Bible Reading Challenge Blog

I guess all I can do is start today’s blog with a story.  There was a very wealthy man who was quite stingy with his money.  He never gave to the church, never gave to those in need, and still thought he was a good man.  When he got to the pearly gates after he died St. Peter looked in the book and said: “Sorry, your name isn’t in this book.”  The man was indignant, he said: “What do you mean?  I remember vividly giving that homeless man by McDonald’s a dollar, and then last year at blanket offering I’m sure I gave at least $5, and I’m pretty sure 25 years ago when I got married I gave the church $10.  How can you say I’m not in?”  St. Peter was about to say something when a voice from heaven boomed out: “Give him back his $16 and tell him to go to…”  I’m guessing you can finish that line, I’m probably not supposed to.

The first 9 verses of chapter 16 are a bit puzzling.  Read them again one more time.  I love the fact that every time that Jesus talks about money he never takes up an offering.  What a breath of fresh air.  The beginning of chapter 16 is puzzling if we have never seen the world through the eyes of someone who lives in a reality where you are just trying to survive one day to the next.  The five years that we lived in Russia I quickly came to distinguish between morality and legality.  It was illegal to hire a refugee from Cameroon to run your food ministry.  It was immoral to not allow a refugee from Cameroon to work for your social ministry.  Which one will you choose?  Will you choose to do that which is moral or that which is legal?  We don’t often have to make that choice here in the United States.  Morality and Legality are often two sides of the same coin.  We are not placed in situations where we have to choose between one or the other.  In Russia I had to make that choice every day.  I paid off police officers, I gave money to government employees to expedite our application to become legal, I made decisions that should have had me deported had people found out, I exchanged money on the black market, I used two passports, I paid for an exit visa…  The list continues, but I’m not sure you want a continued running of the illegal actions that I took.  But I would argue that they were all moral and all were that which contributed to the kingdom of God.  The ends never justify the means, but that which is illegal is not always immoral.  

In Jesus’ day the reality was the same.  The soon to be fired manager called in his boss’ clients and reduced all of their bills so that when he was fired he would have a body of people who would be nice to him.  Was that immoral?  It was certainly illegal and yet the boss when he saw his soon to be fired manager: “commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.”  It actually gets worse, so if you are squirming, you just might want to close your computer and move on to the next thing on your agenda.  Jesus actually says in vs. 9: “make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.”  Jesus tells his disciples to make friends with entrepreneurs who might not have made their fortune in the most honest way possible.  Notice that he is not telling them to make their fortune dishonestly, but become friends with people who did make their fortune dishonestly.

My brother and I have a long running debate on what is called BAM (Business As Mission).  Just to be clear my brother is the Dean of New College of Biblical and Theological Studies at Eastern University, so he is way smarter than I am.  But he is a strong proponent of business being able to provide a launching pad for mission while I have all along argued that business to its core is antithetical to the type of mission that Jesus would want us to do.  I’m sure that he is right, and in light of these Scriptures I may have to succumb to the pressures that are about me and say that he may have a point.  But isn’t there something unsettling in the words of Jesus when he encourages us to make friends with people who are dishonest?  Wait, let me take that back.  I am not in any way equating business with dishonesty.  In fact, the owner was the honest one, the manager was the one who was dishonest.  It does make us think.

The entire chapter of Luke 15 is dedicated to finding the one who was lost.  There are three separate stories and all of them are set up by the comment that a disgruntled Pharisee makes when he said: “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”  The assumption was that Jesus should have nothing to do with them because they are obvious sinners.  The statement assumes that Jesus should be spending time with people who are not sinners, people who are righteous, church people, people like us.  That’s not Jesus’ take on the matter.

The parable of the lost sheep is a classic and many have attempted to portray the scene as one where the other 99 really weren’t in danger because it was fairly common for the shepherd to leave the dogs in charge for a bit of time.  The point of this parable, as is the point of the others, is that Jesus will celebrate over the one sinner who repents because the other 99 do not need to have his presence.  Everyone needs to repent,of course, but the sinner with whom Jesus was told he should not be hanging turns out to be the one that Jesus is willing to bend over backwards to save.  He is called to the lost sheep, not the found sheep.  How does that relate to us in an institutionalized setting such as the church?  Who are the 99 righteous if not the members of the church.  Who is the lost sheep if not the ones who want to have nothing to do with the church, who are on the periphery, who need to be found by wandering outside of the church to see if they are in the area?  Jesus calls us out of our pews and into the streets.

