Jesus and His Bible, Epilogue

Love Is At the Center

I started this study genuinely curious to see how Jesus used his familiarity with his Scriptures, what authors/books he quoted, when he quoted them, and what the contexts of the quotations revealed about his passions in his ministry.  I leaned entirely on the NASB’s cross references in the gospel of Mark, and I used present-day Jewish commentators on the quoted scriptures to get at least a flavor of what Jesus’s community might have understood them to mean. It has been so much fun to do this work.

Jesus quoted from the Law (the first five “books of Moses”) on nine occasions. What he emphasized from the Law were the following themes:

God is present to us at all times

What we do with our own and with others’ bodies matters to God and has profound effects on us; we are eternally present to God

We need to love God wholeheartedly

We need to love our neighbor, showing generosity and compassion to all other human beings

We need to put human need above the letter of the law

He also took his hearers to task for their failure to read the Law with open hearts that saw the love at the heart of all things. “What does the Law say?” he asked; “Have you not read…”; “What did Moses command you?” “Why do you put your tradition above what God has said?” In his claim to be Lord of the Sabbath, Jesus implicitly took precedence over the letter of the Law, even while paying tribute to its heart of love for God and neighbor.  

Jesus quoted from the Prophets on ten occasions. He clearly associated himself with Isaiah and Ezekiel in being a prophet, particularly one who preached to willfully deaf and blind audiences. He expected to be misunderstood and dismissed. His association with Ezekiel, who famously acted parables of his prophecies, teaches us to see Jesus’s actions as acted-out parables. Specifically, what he emphasized by quoting from the Prophets were the following themes:

God does not want ritual obedience when the heart has strayed

God does not want ritual obedience from those who go on to do whatever they want

God wants repentance because the present actions will lead to violence, exile, and ruin

God judges the nation for continually missing the mark and rejecting God’s messengers

God wants the place of worship to be inclusive and free from commerce

God will do what is necessary to cleanse the people in order to effect reconciliation with them

Jesus clearly identified himself with the prophets, calling his people to repent, to be contrite, humble, and reverent before God, so that God might comfort them and care for them like a mother. People are judged by their lack of repentance, their refusal to admit need, their stubbornness in wanting their own way rather than God’s way.

Jesus quoted from the Writings, specifically the Psalms and Daniel on five occasions. As he neared the end of his life and ministry, his mind turned to the apocalyptic visions of Daniel, This turn to apocalypse coincides with the intensity of his experience of moving toward death. At his trial, he quoted Daniel and Psalm 110 to assert his messiahship. As he was dying on his cross, he Identified himself with David, poignantly quoting  the opening of Psalm 22; he invoked thereby the whole of that psalm which moves from his sense of abandonment to his assertion of confidence in God.

Jesus took from his familiarity with his scriptures the understanding that love was and is at the heart of the Law and the Prophets and the Writings. Violations of love toward God and neighbor must be recognized and repented of; if people insist on putting other things ahead of this one, they are moving toward judgment and misery. God will do all God can to bring people into reconciliation with God and with each other. Let those who have ears, hear.

 

Jesus and His Bible, Part 17

 Reconciliation and God’s Kingdom

Like the Prophets of his Testament, Jesus first called out the disobedience of Israel and their breaking of covenant with God. But also like the Prophets, Jesus then envisioned a future of reconciliation. Israel will serve him, and all exiles will come home, and their hearts will be devoted to loving God, as is evident in the allusion here in Mark 13:27 to Deuteronomy 30:4. In the context of that verse, God warns Israel that if they disobey and break covenant, he will scatter them among the nations. But if they return to the Lord and obey him with their whole heart and soul, then the Lord will restore them from captivity.

“If your outcasts are at the ends of the earth, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there He will bring you back.” They will return to the land God has given them, and God will “circumcise your hearts to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, in order that you may live” (Deut. 30:4).

Like other prophets, Jesus also invoked a vision of a humanity reconciled in its entirety to God. He alludes also to the prophet Zachariah, who, during the reign of Darius the Mede, sees an angel going to measure Jerusalem, and the angel says that God will be the glory in the midst of Jerusalem, that it will not need walls to protect it, because God will be a wall of fire around her. God says to Israel to return home.

