Thursday 10 March

Leviticus 21:1-22:33

There are at least two things in this passage that kick forward into the bits of the bible that are a little more familiar.  Firstly, we see that priests are not meant to mourn and bury any people they know other than their mother, father, son, daughter, unmarried sister and presumably wife, although I can’t see that mentioned.  More than that, the High Priest is not even allowed to enter a place where there is a dead body.  So, when Jesus in Luke 9:59 suggests to the man that he should proclaim the kingdom of God rather than going and burying his father Jesus is effectively laying the High Priest’s obligation upon the man.  He is saying to him; my call on you is more important than the call on the Levitical priests and is, in fact, as important as the once-in-a-generation call upon the High Priest of the temple.  As Leviticus has shown us over and over and over again, that is quite some call!  

Secondly we see, quite astoundingly, that after all these rules have been given, Yahweh tells the Israelites that he is the Lord who is making them holy.  Note that, it is God who is making the Israelites holy, not them who are making themselves holy by following all these rules.  This is amazing.  And it has always been the character of God right through the Old Testament, into the New Testament and beyond.  God is the one working in us and for us, drawing us out of the pit and setting our eyes on the prize.  This thing has never been about us people and it never will be.  It is his grace, his effort, his power and his life being put in us for his glory and his renown.  Leviticus is about how God’s work is going to impact upon us, not the other way around.

Mark 15:1-32

It is amazing how this narrative runs.  Every detail, every last event screams painfully close to your ear that it is Jesus who should be pitied here - he is kicked around and abused and insulted.  This occasion should undeniably prove that Jesus got it wrong and the human authority structures had prevailed yet again.  And yet Mark sticks the sword of the Spirit of truth into each of these authority structures such that they are the ones to be pitied and Jesus is the one to be revered.  We pity Pilate that he could be so stupid to choose to murder God just to satisfy a fickle crowd.  We pity the soldiers that they thought the most valuable thing they could get out of the crucifixion was a small portion of Jesus’ clothes.  And finally we pity the chief priests and teachers of the law that they could mock God and not grasp that God cannot be mocked and they would reap what they sowed.  It is as if Mark is peering up out of the page at us and is urging us to see through human apparitions of power and to align ourselves with the KING OF THE JEWS.

Psalm 31:19-24

It is just so great that we can feel we are completely cut off from God’s sight and yet can know that he hears our cries for mercy.  

Wednesday 9 March

Leviticus 19:1-20:27

Come on Mo, is it really necessary to catalogue every single conceivable combination of sexual partners that would be detestable to the Lord?   I feel like I’m back in maths class trying to work out all the possible permutations of a particular set theory.  One thing this relentless listing does do though is make it pretty hard to argue that homosexual intercourse can be biblically justified, as culturally unacceptable as that may be.  The common retort that we should also therefore not wear clothing made of two separate materials (v19) I think is a distraction rather than a genuine counter-argument.  I must confess that I don’t have the foggiest why that particular law was laid down but I do know that nearly every other principle found within these two chapters was affirmed and advocated by Jesus; “not a jot or a tittle...”.  We therefore continue to seek to respect parents, keep some form of sabbath, turn from idols, be compassionate towards the poor, be honest, love our neighbours as ourselves, respect others, respect the land, reject the occult, shy away from decorating ourselves in a manner that suggests allegiance to another god, respect the elderly, look after our children, worship only God and carefully manage our sexual activity.  Some of these are closely in line with cultural norms and relatively straightforward to agree with, even if they are hard to uphold, eg being honest, respecting the land.  Others though place us in a clear clash with the prevailing message of our day and they take serious boldness and effort to follow.  It has ever been so.  The Israelites themselves were clearly told by God that following his principles would make them distinct from all those around them.  God wanted this.  He wanted them to jarr with their surrounding culture because he didn’t find the surrounding culture to his taste.  We are called to live a different culture, to demonstrate life as God intends it to be.  At it’s heart this is a positive call, not to nitpick and criticise the culture around us but rather to recognise it is different and then to press ahead and forge a new culture of our own.  That is something Vineyard people are wonderfully good at.  Let’s keep advancing the Kingdom Way.

