Fulfilled

The Bible is like every other book: There will be parts you like, and parts you don't.

It is unlike every other book, however, in that the parts you don't like are the parts you really should be reading.  

This is how the scriptures work, you know.  I know that you can go through the Bible, reading what you like, seeing what you want to see, and being perfectly comfy with that so far, that works.  But the problem with the Bible is that you're going to find a lot there that you don't like.  There's going to be an awful lot in the Bible that you won't care for, and that you will resist.  You won't like to see great swaths of the Holy Scriptures, which is why you think to yourself that you have the luxury of skipping these things.   But when Jesus was walking around in the flesh, people didn't have the luxury of skipping those passages:  Jesus is the word.  He is the passage.

When the people of Christ's time wanted to skip the passages that they didn't care for, they did so by taking Jesus out to the top of a cliff, and trying to toss him off.  They were so angry with what Jesus had to say and who he is, that they moved in their minds to murder.  They wanted to end this topic of conversation 100%, and instead of just closing the book, they wanted to throw it away, and to stop it from ever being read ever again. Thus the trip to the top of the cliff.  Thus the proposed murder.

Now, you can always tell when Jesus is saying something important or impactful, and you can do so by checking the reaction of the Jews that he is speaking to.  When they get mad, Jesus has said something important.  Now, this shouldn't be a surprise to you, because there is nothing new under the sun.  That is, you should be well aware that we have been instructed to only say things of little to no import.  That is, you're allowed to talk about the style pages, movies, the weather, sports, that kind of thing.  But you're really REALLY not supposed to talk about things that matter.  Your conversation is never supposed to get you to the point where people, whether close family or strangers, get worked up, agitated or involved.  You know, involved to the point that they care.

But here comes Jesus and does what we say we want him to do - he speaks truth to power. And that's good, right? We want him to speak truth to power.  We want him to drive out the moneychangers from the temple, we want him to be in charge of history, we want him to restore justice and to convict those that we dislike.  But that's not the business that Jesus is in.  He's not in the business of convicting people way over there.  He's not in the business of making sure that you are well taken care of and that he is going to despoil the people that you hate. That's exactly what an idol is, you know. And the number one sign of idolatry is that the god that you have made up hates the people you hate, and loves the people you love.  If your god seems to favor you an awful lot, if he seems to be a tribal god who seems to love your tribe, who seems to hate your tribe, then you have to ask yourself where that God came from.  Is he the one who made heaven and earth? Is he the one who formed and fashioned all of creation? Or is he the product of the people that he seems to care an awful lot about.

For you see, Jesus Christ is the Lord and God who is in charge of everything, who made the entire universe and everything in it. And because he exists outside of humanity, external to it, he isn't going to say things that we always like or agree with.  Quite the opposite actually. Jesus holds to an external standard of right and wrong against which all other things are measured.  And more than anything else, his standards don't change when they become unpopular.  This is bigger news than we think it is, especially since today, since we have dispensed largely with the idea of an external right and wrong, we believe that we can, with ease, change and alter what right and wrong are, using only the passage of time for justification.  But the shocker is that Christ's righteousness, being external, doesn't depend on changing times, or, more importantly, on being the right kind of people.  In fact, quite the opposite, as Jesus himself points out in the Gospel reading.  He points out to the Jews who are listening to him that there were plenty of gentiles in their days who were given blessings by God over and above the Jews at the time.  The Jews expected God to like them because they were them. They didn't expect the opposite, which was that God is interested in righteousness that fits the external form of righteousness that he brings.  It's not about where you were born, what your background is, how well you fit the fashion of the time, or anything like that.  Rather, it requires you to be perfect, just as your heavenly father is perfect.  

And if you're not perfect, well, you have troubles.

Now, the way the Jews of the time, and the way most of us have squared that circle is to say that we can just redefine perfect to be whatever we are currently doing. That is, we define moral based on our behavior, rather than changing our behavior to fit our morality.  This just leads to us calling immorality moral after long enough, not because it is moral, but because we do it.  And that's a massive problem, because it doesn't lead to any actual righteousness at all, and quite the opposite.  The only other solution is to approach the Lord with your lack of perfection, and throw yourself on his mercies. And that's what the examples from the Old Testament did that Jesus brings up.  There is right and wrong, good and evil, and the activity doesn't become good or evil based on the person who does it.  This is a hard teaching, harder still for the churches today.  For here's the absolute truth - membership in a church is no guarantee that you're on the right side of things you know. And if, when you read that, you're tempted to toss rocks, or to throw someone of a cliff, well, welcome to the world of that 1st century synagogue.

Ultimately, it's up to us to work out and to determine that the word of Christ applies no matter what.  Our place in any particular part of the world, our place in any particular church may just lead us to the unfortunate space in which we worship God with our lips but our hearts are far from him.  We desperately need a level of revival that revives our own consciousness, where we realize and recognize that these words of Christ apply to us on an individual level, and that no institution can believe for us.  It's up to us to believe as individuals, and to be forgiven as individuals.  And once we understand that, then we find a group of like minded people who seek salvation as much as we do.

And that's what the church actually is.