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 11

 The Rejected Cornerstone

Immediately following the parable of the faithless vine-growers, Jesus carried the confrontation into the religious leaders’ camp.  He asked them: “Have you not even read this scripture: ‘The stone which the builders rejected, this became the chief corner-stone; this came about from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?” (Mark 12:10). 

Let’s not ignore the implications of how Jesus introduced his quotation.  “Have you not even read this scripture?” Not conciliatory in the least.  And you can tell this is so by their reaction, which is to move toward assaulting him, only restrained by their fear of the crowd. I wonder how often today God’s Holy Spirit says to each of us, “Have you not even read this scripture?” Do we respond with defensiveness or do we sit down to listen? I remember when the Spirit brought these verses into my heart and said, “Have you not even read these scriptures?” And I had not actually let them sink in to form the foundation of my faith until that point.

Hebrews 10:1 The Law foreshadowed good things to come but could not bring them about.

Ephesians 2:15 Christ abolished in his flesh the law. 

Romans 7:4-6 We are dead to the Law by the body of Christ; we are delivered from the Law.

Romans 7:25-8:2 The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set us free from the law of sin and death.

Hebrews 7:18-19 The earlier commandment has been annulled and replaced by a better hope in Christ as our high priest, through whom we draw near to God.

Galatians 2:16-21 We are justified by the faith of Christ, we believe in the character and work of Jesus Christ; we are dead to the Law so that we may live to God; we are crucified with Christ, and now Christ lives in us and we live by the faith of Christ who loved us and gave himself for us. We do not annul or reject the grace of God by saying that righteousness comes through the Law. 

So Jesus’s question to religious people of his day is still resonant today.

The passage Jesus quotes is from Psalm 118. This Psalm celebrates the everlasting kindness of God. The psalmist says that he called to God and God answered, that the Lord is for him, and that with the Lord’s name he cut down all the nations. “You pushed me hard to knock me down but the Lord helped me. My strength and my might is Yah, and he has become my rescue.” He claims the Lord as his rescuer. Then comes the passage that Jesus quotes: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. From the Lord did this come about—it is wondrous in our eyes. (Psalm 118:22-23).  The psalmist then petitions the Lord for rescue and prosperity and then this: “Bind the festive offering with ropes all the way to the horns of the altar.”

By quoting this passage, Jesus identified himself with the psalmist as one who fears the Lord. He asserted that God has answered his call, that God is for him, that God is his strength and might. Yet at the same time, the faint echo of the coming offering/sacrifice is hinted at as well.  

Jesus also calls his critics to account—do they fear the Lord? Can they point to where God has answered their call?  Are they rejecting the cornerstone, the stone from which the whole building is measured out and built? 

Jesus and His Bible, Part 7

(Note: I didn't like how I organized this originally, so I've reorganized it and added a bit.)

Jesus and his disciples went into Judea, which is closer to Jerusalem. There he met Pharisees who had a question they hoped would trap Jesus into revealing that he was not adhering to the Jewish law. This question about marriage and divorce is a big question for human relationships, and several inferences have been drawn from it that are in their turn legalistic and inhumane. This is the same Jesus who came not to condemn but to save, and who came to give abundant life, and who promised the Spirit of truth who would guide into truth, and that truth would set us free.

Specifically, Pharisees asked whether it lawful for a man to divorce a wife. Jesus met this with another question: “What did Moses command you?” 

The  marriage laws in Deuteronomy require some context. The Jewish Study Bible summarizes the cultural setting thus: “In the ancient Near East, marriage was a contractual relationship. A woman, regarded in terms of her relation to her father or her husband, could not act independently. There was little conception of the woman as a free agent, either in legal or sexual terms” (Deut. 22, 416, n.). Out of this context, the JSB editors see the Jewish law moving the woman toward agency and moral responsibility (p. 417, n. on verse 22). Jesus followed that direction right into equality, as we shall see.

The law quoted by the Pharisees comes out of Deuteronomy 24:1-4. “If a man takes a wife and she loses favor with him because he finds some indecency or uncleanness in her, he may write her a certificate of divorce and send her away.” This “indecency” could be something morally reprehensible, a physical defect, or lack of sexual satisfaction for the male (Alter, Moses, 698, n.).  Deuteronomy goes on: “If another man marries her, and he also turns against her and writes her a certificate of divorce or if he dies, the first husband absolutely must not take her back as his wife.”

The stipulation of a written certificate of divorce gives the woman a legal status permitting her to remarry. (This is an important distinction for her in a polygamous society.) Additionally, there is some evidence from the 5th century BCE that wives could initiate divorce. Exodus 21:10 specifies that a slave wife is entitled to food, clothing, and conjugal rights; withholding these sets her free from the marriage. Rabbis Suffice it to say that the legal context for marriage and divorce was complicated in Jesus’s time.

