Year: 2015

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Alien Country

Then they sailed to the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee.  When Jesus had stepped out on land, there met him a man from the city who had demons.  For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he had not lived in a house but among the tombs.  Luke 8:26-27

It was his intention, remember, to go to “the other side,” where the Gentiles live—why?  No one appears to ask him.  They may still be a little shaken up after the storm; perhaps in their confusion they imagine themselves to be blown off-course.  But with Jesus one is never off-course.  They have an appointment, and as soon as their boat runs aground the appointment runs to meet them.  Screaming.

You have to feel some sympathy for the disciples (who remain strangely silent throughout this dramatic episode): barely recovered from the worst scare of their lives, they now encounter a human nightmare.  Or rather, an inhuman nightmare.  Demons have been running loose in Palestine, and they’ve seen how Jesus deals with them, but this is a special case.  It’s a whole welcoming party in one body.  For all they know, this is how the Gentiles do demon-possession: in multiples.

Try to see it as the demons do.  For years, they have possessed their host.  We don’t know how these things begin–perhaps he left an opening for evil spirit, and after it had kicked aside his normal affections for family and friends, there was room for more.  By now they’ve driven him from all human company and made him an object of terror and loathing, even to himself.  He lives among the tombs but they won’t let him join the company of the dead; he cuts himself, but is prevented from cutting too deep.  In a twilight world they carouse and brawl and gleefully fight off any attempt to restrain them.  Their host has the strength of ten, because they are Legion.

gerasene-demoniac

Then the Man arrives. They see his boat approaching, and somehow know who is on it.  They raise such an unbearable clamor that their hapless host tries to silence them by slashing at himself with a flint-sharpened rock (which never works).  They hurl him, tripping and stumbling, onto the rocky beach where the boat has scraped ground.

How easy it is to provoke terror in humans!  That’s a primary demonic pleasure, though at the moment pleasure is the last thing on their many manic minds.  He’s standing up, steadying himself with one hand on the mast (like any ordinary man!)—God with us, God against us—how can this be??  His eyes search them out.  He knows them, knows their origin all way back to the moment he threw them out of the Presence, but they never expected to encounter him here.

Come out, he says, with his eyes only.

Don’t torment me! they cry out through the raw vocal chords of their host.  It’s Jesus, they tell themselves—remember, we got the word?—Jesus, the one who—the one that—

“What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?”

The other men are standing around, slack-jawed, keeping their distance.  It’s the kind of situation the demons crave: men approaching stealthily with chains or ropes, trying to sneak up and capture and restrain them.  The demons would have attacked by now, as so many times before—

But the Lord is climbing out of the boat (as awkwardly as any man; they can’t get over it!) with a depthless assurance beyond their experience of humanity.  They throw their host on the ground.  Stampeding over each other, they spin and thrash, screeching in multiple voices.

“What is your name?” he sternly asks.

Their voices come together long enough to scream, “Legion!”—before tumbling into incoherence again, each voice shrieking its own terror.  The abyss is on their collective mind, the pit that waits for all of them where there will be no human meat to feed on; only themselves and the Wrath, forever and ever and ever—

Not yet! they cry.  Hold off! Not now!  In the clamor, one of them mentions the pigs.  Yes, yes—the pigs.  Send us there!  The chaos of voices gradually comes together: The pigs!  Let us go into the pigs!

Their host has become their prison.  He is standing right in front of them, doing what no man or number of men could do before.  They claw and scratch and strain—Will he let us out? Let us out! Out of this—piece of—this pile of—

“Go,” he says.

They nearly tear their host apart, getting out.  With one final scream they leave him, panting and bloody, on the beach.

The fiery air cools.  One sweet breath, then another.  The horizon comes together for him, a clean line separating water and sky.  Blood pounds in his ears, the sound of his heart.  His own heart.  He wills his fingers to move, and they do—his own will.  Knees, legs, arms respond to his timid desire to sit up.  Above his head, that voice says, “Someone get him some clothes.”