The lost coin is almost the identical lesson.  The one sinner who repents is cause for much joy.  The sinner is not going to be where we expect them to be.  They are not going to be joining us on Sunday morning.  They might be here for a wedding or maybe even a funeral.  I have come across so many people in this community that have told me that at one time they used to come to church at First Presbyterian.  For many of them it was during their childhood and since then they didn’t see the utility of attending church and so have turned their back completely on the church.  Notice that I am not saying that they have turned their back on God, although some have, but certainly have on the church.  They will make an appearance at a wedding or a funeral.  This is a lost coin.  This is someone the church ought to spend the time and the effort to pour ourselves into.  One of the missions of the membership needs to be to find the lost sheep and rejoice over the found coins.  

We know the parable of the prodigal son.  

I’ll never forget wandering around the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia and turning to go down a stairwell when this painting by Rembrandt caught my eye.  It is the father welcoming back home the prodigal son.  There is such a tenderness in the touch of the father and an obvious abject confession on the part of the son in his tattered clothes and his single shoe that is curled up.  My favorite part of the parable is found in vs. 20 where we read that while the returning son “was still far off, his father saw him.”  The image I have is that of the father every morning with his coffee cup in hand staring out over at the horizon wondering, hoping that this would be the day that his son returns.

The image of our Father in heaven staring out over the horizon waiting and hoping for us to return to his side is one that resonates with me.  There are times in our lives when we are still far away from the Father, but he is still waiting and hoping that we will return.  When we do, we will be welcomed back with open arms.  The older brother, who would that be?  The entire chapter creates a dichotomy between those who are righteous, or those who have followed the will of God, and the sinners, those who have chosen to turn their backs on God in certain times in their lives.  So if the younger son is the sinner who has been found (vs.32) then the older son must be the righteous, or to apply it to today’s terms, those who are members of the church.  Are we indignant when the sinners are welcomed back into the church even though they haven’t done anything to deserve that welcome?  Are we filled with joy when we see programs changing and time and material resources being spent on those who have not had anything to do with the church, and maybe never will, while they could be spent for the good of the members?  It is a tough question.  We think logically that what we have should be focused on us.  Jesus says no, what we have is for the purpose of bringing the lost to Jesus.

Jesus loves to teach around the dinner table.  Once again, in spite of his condemnation and very harsh words for the religious leaders of his day, they still want him around and they still invite him over for a meal.  This time he tells a parable that deals with a meal as well.  He first teaches people that if you are going to be the first in the kingdom of heaven you must be servant of all.  Back in the 1st century there was a certain protocol in regards to where people sat distinguished their place of honor and their status.  Without living in a caste system it is hard to understand exactly what is going on here.  What Jesus tells his disciples is that we should put ourselves last and then the potential is there that the host would bump us up to first.  If we put ourselves first, we will most certainly be placed lower and that will be an embarrassment.  What is a little unusual in these verses is that the teaching really revolves around how other people see you.  Vs. 11 gives us the moral of the story: “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

We then move onto another meal parable.  He begins by saying that when you have a meal don’t invite those people that you  know will return the favor.  If you want to have a real blessing invite those whom you know will never return the favor.  We tried that once in the church where I was a pastor in Florida.  We had a bbq cookout in the poorest section of town.  I took someone from that section with me to go shopping.  We bought ribs and pork chops and the bill came out to over $800.  We cooked up the food, there were a ton of people there, and then they came and took the food to go, and within 30 minutes it was just us church folk sitting around without any food because they had taken all the food back to their homes.  When we got back and debriefed we realized that the sense of disappointment that we felt was a result of the fact that things didn’t work out the way that we wanted them to work out.  They worked out exactly the way that the people to whom we were ministering wanted them to work out.  At the end of the day we figured that it was more important that we were a presence even if it wasn’t on our terms, but rather theirs.