The Pharisees have bypassed the male-oriented commands about a husband who discovers his wife is either not a virgin when they marry or is unfaithful while married. In both cases, they can have her stoned to death. I speculate that whether or not the Pharisees were in agreement with the law, actually putting someone to death was tricky under Roman occupation. Another possibility is that stoning to death  for sexual sins had fallen out of favor. We know Joseph decided not to make a public spectacle out of Mary’s unexpected pregnancy, going on to marry her only when an angel said she was pregnant by the spirit of God. (Later, Pharisees would taunt Jesus by saying, “We know who our father is.” )

I cannot ignore Jesus’s teaching elsewhere that adultery takes place in the heart before it ever takes place in the bed. Underlying this teaching here in Mark is the understanding that wayward desire is common, and is no excuse for hardening one’s heart towards a spouse.

We have one account of what Jesus did when confronted with a stoning sentence for a woman taken in adultery. (See John 8.) He did not comment on stoning to death per se, but he did stipulate that only those without sin could throw stones, with the result that no one threw any. And Jesus himself, without sin, did not throw any either. 

The Thorny Question about Divorce, Installment 2

Jesus said that Moses allowed divorce because of “your hardness of heart. But from the beginning, God ‘made them male and female. For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and the two shall become one flesh.’ What therefore God has joined together, let no human separate” (Mark 10:6-9).

Jesus based his answer, not on the law, but on the creation narrative.  “And God created humanity in God’s own image; male and female, God created them” (Genesis 1:27). “In the day when God created humanity, God created them in the likeness of God, male and female, and God blessed them and named them Adam (Human) in the day when they were created” (Gen, 5:2). “For this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). 

First, Jesus singles out for notice that God made humanity in God’s image, in the likeness of God, and that included maleness and femaleness. We can also see from other scripture as well that God exhibits both masculinity and femininity in God’s self , so it should not surprise us to see both in our own selves. So while some see this as confirming binary sexual divisions in humanity, it is also possible to see it as affirming that each person, bearing the image of God, includes masculinity and femininity as part of the whole self.  We ought not to try to separate ourselves from our own true identities; we ought to acknowledge and make use of our own interior diversity, as God does.

Second, the husband or the wife can file for divorce in Jesus’s hypothetical scenario. “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery” (Mark 10: 11-12). This is a fundamentally egalitarian teaching. It applies not only to equality between men and women but within each individual equal respect for their masculine and feminine aspects. 

Second, he comments on what “one flesh” means, namely, a unity that cannot be broken by a certificate of divorce.  So he communicates a sense that there is a holy truth in the unity of the sexual act—a truth that goes beyond body to soul and spirit as well. The whole of the human being is involved with another human being. Try as we will, that unity cannot be undone, that involvement cannot be erased. I’ll point to the difficult passage from Paul who says, “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? …Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a harlot is one body with her? For He says, ‘The two will become one flesh’” (1 Cor. 6:15-16).  This teaches us that what we do with our bodies is not simply casual or fleeting; in fact, traces of our actions remain with us in our bodies as well as in our spirits. No one is free from these consequences. 

However, in the context of Genesis 2:24, this statement of unity is immediately followed by the story of the temptation and fall, in which each person is treated as an individual, and in which one person blames another person for his own choice. This shows a limit to the degree to which “one flesh” applies to a relationship in which there are two persons. Each is still responsible as an individual to God.

Jesus went on to teach that second marriages while the first spouse is still alive, even after a legal divorce, is committing adultery. This can be seen as logically following on from the premise of union as one flesh that cannot be undone. However, it is important to understand the context in which a divorce for any cause—any cause—was popular at his time. Jesus spoke into that context. (See the parallel passage in Matthew 19, where the question was: “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause at all?”) Jesus confronts his hearers with the idea that a divorce for trivial causes is no divorce at all. I think he also speaks obliquely against the practice of polygamy as well, despite its prevalence in Israel’s history.

Notably, he never said that divorce because of “hardness of heart” cannot happen. He did not set aside the Mosaic requirements that a husband provide food, clothing, and companionship to a wife.  His taught only that even those who experience a hard-hearted spouse cannot erase the fact of the union they have had with each other. I expect that anyone reading this who has been divorced will agree that a divorce does not magically erase that relationship.

If you have more questions about the topic of divorce, and who doesn’t, please take a look at Dr. David Instone-Brewer’s work on it. Here’s a place to start.

https://www.baylor.edu/ifl/christianreflection/MarriageArticleInstoneBrewer.pdf

Jesus and His Bible Part 4

 Jesus and Purity

The next time in Mark that Jesus quotes his Testament is in Chapter 7.  In the intervening story, Jesus has done the following:

• Told more parables about the Kingdom of God—the seed growing, the mustard seed growing;
• Stilled the storm on the sea;
• Freed the Gerasene (Gentile) madman from his demons;
• Brought Jairus’s daughter back from death;
• Healed (inadvertently) the woman who had bled for 12 years;
• Met unbelief in his home town; 
• Sent the 12 disciples out in pairs to preach;
• Fed the 5000 men plus women and children with 12 baskets left over
• Walked on the water to his disciples’ boat.

