What do I want the Lord to do for me? (A meditation on Matthew 20:29-34)

“As they were leaving Jericho, a huge crowd followed. Suddenly they came upon two blind men sitting alongside the road. When they heard it was Jesus passing, they cried out, 'Master, have mercy on us! Mercy, Son of David!' The crowd tried to hush them up, but they got all the louder, crying, 'Master, have mercy on us! Mercy, Son of David!'”

“Jesus stopped and called over, 'What do you want from me?'

Matthew 20:29-31, The Message

Jesus is on his way up to Jerusalem for the very last time. The way Matthew tells this story (Mark and Luke tell it too), he's been on the road for the last few chapters heading up, up to the city that is renowned for rejecting and killing those who dare to speak truth to her, up to Gethsemane, Golgotha and a borrowed tomb.

The road is crowded with not only his entourage but also fellow

pilgrims on their way up to celebrate Passover as has been their custom for time immemorial. While passing through Jericho, two blind men learn that Jesus of Nazareth is passing by. His reputation as a miracle worker has preceded him and with opportunity knocking they begin to scream his name in hopes of gaining his attention and becoming yet another amazing story of his healing power. Much like they tried to keep little kids from pestering him (Matthew 19), now his handlers want to move him through Jericho as quickly as possible. And when they are told to pipe down they scream all the louder. After all, this may be their last chance to experience a touch by the Son of David.

Their efforts are rewarded. Jesus stops, looks in their direction and very directly asks them, “What do you want from me?” Because we've read the story before we know already how they're going to respond – they're going to ask for their eyes to be opened – but the question itself is worth contemplating. As Michael Card puts it:

“It is a harder question than you might imagine. For years I have placed myself in the story, in Bartimaeus's [named in Mark's version of the story] shoes. When Jesus asks me, “What can I do for you?” to this day I have not come up with an answer.” (Matthew: The Gospel of Identity, p. 181.) Honestly, I'm not sure how I would answer myself.

I think of Solomon shortly after becoming king. God appears to him in a dream and says to him, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you” (1 Kings 3:4-15). He could have asked for anything – wealth, power, influence, fame – but instead humbly asks:  “Give me a God-listening heart so I can lead your people well, discerning the difference between good and evil” (v. 9, Msg). For such an answer he gets what he's asking for – and then some.

Would I ask for wealth so I'd never sweat the small offering ever again? Would I ask for health so that cancer nor COVID-19 could ever touch me? Would I ask for long life, fame, “big” church prestige or ramble out the odd assortment of items on my bucket list? Somehow all those things ring hollow. Hezekiah, when informed by Isaiah that he was going to die, begged God for more time. God gave him what he asked for and during the remaining fifteen years of his life a son was born to him – a son so profane who would live to undue everything he had done during his mostly distinguished reign. In retrospect would it have been wiser to stoically resign himself to his death? Fame and fortune are relatively fleeting things, here today, gone tomorrow and I'm told that many of those folk who enjoy such things also enjoy more stress and anxiety as well and seem to do if the tabloids are even partially true

At 58, I think of my life and I'm thankful that I'm married to a woman who still loves and cares for me 34 years into our marriage, that our four adult children all walk with Jesus and are engaged in meaningful work that they are well suited for and are active participants in the fellowship they belong to. For nearly 29 years I have had a place to work out my calling and along the way have learned to wear other hats like coach, chaplain, teacher and mayor. I don't have everything I want but I certainly can say I have everything I need.

So what do I want? What can the Lord do for me? The best answer I can come up today (who knows? I may come up with a better answer tomorrow) is:

11 Teach me your way, Lord,

    that I may rely on your faithfulness;
give me an undivided heart,
    that I may fear your name.
12 I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart;
    I will glorify your name forever.
13 For great is your love toward me;
    you have delivered me from the depths,
    from the realm of the dead.

(Psalm 86:11-13, NIV)

Lord knows, I want to be a good pastor, mayor, coach, husband and father. But more than success at any and all of these endeavors I do so want an undivided heart that in all things I will demonstrate faithfulness and love to Him who formed me and called me and placed me on this earth to do some good.

Can you really ask for anything more?

The Road to Hell and All That: A Meditation on John 13:21-30

“Then he dipped the crust and gave it to Judas, son of Simon the Iscariot. As soon as the bread was in his hand, Satan entered him.”

“What you must do,” said Jesus, “do. Do it and get it over with.”

 “No one around the supper table knew why he said this to him. Some thought that since Judas was their treasurer, Jesus was telling him to buy what they needed for the Feast, or that he should give something to the poor.”

“Judas, with the piece of bread, left. It was night.” John 13:26-30, The Message

...

“As a secret sign to John, Jesus says it is the one to whom he will hand the bread after dipping it in the Passover relish. This would indicate that Judas is sitting on Jesus' immediate left. In Judaism this was referred to as the place of the intimate friend. There is a possibility that Jesus and Judas were far closer friends than any of the Gospels can bring themselves to say.” John: The Gospel of Wisdom by Michael Card

Would you trust a guy who looks like this?

Judas Iscariot. His name is synonymous with treachery. Not one of the Gospel writers have anything good to say of him. The asides and descriptive phrases that John uses to describe him belie a hardness that seems out of place for the apostle who wrote so much about the love of God. In film he usually is portrayed as someone who has a dark, miserly look about him presumably to telegraph to the audience that this a guy not to be trusted. He's Grima Wormtongue of the Golden Hall only (perhaps) better looking.

