“The primary manifestation of satanic influence and of the evil of this Present Age is religious; it is the blindness with reference to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. How often we fail to understand satanic devices! A man may be a cultured, ethical and even religious person yet be in demonic darkness. Satan’s basic desire is to keep men from Christ. His primary concern is not to corrupt morals nor to make atheists nor to produce enemies of religion. Indeed religion which rests upon the assumption of human adequacy and sufficiency is an enemy of light. This is the character of the age of this world: Darkness” – George Eldon Ladd from the Gospel of the Kingdom 1959

Good stuff huh! What do you think?

Living towards a non-institutional future

“At various tricky junctures in Christian history it has been caustically observed (usually by those under the cosh of popes or prelates) that the message Jesus brings in the Gospels is one of human freedom and possibility through the life-giving of God; whereas what we have ended up with is the church and religion. In other words, the founding impulses of our faith reside in movement, but their continuation has required institutions, with all their temptations towards deadening control.

At one level this is an unavoidable tension. The idea that we can sustain purposeful relationships without organisation is a fantasy. But when money, structures and hierarchy shape our common life – rather than the other way round – the Spirit is rapidly crushed.

The New Testament readings for the Fifth Sunday after Trinity explore this dilemma from different but overlapping perspectives, and propose a radical solution. We are to live in the light of the potential and purpose offered to us in the life of Christ, rather than being constrained by received ideas about how God works within a narrow ‘religious’ framework.

St Paul is writing to the church in Galatia, a region in Asia Minor or modern day Turkey, probably some twenty to twenty-five years after the death of Jesus, in order to try to argue them out of a rather legalistic, ‘traditionalist’ stance on ritual and practice. Luke, on the other hand, is telling the story of Jesus and the dynamic movement around him from a later First Century viewpoint in order to demonstrate why Christianity has authentically found Gentile and not just Jewish expression – a point contested by the Galatians, it seems.

Paul is characteristically blunt. Echoing his argument to the Corinthians, he says in chapters 5 and 6 of this epistle that the fuss about ritual initiation has no value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through active love. “Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation,” he declares (Galatians 6.15). Don’t boast about your piety and purity, in other words; focus instead on sharing the joys and sorrows of those around you in the pattern of Christ. This echoes his theme in the First Epistle to the Corinthians.

Controversially, Paul even likens slavish religious observance to “the corruption of the flesh.” By this he is not demeaning earthly existence per se, but rather pointing out the danger of turning towards things which have nothing to do with what Jesus in another context calls “life in all its fullness” – however ‘holy’ they claim to be. Properly understood, Christianity isn’t about what we these days call ‘religion’ at all, but the reorientation of all we are away from a narrow preoccupation with self and towards engagement with others, including our neighbours, who are also loved and cherished by God. That’s a point made in different ways by figures as diverse as Martin Luther, Thomas Aquinas and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I should add – lest you think I’ve just made it up out of convenience.

A similar impulse emerges from the story in Luke 10 about ‘the sending out of the seventy’ (or seventy-two, depending on whether you go with certain Old Latin and Sinaitic manuscripts, or the Greek and Syriac texts). Here Jesus defines the mission of his followers in terms of sharing peace with those near and far, participating in hospitality and table fellowship, curing the sick, and telling the ordinary people that God is close at hand. There are no ‘religious’ constraints. It’s about humanity restored. Remember also that those who had fallen prey to illness were defined by the people with power in the faith community as ‘unclean’ and out of sorts. It was the Temple religion that conveyed ritual purity and impurity, inclusion or exclusion. Jesus declines to play this game. Those who cultivate life and share it with others should know that “realm of God has come near to you” (10.9). Those who refuse it are their own undoing. Leave them be.

There is a starkness and urgency here that reflects a sense that an important moment of decision has come into their midst in the shape of Jesus. Things will never quite be the same again. There is also a contrast between the ‘feasting narratives’ in Luke (food shared is again and again a sign that God’s promise of life is at hand) and the overall architecture of the story he tells – which is an ordering of the things Jesus does and says, together with his fate, around an unavoidable journey to Jerusalem, the seat of both religious and political power. Here the simplicity of the Gospel hope meets the distortions and manipulations of institutional life in its most naked form: the imperial capacity to kill those who do not fit in.

For Jesus, however, the future is not defined by the powers-that-be, but by the love of God freely given and received. It is to this life-giving power that he trusts himself at the moment of his death, following his betrayal by one who has been seduced by a very different reading of what and who counts in the world.

