The first day of the rest of your life, a devotional thought

There's a fascinating sequence in the first chapter of the Gospel of John that often gets overlooked but is worth far more reflection than it usually gets. It’s right at the beginning of the gospel; we’ve just come through the Prologue (1:1-18) which talks about Jesus being “the word of God” that was there “in the beginning” and by which God created “all things that have been made.” Then it goes on to talk about Jesus as the life that was the “light of all mankind” that was “coming into the world.” As I often point out when I teach Bible studies on the Gospel of John, any 1st Century Christian reader worth their salt would recognize all of this as creation imagery lifted right out of Genesis. 

In other words, John’s telling a New Creation story, or rather: God has told one in the Person and Work of Jesus Christ. 

So far so good, but then in John 1:29 you have this nondescript reference to “the next day.” You have to count, here, but when you do, something wonderful comes into focus: if 1:29 is “the next day,” that would mean that 1:19-29, where John the Baptist predicts the coming of Jesus was “the first day.” So 1:29-34 is the “second day” you might say. Then in 1:35 you get a reference to “the next day again,” making 1:35-42, where Jesus calls his first disciples, “day 3.” Another day (the next day...) begins at 1:43, when Jesus calls two more disciples. Then, in 2:1, where we have his first miraculous sign, the water into wine, we’re told it occurs “three days later.” In other words: the turning of water into wine, by which he “reveals his glory” (2:11), occurs on the 7th day after the introductory prologue that marked this book out as a New Creation story.

If I’ve done the math here correctly, that would mean, in essence, that 1:19-2:1 symbolically marks off, the “first week” of this New Creation story, a sequence of seven days reminiscent of the creation week in Genesis 1. And if I’ve done the exegesis right here, that would mean that the calling of the disciples (1:35-50) is part of the creative work that God’s doing, to bring this New Creation to its fullness in Christ. 

Who knew, that when you were called to be a follower of Jesus, God was doing there and then a Creative Work, something like what he did when he made the sun and the moon and the sea and everything in it, way back in the beginning? Follower of Jesus, welcome to the first day of a whole new world!

En-Couragement, a devotional thought

There’s a scene in Acts 23:11 that I find especially poignant. Here’s the background in a nutshell: Paul’s gone to Jerusalem where he’s been arrested by the religious leaders as a blasphemer and a disturber of the peace. He offers a public defense of himself before a gathered mob of his countrymen (visualize pitchforks and torches if you like...) at the end of which his own countrymen start crying out that he’s not fit to walk the earth.

 The Roman centurion who’s arrested him decides to interrogate him by flogging, to get to the bottom of things. They bind him up and are just about to bring down the lash, when he mentions he’s a Roman citizen and it’s illegal to flog a Roman without trial. Having narrowly escaped a scourging, he’s forced to stand trial before the Sanhedrin, where his testimony illicit such a violent response, that the centurion is forced to “drag him away by force” lest the crowd “tear him limb from limb.”

Paul’s been having a very rough weekend in ministry; the kind of weekend that makes my toughest ministry challenges look like a Sunday afternoon in the park. So it’s poignant, like I say, and touching, when you get to verse 11.

After all this danger and disgrace—mobs nearly tearing him apart, public trials, and near-floggings—Paul’s locked for the night in the Centurion’s barracks, waiting to learn what will come of him. And in verse 11 we read: “That night the Lord stood near Paul and said, ‘Take courage! As you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome.’”

I call it poignant because if ever a follower of Jesus needed encouragement from the Lord, surely it was Paul that night. And the way the verse is worded, it sounds like he received a personal visitation from Jesus himself (The Lord stood by him...), breathing courage into his harried spirit. Of course, part of Jesus’ message for Paul is that there was more to come (eventually he will preach the Gospel in Rome itself), trials in which courage will be especially hard to come by. But in this moment at least, with dangers behind him and dangers ahead, Jesus is simply standing by his friend and imparting to him the supernatural courage that only he can.

May we also know Jesus standing by us, today, in those ministry challenges we face where courage is most needed but hardest to come by.

A High Calling, a devotional thought

There’s a line in Acts 20:26-27 that’s pretty sobering for a minister of the Gospel, like me. Paul is delivering a farewell address to the church in Ephesus, where he had served previously for some three years, “serving the Lord with great humility and with tears” (v. 19). He reminds them of his ministry among them, and then he says: “I declare that I am innocent of anyone’s blood ... because I did not hesitate to proclaim to you the whole will of God.”

