Red Letters/Black Letters: Day 135: 2 essences

"It is written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word 

that proceeds from the mouth of God." Matthew 4:4 by way of Deuteronomy 8:3

Here we find Jesus in the midst of temptation/testing. Jesus has been fasting for 40 days and 40 nights and so the most obvious temptation is the first one that the tempter pulls out of his bag of tricks. The devil tempts Jesus to turn the stones into bread so that Jesus would be able to eat. Jesus does not merely say no, he turns conventional wisdom on its ear and redefines what it means to be human.

At first glance we read what Jesus says and too often we jump to the conclusion that it is merely about Bible reading, not so. At second glance we read what Jesus says and too often jump to the conclusion, perhap like gnostics, that he is merely de-emphasizing the need for food, and all other physical needs that a person has. At third glance perhaps we begin to understand that Jesus isn't necessarily putting aside the physical need but rather opening our eyes to other, spiritual needs.

In this simple sentence Jesus defines humanity not as physical only, but rather as a combination of physical and spiritual. Should Jesus turn the stones to bread, a la manna in the desert, he would only be fulfilling one half of his required needs. Each person has both physical and spiritual needs, when we only seek to acquire physical needs we are overlooking the other half of our essence. At the same time if we seek to acquire our spiritual needs at the expense of our physical ones we are, again, overlooking half of our essence. Jesus, instead, calls us to recognize and understand both of our essences, to become physical and spiritual beings.

Rob Bell, in his video Everything is Spiritual, lays out the understanding that for Jesus there is no dichotomy in life between things that are spiritual and things that are not, in fact everything we do in life is spiritual. In addition everything we do in life is physical, because we can not dissect one half of our essence from the other half. We are created from the dust - physical beings, but also created in the image of God - spiritual beings, let us once again bring them back together and start living lives of self-unity.

+ Do you consider yourself a physical being, a spiritual being, or both?

+ Where did your current understanding come from?

p.s. 134 entries ago we began a journey through the words of Jesus. To be honest there were times I thought we would never see day 135, but here it is. As I have already shared, this blog will continue in roughly two weeks in a weekly format looking at the parables of Jesus. Thank you for walking along this path, and thank you in advance should you decide to walk this next part of our journey with me as well.

Red Letters/Black Letters: Day 134: Redeeming the Rock

"Feed My lambs." John 21:15b

"Tend My sheep." John 21:16b

"Feed My sheep." John 21:17b

One of the things I love about Jesus is his graceful snarkiness. [I am fairly certain I just coined the term 'graceful snarkiness' but feel free to use it, just give me credit ;)] By that I mean that Jesus always shows just the amount of grace that someone needs to understand that Jesus knows exactly what you did but he loves you anyway. Take the scene of John 21 for instance. 

A few days earlier Jesus is with his disciples and is betrayed by Judas and then proceeds to be betrayed by all of his disciples as they scatter like birds. Jesus is taken into custody and questioned and questioned and questioned, somewhere in there Peter decides to show up and linger on the outside looking in, assumedly to find out what is happening. Someone notices Peter lingering, recognizes him, and then asks him if he is indeed who he is. Peter denies it, again, and again before the rooster made his sound.

Then Jesus is sentenced and crucified and dies and is placed in a borrowed tomb and then several days later he isn't in the tomb. Jesus appears to some women and then to his disciples. Some time later Jesus is once again with his disciples and he starts a conversation with Peter. Jesus asks Peter if he loves him, again and again. Peter says yes, again and again. Jesus then tells him to take care of his sheep/lambs, again and again. Peter betrays Jesus three times and Jesus in his graceful snarkiness redeems him three times. He reminds Peter and all who witness or read about it that he knows what Peter has done, he hasn't forgotten, but that it is not about what Peter has done, but rather about what the Savior has done.

We often find ourselves in the same position as Peter, we betray Jesus all of the time, with our words or our silence with our actions or inactions and we tend to think that our betrayal is what matters, our failure is what matters. It isn't. It is what the Savior does that matters, it is his love, his desire for reconciliation that is the focus. Jesus reminds Peter, and he at times reminds us, not to cause guilt but to bring understanding. Peter takes the hint and walks the path that Jesus showed him all the way to an upside down cross.

+ On which do you find yourself focusing, your sins or Jesus's redemption, your actions or Jesus's love?