The voice seems to cascade around him like the soft, barely-remembered folds of a worn linen tunic.  It gives him back to himself; piece by piece, it puts him together.

For the original post in this series, go here.

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Take Care How You Listen

Then his mother and his brothers came to him but they could not reach him because of the crowd.  And he was told, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, desiring to see you.”  But he answered them, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.”  Luke 8:19-21

Everyone hears, but who really listens?  His own family hears selectively.  Mark tells us that they had decided Jesus was mad.  It’s easy to imagine the older brother James calling a family conference, as he is evidently a take-charge kind of guy.  What’s going on with Jesus?  Is this Messiah business starting to get out of hand?  After all, there is a lot of madness going around: plenty of demons freeloading on human hosts, and one of them may even have hitched a ride on big brother.  He was always pretty intense, you know.  We’d better to check it out, because he could get into serious trouble . . .

Whatever the family decided to do was doubtless “for his own good.” Let’s suppose that Mary, James, and Joseph Junior set out to find him.  Perhaps they only wanted to check out the situation first: compare the crowd-sensation Jesus to the everyday-carpenter Jesus they had known in Nazareth, then make an evaluation and determine what to do from there.

Finding him is the easy part—everybody knows where he was last seen, and where he might be headed.  Getting to him is another matter.  He’s like a rock star barricaded by his entourage (though that analogy would not have occurred to them, of course).  The house where he’s staying is not only filled, but packed five or six deep around the doors and windows.  Let us through—we’re family!

Somebody agrees to pass on the message.  After a while, word comes back: the Master says there’s a new definition of “family.”  What I said about hearing?  This applies.  The family has been reorganized, with Jesus at its head.  You become a part of it by first using your ears, then your hands and heart.  Listen and do.  His biological mother brothers never got a chance to speak to him.  Because from now on, he does all the speaking, and eventually they will hear.

the storm

We are called to hear, even (or especially) when the interference is so loud it drowns out everything else.  Like, for instance, we are tossed on the waves or circumstance, with a howling wind in our ears.  Grief is like that, or shock, or unforeseen tragedy.  Master! Master! We cry, barely able to hear our own voices.  “Can you see what we’re going through?  Don’t you care?”  He’s right there.  Though we hear no response, though he may seem to be asleep, he right there.  In the boat.  With us.  When the time is right, he will get up and rebuke the circumstances as he rebuked that storm on the Sea of Galilee:

“PEACE!  Be still.”

Whether the wrath of the storm-tossed sea, or demons or men or whatever it be, no waters can swallow the ship where lies the master of ocean and earth and skies.*  All creation hears him.  Sometimes even before his family and followers do.

*”Master, the Tempest is Raging,” by Mary A. Baker

For the original post in this series, go here.

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Let Me Tell You a Story

And when a great crowd was gathering and people from town after town came to him, he said in a parable: “A sower went out to sow his seed . . .” (Luke 8:4-5)

It’s like a traveling salvation show: one teacher, twelve disciples, a handful of women who supply their material support, and a loose detachment of followers who come and go.  Life is good, spring is here, the air is sweet with new grass and moist earth.  At every stop a crowd gathers, fanning out around Jesus or packing into a house.  Today he stops beside and open field, where a famer with his sons are waking along the rows of black earth, casting seed with broad sweeps.  An earthy breeze blows across the field.  The Teacher breathes deeply, then begins a story: A sower went out to sow his seed.”

the sower

This is the first parable (the same in all three synoptic gospels), and it also might be the quintessential one.  It’s not about the speaker; it’s all about the audience: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”  Four kinds of soil, four kinds of ears, and a roundabout way of getting to them.  Truth takes a walk in the field of analogy—why?  That’s what the disciples want to know later.  What does it mean? is the question they ask, but he understands the Why lurking below it.  Why talk in analogies?  Why teach by metaphor?

