Guess Who! Discovering Christ for Yourself

In Mark 8:27-30 we come to a passage that has typically been titled Peter’s Declaration about Jesus.  This passage is paralleled in Matt. 16:13-20 and Luke 9:18-21.  Jesus asks the disciples who people say that he is.  The disciples answer saying, “That you are John the Baptist and others Elijah and yet others one of the prophets.”  Jesus responds, “But who do YOU say that I am?” 

That’s just it, isn’t it?  We live in a world that yells out with many voices who Jesus is.  Some say he didn’t exist, others say he was just a good man, a nutcase, a prophet but not God, etc.  I am sure you have heard them all.  It can become rather overwhelming can’t it?  However, at the end of the day what matters is your response to that question.  Who do you say that Jesus is? 

You see, Jesus came declaring, “Repent! For the kingdom of God is at hand (near).”  Yet actions speak louder than words don’t they.  And so Jesus spent time healing the sick and the demoniac;  he forgave sins and restored the blind and lame;  he challenged the established religious institutions and taught antithesis on flawed interpretations.  He spent time proving before the eyes of many but particularly his disciples that indeed the kingdom was near and here as the prophets had foretold. 

Was the kingdom near and here?  It is in Peter’s answer to Jesus’ question that revealed his understanding.  Peter says, “You are the Christ/Messiah.”  In the other synoptic gospels he adds, “…the son of the living God.”  Indeed Peter had come to a realization over time that Jesus was after all telling the truth and was the king of this new kingdom!  Peter had spent time with Jesus, saw him in action, heard the words of his message, the compassion that defined his life, and fellowshiped with him.  And we can but only imagine those quiet times at night sitting on a hill overlooking the Sea of Galilee, when Peter shared his most special moments in the quiet presence of his master. 

Friend, it is only when you spend time with Jesus that you are rightly able to discern who he is.  Push aside the voices of the world that would tell you who he is but do not know him.  Pursue him personally and let that experience in the presence of his Spirit speak to you.  And like our dear brother Peter, I believe you will come to that most intimate moment when it will click and you will say, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!”

Amen

 

All Things In Common: Jesus’ Vision of the Church Community

We are all familiar with the story in the gospels of the “Rich Young Ruler” who comes to Jesus and asks him what he must do to “inherit eternal life.”  I suspect most Christians could summarize the entire story found in Matthew 19:16-30 and Mark 10:17-31.  However once the young ruler walks away disappointed and sad at Jesus telling him to sell all of his stuff and give it to the poor, we tend to forget what comes after.  With a few more exchange of words we heard Jesus conclude by saying, “I tell you the truth, no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life.  But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”  (Mark 10:29-31; NIV; italics mine for emphasis). 

One will note at first that Mark and Matthew differ in their time fulfillment emphasis of when this 100X reimbursement will take place.  Matthew leaves it open-ended and does not quite mention when he thinks it will be fulfilled.  His addition of the words “and eternal life” almost seem to place it in the future when the Lord returns and the consummation of all things has occurred.  Yet he could very well see it the way Mark sees it, that the fulfillment or at least the beginning of it is received “in this present age.”  If so what does this mean for the follower of Christ NOW?  Some have interpreted this as a hundred fold return in a Prosperity Gospel manner of understanding things.  I have heard several Prosperity Gospel sermons about this passage supporting the belief that God wants us to have many homes and properties–NOW!  Yet this seems a bit too shallow of an interpretation for me.

A couple of thoughts come to my mind at this point.  First, I consider Mark’s audience.  They are part of the early church.  They are a mostly a gentile congregation in Asia-minor.  There is no doubt that they are under persecution from the circumcised Jews as well as pockets of the Roman Empire, as evidence in Jesus’ parenthetical addition to his list of 100-fold returns, “and persecutions”.  Many of them have lost everything for the gospel and choosing to follow Christ.  Many have lost their jobs for not being willing to join or remain in working guilds that require one to bow to Caesar to be part of the guild.  Others have been rejected by family members for joining this new sect of Judaism or leaving their true Jewish tradition as circumcised Jews believed

Secondly, the flavor of this passage does not seem to me to taste what the Prosperity Gospel interpreters taste here.  I think Jesus’ message of a sort of reimbursement is deeper and flows more with the overall message of the New Testament.  I think what Jesus envisions here is what Paul speaks of in Ephesians.  In 1:5 he speaks of us being adopted as God’s children, therefore having a new family.  In 3:15 he speaks of our “whole family in heaven.”  This is what Jesus means by a 100-fold return of brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers etc.  As mentioned in a previous article, we are leaving one family for another.  Does this mean we do away with the biological family? By no means, it means we are adopted into a new one with the hope of bringing the biological ones along.  But if the biological family rejects Christ, they are not to come between you and the Lord.  You see this of Jesus’ life as well in Mark 6:1-6 and 3:31-35.

Yet there is a third reason that jumps out at me like a hungry hyena.  In Acts 2:42-47 we find the very beginnings of the fulfillment of what Jesus was speaking of in the gospels above.  We see the new family of believers doing exactly that, living this new Christian life as a community of believers.  Luke reveals to us that these early Christians:

 42They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. 44All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. 46Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

This, I believe, is what Jesus was talking about—a community.  He was speaking of the Church community and this is what the gospels were emphasizing.  But Mark wanted to make sure that unlike Matthew, we were told that it is for “this present age.”  What you see in Acts is that these believers were not a self serving people and they were definitely not storing up treasures on earth.  They were selling their possessions and goods so that they could help and provide for ANYONE in need.  Do you see this in the Church today?  Is this what the guys on TV are preaching?  I think not. 

Jesus foresaw, if you will, a community of believers who left their homes, fields and families only to inherit a new community of homes, fields and families.  It may be illustrated in this way.  Imagine a man who left all those things behind to follow Christ.  As he wanders through the street a Christian land owner sees that this fellow looks a bit glum and anxious.  As he asks this wanderer who he is and what he’s doing, the wanderer tells this Christian that he is a fellow believer who has just left so much behind including his home.  The Christian tells his brother-wanderer, “Do not fear, mi casa sui casa.  What is mine is yours. “ 

This is how the new community was meant to live.  We are to have all things in common so that everything I have is not mine but the community of believers’.  We are to lend but never have to borrow.  Why?  Because if I see all these things as ours, I am not really borrowing am I?  We are sharing.  If the Church was living in such a manner, what difference do you think it would make?  I think we would be a lot better off and fewer Christians would be struggling in as many areas as they are.

  Why are so many Christians lonely?  They should have 100-fold of a family.

Why are so many Christians financially struggling?  They should be helped by their new family 100-fold.

Why are many Christians homeless in so many ways?  They should have 100-fold homes. 

I am not talking about get rich quick schemes or people working the system.  I am talking about a selfless community where we all work for the common good of the Church and each other.  What does it look like when we don’t live out the vision of Christ?  It looks like a minister living in a $3 million dollar home driving a Rolls Royce while his brother-wanderer lives in a shack, barely a meal a day, walking to his three minimum wage jobs, while trying to feed his family.  It looks like a local church taking up constant offerings to build a new $12 million church instead of taking up offerings so that the money can be distributed in such a way to help those in need.