Work: Necessary Evil or God’s Plan?

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Work: Necessary Evil or God’s Plan? from Stephen Sizer on Vimeo.

You may know I studied geography at Sussex university, which means I am just about qualified for colouring in maps with my crayons, but not much else. I also come from Suffolk where an ability to read maps, or the stars, is essential if you ever want to escape.

You may have heard of the shepherd lost somewhere in the wilds of rural Suffolk minding his own business, tending his flock of sheep. Suddenly a dust cloud approached at high speed, out of which emerged a bright shiny new silver BMW. The driver, a young man in an Amarmi suit, poked his head out of the window and addressed the shepherd. “Hi there. If I can tell you how many sheep you have in your flock, can I have one?” The shepherd looked at the car, then the young man, then glanced at his peacefully grazing flock and answered, ‘Sure’. The young man parked his car, plugged his Blackberry into his laptop, surfed the web to Google maps, used his GPS to zoom in on the field they were standing in, linked it to NASA’s real time imaging software and began a remote body-heat scan of the immediate area. He dropped the results into an Excel spreadsheet, saved it, then printed a 150-page report on the mini laser printer hidden in his glove compartment.

Handing the document to the shepherd, the young man proudly announced, “You have exactly 1,586 sheep.” The shepherd replied, “Impressive. One of my sheep is yours. Take your pick.” He watched the young man select an animal and bundle it into his car. Then the shepherd said. “If I can tell you what your job is, will you give me back my sheep?” After a nod of acceptance from the young man, the shepherd announced without hesitation, “You’re a management consultant.”

“Dead right” exclaimed the young man in surprise. “How on earth did you guess?” “It wasn’t a guess”, replied the shepherd. “First, you drive into my field uninvited. Second, you ask me to pay for information I already know. Third, you answer questions I haven’t asked. Fourth, you know nothing about sheep. Now please may I have my sheepdog back?”

Read more here cc-vw.org/sermons/work.htm

The Bible and the Land: Gary Burge

Gary Burge has written not one but two short and very readable books for Zondervan – The Bible and the Land and Jesus, The Middle Eastern Storyteller. Both are about 110 pages long, easy to read and bursting with glorious photos and simple maps.

Jesus, the Middle Eastern Storyteller

In Jesus, the Middle Eastern Storyteller, the parables of Jesus come alive as never before when Gary uncovers the culture that gives them their deepest meaning. His expert, illustrated guide shows in everyday terms how the customs, literature and values of the ancient world can inform and grow your faith in today’s digital age.

Storytellers made history, and Jesus was the greatest of them all. But how can modern readers know what he actually meant in such iconic parables as the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan? Jesus, the Middle Eastern Storyteller combines the readability of a popular novel and the authority of scholarship to uncover the hidden meaning of references too often misinterpreted or left shrouded in mystery. The first volume in the Ancient Context, Ancient Faith series drives to the heart of readers’ desire to know the culture behind the Scriptures. Colorful maps, photos, and illustrations enhance the context of the times that shaped Jesus’ vivid communication of core truths. This expert guide is an invaluable resource for study groups, teachers, leaders, and inquiring Christians who want to dig deeper and enrich their spiritual life.

The Bible and the Land

In The Bible and the Land Gary offers a rare exploration into the world of the Bible and how its land, culture, and traditions contribute to a unique understanding of a life with God. Insights into numerous biblical passages reveal how cultural assumptions lie behind countless biblical stories.

As the early church moved away from the original cultural setting of the Bible and found its home in the west, Christians lost touch with the ancient world of the Bible. Cultural habits, the particulars of landscape, even the biblical languages soon were unknown. And the cost was enormous: Christians began reading the Bible as foreigners and missing the original images and ideas that shaped a biblical worldview.

