THE LAST SUPPER CLUB

Transcription

1 THE LAST SUPPER CLUB WHY DID JESUS HAVE TO DIE? WHAT S CHANGED? Monday 26th February How many clubs are we playing with? SNOW! Monday 12th March Monday 19th March What is sin and how is it resolved? What motivates God? & What does Being in Christ mean for us, today? 1

2 HOW MANY CLUBS ARE WE PLAYING WITH?

3 Outline of the evening. 7pm 7.15pm 7.20pm 7.40pm 7.45pm 8.15pm Arrive, chat, get seated. What's golf got to do with anything? by Rev d Lynsay. Grace & eat. Atonement - An introduction by the Bible Project What s in the bag? - The earliest Christian understandings. Dessert & coffee. 8.30pm What do you usually carry? Are there any clubs you think it would be helpful to pick up? 8.45pm Closing prayers. On the following pages you will find some background reading that you may find helpful for the session. It is designed to get your mind in gear, rather than to be comprehensive. Throughout this document, unattributed work is adapted from materials provided by They make their resources freely available to use through voluntary contributions. I am a supporter and find their work a really useful tool. Do have a look at some of their videos if you have the time. 3

4 Christian understandings of Atonement. SATISFACTION: Sin dishonours God. Humans cannot give back the glory to God that has been lost bu their sin. Someone must, therefore, stand in between, who is both Human and God. This is Jesus, who can return the glory to God that has been lost. (Anselm) RECAPITULATION: Jesus Christ recapitulated Adam s life and therefore the life of every human, undoing the sin and death that Adam handed on. PENAL SUBSTITUTION: SUBSTITUTION: This frames atonement in the terms of God s wrath against SIN. Jesus Christ absorbs that wrath on the cross as a propitiation for our sins. God s wrath is pacified by self-punishment. Jesus as the Lamb of God, making the ultimate sacrifice to replace all animal sacrifices. REPRESENTATION: RANSOM/ VICTOR: God becomes human, identifies with humans and takes on mortality to provide life for those destined for death. (Incarnationalists.) Christ enters captive territory. His death and resurrection are the means of liberating humans from slavery to and sin, self and Satan. ABELARD: The cross is a demonstration of God s love to evoke a change of heart in those who perceive its costly nature. IDENTIFICATION FOR INCORPORATION: God s core purpose for Atonement is reconciliation, which must happen in 4 directions: God World Others Self All the other theories can be held within this notion because ATONEMENT is itself a metaphor for all that God does to make us what (s)he wants to make us in light of who we were, who we are and who we are meant to be. 4

5 WHAT IS SIN AND HOW IS IT RESOLVED? 5

6 Outline of the evening. 7pm 7.15pm 7.20pm 7.40pm 7.45pm 8.15pm 8.30pm 8.45pm Arrive, chat, get seated. Where to begin with sin. by Rev d Lynsay. Grace & eat. Sin is Hyper-relational (What?!?) So how is sin resolved? - A survey. Dessert & coffee. Living as Christ s body, means choosing not to root ourselves where sin is rooted, what does this mean? Closing prayers. On the following pages you will find some background reading that you may find helpful for the session. It is designed to get your mind in gear, rather than to be comprehensive. 6

7 What makes human, or what are humans made to do? Why does God create humans? A key concept for us comes fro Genesis 1.26, where we are told that God makes the earth-thing (Adam) in God s image and likeness. The Greek word to convey image and likeness is transliterated eikon. Eikons, defined by being in the image and likenesss of God, are made for union with God, communion with others, love and self-care of the world. Eikons cannot eikon alone! Severed Eikons dimminsh themselves. This understanding makes clear that the beginning of Sin in the Bible is the choice to go it alone to be free, in the sense of indepedent, to achieve the absolute freedom go God. The difficulty with desire for absolute freedom, is that it works away from God s design for creation and redemption (known throughout the Bible as Shalom/Peace). Before the fall, Adam and Eve eikoned. In God s work of redemption cracked Eikons are being restored into glory producing Eikons, by participation in the perfect Eikon, Jesus Christ, who redeems them to eikon now and forever in true, divine, love. 7

8 WHAT MOTIVATES GOD? WHAT DOES BEING IN CHRIST MEAN FOR US, TODAY? 8

9 Outline of the evening. 7pm 7.15pm 7.20pm 7.40pm 8.10pm 8.20pm 8.45pm Arrive, chat, get seated. Food for discussion What motivates God? by Rev d Lynsay. Grace & eat. Do this in Re-member-ance of me? Dessert & coffee. What does it mean to live Atonement?. Closing prayers. On the following pages you will find some background reading that you may find helpful for the session. It is designed to get your mind in gear, rather than to be comprehensive. 9