Yeah, I wouldn't trust him either

Somewhere along the way he had become their fellowship's treasurer delegated to dispense gifts to the poor and buy what was needed for food and sundries. In church circles, the person who ends up as treasurer of a church is usually someone whom the fellowship considers “real good with money” and who possesses a character totally above board. When that trust is betrayed, as it happened to a parish in our area recently to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, the outrage experienced by the rest of the congregation is acute. Everyone knows that thieves steal but when you have seen them in church and made small-talk with them only to learn later they were lining their pockets with money you gave to God how can you not feel duped and stupid for considering yourself their friend?

That's Judas in the middle whom
Satan is devouring

Could it be that instead of the dark, brooding, scheming guy that he is often made out to appear in film and literature (think Dante's Inferno infamous Ninth Circle denizen), he was, in fact, a pretty likable and otherwise friendly fella that you would enjoy having coffee with? Case in point is John's version of that moment when Jesus announces to the group that someone in their inner circle will betray him (John 13:21-30). The way John puts it Jesus becomes “visibly upset”. The Greek word that John uses (tarazzo) doesn't speak of a man quietly putting on a stoic mien as he faces his nemesis. No, it's more like a washing machine agitating as if it were about to be launched to the moon. What else but betrayal by a close and trusted comrade could provoke such a response in the Lord? After all, he knows these guys having chosen them and done life together with them for the past few years. A knife in the back couldn't cut as deep.

When Peter from across the room motions to John to ask Jesus just who the culprit is uncharacteristically Jesus answers straightforwardly: “The one to whom I give this crust of bread after I’ve dipped it” and immediately he so dips his piece of flat bread into one of the common bowls upon the table and hands it to Judas. He might as well have pointed at him and simply said, “him.” I find it curious that neither John nor any of the others at that moment (except, of course, Judas) have a clue of what is going on. He hands Judas the bread and cryptically says, “What you must do, do. Do it and get it over with” and all that some of them can surmise is that Judas has to run a few last minute errands on the Master's behalf before Passover begins. No one guesses that he leaves their intimate gathering only to make a beeline for the Sanhedrin because a guy like Judas could never do such a thing. Later that evening when he shows up in a procession of Temple guards in the garden and gives Jesus the fated kiss of greeting they are all stunned at his duplicity which is maybe why later as John tells his story of his life with Jesus he can't help but reveal his jaded opinion of the man he and everyone else once regarded as Jesus' close friend.

What if this was Judas and Jesus during better times?

The lesson for me is this: don't be too hasty to judge Judas. Walk humbly and don't put any confidence in titles or experiences. I don't want to contemplate it but if push comes to shove I could succumb to the same temptation he did. I want to insist that never in a million years would I sell out the Lord of glory because, well, I'm a good guy, a pastor, and been a Christian for most of my life. But then I think of all that Judas saw and experienced and heard as a member of the Twelve and yet after all that his heart remained a stone within, unmoved and unpersuaded of the truth that was right in front of him. Judas is, in fact, a fearful warning to us all. As Bruce Milne puts it: “There is, tragically, 'a road to hell at the very gates of heaven' in the sense that it is possible to resist even the prolonged, personal appeals of Jesus Christ and turn away at the last into the darkness. There are those whom even Jesus cannot, and will not, save. Not that his grace is insufficient for them. On the contrary, it truly is 'enough for all, enough for each, enough for evermore', as Charles Wesley eloquently declared. But they will not come to receive it. The corollary to the stress on the crucial importance of faith in this gospel is the seriousness of unbelief, the refusal of faith. Hell is no mere theoretical possibility. It is an awesome and fearful reality. To refuse the light means to choose the darkness where no light will ever shine again” (The Bible Speaks Today: The Message of John, pp. 203-04).

The proverbial road to hell

Could Judas have said no? Could he have refused the part he was given to play in the passion of the Christ? The Arminian in me says of course he could, he wasn't a patsy or a fall guy destined to fulfill Scripture. I don't believe for a second that there are some people born doomed to be damned. For all time God has filled the universe with free-will agents whom he desires will choose him of their own volition. That being said I also think that the more we resist the grace of God the greater the chance our character will become permanently bent away from him. While only God knows where exactly it lies there is a point of no return, a place to use Lewis' turn of words where God says to a human being “thy will be done.” It's a sobering thought. Of Judas says Milne: “he was within arm's reach of Jesus through occupying the place on his other side, the host's left, the place of special honor. For one last, lingering moment Judas' destiny hangs in the balance as the love of God incarnate shines one more time into his benighted heart. But the moment is no sooner present than it passes, as Judas in a final act of defiance closes his heart against the light, and turns away into the darkness that has no end” (pp. 202-03). May God keep me - and the rest of us - far from such a place.

Keeping it on the down-low: A meditation on John 7:1-13

“His brothers said, 'Why don’t you leave here and go up to the Feast so your disciples can get a good look at the works you do? No one who intends to be publicly known does everything behind the scenes. If you’re serious about what you are doing, come out in the open and show the world.' His brothers were pushing him like this because they didn’t believe in him either.”

