At the end of Mark 10, we see James and John’s mother approaching Jesus and requesting that one may sit at his right hand in the kingdom and one at his left. It almost seems as if this may be a pre-emptive strike against a possible similar request by Peter and Andrew’s mother. They have completely missed the point of what Jesus is talking about. If we read Matthew, we see how terrible a request this is, as Jesus divides those on his right and his left.

Jesus responds that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, but that they should be servants; to live not to be served, but to serve. In our modern thinking, we have often lost a lot of the point of this passage. We move straight to the point about atonement and forget about the point concerning politics, because we only understand the point about atonement when we understand the new view of power.

The Kingdom of God is basically about a crazy young man speaking about God, loving and dying. He had no need to terrify. This is not to detract from the importance of those who turn away needing to be terrified. We certainly do not want to forget that.

We know about the Kingdom of God through the cross. God made the world out of overflowing generosity. When humans rebelled, this didn’t mean God had to stop, but continued in his overflowing love. When approaching the problem of human sin and cosmic disaster, he did not act out of character, but entirely in character. This is of course hard for us to understand , but we have no chance of understanding it, except through Jesus.

More and more, I have found myself turning to Psalm 2. Particularly at times such as those we find ourselves in, we ask,

“Why do the nations rage,
And the people plot a vain thing?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
And the rulers take counsel together.”

God’s response is that he has put his king on his holy hill, and that they should be wise and be warned. All their plans must be seen in this new light.

John begins with the message, “You are my son,” and ends with God setting his king on Calvary. This is how Jesus wins the victory against the forces arrayed against God. It is not the love of power, but the power of love that we see in action. The cry is, “It is finished.” What does this mirror? It echoes the end of the creation story. God has finished his work.

What God did in Jesus cannot be seen simply as an escape hatch or as an example. Having Jesus as an example is something like me having Tiger Woods as an example for golf. How he plays is brilliant, but I can’t hope to follow his example. Jesus did something which changed the world. God dealt with the forces of evil.

After the 7th day Jesus rested, and Luke is careful to remind us that the next day in the first day. It is the beginning of God’s new world. Jesus’ resurrection is not just about a message that we have life after death, but it is a proclamation that new creation has begun.

In this New Creation, we are now not just beneficiaries, but the agents of his new creation. All the evil that was preventing new creation has been dealt with, and this is alone through the Spirit. It is not just as if there is a world out there which is convicted of sin, and that somehow we are not affected.

In John 7, anyone thirsty is told to come and drink freely of the living water. What are we told is the result? Do the waters end up flowing in? No. They end up flowing out. We are channels for God’s blessing to flow through us.
So what does all this mean?

Today, we face a number of crises. Many of have been told how to live the Gospel in a particular way. We are called to live as people of Jesus and to go out and do new creation. We shouldn’t always be playing catch-up. We should be ahead of the game. We should live lives so that although people do not know what they are about, they want it.

I’m going to give two examples of this work that I have seen. The first is in the area of South Shields. In this area, the shops had started to shut, and then the banks shut because with no shops, no-one was using them. At this point, the church approached one of the banks that were still open and started a credit union, a mother’s and toddler’s group and a community centre. This group is still running. It is wonderful to see people running these schemes and becoming human again.

Another example is an old school on the edge of Durham that was shutting down. There were a number of severely mentally handicapped people in the area. This school has reopened as a place for these people to be involved in works of creating beauty. One of the things I am most touched about is that one of the jobs these people will do is to mend broken furniture. It is incredible to think that these people, who themselves are physically broken, are involved in mending furniture.

In this context, debates about secularism will start to look very different, and it will make sense to talk about believing in Jesus. This is because of the reality at the core of both of these works.

Continued in Part 3.

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