Marginal Christianity

Warnings to and about the Pharisees and Sadducees (Mt.16:1-12) Pharisees and Sadducees are not naturally allies. Much divided them, particularly belief in the resurrection. One who believes in it believes the world can be fundamentally changed. One who does not sticks with the powers that be and the way things are. The two had very different ideas about how Israel should be God’s people, especially viz-a-viz Rome (as we have seen). For them to collaborate against Jesus, to catch him up in a way to discredit or destroy him (v.1), each sense in him a threat to their way of being Israel so strong that can unite in the project to do away with him. They challenge him to perform a sign for them (one they could use to turn the people and/or the authorities against him). The issue at the heart of this confrontation is the same as it was for their ancient forebears who, freed from Egypt by God’s mighty act of deliverance, grumble and gripe in the wilderness soon afterward and ask G...

“Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”                                                                                                                                                                ...

The Sadducees are up next to challenge Jesus. They don’t believe in the resurrection. They were conservative both religiously and politically not liberals as we might imagine their disbelief in the resurrection would make them. -Moses didn’t teach it and Sadducees regard the five books of Moses the most authoritative   part of the Bible. -It was politically risky, as N.T. Wright explains. “It  had become popular particularly during the revolutionary movements of the second century BC, as a way of affirming that the martyrs had a glorious future  awaiting them, not immediately after death, but in the eventual resurrection  when they would be given new bodies. This belief was based on the fundamental  idea of God as the maker, and therefore the remaker, of the world. People who  believe that God is going to recreate the whole world, including Israel, and even  including their own dead bodies, are much more likely to do darin...

The Church’s Temptations The devil tested Jesus by offering him three (false) ways of being Messiah and, thus, three ways of being God’s people. Ways that would offer no challenge to satanic rule over the world. Ironically, each of these three entangle God’s people in colluding with devilish designs in substantial ways. We begin here because this bad news or our collusion with the enemy sets a necessary negative foil for our reflections in this presentation. Consumerism : Jesus was tempted to provide bread for the masses. He rejected this temptation by pointing to the primacy and sufficiency of God’s Word. Rebuffed by Jesus, that old snake continued to ply God’s people with the same temptation. “Give the people what they want! Meet their felt needs! Feed them! Clothe them! Satisfy their needs and wants. Even in church, present God as the great vendor of religious services who will service their every spiritual need! Make consumers of them! They’ll love you and flock ...