The implication here is worth all kinds of careful reflection. On the one hand, if Paul were to have held back in his teaching, on this or that matter, let’s say, because maybe he thought it wouldn’t be well-received, or might step on toes, or what have you, then, apparently, he would be responsible—guilty of their blood—for whatever problems they faced down the road because they did not know God’s will, of God’s way, when they should have. On the other hand, because he did preach the whole Gospel, even the difficult parts that wouldn’t have won him any popularity contests, Paul can leave his ministry at Ephesus with a clear conscience.

Teaching, preaching and serving as a pastor is a great privilege, to be sure, but it is also a huge responsibility.  And if Acts 20:26 is any indication, those who dare to take up this responsibility will give an account, in the end, of how faithfully we discharged our duty to proclaim the whole counsel of God.  May the Lord give much wisdom and even more grace.

Out of the Comfort Zone, a devotional thought

In Acts 9:43 we’re told that while Peter was on an itinerant ministry tour, he stayed for “many days” in Joppa with a tanner (i.e. someone who tanned hides and prepared them into leather), a tanner named Simon. This is just an offhand line, but it’s really interesting to me, because a tanner, of course, handled animal carcasses (which is where the hides came from), and according to Jewish Law at the time, anyone who handled a dead body was unclean; and so culturally, and traditionally, being a tanner was considered an unclean profession. We know from 10:14 that Peter is quite particular about Jewish cleanliness laws (nothing unclean has ever passed his lips, he says), and yet here we see him lodging at the home of an unclean tanner, of all people. God, of course, is about to explode his whole notion of cleanliness and uncleanness, by sending (gasp) some non-Jewish Gentiles to him, requesting an audience, but in a way, this has already begun when he came under Simon the Tanner’s roof. God, it turns out, does not share our concerns when it comes to keeping ourselves safely in our comfort zones, is my point. As uncomfortable as it may have made Peter to be surrounded by so much “ritual uncleanness” (according to Jewish tradition), this is precisely where serving God has brought him, his own hang ups about human defined comfort zones be damned. Where might we find ourselves serving God, if we shared the same indifference about our comfort zones, I wonder?

Learning from the Past, a devotional thought

In Mark 8:1-10 we have the story of the "Feeding of the Four Thousand." It's always made me wonder, this story, because this is the second time Jesus has performed this specific sign in Mark's Gospel. Back in 6:30-44 he miraculously fed 5000 people with 5 loaves and 2 fish; and then in 8:1-10, there's a hungry crowd of 4000; and the thing that gets me, is how the disciples are just as clueless this time as they were the first time. I mean: he tells them he wants to feed the crowd, and they say almost the exact same thing they said back in Chapter 6: where will we get enough bread for everyone? They were there in Chapter 6, when 5 loaves and 2 small fish fed 5000, and yet here, only a couple chapter's latter, they're still scratching their heads: "Gee, Jesus, how are you gonna get us out of this one?"

It's funny, right after this miracle, the Pharisees come to him, asking for a miraculous sign from heaven, and all Mark says is: "Jesus groaned deeply in his spirit" (the Greek word there is: "aarrrrghhhh!"). No wonder, though, the demand for a sign is so troubling to him: he's already done two, back to back, and no one got it, not even his disciples. Would one more miraculous sign really make the difference?

 Of course, when I'm totally honest, I have to admit that I'm as slow to learn, sometimes, as those disciples are. After all, I've seen him do some pretty amazing things in my life, in the past, and still sometimes when it looks like only an amazing things is gonna get me out of whatever it is I'm facing today, still, I scratch my head and say: "Gee, Jesus, how are you going to get us out of this one?" May God remind you and I today, in a deep profound way, of the past wonders he's worked in our lives, and may that remembrance be a great source of strength for whatever you or I need to face today.

Here and Now, a devotional thought

In Mark 6:1-29, Jesus sends his disciples out to preach the Message of the Kingdom, and he gives them these directions as their marching orders: "Take nothing for the journey except your staff, no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. Wear sandals but not an extra tunic ..." I can't help but notice how these travel arrangements would have required his followers to, on the one hand, depend entirely on the provision of God in the moment; and on the other hand, to stay fully in the here and now.

