DISTINCTIVES NOT NEEDED

When Christ is our life there is nothing to add. The bid to form an identity by bits of religion and accumulated distinctives is hollow and makes hollow men/women.

It is a sad mistake to think that Jesus empowers religion and that religion mediates God. Leanne Payne in Real Presence, makes the point that only the Presence of God is Real. Jesus mediates Himself to you. It is Christ in you by the Spirit who incarnates Himself in us and in the community in the celebration of our faith and our belonging in Christ together. But these motions are not life giving in themselves. Jesus is life-giving and our life together is only alive when He is our life and the life of us all. The mediation of Christ to us is direct by the Spirit who is with us and in us.

ORIENTATION
A church in which the majority of people are alive with the spirit and life of Jesus is totally different to a church in which people turn up to extract life from religious motions. Real life is not found in the maintaining of an institution. Real life is ours as we live Christ in us – the eucharist as Everyday living.

Whatever we do, Christ is always our life. His spirit and life is not found in created things or in religious behaviours. Or in the law. He is spirit and life and this life is directly mediated to you and to us by Christ in us and with us. The belief that God is things is idolatry. The emblems of the Lord’s Table are not alive. But they are the illustration and celebration of the fact that those who eat Jesus live because of Jesus. The Lord’s Table is the sign that in Jesus Christ we have become one substance with God and one communion with each other. It’s not the emblems that are the presence. It’s Christ incarnated in us.
FALSE CHRIST’S
Don’t make a messiah out of some rite or distinctive you have seized on as a way of righteousness. Don’t make a messiah out of rites, observances, behaviours and moral programs. This makes us less alive, not more. The law had a purpose once. Not now. Christ is you and the real expression of who you are.
THE SON HAS RISEN
“In the Stygian darkness of the pagan world the Law and the Prophets enabled the Hebrew people to grope forward in the understanding of who God is. The Law and the Prophets are the moon and stars that enabled Israel to navigate a treacherous world of idolatry and injustice.
THE SUN/SON OF LIFE
But when the day dawns, the moon and stars recede and give way to the rising sun. Jesus Christ is the sun of righteousness risen with healing in his rays, and Moses and Elijah have come to Tabor to bear witness to the greatness of the Son of God.
PETER ALMOST MISSES IT
Simon Peter seems to have missed this symbolism, thinking instead of erecting three shrines—one for Moses, one for Elijah, and one for Jesus. But this idea of making the Law and the Prophets equal to Christ is quickly shot down when the voice from the cloud says, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him!” Jesus is what God has to say. A flat reading of the Bible allows us to proof-text any idea we want, but Jesus is the Word of God.” (1)
FABLE FAITH
A broken lens together with ‘another gospel’ and a conspiracy to deceive adds up to cunningly devised fables.
Jesus is the One Word who is our life. There is nothing incomplete about His infinity. Nothing stifling, biased or religious. He is undiluted life, love and light and He has brought Father and the Spirit to live in you.
 
(1) Zahnd, Brian. The Unvarnished Jesus: A Lenten Journey (pp. 54-55). Kindle Edition.