Red Letters/Black Letters: Day 133: God: the great, and different judge

"You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one." John 8:15

I have no clue who will be in heaven. I have no clue who will not be in heaven. In fact I can not say without a doubt that I will be in heaven. I also can not say without a doubt that everyone won't be in heaven. Heaven may be overflowing, or it may be sparse, I do not know. Perhaps only Christians will be in heaven, perhaps only Lutherans, perhaps people from all religions, perhaps agnostics, perhaps atheists, perhaps there isn't a heaven.

I say all of that to say that I do not decide who gets in and who does not, hence I try not to claim that I do. There are people who do claim to know who gets in and who doesn't, interestingly enough heaven is usually populated with people very much like the person claiming to know who gets in and the people who are not like them do not get in.

I also try not to claim that I know who does and does not follow Jesus. I have my own preconceived notions about what it means to follow Jesus, but I also know how messed up I am in so many areas, so I do not say that person A who does X can not follow Jesus.

I had a conversation with a friend the other day about how people who think like us can keep from being as stringent and unyielding as people who think differently than us. We didn't come to an adequate conclusion, but upon further reflection I wonder if it starts by not thinking them as being stringent and unyielding. After all, we are both wanting the same things, right? We are both working toward our understanding of what a better world looks like, we agree on a great many things, but it is where we disagree that drives such a divisive wedge between us. Perhaps we need but focus on our similarities as opposed to our differences to keep from being stringent and unyielding, on both sides.

All of this falls squarely in the category of judgment. In the above passage Jesus says that he judges no one, even though he could if he wanted to, because he would judge from the perspective of God instead of from the perspective of the flesh. In a way it is odd to think about it this way, because o often we tend to think that God judges people the same way that we do, here it appears that Jesus is saying that is not the case. I am not sure how God judges people, by what criteria, in what manner, but I do know that it is not with the eyes that I judge or with the heart that I judge or with the mind that I judge. It is my job to judge less and less until perhaps one day I judge no longer.

+ When thinking of God's judgement do you think it will look like yours?

+ How do you keep from judging? Do you believe you should not judge?

Red Letters/Black Letters: Day 132: The darkness need not define you

"I am the light of the world. He (or she) who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, 

but have the light of life." John 8:12

I believe in an afterlife, I believe in a heaven. But if there is no heaven I still believe that it would be worthwhile to follow Jesus's teachings and example. I say this because Jesus, while mentioning heaven was mainly concerned with how we live our lives in this place and time. He was concerned about who we loved and how we loved them. He was concerned about the need for compassion and apathy. He was concerned about peace, both internally and externally, and justice. He was concerned with people understanding that they didn't have to carry their burdens. He was concerned with people understanding that they were never alone, no matter what they were going through. He was concerned about every single person to ever walk the face of the Earth. 

In this particular verse Jesus says that whoever follows him would not walk in darkness but would have the light of life. I believe that above all other things, what Jesus mainly means in this statement is that we do not have to let the happenings of our lives define our lives. We don't have to be the divorcee. We don't have to be the addict. We don't have to be the dropout. We don't have to be the shunned. We don't have to be _________ (fill in the blank). This is not to say that the things we go through don't happen, or don't matter, because they have and they do, but it is the freedom to understand that the darkness of our lives does not have to define our lives. You have been damaged, but that doesn't mean you are damaged and you will always be damaged. 

We don't have to walk in the darkness, even if we are surrounded by it. We can have hope for a brighter tomorrow. We can have peace on the journey. And most of all we can have the knowledge that no one moment, good or bad, heavenly or hellish, defines who we are, unless we let it.

+ Why do you believe in Jesus?

+ If there was no heaven, no afterlife, would you still believe?

Red Letters/Black Letters: Day 131: Faith and Doubt

"Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." John 20:29b

When Jesus says those who have not seen and yet have believed does not reference any current believer. Mary Magdalene had seen and believed, the rest of the disciples had seen and believed, and now Thomas had seen and believed. Do you know who Jesus was talking about, all of us, all those who count themselves Christian down through the ages, because we have not seen, yet we believe.

