18 September 2010
Psalm 75, 76; Esther 2:5-8,15-23; Acts 17:16-34; John 12:44-50

Esther is the favorite of the king and chosen to be his queen. She had not revealed to anyone that she was a Jew as Mordecai had commanded her. We get a picture here of a young orphan girl who was compliant and obedient to her elders, heeding the advice of Hegai who had charge of the women concerning her appearance before the king and Mordecai concerning the issue of disclosure of her ancestry. The plot begins to thicken when Mordecai hears of a plot to assassinate the king and reports this to Esther and the plot is foiled.

Jesus has simply been obedient to the Father in all He has done and all He has spoken. For that reason He can say that if you have seen and heard Him you have seen the Father. If you reject Him you reject the One who sent Him. His purpose was not judgment but to bring light, offer life to the world, free for the taking. He has shown the difference between light and darkness and men have chosen the darkness rather than the light. What does he mean when He speaks of hearing and not “keeping”? We are responsible to live into what we believe. We are to become salt and light ourselves and bring that light into the world just as He has done and that requires more than preaching and more than testimony, it requires life lived in accordance with His word and example. We are to be obedient to the Father as He has been obedient and He has given us the Spirit which will help us and guide us if we will listen as He listened.

Paul does the work of cultural anthropology and sociology that needs to be done by any missionary. He notes first in his talk at the Areopagus that Athenians are very religious, they have shrines to many gods and, in fact, are open to idea that there are gods that even they do not know about. The city where I live is like Athens, very religious. It is not particularly Christian but it is religious, there are many religions here, many of them focused on healing of body, mind and spirit. Paul continues by saying that his work is to reveal this unknown god to them. This God is sovereign over all things, having created all things. He is self-sufficient, requiring nothing from His subjects. He quotes their poets and philosophers in saying that they too have found something about this God although He continues to be “unknown” to them. He gives a very basic statement about Jesus and then speaks of raising Him from the dead, at which point he loses some of the crowd who cannot believe in such a thing. Is that a problem in our culture(s) today? In fact, it is relatively commonplace that people believe in life after death, in some form or other. Where is the problem today when we try and tell the world about Jesus? It seems to me that the push-back comes more often in the insistence that Jesus is the only way to have a good eternity.

One thing I asked of the Lord,
that will I seek after:
to live in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to behold the beauty of the Lord,
and to inquire in his temple.