Tag: Reconciliation

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Epilogue to the Sermon on the Mount – Matthew 8:5-13

Am important question to ask in order to get deeper in your study of scripture is “Where is this text located?” What is the location on the page – what comes before, what comes after, and why did the author put it there? What’s the geographic location of the event and the writing? What’s the social location? What are the relationships involved? What are the power dynamics and social expectations or assumptions?

On the page, this particular story takes place immediately after the Sermon on the Mount, and serves as an epilogue that reinforces many of the themes from Jesus’ teaching, in the form of action.

Geographically, this takes place in Capernaum, a fishing town on the northern coast of Israel, a crossroads where many ethnicities mingled, including Jews, Roman soldiers, and migrants and merchants from surrounding regions.

Socially, the centurion represents the power of Rome and the oppression of the Jewish people. Beyond that, there was a strong bias against mixing between Jews and gentiles. Many aspects of this story cure against the social norms of the time. The centurion lowers himself to asking for help from an itinerant native teacher – and does it on behalf of his social inferior and servant. For his part, Jesus, a rabbi of growing reputation, ignores the social taboos and immediately offers to go to the house of this gentile, this oppressor. And then the centurion goes beyond, demonstrating an even deeper faith in Jesus’ power and authority than his own people.

This entire interaction is a demonstration of what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount. He has come to fulfill the law in a way that will look like overturning it. Things are being turned upside down, and the insiders are becoming outsiders and the outsiders are being brought inside the kingdom of God.

This interaction is part of a slow roll-out of what Paul calls a great mystery – the expansion of the promise of the kingdom of God to the gentiles. We see this also in the conversation with the Syrian woman later in the book, and even at the beginning of Matthew, in the genealogy. Matthew explicitly calls out the gentiles in the lineage of Jesus (and, incidentally, King David as well).

We have access to the same authority and power of Jesus that we see the centurion seek. The way to the kingdom is narrow but the gate is wide open, regardless of social status, ethnicity nationality, family. This is not a side aspect of of the gospel that can be segregated into a 2-3 week Bible study. This is central point, because it is about human relationships, and Good stepping into heal them and being reconciliation.

This also isn’t just a thing for “Bible times.” This is live and ongoing, happening right now all around us. This is something we are called to participate in, to step out in faith like the Centurion did, being a part of the work Jesus is doing. Like the Centurion, we can “interrupt” Jesus on behalf of others. We can intercede for those near us and those at a distance. May we be a people of prayer.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, August 17

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Be Reconciled – Ephesians 2:11-22

Reconciliation is not simply the speaking of magic words “I’m sorry” and “you’re forgiven”, but is a process that takes time, that takes into account the context of the relationship and the damage done to it. Today we’re going to look at what the resurrection of Christ means to this process of reconciliation.

Renew Church is built on Reconciliation, Restoration and Relevance. The resurrection of Christ sits at the center of these. Though there is mourning, pain, chaos and suffering, the resurrection is the promise that joy comes in the morning and that the banquet of God is belt prepared for us.

Looking at this passage, it comes right after a section (Ephesians 2:1-10) focused on the vertical relationship between us and God. We are dead in our sins – BUT because of His great love for us, He made us alive in Christ.

In this section, Paul addresses the horizontal relationship between people, specifically addressing the relationship between Jewish and gentile Christians. Many of the former were seeking to impose their cultural and ritualistic requirements onto these new converts who had no history or heritage of following God.

To think about this, let’s go back to the gospels, and the story of Jesus clearing the temple after the Triumphal Entry. The temple’s outer courts were called the Court of the Gentiles, and there are stones archeologists have found warning gentiles not to go past certain points on pain of death. It was filled with people selling animals for sacrifice at high prices as well as money changers changing Greek and Roman coins into the temple currency, again at exploitative rates. The practices were explicitly taking advantage of the poor and the foreigners. This is what drove Jesus to the extremes He went to in that situation, stating “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”

The term used here for “nations” is ethonos which is the same team Paul uses to for gentiles, while the term “house” was oikos, which means “household” and which Paul uses in verse 19 of our passage to describe how God has folded gentile Christians into the people of God, into His household, “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.”

We ourselves need to look at how we also put barriers up for those who are unlike us to come near to God, as Jewish Christians did in Paul’s time. Our own cultural practices and expectations can cordon us off from each other. But in the power of the resurrection, our role is to be agents of reconciliation. We keep short accounts, we understand the systemic barriers of hostility that divide is, we champion and empower those in our own “court of the gentiles” and overturn the tables that keep people from God. We are to seek to reconcile and worship with “all the nations,” building relationships across cultural boundaries, taking risks and opening yourself up to other experiences and perspectives. Let’s be people of reconciliation and be part of bringing people together under one family banner.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, April 30, 2023