Salvation: No Terms and Conditions || Christ Vision 1/5
Year B: Proper 12
Over the next five weeks, I’ll be preaching through series called Christ Vision. We know that Jesus is like God, and we know that God is like Jesus. This is really good news. This series is about how Jesus came to show us how he sees the Father, as the Source of infinite love and compassion. Jesus wants us to know that God loves us just as God loved Jesus from before the beginning.
Once we begin to understand this, we will be transformed in such a way that the Love of Father, Son, and Spirit will overflow from ourselves and churches into the world around us.
This first video is on how salvation has no terms and conditions. That is, salvation actually is full and free. In our various forms of religion, we attempt to create God in our image by creating terms and conditions that make us feel as if we have done enough to earn God’s favor or change God’s mind about us, and those who don’t meet these terms as defined by us… well...
For those of you who enjoy the lectionary posts, they are sill here. Just look below the video!
Year B, Proper 12, July 28, 2024
First Reading: 2 Kings 4:42-44
Psalm: Psalm 145:10-18
Second Reading: Ephesians 3:14-21
Gospel: John 6:1-21
Sermon - Jesus, You Need to Repent and Be What We Want You to Be
Over the next five weeks, we’ll be exploring John 6 and the conflict that occurs after Jesus feeds the five thousand. Our passage today in John 6:1-21 which covers two miracles in John: the feeding of the five thousand and Jesus walking on water.
As Jesus travelled from place to place teaching the good news of the kingdom of heaven, large crowds would follow him seeking healing for their whole selves.
Like the passage from last week, which was Mark’s account of these same events, Jesus had compassion on the people and fed them miraculously from five loaves and two fishes. One of the disciples presented this to Jesus and said, “But what are they among so many people?”
Throughout John, Jesus answers this question over and over. He challenges our perception of who God is and what God is capable of.
After the people finished they bread and fish, the disciples gathered up the extra and discovered that there were twelve baskets left over, which should remind us of a consistent theme in the gospel accounts of the restoration of the twelve tribes of Israel.
Once the people began to understand what had happened they knew that Jesus must be the long awaited prophet from Deuteronomy 18. This realization meant that they had found the person that could lead them to rebel against Rome and supply them with everything they would need. The land would flow with milk and honey once more.
But notice Jesus’s reaction:
When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself. John 6:15
When Jesus was offered earthly power, he rejected it.
The connection between this episode and the temptation of Jesus is intriguing.
Jesus was tempted by the Evil One to (1) miraculously produce bread, (2) perform an extremely public sign to prove beyond a doubt that he was the Messiah, and (3) bow down to the Evil One so that he could receive all the kingdoms of the earth.
It’s almost as if the first two temptations naturally lead to the third one.
And I think this is what’s happening in John 6. Jesus miraculously produces bread in a very public setting, and it leads directly to this offering of the kingdom of heaven.
Basically, the people were telling Jesus, “We need you to be who we want you to be.” We’ll see over the next lessons from John how Jesus deals with this and the fallout that occurs because of his rejection of their plans.
But we might think how we ask Jesus to not be himself in our own time. There are people who want to use Jesus to seize political power. There are others who use Jesus to control and manipulate others. Some use Jesus to justify their own hatred and biases.
If we let Jesus be himself, he will transform our lives. If we attempt to transform Jesus, we’ll continue to be miserable and remain in our darkness.
Second Reading: Beyond Imagination
“Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen” (Ephesians 3:20–21).
Our prayers reflect our understanding of God’s power, or it might be better stated that our prayers reflect our understanding of how much or how little God works today. Many Christians, including myself, often see a distinction between how God worked back then and how God works in our day, but I wonder if we have overstated God’s inactivity in our present day.
While I have never witnessed a miracle of biblical proportions, I have seen God undoubtedly work in my own life as well as the lives of others.
The obvious question, though, is whether or not the most we get are these brief glimpses of God’s handiwork in hindsight, or is it possible to be so in tune with the activity of God that we recognize these things in realtime, like many missionaries report?
According to Paul in Ephesians 3:20-21, God is able to do more than any of us can imagine, which begs the question “Has our modern world made our imaginations severely limited?”
I don’t know the answers to these questions; I’m still trying to work them out for myself, and it is possible I might not ever know the answer, but I do know that God is alive, and I know that the Holy Spirit dwells within us. I also know that one way we can glorify God in the church through all generations is to be agents of compassion in our world. Perhaps God can do something beyond imagination through you and me.
Thanks so much for keeping up with this blog. If you have any suggestions, recommendations, or critiques, you can always comment here or reach out through my website: https://danielr.net.