“Jesus came back at them, 'Don’t crowd me. This isn’t my time. It’s your time—it’s always your time; you have nothing to lose. The world has nothing against you, but it’s up in arms against me. It’s against me because I expose the evil behind its pretensions. You go ahead, go up to the Feast. Don’t wait for me. I’m not ready. It’s not the right time for me.'”

“He said this and stayed on in Galilee. But later, after his family had gone up to the Feast, he also went. But he kept out of the way, careful not to draw attention to himself.” John 7:3-10, Msg

•••

Genie: Phenomenal cosmic powers!

[shrinks down inside the lamp]

Genie: Itty bitty living space!

Genie in Disney's Aladdin

Genie could do a lot of cool stuff

What if you could wield the same power Jesus did? To what end would you use it? To empty out the local hospital and special care unit at the nursing home? To work such wonders within the county jail that in a single day the sheriff would have to lay-off staff as there were no more inmates to supervise? To visit every household where a hospice nurse was keeping vigil and essentially raise the dead? Or what other miraculous deed could you imagine completing with the cosmic powers of the Most High at your disposal?

Not once and for all but an ongoing reality

I'm a Pentecostal and by definition and implication I believe in the Holy Spirit's ongoing ministry in the world today. The Day of Pentecost, the historical birthday of the Church, is not just a day we commemorate annually; rather, it is – or, at least, supposed to be - an ongoing reality. Jesus told his first disciples not to leave Jerusalem but “wait for what the Father has promised. You heard Me speak of this. For John the Baptist baptized with water but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:4-5). And a week and a half later his promise was made good when the Holy Spirit rained down in buckets upon them and about a hundred others. The courage they had lacked they now had in abundance. Boldly they proclaimed the message of Jesus to whomever would listen to them. A professional, lame beggar is wonderfully healed and a decidedly dead woman is brought back to life. Nothing, it seemed, could stop them now. But it didn't end with them. The ministry of the Holy Spirit is not a movement regulated to the early half of the First Century AD. He's alive and well and working in the earth today.

And yet, in over twenty-five years of pastoral ministry, truth be told, I have seen and experienced few of what John Wimber used to describe as “power encounters”. I've not seen anyone raised to life. I've never seen a person in a wheel chair rise out of it and run. Once my wife and I were personally used to exorcise an unclean spirit out of someone and while the person knew she was delivered of the thing when it was over, it was definitely not a Linda Blair-like a la The Exorcist event. For a six-year period our fellowship held a monthly healing service and while we prayed with lots of folks who ultimately felt comfort, encouragement and love, we really didn't rack up significant stats to submit to Charisma. Nevertheless, I remain a committed Pentecostal believing fully that if we see little demonstration of the power of the risen Savior in our midst the problem isn't with heaven. It's somewhere on this end of the equation. Or is it?

My personal devotions have been in the Gospel of John this year. Unlike the other gospel accounts where Jesus will frequently work acts of power, the way John tells it Jesus will perform a miracle now and again but under the radar, as it were, and frequently - if a miracle can be described as such - in a demonstratively subtle manner. In chapter 2, at a wedding where he is a guest he transforms water into wine, an event that Michael Card refers to as “one of his most unmiraculous miracles.”

There was no waving of arms, no calling attention to himself. Jesus simply takes the water of the old orthodoxy and unassumingly transforms it into the wine of the new reality. His other miracles in John will follow the same pattern, except for one:

1. In chapter 4 he will heal the official's son in abstentia.
2. In chapter 5 he will cause the lame to walk by simply saying “get up.” This man does not even know Jesus' name.
3. In chapter 6 he will feed the five thousand by simply pronouncing the blessing over the meal.
4. Also in chapter 6 he will walk on the water. Mark observes that he was walking past them, his purpose simply to get to the other side of the lake (Mk 6:48).
5. In chapter 9 he will heal the blind man, also in abstentia.
6. The single exception of the rule in regard to Jesus' unmiraculous miracles is the raising of Lazarus in chapter 11. This he accomplishes by means of a loud shout. (John: The Gospel of Wisdom by Michael Card)

Jesus at the Pool of Bethesda

A well-meaning and sincere member of our fellowship once affirmed to me that if we had the power of God like Jesus and the first disciples had we could empty out Lake View Medical Center (the largest hospital in our county.) John's testimony seems to suggest otherwise.

In John 7, the Feast of Tabernacles has arrived and as was the custom Jewish men were to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem to celebrate and remember their ancestors' wilderness wanderings. While people are packing and making ready for the journey south, curiously Jesus goes about his business as if it's just another day of the week. His brothers chide him and remind him that if he's serious about being a public figure than he shouldn't be hanging around the backwaters of Galilee. Jerusalem is where the limelight is and where stars are born. “Work some of your magic there,” they opine, “and watch how your following will grow again” (recall that at the end of John 6 a lot of people “unfriended” him with his Capernaum sermon about the necessity of “eating his flesh” and “drinking his blood.” You'll have that.) But Jesus won't be manipulated by them or anyone; he'll go when he feels the time is right and not a moment before.

