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Learning for Life: Cultivating a Student Spirituality
Week 15
Tom Oosterhuis, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta
Jesus as Teacher
15.1 Jesus spoke with authority.
“They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes...and they kept on asking one another, ‘What is this? a new teaching – with authority!’” Mark 1:24,27
The Gospel writers make a point of that. They find that this is not typical of the teachers whom they know. What is it about Jesus’ teaching and his conversations that conveyed the kind of authority that was different from that of other teachers? I suspect that we will find that many of our professors also come across with a certain “authority”.
Let’s say first, what it is not. It’s not that some quote from other sources, and Jesus didn’t need to quote. Jesus readily quoted the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament. But when he did so, he also suggested that they were richer than the way they often came across in the teachings of the day. I suppose that if we simply repeated the rote answers of catechisms and confessional statements, we would be saying something true, but would we be capturing the whole richness of what they were intended to convey to us at one point in history.
Jesus is speaking with vision. This vision is tied to the Scriptures, and points to the Scriptures as a testimony to the relationship between God and God’s People, between God and the Nations of the World, and between God and Creation. The Scriptures are opened up in this way to send us into life in a new way, rather than “just” be religious.
Jesus speaks with commitment. He is not spouting off something that it would be nice to know, but he is bringing a vision that is intended to serve the people with whom he walks and talks. He cares about people, and expresses that in what he says.
Jesus speaks with insight. What he is saying is intended to help us to understand our lives and our studies. His statements might never be memorized just for grades, but they will help us to understand something about the way that God acts in history, what we are to think of the different philosophies and movements of our time, and the acts of world leaders and powers of our age.
Jesus’ teaching is not just about things. It talks to us directly. It addresses us personally, and challenges us to reflect on who we are, and to think about what we are doing, and what we are called to be and to do in the midst of a world that is God’s world and under the direction of God’s purposes.
Prayer: Faithful God, you embrace us and you give us eyes to see.
Give us hearts to enter into relationship with all that we learn
and with those who study alongside of us.
Help us to be living witnesses to your love for creation. Amen
15. 2 Jesus as Mentor
“Then, in the house, the disciples asked him again about this matter.” Mk 10:10
Much of Jesus’ teaching takes place before large crowds. Have you ever noticed, however, how often Jesus withdraws afterwards to speak with his disciples?
Sometimes, Jesus takes the time to explain some of his teaching, particularly his parables, in some more detail, in smaller circles, away from the crowds. In the quotation above, the disciples are looking for greater insight into the marriage relationship and into the tragedy of divorce.
Jesus is not primarily interested in laying down a large body of truth(s) and an ethical system, in which we can find ourselves or justify ourselves. He is more interested in establishing and unfolding relationships, which can provide a foundation for expressing what it means to be human, thus shaping our actions out of a particular understanding of who we are.
The heart of being human in God’s creation is to live in a relationship with God, to learn how we are loved, so that in turn we might love and trust. This heart gives us the insight and perspective we need in order to see others in a new light, and to see creation as the place where God’s love and compassion are unfolded.
Ethics and responsibility are lifted above a set of rules to the unfolding of a relationship that God establishes with us in the person of Jesus. Jesus teaches us to be personal, to be human, to live in relationship.
Our daily witness to the good news in Jesus thus takes the form of recognizing and sharing the personality of life and knowledge. Think of what this might mean for engineering and for the natural sciences and mathematics.
The great physicist and philosopher, Michael Polanyi, was so gripped by this thought that his magnificent book on philosophy of science was titled Personal Knowledge.
Jesus the Mentor not only teaches us something but enables us to relate to one another and to what we are learning and doing.
Prayer: God, who walks with us in Jesus,
Teach us to be human, as you made us in your image.
Help us to imitate you in your caring
and in your rejoicing in all that you have made. Amen
15. 3 Jesus is Inclusive
“A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’ Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’ Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, saying to him, ‘See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.’ But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.” Mark 1:40-45 NRSV
The leper was an outcast, rejected from the mainstream of life, on the margins of society. When Jesus heals the leper, he has not merely functioned as a doctor who has fought a disease, but he has given him a place in life, a place in his society.
He has given him a place in God’s rule. As long as he was excluded by the law, he was regarded as being unfit for the Rule and Presence of God. Jesus, however, has welcomed him into God’s presence and into the enjoyment of the benefits of God’s rule in creation.
The more that I read the Gospels, the more I am struck with the “inclusiveness” of Jesus’ ministry. Jesus’ whole ministry is directed to opening up the way for people to experience God’s rule and to live a new life out of it. This did not make the power brokers and gate keepers of society very happy, and certainly explains at least part of the opposition to Jesus among the authorities.
