7 May 2015

Psalm 71; Wisdom 14:27-15:3; Rom. 14:1-12; Luke 8:26-39

We would hardly think of ourselves as worshippers of idols yet we are so expert at convincing ourselves we don’t do it that we fail to even see our idols.  Our idols can be family, work, money, home, church, sports, ambition, the past, the future, almost anything at all.  Whatever consumes our time and energy is potentially an idol.  Whatever concerns you the most, what you spend your time thinking about or fretting over is an idol.  Jesus was clear that we are to concern ourselves with the kingdom of God and His righteousness and allow Him to worry about all the rest, lest they become our idols.  Anything that promises happiness or security other than God can easily become an idol.  Idol worship is escapism in the sense that it beckons us away from reality while the worship of the true and living God immerses us in reality, His creation, His call and His people.

Jesus did a miraculous healing in the land of the Gerasenes.  He delivered a man from a legion of demons, so numerous that they couldn’t be bothered to name themselves individually, it was easier to simply say legion rather than give a roll call.  Jesus wasn’t impressed by their number or their collective power even though the people of the land had made accommodation to them by putting the man in isolation.  They clearly feared the demons but so long as they were in this man they were tolerable in the land.  When Jesus commanded them into the pigs, suddenly there was a problem that must be dealt with rather than tolerated.  Their livelihood was compromised, the pigs were more important to them than the man.  Jesus was treated then like the demon possessed man, He needed to leave them alone and let them get back to work.  They would rather have their prosperity than His power.

God deals with us as He created us, as individuals.  Too often I see a call for Christian conformity in things indifferent.  There are those for whom vegetarianism or some other issue is not only their call but the call.  There are innumerable issues which divide God’s people on which it is certainly possible for us to disagree while still being obedient to the Holy Spirit in our own lives.  I believe on these issues it is important for us to have the discussion while respecting the other.  We can talk about things like pacifism or war, alcohol, environmental issues, diet, creation, and other things with respect and honor rather than invective.  I don’t see it much though, mostly I see one side or the other claiming to be right and the other side listening simply because it isn’t worth arguing.  Paul apparently saw that in the church of his day as well.  The important thing on these issues is to listen to one another respectfully and lovingly, with true Christian charity.  Sometimes we have to ask, is this thing that consumes me an idol or the Gospel. 

6 May 2015

Psalm 72; Wisdom 13:1-9; Rom 13:1-14; Luke 8:16-25

We live in a time and place in Asheville where Mother Nature and nature itself are worshipped as gods in the way the author writes about here.  When there is no creation to speak of, there is no creator.  When we believe the myth of uncreation, the myth of the Big Bang without a Big Banger, of natural and impersonal processes that produce all that is, we miss the chance to worship a person, an artist par excellence, the Creator.  It is quite literally beyond the ken and ability of science to rule out God, that is a personal decision and choice, not a scientific conclusion.  The beauty and also the scientific beauty of the math of the universe, the quantum and particle physics of all that is, the biology and chemistry, astronomy and geology point beyond themselves and yet we study them atomistically rather than as Johannes Kepler did, to know the Creator.  We can’t see the forest for the trees when we do.

“Take care how you hear…”  How do you hear?  Do you hear in such a way as to know the truth of things or do you hear only what confirms you in your prior belief?  If the way you hear hinders you from hearing about Him, perhaps the renewing of your mind is still in process.  When Jesus’ mother and brothers came to Him, Jesus re-defined familial relationships not because his blood relatives were not important but in order to show there is a kinship of those who hear well, those who hear the word of God and do it.  These are true family because we recognize our common parent, God the Father.  Are their final words rhetorical?  “Who then is this, that he commands even winds and water, and they obey him?”

