Thoughts from Luke 9

Luke 9:18-22

Jesus asks the disciples… “Who do people say I am?”, and then yet another question, “Who do you say I am ?"

He did not reverse the order. If he had, would they have answered the same? We all need a context for our answers. We process information contextually. It is relatively easier for us to report and find answers within the context, or our individual frames of reference. That leads often to many answers. 

There were many answers to the first question, starting from the most recent John the Baptist, to the most distant assumption of being a prophet. Our assumptions are also contextual, as we try and relate current to past experience and attempt to make meaning of it. As far as the disciples were concerned, they were reporting theory. Theorising about God is easy. 

There is report of only Peter answering the next question, which stripped both context and theory away, and leaves every individual stark in the light of their individual answer. The answer is the central answer  for subsequent life. Who is Jesus to me?

Peter says he is the Messiah. That was a moment when heaven parted and angels sang in resonance. A revelation that unveiled Jesus as Him for whom Jews had waited for centuries. Simply expressed in two words. Jesus commends Peter acknowledging the hand of heaven in this revelation. No one can say this with conviction without heavens hand. This knowledge is a revelation. It has no other explanation. It is not an intellectual insight, but an experiential revelation. It makes a difference to the one who confesses it. All other answers and  opinions, regardless of their variance from the truth had not the slightest impact on the true nature of Jesus. He was unmoved by all explanations, being beyond them, but the confession of His true character changes and impacts our lives through our confession. Revelation cannot remain shrouded, but needs to be confessed for its work in us.

If advertised, this revelation could have led to  a premature exaltation by humans.  That would turn the Messiah on a road that led away from Golgotha. Mans path often leads to advertisement and exaltation, which was not where Jesus was headed. So he instructed them not to let this be known. Revelation can be personal at any time, but public revelation has a God ordained time.

And then he went on to tell them how He would suffer many things, be rejected, be killed and be raised.

The consequence of this revelation has to lead us to the cross where He was crucified. It is His death that brings us life. He was the master of the universe, yet, chose to permit his hands that flung stars into space to be nailed to some wood. For a time. He permitted it.

We will be able to follow Him only when we understand what it meant for Him to permit it. What He was doing for us. We could distort the meaning of all of Christian life if we do not understand the centrality of verse 22. For so often, the cross becomes our circumstances, those we have to put up with, our troubles and our problems, which actually makes mockery of the cross and His death. It is not about us. It is about God on a cross for us. Often, we climb up on that cross and become martyrs distorting the gospel, for the gospel is not about us. It is about Him. 

God with us. God on a cross, God ascended into heaven, God who is to come again. 

Every high place

REMOVE THE HIGH PLACES

Right through the old testament we read a recurrent theme of how the Lord led his people when they returned to Him. The Israelites were prone to wander and stray, led by the duplicity and pride of their hearts into rebellion, which was sometimes sheathed by ritual, at other times blatant and candid. Israel’s line of kings and leaders led an ongoing recurrent battle against “high places” established and frequented by the people, and which were often described as the reasons for their rebellion. Every king or leader that initiated a wave of reform and return to God and peace in the land always is recorded as having destroyed these “high places”.

In travelling through the region of Lahaul, Spiti and Ladakh, one cannot but be reminded of this imagery. Every high pass has a procession of prayer flags waving wildly in the wind. Coloured tokens of prayers offered to a pantheon of Gods mark every high pass and mountain top. Sometimes, looking at the inaccessibility of these strongholds, one wonders by what feat of athleticism they were strung up there in the first place.

In traversing the territory of our own individual heartscapes, we need to be also aware of our own “high places”. Altars we have raised at many milestones in our lives to our own idols, proud flags waving wildly in the face of  Lordship to our living Lord and Master. These our personal high places. Citadels that vary from fabric to fortresses erected to our own Gods of pride, vanity, selfishness and greed.

How do we go about destroying these high places in our lives? The Old testament recurrently records the kings who smashed these altars had one common characteristic. A wholehearted devotion to Yahveh, the One true Lord.

Is our heart whole? Is our devotion complete? We have to be wholehearted by conscious volition, not by progressive yearning. And when we assume this armour, we find a humility before which our pagan altars crumble without resistance or rancour. Ours is not a violent extermination or a catastrophic pogrom, but a return to wholeheartedness, before which every “high place” finds no alternative but to crumble into dust. Every mountain, then, is made low, and we can find a liberty than helps us kneel.

What are my high places? How do I recognize them? How do I search for them? What will indicate that I have such a high citadel of rebellion hidden in the mountains  recesses of my soul?

