First in the Kingdom

Notes
Transcript
A tale of two rooms
A tale of two rooms
Have you ever been working away at something at home or at work, and realised that you need something from the other room?
The insight is clear.
It’s obvious what you need, you barely even need to think about it consciously.
So you step away from what you’ve been doing, step into the next room, and...
You can’t remember what you came into the room for. You can barely even remember what you were doing before you came into the room.
You can only remember what you were doing when you retrace your steps and go back to where you started.
Good news! This may not be a senior moment!
(Although I’m not really qualified to say, one way or another.)
No, this “other room” phenomenon is a function of how our brains store our short term memory.
For whatever reason, when we’re busy with a task, our brains think that “this room” is basically all that there is. “That room” may as well bne another planet.
Thanks brain.
One reality or another.
This room or the next.
It can be hard to see, or even imagine what life in “the other room” could even be like.
A Gospel in two parts
A Gospel in two parts
Hinges on Jesus’s three predictions of his death in chapters 8, 9 & 10
The first part of the Gospel, Jesus is heading away from Jerusalem, his messages are popular, and the crowds grow and grow. His ministry is “successful”. In the second half, he turns his face towards Jersualem, towards the cross. His messages become more costly, more difficult for people to understand. The crowds melt away.
And yet.
And yet.
It is only through the cross that Jesus fulfils his calling.
It is only through the cross that Jesus takes our burdens on his shoulders.
It is only through the cross that Jesus opens the door to life eternal, life in all of its fullness.
Truly the Son of Man came to serve and not to be served.
Maybe our ideas of “success” aren’t all that they’re cracked up to be.
Maybe the reality that we can see from the room we’re in isn’t as real as we imagine it to be.
Disciples who don’t get it
Disciples who don’t get it
Another key theme of Mark’s Gospel is that Jesus’ disciples never quite seem to be up with the play.
Jesus has just predicted his death for the third time.
The tide has shifted.
The entire thrust of Jesus’ minstry has just changed. For good. There’s no going back.
But James and John don’t seem to have noticed.
They’re still on the triumphal trajectory of the first half of Jesus’ ministry, and they’re trying to sort get ahead of the curve, and get themselves wealthy and sorted for the next room.
It’s almost comically childish the way they go about it. “Jesus, we’re going to ask a favour of you, and we want you to promise to say yes before we ask.” It’s so selfish and naieve that it’s laughable.
The other disciples are jsut as bad. They get indignant, not because what James and John were asking was innappropriate, but because they didn’t get in first.
Bickering ensues.
As disciples of Jesus today, there’s two ways we can read this apostolic naievity.
Either we can be discouraged - even Jesus’ closest companions didn’t get it, so how can we?
Or we can be reassured -There is a whole new season of life, a whole new way of being that is just in the next room, and it’s not up to us to have it all figured out. Even if we get things wrong along the way, Jesus goes ahead of us, and brings us along too.
This room or the next?
This room or the next?
This room or the next.
One reality or another.
It can be hard to see, or even imagine what life in “the other room” could even be like.
What are these other rooms I’m talking about?
For Jesus and his disciples, the next room was the next stage in Jesus’ ministry, then life as a persecuted disciple of a crucified and risen messiah, and ultimately the promise of life everlasting in the Kingdom of Heaven.
The rooms around us might not seem so dramatic, but they can be equally hard to see or imagine.
They might be age and stage of life rooms.
Going from school life to adult life. One of the most difficult things for young people leaving school is trying to imagine what comes next. The sheer number of options available in our post-modern, global world is overwhelming, and the pressure to “get it right” seems sky high. It’s easy for those of us who have been through that stage to see that the pressure isn’t as real as they imagine, but you can’t really understand that until you walk through that door.
There are all kinds of “new room” moments in our lives. Getting married. Starting a family. Changing job, changing your home town, changing your career. Retiring. Making decisions for your later years.
None of these things are the same, but they all have the same challenge of imagination and understanding. We cannot know what the next room will be like until we’re there.
We’re in a changing rooms moment in our church right now.
After months of consultation and prayerful discernment, they are opening the door to another room.
Will we step through that door?
What will it be like on the other side?
Will it be better or worse?
How to navigate the space in between?
How to navigate the space in between?
Te Marama o te Aō
Te Marama o te Aō
Initial thoughts:
bi-cultural partnership
Ohope hui - making room
unilateral vs bi-lateral covenant
meeting our own needs first?
liminal space - one room to another
James and John wanting to get themselves sorted for the “next room”
The sapce in between - a hard place to be. Two responses “why can’t we stay in this room?” “Why haven’t we gotten on with it next”
te marama o te ao
aurora/light pollution
The last battle/telmarines
first shall be last
turning point of Mark’s Gospel