Fact is, the Kingdom is not about facts.  It’s not a series of propositions backed up by signs.  It is unexpected, secret, often woven so firmly among the threads of ordinary life it’s easy to overlook.  Jesus never tells epic stories of the Homeric or Gilgamesh mold—all his stories are about farmers and bankers and housewives, for such is the kingdom.  Some will see it, enter it, and flourish in it.  Most won’t.  “The secrets of the kingdom of God have been given for you to know”—but it seems a bit unfair.  Why us, and not them?  God knows.  And eventually, we will know.  Even they will know.  When the storyteller tells a story, ultimately the story is Him.

For the original post in this series, go here.

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Love and Forgiveness

One of the Pharisees asked [Jesus] to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee’s house and took his place at the table.  And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment . . . Luke 7:36-37

This is the Jesus both believers and unbelievers like: friend to sorrowful, put-upon women, ready to forgive a “sinner” who, truth be told, was probably more sinned against.  We think of her as young, pretty, ashamed, overcome.  But maybe she wasn’t.

Suppose she is past her prime, a bit worse for wear, brash, coarse, and unrepentant?  The kind of pushy, chip-on-her-shoulder sinner who likes to say, “You think you’re better than me?  I’ve seen the way you turn up your nose and gossip among yourselves.  Silly cows.  I could dish some dirt on your husband, sister—and yours, old lady.”  “Sinner” probably means prostitute; if she were a man it could have meant extortionist or crooked merchant or innkeeper, but women were as limited in their sins back then as they were in their choices.  The point is, her reputation precedes her into the Pharisee’s house, and no amount of fragrant oil will make it smell good.

She obviously knows Jesus by reputation.  Perhaps, passing by on ordinary business, she caught one of his impromptu sermons or was witness to a healing.  An intriguing man, no question.  Perhaps she arranges to go that way again.  And again.  This time she lingers, staying well back.

What draws her?  She’s seen the worst in people, and “sinners” tend to become cynical.  At first glance, or first hearing, this teacher may have seemed like another charlatan, or an innocent who hasn’t wised up yet—the world would get to him sooner or later.  But a second and third glance forces a revision: this man has something on the world.  He knows.  But knowledge hasn’t made him “knowing” in that cheap, battered way she recognizes so well.  Perhaps, as he was speaking his eyes met hers and she realized—with a shock—that his knowledge was not general but quite specific.

It’s bold, to go to Simon the Pharisee’s house.  But she’s known for boldness, as well as other things.  She’ll go veiled, like a servant of one of the guests, and with luck no one will recognize her.  As for the alabaster jar—that was a gift, one of her treasures, given when she was younger and somewhat dewier.  Something moves her to take it, perhaps offer it to him as some sort of appreciation gift.  She has noticed women traveling along with him, with no damage to their reputations—imagine that!  The rumor is that some of them are well-to-do and have provided traveling funds.  If he accepts money from them, he shouldn’t be too proud to accept a gift from her.  A gift for . . . what?  Hard to say, exactly.  She could tell him it was for helping so many sick people in her town, or for the strong, winged words she doesn’t quite understand.  Perhaps just for the moment when his eyes met hers.

Anyway, here she is among the other observers of the feast, veiled and silent, awaiting her moment and hoping she’ll recognize it.  Perhaps she’s practiced what she will say and plans to make her little presentation when the guests get ready to take their leave.

Here she is, right behind him as he reclines at the table, his feet stretched toward her.  How lucky is this?  She will wait and listen to the table talk, and her moment will come and . . .

Here she is.

Here she is.  And . . . he knows.

He doesn’t just know she’s there—he knows her.  All about her.  Realizing what he knows is like beating herself with a lash.  He knows about that time she . . . And that other time she cheated . . . And the time she went to her rival’s house and . . .

The calculation drops, as well as the maneuvering and advantaging: here she is, and she is a sinner, just as they all say.  The empty space between them fills up with her, with her sins and rationalizations, finally seen as they really are by someone who can no longer deceive herself.  Her head bows and a single tear falls on his feet.  Than another and another.

She is revealed; the veil is cast aside.

She is undone; her hair tumbles down.