 “Flee from the land of the north, for I have dispersed you as the four winds of the heavens.” Zechariah goes on to say that God is coming to dwell in the midst of Zion and “many nations will join themselves to the Lord in that day and will become my people” (Zach. 2:6). This carries forward the vision of a humanity reconciled to God.

Jesus placed his vision in the tradition of the Prophets by invoking Isaiah and Zechariah. He brings in the books of Moses by quoting Deuteronomy (the last to be written down, often dated to the Babylonian exile). He also quoted from the book of Daniel, a book of conundrums, with its pinpoint accuracy about the history of the Middle East up to the death of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, and its far flung predictions in the ending chapters that no one has yet seen fulfilled.  

Jesus referenced by these quotations the covenant of obedience between Israel and God, the breaking of which led to Israel’s exile and after their return to Jerusalem, the collusion of some of Israel with the Greek invaders to the profanation of their Temple. He also spoke of God’s judgment on the occupying powers. He stated that the Israel of his own time was again breaking the covenant, some colluding with the invaders, that they would therefore be dispersed and exiled, and that their own Temple would be profaned and destroyed. He warned his followers that because of their suffering, they would be vulnerable to claims by false messiahs, but reminded them that the work before them will still be to spread the good news of God’s kingdom and God’s Messiah Jesus while enduring unto death.

He asserted as well that the coming of the Son of Humanity will put an end to nations and armies (which was opposite to what Israel hoped for) and that His kingdom will include all humanity. We hope to see this literally true, but we remember as well that Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is among/within you.” This helps define our relationship to nations and armies in our present day. Our first loyalty is always to the Kingdom of God and the King God has chosen, namely Jesus.

Series on Meeting Jesus, part 5

5) Jesus Shows Us the Path to Life

First-hand religion is what the Bible and Christian teaching point to, not second-hand or traditional. Jesus affirms this by teaching that the essence of the narrow way is “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength”; death is the path to life.

We can see this immediacy of relationship from the Old Testament in the stories of people talking with God: Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, Cain, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, David, Solomon, Samuel, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, and so on.  These stories include direct relationship with God, the immediacy of a present God, not a God hidden behind or within creation or tradition.

Yet even tradition was set up to personalize relationship with God.  The three big stories of the Bible below are those identified by Marcus Borg in Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time.  He mentions there are others, such as illness to healing, becoming a disciple, and more.

Slavery to Freedom story

Deut 6:4-9 Hear, O Israel, The Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.  These words, which I command you this day, shall be in your heart, and you will teach them to your children, talk of them in your house and on the road, when you lie down and when you rise up, wear them on your hand and on your forehead, write them on your doorposts and on your gates.

Re Passover: And you will show your son in that day, saying, This is done because of what the Lord did to me in bringing me out of Egypt.

Deut. 6: 20-23 And if your son asks you, What is the meaning of the rituals, rules, and laws God gave us? you tell him: We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. Before our eyes the Lord sent miraculous signs and wonders—great and terrible—upon Egypt and Pharaoh and his whole household.  But God brought us out from there to bring us in and give us the land God promised to our ancestors.  The Lord commanded us to obey these commands and to reverence the Lord our God so that we might always prosper and be kept alive, as is the case today.  And if we are careful to obey these commands before the Lord our God, who commanded us to do these things, that will be our righteousness.

Deut. 26:5-9 Then you shall declare before the Lord your God: My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous. But the Egyptians mistreated us and made us suffer, putting us to hard labor. Then we cried out to the Lord, the God of our ancestors, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our misery, toil and oppression. So the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terrors and with miraculous signs and wonders. God brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey, and now I bring the firstfruits of the soil that you, O Lord, have given me.

Jeremiah 31:31-34 Behold, the days come, says the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, with the house of Judah, not the same as the covenant I made with their ancestors I brought out of Egypt, leading them by the hand, which covenant they broke, though I was a husband to them; but this shall be the covenant I will make with the house of Israel; I will put my law in their guts, I will write it on their hearts, and they shall no longer teach their neighbors, saying “Know the Lord” for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more.