Obi-Wan sorta looks like Jesus, too

Of course, as soon as his brothers leave town, he gathers his things and begins the journey by himself. In my mind, I envision Jesus making that ninety mile trip incognito, dressed like some First Century Jedi complete with hooded cloak. He lingers on the fringes of the caravan, hearing the occasional camp fire conversations about him whether or not he is a good man or little more than a snakeoil salesman. Like the genie in Aladdin's lamp, phenomenal, cosmic powers are at his command within the “itty bitty living space” of himself. But he doesn't wield them dramatically like a light saber or as Master Yoda might by raising an X-Wing fighter

If you've seen the movie,
I think you get it

out of the muck of a Dagobah swamp. He doesn't because as he asserted with the audience that gathered around him following the healing of the man at the Pool of Bethesda, “...the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does” (John 5:19, NIV). And as the feeding of the multitude outside of Bethsaida demonstrated, miracles don't normally spur people on to true faith. Quite the contrary. As Bruce Milne puts it, “Hunger for spectacular signs is the enemy of real faith, since it leaves the fallen, self-centered heart untouched and unrebuked” (The Bible Speaks Today: The Message of John).

I used to feel inadequate when a sick person came to me for prayer and despite my most sincerest intercession “nothing” came of it. They were still sick after the fact. Most people don't blame their ministers for not making them better. They know it doesn't usually work that way. (I do recall a very distraught woman who called me once and cried electronically on my shoulder about her husband who had left her. When I tried to comfort her with a “I've been praying for you” remark, she screamed into my earpiece, “WELL, IT'S NOT WORKING!” Admittedly, she had had a bad week.) I still pray for healing. I still believe that the Jesus I follow has real, phenomenal, cosmic power that if he so chooses can cause dead limbs to be whole again and set bound persons free from unclean spirits. But as John's gospel tells it, our Savior came serving. “When the disciples were hungry, he fed them. When their feet were dirty on the night of Judas' betrayal, he washed them” (A Better Freedom by Michael Card). This reminds me that as I go about my ministry which frequently seems to major in little more than in handing out cups of cold water in his name (Matthew 10:42), it is no little thing after all to emulate the One who usually sought a low profile and did not try to make the headlines – until it was absolutely necessary.

Granted, he didn't do this all the time

Led not lost: A meditation on Exodus 15:22-27 and disappointment

Ayun Musa, the traditional site of this site

“Then Moses led Israel from the Red Sea, and they went out into the wilderness of Shur; and they went three days in the wilderness and found no water. When they came to Marah, they could not drink the waters of Marah, for they were bitter; therefore it was named Marah.” Exodus 15:22-23, NASB

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick...” Proverbs 13:12, NIV

Philip misses his dad - as we all do

Several years ago, a 54-year-old man in our fellowship who didn't like the way the heart medicine he had been prescribed made him feel, decided to go off his meds and “trust God for his healing.” Within a few months of that decision he had a fatal heart attack and died while driving home one afternoon. While his wife has weathered the storm well enough, his fifteen-year-old son remains in the thick of it angry that he has been robbed of his dad before his time. In his own words pasted on his Facebook wall recently, “Obviously whoever said that it will get better has never lost their father. #goingdownNotup#missdad.”

They are an amazing couple

A young couple from Refuge, who have been trying desperately to have a child for over a year, with joy shared with all of us on a Sunday morning a few weeks ago that at long last they were with child. The woots and the applause were spontaneous as everyone knew they had been trying to conceive for some time. Last week, when they went to the doctor for a check-up, their joy was popped like a soap bubble in the summer air when the ultrasound revealed that their baby had died a few weeks ago.

The future is uncertain - but then, it always is

Back in June, my father-in-law went to see his doctor due to issues he thought had to do with his stomach. But after a series of tests they learned that he had a malignant tumor the size of a fist on his liver. Just the other day when he and my mother-in-law sat down to discuss the action plan with the surgeon they were informed that he had, in fact, Stage 4 cancer, and given that the tumor had already metastasized to his lungs the best plan of action was no plan whatsoever. Whatever news they were expecting to hear this was not it.

All of us who follow Jesus know that these vignettes are not extraordinary or unusual. Things like this – and worse! – happen to followers of Christ all the time. In fact, just as Jesus reminded his first disciples, stories such as these are fulfillment of his promise: “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33, NIV). Disappointment and hope waylaid are at times par for the course.

One theory of which way they went

I think of the Children of Israel fresh from their deliverance from Egypt. They had walked through the waters on dry ground and watched the liquid wall collapse like an avalanche upon the pursuing chariots of Pharaoh. The sight of some of the bodies of the men who but a short time ago were in hot pursuit of them now washing up upon the shore like so much flotsam and jetsam was certainly part of the inspiration for the song of victory that arose shortly afterward (Exodus 15:1-21). But now, safe on the the other side of the sea, what do they find there? Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

Author Thomas Cahill describes the Sinai peninsula as “one of our planet's most desolate places. It would be hard to conjure up a landscape more likely to lead to death – a land bereft of all comfort, an earth of so few trees and plants that one may walk for hours without seeing a wisp of green, a place so dry that the uninitiated may die in no time, consumed by what feels like preternatural dehydration. By contrast, the gentler Judean desert of John the Baptist seems almost an oasis” (The Gift of the Jews, pp. 132-33). Bruce Feiler adds that the Sinai has often been “referred to as '24,000 square miles of nothing'” (Walking the Bible, p. 203). When I hear the word, “wilderness”, something out of a John Muir sketch comes to mind, beautiful mountain vistas crossed now and then with sparkling glacier streams. But in the Sinai I should think the moon, desolate and empty.