The level of activity is breath-taking to read. In these encounters and events, we see the growing awareness among his followers that he is not a run-of-the-mill itinerant preacher or prophet. They add to their undoubted affection and admiration a streak of fear when he stills the storm and walks on the water.  We also see that his home town is blind to his worth and that the Gentiles want him to go away. Mark’s Jesus inspires awe, and yet desperate people continue to beseech him for help.

 Jesus quoted his Testament in the context of a dispute with Pharisees over ritual purification.  In Mark 7, Pharisees noticed that the disciples ate with unwashed hands. Pharisees asked Jesus why the disciples did not keep the traditions. This  reflected on Jesus as a trustworthy teacher, so they were really asking about his relationship to the Law and ritual.

 Jesus said, “Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men” (Mark 7: 6-7).

This is a reference to Isaiah 29:13:-14: "Then the Lord said, ‘Because this people draw near with their words and honor me with their lips, but they remove their hearts from me, and their reverence for me consists of tradition learned by rote,  therefore behold, I will once again deal marvelously with this people…and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the discernment of their discerning men shall be concealed.’”

The context in Isaiah is a prophesy against Jerusalem, specifically that the city will undergo a military siege, defeat, and a return to dust, accompanied by thunder, earthquake, tempest, and the flame of a consuming fire. Strikingly, God tells Isaiah that this vision will be like a sealed scroll to his audience, a scroll the literate will reject because it is sealed, and the illiterate because they cannot read. It is followed by the pronounced woe to those who act secretively, who consider themselves wiser and more understanding than God, who are like pots thinking themselves equal to their potter.

This chapter in Isaiah ends with a prophecy concerning bringing hearing to the deaf, sight to the blind, gladness to the afflicted, causing the needy to rejoice in the Holy One of Israel. But also ending the ruthless, finishing the scornful, cutting off those intending evil, those who pervert justice with lies and bribes. Christians will see Jesus in these words, which express the hopes of humankind for a better future. 

It is clear where Jesus included those who were preoccupied with ritual purity—they were among the ruthless, the scornful, those willing to bully, lie and cheat for their own ends. 

Jesus went further with his indictment of Pharisees. Jesus said they put traditions ahead of the commandment of God, quoting Moses: “‘Honor your father and your mother’ and ‘he who speaks evil of father or mother, let him be put to death’ but you say ‘If a man says to his father or his mother, anything of mine you might have been helped by is Corban—given to God’—thus invalidating the word of God by your traditions which you have handed down, and you do many such things like that” (Mark 7:9-11).

This commandment to care for parents deals directly with human relationships, calling the young to care for the old. The familiar context is the 10 commandments given to Moses by God on the stone tablets: “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you” (Ex. 20:12, see also Deut. 5:15). It is worth noticing that Jesus quoted only the command. When God says to do something positive, do it regardless of outcome, may be the message.  [Robert Alter notes that “it is hard to square the causal link between honoring parents and longevity with empirical observation, and one probably has to regard this as part of the traditional wisdom of the ancient Near East, the sort of hopeful moral calculus reflected in the book of Proverbs” (Moses, 297, n.).]

Jesus also invoked the flip side of caring for parents. In a list of capital offenses is included the following: “And he who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death”) (Ex. 21:17, see also Lev. 20:9). Robert Alter translates “curses” as “vilifies,” and notes that it connects with treating parents with contempt. (Moses, 303, n.). Jesus condemns the tradition that makes it a good deed to give away “to God” money or goods  that one’s parents need. He makes clear that human need is more important than looking good.

Jesus followed this by an address to the multitude: “Listen to me and understand: there is nothing outside the man which going into him can defile him; but the things which proceed out of the man are what defile him” (Mark 7:15). Jesus directly confronted Jewish dietary laws about what could and could not be eaten. He explained to the disciples that, literally, what a person eats goes into the stomach and is eliminated, causing no impurity.  Mark asserts that this means “he declared all foods clean,” an interpretation confirmed by Peter’s vision on the rooftop detailed in Acts 10. This vision expanded the acceptability of all foods to include the acceptability of all persons, whether Jewish or not. Those of us who yearn for rules and guidelines that will make us acceptable to God are out of luck.

What is defiling before God are the ways we harm each other that derive from evil thoughts, pride, and foolishness. Again Jesus sets to the side the interpretations of the Law and the religious traditions that hinder us from caring for the human needs we encounter.