She is broken, the alabaster jar cracks.

the-woman

This women, who confronted the world with a knowing smirk, is a blubbering mess.  These aren’t just decorous tears; it’s also snot and spit.  Having no towel, she mops it up with her unbound hair.  She’s making a scene, and in faintly aware of voices directed her way as other men’s feet jerk aside.  But not his.  He is perfectly still, as though her hysterical offering were proper and decent.  She hears his voice, speaking about her.  Then she hears it speaking to her.

The gift, as it turns out, is not really hers to give.  It’s all his, and it’s something she had not believed she could have:

Forgiveness.

And peace.

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For the original post in this series, go here.

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Are You the One?

The disciples of John reported all these things to him.  And John, calling two of his disciples to him, sent them to the Lord, saying, “Are you the one who is to com, or shall we look for another?” (Luke 7:18-19)

Meanwhile, things haven’t been going well for John.  We already know (3:20) that he’s been locked up for preaching a little too close to home for the local authorities, and (holy as he is) it’s only human to have some doubts.

Envy has nothing to do with it.  He always knew that Messiah must increase.  But now he’s now sure the man he baptized and witnessed to is really the One.  Where’s the winnowing fork?  Where’s the ax laid to the root?  Where’s the fiery Holy-Spirit baptism?  Prison is not the problem, for John was prepared for anything.  Hang him up by his thumbs, roast him slowly over hot coals—no big deal as long as his message was true.  Get ready! Repent! Judgment is on its way with the Kingdom of Heaven close upon its heels!

But the reports he is hearing are not what he expected.John-in-prison

Messiah is making news, all right, but instead of judging people, he’s healing them.  The gist of his sermons is about loving your enemies and being like your Father in heaven.  Father?  And what’s all this about “Do not judge”?  John’s sermons were all about righteousness and the Kingdom and–yes, judging.  The righteous judgment of God was the whole point.  Languishing in Herod’s prison, his life hanging on the whims of a vindictive woman, John can’t take the ambiguity anymore.  He has to get an answer, even though Jesus might be angry.  Are you the one?  Or to put it another way, did I dedicate my life to cutting a path for you . . . for nothing?

The two disciples come back with some reassurance: Jesus wasn’t angry.  But he wasn’t a model of clarity either.  Imagine the conversation: “We stayed all afternoon and watched him heal people.  Scores of people—blind, cripples, lepers, demon-possessed.  He healed them all.  You should have heard the demons screaming as they gave up their grip!  In between, he talked.  Lots of people came just to listen to him.  He quoted that passage from Isaiah, the one about the Spirit of the Lord being on him and preaching good news to the poor.”

Good news, thinks John.  Not judgment, after all?

“He told us to tell you what we saw.  And one more thing: a message for you.”

“Yes?”

“He said, ‘Blessed is the one who takes no offense at me.”

Offense?! thinks John.  Was he taking offense?  No, he was just asking . . . or maybe . . . Well.

The prophet sitting in the dungeon, soon to lose his head, has no superior in the old order.  Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah—none are greater than he.  Yet this kingdom he preached was beyond even his comprehension.  The youngest child who finds a place in it is “greater” (in understanding, experience, love) than John.  Many, many years later, Jesus’s half-brother James would acknowledge this while writing to fellow believers: Elijah? Just a man, like you.  But he had no more access to the Father than you.  In fact, you have more.  You have a blood relationship, a living Spirit.

John, don’t be offended . . . The great message you delivered was vital and necessary, but only the half of it.

Elsewhere in Galilee, Jesus pauses in his healing and preaching to glance over at the ever-present peanut gallery: the scribes and Pharisees who, Luke informs us, rejected God’s plan for themselves.  They disapproved John, they disapprove Jesus: one a fanatic, possibly possessed; the other altogether too friendly with good food and wine and tax collectors.  The only religious figure who would satisfy them might be found by looking into a mirror.  Yet—“Wisdom is vindicated by all her children.”  The children, a motley rag-tag group for sure, are beginning to make themselves known.  In fact, well see one in the next chapter.