In such a moonscape like the Sinai water is everything. So three days after the Red Sea crossing, at the limit that a normal human body can tolerate before risking death by dehydration, the sojourning people of God spy an oasis creep up over the horizon. Their spirits must have soared again knowing that soon their thirst could be slaked and their bleating livestock watered. Did some of them race ahead to get first dibs at the watering hole? But no sooner do they arrive than they discover that the water is undrinkable and bitter, like being teased by a mirage but worse because a mirage isn't wet. Their disappointment is palpable and the discontented murmur of thousands must have sounded like a hive of angry bees suddenly overturned.

Moses, the focal point of the people's ire and dissatisfaction, cries out to Yahweh and he provides an unusual solution: “God pointed him to a stick of wood. Moses threw it into the water and the water turned sweet” (Exodus 15:25). There are some commentators who write a lot about certain kinds of trees that have restorative powers when thrown into brackish water but personally it seems to me in their rush to demonstrate that what we are reading inside the pages of Holy Writ is scientifically provable they miss the point: once again, with their backs against the wall, God had provided for them in a miraculous way, just as he had at Pi Hahiroth (Exodus 14:1). Yahweh had asked Moses to take a step of faith – throw a stick of wood into the water – and watch what happens. The moral being that at the crossroads of disappointment and unbelief, trust and faith are always required.

But something else happens at the place that they would later call Marah: they learn something new about the Lord who had delivered them from the hand of Pharaoh:

“That’s the place where God set up rules and procedures; that’s where he started testing them. God said, “If you listen, listen obediently to how God tells you to live in his presence, obeying his commandments and keeping all his laws, then I won’t strike you with all the diseases that I inflicted on the Egyptians; I am God your healer.” (Exodus 15:26)

As Karen Lee-Thorp paraphrases the same moment,

Trust me, obey me, and I will take care of your physical needs. Ignore me, and you are at the mercy of the climate, the food supply and of things called “germs” that you know nothing about. Yahweh must have felt like the parent of two million two-year-olds, with only one eighty-year-old nurse to commiserate with (Story of Stories, pp. 51-52).

Hundreds of years before at the top of Moriah Abraham had learned a new truth about Yahweh – that He was the God Who Provides. In the nick of time, He had provided the ram for the sacrifice in response to the Abraham's act of trust. Now at the bitter waters of Marah God reveals that He is the God Who Heals. Just as he healed the waters, he is able to restore those who choose to honor and hold true to him even when their hope has been waylaid. In fact, while obedience won't necessarily give us a free pass from hardship he promises that when it comes it won't be considered judgment. Rather, it will force our true colors to come out, revealing how deep our confession really runs.

There is something else I missed before but those more studied in these matters have since pointed out to me: they were led to Marah. That's where the Cloud, the physical manifestation of the Lord's presence among them, took them. They didn't stumble across the bitter waters of Marah by “accident.” Rather, it was by design to prove what was in them. As J.A. Motyer observes, “Every move in whatever direction, every stop and start, every turn of the pathway was by the will of God. Whether they were in the comforts of Elim or in the dire straits of Rephidim, it was because the Lord had led them there.” (The Bible Speaks Today: The Message of Exodus, pp. 177-78).

As Lee-Thorp puts it:

This whole desert journey was the beginning of a school. Yahweh had trained Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jacob's sons as individuals; now he had to put more than a million people through the same course. Some of them weren't even Jacob's descendants and had heard of Yahweh only a few months earlier. Nearly all of them had grown up as slaves and children of slaves. This stage in Yahweh's plan was about transformation...

...To change from slaves into servants, the people had to learn fear – and at the same time trust – Yahweh more than any other gods or human. One might expect that the plagues, the Reed Sea miracle and the constant physical presence of the cloud would have convinced them, but dry mouths and growling stomachs proved otherwise. Hence, Yahweh deprived them of the sources of their basic necessities to force them to depend on him. Then each day he provided just what they needed, so as to reinforce an attitude of daily dependence (Story of Stories, pp. 52-53).

So trouble and difficulty is all a part of the journey and the story that God is writing with our lives. Whether the place we're at is Marah where our hopes have gone awry or at the copious springs of Elim (Exodus 15:27) where it is so easy to be at peace with our lot in the world God desires that we trust his goodness and his purpose to lead us through the harsh terrain ahead. I hope that fifteen-year-old boy finds comfort on the other side of his present rage. I marvel at the woman who just lost her baby as she expresses to me her gratitude that she and her husband could be parents. But I am not surprised when my father-in-law shared with all of us this past weekend gathered for his 80^th birthday that whether he is healed or not of the cancer presently growing within him, he will “trust the Master.” It's the way he's talked for as long as I have known him, a confession that arises out of a habit of faith.  

Nothing lost in translation: An Advent meditation

“It is true that no one has ever seen God at any time. Yet the divine and only Son, who lives in the closest intimacy with the Father, has made him known.” John 1:18, PHILLIPS

“Then Philip said to him, 'Show us the Father, Lord, and we shall be satisfied.'”

“Have I been such a long time with you,” returned Jesus, “without your really knowing me, Philip? The man who has seen me has seen the Father.” John 13:8-9, PHILLIPS

A few weeks ago I subbed a few days at the middle school serving as the aide who travels around with a young Venezuelan boy who moved to our town in September. He speaks little English and I speak hardly any Spanish so his teacher suggested I download Google Translate to my phone. “It will be helpful,” is how she put it. So I did and as she was right. Frequently during those two days Justin and I were making ourselves clear to each other through that app on my phone. Two people from different parts of the globe being able to communicate through a little hand-held device. How cool is that?

