TEACHING

LENT 5, SUNDAY, MARCH 26, 2023
10:30 AM (kids! + communion)
FIVE SHIFTS OF TRUE REVIVAL + REFORMATION
A reformation is a period of recalibration and course-correction. Any community around for as long as the church will experience inevitable drift over time. Yet the Spirit has worked again and again throughout history to draw the church back toward its center. Key moments come when particular ideas and practices are rethought and core truths are rediscovered.

Rapid cultural and technological change, clergy scandals, church divisions, and political turmoil have resulted in a period where “deconstruction” is the buzzword. Many Christians find themselves rethinking their faith, and many outside the church dismiss Christianity as having nothing true or relevant left to say to the world.

THE JOURNEY TODAY: Discovering Shift One to One and ½: Jesus Glasses to On the Road With Jesus
The reformation we need in the post-Christian, deconstructing North American church is Centering on Jesus. We unpack Luke 24 while we walk on the road to Emmaus with Jesus and the early disciples. Two big ideas give us five changes in how we do Christianity: “One: God always looks like Jesus, and Two: all scripture is properly read through him.” 

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Teaching Notes:

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Pilgrim Church Vision: Love | Invite | Flourish | Root
We exist to love our city and to invite our neighbours to flourish by rooting our lives in the outrageous love and life of Jesus. 
[Jeremiah 29:7, 1 John 4:7-8, Ephesians 3:17, Col 1:17, Col. 1:28-29, John 13:34-35, John 3:16-17]

Quotes: 
“God always looks like Jesus, and all scripture is properly read through him.” -Edem Morny

John 2:22 says that Jesus had to die and be resurrected before his disciples understood him and how he read scripture. 

“Once Jesus’ disciples grasped the paradigm shifts produced by Jesus, they never viewed the Bible the same way again. The disciple’s views of God were permanently changed because Jesus became their primary way to understand God. And scripture became all about God as they understood how Jesus explained and modeled him.” -Edem Morny

BIG IDEA:
“(1)God always looks like Jesus, and (2)all scripture is properly read through him.” 
When a person needs to be resurrected before they can be understood, we are no longer in “ordinary” territory. Add onto this the fact that resurrection itself is not “ordinary,” and we may be dealing with something more radical than we’ve been taught to think.

Once Jesus’ disciples grasped the paradigm shifts produced by Jesus, they never viewed the Bible the same way again. The disciples’ views of God were permanently changed because Jesus became their primary way to understand God. And scripture became all about God as they understood how Jesus explained and modeled him. (Col. 1:15, Luke 15:1-2; 24:13-35).

REVIEW: Forgetting the Jesus Glasses...
“...instead of viewing Jesus as the “pleasant side of God,” we should look at Jesus as the accurate picture of what God looks like.” -Edem Morny

 “The problem for many Christians might be that we think Jesus is too good to be true and need to supplement him with other portraits of God we see elsewhere, including in scriptures that seem in tension with his character.” 

• The false leaders in Corinth and Galatians were doing this! 

 

• When a person needs to be resurrected before they can be understood, we are no longer in “ordinary” territory. Add onto this the fact that resurrection itself is not “ordinary,” and we may be dealing with something more radical than we’ve been taught to think.

ON the Road: Luke 24:25-44 

“For that we need to learn how to read the scriptures; and for that we need, as our teacher, the risen Lord Himself. This passage forms one of the most powerful encouragements to pray for His presence, and sense of guidance, whenever we study the Bible, individually, in pairs or in larger groups. We need to be prepared for him to rebuke our foolish and faithless readings, and to listen for his fresh interpretation. Only with him at our side will our hearts burn within us (V. 32), and lead us to the point where we see him face to face” (NT Wright, LFE, 295).

• Once Jesus’ disciples grasped the paradigm shifts produced by Jesus, they never viewed the Bible the same way again.
  • The disciples’ views of God were permanently changed because Jesus became their primary way to understand God. And scripture became all about God as they understood how Jesus explained and modeled him.
  • It is such a shift in paradigm that can lead to a conclusion like, “The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation” (Col. 1:15).
• We propose that the only way a trained Pharisee in first century Judaism can come to the conclusion that the law was a “guardian” until faith came was because they had caught a vision that Yahweh had always been like Jesus.
  • This meant that scripture (at this point only the books of the Old Testament) needed to be read differently so that both Jews and Gentiles now could be included in the people of God simply by trusting in Jesus.
    • Perhaps we’ve gotten so used to reading those words we haven’t been hit by how radical that claim was to make in Paul’s time.
• Another example in which scripture is read differently in light of Jesus is in Paul’s instructions to the Roman house churches about how to respond to evil and persecution meted out to them.
  • Paul tells the Roman house churches in Romans 12 to “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse” (v 14) and “Do not repay anyone evil for evil” (v 17).
    • In support of this teaching, Paul quotes from Proverbs 25:21-22 of the Hebrew Bible - “if your enemy is hungry, feed him …”
      • The same Hebrew Bible also contains Deut. 19:21 - “Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.”
    • But Paul is convinced that God has always looked like Jesus, and so he prioritizes the portions of scripture that reflect this revelation of who God is.

APPLICATION || Repenting And Next Steps

1. Turning back towards a God who looks like Jesus
2. Reverse Prosperity Gospel
3. Death of the Monster God If God has always been like Jesus, willing to be put to naked and shameful death by crucifixion for humanity who were “sinners” without exception (Rom 5:6-8)
4. Inclusion Based on Universal Sin and Divine Love Contagious Holiness and Holy Spirit Timeline
5. Jesus Only - Gets you EVERYTHING
   1. Take Jesus seriously and believe that this is fully what our Father looks like.
   2. Then our ways will look less like Marduk, the chief deity of the Babylonian empire and be more like Jesus, God who became flesh and tabernacled on earth among people, experiencing all their struggles but not lifting a finger against his enemies.
6. House of Healing towards Holiness Enraptured by a vision of a loving God who accommodates our failures while desiring and working for what is best for us. Become a place of rehabilitation and restoration instead of a place of retributive judgment and self-righteousness.

For Reflection and Discussion

1. Reread Luke 24:13-35 and the other passages
   
2. What kept Cleopas and his companion from recognizing Jesus?
   
3. What are the similarities and differences between the meal in verses 28-35 and the very first meal recorded in the Bible in Genesis 3:6-7?
   
4. Luke intended that his readers should see the simple meal here pointing forward to the breaking of bread, which quickly became the central symbolic action of Jesus’ people. Jesus was recognized by the couple in the breaking of bread (v.35). How is he also made known to us in the Lord’s Supper or Communion? 
   
5. Share some contrasts that you see between how Jesus - the spitting image of God - portrays God and how popular religion or culture portrays God.
   
6. What is one way in which your church community or tradition needs to take the portrayal of God by Jesus more seriously? How do you believe such a change might transform the way the church engages the world?
   
7. How do you think your perception of God shapes how you relate to others? Does it?
   
8. Can you remember a passage in scripture which causes you the most discomfort around God’s character? If you applied the perspective that God looks like Jesus and that scripture is a product of both human and divine agency, how might that change how you understand the meaning of that passage of scripture?