This kind of inclusiveness, hospitality and openness to others who don’t meet our developed standards is at the heart of the Christian message. Christians haven’t always lived up to our own confession. We have our own history of racism, declaring people unclean, on the outside of God’s reaching out. Sometimes, we have also glorified war too readily, and made membership dependent on material success, expectations as rules and customs.
In the midst of our shortcoming, we are constantly called back to remember that our involvement in the rule of God is only as invited guests. At the introduction to God’s rule, we are reminded of the need to repent, to change our direction, mentality, habits and conduct. Once we get past the introduction, we discover that our whole lifestyle, in imitation of Jesus, is one of hospitality and openness to others. We are always present as invited guests.
Prayer
God, you open your heart for all of your creatures.
Keep us from being judges of others
and make us people who make room for those who are neglected, and pushed to the edge of life. Amen.
15. 4 Jesus teaches us hospitality
“When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbours...invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed....” Luke 14:12-14 NRSV
I have long been convinced that the word which most clearly expresses a Christian lifestyle is “hospitality”. If we were to go back to the language of the apostle, Paul, we could call the Christian community a “one another” community. We are called to love one another, be at peace with one another, build up one another, not to think of ourselves as more important than the other, and so on. We are also called to be humble. All of these expressions fit in with a community that is characterized by hospitality. We are there for one another; we make room for the other; we encourage the growth of one another.
The Christian community is also fellowship. The very fact that we speak of community expresses that for us already. We are a community that can be called the family of God, the people of God, brothers and sisters. We are not only at home with God, we are at home with one another, in Christ. The Spirit of God makes us one, helps us to be partners with one another, hold all things in common, share things and work as a unity, one body.
It is, however, hospitality that makes a community tick. Without opening up to one another and giving ourselves to one another, we tend to make the community into a club or a clique, a place where we go primarily to benefit ourselves, and to express certain needs.
A community functions as a place where we find security and identity, where we can be strengthened and built up. Then, we profit from the hospitality of others, and ultimately from the hospitality of God who has invited us into his presence, and who invites us to the “great feast”. In that kind of community, we learn to be hospitable towards others - to invite others into our world and to share it with them, - to learn about and to respect what others bring into our presence, - to open ourselves up to the movement of God’s Spirit who draws us outside of our smaller beginnings into a future that God is preparing for his creation.
Hospitality has a way of inviting people in without obligating them and without laying guilt trips. Hospitality is the heart of genuine fellowship.
Jesus cordially invites you to share the hospitality of friendship, thinking, food and worship in a variety of opportunities again this week.
Prayer: Lord, you have invited us into your community
and clothed us with new life, new hope.
Help us to be gracious and open to those around us,
to make room for the stranger in our lives. Amen
15.5 Breaking out of the mould
“Do you think that they were worse (sinners) offenders than all the others... “ Luke 13:4 (1-9).
This passage deals with the slaughtering of worshippers in the temple by Pilate’s troops, and with the accidental death of 18 people on whom the tower of Siloam collapsed.
Jesus’ reaction to both of these events is to call for our repentance. That means at least this much: breaking through the political reactions to acts of terrorism and looking beyond the questions of helplessness and hopelessness implicit in natural disasters.
Jesus is asking us to look into ourselves to ask who we are and what is our responsibility before God. More than being sorry for wrongdoings, our responsibility is to turn away from a whole framework of thinking that is piecemeal, reacting to the world in which we live, and find ourselves instead in a whole new framework of viewing things, with God at the centre. We become defined then, by our confidence in the promises and purposes of God which remain valid even when our world seems to be falling apart around our ears
.
This framework, which we know better as the Kingdom or Rule of God, provides us with the kind of hope that allows us to transcend our angers (at terrorists or our own “unfortunate” circumstances), our fears (of sickness, exams, the unknown), our insecurities (about our abilities, our relationships) and to take God seriously as the one who provides us with the bigger picture.
A couple of years ago, I gave a ride to a couple of students who were to accompany a group of disadvantaged people on a trip to enjoy the mountains. The mentally challenged people that I met in the room where I dropped off these students, and the people that I met walking down the street, don’t readily fit into my world, and it is very easy to dismiss them or to ignore them when I am with my own friends.
When Jesus tried to break through the distinctions of his own society, I think that he was trying to get at precisely this kind of situation. We become caught up in the challenges to our own worlds, and ignore the barriers that separate us from so many people. We are tempted to define the real way of living as the one that comes closest to our own experience, so that others, particularly the disadvantaged are, by definition, relegated to the outside. We do that personally and we do it by accepting the way our governing bodies dismiss the people who are not “economically” assets to our society.