When bad things happen around the world is one of our first thoughts…”What did they do wrong?”  We are programmed to pair up unfortunate incidents as a recompense for sin.  When the towers fell there were some preachers who said that it was God paying back America for their falling away of His will.  When AIDS first came around it was very common in Christian circles for people to think that this was punishment against homosexuals.  We are trained to think that when bad things happen it is a direct result of our actions which must have been against God’s will.  Jesus speaks against this type of thinking at the beginning of chapter 13 of Luke.  The historian Josephus writes about a massacre of the Galileans to which Jesus is referring in vs.2.  Were they worse sinners because they died such a cruel death?  Absolutely not.  When the towers of Siloam fell were those killed worse sinners?  Absolutely not.  But they, along with the rest of us, will perish the death that is eternal if we do not repent.  What Jesus does is take away the common thinking that we serve a God who is waiting for a Gotcha! moment when he rains down His punishment, as opposed to a God who just wants us to love Him.

Jesus again takes on the institutional thinking that rules and regulations are more important than people in the following verses.  After he heals a woman on the Sabbath the leader of the synagogue criticizes him for working on the Sabbath.  Jesus, of course, chastises him for the fact that everyone works on the Sabbath.  Everyone leads their livestock to water even on the Sabbath.  That is work.  But as he has said in the past humans were not made for the Sabbath but rather the Sabbath was made for us.  We cannot be prisoners to rules, but rather use the rules in order to benefit society and our individual lives.

I find it interesting that in vs. 31 and following you have the Pharisees looking out for Jesus by warning him that he should be on the move because Herod was looking to kill him.  Now, we can imagine that the reason they didn’t want Jesus taken out in their town was that they knew that that would create problems in their town.  They didn’t want trouble and so if Jesus was gone then there was much less chance that their town would see the trouble that Herod could bring when he was hunting someone.  So, maybe they weren’t looking out for Jesus as much as they were looking out for themselves.

Luke 12 covers a wide spectrum of topics.  We pick up to find Jesus’ popularity rising to the level where there are thousands of people who are following him.  There are so many, in fact, that they were trampling on one another.  I love Luke’s details, they just don’t always make sense, but are sure to give you a smile.  Jesus teaches us on the topic of making sure that we are aware that whatever we do in secret, really is not in secret.  On the way home from Puerto Rico yesterday they showed movies on your own personal screen on the seat in front of you on the plane.  For some reason I began watching Black Mass which is a movie about Whitey Bulger, the infamous gangster.  There is a scene where his son is in trouble because he punched one of his classmates in the face.  His dad asked him: “What was your mistake?”  And the boy answered, “I punched someone in the face.”  The dad responded by saying “No, that is not the mistake, you were just defending yourself.  Your mistake was that you punched him when a teacher saw you.  If you had punched him when there was no one there, then no one would have known and it would have been as if nothing ever happened.”  As you can imagine his wife, the boy’s mother, was mortified.  But isn’t that what we think.  If we can get away with it, if there is no one to see what we do, then we don’t have to worry about it.

Jesus is trying to teach us that nothing we do stays in the dark.  Our loving God knows everything about us, considers us more important than the sparrows for whom he provides, and so our attempts to sneak in a life that is against the will of God is really only hurting ourselves.  All things come out in the open.  

 Jesus then switches subjects and addresses the favorite topic of the end times.  Once again, and this is consistently the case, Jesus reminds us that we will never know when the end times will be so our responsibility is to be always ready.  The picture depicted of those times is not a happy one.  We find families divided against each other.  Jesus calls the crowds hypocrites because we can tell that when the wind is blowing from the south that the days will be getting warmer.  And yet we are not able to distinguish the fact that the world has claimed our attention and we would much rather spend our time with that which pleases ourselves rather than be ready for the coming of Christ by doing that which please the loving Father.

A special prize to anyone who might be able to respond and tell me where this artwork is found, the author, and the name of it.  It is a pretty easy question, so chime in and let me know.  I’ll try a harder one as we go along.

Today’s Scripture reminds me of this image and specifically in verses 20 and 46.  Jesus chastises those who doubted him as far as from where his power came.  He speaks about the finger of God being able to cast out demons even as the above depicts the creation of Adam.  Sorry, did I give it away?  But then again in vs. 46 he scolds them for not being willing to lift a finger, to use their power, in order to ease the burden of the people surrounding them.  The people were cowering under the pressure of doing the right thing and following rules and regulations as opposed to following the response that is natural when we react to the love of God.  The rules and the regulations constantly changed depending on who were the religious leaders of the day.  Rules should serve to open our ability to love God, and not to imprison us withing a structure that doesn’t allow us to see God’s love through the legalism that might exist.

