Confrontation in Nazareth (3)

 

 

Should we return to Nazareth, how might our baptism confront us?

 

The first possibility of confrontation has to do with living in an open heaven, of living in unbroken communion with God. Baptism ought to usher us into a life of intimacy with God, of seeing the things which are invisible as our Way of Life in Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 4:18).

 

When we first believe, when we first come into a relationship with Jesus, we tend to read the Bible in a pristine fashion, to believe what we read, to see Jesus and hear Jesus throughout our days and weeks, and to trust Him. We often share what we are experiencing without forethought, that is, sharing Jesus is natural to us. This can be especially true if we do not have a religious background which has conditioned our expressions and responses, and which has imposed (intended or unintended) conformity on us.

 

 

When Jesus was praying at His baptism “heaven was opened” (Luke 3:21). Shortly thereafter Jesus says to Nathaniel, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man” (John 1:51).

 

We are called into a life with open heavens; a life of intimacy with God and with one another.

 

A challenge is that the assembly in the synagogue in Nazareth is not living under open heavens, it is living under the iron dome of the Law and the traditions of men. Therefore, the synagogue will have nothing of this Jesus who reads from Isaiah the prophet and claims the Word of God to Isaiah as His own calling and inheritance. The synagogue will say, “Who does He think He is?” (Luke 4:22).

 

Here we encounter “bait and switch Christianity.” One of its forms is the promise of a true relationship with Jesus Christ, which then, after baptism (or its equivalent, such as “accepting Jesus”) is switched to a mode of religion that seeks to control expressions and responses in order to establish conformity of behavior and thought and expression. This form of Christianity seeks to put new wine into old wineskins.

 

These old wineskins may speak of grace, but they practice the Law. These wineskins insist that we cannot have daily intimacy with God, they insist that we must replay the “repentance” tapes over and over, week after week, living as if the veil in the Temple is still firmly in place, always trying to measure up for God – never accepting the New Covenant in which our consciences are cleansed from guilt and sin and in which the Word of God is written in our hearts and minds and in which we have been made complete in Jesus Christ (see Hebrews Chapter 10 for a look at the New Covenant!).

 

I don’t think there is any great conspiracy about all this, it is just the way we are, we gravitate toward the earth, toward law, toward “works,” toward erecting barriers – we often think they are safety barriers, but they are barriers to the expression of Divine Life within us…as individuals and as a People.

 

Paul writes, “It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1).

 

The promises of God are for us all in Jesus Christ. “For as many as are the promises of God, in Him they are yes; therefore also through Him is our Amen to the glory of God through us” (2 Cor. 1:20).

 

We tend to read promises and callings of God as either past or future, we tend to see them as relating to people in the past, or to people in the future. We seldom see the promises and callings of God as being alive to us today. We see Jesus as not so much alive and present today, but as alive in the past and as alive in the future; this is why we tend to speak of Jesus in either the past or future tenses, but seldom in the present tense.

 

Martha, in John Chapter 11, is a good illustration of this. When Jesus arrived in Bethany after the death of her brother Lazarus, she said, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.”

 

Jesus replies, “Your brother will rise again.”

 

Martha responds, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”

 

Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.”

 

Even though Martha was having a conversation with Jesus, she was looking at Him in the past (if you had been here my brother would not have died), and in the future (I know he will rise in the last day). She could not “see” Jesus as the present Resurrection.

 

I seldom hear professing Christians speak of Jesus in the present tense, He is usually in the past or the future, seldom do we speak of Him as being alive today, as being in a relationship with us today. Seldom do we see that the calling of God to live as His sons and daughters in mission to the world is for us in Christ today, seldom do we see that as the Father gave the Firstborn Son to the world, so the Father gives the many-membered Son to the world.

 

Yet, as we learn to live beneath open heavens these things, this Way of living, becomes natural to us, it is our Way of Life.

 

This may make little or no sense to you right now, but perhaps as we continue to ponder Jesus’ return to Nazareth things will become clearer.

 

Jesus says to Nathaniel, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man” (John 1:51). If this is true of Jesus, then this is true of His Body.

 

Is your baptism a present reality in your life in Christ, or is it something that happened “once upon a time” and no longer lives within you?

 

Is it time to stoke the embers of your baptism into a roaring flame?