All things, rulers, systems, everything, is under the authority of God.  The sovereignty of God is all-encompassing.  We see that truth in the prophets, that even leaders who are wicked, even when they persecute God’s people, are under His authority, are sometimes used as instruments of His judgment, to bring about His purposes.  Paul is speaking like Jeremiah when he counsels the Roman church to submit to authority.  Jeremiah told the people to seek the prosperity of the city to which they were exiled, even though David, in Psalm 137, asked the poignant question, “How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?”  Jeremiah and Paul agree that we should sing the Lord’s song with confidence and faith in His sovereignty even when we are in a foreign land.  The one whose commands are obeyed by even winds and water is on His throne and in control of all things.

5 May 2015

Psalm 61, 62; Wisdom 10:1-21; Rom. 12:1-21; Luke 8:1-15

Wisdom is that by which men persevered in the face of wickedness, wisdom is righteousness, living according to the precepts of God.  Has that changed since Jesus?  Habakkuk wrote it, Paul picked up on it and Luther re-discovered the truth that the just or righteous shall live by faith and so we shall.  Jesus is our righteousness, not our works which are, as Paul says, no more than filthy rags even for the best of us.  This passage speaks of many which it calls “righteous” and some certainly rise above the rest but are they truly “righteous.”  Jesus is the only righteous man who ever lived in the sense that He kept the law perfectly, did not sin.  Many of these in this list sinned in ways that we are told about yet righteous is the word used for them.  If you look at the list a second time what you will discover is that these all were, as the writer of Hebrews wrote, men of faith whose faith was the wisdom that kept them safe, delivered them from evil, and made them truly noteworthy.

Certainly it would have been odd for this traveling band of disciples to have included a group of women, particularly women who “had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities.”  We know from the short list Luke provides that the women who followed the group included a royal official’s wife, indicating that the message and ministry of Jesus attracted attention at the highest levels of society.  As we have just looked at a passage where a woman we feel certain is a prostitute ministered to Jesus, we can see that His ministry reached up and down the social ladder.  That women were accepted into the group indicates that they would have also been there for teaching, a very different attitude from the culture, they would have been part of the group that heard this parable, and many teachers would have believed that they were incapable of learning, perhaps thinking of them as the poor soil of the parable.  We should examine our attitudes towards others in light of the indiscriminate work of the sower in the parable, perhaps we sow only where we think it might be profitable in bearing fruit.

The renewing of the mind begins with accepting the resurrection of Jesus, accepting that He alone in all of history is worthy of being the first person to be resurrected.  That truth leads to a sober reflection on ourselves doesn’t it?  Paul writes that we are “not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think.”  For some that isn’t a problem while for others it is a great stumbling block.  The church often makes too much of some gift or other and when we do, we devalue the other gifts.  Some church cultures exalt the teacher, some the musicians, some the prophets, in some the gift of tongues is seen as the be all, end all and those who do not possess this gift as lesser, even suspect Christians.  In the end, Paul says that the only mark of a true Christian is love, keeping the new commandment Jesus gave at the Last Supper.  

4 May 2015

Psalm 56, 57; Wisdom 9:1, 7-18; Col. 3:18-4.18; Luke 7:36-50

Solomon (if he is the writer and he certainly seems to be given the subject matter and his mention of building a temple) says something interesting here, “the reasoning of mortals is worthless, and our designs are likely to fail;  for a perishable body weighs down the soul, and this earthy tent burdens the thoughtful mind.”  Is that suggesting a dualism between body and soul?  There is a dualism without the Holy Spirit.  It is the same dualism Paul wrote about in Romans 7, the dualism of desire.  We are both body and soul and we have always experienced a war between the two, the body making the demands of satisfaction of immediate desire while the soul seeks to satisfy its desire to please the Lord, and those two are sometimes, if not frequently, in tension with one another.  In the garden, the desire for the fruit of the tree of knowledge, expressed as “good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise” overcame the desire for obedience.  We live in a technological age where we are pressing towards trying to overcome this perishable body and live forever by science.  Solomon offers us reassurance that the reasoning of mortals is worthless, pursue immortality God’s way, being willing to lose this life in order to gain eternity.