For the original post in this series, go here.

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Arise!

Soon afterward he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a great crowd went with him.  As he drew near to the gate of the town, behold a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she a widow, and a considerable crowd from the town was with her.  Luke 7:11-12

Widows’ sons die every day.  If the mother is blessed by extended family, not to mention other sons, she the-widowwill at least have shelter and food in exchange for watching the children or grinding the grain.  If not, she will have to piece out a living on charity.  The pressing nature of What will I do? crushes every other concern, even proper grieving, so on top of all her other problems is the burden of guilt: she is forced to worry about her own life even while grieving for his.  Why could their fates not be reversed?  Better for all concerned to let her go, let him live—take a wife and raise his children and continue the family line, as is proper and fitting.  Sad and angry and worried, she follows the pitiful bier, having spent her last pennies for the bare minimum of a respectable funeral, with a few paid mourners and a drum.

Widows’ sons die every day, but this day would see a turnaround.  As two “considerable crowds” meet at the city gate—his followers and her mourners—it’s not the dead son but the weeping mother who catches his eye.  He raises a hand to stop the procession, and to her he says, “Don’t cry.”

It’s one of those statements that, from anyone else, would seem almost cruel, especially to the chief mourner.  What do you mean, ‘Don’t cry’?  I have every reason in the world to cry, and there’s nothing to be said about it.  Shut your mouth and cry with me, or just move along.

But if she knows who he is (the crowd of eager rubberneckers behind him might have given her a clue), she would stop crying, her tears caught in her throat.  He heals the sick but he can’t raise the dead.  Can he?  She knows her nation’s history, and remembers that Elijah, the greatest of prophets, raised a widow’s son: he stretched himself out on the boy’s lifeless body and cried aloud to Yahweh, three times.

Jesus puts his hand on the bier—really nothing but a plank carried by two men, signifying a poor man’s burial.  Who is on the bier?  A young man, that’s all we know.  Perhaps a pious dutiful son or a casual jokey son—his mother’s joy or exasperation, either one, equally dead.  And Jesus is speaking to a corpse.  “I tell you . . .”  Not crying aloud to the Blessed one, not placing mouth to mouth or heart to heart.  Imagine the thoughts racing through the observers, especially the religious elite:

I (Who does he think he is?)

Tell (Tell?! What words can get through dead ears into a dead brain?)

You (Who is this ‘you’? That’s just a–)

“ARISE!”

Death is a mystery, both then and now.  Some ancient cultures kept watch over the body for a certain number of hours in case the spirit returned to it (rumored to happen, though almost no one has actually seen this).  Wise men of all cultures debated this most-common phenomenon: Does the spirit stay with the body, or how soon does it go, or is there a spirit, and can it return?  In this particular case, all agree it’s not near-death that confronts Jesus at the gates of Nain—it’s death.  The body and the spirit have parted company.

Was the spirit lingering nearby, or was it speeding toward the afterworld?  In either case, the Son of Man’s voice darts out like a harpoon; with a word it captures the young man’s spirit and pulls it back to the lifeless body.

Arise: air surges into the stilled lungs; the flaccid chambers of the heart clench; a rush of blood to the brain revives its memories.  Suddenly awake, the young man feels a hand close on his, lift it and place it in the last hand he remembers as life left him: Mother.  All the busy little engines of his body, down to the last threadlike capillary and blood cell, charge back into operation.  The broken connection is restored.

And awe fell over everyone.

For the original post in this series, go here.

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Just Say the Word

After he had finished all his sayings in the hearing of the people, he entered Capernaum.  Now a centurion had a servant who was sick and at the point of death, who was highly valued by him.  Luke 7:2

Back to Capernaum, where it all began.  There’s a centurion stationed in the town, a man who has reason to know of Jesus by reputation.  Stories get around, and since some of those stories happened right there in Capernaum, they don’t have to travel far.  This officer seems to be stamped from the same mold as Cornelius in Acts 10, also a Centurion stationed in Palestine: a sober, respectable, God-fearing man.  Both feared God coming too close to them, perhaps; God-fearer, in this context, means uncircumcised.  They admire from afar, until something happens to bring God near.  For Cornelius it was a dream; for this man, a crisis.