On the Saturday following my subbing assignment we were in the Cities having breakfast with our daughter and her roommate who happens to be a Spanish major. I was estatic about finding Google Translate and was having fun speaking into my phone and hearing my words “magically” transformed into Spanish with a soothing Latin lilt (or firm Icelandic bark). That's when Katie, Emma's roommate, gently popped by bubble: as far as Spanish goes, she explained, the words may be correct but the grammar and syntax are frequently incorrect with a program like Google Translate. That must be why “Seniora”, our high school Spanish teacher and presumably every other Spanish teacher out there, strictly forbids their students from “cheating” by using it. I suppose just like everything else there are no shortcuts to mastering a language no matter the path you choose.

But as Katie was kindly setting me straight I had a thought: Google Translate may not perfectly bridge the communication gap between two cultures but Jesus perfectly does. Jesus translates the Father's heart and nothing is lost in translation.

The way John tells it, the night before his death Jesus spent a long time with his closest followers sharing with them his “last lecture.” Somewhere in the middle of it, Philip timidly raises his hand and makes a request: “Show us the Father and that will be enough” to wit Jesus replies, a bit incredulously, “What? Do you still not get it? [Okay, that's my paraphrase] The man who has seen me has seen the Father.”

It's a pretty audacious statement for anyone to make unless you can stand by those words. So what do we learn about the holy, invisible and mighty God by reviewing the life of Jesus?

We learn what breaks his heart, for starters. He hates it when the strong pick on the weak or use their power to lord it over those who are powerless whether they are women, the infirm or the poor. He really hates it when religious people who should know better do nothing to alleviate the sorrow or the spiritual poverty of others. After all, we never read of Jesus running sinners out of town but at least on one occasion he made a whip and wasn't afraid to use it when part of the Temple was egregiously being used in an irreverent fashion.

We learn that while he has no favorites he cares especially for the poor in spirit, the humble of heart, the outcast, the sick and the unclean. Jesus wasn't afraid to touch the leper. He sent demons packing out of oppressed people. He made blind men see again and lame men walk – no, leap! - once more. He restored a dead son to his grief-stricken widowed mother and a dead daughter to her heart-broken parents. But Jesus wasn't throwing around healing virtue like some light saber toting heavenly Jedi just because he could; he did so, he said, because he saw his Father doing the same (John 5:19).

We learn that God took the initiative in saving us. We were so lost. Never in a million years could we have fixed what was broken. We are the lost sheep, the lost coin, the wayward son, the traveler waylaid by bandits, dead Lazarus laying stone cold in his tomb. We are all of them – and more! God took the initiative in sorting out this horrible mess we landed in when our original parents chose to ignore the ban on the fruit of the tree. He sent us his Son, Jesus, to pay the ransom for our sin, to find that which was lost, to resurrect that which was dead. To save us.

Ultimately, we learn that God loves us. Jesus said as much in the first Bible verse that so many of us committed to memory when we were children: “For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that every one who believes in him shall not be lost, but should have eternal life. You must understand that God has not sent his Son into the world to pass sentence upon it, but to save it—through him” (John 3:16, 17, PHILLIPS).

Of course, these things are but bullet points on what is most definitely a far longer list but all that to underscore my original thought: with Jesus nothing is lost in translation. He speaks fluidly the wisdom of heaven and conveys perfectly the Father's heart for us all.

I still have Google Translate on my phone. Why not? If I'm out for dinner with my family there's more than one way to pass the time while we wait for our order to be filled. And Icelandic sounds so very, very cool.

Tell me the story again: A meditation on Mark 3:20 - 35

“But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.” Luke 2:19, KJV

Most people who attend local fellowships I assume are already in the know of the particulars of the first Christmas story: virginal Mary great with child, the carpenter Joseph, the journey to Bethlehem already overwhelmed with people because of the Census, the manger, the star, the shepherds and the wise men who came from the east seeking the new born king. When I was a boy every December 1^st and every December 24^th I heard the story again read from our family Bible by my mom or dad by the light of our Advent candle to say nothing of the weekly gospel readings at church read during the Advent season. Yes, the Christmas story from Luke is as familiar to me as Rudolf, Frosty and C. Clement Moore's 'Twas the Night Before Christmas and Dicken's A Christmas Carol.

But because I know the story so well means its also possible for me to “forget” what it means or – God forbid! - not get what it means at all. Look at Mary. Is there anybody else in that story that is more close to it than her? She alone feels the wonder when Jesus first begins to move within her. She carries him to term and delivers him in the hay in the stable behind the inn. She nurses and nurturers this baby and watches him grow and develop, in time, into a man. But just because you're involved in the story and have a part to play in it doesn't mean you necessarily understand what is going on. Sometimes you can be as much in the dark as everyone else.

Fast forward thirty-some years. Mary's son is a full grown man now and has begun the work he was born to do. But that work, as she and everyone else soon finds out, is at the same time amazing and wonderful as it is perplexing and embarrassing. In Capernaum where he is living now he heals people. Those demonized by unclean spirits are set free. Crowds hound him day and night and, at times, threaten to trample him like groupies would a rock star today. At the same time his work and his words have a penchant for alienating him from the religious establishment. Some of the teachers of the law are so incensed and offended by what he is saying and doing that they are out for blood – his!