I wish I could say something different, but faith is a difficult thing to have in something that you haven’t seen.  As children we have this, almost innate, belief in our parents, that they are the ultimate solvers, that a kiss could fix a boo-boo, that if we fell they would pick us back up, that no matter what, if they were around everything would be all right. But then, inevitably, something would happen and pain would survive a kiss, we would have to pick ourselves back up, and things weren't always great when they were around. As long as it continued to happen we believed that it would continue to happen, but then when it didn’t we could no longer believe in it.  And that was seeing.

We know that merely being with Jesus didn't give faith, how often do we see Jesus asking his disciples why they have no faith? And we also know that seeing him die wasn’t the automatic catalyst we often think it should have been, one thief praised the other mocked. So we can see that merely seeing isn't always believing. But in our case we have to do something even more difficult that seeing and believing we have to believe without having seen.

Maybe it is like what Billy Graham once said, “Can you see God, have you ever seen him? I've never seen the wind, I've seen the effects of the wind, but I've never seen the wind, there’s a mystery to it.” A mystery to it, I've never seen God, but I have prayed and felt more at peace. I've never felt God’s physical touch, but I've felt my heart moved. I've never literally heard God’s voice, but I know I've known what God has wanted occasionally. Have you been there? Knowing what to do when the way is unclear?

St. Thomas Aquinas said, “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.” When I was in youth group we sang a lot in church, for Christmas, Easter, Mother’s and Father’s Day, and any random time my youth leader and senior pastor decided that we should. One day we were asked to write a song to perform in church. I went home and wrote the lyrics to a song titled I Am. In the song it talks about waiting for some simple sign that would turn my head and then later the realization that a miracle won’t make you believe. You see, we are such a people that even when we do see something we may not always see it the same way. What Aquinas and I mean is that if you already believe that God is working you will most likely see a miracle when something unnatural happens, and if you don’t believe God is working you will find some other reason that it happened all together.

Thomas doubted, but that was not the fullness of who he was, the same can be said for each of us, doubting doesn’t disqualify us, neither does it diminish us. We are still meant to be children of God, we are still important enough that God sent Jesus to live and die for us, still important enough that the Holy Spirit is still prodding us on to greater things. St. Augustine said that "faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe." We won’t visibly see God while we walk this world, but if we believe without seeing one day we will be able to walk with him and talk with him, and he will tell us that we are his own. Until then we must look with the eyes of our heart.

+ How do you overcome your moments of doubt?

+ When you read this account, have you ever thought of yourself as being blessed for believing without seeing?

Red Letters/Black Letters: Day 130: Who you gonna be like?

"Peace to you! As the Father has sent Me, I also send you." John 20:21

Jesus had a mission, and we are given one as well, to sow seeds of peace and hope and love wherever we go. It would be so simple if we just lived that mission out, unfortunately we so often do not. Too often we are more like Jonah than Jesus, going through life with our preconceived notions of who God loves and how God loves and those notions are so close to our own whos and hows. Like Jonah we tend to show more anger over the things that matter little as opposed to the people who matter much, That is not how Jesus taught us to live, and it is not congruent with the mission that Jesus gave us.

Jesus was sent "from heaven to earth to show the way" and we tend to make our own way instead. We go through life expecting God to show up where and when and how we want, as opposed to looking for where God is already at work and joining God in that place and in that manner. We stand at the beginning of a new year, may our prayer be that this year we will love better and follow closer than we have in the past year.

+ What resolutions have you made to improve your walk with Jesus?

Red Letters/Black Letters: Day 129: Thomas: a 5 minute biography

"Reach your finger here, and look at My hands: reach your hand here, 

and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing." John 20:27

Thomas gets a bad rap. The poor guy has had Doubting attached to his name for 2000 years, and I don't think that he deserved that. Have you ever noticed that Thomas asks for what the rest of the disciples have already been given? Just a few verses earlier Jesus appears to the other disciples and he shows them his hands and his side. 

Not only does Thomas not ask for anything that hasn't already been shown to the disciples, but Jesus is willing to do what Thomas requires. Interestingly enough John doesn't actually say that Thomas does put his fingers in the holes, Thomas exults Jesus as soon as Jesus is willing to show him. Maybe it is not so much as the physical touch and sight of the wounds as much as realizing that this is the same man that Thomas had a relationship with. There are two other times Thomas shows up in the gospel of John and I think both of them will give a larger vision of who Thomas is, and what his relationship with Jesus was like.