The sending out of the seventy – to return to that particular story – is also highly significant in a number of other respects. First, note that the journey of faith is one shorn of power and pretension. God goes with this motley crew (they are not an inner core, but those gathered from around the region), rather than being located in a building or an organisation. It is relationships that are central to God’s purposes. And in the story as Luke tells it – there is no parallel in the other synoptic gospels – the mission of the multitude is rather more successful than that of the Apostles, the ‘official’ emissaries.

Though Luke’s gospel is Gentile in orientation, there is also lurking here a traditional Hebrew preoccupation with numbers. Whereas ‘the twelve’ are related to the tribes of Israel, ‘the seventy’ seem to echo Haggadic assumption that there are seventy nations and languages in the world, based upon the ethnological table given in Genesis 10. The point is that the Good News is for the whole world, not just an in-group, a point emphasised by the Revised Common Lectionary in its choice of Psalm 66, which speaks of “all the earth” as sounding the praise of the God whose eyes “keep watch on the nations”.

Here, then, is a message of biblical hope for a world which is all-too-conscious these days of the way that ethnic, exclusive religion can cause division and conflict, and where the authority of top-down institutions (including many inherited patterns of church life) is facing challenge and criticism.

So where does this gospel message leave us as Christian communities now? In a situation where, I would suggest, bold experimentation is necessary – alongside a commitment to using and re-using the best of what we have inherited in ways that builds bridges rather than barriers. That is precisely the point of something like the St Stephen’s project (http://www.stephenproject.org.uk/). It takes one of the key features of an institution, a beautiful and historic building, and turns it inside out (well, metaphorically, anyway!) so that it becomes a point of contact, service and inspiration for a wider community.

That kind of enterprise is many thousands of miles and a couple of thousand years away from the Jesus movement described in the Gospel of Luke, of course. There is no neat escape route from the entanglements that have been entailed by the long and sometimes tortuous course of Christian history. But that’s not the point. The point is that the same message of human freedom and possibility through the life-giving of God, which is the theme of our readings today, can work itself out in many different cultures and contexts.

What holds it together or lets it fall apart, of course is people… like us. For the same domination-free realm, or kingdom of God, to which Jesus and his earliest followers testified is also near this morning. Near, but not the same as us, identified with us alone, within our control, or ours to possess over and against others. It is a motivating grace that can move us to great deeds, but also keeps us in check.

Perhaps my favourite prayer-poem is one written by Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, not long before he was gunned down in 1980 for speaking out on behalf of the poor. It is called ‘Prophets of a Future Not Our Own’ (http://www.simonbarrow.net/reflect3.html), and in it he reminds us that the realm of God which comes so very close to us when we share peace, hospitality and food (as in Luke’s story) “is not only beyond our efforts, it is” – for the most part – “beyond our vision.” For “[w]e accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete…”

But that, Romero reminds us, is not what counts. We may only be able to do a little, but we can do it well and in a spirit which is open to its completion from a horizon we do not own, but to which we are continually invited by Love – whether we are seventy, seventy-two, many more, or rather nearer a dozen”.

————

© Simon Barrow is co-director of Ekklesia. This address was given at St Stephen’s Anglican Church, Exeter (http://www.parishofcentralexeter.co.uk/), on Sunday 4 July 2010.

Happy listening

Jx

But there’s no doubt to the world rest is perceived as laziness or inefficiency but perhaps yet again this is an example of the topsy turvy nature of the kingdom?

Making time to spend with our heavenly father could be perceived as madness, yet it’s the time spent with God that transforms us, that releases to us the living water that is so desperately needed by us all.

The contrast is busyness, activity, striving…but all these are about me, what contribution can I make to the world rather than what has Christ done already?

Jesus doesn’t need our help, everything is done, all of it. Surely our “job” is to receive the finished works of grace and be transformed by it and then in turn rub along side others so that they can meet Jesus too? We must learn to do what Jesus did and that is do what the father is doing, but it’s hard to see what daddy is doing when we’re busy dealing with our own agendas.

Rest does not come easily, we’re in a constant battle with ourselves, we’re often desperate for significance, influence, status and power? Yet all God ever asks of us it to be ourselves, truly ourselves, in him.

A while ago I felt inspired to write a book, it’s all about me, but it goes deeper than that. It tells the story of a man desperate to belong, searching for purpose, identity and significance and that the only place I can find that is in Christ and in his presence.

I used to think if I only did this or that, had a unique selling point, something to offer I could make a difference, I always had a project bubbling away, a plan or scheme, sometimes to carry a message, sometimes to make money, but the common ground was it was about what can I do, and in reality, there is noting I can do, I’m all done.