10 What motivates God? - R N Frost November 14, 2011 Why does God do anything? And, as it relates to us, how do we fit within that purpose? Over the years this question has gained weight: I had to ask it. Why? Because I ve heard different people locate all of life and meaning within one ultimate divine ambition. And I do it myself. But the answers differ. And if we have competing claims how is any one of them ultimate? One speaker, for instance, holds that God is moved by his goodness. Another elevates love. Still others point to God s glory, or his holiness, or his power. And in each case the person gives primacy to their designated issue so that everything God does is explained by just one quality or ambition. What, then, should we make of claims for a single divine motivation? To explore the question we need to consider at least two more questions. First, isn t it presumptuous to make such bold pronouncements about God s ultimate character? And, second, wouldn t it make better sense to adopt some sort of facet-theory? So that different attributes or ambitions are treated as coordinate aspects of God s character? In this view it can be argued that sometimes we see more of one aspect in play and sometimes more of another. In one text it s holiness, in another it s love, and so on. Any answer needs to come from the Bible: if it answers the motivation question with a coherent and sustained response throughout the wide range of Bible writings then we need to listen and respond. If not, then we can propose whatever makes good sense to us and that sets up the possibility of our being presumptuous. In other word, we need to ask God whether he has an inspired biblically speaking answer. He does. There isn t a set of facets. Instead he offers us a single answer: he is moved by the mutual love that exists throughout eternity between the Father and the Son by the Spirit. This love is what moved God to create us; and why he allowed us to sin by loving ourselves; and why he sent the Son to save us from our ultimate sin of self-love. In sum, the Father s love for the Son and the Son s response expresses the ultimate motivation of God and he wants us to participate in that love but he won t force it upon us. Here s a nutshell basis for this claim as the Bible presents it. We start with what Jesus, our Lord, tells us. In John 17 He portrayed his relationship with the Father as a love-motivated glory (verse 24) so that the Triune communion before the world existed (verse 5) was one of shared glory. Love was the basis for this plan, a love that embraces all who respond to it and that forms a communion of love: that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them (verse 26). In 1 John 4 the divine communion was summarized by the declaration that God is love. Paul, knowing this, wrote to the Corinthians that in the spiritual-relational triad of faith, hope and love the greatest of these is love (1 Corinthians 13:13). Divine love exhibits God s heart for us that the Spirit reveals to us in salvation as he pours out his love in our hearts. God so loved the world revealing the spreading quality of his love that he gave his Son over to death in order to raise us out of death in the Son s resurrected life (John 3:16). 10

11 This plan was engaged in the Godhead before creation (Ephesians 1:4) and was anticipated by the writers of the Old Testament (1 Peter 1:10-12). It was the pre-incarnate Son who walked in the Garden in Genesis 3 and it was the promise of his coming incarnation that God offered as the resolution to sin (Genesis 3:15); and that launched the promised blessing (Genesis 12:1-3 & Galatians 3:8) in the coming of an anointed servant who is the Son (Isaiah 49-53) and who would suffer death on our behalf in order to bring us into a marriage with himself (Isaiah 54:5). Which brings us to the application: what does this self-disclosure of God s sole motivation mean to us? It means that for us to be right with God that is, to be righteous and reconciled is for us to share his motivation. This call to love is what he called the greatest commandment : nothing else will do. Listen, then, to the Old Testament call that encapsulates this wonderful disclosure of God s ultimate motivation: Kiss the Son (Psalm 2:12). It s what we were made for. And for any and all who aren t there yet there s still time to repent of any false loves that block a proper, true love. So come one and all to taste and see that this relational, loving God is good. You ll love his embrace. Even though God's answer was more than satisfactory and even though Job was humbled by it, God still chose to restore all Job's blessings to him, showing us that even in the face of the infinite complexity of the universe, our problems are still important to God and that we should still trust Him to look over us. Together, all three of these wisdom books show us the meaning of life and what it means to live in the wisdom of God. What Does It Mean to Remember Jesus in the Lord s Supper? JANUARY 6, 2014 Dustin Crowe SHARE Evangelical churches typically recite these words when taking communion or the Lord s Supper: Do this in remembrance of me. Whether your theology of communion leans toward the Calvinistic spiritual presence or Zwingli s memorial view, or you find yourself floating back and forth between the two, I would guess we all desire a heightened sense of what God holds out to us in these dynamic symbols. In 1 Corinthians 11:24-25 (see also Luke 22:17-20) Paul recounts the instructions Jesus gave the disciples when inaugurating the new-covenant meal. Jesus says as we grind the broken bread (his body) in our teeth and as the bitter taste of the wine (his blood) lingers on our throats, we remember Christ s death. More Than Recalling So what does it mean to remember? Does it simply suggest we shouldn t let thoughts slip out of your mind? Does it mean we reminisce on the sufferings of Jesus so I feel really thankful or really awful? For many Christians, to remember is an ambiguous mental activity. 11