The first can be found in chapter 11 and has to deal with the death and subsequent resurrection of Lazarus. As you may remember Lazarus was a friend to Jesus and so when Jesus learned that his friend had died he wanted to travel to Judea to raise him from the dead. Unfortunately the last time Jesus was in Judea people had tried to kill him, so the disciples weren't too keen to go back.  To this end the disciples tried to talk Jesus out of going. Jesus tells them that Lazarus is sleeping and that he is going to wake him, the disciples say that if he’s sleeping he will get better. Jesus then tells them that Lazarus is dead and that now he is going to show them something that will make them believe, and sets off on his way. Then Thomas speaks up, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
So we get our first glimpse of Thomas and we find someone who is willing to die for the cause. He is the first disciple to get on board with Jesus’ plan to go back to Judea. While all the other disciples are questioning Jesus, Thomas is getting ready to follow him.

We next find Thomas three chapters later.  This time it is during the last supper, Jesus has talked about Judas’ betrayal, and then Peter’s denial. He is telling his disciples that he is going away, but that he will be coming back to take them with him. Thomas says, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” Jesus then replies with probably the second most widely known verse from the Gospel of John, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”

So this time Thomas asks a question that leads to the enlightenment of all the disciples, and to us as well. We see Jesus clarifying his connection to the Father, that if we know Jesus we now know God.  Do you realize that this one sentence changes everything? No longer do we think of God as vengeful, because Jesus wasn't vengeful; no longer would we think of God as far away, because Jesus got in so close to those around him; no longer would we think of God as impersonal, or petty, or any of the multitude of things that people thought about God, we now have a vision in flesh of what God is like, and God is found to be compassionate, caring, sacrificial, in short everything that Paul would later say about Love. It would lead people to write and to believe that God is love, because Jesus was love in the flesh. Thomas asked a question and we are all the better for it.

Going back to the second half of what Jesus says, “If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well.  From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” Not only does Thomas ask a question and we are all the better for it, but so is Thomas. Remember, after Jesus showed Thomas his hands and side Thomas cried, “My Lord and my God.” Thomas was the first person to truly understand that when you saw Jesus you saw God.

So Thomas is on board with what Jesus wants to do. And Thomas asks questions that lead to people gaining a better understanding of what Jesus said. In addition Thomas asks for proof of things unseen and receives it, and afterwards declares Jesus to be God. Thomas, Didymus in Aramaic, means twin, often Thomas is said to also be called the twin, did you know that in the early years of the church there were people who thought that meant that Thomas was actually Jesus’s twin? And we think of him as only a doubter, kind of sad if you think about it. The people who knew him thought he was close enough to Jesus to not just be a follower or even a brother, but a twin, and all we remember is that he once doubted, which haven’t we all?

+ How have you traditionally viewed Thomas?

+ Do you view him any differently now?

Red Letters/Black Letters: Day 128: To leave nothing unfinished

"It is finished." John 19:30

Jesus accomplished what he was here to accomplish and then breathed his last.

I take this to mean that as long as you are breathing you still have a purpose.

As long as you are existing there is a reason for you to exist.

Our goal is to recognize this fact and then attempt to understand what our purpose is.

By the words, "It is finished" Jesus was saying that he accomplished what he set out to accomplish, in other words when he died upon the cross there was nothing that he left unfinished.

Our hope is that when we come to the end of our journeys that we will also be able to say "It is finished" and know that we have also accomplished that task that God has set for us.

Jesus understood his purpose and lived his life accomplishing that purpose, I pray that we can all say the same.

+ Do you believe that God has a particular purpose for your life?

+ Do you know what it is?

Red Letters/Black Letters: Day 127: To listen is to know

Pilate therefore said to Him, "Are you a king then?"

"You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, 

and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. 

Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice." John 18:37

I have written before about how it is my belief that it is not our attainment of the goal, but rather our desire for it and or attempt to reach it that makes us holy. Here, once again, I find myself.

Do you remember how in the late 90's/early 2000's there arose such a clatter of WWJD [what would Jesus do?] ? Everywhere you looked people were wearing silicon bracelets sporting those four letters. Books were published on them. Nearly every preacher in America gave a sermon on them. Even parodies of them spread, like WWSD [what would scooby-do]. On my particular college campus we had recently lost one of our students and her sister popularized WWLD [what would Laura do?]. 

