Transcript
So that when we speak of presence, we are not speaking only of the presence of the kingdom in Jesus, we are speaking of the presence of the kingdom in that body which Jesus calls and sends into the world. One thing is absolutely clear in the New Testament and that is that Jesus was not interested in leaving behind an exact verbal record of his teaching. In total contrast to, for example, Mohammed, where the whole centre of interest
lies in the exact recording of the messages received by Mohammed, there is no interest in the New Testament, in the exact, no interest in the gospel story, Jesus shows no interest in the exact recording of his words. What he is concerned with is the formation of a people, the gathering of disciples, the preparing, the training, the consecrating and the sending into the world of a body of disciples who will continue his ministry. And the most full
development of all this is in the section of St John's Gospel, chapters 13 through 17, which speak of Jesus preparing his disciples to represent him, to continue his ministry in the world. We cannot, of course, one could perhaps spend this lecture just reading those chapters, but we, you can do that without my help. But if you look at them, you have first of all in chapter 13, Jesus washing the disciples' feet, preparing them for a kind
of ministry which will be totally different from how the world understands the kingdom, the presence of the king is manifested in the service of a humble slave. And then that leads up to verse 20 of 13, truly, truly, I say to you, he who receives anyone whom I send receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me. To receive Jesus is to receive the father, because the father is present, the reign of God
is present in Jesus. And to receive the one whom Jesus sends, the apostle, the church, is to receive Jesus. The kingdom is personally present in Jesus, and is present in those whom he sends into the world. And then in chapter 14, we've already looked at this promise that those who are sent will do greater works than Jesus himself, because he goes to the father. And then in verse 23, if a man loves me, he will keep
my word, and my father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him. As God dwells in Jesus, so he will dwell in the church, in those whom Jesus sends. And then in chapter 15, we have the image of the vine and the branches, the branches having their life by abiding in the vine. And then verses 9 and 10, as the father has loved me, so I have loved you, abide
in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. As Jesus, abiding in the father, bears the very presence of the kingdom of God in the life of the world, so the church will do. And then in chapter 16, we have the promise of tribulation in the world, leading up to the promise of peace, of shalom. In the world, you
have tribulation, but in me you will have peace. I have overcome the world. Peace, shalom, the word which supremely expresses the presence of the kingdom, the word shalom, which conveys the whole blessing of God in its fullness. And then, of course, in the 17th chapter, supremely, where Jesus consecrates himself an offering to the father, and in the same prayer, consecrates his church to be sent into the world to continue the ministry for which the father sent
him. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth, thy word is truth. As thou didst send me into the world, so I have sent them into the world, and for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be consecrated in the truth. The true high priest, the one high priest, in whom the priestly calling given to Israel is finally fulfilled, consecrating himself to the father
as an offering for the sin of the world, in the same prayer, in the same action, consecrates his disciples to be sent into the world as the continuation of his own ministry. Now this is, of course, St. John's interpretation of the Eucharist. St. John does not record the institution of the Lord's Supper, but these passages give the true interpretation of the Lord's Supper. At every celebration of the Lord's Supper, when we do what Christ commanded us,
the church is consecrated afresh in the truth and sent out afresh into the world. We will come back to look at that again at the end of this lecture. But then we go on to the great missionary passage, which we referred to earlier in the week, John 20:19 and following, where this whole teaching is made absolutely clear. On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being shut where the disciples
were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, Peace be with you. When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, Peace, shalom, be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, receive the
Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained. This is, if you like, the charter of the church. Here is the launching of the church, in which the church is defined from the very beginning as the continuation of God's mission in Christ sent into the world and sent into the world as the bearer of shalom. And shalom is the presence of the kingdom. It
is the presence of God's peace in the midst of the world. But as Jesus sends them into the world to be the bearers of that peace, he shows them his hands and his side, the marks of the cross. And it is by these marks that the disciples recognize him. The body of Jesus, the risen body of Jesus, bears the marks of the cross. The cross is not, so to say, a closed chapter, which is finished with.