This new book by New Testament scholar Gary Burge launches a multivolume series that explores how the culture of the biblical world is presupposed in story after story of the Bible. Using cultural anthropology, ancient literary sources, and a selective use of modern Middle Eastern culture, Burge reopens the ancient biblical story and urges us to look at them through new lenses. Here he explores primary motifs from the biblical landscape—geography, water, rock, bread, etc.—and applies them to vital stories from the Bible.

Listen in on a Q & A with Gary over these two new books:

Q:     Does culture always affect one’s understanding of spiritual life?

A:      Every community of Christians throughout history has framed its understanding of spiritual life within the context of its own culture. Byzantine Christians living in the fifth century and Puritan Christians living over a thousand years later used the world in which they lived to work out the principles of Christian faith, life, and identity. The reflex to build house churches, monastic communities, medieval cathedrals, steeple-graced and village-centered churches, or auditoriums with theater seating will always spring from the dominant cultural forces around us.

If it is true that every culture provides a framework in which the spiritual life is understood, the same must be said about the ancient world. The setting of Jesus and Paul in the Roman Empire was likewise shaped by cultural forces quite different from our own. If we fail to understand these cultural forces, we will fail to understand many of the things Jesus and Paul taught.

Q:     If we fail to consider cultural context, are we in danger of misinterpreting scripture?

A:      We must be cautious interpreters of the Bible. We must be careful lest we presuppose that our cultural instincts are the same as those represented in the Bible. We must be culturally aware of our own place in time-and we must work to comprehend the cultural context of the Scriptures that we wish to understand. Too often interpreters have lacked cultural awareness when reading the Scriptures. We have failed to recognize the gulf that exists between who we are today and the context of the Bible. We have forgotten that we read the Bible as foreigners, as visitors who have traveled not only to a new geography but a new century. We are literary tourists who are deeply in need of a guide.

Q:     Why did you write the Ancient Context, Ancient Faith series?

A:      The goal of this series is to be a guide-to explore themes from the biblical world which are often misunderstood. In what sense, for instance, did the physical geography of Israel shape its people’s sense of spirituality? How did the story-telling of Jesus presuppose cultural themes now lost to us? What celebrations did Jesus know intimately (such as a child’s birth, a wedding, or a burial)? What agricultural or religious festivals did he attend? How did he use common images of labor or village life or social hierarchy when he taught? Did he use humor or allude to politics? In many cases-just as in our world-the more delicate matters are handled indirectly, and it takes expert guidance to revisit their correct meaning.

In a word, this series employs cultural anthropology, archaeology, and contextual backgrounds to open up new vistas for the Christian reader. I wrote the first two volumes of the Ancient Context, Ancient Faith series to connect modern readers with ancient life.  If the average reader suddenly sees a story or an idea in a new way, if a familiar passage is suddenly opened for new meaning and application, this effort has succeeded.

Q:     Do I really need to understand ancient Middle Eastern culture in order to understand the Bible?

The stories we read in the Bible sometimes presuppose themes that are completely obscure to us (e.g. the scarcity of water; see next question). Moreover, when we read the Bible, we may misrepresent its message because we simply do not understand the cultural instincts of the first century. We live two thousand years distant; we live in the West and the ancient Middle East is not native territory for us.

Q:     How does water highlight the simple yet profound differences between ancient Middle Eastern life and ours today?

A:      Those of us who live in North America or Europe think little about water.  Rainfall averages are generally ample; if anything, we may experience flooding.  This is the opposite of life in the Holy Land. The people of the Middle East think about water constantly: it is the “oil” of the Holy Land.  And if you control it, you have power.  Glimpses of this reality are hidden behind many political struggles. When the rains failed to come during biblical times, the springs dried up and the wells went dry, drought and famine became a reality.

Judaism also distinguished between “living” water (which came from the hand of God via rain, a spring, a river) and common water (held in a cistern or “lifted” by human hand).  Many Jewish purification rituals had to take place in such living water; living water had the power to cleanse and purify.  So when Jesus offers “living water” to the Samaritan woman at the well, he is offering an inner life-giving spring for cleansing.  This significance would not have been lost on a woman who had probably been barred from her community’s ritual baths of purification.