Our negative emotions can be the trail that leads us to them. Anger, disappointment, hurt, stubborn resistance, depression, sorrow, frustration are the spoor of the beast that has ravaged our landscape. Do we follow these trails to its mountain lair? How do we handle negative emotions? They often ravage our friendships and scorch our fruitfulness like marauding Bedouin bands. What do we do when they have gone and only the fumes of their passage remain? Do we follow them to their secret lairs and lay siege to their supply lines? Or are we helpless victims to their next assault?

Our livescapes can only consistently bear fruit when their mountain hideouts are cleansed and rendered in hospitable for their residence. Every assault marks a high place in our hearts. Sometimes uncrecognised. Sometimes well mapped and recorded in our minds.

We are not called to possess great skill and cunning. We are not called upon to wage war on our own strength. Every attempt at self sustained savagery against these marauders will fail in futility. This is the predicament of all mankind.

We are called to gather under Jehovah Nisse. We are called to Lordship. His Lordship. Our battle consists of repentance and rest. We are called to be still and know. Our vison of battle dust and blood through steel shod visors is an awakening vision of the bankruptcy of our own souls. Do we bow? Can I surrender? Can I stand in the knowledge of His Lordship? Have I allowed His banner to encompass my mountains?  Can I say with all my heart  “Jesus is Lord?” The huzzah is then heard, and every high place will fall, like the wall of Jericho, without a single stone shot from a sling, or the need for a sword to be unsheathed. 

Safe

SAFE

How safe a place it is to be

Sheltered, blanketed in thy security

Drawing close, sheathed in the night

Closetted by prayer, my inner delight

Star studded lights illumine ascending thanks

Gurgles and noises from silent river banks

Trees brush my thoughts in their heavenward gaze

A communion most holy, captured in the haze

Oh that this communion could forever be

A continuum while our earths orb spins celestially

Daylight hearkens, splitting the skies canvas sheen

And night will be a memory, as if it had never been

Fingers of dawn drawn by the caressing sun

Crossing mountain tops, burning the snow as it falls

Soon will wake the day with it strident calls

Live in my heart today, most enraptured love

Hold your threads through today’s fabric like a glove

Cocooned, chrysalised, sheltered and warm

Insulated and accoutered, for all of today’s harms

I grip your presence in a childlike grasp

One finger will suffice, it will be my one stringed harp

Play melody, and sing ascendant note

Rise and fill all space with that grateful cry

Till night returns, at bedtimes weary sigh.

Time space and grace

TIME SPACE AND GRACE

In dealing with people, what I seek are these three things: time, space and grace.

Time. I want people to give me their time. To listen to me and listen to what I am saying. To understand my intention though my words are often inadequate expressions of that intention.

Space: I want people to give me space. A space that allows me to come alongside, rather than demanding complicity with their schedule. I want them to give me a space to understand their intention and allow me to choose to join hands with theirs in accordance with my grasp of circumstances and situations.

Grace: I want people to extend grace to me for my shortcomings and failures. To allow me to learn and improve.  Grace that permits silences, and does not demand a retort. Grace to allow me to assimilate and learn, even when I am slow to respond. Grace that does not visit recrimination or sarcasm but allows me to breathe air of freedom, even if I need to breathe it for a little longer than others.

And in so needing all these things, dear Lord, help me to extend these same things to those around me. To do unto them, what I would have done for me.

Help me Lord, want to extend these three things to others more than I desire them for myself. I am far from it Lord, and vast tracts of land in my heart are unplowed and barren. Till that land, and let it bear fruit, though the process is painful and the yield is as yet unobserved. 

Impertinence

“Individual effort for God is an impertinence…” Oswald Chambers.

Oswald Chambers quotes the example of Moses feeling the burden of his people oppressed by the Egyptians. Trained in Egyptian ways and educated in the royal household he thought he was uniquely positioned to be their deliverer. He was driven into the wilderness for forty years. The fellowship of sheep drove every idea of unique positioning from his  mind. Till God called him into the position he had for him when a bush caught fire.  By this time, every idea of self exaltation was an alien impertinence.

We tend to be impertinent with God, assuming roles and missions originating from our worldly ideas of positioning and platform. All our placards and pennants crash and burn. Then there is that brazen sobering wilderness where God is silent and all we hear is the bleating of sheep. Our ideas of impertinence and self-dependence fade away. When we learn daily reliance on God, he calls out to us and commissions us, and then we think that then is an impertinence!

Daily reliance on God is our sustenance. Every thing else is an impertinence.