The Pharisee thinks he knows something that Jesus doesn’t.  He thinks Jesus doesn’t know who this woman washing His feet really is, that she is a prostitute, and if Jesus knew that He would surely condemn her.  He has no respect for Jesus, as a teacher or as a man, and he has proven it by not offering basic hospitality.  According to the law, he is sinning against Jesus by this failure.  The woman is doing abundantly more than the man was required to do but she was making up the lack by her own ablutions.  Jesus’ parable points out two things, that He indeed knows of this woman’s sin and that He recognizes that this Simon the Pharisee has slighted Him and sinned.  Jesus proclaimed forgiveness to the woman, she was made new.  Who had real wisdom?

Why does Paul give these commands to the Colossians?  He would only be writing such things to the extent they were counter-cultural.  He is telling them how Christians treat other people.  All these admonitions find their type in the relationships between God and man as revealed in Christ Jesus.  Paul writes these things from a unique perspective, as a man whose understanding of the world around him was utterly changed on the road to Damascus.  What he believes now about other people, Gentiles, is radically different from what he believed that day.  He now calls these people brothers, loves them, prays for them and gives himself on their behalf.  Do we have the attitude of Simon the Pharisee or Paul towards others?

3 May 2015

Psalm 24, 29; Wisdom 7:22-8:1; 2 Thess. 2:13-17; Matt. 7:7-14   

Wisdom could be defined as the ability to see the truth and act appropriately on that knowledge.  For instance, in the matter of the two women who came before Solomon with the baby that each claimed as her own, Solomon knew that to get what to do to get at the truth, order the baby murdered and the real mother would be unwilling to allow it.  Wisdom is bound up not only in knowing but in acting as well.  We are required to do something about what we know.  That doing can look inactive if it is simply being still but sometimes being still and not taking action is the most difficult of all activity.  Passivity is one thing, waiting upon the Lord is an altogether different thing.  On the cross, Jesus acted in persevering to the end when He could have done otherwise.  Try and be attentive today to all the situations in your life where wisdom is required to act appropriately, being sensitive to situations where you react instinctively as well, and see how much prayer and asking for wisdom could change things.

How many of you, when you read this passage, particularly the words, “For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened”, feel like you’ve not experienced this as true?  I know that in my life I have sometimes felt that I asked God for bread and instead received a stone like Charlie Brown in the Great Pumpkin, everyone else seems to get good things and I am left out.  Perhaps what I really need is wisdom to know what to ask and what to do with what I receive.  If I believe this passage then I have to also believe that whatever the Lord gives me is something good and useful, even when it feels like stones and serpents.  If I believe those things are true, then what I truly need is the wisdom to value the gift and the wisdom to know what to do with it.  David was anointed king but that anointing, for a long time, meant only that Saul would be seeking to kill him.

It is a wonderful thing to know that “God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth.”  That doesn’t always mean, however, that we experience it as wonderful to be God’s chosen.  Jesus was clear that we would be persecuted, reviled and hated because we are chosen.  Paul was hounded all over the region because he believed in the truth and ultimately was also put to death for his commitment to the truth he believed.  Most of the apostles suffered for their belief.  How then have we forgotten this and come to believe that we will be extolled for it?  Wisdom is standing firm but standing firm is only necessary when we’re being challenged, when there is something trying to move us or cause us to doubt. 

2 May 2015

Psalm 55; Wisdom 7:1-14; Col. 3:12-17; Luke 7:18-35

In sports, when coaches prepare their teams for games, particularly when the other team is more highly thought of, they will remind their own players that the other team is like them, they put on their pants one leg at a time. Don’t make too much of those other guys is the message.   Here, the writer, a king, perhaps Solomon, delivers that same message about himself.  I came into the world just like every other person, I am not ontologically different than others, a strange thing for a king in that time and region to say.  That recognition, if Solomon is indeed the author, was crucial to his gaining wisdom.  We know that when he ascended the throne of his father David he was given a choice of anything his heart desired of the Lord and he asked for wisdom to rule well and rightly because he knew he lacked such.  Humility is always the right attitude before the Lord.