Q:     How is an understanding of the Holy Land’s geography, topography, and agriculture vital to interpretation of scripture?

A:      The Holy Land itself gives us a window into God’s purposes for life.  The Promised Land is not an easy land-it is not paradise, neither today nor in biblical times.  The land has a spiritual architecture that incorporates elements we desire (good cities with ample rainfall and rich soil) and things we would prefer to avoid (wilderness).  But this is life.  And when God brought his people to this land, he built into it those elements that would provide a framework for his people to understand life with him.

The land is itself the cultural stage-setting of the Bible.  Biblical stories assume we know something about altars, sheepfolds, cistern water, and the significance if the wind blows west out of the desert.  To project European or American notions of farming (seed distribution) or fishing (cast and trammel nets) or travel (at night or day) onto the Bible is to immediately distance oneself from what the Bible may have intended to say.

Q:     How did Jesus’ storytelling fit the context of his culture?

A:      Jesus lived in a storytelling world and he was well known for his ability as a storyteller.  Jesus himself was theatrical, and this was feature of his teaching strategy.  Rather than giving a speech about a corrupt temple, he ransacked it.  His culture valued the clever image, the crisp story.  Jesus himself was clever and in this brilliance, people intuited his sophistication.  However, Jesus’ best figurative stories contain a surprise.  They are like a box that contains a spring-and when it is opened, the unexpected happens.  They are like a trap that lures you into its world and then closes on you.

Q:     Do we need to become more like the ancient world in order to live biblically?

A:      No, we do not need to imitate the biblical world in order to live a more biblical life. This was a culture that had its own preferences for dress, speech, diet, music, intellectual thought, religious expression, and personal identity. And its cultural values were no more significant than are our own. Modesty in antiquity was expressed in a way we may not understand. The arrangement of marriage partners is foreign to our world of personal dating. Even how one prays (seated or standing, arms upraised or folded, aloud or silent) has norms dictated by culture. There is no ideal cultural standard; we must each learn how to live biblically within the context of our own culture.

Gary M. Burge (PhD, King’s College, Aberdeen University) is a professor of New Testament in the Department of Biblical & Theological Studies at Wheaton College and Graduate School.

Standing Strong in the Storms of Life

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A Firm Foundation in the Storms of Life from Stephen Sizer on Vimeo.

It is 2:00am and you are deep in sleep, warm and at peace in your bed. Suddenly you wake up to the sound of hammering on your front door, the sound of shouting. You jump out of bed and race for the door, your heart pounding, your eyes still bleary. Before you reach the door, it is torn off its hinges and flattened before you. You are face to face with men in black uniforms carrying guns. There are bright lights in your eyes. You begin to speak and then you feel the searing pain at the aside of your head then … nothing! When you regain consciousness you are lying on the ground, you can feel the grass. It was not a dream – hours have passed. Your family are with you. They are distressed. They are bandaging up the wound on your head with strips of cloth from your son’s T-shirt. It feels cold and damp. As your eyes begin to focus you see stars above. “Why are we outside? What’s happening?” you whisper. With tears your wife says, “The government – they took everything! Our house, cars, clothes, food, money … every­thing! Because we are Christians.” In one day, your whole life has changed, radically, permanently. You are now criminalised, you are poor, unemployable, persecuted, an exile. You won’t gather with your friends for church this Sunday. As a matter of fact, you don’t even know where they are.

You sit there with a numb mind and bruised body trying to grasp what has just happened to you and your family.