The body of Jesus, the risen body of Jesus, bears still the marks of the cross. And as we shall see when we look at some of St. Paul's words, this is vital for St. Paul's understanding of what the church is. The church is that body which bears about the dying of Jesus and therefore bears also the life of Jesus. But this is made possible only because Jesus shares the spirit with them. That spirit by whom Jesus
was anointed at his baptism for his ministry is now given to his disciples. Here we are reminded of the profound missionary implications of baptism. Baptism is so constantly misunderstood among us Christians, is it not? As though it were a kind of ticket to heaven, which is a total misunderstanding of it. It is a commitment to the mission of Jesus to bear the sin of the world for the salvation of the world. The baptism of Jesus was
his accepting of the sin of the world, bearing it, carrying it right through to the completion of his baptism on Calvary. And our baptism is our incorporation into the baptism of Jesus. So Christian baptism, as distinct from the baptism of John, is not a baptism for my salvation. It is a baptism for my commitment to the salvation of the world through Jesus Christ. That's a very different thing. But this baptism, which is baptism in water and
the spirit, in contrast to the baptism of John, which is baptism in water only, because it is only a sign. This which is baptism in water and the spirit, the total baptism, which begins in Jordan, is consummated on Calvary and is now made available to mankind. Through the gift of the spirit. This baptism is now made available, so to say, to his church. So Jesus breathes on them and says, receive the Holy Spirit. He just as
at the first creation, God breathed into man and he became a living soul. So the breath of God, which is the life of God, which is the power of God, which is the life-giving power of God, is shared with the disciples by the one who bears in his body the marks of the cross. And that gift of the spirit carries with it the authority to forgive sin. Jesus was able to bring the peace of God
to mankind. The shalom, which is the mark of the kingdom. Because he could say, your sins are forgiven. Because he came as the bearer of God's forgiveness. And the church is into the world to bear that gift of forgiveness. I think that this famous text has been misunderstood in two ways. It has been misunderstood as being a promise to the ministry rather than to the church. So that this phrase, whosoever sins you forgive, they are forgiven,
has been used in ordination rights in a sense to imply that this is something given to the ministry as distinct from the church. I do not believe that that is so. I believe that this is a gift given to the church and that this body represents the church as a whole. And that therefore, of course, it is given to the ministry in order that it may be given to the whole church. But not given to the
ministry in order that it may not be given to the whole church. And secondly, this doubling, whosoever sins you forgive, they are forgiven, whosoever sins you retain, they are retained, is not, I believe, two different commandments. One commanding the church to forgive sins and the other commanding the church to refuse to forgive sins. But rather a typical Hebrew doubling, which we are familiar with in the Psalms, the saying the same thing twice, one positively and one
negatively. What it is saying is simply that this supreme gift with which Jesus came to the world is entrusted to the church. The church is sent into the world to bear for all mankind the gift of forgiveness through Jesus Christ. So in summary, we are saying that in the New Testament we see the kingdom not merely proclaimed by Jesus, but present in Jesus. And we see the kingdom present not only in the works of Jesus, but
in the person of Jesus, he is himself the presence of the kingdom. And that that presence does not end with the ending of Jesus earthly ministry, but on the contrary, it is the intention of Jesus that this body which he has called and consecrated and sent into the world should be the bearer of the presence of the kingdom through the life of the world. Not only the announcer, the proclamer, the herald of the kingdom, but also
the bearer in its own life of the king. Now what, in practical terms, what in all honesty can it mean to speak of the church as the bearer of the kingdom? When one thinks of the blood-stained history of the church, of the sin-laden history of the church, one is inclined to remember the words of Exodus 33, you are a stiff-necked people, if for a single moment I should go up among you, I would
consume you, and to feel that it is indeed almost impossibly difficult to speak about the church as the bearer of the kingdom. If the reign of God means the overthrow of evil and the victory of holiness and love and truth, in what sense, looking realistically at the history of the church all down the centuries and in our own day, in what sense can we say that the church embodies the presence of the kingdom in the life
of the world? Well, as we start to try to answer that question, let me just remind you of two things. One, that right here in St. John's Gospel itself there is an unparalleled emphasis on the presence of sin in the church. St. John's Gospel goes out of the way again and again to emphasize the fact that Judas was one of the twelve, that there was treachery at the very of the church from the very beginning, that