Do you have a part of your spiritual journey that relates to being freed from enslavement and brought into the promised land? Can you say these things aloud and put into the place of these nations the story of how God has brought you and your community out of slavery, whether literal or figurative, and into freedom? Try this and perhaps you will want to share the story with someone else.

Exile and Return Home story

Isaiah 40

Be comforted, my people, speak compassionately to Jerusalem; tell her that the battle is over, her sins are pardoned, for she has received double purification for her sins. The voice cries in the wilderness, prepare the way for the Lord, make a straight highway in the desert for our God.  Raise the valleys, level the mountains, straighten the winding, smooth out the rough.  God will reveal God’s glory, and all humanity shall see it at once.  This is what the Lord says.

Behold your God; The Lord comes with strength to rule, bringing along wages and reward. The Lord shall feed his flock like a shepherd, gathering the lambs up and carrying them up close, and gently leading the pregnant ones.

What do you say, Jacob; what are you speaking, Israel?  You say, My way is concealed from the Lord, and God passes by my judgment. Do you not know, have you not heard that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth never faints, never tires. No one can grasp God’s wisdom and understanding of human beings.  God gives energy to the faint, strength to the weak. Even young folks are faint and weary, and fall to the ground, but those who expect, who look for the Lord shall renew strength, soar with wings like eagles, run without wearying, walk without fainting.

Isaiah 42:16 I will bring the blind by a way they do not know; I will lead them in unfamiliar paths; I will make darkness light for them and straighten out what is crooked.  I will do these things, and I will not forsake them.

Isaiah 43: 1-20 This is what the Lord says, the Lord who created you, Jacob, and who shaped you, Israel. Fear not, for I have paid your ransom, I have called you by your name; you are mine. When you pass through deep water, I will be with you; rivers will not sweep you away; fire shall not burn you, nor shall flame kindle on you.  For I am the Lord your God, the Holy one of Israel, your Saviour…Fear not; for I am with you; I will bring your children from the east and west, the north and south; I will say, Bring my sons from far and my daughters from the ends of the earth. You have not called upon me, Jacob, and you, Israel, have been weary of me; you have not worshiped me with offerings and sacrifices; instead you have made me part of your sins and wearied me with your iniquities.  I, even I, am the one who blots out your transgressions, your rebellions, for my own sake; for my own sake I will not remember your sins. Remember me; let us converse; tell me your story and explain your side of things.

Isaiah 40:20-21 Leave Babylon, flee from the Chaldeans, and sing this song, tell this story even to the ends of the earth: The Lord has redeemed, has ransomed Jacob, and has led them through deserts where they did not thirst because water sprang from the rocks for them.

Isaiah 51:11 Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; everlasting joy shall be upon their head; they shall have gladness and joy; sorrow and mourning will flee away. 

Do you have a part of your life that resonates with the exile and return home story? Can you witness to the faithfulness of God described above to rescue you from being strangers in a foreign land, whether literal or figurative, and bring you and your community back home? If so, you might consider sharing your story with someone else.

Sacrifice and Redemption story

This story describes human beings as marked by guilt, shame, experiential distance from God, and then through the intervention of Jesus’s death and resurrection, receiving forgiveness, grace, acceptance. The key is turning toward God and accepting what God has done independent of our own efforts to reconcile with us.

Psalm 51 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, and thee only have I sinned. Wash me, and I will be clean, purer than snow.  Create in me a clean heart, O God…

Matt 9:13, 12:7 Why does your Master eat with publicans and sinners?  Jesus heard this and said to them, Those who are well do not need a doctor, but those who are sick do.  Go and learn what it means when God says, I will have mercy and not sacrifice; for I came to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.

Why do your disciples break the Sabbath law? Jesus said, But if you had known what this means—I will have mercy and not sacrifice—you would not have condemned the guiltless.

Eph 5:2 Walk in love, as Christ also has loved us, and has given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God.

Heb 7:27, 9:26, 10:12 Jesus was made the guarantee of a better testament…holy, guiltless, undefiled, separated from sinners, made higher than the heavens, who offered himself up once for all time.

