Deep Creek Anglican Church Blog

Yesterday we began a short Sunday series inspired by William Willimon’s Why Jesus? This book will challenge you; amidst the delightful turns of phrase and humour, Willimon enables the reader to see the Jesus of the gospels – the Jesus revealed to the first disciples.

In lots of ways, we  seek to make Jesus ‘safe’ – but He won’t be tamed, contained or constrained by us.  He cannot be reduced to a set of doctrinal propositions.  As Ben Witherington states, “Jesus is enigmatic as well as charismatic.”  You can read Witherington’s excellent review of Why Jesus? here, here, here, here, here, and finally here.

Here are a selection of highlights from the opening chapters by Willimon:

• “in reading this book, you are taking the risk of getting discombobulated , commandeered, and befriended by the most interesting person in the world” (xiii)
• “…in Jesus Christ, God slipped in among us…All the Gospels present Jesus on a continual road trip – God in motion, urgently making a way to us in defeat of the desert in which we wander” (1)
• “It’s emblematic of Jesus.  Despite his disciples’ betrayal, on the first day of his resurrected life, there’s Jesus with nothing more pressing to do than immediately return to the ragtag group of Galilean losers who had failed him.” (4)
• “Jesus tends to come to people where they are but rarely leaves them as they were” (9)
• “Jesus brings peace, but his peace often brings disruption and despair before it is sensed as peace” (13)
• “The ange’s song is not only a birth announcement; it’s a war chant, a proclamation announcing a change of government.  There is a new king in town…” (14)
• “At the heart of the universe is not dog-eat-dog, survival-of-the-fittest struggle and war.  At the heart of it all is a God who is peaceful, loving, long-suffering, forgiving, and gracious.  Jesus looks like God.  God looks like Jesus” (19)
• “Parables take you deeper.  They are a complex, deep way of thinking about the world.  It is possible to think too quickly or superficially that you know Jesus.  Then, you can pigeonhole Jesus and forget about him, thinking about Jesus in about the same way you think about everything else” (29)
• “Jesus is God with us, not God controlled, explained, and tamed by us.  Jesus not only spoke in parables; Jesus is a parable” (30)

Why Jesus? is a great read – profoundly challenging and wonderfully encouraging.  But better than this book, get to know the Jesus of the gospels, journey through life with Him – it is an exciting and stimulating ride, regardless of the specific circumstances of your life.

The Bible’s claim to the uniqueness of Jesus Christ raises numerous ‘interaction’ issues – not only in western multi-cultural societies of our time but also back in 1st C Palestine and the Greco-Roman world.

Here are two helpful insights on Jesus and other religions, dealing with two different questions:

• can all religions be equally right?
• how should followers of Jesus interact with those of different faith?

Tim Keller tackles the first question at a Veritas Forum at UC Berkeley:

John Armstrong tackles the second question in a recent blog post, What about other religions? I think John strikes the right biblical balance when he concludes:

“Our message to people of other faiths ought not to be an all-out attack on them as the teachers of a false religion and the followers of the doctrines of demons. If you read the New Testament the Lord Jesus himself had some rather unkind things to say about faith and religion but it was almost universally pointed at those who practiced a conservative form of Judaism who believed in the supernatural but lived as if their version of the faith was the beginning and end of all truth and practice. We can present Jesus as the “way, the truth and the life” without attacking others and their faith. We can see the “ethical” elements in other religions and have dialog for common cause in society. In the process we had best be very careful we never surrender the finality of God’s revelation in Jesus, who leads us to the Father. But we can, and should, do all of this while we also embrace the mystery of some things that we do not fully understand.

God will be the judge. I do not tell specific people that they are going to hell. Why? For starters, I do not know that for certain. Second, they could still believe on Christ in the future and become Christian believers. Third, I do not finally know how God will treat different people and different faiths in his final, just judgment. What I do know is that God’s judgment is very real and I must warn people of the reality of this just judgment….”

Today I picked up a copy of The Radical Disciple by John Stott, perhaps his last book(?).  His ‘Postscript: Farewell’ at the back of the book is very touching.  What a great man of God and how blessed we have been through his writings.

As I flicked the pages to get an overview of the book, I came across this great quote:

“…we must continue to affirm the uniqueness and finality of Jesus Christ.  For he is unique in his incarnation (the one and only God-man); unique in his atonement (only he has died for the sins of the world); and unique in his resurrection (only he has conquered death).  And since in no other person but Jesus of Nazareth did God first become human (in his birth), then bear our sins (in his death), and then triumph over death (in his resurrection), he is uniquely competent to save sinners.  So we may talk about Alexander the Great, Charles the Great and Napoleon the Great, but not Jesus the Great.  He is not the Great – he is the Only.  There is nobody like him.  He has no rival and no successor.”

Prison Fellowship, founded by Chuck Colson, has been, and continues to be, wonderfully used by the Lord to bring transformation in prisoners lives throughout the world, their families and indeed communities.

Deep Creek Anglican Church has had a long association with Prison Fellowship with members of our church undertaking key leadership roles in Prison Fellowship Victoria and in the South Pacific.  Our young adults have also been active in PF Camps for Kids & Teens.