Mark 14:43-72

I’m rolling up the clouds like a scroll, I’m smashing the feet of iron and clay, I’m calling down the curtain on this corrupt and imperfect kingdom.  And, more than that, I’m starting a new show, a show of light and hope where I’m the star and all and sundry play a role.  And a fat lady is never, ever going to sing for the end of this production.  It’s no wonder the high priest tore his clothes when Jesus declared these words; he probably needed to buy a bit of time before his jaw would climb back up off the floor and reattach itself to his neck.  This is the sheer audacity of what Jesus declared and what we believe; the greatest day in history has gone. The world was once and for all fundamentally sorted by the one man Jesus Christ.  We don’t need another hero or a black Jesus or to imagine there being no religion.  Everything we need has been done, by him, back then.  There is not a person in London whose life could not be radically and totally sorted out because of what Jesus has done.  There is not a community in the whole of England which can not be transformed and inspired by the coming of the Kingdom into its midst.  Yes we do live inbetween the dawning and the arriving of this new Kingdom, there is the experience of the now and the not yet but - and this is a glorious, blood-pumping thought - there absolutely is a “now”, Jesus has opened up those ancient doors and beckoned all the nations to come in, he has torn apart the curtain and unleashed his presence across the globe, he has triumphed over ever power and is scattering his gifts across this land.  Let’s not be downtrodden or discouraged, browbeaten or deflected but rather let us celebrate the very present reality of God’s kingdom available to all through us in us and beyond us.

Proverbs 6:30-35

Forget Titanic and the English Patient and Shrek and all the other Hollywood tales that captivate the heart; don’t bonk another person’s wife.  You will regret it, you really, really will.

Tuesday 8 March

Leviticus 17:1-18:30

It’s worth sticking a mental bookmark against the regulations on blood that are outlined here.  In particular 17:14 is foundational for understanding why blood is at the centre of the covenants between God and mankind.  In the Jewish mind there is something precious about blood that ties it inextricably to the life and personality of the being through which it flows.  Perhaps it is similar to our common understanding of the heart being the defining part of a person.  Blood is seen as the foundational element of both the old and the new covenants between God and his people. I think this is about justice.  As God recklessly gives abundant life on one side on the equation, justice demands that there be some sort of payment of life on the other side of the equation.  In the old covenant that life is represented by the blood of bulls and goats while in the new it is represented by the wine of the Lord’s Supper.  The remarkable thing is that in this covenant that rules in our day, our entry into true life is balanced out by the blood of Jesus; we have been bought not just by the death of God but by some of his life as well.

Mark 14:17-42

Peter probably believed he had done his betraying of Jesus by the end of this passage.  I suspect he assumed that his falling asleep 3 times in Gethsemane was the act of disowning that Jesus had predicted.  I would certainly have assumed the same thing if I was in his shoes.  And yet we know that in tomorrow’s reading Peter goes much much larger in the disowning stakes in just a few hours time.  That seems to be at the core of the tragedy of humanity that Mark is asserting here - we as people know that we are weak and in need of help but are blind to quite how bankrupt we really are.  That is why Mark is at such pains to point out that Jesus’ situation was so desolate as he was dragged towards the cross.  It is crucial to Mark’s faith that Jesus was thrown down into the deepest corner of the pit of despair and that he rose from such a place.  Jesus was hurled into the most tortuous place of discord and confusion and then his peace reigned.  This is vital for us having real confidence that our faith really cuts it.  You could be a victim of all kinds of abuse, you could be at the heart of a financial meltdown, you could be so desperately alone and you would not have sunk lower than Jesus’ grace can reach.  Alternatively, you might think you are ‘all that’ and that the sun is shining out of the creases in your freshly-ironed chinos and yet you would find it to be just a facade and a delusion and that you are more dysfunctional than you yet know.  Humanity is bitterly stricken and only One Man has the remedy for its ills.

Psalm 31:9-18

We started this psalm yesterday and find here many more prophetic allusions to the fate of Jesus on the cross.  It is quite extraordinary how God revealed all this stuff in an through the life and worship of David.

Monday 7 March

Leviticus 15:1-16:34

I don’t suppose you’ve ever discussed chapter 15 in house group?  It details the discharges and bodily functions that we keep behind closed doors and feels bizarre to read in God’s word.  But, the truth is, that chapter 15 points to the grisly reality of humanity and to the absolute otherness of God.  These discharges are part of normal life - sex and sores, periods and bleeding etc - and yet they need to be atoned for before God can be approached.  This is the message of Leviticus - God and people should not mix.  God and people cannot mix.  It’s like putting metal in a microwave.  And that is where the glorious mystery of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, comes in.  This annual slaughter of bulls and goats is a little like a chemical formulae that somehow transforms metal into the state that it can sit in a microwave and not explode.  It is a yearly reminder that any approach to God defies the rules of physics and confounds the nature of things.  For people to be able to come into the presence of God is a mystifying miracle of mercy every time it happens.  It is a truly shocking privilege that we can, as Hebrews puts it, approach God’s throne of grace.