I love the metaphor that Jesus gives when he tells a story of a neighbor knocking on your door at midnight because a guest just arrived and he had no food.  First of all, what guest arrives at midnight?  Maybe the one who had come from miles and miles away on foot and ran into difficulty and the only person that he knows is you.  You just might happen to be the only family that he might know within a 20 mile radius or a day’s walk.  So he came when he could and needs shelter and food.  This is not a scenario that would ever happen, or at least very rarely happen, in our day and age.   But this was pretty normal in Jesus’ day.  This is why hospitality is so heavily stressed throughout Scripture.  Because people were on the move and things happen, then you have to be ready to receive those who might need your help.  We have developed systems now instead where people can stay or where they can get help whether they know anyone in that town or not.  The point is that if we succumb to the pressure of an insistent neighbor then how much more will a loving God succumb to a persistent child who comes daily to him in prayer?

We are going to be focusing on two aspects of Luke 10.  The first is the parable of the good Samaritan.  I hope people realize as they read the parable that Samaritans and Jews had nothing in common, and in fact they despised each other.  So when a story is told of a man walking along a path who is beaten and robbed and left for dead people would hear it and know how realistic of a scenario it really was.  The road from Nazareth to Jerusalem crossed through the territory of Samaria.  As a result people sometimes took the more circuitous and yet safer route that went West.  Jesus’ story has a Jewish man who was probably in a hurry who took the shorter route, but the more dangerous one.  As he was walking alone he was mugged.  The aftermath of the attack leaves him on the road left for dead.  We then see a priest taking that same road as well as a Levite, who was also in the priestly class. They walked right by him and paid no attention to him.  They were busy, they had a lot to do, and maybe they thought it was an ambush.

I will never forget driving with my dad and two of my brothers from Atlantic City, New Jersey all the way to Tegucigalpa, Honduras.  This trip took us through Mexico.  Many of the roads seemed like they were out in the middle of nowhere, and could have been very dangerous.  There was one long road with desert on either side where a car was on fire and a person was lying on the shoulder of the road.  My dad said, “Hang on boys”, and we sped right past the fire and the person on the side of the road without stopping.  As we passed we saw a group of 5 or 6 men waiting to see if we would stop and then they would ambush us.  It was an incredibly vivid lesson for me.  There were probably very good reasons for why the priest and the Levite didn’t stop.  But the point is that the Samaritan, the hated one, the one who had nothing to do with Jews, did stop.

Not only did he stop but he took the hurt man to a hospital and paid the ER bill and told the doctors that if he needed a special dinner or anything at all that they should send the bill to him.  This is an incredibly powerful story.  The question Jesus is answering is: Who is my neighbor?  It has nothing to do with geography.  It has nothing to do with any alliances.  It only has to do with action.  Whoever does the will of the father is the neighbor.  Whoever loves God and loves the person who is in their midst, that is the neighbor.  What a great lesson for all of us.  

The second story is not a parable but a life of event where the sisters Mary and Martha, who happen to be the sisters of Lazarus, you know, the one that Jesus raises from the dead, are having a bit of a squabble.  Mary is just sitting at Jesus’ feet while there is work to be done.  Martha, who I’m guessing is the oldest one, was arranging everything and making sure that everything is in place.  Jesus’ point is not that you should be slothful, but rather that you should have your priorities right.  It is important to be industrious and to have the best work ethic out of anyone around you.  But you cannot miss the presence of God in your life for the sake of propriety or for the sake of working to the degree where you are trying to show how hard of a worker you are.  Some great lessons for all of us.  Who is my neighbor?  Anyone who is need, and not anyone who is allied with us just for the sake of the fact that we are similar or have some things in common.  What are my priorities?  To love God in the here and now.

The cost of discipleship is intended to be steep.  Lord, I will follow you at all times and wherever you go.  Are you willing to live a life where you are stationed from one place to the next?  Granted, military and missionary kids understand that language and know what it is like to be moved from one place to another just after a handful of years.  If our love for our family is so overwhelming that we are not able to see the importance of service to the King and Lord Jesus Christ then maybe burying our dead would be more important than following him.  In the last verses of this chapter Jesus seems to cover both here.  

As we work our way backward we then see in this chapter that Jesus does not shy away from welcoming anyone who just might be associated with him and is doing good.  Whoever is not against us is for us.  I’m not sure we always say that.  We often establish specific criteria for who can be a part of us and who can claim that they are one of us.  Jesus has a really low threshold for anyone who just might want to walk alongside with us.  