Now I occasionally get asked to speak at events  and in many ways I wonder why, I don’t do anything, I don’t have any letters after my name, I have no qualifications, I have nothning to sell and nothing to pitch, I just tell my story, live my life and try to be myself and that’s easy really, it’s not hard being me, it’s trying to be something I’m not (whether because of external pressures or my own insecurities) that causes me pain or sucks the life out of me.

I have learned I can walk with Jesus,

Practice his presence,

I can be myself,

I am free.

At peace.

Rested.

Easy.

I really hope that my book speaks more about the realities of Gods presence and grace in our lives than it speaks of me, but it’s hard to tell, I suppose its all depending on the reader?

But what about the way we live? does our message and our lifestyle really tie up or are there huge discrepancies between what we say and what we do?

Consider the message of the gospel, that all are equal under Christ’s leadership, yet do we still manage to find ways to promote ourselves and crown ourselves kings? We still play power games and seek significance, we still long for titles and recognition?

Are we just a people who speak words but don’t live out the realities of the message?

Surely we have to be incarnational people, that the message we speak has to be the very same message we live?

Anything else is just a show isn’t it?

Anything else is a religious performance?

Sure, the Lord can use us even as we perform, after all he can use TV, movies, music and the media to communicate to those who are seeking him but does that somehow qualify the medium used? Is that Gods best for us?

He used an ass to speak in the old testament, does that make the ass anointed or just a tool in the hands of God?

We need to learn to stop putting on a show and learn to live the life, walk the walk, not just talk the talk.

When our words and actions combine together there is so much more authority, reality, resonance, power.

I must not talk of grace and show none, I must not talk of freedom and then control, I must not speak of equality and build an empire.

I need to be the message.

I am a tool, lol.

Religion is all about image, it’s all about good PR, a good rep. But there’s no power in religion other than the power to bind, enslave and control, it’s a cunning deception.

Real power liberates. It was for freedom that Christ has set us free!

Jesus didn’t have very kind things to say to those who were religious, he called them hypocrites, our word actor comes from the same root as the word hypocrite, religion is all about the show, it’s all about making a good impression, but it couldn’t be further away from freedom in relationship with Christ.

I can have a rep, a good one or a bad one, it’s all subjective and can change on the wind. To allow ourselves to be defined by ones reputation is as foolish as building on sand, yet so much of our western “churchianity” is built on our reputation. We must blend in, we must not look different, we must be accepted, seeker friendly services, audio-visual presentations, large buildings, program after program, but to me that sounds like were living in fear not freedom. The early church had none of these things yet grew massively simply because they were consumed with the  intoxicating, powerful presence of God.

Without the presence of God manifesting in us and the kingdom manifesting around us we’re completely powerless, perhaps that is why we’ve spent so much time doing “stuff” and try to build our empires and a good reputation?

The sad thing is that my reputation is all about me, I am smack bang in the center,  I  / we  / our church, ministry or whatever is directly at the centre and by simple consequence, Christ is not!

It’s not to say a reputation is necessarily bad, it’s not down to me what others say, do or perceive,  but at times it can come between us and God, a reputation can become an idol, sometimes of our own making and we can consume so much energy trying to defend it.

The message of the kingdom IS complete foolishness, to believe that through Jesus’ life death and resurrection we can actually be filled with the very presence of God, the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead and can then commune with the living God who dwells within us  and to partner with him to bring about his kingdom here on earth is total madness to those who don’t know God or who have had no experience of God and no amount of religious activity is ever going to replace an encounter with the living God.

I think in our desire to seem less weird or to be cool we try to build a good rep, but consequently we compromise the freedom, fullness and joy of the gospel message.

The gospel is a spiritual message, received by faith, it has huge power to heal, deliver and transform and is full of joy but it’s not a head religion, the head may catch up but it’s the heart that “hears” the message. Jesus said “let all that have ears let them hear”, Paul said to the Ephesians ”I pray that the eyes of the heart will know”, revelation not information.

To be completely consumed by the presence of God is intoxicating and all consuming and the presence of God in our lives should be flowing through us and it will change us and change the things we do.

If we are pursuing the kingdom, if we are pressing for revival and transformation surely we must expect our reputation to be challenged and criticised, we must expect things to change, there will be pressure, and at times we must make choices that take our reputation and lay it down, but surely the joy of walking in a deep communion with the Lord is more valuable than any worldly reward.

Have we replaced the powerful gospel of freedom, liberation and joy with slick presentation and cool imagery because we have lost the presence of God that so utterly consumed the early church?

I do believe revival is here and there is new life emerging, but revival has to go beyond meetings, it has to lead to transformation, it has to ruin us for anything other than the real thing, it has to blow apart our reputation, and it has to reflect Jesus, after all it’s not about me it’s all about Jesus.