Chuck Colson has recently been interviewed by Kathryn Schultz of Slate, a magazine that has described his story as how “a Watergate crook became America’s greatest Christian conservative.”

The interview is well worth reading.  Here are just as few responses that caught my attention:

If Watergate didn’t prompt your conversion, do you feel that your conversion affected how you handled Watergate?

Oh, yes. One day I did a show with Mike Wallace. This was when Watergate was absolutely at a fever pitch and the trials were going to begin and by this time I’d been indicted. He asked me how I could be a friend of Richard Nixon, given the things Nixon had said on the tapes. And I said, “Well, he’s my friend and I don’t turn my back on my friend.”

I got home that night and realized that there was no way I could be a good witness for Christ if I compromised on what I could say, or was not as fully honest as I could be. So I decided the best thing I could do was plead guilty. I sent my lawyers into the Watergate prosecutors to say I wouldn’t plea bargain, and that I had not done what they charged me with [conspiracy to cover up the Watergate burglary], but here was something I had done [obstruction of justice]—and if they wanted to charge me with that, I would plead guilty. And I did.

Christianity also preaches humility and an awareness of our human fallibility. Yet evangelicalism presupposes that you have access to the absolute truth about God. How do you square those two things?

I don’t think it’s hard to do at all. If you’re a Jew, you believe exactly what you’re taught, which is that you’re born of the covenant people. If you’re a Hindu, you believe exactly what Hindus teach about reincarnation, about karma and consciousness, about the idea that we are a dream in the mind of God. These are all truth claims. And I respect everybody’s right to make a truth claim.

My truth claim is that Jesus says, “No man comes to the Father but through me.” Therefore I want people to come to Christ because I want them to be forgiven of their sins. It is a truth claim, but it is not an exclusive truth claim, because what Jesus is saying is: Everybody is free to come. You don’t have to be born in to a certain heritage. You have to believe a certain thing. Everybody is free to come and be forgiven. That’s my truth claim.

What exactly does it mean to “respect” everyone’s truth claims, given that in the end you’re trying to get everyone to recognize your truth claim as the real one?

We can’t all be right. Ultimately I want everybody to find what I have found in life, I want to share it with people. But I also recognize that all religions have good things in them, and a lot of them share many common values. I believe moral teaching is universal, I believe we are made with a desire for certain goals and outcomes, that that’s just the way we’re wired. So Hindus have some very good values, Muslims do too. I don’t feel exclusive. I think a lot can be learned from different faiths.

In the end, you’ve got to decide for you, what is the right road to God? And Christians in that sense don’t have any wiggle room.  We’re not given any leeway in that.

We’re about half way through our series from the Book of Proverbs – Living Wisely.  Today our Young Families and Young Adult pastor, James Duff, preached on the need for us to be truthful.  In his message, James reminded us of the famous and absolute statement by Jesus, recorded in John 14:6

“I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

Jesus authenticated the truthfulness of this truth statement through His resurrection from the dead.  Seems straightforward, but so does calling a red balloon a ‘red balloon’:

Greg Sheridan, Foreign Editor for The Australian, pens a column today on how Christianity is “massively under-regarded in Australia.”  His focus is primarily on the Catholic Church.  He comments that in the last half century, the church has been harmed by the sexual abuse scandal and liberalism.  On the latter he writes:

“A liberalism that softens all differences, that abolishes almost all rules, that says one thing is as good as another, may be exhilarating at first in the sense of licence it brings, but ultimately it is enervating. After all, Jesus Christ might have been just a man, in which case Dawkins, Hitchens et al are right. He might be just a prophet leading up to Mohammed, the last prophet, in which case Islam is right. Or he might be the son of God made man to redeem humanity’s sins, in which case the Catholic Church is right.

One thing is certain: he couldn’t be all three, and in the end you must make a choice. A religious liberalism that tries to avoid these choices leads nowhere.”

‘Who is Jesus Christ?’ is THE question to be answered before we consider our response to Him.

If you love New York City (as I do) and find Woody Allen….at a minimum, very interesting, then it’s worth reading the recent New York Times article, Woody Allen on Faith, Fortune Tellers and New York.

Amongst lots of interesting comments on the arts, and film making in NYC, there were two comments that really stood out to me.  He was asked:

Q. How do you feel about the aging process?

And his response?

A. Well, I’m against it. [laughs] I think it has nothing to recommend it. You don’t gain any wisdom as the years go by. You fall apart, is what happens.”

Woody’s comment on wisdom caught my attention.  As I sought to say on Sunday, in the first week on a series from the Book of Proverbs, there’s a lot more to wiisdom that simply clocking up the years!

And then on the subjects of the supernatural and faith, Woody remarked:

“…there’s no real difference between a fortune teller or a fortune cookie and any of the organized religions. They’re all equally valid or invalid, really. And equally helpful….I was interested in the concept of faith in something. This sounds so bleak when I say it, but we need some delusions to keep us going. And the people who successfully delude themselves seem happier than the people who can’t.”

I find such a relativistic perspective very sad.

In stark contrast, the Apostle John had an unshakeable faith in Jesus Christ (who is indeed Reality):

^“1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²He was with God in the beginning.

³Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made. ⁴In Him was life, and that life was the light of men. ⁵The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

¹⁰He was in the world, and though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognize Him. ¹¹He came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive Him. ¹²Yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God— ¹³children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

¹⁴The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”  (John 1:1-4, 10-14)

^“1That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. ²The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. ³We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.” (1 John 1:1-3)

You can never graduate beyond Christ  - neither as an individual nor as a church.  So begins chapter two of Jesus Manifesto: Restoring the Supremacy and Sovereignty of Jesus Christ.

And then our authors launch into Paul’s Letter to the Colossians.  My favourite part of the New Testament.  And this is no dry treatment.   Here are some samples:

• In discussing the false teaching in Colossae, “What a unique way to combat error – drown God’s people in a revelation of the image of the invisible God, who delivered us from darkness, redeemed us, and made us part of His eternal kingdom.”
• “The Christ that the Colossians knew was simply too small.  That was why they became susceptible to chasing other things – including religious ones – in the first place.  Sound familiar?”
• On Christ as a creator, “This Christ is not only before all things, but the entire universe is held together in Him.  He is the cohesive force, the glue and gravitational pull that holds all created elements together.  He is creation’s great adhesive, the hinge upon which the whole cosmos turns.  Remove Christ, and the entire universe disintegrates.”
• On Christ’s work on the Cross, “…by His death, He slew all negative things.  He brought the old creation to a complete end.  Better, the old creation died having made peace with its Creator.  And then, by His resurrection, He brought forth from the womb of death an unprecedented creation – of which you are a part.”
• In considering Col 3:11, “In a church that is filled with leader-oholics, justice-oholics, commandment-oholics, and doctrine-oholics, it is essential that we comprehend how Paul (the go-to-guy for all matters “doctrinal”) understood his calling as an apostle.  For Paul, his apostolate was not to advance a defining array of doctrines or a checklist of propositions.  As far as he was concerned, our faith is not even a relationship with a set of doctrines or commandments.  Christianity is a relationship with Jesus the Christ.  When things go wrong….it’s because we have lost our “first love”…or never had it in the first place.”  That’s worth chewing on.  Holding Christ central and the focus of greatest devotion is what the the Ephesian church did not embrace – to its great loss.

This is just a sampling of a truly great chapter.  But better than this chapter is to meditate on the Letter to the Colossians and ask the Holy Spirit to grew your love for the Lord Jesus.

“Jesus Christ is the gravitational pull that brings everything together and gives it meaning.  Without Him, all things lose their value.”

That’s how our Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola begin Jesus Manifesto: Restoring the Supremacy and Sovereignty of Jesus Christ.  We’re going to journey with them in their exploration of one Person – Jesus Christ.

Listen to the goal of Jesus Manifesto:

“We hope to present our Lord to you in such a way that you cannot help but love Him, that you cannot help but fall at His feet and give Him your undying devotion – not out of guilt, duty, obligation, or fear, but because your heart has been captured by a glimpse of the greatest person this world has ever known, Jesus Christ.  Out of such love flows everything else.”

Chapter One: The Occupation of All Things

This is a power packed opening chapter.  My posts are to encourage you to read Jesus Manifesto – not to be a substitute.

Who is the focus of this book, this chapter, the Father and Holy Spirit, the angelic hosts, the creation, the Bible? JESUS!  Here is a sampling:

• when God expresses Himself, it is Christ
• Christ is the only thing that the Spirit reveals
• all of the holy angelic hosts live to worship and serve the Lord Jesus
• the whole created order was created by, in, through, and for Christ – and it waits for deliverance from the bondage of corruption and to be filled with Jesus’ ‘infinite sweetness’
• the Old Testament Scriptures should be understood in the light of Jesus Christ
• the New Testament writers were completely consumed with Christ.

Jesus is the God of the whole show – the centre, corners and edges.  And therefore the practical implications of His supremacy know no bounds, viz:

• we will naturally and consistently speak about Him – Jesus will be our chief occupation
• we will always show Him from the pages of Scripture
• nothing is worth pursuing outside of Christ

The concluding words of this opening presentation on the magnificence of Jesus are very challenging:

“A spellbinding apprehension of Jesus by our hearts wipes everything else off the table.  Jesus bests all things.  He dwarfs every competitor.  Concisely, a person who is fully occupied with Christ, who knows Him well, and who is in touch with Him through daily fellowship can boldly say, “Christ is all I need.  you can strip everything else away from me, and I would still be left with Christ….”

We have just completed a four-week series on Counterfeit gods.  Tim Keller’s book was very thought provoking and stimulating.  Especially the evocative images of the heart as an idol factory, converting ‘things’ (mostly good) into ultimate things.  All the false gods in our lives – that promise the world and never deliver on their marketing – fall away when our lives are centred on the Lord Jesus, the supreme Lord of all.  The One who is:

‘Above all powers, above all kings
Above all nature and all created things
Above all wisdom and all the ways of man
You were here before the world began

Above all kingdoms, above all thrones
Above all wonders the world has ever known
Above all wealth and treasures of the earth
There’s no way to measure what You’re worth’