It's fascinating to explore mission to the powerful. A number of biblical examples are illustrative, but perhaps the most iconic is the story of Daniel and his friends making a point to King Nebuchadnezzar about their overarching commitment to God.
To explore the topic of "Mission to the needy" we turned to the story of friends lowering a paralytic man through the roof. This topic is particularly timely for our world, stretched by financial pressure and prominently torn by conflict. It is worth pondering the thought from James 1 that pure religion is looking after widows and orphans.
The topic "Mission to my neighbour" sends us straight to the Good Samaritan. Although so well-known, this story has so much capacity to challenge us. It provides an excellent perspective on key aspects of "mission", and we ponder what it means for us today.
How to catch the kind of motivation that makes you re-walk a day's journey without resting? Some of the motivations experienced by friends of Jesus in the New Testament don't correspond all that well to our experience as followers of Christ millennia later. Other stories map more closely, and Cleopas walking with a friend to Emmaus seems a great example.
We all have excuses to avoid God's mission, but the most obvious ones are nearly trivial. Looking at the story of Jonah exposes a much more challenging idea: what if we avoid mission simply because we don't actually agree with God that someone else needs and deserves His mercy?
Abraham challenges God's suggestion of destroying Sodom and Gomorrah, which is a challenging picture of "participating in God's mission".
How might we stop "mission" becoming a mirror? Talking about comfort zones in the context of God's mission reminds us just how powerful the pull of comfort can be. Do we get uncomfortable in our inclusive acceptance of people, or do we expect them to leave their comfort zone when joining our Christian community?
What is the Great Commission again? It's a command to go, make disciples, baptise them, and teach them to obey. All of these aspects deserve to be unpacked a lot, but a somewhat obvious idea is that this task might not involve all that much preaching and Revelation seminars! What if we accidentally turn mission into making people more like us , rather than more like God?
An exploration of God's Mission must start with a focus on the God of mission. This new season will explore the theme of "God's Mission, My Mission", and we have to recognise that the word "mission" means a wide range of different things to different Christians. In fact, our initial reaction to this title probably depends on what kind of mission we are picturing. This idea will need to be explored more fully in upcoming episodes, but first In this introductory episode we focus on the God of miss...
After exploring the themes and some details of Ephesians, does it "feel different"? This episode is a bit of an experiment - does listening to the entire book of Ephesians work for you after 13 episodes exploring it bit-by-bit?
Ephesians closes with almost the same sentence as it began: a blessing of grace and peace. Peace seems at first to be the flip side of the aggressive military imagery of God's armour, but it might not be that simple. The peace and unity described throughout Ephesians is something that must be built up - it does not just appear by default.
How helpful is military armour as an analogy for the Christian life? This passage is perhaps the most well-known part of Ephesians, and yet it actually feels somewhat strange juxtaposed against the deep theme of unity that we've seen throughout the book. We discuss the aggressive aspects of this analogy, and find lots of overlap with our discomfort at the preceding slavery passage.
The theme of unity and submission gets awkward when discussing slaves! It is hardly surprising that the New Testament mentions slavery (it was a cultural norm), but it is a shame that the various authors were not more clear in condemnation of the practice. We explore why some situations do seem to call us to obey and be sincerely respectful of authority, and yet many other situations seem to call us to resist and agitate for change.
We've reached the well-known passage about submission in marriage... ...except that after the emphasis on unity that has been observed consistently throughout Ephesians so far, it seems most likely that this part is not talking about submission and power balance at all. It is a radical call to inclusive and united love, and it's actually quite fascinating that Paul suggests marriage relationships can help us understand the mystery of Christ's unity with the Church.
Ephesians 5 is a call to "be careful how you live". The chapter opens with a stark juxtaposition between "worthless deeds of evil and darkness" and choices "that please the Lord". It is valuable to ponder the inclusion of greed at least as prominently as sexual immorality - an emphasis that has perhaps been lopsided in Christian history. There's also some interesting comments on music which circle back to themes of unity and community.
The second half of Ephesians 4 looks at some practical ways to pursue the unity that has formed a substantial theme of the book so far. There's an interesting comment on anger, but we end up spending most of our time exploring the admonition to "watch the way you talk". The bar of "saying only what helps" is a very lofty goal, and has direct relevance to the way we interact online in modern society.
The theme of unity is again in the foreground. This chapter starts with an exploration of the reason for and mechanism of unity: love. This emphasis is expressed explicitly through some wonderful verses, and also poetically through a pattern of 7 that culminates with God our father of all, "who is over all, in all, and living through all." We are intrigued by the role that teaching and doctrine plays (and specifically does not play) in all of this.