Perhaps, if we genuinely acted out of the framework of God’s rule, we would have a better idea of what it means to engage in responsible living, instead of fitting into the institutions that we allow to rule our lives. In fact, perhaps, we might become instruments of God in helping our institutions become movements which embody the service of God, and draw all of us into a community which supports us in our journey with God and neighbour.
Prayer: God of all creation, of the wide open spaces
Give us room to breathe and to see new horizons.
and to see all those around us as those for whom you care. Amen
15. 6 Jesus as Teacher
Jesus has great acceptance across the world today as a teacher. Most of the world religions and even a society that claims no religious allegiance, find that Jesus’ teachings can add to or fit in well with their highest ideals.
The question that Christians face more and more, especially within Christian circles, is what is the role of the person of Jesus and what happened to him. I’m not just speaking of Jesus as a model for how we act in the world, but also about the meaning of his crucifixion and resurrection.
One example of questioning is the strong reaction, both favourable and unfavourable, to Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ. . When the Gospel of Judas was published by National Geographic it was immediately heralded as implying a re-examination of Christian understanding of who Jesus was.
It won’t do for Christians simply to defend the orthodoxy of Jesus’ death and resurrection, as such. We will come across as knee-jerk, and perhaps even as pushing a mythology. What we need to ask honestly is what is the hope of the world, and what is the significance for our lives in believing that Jesus was more than an insightful teacher. In his life, he opens up a new understanding of who God is, a new relationship to God, and a new hope for how we may live in this world.
Too often, Jesus’ death and resurrection is seen as a way for us to get to heaven rather than as a way to make us human as God calls us into being, as a way of opening us up to living with God and our neighbour, including all of creation. Jesus’ death and resurrection are very relevant to what goes on at this university, and the world.
Jesus’ teaching compliments his unique role in bringing God into our lives and giving us hope for shaping this world as God’s creation, whether that be in the discoveries of science or in the peace of restored relationships between neighbours and nations, even terrorists and powers.
My hope is that this perspective will work with your love of learning things to help you to enjoy your studies even more deeply this term, and to see how the university is anything but an ivory tower.
Prayer: God who speaks and acts,
Give us the grace to be called into life.
Give us voices and give us hands and feet to express
the life that we have received in Christ. Amen.
15. 7 Found Together Along the Way
“Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” Luke 24:32 (13-25)
“Journey” has become a popular metaphor to describe our spiritual development, and our discovery of God and neighbour. It is not an invention of our times. It seems that God often meets us on the road (Balaam), sometimes even overwhelms us on that road (Paul on the road to Damascus), or at the very least sets us on the road to somewhere, as with the Exodus. The first Christians, perhaps taking a cue from Jesus’ own description of himself as the Way, called their movement, the Way.
The journey’s beginning doesn’t necessarily lead to anywhere in particular. It can start as trip to a place of refuge (Jacob); it may have a purpose that is clear (Eliezer), or it may be a journey of retreat to a comfortable place. This is perhaps where we find the two disciples who have left Jerusalem on Easter Sunday to head back home to Emmaus.
Their journey back home may have been to lick their wounds, to start over again with new dreams and new hopes, after their present hopes seemed to run aground in the cross of Jesus. This is the kind of thing that happens when people gather for nostalgic reasons, or to reaffirm their beginnings and where they are standing. One doesn’t have to move ahead. You can just stand pat - glorying in the circumstance that once upon a time, everything was going well.
At a certain point, however, the journey becomes one of reflection and exploration. They are joined by a stranger who asks the hard questions - what are you discussing and why are you talking about these things? At first these questions catch them by surprise because to them it was obvious that the only thing worthwhile talking about was the crucifixion of Jesus, and they were trying to make sense of it. Jesus was sort of an in house issue
The stranger, Jesus, as it turns out, points them to the roots of his suffering in the law and the prophets. Jesus life, death and resurrection are tied to God’s purposes and dealings with Israel. Israel does not run into a dead end and Jesus does not carry out his mission in a vacuum. One can not really recognize Jesus without the history of God’s people and without meeting him in worship and the breaking of the bread.
If that is true for Jesus, it is certainly also true for his disciples. We find ourselves rooted in the history of God’s people, as in the history of serving, of organizing, of understanding the mission of Jesus in our lives, in a host of different situations. Our worship, our faith, our future are not rooted in a vacuum, but have the character of God’s working with us written all over it, from generation to generation.
Prayer: God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Walk with us also, and open us up to your mission in this world,
that we may serve your purposes. Amen
Copyright © CRCMA 2008
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