there has never been a time when there was not sin in the very heart of the church. John, in his gospel, goes out of the way to emphasize this over and over again, and very specially in these last passages. And it's exactly in the context of the presence of evil in the church that the fourth gospel insists upon the presence of Jesus. In the 13th chapter of John, where the treachery of Judas is foretold, John 13:18,
Jesus says, I am not speaking to you all. I know who I have chosen. It is that the scripture may be fulfilled. He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me. I tell you this now before it takes place, that when it does take place, when you see the presence of sin in the life of the church, you may believe that I am. You may believe that I am. Ego eimi. I am
that I am, the divine name. Right in the context of the presence of sin in the world, we are summoned to believe in the divine presence, the presence of Yahweh, of God himself, in the midst of the church. And the other pointer that I think will help us is just to look at one phrase in St. Paul which perhaps summarizes his whole doctrine of the church and helps us to understand in what sense we are to
speak of the presence of the kingdom in the life of the church. I refer to 2 Corinthians 4 verse 10 where Paul says that we are always carrying in the body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may be manifest in our body. That is a definition of the life of the church, carrying in the body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may be manifest. If we are to answer
the question how is the kingdom present in the life of the church, we have to go to the heart of our faith, namely to the cross. According to the witness of the New Testament, the cross is supremely the place where to the eyes of faith the kingdom of God is present. The power of God present under the appearance of weakness, the wisdom of God present under the appearance of foolishness, the victory of God present under the
appearance of defeat. Jesus is the one of whom we can say not only that the kingdom was proclaimed by him but that it was present in him. Not just the message of Christ but the fact of Christ is the subject of our preaching and the heart of that fact is the cross as the gospels so clearly show us. The decisive event in the drama of the kingdom of God, the event by which things are permanently changed
is the cross. Now I know that when we begin to speak about the cross we are in an area which is littered with theological controversy and I don't pretend to solve all the problems connected with the understanding of the cross in a few minutes but let me say three very simple things. Let's remember first of all that we are dealing with a fact, with something which happened, with an event. An event which we will never be
able fully to grasp with all our intellectual powers and therefore there may be many theories of the cross, there may be many theories of the atonement. None of them will ever fully fully contain, explain, fathom the meaning of that event. The event, the happening, the sheer happenedness of that event which is testified to us in scripture will always be greater than any doctrine about it that we can frame. Our doctrines may point to it, may help
us to approach it but can never so to say replace it. The simple faith of the Jewish believers in the time of Jesus looked for the coming of the kingdom of God as the rejection and destruction of God's enemies and the acceptance and the deliverance of God's loyal people. A very simple way of understanding the kingdom of God and that we find echoed right through the Old Testament. The Vox Populi, the popular religion which sounds out
loud and clear in so many pages of the Old Testament so as almost to drown the voice of God's prophets. The word of God spoken in riddles and paradoxes through the prophets. The Vox Populi, which booms through all the Christian political demagogy of church history and of our own time, which simply identifies my cause with God's cause. Whether it be the preservation of feudal system against oligarchy or the preservation of the ancient Christian economic order against
capitalism or the preservation of capitalism against Marxism or the preservation of our way of life against other people's way of life. All the simple popular demagogy which identifies the reign of God with our deliverance, our security, our safety, and which we hear as a kind of background noise all through the Old Testament, sometimes almost drowning the words of the authentic prophets, which always contradict that. But surely that kind of simple expectation was the expectation of the
loyal people to whom Jesus came. But what happened of course was something quite different. In the presence of Jesus, there is no question that our enemies are condemned and we are vindicated. On the contrary, in the presence of Jesus, we and all men are revealed equally as God's enemies. And we and all men are revealed equally as those whom God loves and accepts, the ones whom he has come to deliver. When we look at the story
of the passion, we see both the righteous, the representatives of religion, of law, of morality, of statecraft, the powers that be, the heirs of Moses, the representatives of the majesty of the Roman Empire, and also the representatives of the will of the people, the grassroots movements, which for so many modern people are the voice of God, the mob demonstrating in front of the governor's mansion. Both are revealed at the final showdown as the enemies of God
who conspire in the whatever mutual differences they may have, who agree in the end that Jesus must be destroyed. And both at the end are accepted as the beloved children of God and brothers of the Son of Man.