John

Be Prepared

/ JJS / 3 Comments

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Today’s readings:
Psalms 24; 150, Isaiah 13:1-13, Hebrews 12:18-29, John 3:22-30

As we reach the mid-way point in our season of Advent, today’s scripture readings appropriately focus on preparation.

Psalm 24, written a thousand years before Christ’s birth, uses the metaphor of a king returning victorious from battle to describe the Lord assuming his place among his people. Not written about Jesus specifically, this psalm sets the stage for the hoped-for Day of the Lord.

Isaiah also describes the Day of the Lord (prophetically speaking, there were several such days), but from a differing viewpoint. Rather than describing a glorious victory, Isaiah warned the Babylonians of the destruction awaiting them for turning away from God and oppressing God’s people.

The letter to the Hebrews, written after Christ’s death, warned its audience to listen for the word of God so they would be prepared for Christ’s return. Its author claims that on the Day of the Lord his voice will shake heaven and earth, and he will return like a “consuming fire” burning away unrighteousness.

Our passage from John is more gentle. It tells us how John the Baptist willingly stepped aside when Jesus – the one for whom he had been preparing the way – began his ministry in earnest. John was content to have played his role faithfully, and sought no further adulation. Unfortunately, retirement would not be kind to John; because he had angered too many powerful people by telling the truth, he would soon be executed.

As common-sense as “failing to plan is planning to fail” may sound, we also have to accept that events of our lives, community, and globe are frequently unpredictable. The Jews and Babylonians, despite prophecy, weren’t ready for what happened. The audience of Hebrews was preparing for Christ’s literal return, but had to keep going when that didn’t happen. Like John the Baptist, we must be content with having faithfully done our part. We can’t control whether the world responds accordingly. When the Day of the Lord seems distant and unrighteousness all too near, our best preparation occurs in our own hearts, where God provides us the faith and strength to face what we must.

Comfort: Relying on God is the best preparation …

Challenge: … but be ready for God to ask you to do some challenging things.

Prayer: Loving God, I have prepared for you a room in my heart; may you dwell within me always . Amen.

Discussion: Isaiah and Hebrews both mention mount Zion – Isaiah as a spot of military-like victory, and Hebrews as a place triumphant through grace and mercy. How do you think about these contrasting visions of the Day of the Lord?

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Impractically Possible

/ JJS / 1 Comment

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Today’s readings (click below to open in new tab/window):
Psalms 47; 147:12-20, Exodus 16:10-22, 1 Peter 2:11-3:12, John 15:12-27

After his resurrection, Jesus commanded his apostles to carry on his mission of love for the world and one another.He unflinchingly told these newly appointed bearers of love how the world would receive them: people who hated him would hate them; authorities who persecuted him would persecute them. Imagine similar words coming from a corporate recruiter looking for top talent, or a politician trying to build grassroots support: follow me and you’ll be hated and persecuted! Why would anyone sign up?

In the case of the apostles, they were motivated by love. Their leader had laid down his life for them – for the whole world – and in doing so overcame death. He wasn’t asking them to do anything he hadn’t done. Experiencing such love straight from the source left them unable to deny that the mission was worth any risk. The eternal life that Jesus promises doesn’t begin after our deaths, but in the moment we realize the willingness to lay down our lives down for one another frees us to love as Jesus loves.

Except for John, all the apostles died as martyrs. Most of us will not be tested to this extreme, but there are other ways of laying down our lives than death. Taking the smallest slice of cake or dropping spare change into a charity bucket is good but not enough. Following Jesus makes impractical and dangerous demands that may  require us to risk our finances, reputations, and livelihoods. Love that requires us to take in strangers and to decline striking back in revenge seems positively scandalous. In a culture where Christians are the default authority, we will be at odds with fellow believers who would cling to the dominance of Christendom so blindly they cannot recognize when we are no longer the light revealing the corruption of the empire, but the empire itself casting long shadows of injustice. We value security above faith at our own spiritual peril.

Jesus does not prioritize the safety of our bank account, good name, or physical person. He does call us to sacrifice all these things in service to each other.

Comfort: In the long run the sacrifices we make to follow Jesus do not deny us of anything, but help him give us everything.

Challenge: Almost all of us have a point where our desire to be safe impedes our desire to be faithful. Discuss this with some fellow believers.

Prayer: Loving God, give me strength to follow in the steps of Christ. Amen.

Discussion: When does your faith inconvenience you? Does it ever put you in harm’s way?