Back in Nazareth twenty-some miles away, Mary keeps on hearing stories passed on to her by those who saw him do such things as forgiving a paralyzed person's sins (and then healing him for good measure!) and taking up with such riff-raff like tax collectors and their ilk (see Mark 2-3). What is going on? But when she is told that he's so overwhelmed by all those who are looking for him to pray for them that he doesn't even have time to eat, she's heard enough. She calls Jesus' brothers together, grown men themselves now, and essentially tells them its time for an intervention. In fact, the Greek adverbial phrase that is translated “they went to take charge of him” (Mark 3:21) means essentially to drag him by force if he won't come of his own accord.

The way Mark tells it, two opposing forces in chapter 3 are on a collision course with him. On the one hand, Mary and her sons are coming down from Nazareth to hog-tie him if necessary and take him home because in their estimation his new-found fame had made him crazy (v. 21). At the same time Jewish theologians are coming down from Jerusalem to discredit the miracles he had performed by claiming he was able to do such amazing things only because he was in league with the devil (v. 22). Incredible. The people who should know him better – his family – and the people who should know the Scriptures better – the religious experts – strangely find themselves agreeing on this one point: he must be stopped and forcibly if necessary.

Say what?

Okay, I get why the theologians have got themselves all worked up in a lather. He's not just a boat-rocker proposing a renewal of the ancient tradition come down to them from Moses; he's come to do away with it altogether. And his star is rising with the people. But what's with Mary? Doesn't she recall the angel and everything he said to her? Doesn't she remember what the old man said to her that day she and Joseph presented their son at the Temple that their child was destined “for the fall and rising of many in Israel” (Luke 2:34, NKJV)? Could she have forgotten what those breathless shepherds racing in from the hills outside of Bethlehem told her that night about what the angel had said to them? If Mary, who is center stage in every creche I've ever seen, can't put two and two together, what hope is there for the rest of us who weren't even there?

When Jesus is informed that his mother and his brothers have just arrived in town and would like a word with him, he doesn't excuse himself from the crowd so that he can have some private moments with his family. Instead he uses their appearance as a teaching point. Looking around at all the people sitting around him he states rhetorically, “'Who do you think are my mother and brothers?...Right here, right in front of you—my mother and my brothers. Obedience is thicker than blood. The person who obeys God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.'” (Mark 3:33-35, The Message) Wow. How's that for a brush off? I can't imagine any mother not being offended.

Of course, Mary at that time is pretty much like everyone else in the story: clueless. When he speaks of destroying the temple, they think of Herod's impressive edifice reduced to rubble in Jerusalem. When he teaches on the kingdom of God they see a throne and a country with borders. He is speaking of things far greater. In time, she'll come to see him and the things he taught differently as will the rest of those who are in that circle that follow him about. As Augustine put it, "...Mary is more blessed in receiving the faith of Christ than in conceiving the flesh of Christ. For to the one who said, 'Blessed is the womb that bore you!' he himself answered: 'Blessed are they who hear the Word of God and keep it.'"  At that particular moment, however, even she's got a thing or two yet to learn about maybe the greatest story ever told; that God came near to us in Jesus and made it possible for us to see and hear him up close and personal. All the more reason for a rube like me to hear the story told again in hopes that it might continue to provoke me into the humility and obedience it demands.

One small touch

“When the apostles in Jerusalem received the report that Samaria had accepted God’s Message, they sent Peter and John down to pray for them to receive the Holy Spirit. Up to this point they had only been baptized in the name of the Master Jesus; the Holy Spirit hadn’t yet fallen on them. Then the apostles laid their hands on them and they did receive the Holy Spirit.” Acts 8:14-17, The Message

Most people who read this passage of Scripture are drawn to it because what they think it has to say about their particular version of pneumatology (i.e., the study of the Holy Spirit and spiritual things); whether Luke is saying that Holy Spirit-infilling normally is a separate event following salvation or this was a solitary “out of the ordinary” kind of experience for a decidedly out-of the-ordinary event. (Whichever way you choose to answer that usually says more about your personal convictions about these things than it has to do with the story itself). But what gets my attention is the descriptive statement, “Then the apostles laid their hands on them...” In that small gesture, something of incredible significance is occurring right before our eyes but if we're not paying attention we'll totally miss its import.

Philip if he had lived in the "old" West

Like a lot of biblical writers, Luke is known for his economy of words. Case in point is his comment describing the after-effect of Philip's ministry in Samaria. Philip shows up practically out of breath from running away from Jerusalem where at the moment a young zealot by name of Saul is rounding up the Christians there following the death of Stephen. But instead of keeping a low profile, he gets up on a stump, preaches Jesus and is used by the Lord to heal many paralyzed individuals as well as exorcise demonic spirits from many others. And all Luke will say about these remarkable things is: “So there was great joy in that city” (v. 8). He clearly was not a 21^st century writer who would have relayed this story in far more dramatic fashion.