Just a week ago, on Saturday 29th August, Joseph Garang, Archdeacon of Wernyol in Southern Sudan, near the border with Uganda and Kenya, was shot dead at the communion table during a service of Morning Prayer. He was one of forty Christians – men, women and children – killed that day in Jonglei State. In Ezo, near the border with the Congo, earlier in August, there was another devastating attack by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in which three people, including a Church lay reader were murdered. The attack included the abduction of children from the Anglican church in Ezo.
The Hospital was also attacked, medicine stolen and equipment destroyed. Several thousand more people have been displaced – people that the local churches are struggling to care for. Over the years, many have crossed into Northern Uganda as refugees and we hope to work with some of them in January when we launch the Christianity Explored Course in Swahili. Open Doors advocates on behalf of persecuted Christian minorities. They rank countries by the intensity of persecution Christians face for actively pursuing their faith.

Of the fifty countries where persecution is considered most severe, six countries have Communist or former Communist governments (such as North Korea 1st , China 12th & Vietnam 23rd). Three are non-alligned (India 22nd , Burma 24th & Kenya 49th ). The other 41 countries are ruled by Islamic law.

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How to be Wise: Matthew 7:24-27

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The Wise & Foolish Builders: Matthew 7:24-27 from Stephen Sizer on Vimeo.

In 1174 the Italian architect Bonnano began work on what would become his most famous project: A bell tower for the local Cathedral. The tower was to be eight-stories and 185 feet high. There was just one “little” problem: builders quickly discovered that the soil was much softer than they had anticipated, and the foundation was too shallow to hold the structure. And sure enough, before long the bell tower began to tilt… and it continued to tilt… until finally the architect and the builders realized that nothing could be done to make what became known as the Leaning Tower of Pisa straight again.

It took 176 years to complete and many attempts were made to compensate for the “tilt.” The foundation was shored up; the upper levels were even built at an angle to try to make the top of the tower look straight. Nothing worked. The tower has stood for over 800 years, but leans about 17 feet away from where it should be and was closed in 1990 for fear that it would fall and cause loss of life and injury. The Leaning Tower of Pisa is a vivid reminder that foundations may well be hidden but they are essential. As we come to the end of this series of studies in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus brings us to his application, our take away and he challenges us to check our foundations before it is too late.

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching,  because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.” (Matthew 7:24-29)

The opening word ‘therefore’ draws the sermon to a close and links all that has gone before to this concluding illustration.

Notice what Jesus does not say… “everyone who hears these words of mine is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.”  Hearing sermons is not enough. You may have been a member of Christ Church for one year or twenty years. If you have been a member as long as me – 12 years, and if you too have attended at least two services every Sunday, you will have heard more than 1200 sermons, allowing a few weeks a year for holidays. But if you have not put them into practice you are, says Jesus, you are “like a foolish man who built his house on sand.”  Hearing sermons is not enough. But nor did Jesus say, “everyone who hears these words of mine and believes everything I say… is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.”  Hearing is not enough. Believing is not enough either.

Jesus does not say “everyone who hears these words of mine and studies them carefully in a home group… is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.”  Studying Jesus words is not enough. Jesus doesn’t even say, “everyone who hears these words of mine and teaches others to put them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.”  No. The people Jesus says are wise are those who “hear(s) these words of mine and puts them into practice.”

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I Want to be Left Behind: Matthew 24 and the Return of Jesus

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I Want to be Left Behind: Matthew 24 from Stephen Sizer on Vimeo.

The video game taking Christian America by storm, apparently is called‘Left Behind: Eternal Forces’. Controversially it encourages players to kill anyone who resists conversion to Christianity. As Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft battle it out for domination of the electronic game world, the games’ creator anticipates a ready market among those who have already bought 63 million copies of the ‘Left Behind’ novels.