Mark 13:32-14:16

I’ve been deeply convicted of how I see Jesus, love Jesus and worship Jesus and yet choose to do things that I think will be effective rather than waiting to hear what he wants me to do.  This passage speaks into this conviction again.  Jesus unambiguously describes his followers as servants who have been given assigned tasks.  He calls us to primarily be watchers, not doers.  We should keep watch, be on guard, be alert.  This alertness needs to be to him and the things he is calling us to.  Not to plough on ahead on our preset agendas, even if they are ones we believe fully meet his own priorities - even relentless care for the poor can be a distraction from the most important thing.   We have to completely and utterly submit ourselves to Jesus, to waste all of our earthly resources on him and his call even if there is no obvious “result” in doing so.  When we start asking “what would be most effective” or “what would help most people” or even “what is on my heart to do” we need to be very careful that we are not starting to be alert to results rather than watch the Lord.  This thing is ultimately about keeping our eyes fixed on him, on straining to hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches and to do whatever we see the Father doing.  We need to curb our independent spirits and come, day after day, as slaves to their master’s table.

Psalm 31:1-8

We see here Jesus’ last words before he died.  His declaration “into your hands I commit my Spirit” was not a final statement of completion but a hope-laden cry for help; people hearing him cry out would probably have expected him to finish the psalmist’s phrase “... redeem me, O Lord, the God of truth”.  The fact that Jesus didn’t get this far left this idea hanging in the air like a circling bird of prey. 

Sunday 6 March

Leviticus 14:1-57

Not a high-point of scriptural revelation.  It does show us though that there is nothing too minute or too mundane for the attention of God.  If God is bothered about the colour of the mildew in my house then he is far more meticulous than I and, as a consequence, far more reliable than me.  I can be fully assured that God is never going to be caught out by the small print!  This is really amazing.  God’s horizons expand so far that our eyes water just to look at them and yet his attention is on bacteria and microbes so titchy that we need a microscope to even see them.  We know that He is able to do immeasurably more than we could ever ask or imagine but we also need to recognise that he is able to contemplate more tiny, mundane details than we could ever be bothered to think about.

Mark 13:1-31

I was reading an article about the fall of Jerusalem the other day and was shocked to find out that very few Christians were killed in the battle as they had fled at the very start of the trouble.  These followers of Jesus survived one of the most ruthless and blood-thirty sieges of the Roman empire because they took seriously Jesus’ command to flee to the mountains when they saw the abomination that causes desolation (vs 14).  I find this very challenging.  While it is true that Jesus used some dastardly difficult language when he talked about the End of the Age he did also give some clear, practical instructions for his followers to, well, follow.  He told people to be ready for trouble, to be ready to witness to some pretty senior fellows and to be ready not to worry about what to say as the Holy Spirit would provide them with their material.  I seem to have spent most of my life doing the exact opposite of this; I’ve gone to lengths to avoid all trouble, I’ve generally kept schtum when around anyone important and have worried a lot about how I could tell my friends about my secret Jesus addiction. So, while I know this passage is difficult I’m determined not to get stuck in the weeds nor to ignore it all together but rather, like the early Christians who fled from Jerusalem, put into practice the simple instructions of Jesus that it contains.

Psalm 30:8-12

Some scholars are convinced that this Psalm denies any belief in resurrection (ie the answer to “will the dust praise you?” is “No”.  Other scholars are convinced that the psalm affirms a belief in resurrection and that the answer to “will the dust praise you?” is “Yes”.  I don’t know either way and, if I’m honest, not a lot of me cares.  I do know though that in our darkest times as a family God did seem to remove our sackcloth and clothe us with joy, he did take our wailing and turn it into dancing and he has done more for us than we could ever, ever begin to thank him for.  

