There are some messages that preach themselves for whatever reason. People get it; you feel the flow. “The Shape of Jesus”, this last weekend’s message at Journey, was not one of them.
It was concept heavy in some respects and the point of the message goes against the grain of our cultural “zeitgeist” (cool sounding word, huh?). From day 1 of His life people wanted Jesus to fit into certain categories. They had ideas of what “Messiah” is supposed to look like, how he’s supposed to role and who’s side he would be on (especially the last one). Jesus didn’t fit these! He still doesn’t.
So we looked at what we called a “Paradigm Verse” and a story to get our heads around this idea: one of the main reasons we read the scriptures is that it defines for us the “Shape of Jesus”.
We have the idea that I get to have my “Personal Jesus”. We see this in the way that we “Invoke” Jesus. “I don’t think Jesus would…” Of course this is always to show that Jesus is on our side, shares our opinion, fits our portrait of “Ultimate Dude! My man J.C.!”
But Jesus keeps saying disturbing things to mess with this idea. For example our Paradigm Verse:
Matthew 21:42 Jesus said to them, “Did you never read in the Scriptures, ‘THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED, THIS BECAME THE CHIEF CORNER stone; THIS CAME ABOUT FROM THE LORD, & IT IS MARVELOUS IN OUR EYES’? 44 “And he who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust.”
He said this in front of the Temple in view of some MAMBO STONES.
The point: we conform to the shape of the stone… not the other way around. “Is Jesus relevant to my life?” Well maybe a better question is, “Am I relevant to His?”
The story that epitomizes it for me is the so-called “Transfiguration story” which we looked at.
BIG ANNOUNCEMENT: Our friend and colleague Peter Thomas, who has been at Journey almost from it’s very beginning, feels led to start a church in the South bay area and we are behind him. We are sending prayer, money and people and would encourage you to be a part of starting this exciting new church – by one of those 3 means! Check out Explore Community Church here!