The game is set in New York City, a rather unusual venue for Armageddon you might think since New York doesn’t actually get a mention in the Bible. It is, however, the location of the United Nations headquarters and that is the clue. Never popular in some Christian circles, in Left Behind: Eternal Forces, the bad guys are the Global Community Peacekeepers, who are on a search and destroy mission in Manhattan. Their target is the remnant of newly converted Bible-believers, left behind when Christians were secretly raptured to heaven. These new believers, left on earth, form a Christian army called the Tribulation Force. Under the heading ‘Turn or Burn?’ a review by Focus on the Family asks,

How do peace and prayer go hand in hand with tanks, attack choppers and street battles? … Yes, you’re offered sniper rifles, gun turrets, even tanks and helicopters. And there are points at which a gun battle is necessary to avoid a massacre. It’s easier to convert a group of enemies than it is to shoot them. Still, post-Rapture warfare is integral to the game…books and movies.

In an interview, Tim LaHaye, the author justified the use of violence by Christians as the “self preservation instinct of the much-persecuted saints during the Tribulation.”[1] What a relief. It’s all right then. Christians can kill as long as its “self preservation” killing… in the name of Jesus. A rather more sceptical review by a Jewish website observes that,

The goals of the game are simple: Spread the gospel, and stay alive. But staying alive may sometimes lead to the taking of life — “fighting hellfire with hellfire”.  And that raises a knotty moral conundrum for any game designer who worships Jesus, the Prince of Peace.[2]

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Ready to Rebuild: The Temple in Scripture

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Ready to Rebuild? The Temple in Scripture from Stephen Sizer on Vimeo.

On January 8, 2001, former Shin Bet secret service chief Carmi Gillon and former police commissioner Assaf Hefetz together with leading Israeli academics delivered a report to the then, Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, detailing their concerns regarding plots by several Jewish extremist groups, to blow up the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque. Gillon and Hefetz founded Keshev, the Centre for the Protection of Democracy, based in Tel Aviv, after the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin. Their report, entitled, ‘Target Temple Mount’ examined current threats to the Temple Mount from extreme militant and Messianic groups. It concluded,

‘The Temple Mount is like a smouldering volcano that is bubbling and threatening to erupt – a threat that is liable to endanger Israel’s existence.’[1]

Six months later, in July 2001, the Rabbinical Council of Judea, Samaria and Gaza reversed the position taken for nearly 2000 years. They called upon all rabbis to take their communities to visit the Temple Mount. This was the first time a group of rabbis representing a significant proportion of the religious Jewish community had ruled it permissible for Jews to ascend the Temple Mount. Previously this had been forbidden because Jews might walk on the area what used to be the sacred holy of holies.

The rabbis also called upon the Yesha Council of Jewish settlements to organise mass visits to the Temple Mount from the settlements.[2] As a result around 500,000 secular, religious and ultra-Orthodox Jews gathered near the Temple Mount at the Western Wall ‘and swore faithfulness to the Temple Mount and Jerusalem.’[3] In the same month, July 2001, the Israeli Supreme Court made an equally momentous decision. For the first time ever they gave permission to Gershon Saloman and the Temple Mount Faithful to hold a symbolic cornerstone laying ceremony for the Third Temple near the Dung Gate adjacent to the Western Wall. Every year on Tisha B’Av (29th July), the day when Jews mourn the destruction of the first and second Temples, Salomon and his Faithful drive a lorry carrying three ton corner stones as near as possible to the Temple Mount. In 2006, despite police objections, the Israeli Supreme Court gave them permission to actually enter the area of the Haram Al Sharif on the festival of Tisha B’Av. To pre-empt a massacre, the police closed the site to Jews as well as Muslims for the whole day. Intelligence reports revealed that thousands of Muslims were planning to flock to the site to protect it.[4] On Tisha B’Av in July 2007, in 2008 and yet again this July, Salomon and his disciples have asserted their legal right to hold a ceremony nearby. Salomon’s agenda is clear and unambiguous.

“The Israeli Government must do it. We must have a war. There will be many nations against us but God will be our general. I am sure this is a test, that God is expecting us to move the Dome with no fear from other nations. The Messiah will not come by himself, we should bring him by fighting.”[5]

Since 1967, when Israel took the Temple Mount by force, there have been no less than 100 armed assaults on the Haram Al Sharif often led by Jewish rabbis.[6] An Israeli Arab MP, Mohammed Barakeh described the Israeli High Court’s decision as like putting ‘petrol in the hands of declared pyromaniacs.’  And it seems some Christians  too are convinced the Jewish Temple must be rebuilt. So much so, they are funding Jewish groups committed to removing the Dome of the Rock and replacing it with a Jewish Temple.

