J-Curve Session 31: (Pastor Matt Carter, Chapter 31)

Class Description: Session 31, Chapter 31

Chapter 31: The Spirit at the Center: Learning Wisdom Down Low

Unless the Spirit repeatedly brings the mind of Christ into our hearts, our ever-present flesh will recoil from the wisdom of the cross. Only the Spirit can continually make the cross fresh.

Class Notes:

1.    Let’s refresh our memories.  What kind of culture was Paul writing into in the first letter to Corinth? Look at the top of p 258 first paragraph to get another dimension of the church culture in Corinth.

2.    P 259 Notice the capital “S” above in Spiritual (1 Cor. 3:1 AT).  A Spiritual person is not someone who is religious or who prays easily.  A Spiritual person is in step with the Spirit and led by the Spirit...  The Spirit carries the mind of Jesus into our lives, allowing Jesus’s fruits (Gal. 5:22-23) to become our fruits.  Dropping the “S” depersonalizes the Spirit.

a.    Perhaps especially in our reformed faith tradition, we struggle to speak often and actively about the personal nature of the Holy Spirit.  Why is it important to recognize and remind ourselves that the Spirit is God himself no less than Jesus?  (Look at the bottom of p 259).

3.    P 260 The Spirit himself is a gift - “the Spirit who is from God” (1 Cor. 2:12).  He’s not part of a world soul - he’s a person, a personal gift from a personal God.  So at every level, gifts lie at the heart of the church (1 Cor. 4:7).  With the gift of the Spirit, we can “understand the things freely given us by God” (1 Cor. 2:12b).  That’s why “the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God” (v. 10b).  Only God can reveal God.  So wisdom comes from outside us.  The wisdom of the cross is so alien to our spirits that we need his Spirit to talk to our spirits.

a.    Let’s have a discussion about the kinds of things that the Holy Spirit does in the lives of believers.  What does he do in us?

4.    Look at the chart on the top of p 261.  

a.    Every one of us has at one time or another attempted to climb the failure/boasting chart.  Can we recognize ways even in this chart that we’ve abused the Spirit’s power for selfish gain?

5.    P 262 The Spirit helped me to shut my mouth. Plus, I’d recently noticed in the Gospels how much Jesus looked at people.  The Spirit didn’t operate in a vacuum; the body of Christ and the word were his language, helping me to listen.

a.    If the Spirit was active in the life and ministry of Jesus himself, we certainly need him no less.  Can you relate to PM in this interchange with his daughter Courtney? Do you recognize the Spirit’s work in causing him to be quiet?  Discuss.

6.     P 262 Unless the Spirit repeatedly brings the mind of Christ into our hearts, our ever-present flesh will recoil from the wisdom of the cross.  Only the Spirit can continually make the cross fresh.  Now look at the chart on p 263.

a.    How do PM’s actions under the Spirit’s influence demonstrate the wisdom of the cross?

b.    This kind of Spirit led ministry requires that we’re not attempting to design and control what resurrection might look like.  What do we need to believe in order to actually let the Spirit lead through conversations like these?

c.     It’s much messier and costlier to live this way.  What is to be gained?

7.    P 264 Staying in step with the Spirit is not nearly as complex as we might think. We aren’t trying to read the spiritual the leaves - as we embrace Christ in the dying and rising, the Spirit always shows up!

a.    I really appreciate what PM is saying here.  Essentially, we don’t need to guess what it looks like to keep in step with the Spirit.  He has a predictable gait which is always in step with the revealed will of God in Christ Jesus, namely, that if we’ll model Christ through dying and rising - that’s the stuff that the Spirit can use to propagate really neat resurrections!

J-Curve Session 35: (Pastor Matt Carter, Chapter 35)

Class Description: Session 35, Chapter 35

Chapter 35: Jesus: The ultimate party crasher

“Next time you have a feast, go out to the highways and byways, and invite the poor, the blind, and the lame; then you will be loving, because these people can’t pay you back, but your heavenly Father will.”

Class Notes:

1.     Pp 289-91 How was wealth separating people in Corinth? 

2.     Climb inside the mind of the weak for a moment.  P 291 excerpt “Not slave and free....”

a.     Do they at all perceive themselves as being on level ground with the wealthy strong?  Has the death of Christ actually produced a body that is unified?  What was missing practically?

b.     The strong were blind, but blind to what?  What were they missing? 

c.      Do we discern ourselves as the weak or the strong?  Do we identify with either group? 

3.     P 292 Its easy to imagine the impact as Pauls’ letter is read aloud to this house church.  The strong look down, ashamed, and smiles spread over the faces of the weak.....  It’s Jesus’s meal; he’s the Lord of this feast.  But when you mock and exclude the weak who are his very body, it is no longer his feast; it’s a supper for the strong.

a.     It’d be easy to read these sentences and insolate ourselves from their indictment.  Paul was writing to the church at Corinth, not Elverson.  Has it escaped our notice that poor and uneducated people don’t tend to ‘stick’ at Brick Lane?  Is that changing?  We may not be discriminating as regards the Communion table, but are there other areas where we’re making the weak/poor feel uncomfortably conspicuous?

4.     P 293 “Next time you have a feast, go out to the highways and byways, and invite the poor, the blind, and the lame; then you will be loving, because these people can’t pay you back, but your heavenly Father will.”

a.     Confession time...  I struggle with this.  Do you?  Why?  What does it look like and how might we improve?  Anyone actually doing this well?

