The Message Remix (370 page)

INTRODUCTION
JUDE

 

Our spiritual communities are as susceptible to disease as our physical bodies. But it is easier to detect whatever is wrong in our stomachs and lungs than in our worship and witness.
When our physical bodies are sick or damaged, the pain calls our attention to it, and we do something quick. But a dangerous, even deadly, virus in our spiritual communities can go undetected for a long time.
As much as we need physicians for our bodies, we have even greater need for diagnosticians and healers of the spirit.

Jude’s letter to an early community of Christians is just such diagnosis. It is all the more necessary in that those believers apparently didn’t know anything was wrong, or at least not as desperately wrong as Jude points out.

There is far more, of course, to living in Christian community than protecting the faith against assault or subversion. Paranoia is as unhealthy spiritually as it is mentally. The primary Christian posture is, in Jude’s words, “keeping your arms open and outstretched, ready for the mercy of our Master, Jesus Christ.” All the same, energetic watchfulness is required. Jude’s whistle-blowing has prevented many a disaster.

 

 

From:
Jude gladly claimed kinship with his brother James, the leader of the Jerusalem church. But neither man boasted of their kinship to Jesus, their half-brother or step-brother. Both knew that faith, not blood, counted with Jesus, and they had been faithless throughout Jesus’ life and came around only after his resurrection. After the shock wore off, Jude became a passionate defender of Jesus, first to his fellow Jews and then against those who wanted to defile the Message of Jesus.

 

To:
Early believers were used to apostles and their teams passing through town and further instructing them on Jesus’ work and teaching. But the empire was full of traveling philosophers-for-hire and evangelists for new religions. These people made their livings teaching spirituality, so when Christians became a profitable market, some teachers moved into the Jesus business. Especially popular was a version that offered all the benefits of salvation without the hassle of quaint Jewish practices like chastity. Young Christians in far-flung cities were sitting ducks for such teachers, and it infuriated Jude to see vulnerable people exploited.

 

Re:
Probably between A.D. 60 and 80. The Jewish Zealots in Judea Province had long advocated revolt against Rome. In A.D. 66 the desecration of a synagogue sparked open war. The Jews had some early victories until General Vespasian brought in sixty thousand Roman soldiers. They quickly mopped up most of the province, but Jerusalem held out until A.D. 70. By then, Vespasian had returned to Rome to become emperor, and his son Titus led his army into Jerusalem. They looted the Temple, burned the city, and slaughtered or enslaved much of the Jewish population. The Judaism of priests and Temple sacrifices ceased to exist, and only the rabbinic Pharisees and the Christians were left as heirs of the ancient faith.

INTRODUCTION
REVELATION

 

The Bible ends with a flourish: vision and song, doom and deliverance, terror and triumph.
The rush of color and sound, image and energy, leaves us reeling. But if we persist through the initial confusion and read on, we begin to pick up the rhythms, realize the connections,
and find ourselves enlisted as participants in a multidimensional act of Christian worship.

John of Patmos, a pastor of the late first century, has worship on his mind, is pre-eminently concerned with worship. The vision, which is The Revelation, comes to him while he is at worship on a certain Sunday on the Mediterranean island of Patmos. He is responsible for a circuit of churches on the mainland whose primary task is worship. Worship shapes the human community in response to the living God. If worship is neglected or perverted, our communities fall into chaos or under tyranny.

Our times are not propitious for worship. The times never are. The world is hostile to worship. The Devil hates worship. As The Revelation makes clear, worship must be carried out under conditions decidedly uncongenial to it. Some Christians even get killed because they worship.

John’s Revelation is not easy reading. Besides being a pastor, John is a poet, fond of metaphor and symbol, image and allusion, passionate in his desire to bring us into the presence of Jesus believing and adoring. But the demands he makes on our intelligence and imagination are well rewarded, for in keeping company with John, our worship of God will almost certainly deepen in urgency and joy.

 

 

From:
John (traditionally the apostle John, though the writer doesn’t say so) was a prisoner at the Roman penal colony on the island of Patmos, off the coast of Turkey. But the old man hardly marked the harsh labor in the stone quarries, the wind and rain and bad food, except to note that trials were part of the journey with Jesus. His thoughts were with believers on the mainland, and with Jesus.

 

To
: Fifty years after Paul first took the Message of Jesus to western Turkey, there were Christians in nearly every city. Few remembered the excitement of the early days, when the news that Jesus was the King of the world, and was coming soon to reign with justice, had rippled from household to household. Fifty years, and still Jesus hadn’t come. Now a madman was emperor—he actually believed the poets who called him a god, and people who refused to worship him found that nobody would do business with them. Some were even arrested. And inside the churches, some members wanted to twist the Message to suit themselves. Christians were getting scared. Was God really in control?

 

Re:
Probably around A.D. 95. Emperor Domitian liked to be addressed as “our Lord and God.” He decreed that anyone who held public office or testified in court had to offer a pinch of incense to the emperor’s guardian spirit and declare, “Caesar is Lord.” Those who refused could lose their life. And even in areas where arrests were few, the trade associations cut off business from men who wouldn’t offer the sacrifice, and Christians didn’t dare go to court to seek justice.