Now he has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment; so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.

But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God…For by one offering he has perfected for ever those that are consecrated to God.

John 3:16, 17 For God so loved the world that God gave the only begotten Son, that all who believe in him will not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.

Mark 10:45, Matthew 20:28

Whoever wants to be highly ranked among you shall wait on tables, and whoever wants to be the boss shall serve everyone.  For even the Son of man came not to receive service, but to do service, to give his life to ransom many.

Do you have part of your life that resonates with the sacrifice and redemption story? Have you turned around from alienation and estrangement from God, guilt, and shame to an awareness of God’s redemptive action on your behalf, grace, and acceptance?  If so, perhaps you will want to share this with another person.

Jesus, Jonah, and Authenticity

Preached at Homedale Friends Community Church

May 6, 2012

Jonah has to have been the least favorite prophet for Jewish folks who every day thanked God they were not Gentiles.  Jonah shows up running from God’s call to go to Assyria, to the city of Nineveh, to preach to non-Jews.  His efforts to avoid God’s call land him in cold water and then in the belly of a fish.  He personally repents, and God gives him another chance to obey.  When he does, the people of Nineveh repent so thoroughly that even children and animals wear sackcloth and ashes.  Jonah waits for God to destroy Nineveh, and instead God forgives them, to Jonah’s angry dismay.  So when Jesus brings up the sign of Jonah, he is not only talking about disappearing for three days and coming back  (his coming death and resurrection) but also about taking the possibility of reconciling with God to the enemies of the Jews, the Romans, and to other Gentiles as well, despicable as they are.  No wonder these references made people mad.  They understood he was saying that God loves more people than the Jews.

When I started thinking about Jesus referring to Jonah, the above was what I thought would be the main idea. However, each time Jesus mentions Jonah, he does so in the context of clarifying what is really important to God.  These clarifications take five main directions.

Here are the passages:

Then some Pharisees and teachers of the Law say, “Teacher, we want to see you perform a miracle.”

“How evil and apostate, how faithless to God are the people of this day!” Jesus exclaims.  “You ask me for a miracle? No! The only miracle you will be given is the miracle of the prophet Jonah. In the same way that Jonah spent three days and nights in the big fish, so will the Son of Man spend three days and nights in the depths of the earth. On the Judgment Day the people of Nineveh will stand up and accuse you, because they turned from their sins when they heard Jonah preach, and I tell you that there is something here greater than Jonah!” (Matthew 12)

Jesus says, “You can foretell the weather from the sunset or sunrise, but you cannot interpret the signs concerning these times. How evil and godless are the people of this day! You ask me for a miracle? No! The only miracle you will be given is the miracle of Jonah.” (Matthew 16)

Jesus says:

“How evil are the people of this day! They ask for a miracle, but none will be given them except the miracle of Jonah. In the same way that the prophet Jonah was a sign for the people of Nineveh, so the son of Man will be a sign for the people of this day. … On the Judgment Day the people of Nineveh will stand up and accuse you because they turned from their sins when they heard Jonah preach; and I assure you that there is something here greater than Jonah!” (Luke 11)

Since each passage occurs in its own context, I looked for threads of meaning that tied the contexts together.  Here are those threads.

First, the context teaches us that God cares more about humans and their needs than about the Law.

Several Old Testament prophets condemned Israel to God’s judgment specifically for breaking the laws about Sabbath.  So you can imagine that folks who carefully followed the law like the Pharisees are shocked when Jesus’s disciples “harvest” and eat some grain from fields as they walk along on the Sabbath, and when Jesus heals a man with a paralyzed arm on the Sabbath. These actions and Jesus’s words make the Pharisees so angry they plot to kill him. Jesus reprimands those with a legalistic view of the Sabbath by reminding them of what Hosea the prophet said: God desires goodness, kindness, faithfulness, not sacrifices.  This means that the actions proceeding from a good, kind, faithful heart are what God has as a priority.  Jesus announces to the legalistic folks that even they would pull a sheep out of a pit on the Sabbath, and that doing good to humans on that day is also important and perfectly lawful.  He asserts that he himself, “the Son of Man,” is Lord of the Sabbath. 

