James’s Blog: God in a Box.

James’s Blog: God in a Box.

I’ve been making my way through the account of Jesus’ life found in Mark’s Gospel recently, and though serendipity I ended up reading the Passion narrative during the week leading up to Christmas. The Resurrection arrived on Christmas day itself.

On Christmas Eve I was struck by the comparison offered in Mark 15:42-47. The season demanded that we remember the Christ being placed gently in the manger by his parents, and there I was reading about how another Joseph placed him gently in a tomb carved from rock.

Neither could hold him of course. He grew too big for the manger, and grew too alive for the tomb.

Such is the way of Jesus. He will not be ‘placed’ anywhere for too long. He cannot be held, trapped, nailed down, cornered, pinned, ensnared, bound, boxed in or bottled up. You may as well try and glue the sea in place. We may be more comfortable if he stays in the manger, the gentle spirit of Christmas goodwill, but he will refuse your kind offer of accommodation, and wander off somewhere, life and mayhem following in his wake. Despite all the trouble he’s caused me at times, he is without a doubt my favourite person ever. And despite all the trouble I’ve caused him, he seems quite fond of me too.

So when the Messiah who won’t sit still sticks his head through your doorway and says, “I’m going out for a while. Fancy a walk?” what can you do? What can you say to that kind of invitation?

James’s Blog: A King of Two Halves.

James’s Blog:  A King of Two Halves.

I’ve been doing some work for a sermon on Jesus as the Messiah, and it got me thinking. Israel had been waiting and watching for the Messiah for hundreds of years and when he finally appeared they missed him, because he wasn’t the sort of Messiah they were looking for. They had been expecting a great political and military leader to set the nation’s wrongs right – a new King David. What they got was a homeless preacher who was obsessed with healing the sick and lacked nationalistic zeal. What I realised yesterday was that the Old Testament makes it kind of obvious exactly how the Messiah would follow in David’s footsteps.

David’s kingship is a story of two halves. His rise to the throne is told in 1 Samuel, and is full of some very well known stories. David slays Goliath and flees from Saul, fearing for his life, and eventually forgiving the man who persecutes him. He faces many obstacles, but the theme that comes through is best spelt out in 1 Samuel 30:6 – ‘David was greatly distressed because the men were talking of stoning him…But David found strength in the LORD his God.”

By contrast, the story of David’s kingship in 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles is very different. Although he achieves many important things, the stories that stand out from David’s reign are not like those that went before. Instead, we hear about his adultery with Bathsheba and murder of her husband; his trust shifting from God to his army; being told that he will not build the temple because he has too much blood on his hands; a brutal civil war because he was a bad father to Absalom. These are all things that happenedĀ after David reached the pinnacle of power. Yes, he was a great leader and a godly man, but the Old Testament isn’t shy about his failings. It’s almost as if those who compiled the stories want to say that David, the refugee shepherd of misfits, trumps David, the mighty warrior king, every time.

If the people of Israel had seen that, then they might have been able to make sense of Jesus. Of the two halves of the great king’s story, it makes perfect sense that the Messianic Son of David would base his life on the first. After all, Jesus himself said that it was the poor in spirit who would lay hold of the Kingdom of God, not the influential power brokers. I have to confess that I can’t understand those Christians who think that the best way to further God’s purposes is from the throne, from a position of strength and power. I wonder if they’ve even ever read their Bibles.

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