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Math Nerd Theology

/ JJS / Leave a comment

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Today’s readings (click below to open in new tab/window):
Psalms 5; 145, Genesis 2:4-9 (10-15) 16-25, Hebrews 1:1-14, John 1:1-18

First, a short math lesson. When you square any number, positive or negative, the result is always a positive number: 3 x 3 = 9 and -3 x -3 = 9. Fairly straight forward, yes? (If not, don’t worry; there won’t be a quiz). However, some equations can’t be solved without finding the square root of a negative number. Since such a number does not exist, mathematicians invented an imaginary unit named i. Perhaps it’s more correct to say they discovered it; philosophers have debated for centuries whether mathematical concepts are invented or discovered. In either case, the square of i is -1. No one can hold up i fingers or charge $i for a pound of bananas, but i is necessary to calculate the square root of -9, which is 3i. 

End of math lesson. But what was the point?

The Gospel of John tells us that in the beginning, there was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. In the original Greek, John uses the term logos, which means “word” but also means “reason.” John’s logos is Christ, so John is claiming Christ has been present and co-existent with God from before the beginning of the world. How can this be? Like i, faith in the logos solves an otherwise impossible problem. John has no direct evidence for it, but he invents/discovers it to make sense of God’s relationship with the world expressed through Christ. Some may call it imaginary, but it is also necessary.

Critics of faith often mock it for lacking reason. If your faith comes under fire for being unreasonable, think of i (but not too hard, or your brain may start to itch). Just because something can’t be pointed to or counted doesn’t mean it’s not essential to the fabric of the universe. We don’t call the entire field of mathematics a sham because it relies on an “imaginary” unit. The claim of Hebrews 11:1 that “faith is the evidence of things unseen” is our version of i, the necessary but unknowable solution for morality, eternity, and the soul.

And we thought algebra would never be good for anything.

Comfort: Faith isn’t about seeing, but believing.

Challenge: Call your algebra teacher and apologize for not paying more attention.

Prayer: All powerful Creator, I thank you for being present in the world, though your mystery is beyond my understanding. Amen.

Discussion: Have you ever found a use for something you thought would be useless when you learned it?

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Spit, Mud, and Healing

/ JJS / 5 Comments

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Today’s readings (click below to open in new window/tab):
Psalms 20; 145, Joshua 3:14-4:7, Ephesians 5:1-20, John 9:1-12, 35-38

All four gospels tell the story of Jesus healing a blind man on the Sabbath. The mechanics of it are simple: he spits on the ground, makes mud, and rubs it on the man’s eyes. Afterward the man rinses the mud off and can see. Mud and spittle were a common enough medical treatment in the Greco-Roman world of the period, so it’s very likely someone had tried this remedy before, maybe more than once. What was so different about Jesus? We could say “He was the magic son of God!” and be satisfied with that answer, but the story reveals more.

Jesus started from a different perspective than the people around him: they believed the man was blind because he had sinned, but Jesus told them that was not true. Instead, he saw an opportunity to reveal God’s glory by helping someone who hadn’t even asked for help.

How much dirt and spit have we wasted by pre-judging a situation? How could a different perspective help transform the most common, mundane elements in our lives into opportunities to reveal God’s love to the world? Residents of Cateura, Paraguay are a fine example. Their survival depends on harvesting recyclables from an enormous trash dump just outside one of the poorest slums in South America. But in this, they have found beauty: they have crafted a world-renowned children’s orchestra of instruments made from discarded articles pulled from the dump.

A blind beggar turned into a prophet. Broken pipes turned into flutes. The people and things in our lives that seem broken or useless transformed by the power of the Spirit into … what? We may not restore someone’s sight, but we can help restore hope, peace of mind, or the simple comfort of a hot meal and a warm bed. What if we have dirt or spittle (metaphorically speaking) but not both? Then we have an opportunity to combine our resources with another person’s, and the invitation for the working of the Spirit is doubled (or tripled, or…). Looking with Christ’s eyes, we see brokenness as only the first step toward wholeness.

Comfort: No matter how broken we may be, God can put us back together.

Challenge: What relationships or situations in your life have you written off as too broken to fix? Ask a friend or mentor how you might change your perspective on the situation to better resolve it.

Prayer: Gracious God, teach  me to see opportunities instead of problems. Amen.

Discussion: Have you ever witnessed or experienced healing where others had written off any such possibility?

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