When it happens in the Bible it's a big deal

In like manner, he relays what happens when Peter and John show up to confirm the rumors they had been hearing in Jerusalem that Samaria had received the word of God. Luke doesn't bother to bring us into the moment of what their follow-up entailed but I infer that it involved some conversations with Philip and at the very least, having a meal or two with these new Samaritan believers. Whatever they saw was confirmation enough that the rumors were true, that there were now Christ-followers in Samaria and so at Philip's urging they prayed for these new believers in Jesus to receive the Holy Spirit. And what happens next is a “whoa” moment in Scripture because in sacramental fashion, Peter and John, both law-abiding Jewish men lay their hands – probably for the first time - upon redneck, lowlife Samaritans. The moment is awe-ful, fateful and rather humorous all at the same time.

Most of us who have grown up in church or at least are familiar enough with our Bible, know enough to understand that Samaritans in Jesus' day were considered inbreds by the rest of the Jewish population of that region. Though once upon a time they had been part of the family, following the end of the Northern Kingdom in 722 BC much of the population had been deported. The current denizens of Samaria were the descendents of a mixed bag of people who had been planted there by later foreign kings to work the land. Ajith Fernando has this to say about the centuries old schism between the two groups:

"Dude, what are you doing?"

Animosity toward Jerusalem among the Samaritans had deep historical roots. They were refused a share in rebuilding the Jerusalem temple (see Ezra 3:7-4:5), so they erected a rival temple on their hill, Gerizim. The Judean ruler John Hyrancus destroyed this temple and conquered Samaria in the second century B.C. When the Romans conquered Palestine in 63 B.C. they liberated Samaria from Judean control. (Acts: The NIV Application Commentary, p.273)

That all adds up to a lot of bad blood. No wonder the woman at the well in John 4 is incredulous that Jesus, a Jew, would even bother to talk with her. No wonder, at another time James and John asked Jesus for permission to call hellfire down on a bunch of inhospitable Samaritans (Luke 9:53-54). And yet a year or so later here is the same John back in Samaritanland, along with Peter, ready to bless their ancient foe with the blessing of the Father that had been given to them. I wonder at the moment if he was amused by the irony of it all?

But in that gesture, that laying on of hands, Peter and John are declaring that these Samaritans are equals, members and participants in the new covenant with Jesus Christ. Whether or not they had the theology of it all worked out at that moment isn't clear but by laying their hands on them it can only mean that ultimately they will reach that conclusion. Of this particular episode in the history of the Church, John Stott says,

More radical than this

...the Samaritan schism had lasted for centuries. But now the Samaritans were being evangelized, and were responding to the gospel. It was a moment of significant advance, which was also fraught with great peril. What would happen now? Would the long-standing rift be perpetuated? The gospel had been welcomed by the Samaritans, but would the Samaritans be welcomed by the Jews? Or would there be separate factions of Jewish Christians and Samaritan Christians in the church of Jesus Christ? The idea may seem unthinkable in theory; in practice it might well have happened. There was a real 'danger...of their tearing Christ apart, or at least of forming a new and separate church for themselves' [quoting Calvin]. (The Bible Speaks Today: The Message of Acts, by John R.W. Stott, p. 157)

I'm sure at the time in the Jerusalem church there were some who longed for the old rift to be healed. I'm also sure there were others who would allow the Samaritans to come back in on a probationary status while pedigrees could be checked out. But here in one fell swoop it is the apostles' assessment that these distant “cousins” were in fact now “brothers and sisters in Christ” and should be respected and welcome as such. I wonder how quickly the Jerusalem Jewish “pure-breds” embraced their “mudblood” relations? Based on the previous conflict between the Hebrew Christians and the Hellenized Christians (see Acts 6), probably quickly in some places and not so quickly in others. So for Peter and John to act as such not only did it show spiritual insight but also demonstrate moral courage. Had they held back it very well could have meant, the development of a new and subtle schism in the Body as, to use Michael Green's words, “converts from the two sides of the 'Samaritan curtain' found Christ without finding each other.” Indeed.

One small step that changed everything

In 1969, when Neil Armstrong stepped upon the moon for the first time he uttered the now famous line, “That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say that when Peter and John laid their hands on these new believers, Samaritans the lot of them, it was one small touch for these men, one giant embrace for the Church universal – the first of many more embraces to come (see Acts 15). That kind of change would take generations to get into the milieu of Jewish disciples. Acceptance of Gentile believers would take even longer. But great shifts in perspective always begin such – a small seed, a small step, a small gesture made that in time results in great good. As Fernando puts it,

It is providential that through the ministry of leaders from the Jerusalem church the Samaritans received the Spirit. It helped maintain the unity of the early church...It helped [the new Samaritan Christians] begin their life as Christians with an attitude of warm love toward their traditional enemies. Perhaps somewhere in this process, they repented of their attitudes of animosity toward Jerusalem. For the Jerusalem Christians too, it was important that the authenticating sign of the conversion of the Samaritans took place when the apostles were there and through their mediation. Accepting Samaritans to their fold also involved some major attitude shifts on their part. Therefore, clear evidence that God was in these events was necessary. (Acts: The NIV Application Commentary, p. 273)

One thing is for sure, as they leave town everyone has undergone change. The Samaritans have been blessed with the Holy Spirit – a blessing, as it has already been pointed out, mediated by the Jewish apostles. But Peter and John leave changed as well for on their return journey to Jerusalem they stop in many a Samaritan village to share Jesus there (8:25). It's a brand new day for everyone, the first of many new days to come for all believers everywhere.