Realign

How many of you have ever driven a car in rural New Brunswick? I tell people that I grew up in Fredericton, because it was the closest city to where I was, and it was easier than explaining where I actually grew up.

Basically, where I grew up, you drove 20 minutes from Fredericton to Burtts Corner, turned off onto a dirt road, and followed it for another 15 minutes until riiiiiight before the dirt road turned into an Irving logging trail. And that is where you would find our house, in Dorn Ridge. It wasn’t considered a town, or even a community, it was called a settlement. Now, all the roads in the area were often dangerous to drive on, because of all the broken pavement and potholes. But our road, the DIRT road… Half the time it was washed out. Potholes everywhere the eye could see. You couldn’t POSSIBLY dodge them all. Because of this, my Dad’s car was essentially always out of alignment. There comes a point when you live on a road like that where… you just don’t even bother trying to keep up with the maintenance on things like suspension, and alignments. The car was out of alignment by the time he got home from getting it aligned, so what was the point?

I think that the life of a Christian can be similar. There are a lot of potholes and bumps in the road that throw us out of alignment with God. We start trying to do things our way, and start trying to make God adapt to our plans, and our life goals. We pray, sure, but we rarely listen. There comes a point in the life of every Christian and every church, when we need to Realign with God. There comes a point when we are so focussed on our own plans, that we begin to fail to see what God is doing around us, and fail to seek his will and plan for us. And I know we are a few weeks past new years, but I always think that this is a good topic to think about and consider in a new year, because our lives can change so much in just one year, as we most definitely know.

We are going to look at a couple classic bible stories, but in a new way. We so often separate these stories into cool Sunday School lessons, but there is a lot of cool stuff to be found when you read the passage in its context, and by that I just mean reading what is going on around a story, before and after. And what we are going to

see is that even Jesus’ own disciples, the people he had hand picked to lead and start his church, sometimes they needed to realign with God too.

Ok, so let’s start with some context that will help shed some light on the situation during Jesus’ day, and this probably will be more of a refresher for a lot of you than new information. The Jews that were living in Israel at the time had returned from captivity in Babylon a few centuries prior, but they had essentially been oppressed ever since, by one group after another, currently the Romans. They had not truly been an independent nation since they came back. Because they went into exile originally as punishment for their sins, they still saw themselves as being in a sort of “Spiritual exile”. Even though they were back in their own land, they saw themselves as still being in exile. And to them, the coming of the Messiah would signal the return from exile, and the establishment of a new kingdom. This would be the sign that God was once again with them. So because of this, everyone was looking for a messiah who would be strong and mighty, someone who was a warrior, who would bring back Israel’s independence, and establish a new kingdom. During this time there were actually MANY people claiming to be the Messiah, most of whom were leading rebel groups to try and overthrow the Romans. This is the kind of Messiah that the people of that day were looking for, and expecting, INCLUDING Jesus’ disciples. Before the disciples received the Holy Spirit, they held this view. Acts 1:6, even after Jesus rose from the dead, it says “Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”. Even after everything that had happened, they STILL didn’t get it, until they received the holy spirit. So this is a view that was widely held at the time by the people of Israel.

Ok, so now let’s look at the passage, we will be in John 6:14-21 if you want to follow along in your bibles. Jesus has just fed 5000 men, and additional women and children, miraculously, using only 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. Afterward, everyone present decides that he must be the Messiah who is promised to come, because of the miraculous signs that he can perform, and now they want to make him king, by force. And that is where this story picks up.