I just wanted to put this blog post in the context in which I find myself.  It is early on Wednesday morning and I am waiting in an airport at JFK for my flight to San Juan which I was not able to make last night because my flight was delayed out of Philly.  Last night did not go at all as planned.  I put up a bit of a stink because I did in fact make the gate in time, but they had already closed the gate…early.  As a result I got some meal tickets, taxi vouchers, and free night stay at the Crown Plaza.  These are all nice things, but I would much rather be in Puerto Rico right now with my brothers.

Driving to the hotel last night I got into a conversation with the taxi driver.  I almost felt embarrassed telling him about my predicament and why I found myself in the situation where I was frustrated and angry with the airport.  Here was someone who may not be able to even imagine what a trip to Puerto Rico to play golf would look like.  At one point I said: I’m disappointed, but there are worse things that happen in the world.  “True that!”  He replied approvingly.  The acute disparity between us was painful, and not being able to go on vacation on time made me feel like a spoiled child who was upset over something incredibly insignificant.

In the stories we have today in our Scripture we find people who have incredibly significant issues, and yet they are demure and humbly approach the Savior asking if he could do something for them.  There is no sense of entitlement and certainly no sense that they deserve to have anything done for them.  The man who has the demons driven out of him asks Jesus to leave him.  He calls him Son of the Most High.  Not even the disciples find themselves with that understanding.  The healing of Jairus’ daughter finds someone that we would call a pastor asking Jesus to come to his house while he was not worthy to even approach him.  The woman healed from the issue of blood falls at Jesus’ feet admitting to everyone her plight and how Jesus was able to heal her.  All of these issues are far more important and are absolutely life changing compared to a missed flight.  It is humbling sitting here in NYC to realize how petty we can be at times with our thoughts and actions.

I want to focus on vs. 55 where we read that “her spirit returned”.  We must remember that the word for spirit in Greek is pneuma.  It is the root of the words that we use in English such as pneumatic.  It literally means breath or wind or air.  So if we were to read this verse literally it would read: “her breath returned”.  There is a physical component to this healing story that is missed if we just say that her “spirit” returns.  It also leaves us with a false sense of understanding as to what happens to us once we die.  When we die our spirit does not hover around in the air for an undisclosed amount of time.  Rather, our spirit and our resurrected body immediately go to our savior Jesus Christ.  So when we read that this girl’s spirit returns we must interpret that as her breath comes back.  She gets her second wind so to speak. 

There are a variety of stories and miracles that take place in Luke 7.  The nature of a miracle is that it defies our understanding of nature and the way that things are supposed to work here on this earth.  It is clear that a servant is not supposed to get well from mere words spoken on his behalf, a son is not supposed to rise from the dead while lying in a coffin just with a mere touch.  But this is what Jesus does.  These stories are related because neither the centurion nor the widow of Nain are part of the people of Israel.  Jesus reaches out to those who are not within the community, not within those who are considered the favored of God.  It proves to be another great example for our sake of how our reach ought not to be so myopic that we don’t see beyond our walls.  Our reach has to extend far beyond what we see or what we consider as being familiar.

John the Baptist wants to know if Jesus is the one for whom we have all been waiting.  But Jesus doesn’t give a straight answer.  If John wants to know who I am, tell him what you see.  Tell him about the miracles that you are experiencing.  My teachings and my words are crucially important, but my actions and my miracles are all signs that point to the Father.  Jesus then takes the opportunity to teach the crowds about who John the Baptist is/was.  It is obvious that he loves John the Baptist.  He calls him the greatest of those born among women.  Now that is a great reference to have if you should ever need one. 

He then shifts to the anointing of Jesus by the prostitute.  In Luke he doesn’t call her by name.  But he does point out to his host, Simon, how far he fell short in treating him with the respect that he was due.  It was a pretty sneaky way to say: She has washed my feet as any other household would do to welcome a guest, but you haven’t even offered me water.  Keep in mind this Simon is a Pharisee who was well known in town and so had something to risk by a prostitute coming into his house and wrecking the party that he is throwing for Jesus.  So he definitely does have something at stake.  Jesus puts him in his place, but also allows him to save face.  At the same time Jesus teaches a lesson on his ability to forgive sins.  He was able and he does.  Again people were not sure who he was.