It’s all about him.

Once our reputation is ruined, we no longer have to be concerned about our appearance or our ministry or our ego, we can get out of the way and let God be God, we are off the hook, free.

After all freedom is the message of the gospel.

Just a thought

]]> http://www.jasonmarshall.co.uk/?feed=rss2&p=1472 0 http://www.jasonmarshall.co.uk/?p=1461 http://www.jasonmarshall.co.uk/?p=1461#comments Mon, 17 May 2010 16:52:58 +0000 Jason http://www.jasonmarshall.co.uk/?p=1461 A friend posted this on his facebook page and I thought it was so good I couldn’t help adding it here!

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Sadly this has been removed from YouTube so It will no longer play, in my opinion I think it got a little close to the knuckle for someone so the higher powers pulled it! what a shame..it was very good.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s clear that proportional representation has it’s challenges, you could end up with a variety of colorful characters sitting in parliament, however surely that is representative of our culture and a healthy political system has to allow for the diversity of our culture rather than a controlled and restricted flow of power from the elitist few who believe they are there serving the greater good but who are in fact wholly dependant on the system for their own gains?

It would mean working together, taking time over decisions, and ultimately growing up, learning to listen to each others points of view and finding healthy ways to deal with the tensions? perhaps it wouldn’t be as neat, but it might be fair?

It’s clear there are many challenges ahead, but perhaps now is the time for that change?

The more people I meet, the more I realise how much this drive affects everything.

Yet there has to be something more powerful than the drive for significance, and I think it’s simply an understanding of who we are in Christ.

A little while ago I was exploring the topic of identity, how we have been robbed of our godly identity. It seems that it’s the enemies greatest strategy has been to keep us focusing on everything else hindering us from finding the peace, hope and the security that can only be found through Jesus.

It’s funny, but the more people you meet striving for significance the more you realise that there’s something missing, striving isn’t pretty and it’s costly too. It robs us of peace, it causes conflict, it causes pain, it causes tension and competition between the best of friends and it drives some people to extremes. I think of someone like Katie Price, for example, who is so desperate for significance, so desperate for love, that she’ll do almost anything to get the sort of attention she craves, you could say she sold her soul. And though she may be an extreme case, are you and I so different? 

How many times have we chosen to walk a path that has caused huge compromise in our lives? What about that career choice to climb the ladder at the expense of somebody else or at the expense of my family or my closest relationships? What about the times when our identity is so wrapped up our position that we can’t see the wood for the trees and we can’t see the damage that we are doing to the people around us? The times when we’re so busy in self-preservation mode, because of these weak fragile foundations that we’ve built on, that we treat people around us like second-class citizens?

The good news is there is a point that we can find peace in Christ, and by that I don’t mean peace with the compromise, but that place of total surrender. Simply put, if Jesus died for the sins of the world, then, we have to be able to receive the forgiveness and healing that he paid for and striving is, after all, just another sin, if we strive we are basically saying that what Christ did on the cross wasn’t enough, but it clearly is. It has to be.

I realise how much I’ve tried to pursue significance through different avenues over the years from the music career to evangelism and the prophetic gifting to leadership, things that should be godly yet been used for my own purposes, my own significance.

What I have realised now, as I’ve willingly ( though sometimes painfully) surrendered most of these things just how dependent I was on them for my sense of significance and subsequently how free I am now (which is rich coming from a bloke who’s just written his own story and published it in a book and writes a blog on the world wide web). I love the freedom I have now, it’s funny, even Dawn has noticed it, there has been a major shift. Somehow by God’s grace I have allowed him into some of the most secret places of my heart and He is bringing such freedom, love and joy. At times it’s hard to contain.

I suppose my fear is that somehow, I will get snared up in all this crap again at some point. But I have to choose not to walk in fear but in openness and humility with the possibility that the Lord may ask me to lay it all down again sometime. To be quite honest with you knowing just how free I am right now I would willingly do so again, though that is easier said than done.
Recently some people have labelled me radical, some people labelled me extreme or even a heretic and it’s funny even with those labels I can find myself finding significance in the titles, but in reality the only place I should ever look for significance is in the heart of my heavenly father.

It seems to me, everything good comes from rest, everything good comes from a place of peace, Jesus said “come to me all who are weary” and I’m sure he means more than being simply weary of religion, but being weary of striving, weary of trying to find significance, weary of being so selfish. All we really need is to know is that we are loved by the creator of the universe, unconditionally, and then from that point everything else changes.

