Mustardseed Talks

People have all manner of expectations regarding the nature of God. There is a sense of mystery associated with God - God is beyond our understanding. We assume God will act according to righteousness - God is just. Generations have known it is a fearful thing to be found the enemy of God - God is powerful to avenge wrongs that have been done. When God ultimately appears on the stage of human history there are a number of challenges to our assumptions and what we think we know. God comes to us in the form of a baby… Jesus. God’s mystery deepens even as it becomes more tangible. God’s justice is revealed in kindness and God is never more power than in this expression of vulnerability.

Write your goals in ink and your plans in pencil! God is well able to work all circumstances for good - even those things that are so far beyond what we could have possibly anticipated.

The pressure to conform has probably always been a feature of human experience. Our need to fit in with social groups means that we are very attuned to being the people we believe we are supposed to be in order to be accepted by the group. God sees through our best efforts to be someone we are not. God's Holy Spirit gently calls us to be the best expression of who we are.

Most of us have grown up in a culture that, while rejecting much of the religious structure, has yet been transformed and is still deeply informed by the figure of Jesus. We do not realise how different everything was before the revelation of Christ and its transforming leaven entered the cultures of the world. If we did appreciate that difference, then we would also appreciate how necessary and important it was that John came to prepare the way. Jesus brings a way so radically different to the world’s way, that if we are not prepared we miss it completely. Allow yourself to be further prepared this morning as we gather around Jesus and hear about John.

We live in a time of empty political promises and impotent opposition with no compelling alternative. Unfettered self-interest, and the politico-economic system it has given rise to, tends to blame victims and punish the vulnerable. This is nothing new in our world. Into this jaded world, Isaiah pronounces the inevitability of God's ultimate reign of justice and peace. A reign that will not be foisted on anyone... but that all will desire. Isaiah's call to God's people is to live into God's kingdom reign now!

Can you imagine a life in which the assumptions you have always operated with no longer apply? A world where oppressive mechanisms have become so weakened that they no longer squash people. Where the tried and true approaches of using force to achieve security likewise no longer work. A world where values of love, care and compassion arbitrate outcomes! As Isaiah dreams of this world he can only express it in terms of a new heaven and a new earth! Let's dream with Isaiah...

Zaccheus’ interaction with Jesus is surely one of the more comical episodes in the Bible. A short, yet fully matured, man clambering up a tree for a sneak peak and then everyone’s attention being directed at him in his elevated vantage point. What begins as an opportunity for ridicule and further exclusion, ends up with Jesus honouring Zaccheus by inviting himself to dine with Zac in Zac’s home. Unexpected!? Unacceptable!! That was nothing on what happened next!

Every person prays. It is as natural as breathing! It is the cry that comes from our heart when we know not what else to do or say or think. The good news is that God promises to hear and respond. A promise worthy of your confidence!

When Paul writes to Timothy about the grace he has discovered in Christ, he writes as one keenly aware of the impact this grace has had on his life. Paul's life was completely transformed by his encounter with Christ. His previous understanding of faithfulness was exposed as oppression. His narrow focus on a particular group of people was expanded to all the peoples of the world.

To whom we give our allegiance is very important. It shapes the way we behave. It reveals what we truly value. And our real allegiances are often only made known when push comes to shove! This week's gospel reading has Jesus challenging our most basic (even primal) allegiances - family! Jesus appears to be saying that there is an allegiance that is more fundamental than that of family. There are not many places where the gospel cuts this close to the bone of our normal every day assumptions and attachments.

Jesus often promotes behaviour that does not seem to come naturally to us. Whether he is referring to where we seat ourselves at a dinner party or who we decide to invite to join us at our party - Jesus’ priorities are not the priorities we most often hold when we are left to our own devices. This should give us pause for for thought. Jesus seems to be telling us that value is found in places we tend to overlook, and that the value we think we see is not as valuable as we tend to think it is! Even when our experience confirms the truth of what Jesus teaches, we are slow to be persuaded. What is it that makes the kingdom so hard to believe?

The nature of ‘promise’ is that it points to something that is yet to be fulfilled. Promise holds within it commitment or intent. It says that there is more to come. In salvation history, there is a sense in which successive generations inherit the promise to those who have gone before. As a result they have opportunity to live more fully in what God has progressively revealed. When Jesus came, lived, died and was raised again, this represented the fullest revelation of the grace of God. Self-giving love is the heart of God’s promise/intent for us. All before Jesus hope for him. All since refer back to him. Our call is to follow him!

Things are not always as they seem. People are not always who they say (or even think) they are. Obedience to the letter is not always consistent with what was intended. In the midst of the fluid shifting of what appears and what has substance, Isaiah seems to suggest God wants to reason together with us! Reason together with God?! What might that mean?

BEWARE! Greed is out to get you! It does not care about your wellbeing. It will do all to ensure you are never satisfied. It will make your friend into your rival. It will make your rival into your enemy. Then it will make your enemy into your mentor. You will follow until you hate even yourself. And still you will not be satisfied. 
BEWARE! Greed is out to get you!

Paul makes use of a number of figures of speech when describing Christian discipleship. ‘Walking in Christ’ is one example. When Paul writes to the believers in Colossae, he is at pains to ensure they appreciate just how liberated they are to walk in Christ. Paul identifies several things that might easily impede the believers’ walk - and makes it clear they have been set free from such impediments. We do well to remember and walk in the freedom Christ offers us.

When the lawyer stood up and asked Jesus his question about inheriting eternal life, it seems likely that he was hoping for instructions that would be clear, finite and manageable. Instead, Jesus’ response seems less than clear, somewhat infinite in its demands, and of a nature that the most saintly among us would freely confess is well beyond anyone’s capacity to satisfy. So what shall we do to become the inheritors of eternal life?

When Jesus sends his disciples out, his strategy is quite unique. He sends them out not in strength but in vulnerability. 
The genius of Jesus’ approach is that those who are moved to respond to the vulnerable messengers of the Kingdom, are simultaneously drawn into a Kingdom response of care for the vulnerable. Their very response of receiving (and caring for) those sent in Jesus name is their point of entry into the experience of the kingdom of God.

One thing that can be said about Jesus is he never asked anyone to do what he was not prepared to do himself. Even when it comes to the most exacting demands of discipleship, Jesus is still inviting us to follow him... rather than go somewhere he himself is not going! This is leadership. This is being the person others can follow and become like (in that sense). This is precisely what discipleship is about.

Most of us crave a sense of being ‘right’ in our world. We prefer to be on the right side of the law, the right side of the bully, the right side of the tracks (in the days when all the acceptable people lived on one side of town and the others on the ‘other side’ of the rail line). But Jesus changes the parameters of ‘rightness’. In his presence, it no longer matters how right you are in any other context. The only thing that matters is how you are with Jesus! Those who have their ‘rightness’ invested elsewhere often find this most disconcerting! Those who are not held by other forms of rightness appreciate the loving acceptance that Jesus offers.

There are moments in life that seem to be a dead end. This might be literally the death of someone we have loved. Jesus enters our world of seeming absolute finalities and calls forth things beyond our capacity to imagine possible. Sometimes this can be experienced as strangely unsettling - like new growth bursting through the pavement, it breaks open the smooth certainties of our established expectations. Jesus draws us into a life that is not as neat or predictable... But that is most certainly fully alive!