There’s one indispensable person in household, the man who keeps things in order while the master is on patrol or on maneuvers—the rare slave (or freed servant) whom one can totally trust with business, and who is also a friend.  Let’s call him Decius, and suppose that the officer comes back from patrol one day, calls for help removing his armor, and the houseboy appears.  What’s this?

“Where’s Decius?”

“He’s taken ill, sir—the physician fears he may die.”

The bottom drops out of an ordinary day.  Everywhere the master turns, he bumps his nose against some little matter that Decius always attended to, some loose end left awkwardly hanging, some thought that could not be shared.  Perhaps, after a few days spent distractedly, trying to carry on between visits to the bedside, watching a life fade away as its value multiplies, someone mentions that Jesus has returned.

Sharp need brings God near.  What the master admired by reputation—for Jesus is a prophet, obviously close to God–becomes painfully relevant.  He requests an audience with some of the Jewish elders, with whom he’s maintained respectful, formal relations: “If you would, please speak to Jesus, and pave the way carefully with any kind words that you may feel led to say on my behalf . . .”

centurion

He sees them off.  Perhaps an hour or two passes while he paces and frets.  Suddenly he smacks his forehead: Argh!  What am I thinking?  I know how authority works.  I don’t have to be standing over my soldiers all the time to see that they do their duties—I give a command; it’s done (or else).  The prophet is obviously too busy to come himself, but all he needs to do is speak to the evil spirits, or say a word to his all-powerful God.  The work of a moment, if he’ll only do it.

“Go, boy, tell him this: Just say the word, Master, and my servant will be healed.  Yes? Repeat it to me, so I know you have it . . . Good; now go—hurry!”

More pacing, as the fever rises and his faithful right-hand man tosses and turns in delirium.  My right hand—exactly.  Without him I’m hobbled, hindered, half-blind.

Perhaps, as Matthew says (Matt. 7:5ff), the officer cast all caution and decorum aside, flung himself out the door and went pelting down the road in search of the prophet.  If you want to get something done, better do it yourself. Perhaps he dashed up to Jesus, thrust aside the Jewish elders and gasped out his request.

Whether this centurion delivered it himself, or left it in the mouths of servants or representatives, we know the message: Just say the word, Lord; just say it, and I am completely confident it will happen.

But here’s another word—amazed.

Jesus heard this and was amazed at him . . . and said, “I tell you, I have not found so great a faith even in Israel!” (Luke 7:9)

I’m amazed that Jesus is amazed.  I forget his profound humility.  He’s already healed every disease, escaped a lynch mob, cast out demons, and established a new order of thinking.  He does it all!  He knows it all!  And yet he allows himself a cleared blue space that’s open to surprise.  Not by the unexpected mechanics of creation or the hidden beauties of the earth, but by us.  There is room in him to truly connect and honestly compliment where there is any small thing to praise.

It also shows what matters to him, what genuinely pleases him.  Not just words, but faith.  Real faith, no less real for being pushed roughly against a wall.

And speaking of “the word”–he says it, and the servant is healed.  All his servants are healed, sooner or later.

For the original post in this series, go here.

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Trees and Fruit, Rocks and Houses

No tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit . . . Everyone who comes to me, and hears my words and does them, is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock.  And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it.  Luke 6:43, 47-48

About fifteen years ago, when we moved to this plot of ground, we planted a cherry tree .  It’s a good-looking tree, and most years, around this time of year it starts producing good-looking cherries.  But just as they’re turning ripe, this happens:

brown rot

To the best we can determine, it’s brown rot fungus, a condition that sounds as ugly as it looks.  It’s fixable, but not easily.  So we haven’t done anything about it yet.