12 But in the Bible, a call to remember especially when tied to a covenant sign or ceremony is a vibrant, powerful, and participatory concept where we recalibrate our lives according to what s being remembered. According to Herman Ridderbos in his outline of Paul s theology, It is not merely a subjective recalling to mind, but an active manifestation of the continuing and actual significance of the death of Christ. Michael Horton layers our understanding of remembrance with the Jewish context. In our Western (Greek) intellectual heritage, remembering means recollecting : recalling to mind something that is no longer a present reality. Nothing could be further from a Jewish conception. For example, in the Jewish liturgy, remembering means participating here and now in certain defining events in the past and also in the future. Here are two brief examples where the Old Testament remembers in an active way of bringing past realities into present-day living. After the flood, God tells Noah the rainbow is the covenant sign that he will not cover the whole earth in judgment with water again. Each time the sign of the rainbow appears the covenant is remembered. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth. God said to Noah, This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth (Gen. 9:16-17). The covenantal sign of the rainbow reassures us of God s promises that still apply today. The preeminent picture of redemption in the Old Testament is the exodus of Israel from Egypt, memorialized in the Passover meal. Every year the Israelites would again participate in this meal to remember who or whose they were. It s not dry history to be learned but dynamic history to be lived. They participate in the meal because they are partakers in the reality of this redemption as Israelites. This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the LORD; throughout your generations, as a statue forever, you shall keep it as a feast (Exodus 12:14). The Puritan John Flavel distinguished between two types of remembering. The first is speculative and transient, and the second is affectionate and permanent. A speculative remembrance is only to call to mind the history of such a person and his sufferings: that Christ was once put to death in the flesh. An affectionate remembrance is when we so call Christ and his death to our minds as to feel the powerful impressions thereof upon our hearts. When the Lord s Supper is served believers experience an affectionate remembrance because the gospel is recalled and reapplied. We remember the grace purchased at Christ s death is the same grace we need when we come to the table. Contemporary Example Even as a new husband I know the importance of remembering my wedding anniversary. It wouldn t quite cut it if on that day I did nothing special for my wife and only mentally acknowledged our anniversary. She wouldn t say, How thoughtful! I m glad you didn t forget. You don t remember your anniversary by stating the facts. She would rightly expect that the concept of remembering our anniversary involves a layer of activity, such as me writing a note or taking her on a date. We remember our covenantal promise as I pursue, cherish, and love her afresh like I vowed on our wedding day. One of the things encouraging me is the current resurgence of understanding the ongoing application of the gospel. Christians today regularly hear that the gospel is believed once for 12

13 salvation but is reapplied daily. The gospel rhythm isn t one-and-done but rinse and repeat. This growing awareness of what it means to preach the gospel to ourselves daily or to apply the gospel might give us some insight as to how we look to Christ and again receive his grace as we eat the bread and drink the cup of the Lord s Supper. Every time we take communion the gospel is proclaimed, and we believe and embrace it again in other words, we remember. My hope is that Christians come to the Lord s Table with eagerness and expectancy, believing this is not a dull religious ceremony but a spiritual gospel experience. Much of this course is based on Scott MacKnight s: A Community called Atonement. This review sums up the part we are thinking about tonight. Part Four concludes the book by suggesting various avenues in which this understanding of atonement gets lived out. Chapter fifteen explains that believers embody and extend God s atoning work by engaging in missional love that seeks the holistic welfare of the social context in which we live. Justice is the focus of chapter sixteen, and is reworked to denote systemic justice that is restorative and relational in the here and now (132) rather than merely divine reprisal. Chapter seventeen fleshes out what it means to be missional. Drawing on Brian McLaren, McKnight explains that just as God s mission is to seek out and restore the whole person, so this mission forms the sacred summons of the Christian. In a helpfully articulated distinction, we are to be missional (going into the world) rather than attractional (waiting for the world to come to us). Chapter eighteen addresses the role of Scripture in atonement, provocatively declaring that some Christians... ascribe too much to the Bible when they should be starting with and centering on the Trinity (143). Scripture itself, moreover, is missional, designed by God to work its story into persons of God so that they may become doers of the good (147). Finally, chapter nineteen explores the atoning significance of prayer and the sacraments. 13