At the time I felt it was all rather trite, especially since some people came up with a lot of junk that I am pretty sure Jesus would not have done. But as I sit here now I wonder if to some degree it was a good sign that WWJD became so popular. Jesus says that everyone who is of the truth hears his voice, hears his voice, and I think of 'everyone who has ears to hear' and think that perhaps if we can hear Jesus's voice we are on the right track. We may not always hear it clearly, sometimes we don't hear it in a timely manner, but as long as we hear it we aren't too far gone.

I often hear Jesus's voice, not audibly, but in my mind, poking me at times, pushing me at times, slicing me at times, lifting me up at times, laying me low at times. I am beginning to think that it is in the hearing that we find movement and peace and grace and strength. I am beginning to think that is in the hearing that we can have comfort and confidence. I hear Jesus, therefore I am one who is of the truth, Lord, let me hear more.

+ Do you hear Jesus?

Red Letters/Black Letters: Day 126: A different kind of Kingdom

"My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight, so that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now My kingdom is not from here." John 18:36

Jesus's kingdom is not of this world, yet so often it seems that his followers have focused on power and wealth and glory as the world knows it and as the world gives it. Too often we have fought battles of flesh and blood when we should have been doing battle within ourselves. Too often we have sought crowns and thrones and titles and political office. Too often we have sought a good name and a good reputation. Too often we gauge our blessedness by the amount of money we make and what kind of house we live in and how many kids we have in private school. Too often we have been about the bigger, the better, the more, the greater, when Jesus said that who ever wants to be great needs to make them self least.

In the moment Jesus finds himself in during John 18 he is before Pilate, and he says that if his was an earthly kingdom his followers would be knocking down the doors to rescue him. While I am not sure this is literally true, after all his disciples have all abandoned him post arrest, I believe Jesus's point is a sound one, that his kingdom truly is not an earthly one. This is not, strictly, the same as saying that his kingdom does not exist here and now, because the kingdom is indeed available to us in the here and now, if we but have eyes to see and ears to hear.

If we are to be kingdom people we need to recognize the truth that wealth is not something that can be attained in a bank account or a hedge fund. If we are to be kingdom people we need to recognize that love is not something that allows us to be comfortable. If we are to be kingdom people we need to recognize that it is not about getting our way but rather about attuning ourselves to The Way. If we are to be kingdom people we need to recognize that our lives need a seismic shift from an earthly viewpoint to a kingdom viewpoint.

+ In what ways have you found yourself focusing on earthly gains instead of kingdom gains?

+ How can you align yourself with the kingdom view?

Red Letters/Black Letters: Day 125: Till all are one

"I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in you; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me." John 17:20-21

Christian Unity is not just some buzzword, at least it shouldn't be. Here we are given a very clear message that it is Jesus's desire that everyone who comes to belief in him would be one. This one should emanate from a connection one to another but also from a connection of all to God and of God to all. And I sit here and think, 'No wonder so many people don't believe in God or Jesus or the church, for that matter.' Jesus believed that our unity would enhance our witness, and our lack of unity would erase our witness, and it seems as if that has been proven to be true. I wonder what went through Jesus's mind when he spoke his prayer in John 17, did he know then what we would do with the world and teachings he gave us? Did he know, sitting there, that our version of his teachings would be splintered into 30,000 some odd shards? Did he pray in vain? Or does his prayer still vibrate through our world, still pulling us into a heretofore unknown reality of unity?

Here we all are, at the beginning of a brand new year, at the beginning of a potential brand new start, and the question we have to wrestle with in this moment and the coming days is: are we working toward Christian Unity? If we are not we need to begin to evaluate how we can. If we are we need to focus on redoubling our efforts to make an impact in the church/world around us. We need less in-fighting and more consensus building. We need less gossip mongers and more solution finders. We need less disagreeable disagreements and more productive board meetings. We need less posturing and more sacrificing. We need less competition and more teamwork. This should be happening within the local church, within local churches, within a single denomination, within multiple denominations. 

Sharing Jesus's name and love should be our main goal, and any unity we can find on the road to that destination needs to be explored.

+ How do you [and/or the church you attend] already promote Christian Unity?

+ How can you work to promote Christian Unity more?

+ If you are not a pastor consider having a conversation with yours about their views and work toward Christian Unity. 

+ If you are a pastor do you have conversations with your leaders about the need for unity?