John was a man who had right priorities and attitudes.  That said, all don’t have to go into the wilderness and live rough eating locusts as their diet.  He had a mind for one thing, the kingdom of God.  He believed God that his mission was to prepare a people and through his ministry the Messiah would be revealed and he cast aside all that would have inhibited that from happening.  He feared no man, was not a man-pleaser, and believed fully.  When his own arrest happened, and it looked like this would end badly, John sent his disciples to Jesus to ask, are you really the one?  Ancient commentaries said he did this because he wanted his disciples to have hope and to attach themselves to Jesus.  More modern commentaries say that John was in doubt and that Jesus’ leaving out of the setting prisoners free meant John would not be set free and would have to persevere in faith without receiving what he sought.  I don’t know which it is but I do know this, he sent his disciples with a question to the only person on earth who knew the answer to the question.  He didn’t ask for anyone else’s opinion, only Jesus’.  Jesus’ answer was to say, have I done all the things I just quoted from Isaiah?  All would have to decide on faith.

In yesterday’s reading, Paul commanded us to put off certain things, sinful behaviors and attitudes.  Today, we get the putting on of things to replace the old “clothing” of our lives.  The Christian life isn’t merely what we don’t do, “drink, cuss, smoke or chew or go with girls (or boys) who do.”  Christians should look distinctive in their way of living.  Paul says that those attributes include, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, loving, peaceful and  thankfulness.  Who wouldn’t want to be part of a community of people characterized by these traits?  We need help with all these and one way to get that help is to let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.  It all begins with the humility to recognize that we need Him to change us and provide us with all we need to become such people.  Solomon knew the people needed a wise king, we should likewise know what the world needs us to be if they are to know Him.

1 May 2015

Psalm 40, 54; Wisdom 6:12-23; Col 3:1-11; Luke 7:1-17

The beginning of wisdom is “the most sincere desire for instruction, and concern for instruction is love of her…”  There are two ways to look at that statement.  One would be that the beginning of wisdom is when you have enough wisdom to seek wisdom, there is certainly something wise in seeking to be wise.  The second way is to recognize that you lack wisdom and begin to seek it.  The key to the search for wisdom is in where we seek it.  It all goes back to, you guessed it, Genesis 3. Could Adam and Eve have searched for wisdom somewhere other than the tree?  The answer is yes, they could, the Lord, at least sometimes, walked in the garden and they could have asked Him for wisdom but instead sought it apart from Him, in something created, something Solomon said was “under the sun.”  Anything created is necessarily limited isn’t it?  The obvious place to seek wisdom is from the most wise source you can find and if you have access to something or someone who is uncreated, who created all things, go to that source rather than any lower source.  There are people who have been following the Lord longer than you and closer than you, those people are good sources as well, but ultimately, seek the Lord, the writer says wisdom delights to be found and make herself known.

The centurion went to the Jews and asked them to approach Jesus on his behalf.  Their entreaty begins with the words, “He is worthy to have you do this for him…” When Jesus arrives at the man’s house, the man begins with, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy…”  He has faith, he has wisdom, he has sought the healer and believed He was able to do what was necessary to heal the servant simply because he believed Jesus had unique authority.  Though the man was a Roman official, he was humble in the face of what he recognized as greater authority than he possessed.  The widow of Nain asked nothing from Jesus, He acts entirely on His own accord.  In the first part of the reading we see a miracle actuated by the faith of a man and in the second, a miracle no one dared ask for or expect, no faith required.  The reaction to that miraculous raising from the dead, however, was entirely appropriate, the glorification of God.

Have you died with Christ to this world?  Parts of me, perhaps, are dead and no longer enthralled with things of earth but there are huge parts of me that are not dead to the world.  I hate to say that but I have to be honest with Him and myself if I am to make progress in wisdom.  I have to deal with that reality and ask Him to deal with it by the power of the Holy Spirit so that I might have the mind of Christ in all things, that I might seek things above, things eternal.  Paul says that the work of putting to death those things in us that are problematic and sinful is a joint venture between me and God.  His words are a commandment, in the imperative, “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you…”  Seeking and seeing things above is part of the work of putting lower desires to death in us.