Saturday 5 March

Leviticus 13:1-59

Generally fairly dull and, if I’m honest, something I mostly skim-read but there is within this passage a truly heart-breaking picture of life outside of the grace of Jesus.  Chapter 13:45-46 condemns all people with infectious skin diseases to an awful fate.  These people were brothers and daughters, shepherds and priests, worshippers and doubters but when they contracted an infectious skin disease they had every aspect of their identity stripped away from them.  Wrenched away from all support networks (they lived alone) and divested of any personality (their clothing style was enforced upon them) it’s like these poor wretched souls were transferred into a separate race - the walking dead - whose new vocabulary had just a single word - “Unclean!”, “Unclean!”.  Taken on its own this instruction could cause you to doubt the goodness and the compassion of God.  How could He possibly prescribe this as a way to treat people, let alone the victims of a disease?  I take consolation from two facts. Firstly, we know that this was not God’s plan for the world but is a direct product of the sin of Adam.  As we have seen before in the bible, the Fall and the curse are not just theological concepts - they were tragic events with real consequences - they really do bite and they really do hurt.  Secondly, we know that it was precisely these people, these lepers, that Jesus so actively sought out.  Any perception of injustice we might have had about God’s treatment of these people is put through the mincer by the God-in-flesh’s outlandish provision for them.

Mark 12:28-44

A demonstration of loving your enemies.  We’ve seen on either side of 12:28-34 Jesus’ uncompromising assault on the teachers of the law.  He has called them hypocrites, murderers and arrogant despots and yet, when one of them approaches him Jesus is willing to engage.  A few of things that I noted about how Jesus did this: 

1. Jesus listens to his enemy - He hasn’t let cynicism towards teachers of the law monopolise his opinion and he pays sufficient attention to discern that this question is genuine. 
2. Jesus doesn’t cede ground to his enemy - He doesn’t just accept the terms of the argument set by the teacher of the law (ie which ONE commandment is most important) but he provides an answer that fits with his own understanding of the issue (ie there are TWO most important commandments).
3. Jesus affirms his enemy - Jesus probably could have taken exception to the slightly arrogant tone of the teacher of the law but instead he decides to encourage the good that he is seeing in him.
4. Jesus challenges his enemy - Jesus’ statement that the teacher of the law is not far from the kingdom of God carries with it a clear challenge; will the teacher of the law choose to step into the kingdom that he is approaching or will he remain on its fringes?

Proverbs 6:20-29

Another example of the Jewish obsession with passing clear and robust instruction from one generation to the next.  Don’t be a loaf of bread!

Friday 4 March

Leviticus 11:1-12:8

These food regulations sound like my grandfather’s rules for having a bath; on Tuesdays, as long as the sun is shining and the month doesn’t have an ‘r’ in it.  They also make me feel rather smug about my life-long distrust of shell-fish.  

It’s important to recognise that we have now moved on to talk more about cleanness than devotion.  I’m not sure this is necessarily the best way of making this distinction but it does appear that Israel’s view of holiness comprised both single-minded devotion to Yahweh (Leviticus chapters 1-8) and rigid protection of his community (chapters 11-15).    By ‘protection of his community’ I mean that the purity laws in these chapters seem to be angled directly at managing disease and infection in a travelling community with no refrigeration, no NHS and no supply of Cillit Bang.  If this theory is correct then these laws, although incredibly rigid, point not to God’s killjoy spirit but his trenchant commitment to the preservation of his people.  It also points to the inescapable commitment each and every member of God’s people has to their fellow believers.  This chapter suggests that you just cannot consecrate yourself to holiness and worship of God if you are not committing yourself to the preservation and health of his church.

Mark 12:13-27

Jesus is like Simon Cowell.  Some motley group strutt into the audition hall ready to show the judges they are where it is at and then, after throwing down their thang, Cowell cuts them to the core.  I suspect the Saducees would have felt as mystified and aggrevated by Jesus’ description of them as “not knowing the scriptures or the power of God” as the X Factors contestants do when they are told they can’t sing and look like a pig.  And this inflammatory message of Jesus is a huge challenge to us today.  Essentially he is saying that you can talk religious, act religious and even think religious and yet be completely excluded from everything that God is doing.  And, on the more positive side of the equation, Jesus goes on to declare that God is alive and well and to be experienced today.  This is the amazing news for us.  God is not some dry theory to be postulated about and debated at length.  His book is not an academic treatise to be analysed and rolled up into batons to whack people with.  No, God wants his book to be learnt but as the menu rather than the meal.  He wants to be explored as a person, not developed as a concept.  Jesus brings this message to the people in no uncertain terms; God is very real and desires deep, current, empowering relationships with his people.  If that is not your understanding and experience of God then you need to take stock - decision time is coming, and you really don’t want to get 3 “No”s.

Psalm 30:1-7

“His anger lasts a moment but his favour lasts a lifetime. Weeping may remain for a night but rejoicing comes in the morning”  Wow.  I just love the authenticity and hopefulness of it!