But aren’t we just dealing with a small bunch of religious fundamentalists and radical extremists? If only. Millions of Orthodox Jews worldwide pray three times a day “may the Temple be speedily rebuilt in our days”. And millions of Christians readily buy books on prophecy that predict it. And it seems, most Israelis, religious and secular, apparently agree.

Read more here and listen here

The Battle for Jerusalem

The Battle for Jerusalem from Stephen Sizer on Vimeo.

What provides you with most security? After your faith and your family, what comes next? Probably your home.

It is probably your largest monthly financial expense or, if the mortgage is paid, your most valuable asset. You may have only just moved in yesterday. Your life, your memories, your hopes and dreams are still carefully packed away in those unopened boxes, but it is still your home. Or you may be living in your parents home. You may have been born there, grown up there, never spent a night anywhere else. What ever, your home is your security. The place where you can lock the door, feel secure, be yourself, protect your loved ones, raise your family.

Now imagine losing it. Not to a mortgage company through repossession, not because of a divorce settlement or an act of nature be it fire or flood, but lose it violently to a foreign government. Imagine being woken at 6:00am by riot police with dogs and bulldozers. They force you out at gun point.

They give you 15 minutes to remove your possessions.

They demolish your home in front of you. Then a week later, they send you the bill. It happens every day. Salim and Arabiya Shawamreh live in Anata, a village to the east of Jerusalem.

In June, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that their home could be demolished – for the fifth time. Four times it has been demolished and four times friends and international volunteers have rebuilt it.

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With God on our Side

I am delighted to endorse a new film being launched this autumn produced by Porter Speakman Jr and Rooftop Productions.

“With God On Our Side takes a look at the theology of Christian Zionism, which teaches that because the Jews are God’s chosen people, they have a divine right to the land of Israel. Aspects of this belief system lead some Christians in the West to give uncritical support to Israeli government policies, even those that privilege Jews at the expense of Palestinians, leading to great suffering among Muslim and Christian Palestinians alike and threatening Israel’s security as a whole.

This film demonstrates that there is a biblical alternative for Christians who want to love and support the people of Israel, a theology that doesn’t favor one people group over another but instead promotes peace and reconciliation for both Jews and Palestinians.”

Launch: Autumn 2009. More news soon.

With God on our Side – Website, FaceBook and YouTube

Where is the Promised Land?

Kristin Davis, star of Sex in the City is, “the new face of Ahava” the Israeli cosmetic company which specialises in natural skin care products made from Dead Sea minerals. “I’m honoured to be a part of a beauty legend that dates back to Cleopatra,” she said. Unfortunately, Ahava cosmetic products are made in Mitzpe Shalem, an illegal Jewish settlement built in the Palestinian West Bank. Ahava’s extraction of Palestinian natural resources from the Dead Sea is, according to the Fourth Geneva Convention, illegal use by an occupying power of stolen resources for its own profit. To add insult to injury, Ahava’s labels claim Israel to be the country of origin, something decried by Oxfam and other human rights groups as blatantly misleading. Ironically, Kristin Davis is a spokeswoman for Oxfam – or rather was until this week when they suspended her (see here for details). Hopefully, Kristin will now sever her relationship with the cosmetics-maker, regain her platform with Oxfam, and campaign for the human rights of all who have been dispossessed.

Not surprisingly the subject of ‘the Land’ is deeply controversial and highly politicised. Even its name – Canaan, Israel, Palestine, the Promised Land – says as much about our presuppositions as our knowledge of Middle East geography: Promised Land? Promised to whom? Under what terms? For what purpose?

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