Marginal Christianity

The kingdom of heaven, God’s rule, announced and described by Jesus, Matthew authenticates by a series of acts of power in which Jesus enacts his authority as kingdom bringer. He shows God’s rule by healing, exorcizing, calling, controverting, and proclaiming its advent throughout Galilee in chs.8-9. Ch.10 follows on this authentication by Jesus passing this power on to his followers and sending them in service of this kingdom. So we have a series of  -announcement and description of the kingdom (chs.4:17-7:29), -demonstration of the authority of the kingdom (chs,8-9), and -sending followers out in service to and with the authority of this kingdom throughout Galilee (ch.10). What we see unfold in this series and, indeed, throughout the whole gospel, is what C. S. Lewis famously described in Mere Christianity , “ Enemy-occupied territory---that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise,...

Spiritual Flaw #1: We’ve Never Known the Real Jesus The American Jesus looks something like this: Jesus as a 1 st century Middle Eastern peasant probably looked something like this: American Christianity forgets that Jesus is a Jew through and through. He cannot be understood apart from that Jewishness. To forget this and to try and read Jesus as an American is to misunderstand the New Testament almost completely. Americans also forget that Jesus is cross-eyed . He sees everything from the perspective of the cross which turns everything in our prudential calculating way of living for ourselves, by ourselves, and by our own strength on its head. His upside-down, out-of-the-box, round peg in a square hole, a question-wrapped-in-a-riddle-surrounded- by-an-enigma life calls all that into question. Any hope we have as Americans in understanding Jesus is to see as black . Unless we see him as one enslaved throughout his li...

Four Triads on Possessions and Allegiance (6:19-7:12) Where Your Treasure Is (6:19-23) 19  “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; 20  but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. 22  “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; 23  but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! This third section begins with a traditional teaching in v.19a and the vicious cycle in 19b. The transforming initiative begins in v.20 with an explanation in vv.21-23. “Heaven,” writes Stassen “is ‘the sphere of God’s rule where his will is done.... To have one’s treasure in heaven’ means to submi...