Welcome to Moore in the Word, a podcast of Moore Theological College in Sydney, Australia, that seeks
to glorify God through biblically sound, thought-provoking and challenging talks and interviews.
In this episode, from a chapel service held on Tuesday 13th May 2025, David Höhne, Academic Dean and Lecturer in the Theology,
Philosophy and Ethics department at Moore Theological College, speaks on Luke 6:20-36 and Jesus' deconstruction of faith.
He reminds us that real faith means facing rejection by others, loving and forgiving your
enemies, and resting on the firm, unshakeable foundation that is the Lord Jesus Christ.
We hope you find the episode helpful.
Please say keep Luke six open in front of you and let me pray.
Our great God and loving Heavenly Father, we thank you for this new day.
We thank you for the opportunities that you have put before us to do the good works that you planned in advance.
And Lord, we pray that uh, you would open our hearts to hear your word this morning for Jesus' sake.
Amen.
In our reading from Luke this morning, we see the Lord beginning his own reformation movement.
And at the same time, we get a glimpse of what it is to deconstruct faith.
Now I heard this term deconstruction used in the context of belief a few times of
late as I was trolling the internet looking for, uh, an introduction to a sermon.
And as a middle-aged academic, I thought deconstruction referred to the refusal of all meta narratives in society
and its institutions, or the infinite deferral of meaning conceived between the signifier and the signified.
I thought we were discussing the philosophy of Jean Francois Leotard or Jacques Deida.
However, with a ah, dad, eye rolling smile.
My first ever apprentice informed me that deconstruction now refers to the way an
individual discovers an existential gap between her belief and her lived experience.
Hashtag evangelical hashtag church two.
It is a spiritual journey.
One takes from being full of confidence and very low on curiosity to an identity that
floats on a mist of questions that are irrefutable just because they can be asked.
Well, fortunately, postmodernism is supposed to be all about irony.
It's fitting that Christian faith has been deconstructing since the Lord preached his sermon on the Mount.
Naturally.
It was the Lord himself who said it first and best.
You've heard it said, but I tell you so let's turn to our reading from Luke six and see how the Lord himself sets out a deconstructed faith.
Now looking back through the context of Luke six, we soon become aware that there's only
one grand meta narrative for human history and it belongs to the one who determines it.
Let me read to you from Luke chapter four, verse 18.
Jesus says, the spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me.
To preach good news to the Paul, he sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery
of sight to the blind to set free the oppressed to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.
Hashtag Isaiah 61.
The son of the most high does not occupy a side of history, whether right or wrong.
He perfects it as the one who announces God's good news and the time of the Lord's favor.
And it's surprising how mixed people's reactions are to this good news.
The people of his hometown and possibly his wider family try to kill him at the very thought of it.
The crowd swarm around him like shoppers on Black Friday.
And evil spirits are drawn to him like sparks to a lightning rod.
The Pharisees blowing the first century's trumpet of patriots.
They love to hate him.
And so we begin Luke six with this last group, deeply engaged in synagogue rage, either chasing Jesus through the fields, obsessing over food laws.
Or in an actual synagogue, fuming over Sabbath law regulations, and it's this faith that Jesus has come to deconstruct.
Now, Jesus for his part, responds with the obscure stories about David getting holy bread to go from the temple, preparing us as readers
for the eventual challenge of seeing Jesus as the Messiah of Psalm 110 verse one, Yahweh's priestly king, who rules over the universe.
Otherwise, Jesus exercises the power of the prophets of old overcoming sickness and deformity because this is what it means to free the captives.
Then he announces the coming of the kingdom of God by formalizing a small group around himself that disciples who
are apostles and addresses the gathered throng on the plane somewhere outside of Jerusalem in the area of Judea.
And so we find ourselves in Luke chapter six, verse 20.
The first thing we learn about deconstructed faith is that the faithful are blessed by God.
If they're rejected by the Jewish leaders, hear from verse 20 onwards, hardly bespoke or though totally retro.
Deconstructed faith means poverty, hunger, weeping and vilification for one's identity with the son of man.
The Lord begins with the language highly reminiscent of Deuteronomy 27 and 28.
The language of blessings and cursings there becomes blessing and woe here.
The various blessings and woes are held together by identification with the prophets of
Old and their relationship with those who should represent Yahweh, but instead obscure him.
And the big idea of this sermon for Jesus is you are blessed if you suffer like the son of man.
Luke chapter six, verse 23, rejoice in that day and leap for joy.
Take note.
Your reward is great in heaven for this is the way their ancestors used to treat the prophets.
Or in verse 26, woe to you when all people speak well of you for this is the way their ancestors used to treat the false prophets.
You know, you are on the right side of history if your audience treats you as they treated the prophets of old badly.
Now, at this point, it would be easy for the martyr complex to set in.
To confuse the glory of revolution with the reality of just being revolting like a love in between Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson.
No, the son of man has come to deconstruct a faith that has turned the fear of legacy into an intricate system of self-righteousness.
And so the second thing we learned about deconstructed faith.
This is quite shocking, really having denounced the faith of the world around him.
The second thing about deconstructed faith is it resides in loving your enemies.
Loving your enemies.
Chapter six, verse 21, 7.
Love your enemies.
Do what is good to those who hate you.
Far from gloating over their cancellation in a tempest of self-righteousness.
Deconstructed faith means actually and self sacrificially, loving those who reject you and praying for those who despise you,
loving those who reject you, and praying for those who despise you.
Now though it may sound like the golden rule, the love of deconstructed faith is not the casual compassion of the bourgeois.
Look at verse 31 just as you wanted others to do for you.