The extra tunic would be handy after the first one wears out. The bag of money would be useful if and when the next meal isn't quick to come along. And so on.

 The idea here is, the Message of the Kingdom is so urgent, so pressing, that any preoccupation with "tomorrow's necessities" shouldn't and can't distract them from this work in the here and now. (This actually puts Jesus teaching in Matthew 6 about not worrying for tomorrow into sharp relief: could the "worry about tomorrow" be the stuff that distracts us from the urgency of doing Kingdom work today?)

It's tempting, maybe, to dismiss Jesus's directions in Mark 6 with a "that was then, this is now" kind of of nonchalance, but it occurs to me that sending them out without money in the bag in that historical era, when 3 square meals were even harder to come by than they are now, would have sounded just as radical then as it does today. It gets me thinking about the "provisions for tomorrow" that I so often trust in, and the way these things may in fact be distracting me from the good work Jesus has called me to do today. And it gets me praying that God will keep my heart focused on what is most needful in the here and now, as I do my part to proclaim the message of the Kingdom.

Miracle of Miracles, a devotional thought

Mark gives us three powerful healing miracles back to back in Mark Chapter 5. Jesus exorcises a legion of demons from the man living out in the Gerasene cemetery; then (unbeknownst to him) he heals a woman who has been suffering 12 years from constant hemorrhaging, and then he resuscitates a dead girl, the daughter of the head of the local synagogue.

It's interesting what stands out when you stop to consider what each of these stories share in common. Because the Gerasene demoniac is a) a non-Jew, living b) in the cemetery, and c) among the swine-herds, all of which would have made him "unclean" according to the Jewish customs of the time. Likewise, the bleeding woman would have been considered ritually unclean by any 1sty Century Jew who knew the Book of Leviticus well. So too the dead girl-- for a Jew, contact with a dead body also led to ritual uncleanness. In one short Chapter we come across pigs and pagans, disease and demons, blood and bodies. It's hard to imagine a less-clean travel itinerary, and yet Jesus--the holy, pure, Son of God--moves calmly, assuredly and altogether unperturbedly amid it all.

It strikes me that his Kingdom of God ministry issues a deep challenge to the notions of holiness and unholiness, cleanness and uncleanness, purity and impurity that were woven deep down into the religious fabric of his world. And it gets me wondering-- what deep-seeded notions of "cleanness" and "uncleanness" are at work in my own heart, determining who I have contact with and who I don't, who I will embrace and who I won't, and is his Kingdom challenge as much for me as it was for "them" back then?

What's in a Name, a devotional thought

I love the description of Jesus "naming" his disciples in Mark 3:16-17. It says that after he chose the 12, he gave Simon the name "Peter" (Peter is Greek for "the Rock") and he gave James and John the name "The Sons of Thunder."

I've always sort of read this in a sombre way, that Jesus is putting his finger on something truer-than-true about these men. And there's probably something to that, but this morning it struck me how playful the giving of "nicknames" actually is. In the Robin Hood legend, one of the running gags is how Robin Hood renames all the outlaws who join him (Little John was John Little before he met Robin). Or remember how Mike Myers kept adding "-meister" and other such playful suffixes to peoples names in Wayne's World? We just watched Big Hero 6, and in that movie, it's Fred, the not-a-care-in-the-world-party-guy who "gives everyone their nicknames." Oh yeah, and in the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, it's Michelangelo (the party dude) who assumes the responsibility of giving all the bad-guys their super-villain handles.

No: Jesus is not like Mike Myers or Michelangelo or Robin Hood, except in this: when his followers come to him they find themselves creatively, even playfully, renamed. In my mind's eye I could almost see the twinkle in the eye as Jesus looked at Peter and said, "from now on we'll call you The Rock." And I can only speculate what earned James and John the handle "Sons of Thunder!" (but it's pretty rewarding speculation). Two intermingled thoughts linger with me here: 1) in coming to Jesus something deep and true and essential about who we really are gets drawn out of us, and this is reflected in the renaming of people we see him doing in the Gospels; but 2) there is something profoundly good-natured and joyful and even playful in the way Jesus goes about drawing this out of us.