Second, Jesus shows that we cannot limit God’s generosity and grace to those who are like us, and that if we limit these for others, we limit them for ourselves.

Jesus heals a man whom an evil spirit has made unable to see or speak.  The Pharisees attribute this miracle-working power to the devil rather than to God.  Jesus says that this is first impossible, and second unforgiveable.  Why is it unforgiveable?  Because when the Pharisees refuse to welcome the healing and freeing power of God for others, they set themselves outside it as well.  I can’t be forgiven if I’m not willing for God to forgive others; I can’t be healed if I’m not willing for God to heal others; I can’t be the one God chooses to live in if I won’t allow God to live in others, also. And further, God does all the good we see—every good and perfect gift comes from God.  If the Pharisees had known God, they would have known this truth. When Jesus teaches about prayer, he gives his followers a model prayer and encourages them to persist in praying because God is good and gives good gifts.

Third, Jesus goes on to say that there is no sitting by and evaluating. 

Those who meet him have two choices—to gather close like fish in a net, or like folks welcomed into a home, or to run away in terror, to scatter. He also points out that we can tell what is in people’s hearts by what they say; perhaps this is like the psychological tendency to project on others what is actually true (and what we dislike) about ourselves. There is no way to stop this process except to admit the nature of our own hearts and open them for God to change. The gospel of John puts it like this:  this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world and people prefer the darkness because they think it hides their evil deeds.  C.S. Lewis puts it this way: God is the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from (Mere Christianity).

Fourth, Jesus warns his listeners to be authentic and make sure the light in them isn’t darkness.

He makes that really specific by accusing the Pharisees of hypocrisy—cleaning up their facades while carrying around greed and wickedness; tithing spices while neglecting justice and the love of God; loving status while being dead inside; loading up others with burdens while offering no help to carry them; building monuments for the prophets while planning to kill Jesus.

Jesus warns his followers about the yeast of Pharisees and Sadducees—their teaching and their hypocrisy.  Their teaching is that only by careful obedience to the Law can a person be redeemed, and their hypocrisy is that they teach this while allowing themselves loopholes and justifying their disobediences. God doesn’t like this:  God cares more about repenting for one’s own disobedience and being merciful to others, giving them room for God to work on them without attributing the work of God’s Holy Spirit in them to the devil.

Fifth, Jesus teaches that obedience is the identifying characteristic of the family of God.

When Jesus turns around and hears that his mother and brothers have come to see him, he spreads his arms wide to include all his followers and says, “All who do what God wants them to do are my family.” When a woman blesses Jesus’s mother, Jesus in reply blesses those who hear and obey God.

What might keep people from obeying God? The story of the sower and the four kinds of soil illustrates how having hard hearts, being unwilling to suffer, or worrying about money prevents people from hearing and obeying the good news.  But some accept it, let it sink into their hearts and grow, and bring forth the good, kind, faithful actions that show their hearts have changed into good, kind, faithful hearts. 

Religious hypocrisy separates people from knowing God; authenticity makes knowing God possible.  How can we become more authentic? The way to authenticity is honesty about our neediness before God and obedience to the voice of God’s Holy Spirit.

• We can put human needs ahead of rules.
• We have to keep God’s justice for ourselves and distribute God’s mercy on others.
• We have to take our light out from under the barrel of politics and legalism and obey the mandate to be a light to the world.

Jesus says that the answer to our fears is to gather with him, to press closer to him, and not to split up and run for it.  Our stance toward those in need around us is to heal, to give food, to set them free from the evil one.  Our stance toward ourselves is to focus on the inside of the cup, not the outside, and be honest about what’s there. 

We are called to listen to God and obey, just as Jesus did.  Jesus promised us the Holy Spirit, who is voice of God to us, guiding us truly and guiding us closer to truth.  Jesus himself is the Truth.  Like Jesus, we point to a God who cares that all repent and be redeemed through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  This frees us to live at peace with God, reconciled with God, able to look into God’s eyes and see the love there, and to share that reconciliation with others.