He is speaking to the Pharisees and religious experts of his day, they did religion brilliantly - they had ways of washing and strict rules about giving - but Jesus comments to them are quite devastating. He calls them 'fools' (v40), now that's not particularly polite in any circumstances but especially when sat around someones dinner table. But Jesus doesn't do it because he wants to be cruel he does it because he wants them to repent.

You see a fool in the Old Testament was someone who was blind towards God and therefore couldn't respond to God properly. That was the religious leaders problem, and Jesus does the most loving thing someone can, he risks opposition and offence by warning them of their mistake and the danger it placed them in.

You don't need religion he says you need a change of heart. Your religion isn't enough to make you right with God. He then goes on to show that he has come to do that, the prophets all point to him and if they want to honour them they need to recognise who he is and what he has come to do. To win a people for God who can come into a holy God's presence not because of religion but because they trust in Jesus who will make them right with God.

The tragedy is 2000 years later, I can still find myself slipping back into religion mode rather than trsuting in God's means of being right with him his Son dying in my place.

Aren't all good people Christians

This is one of the enduring legacies of Christendom. Is can be expressed as aren't all good people Christians or sometimes as I'm a Christian, I'm British. It is the assumption that a set of moral characteristics or nationalistic ones makes you a Christian.

We need to be probing and getting people to examine that idea. What is a Christian? is the fundamental question to ask. Once people see that actually to be a Christian is to be a follower of Jesus Christ it begins to raise questions about whether they are or not. It also may enable us to talk about who Jesus was and what he did with them.

The other question to ask is what good is. How do you decide who is good. Romans 3 says "there is no one who does good, not even one." That is quite a stunning statement, and provokes much discussion and debate. Ultimately the question of good is one of relationship to God, whether we have rebelled against God and decided to determine right and wrong for ourselves is the decisive factor in determining whether we are good or not.

However, this question also allows us to ask one back - what do you think grace is? Can a bad person go to heaven?

To follow

I have been thinking about what it means to try and build a church around discipleship. What would it look like? How do you go about facilitating it? What about those people who would find it uncomfortable? Is it something that, like an iceberg, is glimpsed but largely goes on under the surface? Or should it be integral to everything we do?

I know that one of the most valuable influences on my Christian growth has been firstly as a 14 year old being in a bible study group of young 20s, I may not always have understood everything but it was fascinating to see debate and passion about what the bible said. It also led to relationships where people could challenge me about my Christian living, just what I needed in my later teen years.

Then at uni I met for a reading group with the UCCF staff worker and some other students, then later on 1-2-1 with another Christian, both significant influences. I needed people to debate and discuss with, to bounce ideas off, to work out my theology and Christian living with.

I guess that's partly why I think discipleship is so important, it has played a huge part in my growth as a Christian. Its why I have met with 4 young men over the last 4 years for 35-60 mins a week to study the Bible, encourage one another and pray for each other. I get as much out of it as they do, if not more.

But would it be possible to get everyone in a church involved in just such a relationship? I guess one fear we all have is what do we do. In my experience it needs to be kept fairly simple - read a passage of the Bible together and chat about what surprises you, what makes you say wow, what does it teach us about God, what about Christ and what about yourself? What does it mean to put it into action? Spend time together chatting about your week, pray for each others needs, families, and spiritual health (prayer, leading family, bible reading, evangelism). Or alternatively use the same bible reading notes and then discuss what you have read in the last seven days.

You don't have to challenge the socks off each other every week, but be ready to issue a challenge when it comes. Above all such things must be built on relationship - give it time, do things together, and keep the things you pray about between the two of you unless you agree otherwise.

Is it possible to see a whole church built around relationships like this? Yes. How do you make it happen? You find someone and ask them if they want to meet up and then you commit to it.

Am I being discipled?

We are all very familiar with the great commission in Matthew 28, "go and make disciples of all nations..." It is a clarion call to evangelism that we hear time and again, but we need to just have a double take, the call is not to go and 'get decisions' it is to go and "make disciples". A disciple is one who answers Jesus call to "Follow me", it is not hit and run evangelism Jesus calls us to but long term discipleship.

The gospels have much to say about the cost of discipleship, it is described as carrying your cross, it is costly, it involves rejection, it involves showing mercy to those who hate you... Discipleship is not easy, but as you read through the gospels you see Jesus gradually moulding the disciples, asking them challenging questions, confronting them, opposing them, giving them challenging tasks but always discipling them.

That's why come Acts the previously fearful apostles are ready to form the church, to lead it, to carry their crosses, to be persecuted, to be opposed, to face death. They know Jesus is the Messiah and they are witnesses of the resurrection and they have also been discipled, they have been trained, taught, and nurtured in the faith.

Is that going on today? Am I in a discipleship relationship? In our world of time constraints, deadlines and the like I wonder if this has been lost. If we want to see young people become the next generation of church leaders we must invest time into discipling them, if we want to grow in our faith we must ensure we are being discipled by someone older and wiser in the faith. It is what we see modelled with Paul and Timothy and as Paul writes to Timothy he says "what you have heard from me...entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also." That is discipleship.

The challenge is will I make time for it? Will the church help facilitate it? How can it do so? We must because it is what we are called to do, disciples are fruit that lasts.