Do the same for them.
If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?
Even sinners love those who love them.
Many years ago now, I found myself on the PNC executive for a local primary school with the task of recommending school values.
Now, it was early in 2008 and I don't, I don't know whether you remember what happened in April of 2008.
Can anyone remember?
The Prime Minister of Australia formally apologized to the indigenous people of this country.
For the events that came to be associated with the stolen generation.
The leader of our country stood up in the parliament and said, we are sorry for the way we treated you
now as the executive conferred.
I took the opportunity to suggest that we ought to adopt generosity and forgiveness as two of our school's.
Community virtues seemed appropriate at the time, forgiveness,
but I was shouted down,
shouted down in favor of far more benign and ultimately benal compassion.
That niggling sense that I should probably give out of my large to the marginalized who are otherwise so important for my political identity.
Green is good,
but look at what the Lord says in Luke chapter six, verse 35.
I. Love your enemies.
Do what is good and lend expecting nothing in return, then your reward will be great and you will be children of the most high.
For he is gracious to be ungrateful and evil.
Be merciful.
Just as your father is also merciful.
The golden rule should leave a mark in our flesh.
A deconstructed faith generously goes in search of the lost, but more rather than
despising, those who reject them, the children of the most high are renowned for mercy.
The deconstructed faith does not give what is deserved to those who have no
right to ask for it, because that is how our Heavenly Father treats all sinners.
The third thing we learn about a deconstructed faith is that my self-awareness leads me to forgive those who reject me.
Verse 37.
Do not judge and you will not be judged.
Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.
Forgive, and you will be forgiven.
The greatest gift the faithful have to give to his or her culture despises is the forgiveness that's been given to them by the Lord himself.
The love of God in the heart of the deconstructed means that her self-examination is done in the light of the grace that she has received.
Now, this is not the practice self-loathing of cultural narcissism.
The loud announcements of one's unworthiness so as to garner indulgent empathy from those around hugs likes.
Nor is it the fashion critical coach that trains us to scrutinize others through
the lens of an Instagram portrait, or as the Lord said it far more clearly.
Why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but don't notice the log in your own?
Truly deconstructed faith exhibits a generous love fueled by self-examination that scrutinizes
our own inner motives in the light of God's grace and recognizes oneself in one's enemies there.
But for the grace of God, go I
a good man produces good out of good storeroom of his heart, says the Lord in Luke 6 45.
The last thing, the fourth thing that we learn about deconstructed faith is that it has the stability that only the son of man can provide.
Look at Luke 6 47.
I will show you what someone is like Who comes to me?
Here's my words, and acts on them is like a man building a house who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock.
When the flood comes, the river crashed against that house.
Couldn't shake it because it was well built so much more than the brittle edifice.
That is absolute certainty that deconstructed faith rests on a strength that welcomes unending curiosity amid the morass of
self-identity, doubt, or selfs answering questions that deconstructed faith exhibits the unshakable substance of Jesus the Christ.
It's a gift identity, not a self established identity.
Consequently, the deconstructed faith is not vilified by confidence.
It has a confidence that comes from without, even as it is strengthened within a genuinely
deconstructed faith, curates an identity guided and governed by the person work of the Lord Jesus.
Someone who gave himself up to the worst of human envy and in the process destroyed the aspirations of
the certain and diffused the piety of the perpetually doubting Jesus loved his enemies so much that he
stretched out his arms to them and prayed for their forgiveness, even while they nailed him to a cross.
And what could all this possibly mean at a theological College like Moore?
Well, to be part of this community is to be on a faith journey that will last one, three, or four years or 19.
If you're remedial,
it's likely that some of you have already discovered in enemies in the least expected places.
The Christian parents who wept at the thought of you throwing away a future, they had worked so hard to provide.
So that you could live on a ministry wage.
The one time friends who cannot compromise their non-belief by associating with believers like you or the
workmates who delighted in making lewd remarks about clergymen when you told them you were going to study.
These are just some of those who we ought to love and pray for.
Now once you arrived at College.
Settle into the community life.
No doubt.
Some of you have been astounded that some of your cohort call themselves ministers of the gospel.
How could they possibly think that about the Bible, the gospel, the ministry?
What kind of church have they come from,
whether they're too pious about faithfulness or too pragmatic about fruitfulness?
Your classmates will have to, may well have to duck out of sight while you swing that plank around in your eye.
That is, by the way, why we do all those time wasy things at College, like orientation and reflection or intentional ministry reflection.
It's so that we can learn to read the room reason through the lens of grace.
I relate to others as forgiven sinners.
Of course, eventually you'll find yourself as a leader of God's people in a situation
of genuine hostility towards what you understand of the truth of God's word.
My first weekend in a new diocese outside of Sydney as a clergyman was that a special synod staged by the senior clergy.
To reinstate the bishop who it had recently emerged was guilty of sexual misconduct as a rector of a church many years before.
The low light of this spectacle was when a member of the sinner rose to reveal that she had spoken to the victim and allegedly
said that she held no grudges towards the bishop, and so they conspired together to reinstate this bishop who was an adulterer.
But in hindsight, I should have spent as much time lovingly praying for that man as I did opposing him as a false teacher.
Ours is a faith that is deconstructed by grace and characterized by mercy.
Let's pray that that will be true.
Our great God and loving Heavenly Father.
We thank you for the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Your everlasting love and the fellowship that we enjoy in your Holy Spirit,
deconstruct our faith.
Lord, make us seasoned with grace and full of mercy.
For Jesus' sake.
Amen.
Thank you for listening to Moore in the Word, a podcast of Moore Theological College.
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