Rot in the heart is hard to fix, too, and hard to completely hide.  But it always shows itself sooner or later.  Deep at the root of me is an unspoken conviction that I’m actually the most important person in the world, and sometimes—when I’m pressed or upset, or haven’t met three out of five of the goals I set for myself that day—I’m angry that others don’t recognize my importance.  Doesn’t the old man driving 50 mph ahead of me on this twisty country road realize I’m in a hurry?  Don’t the shoppers chatting in aisle 10 of WalMart understand they’re in my way?  Why doesn’t the woman at the Post Office see that she’s standing right in front of my PO Box?  Did she have to get here the same moment I did?

Of course, I only think that way when I’m stressed.  It’s not the real me.  Except, according to Jesus, it is.  These moments are bad-fruit alerts.

Yeah, sure, I’m trying to get better, and sometimes nobler reactions assert themselves.  And yet, “a man’s words flow out of what fills his heart” (6:45).  Anger, resentment, pride, greed, and envy lurk within my heart, and sometimes they pop up and try to look like legitimate grievance.   But soon enough the rot shows.

As I mentioned, the treatment for brown rot fungus is difficult: you have to cut off all the diseased twigs and fruit (called “mummies”—cute), and you can’t just rake them up in a pile.  You have to burn them.  Then apply a fungicide to the decimated tree, according to the manufacturer’s instruction.  It may take more than one application; you’ll have to wait a year and see if the fungus comes back.  “Prevention is the best treatment,” the websites say–which doesn’t help me a lot now.

Prevention (to switch metaphors) is like building a house.  A wise man will select his ground carefully, then mark it out and dig down to bedrock before laying stones for a foundation.  If you hear my words and do them, Jesus says, your house will rest on just such a foundation, and no storm will shake it.  His disciples may have scratched their heads at that, because what he had been talking about up to that time sounds just the opposite of prudent. Love your enemies, smile when people spit at you, give more than you’re asked, cheerfully let yourself be taken advantage of—anybody who follows this advice (or, as Jesus puts it, Does what I say) would be lining up outside the soup kitchen in a matter of months, right?  From that angle, Kingdom living looks like dumpster diving.

But maybe at the bottom of these commands is one rather large assumption: You are not the most important person in the world.  I am.

That is, this man who apparently gave up a family and a permanent home in order to walk the dusty roads of a second-rate province in a corner of the world’s greatest Empire, is really the Emperor.  He owns the place; he knows location better than any realtor.  What he’s saying is, dig here.  Build here.  Live here.  If you do, nothing in this world will ever shake you.  Nothing.

That’s kingdom living, whether you make six figures or cash your checks at the pawn shop.  It’s building your house, as the Sunday-school song goes, on the Lord Jesus Christ.

The sermon is over.  He stands up, brushes off his tunic, wraps his cloak about his unremarkable frame.  Immediately the Twelve are at his side, and a number of disciples tag along.  The “multitude,” who came to be healed and stayed to listen, break up and go their separate ways. To most, though they might have called him “Lord, Lord,” his words rolled off like water from the proverbial duck.  But there are a few who walk more slowly, their minds still back there on the plain where he spoke to them, and his words are burrowing deep and settling in.  Soon they will sprout. He’s going to talk about that.  But for now he’s on the road again, headed to his old stomping grounds in Capernaum, where . . . .

For the first post in this series, go here.

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Judging and Being Judged

Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you . . .  (Luke 6:37-42)

The most-quoted passage of scripture is not John 3:16 or Genesis 1:1.  It’s this right here: Judge not.  Smug unbelievers hurl it frequently against smug believers, typically with scraps of tacked on theology like, Who are you to speak for God and You’re not acting very Christ-like are you?  What would Jesus do, you hypocrite?  In other words, judging. We all judge.  We all have some sense of moral hierarchy, and the real question is not, Who are you to speak for God? but Who is God to speak to me?  The point here is not that we can’t make any judgments about anything ever, because we do that practically every time we open our mouths.  However screwed up our morals may be, we are still moral creatures.