Ephesians 3 continues Paul's effervescent enthusiasm for a gospel of inclusion. Even while taking some diversions to obliquely reference his own calling and situation, Paul sticks with the tone and theme that he has developed in the previous chapters. A few key metaphors and images jump out at us, including "mystery", "prisoner", and inclusive unity.
The New Testament claims Jesus broke down walls of hostility that divide us as people - what walls might still exist today? We continue our steady meander through Ephesians, which this week is up to the second part of chapter 2. There are a range of meaningful metaphors here describing the inclusion of Gentiles into God's plan, culminating in sanctuary imagery that speaks of the unity God seeks to have with us as his creation.
Ephesians 2 opens with a succinct but thorough outline of the gracious gift of salvation. This is such a clear description of the idea that God saves us by his grace and because of his love (not as a reward for our actions or attitudes) that it is hard to work out how some Christians have seen things differently. We are particularly intrigued and puzzled by a few phrases Paul uses here, such as "children of wrath" and the past tense of God having "raised us from the dead along with Christ and se...
Paul turns to prayer as he continues to introduce this epistle. There are two prayer sections in Ephesians (1:15-23 and 3:14-21), and we notice they have a lot in common. Even though they're positive and uplifting, we are vaguely uncomfortable because of hearing numerous didactic and disciplinary prayers in the past. Thinking about various "cultures of praying" turns into somewhat of a mirror in which we examine ourselves and personalities, and we are challenged by the idea to pray constantly....
Ephesians opens with an encouraging summary of Christian hope. Paul seems keen to introduce themes of unity, redemption, Spirit, and inheritance. Each of these are likely to be developed further in the epistle, but even in the first 14 verses there is a range of rich ideas worth pondering. In particular, the unity described as God's plan is astoundingly wide-ranging.
Acts 19 tells a 3rd-party perspective to prepare us for studying Paul's letter to the Ephesians. There are a number of anecdotes recorded about Paul in the city of Ephesus, and most of them seem to highlight the prominence of his activity. It seems he regularly "went viral" in the society of the day, and stayed there for some years having significant impact.
We turn to the end of Revelation to wrap up this season. Exploring (nominally) the "3 angels messages" of Revelation 14 has been hard work at times this season, and we approach this final episode with a slight sense of exhaustion. We certainly haven't resolved all the questions that arise from these chapters! However, there is a hope and peace that seems central to the book, and comes more prominently to the foreground in the final chapters of Revelation. This is worth some attention....
What if the mark of the beast is something that we might have in varying degrees? Thinking about "marks" in general leads us to wonder what it might mean for somebody to be Graffitied by the Beast. It is remarkable to find that Peter is declared by Jesus as the rock of the church and also decried as "Satan" within only a few verses of Matthew 16. We suspect there is room for considerable humility when thinking about beastly marks.
Sparked by a midweek conversation, we explore the book of Job as apocalyptic literature. There are a surprising number of connections and similarities between Job and the more recognisably apocalyptic writings of Daniel and Revelation. There are scenes in heaven, and even beasts from the land and the sea!
Language like "Satan's deceptions" often implies that salvation is somehow about expertise or technical knowledge. The lesson jumps straight into some well-worn Adventist slippers: the State of dead (which we mostly skip over), and the 7th-day Sabbath (which we focus on a little more closely). It is interesting to observe that Adventists in practice often end up loving Catholics while excoriating the Catholic church, which actually suggests some equivocation about our conventional narrative. Joh...
Babylon was already archaic by the time Revelation was written, so how do we understand it today? It is interesting that Babylon is invoked in Revelation to represent great evil. A number of pretty terrible regimes intersect with the Old Testament stories, and taking another look at Babylon leaves us feeling that it might not have even been the worst. We discuss the different approaches to life that can arise from a focus on apocalyptic Babylon.
Sabbath, Creation, and the End seem to deserve a bit of untangling. The lesson this week sets out to discuss Sabbath and issues of worship in the End Times described by Revelation. It quickly stumbles into a bit of a creation rut, which is a topic we already discussed in the previous episode. Taking some of the rhetorical questions at legitimate face value turns out to be a productive line of conversation.
Does worshiping "Him who made the heavens and earth" require a particular understanding of how creation happened? There is a wide variety of Christian pictures of the "how" of creation, and some of these are explicitly repudiated in this week's SDA Sabbath School lesson. Certainly there are some questions that arise from some of these understandings, but it seems that such questions are not simply solved by adopting a more conventional traditional interpretation of the Creation Week in Genesis. ...