It doesn’t matter what you do, it doesn’t matter what title or position you hold, once you’re free from striving, once you’re free from the desperate search for significance nothing else matters and surely that’s the place that we need to be.
I find myself in a peculiar place these days where I’m just pretty comfortable being myself, being a dad, being a husband, whether I’m playing in a band, writing a book , teaching guitar, digging the garden, blogging or speaking at an event I think I’m finally coming to a place where I’m comfortable in my own skin, you could say I am becoming who I am, and surely that’s the point?

Just being myself no labels, no titles, just as God intended me to be.

The point of Jesus Christ dying on the cross and restoring us into a place of relationship with God the Father is that the essence of our Father can be found in us, in you, in me. Isn’t that what being filled with the holy spirit is about? Bearing the fruit of the spirit so that we can be like Christ, sons of God?

There’s a line in the book of Romans that says “The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed” surely that’s you and me, that’s our destiny. Once we truly learn to live as sons of God, to be like Christ, to walk as Christ walked, to live as Christ lived, the world will be transformed and surely that’s the point.

But we have to have all our other dependencies stripped away, all our false identities, all our masks, then we can just be who God has created us to be, human beings not human doings. For me, this season has been one big lesson. To begin with it was as if I was walking into the desert but perhaps I’m actually walking into the promised land?

I am prepared to count the cost, I want to live at peace with God, I want to learn to do what I see my father doing and surely that’s only possible when there are no other agendas no other distractions.

This is how Jesus lived, so surely that’s how we can live.

So there is a great challenge where do we look for our significance? do we look to status, positions of power and authority, do we look to our career, labels, titles or do we look to our heavenly Father?

Food for thought.

After more than two years of writing, re writing and editing, my book “into the fire” is finally finished.

I’ve often been encouraged to write my story whenever I’ve spoken and shared snippets of it at events and with friends. After much soul searching I finally thought I’d  go for it. In short, it’s the story of how I came to faith after growing up in a broken home followed by years of drug abuse and dependency then how my life has been restored and transformed after a power encounter with Jesus.

You can get a copy directly from me for £5.99 (plus p&p) on the book page or by hopping over to Canaan press Here.

I hope you enjoy the read, Jx

]]> http://www.jasonmarshall.co.uk/?feed=rss2&p=1390 0 http://www.jasonmarshall.co.uk/?p=1288 http://www.jasonmarshall.co.uk/?p=1288#comments Thu, 01 Apr 2010 09:44:30 +0000 Jason http://www.jasonmarshall.co.uk/?p=1288 I’ve just got back from two weeks in Central Asia – my third trip to this wonderful part of the world. I just want to feedback a few thoughts…there is so much to unpack but here are a few thoughts for now.

I went not knowing Gods agenda, but went looking for connections, opportunities to learn what the father is doing and to see the kingdom break in – I was not disappointed, though I know there is a great deal more to come.

I was travelling with a great team of humble Jesus lovers (four of us in total) with big servant hearts and a desire to do the will of the father. Much of the purpose of the trip was around the work of the Holy Spirit with teaching and demonstration, God showed up time after time after time.

There was so much healing being done, daddy was healing up the broken hearted and bringing much refreshing, we also saw some healing miracles, deaf ear opened, knees and joints healed, kidney pain gone, to mention just a few.

Its incredible how hungry the people are for God to work there, and he’s doing some deep deep work. I came home encouraged,  I think because of our journey here in the UK I  seemed to effortlessly mesh with what is happening over there at times it felt like stepping into comfortable slippers, the connections seemed so strong.

There is also a major shift in thinking happening, I kept having conversations about organic church, underground church, a shift from empire building to Kingdom, the presence of God throughout the whole trip was tangible. The father seems to be using the political atmosphere to provoke thought and new ways of doing things, I’m really excited about what will emerge over the next few years.

Its always interesting coming home, the first time I had such a culture shock,  the second time less so, this time I think I’ve realised that the lessons that God was teaching me have started to be outworked here in my life, we have made massive changes in the past 3 years.

I often wonder why God can move in such power over seas but it’s so hard here, and I don’t think it’s just our materialism and wealth, though these things  surely have an influence, I think it’s deeper than that…I think it’s because we have learned to mask our needs…we’ve learned to build complicated façades of which materialism and wealth is just a part, we don’t want to visit the pain and hurt, we mask it with stuff, with medication, with self importance and busyness and many other learned coping mechanisms that keep God at arms length – humility is surely the key to seeing God break into our lives.

It’s funny you go to serve and give and come back richer, challenged and different as a result – My passion is to see things transformed here in the UK yet I’m learning so much from our friends on the other side of the world, bring it on.

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