5.     P 293-4 In my opinion, the weakest of those three layers in our churches is the middle one - the leaders.  For Christ’s community to reflect his beauty, Christian leaders need to constantly re-enact his death.

a.     Ouch!  PM, as he’s looking at the American Church, is looking at her pastors and elders as the weakest layer of the diagram on p 293.

i.     On a national level, do we agree with his assessment?  Why or why not?

ii.     On a local level, how are we doing at Brick Lane?  Where is this purposeful re-enacting actually taking place?

iii.     Where do our pastors, elders, deacons, ministry leaders, or staff have room to grow?

6.     P 294 Read 1 Cor. 11:23, 25-26 excerpt.  In secular liberalism, abortion “protects” a woman’s freedom of choice.   Someone has to die so others can live.  Outside of Jesus, it’s always someone else who dies.  Someone else is the problem.  Our founder’s death lies at the center of our faith.  Instead of killing our enemies so we can live he died so that we, his enemies, can live.

a.     Does PM’s logic make sense to you in these paragraphs?  When community is built up around a shared ideal, anyone who poses a threat to that ideal becomes dangerous.  Discuss so we make sure we’re all following him here.

Further down on p 294...  Each tribe is ranked internally and in relationship to the other tribes.  Paul, the football player, leaves his table, sits with the Goths, and then brings them up to the football table.  From the culture’s perspective, he’s destroying the lunchroom.  From Paul’s perspective he’s creating the body of Christ.

b.     If we perceive ourselves as the strong, we should picture ourselves already seated at the football players’ table. What perceived rights do we tend to hold onto that associating with the weak/poor (read here: someone who smells, an addict, some guy who’s all tatted up or pierced through) might threaten?

7.     P 295 bottom: For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.  There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3:27-28)...  Scholars believe that Paul is reciting an early church baptismal formula, “neither Jew nor Greek,...  neither slave nor free,...  no male and female,” which was spoken as the person was being immersed.  You go down into the water as a wealthy Greek landowner and come up one in Christ.  You go down as a poor Scythian slave and come up a son or daughter of God.  The slave and the landowner are now equals in the one body of Jesus. Our former identities have not only been erased, but replaced with his.

a.     This section reminded me of our earlier discussion about Onesimus and Philemon.  It’s a picture of the vision of the good we’ve been discussing all along - a true Jesus community!

b.     Have you ever looked at baptism that way?  How would doing so enrich your understanding of it?  How should it change the ways we perceive other believers whom we may look down on?

J-Curve Session 36: (Pastor Matt Carter, Chapter 36)

Class Description: Session 36, Chapter 36

Chapter 36: The Beauty of a Jesus Community: Including the Distant Outsider

“But Paul mentions in the same breath the now infinitely valuable slaves and the wealthy aristocrats.  They are on equal footing, completely valued in Christ, in his body in a virtual Jesus community.  The gospel re-enacted by its leaders has worked.”

Class Notes:

So that we can capture the whole context of what PM is going to show us today in chapter 36, let’s begin by reading 2 Cor. 8:1-15.

1.     Bottom of P 299 The poor have no value, so their thanks have no weight.

a.     The apostle Paul is trying to get the Corinthians off the failure/boasting chart.   In your own words, why would the wealthy Corinthians have spurned an opportunity to give to poor Judean believers?

2.     P 300

a.     Why is it critical for us to see J Curve living modeled?  Why did the Corinthians need the example of the Philippian believers?

b.     Justification by faith levels the playing ground, destroying the Failure-Boasting Chart with its factions, jealousy, and exclusions.

i.     Encounter at the dollar store with a young mom.   “Nice Truck.”

ii.     Have the things we’ve been discussing this year leveled the ground for you?  Are you and I learning to see “the weak” as infinitely valuable? 

3.     P 301 Because the Corinthians live on the Failure-Boasting Chart, they love receiving grace, but they give it sparingly.

a.     How does failing to extend grace cheapen the grace we’ve received?

4.     Pp 301-2 For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich (life), yet for your sake he became poor (death), so that you by his poverty might become rich (resurrection) (2 Cor. 8:9)....  Paul doesn’t berate the Corinthians for not giving.  He points them to a new vision of beauty - the sacrificial death of Jesus. 

a.     Jesus isn’t simply the payment, he’s the model!  Paul is providing the Corinthians with an opportunity to incarnate with their brothers and sisters in Christ.  In what ways is this vision of beauty so much higher than remaining on the F/B chart?

b.     This account has gotten me thinking about the Afghan refugees.  Anybody else thinking that way?

5.     P 304 “But Paul mentions in the same breath the now infinitely valuable slaves and the wealthy aristocrats.  They are on equal footing, completely valued in Christ, in his body in a virtual Jesus community.  The gospel re-enacted by its leaders has worked....  Only when the other becomes my brother or sister, only when objects of pity become people - even friends - do we create a divine community.

a.     How/Where is that happening at Brick Lane?

b.     Where do we still need to grow?

6.     Anything in particular stand out to you from the conclusion or from the Afterward?

7.     General comments on our time together? 

a.     What has been impactful? 

b.     How are you growing?

c.      Where have you embraced suffering in new ways?

d.     Where are you seeing resurrections?

e.     Are you embracing a new vision of the good anywhere?