The point is, Where does the judging start?  If my judging doesn’t start with judging me—always—I’m in danger of making myself the judge.   judging

To understand Judge not, we must take the Jesus’s previous words in one hand and his subsequent words in the other. “Children of the Most High” who are “merciful as their Father is merciful” (vs. 36) will not reassure fellow sinners that their sins are okay with the Big Guy.  They will not tie blindfolds over their eyes and proceed to lead the blind (vs. 39).  If the Lord has opened your eyes, what do you see?  You see Him and his commands—and most acutely, you see how you’ve broken them every day of your life, both carelessly and willfully.  You see how he’s held on to you while you were pulling away from him.  You see how his mercy reeled you in, whether little by little or all in a rush.  When tears of remorse have washed all the crud out of your eyes, you can see how that friend or relative or fortuitous stranger is making the same dumb assumptions you once did.

What would Jesus do?  He would pay for all those dumb assumptions and willful flaunting and innumerable offenses, because somebody had to.   Judge not doesn’t mean there’s no judging going on, only that we’re not the ones who pronounce sentence.  Someone does, someone will, and someone pays.  See to it that it isn’t you.

For the first post in this series, go here.

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Love Your Enemies

But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.  To  one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either.  Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back.  And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.  Luke 6:27-31

I wonder how many listeners got past the first three words: Love your enemies?! What kind of teaching is this?  No wonder he began with a warning note (I say to you who hear sounds like, “Listen up!”).  This is explosive stuff:

Love your enemies

Do good to those who hate you

Bless those who curse you

Pray for those who mistreat you . . . .

But if we’re really listening, we might understand that it’s not a new teaching.  We might even catch a few echoes from the past:

They despised his pleasant land, having no faith in his promise . . . Nevertheless, he looked upon their distress when he heard their cry  (Ps. 106)

They forgot the LORD their God . . . But when the people of Israel cried out to the LORD, he raised up a deliverer, who saved them (Judges 3:7,9)

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.

The more I called to them, the more they ran away, sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols.

Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to talk; I took them up by their arms, but they did not know that it was I—

I led them with cords of kindness, with the bands of love;

I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws; I bent down to them and fed them . . . (Hosea 11:1-4)

All we like sheep have gone astray.  We have turned—every one—to his own way . . .  (Is. 53:6)

The echoes go back and back, all the way to, Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?

How would you define the word “enemy”?  Someone who doesn’t like you?  Maybe, but if that person keeps his distance, you can live with that (and besides, you may not like him much either).  An enemy is someone who opposes you—not accidentally, like the driver who changed lanes and forced you to stamp on the brakes and lay on your horn–but deliberately.  The committee chair who shoots down all your ideas, the supposed bff who spreads lies about you, the rival contractor who underbids you, the woman who leads your husband astray—that’s your enemy.

But what about the wife with the wandering eye, or the child who runs away while you’re calling him to come back–runs right into the street?

The Lord’s own children opposed him.  They ran away deliberately, right into the street.  They made themselves his enemies, disregarded his words, gobbled up lies about him and squandered his blessings.  Have you ever held a rebellious child while she’s in the throes of self-destructive rage, thrashing his arms and legs and screaming, “I hate you!  I hate you!  I HATE you!”  What’s your reaction?

angry boy

Can God feel like a battered husband or a rejected parent?

Listen: Anyone can love somebody who makes them feel good.  Anyone can return a favor or make a loan when the collateral is up front.  Kindness can be its own reward, if it earns you a warm inward glow instead of a kick in the teeth.  Like you’d get from an enemy.

But the Kingdom again turns our world on its head.  Our reward is not a result of loving enemies, it’s the cause of loving enemies.  It’s the very reason we can love, and do good, and lend with no expectation of return, even a murmured “Thank you,” from the objects of our largess.  If we are children of the Most High, our account has already been paid into:

For he is kind to the ungrateful and the unjust.

If the ungrateful and the unjust don’t say it, the angels will: Look at that.  Loving their enemies–just like their Father.

For the first post in this series, go here.

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