Jesus and His Bible, Part 2

Jesus and the Sabbath 

In Mark 2: 23-28, Jesus and his disciples were walking through a field on the Sabbath. His disciples plucked some grain and rubbed the chaff off and ate it as they walked.  The Law-abiding Pharisees were shocked at this action, which by their lights was a breaking of the holy Sabbath.  They said, “See here,” a confrontational opening to what turns into a very surprising conversation.

Jesus responded: “Have you never read what David did when he was in need and became hungry, he and his companions: how he entered into the house of God in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the consecrated bread, which is not lawful for anyone to eat except the priests, and he gave it also to those who were with him?” (Mark 2:25-26).  

The historical context is this:  Saul’s jealousy of David’s military successes and fame among the women, sets out to have David killed. Jonathan tells David and sends him away, running for his life.  He comes to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest; tells him the lie that the king has commissioned David with a secret mission, and he and his young men need food  (1 Sam. 21:1) The priest answers that the only food on hand is the consecrated bread; they can have it only if they have kept themselves from women. David says they have, and they get the bread. [Sexual activity was taboo during periods of combat. Alter, Prophets 265, n.] 

It interests me that Jesus referenced Ahimelech’s father Abiathar, and the writer of the history identifies Ahimelech as the priest at this time.  It may have been that both were present, and, for all we know, the son consulted the father. What we can see is that Jesus was not bothering to be word-perfect in referring to this incident, but also that he knew the scriptures well enough to know the names of both father and son. This all by itself suggests that we also can make our emphasis on the meaning of the Old Testament texts, rather than focusing on the letter of the law. 

The laws governing this bread are found in Leviticus 24:5-9: “Bake 12 loaves, place them in 2 rows along with frankincense, which you will offer as a token for the bread, and the bread will be renewed each Sabbath. The priests shall eat it in a holy place.” 

Robert Alter notes that it was common in the ancient Near East to offer bread daily to the deity, but this law limits the offering to once a week. He suggests that this perhaps signifies that they are NOT keeping God alive. This idea is in keeping with other scriptures where God is depicted as saying that God does not need their bulls and sheep for food.  Additionally, it is notable that the bread was stale when priests finally ate it. (Alter, Moses, 248, n.)

Interestingly, Jesus made nothing of the fact that David got the bread by deceit. David  pressures the priest with his “secret mission” from Saul; he also cynically assures the priest that all his young men have kept themselves pure from women because they’d been in combat, which is not true as he is alone. His lies show that he is desperately hungry and will say anything. But Jesus attributed no ill to him. Jesus recognized the imperatives of bodily hunger.  And human need was more important than following the law.

Jesus went on to assert that “the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27).  In the Law, God establishes Sabbath as one of the central identifying and compulsory laws for the children of Israel. Six days for labor, and then everything rests on the seventh day. Jesus took them back to the earliest establishment of Sabbath (Ex. 23:12, Deut. 5:14): it is a time to take a breath (Alter, Moses, 310, n.), to refresh all who labor, from master to slave to beast. Later elucidations of the meaning of Sabbath include God’s resting after creation or the history of Israel’s liberation from slavery, but Jesus did not invoke those in this instance. The simple identification Jesus made asserts that Sabbath was created for the good of humankind.

When Jesus went on to assert that consequently the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath(Mark 2:28), this had to shock the Pharisees. It comes after Jesus says you need to patch old garments with old cloth, that you need to put new wine into new wineskins. What he is bringing is not a patching of the Law, but a new Law altogether—the Law of love.  

Calling and Commitment

Mark 3

Preached at Newberg Emerging Friends Church

March 17, 2019

When I first began thinking about the part of Jesus’s story that is in Mark 3, I did what I’ve done with the Bible for most or all of my life. I compared myself to Jesus, and I found myself failing again.

I don’t measure up. The main way I can identify with Jesus is that he was angry with those who were so stubborn and wrong. But no one has plotted to kill me because my commitment to healing and setting people free is so disruptive. I’ve barely been maligned at all; to my knowledge no one has said I was inhabited by the devil. No one has thought I was crazy, in need of protection against myself, because I give my whole life entirely to healing and setting people free.

So since I don’t measure up to being Jesus, I will instead ask what this part of the story reveals about God through Jesus, who is visible God. And to do that, I may need to see how I identify with others in this section of Jesus’s story as told by Mark.

Jesus saw a man with a paralyzed hand in synagogue one Sabbath. Jesus asked the people: “What does our Law allow us to do on the Sabbath? To help or to harm? To save a life or to destroy it?” No one answered him.

When We Are Paralyzed

Have I ever been paralyzed by grief or guilt or trauma or fear? Well, yes. I recall a time when I was up to my neck in recovery from childhood sexual abuse and I could not bear to sit in church. I felt moved (I hoped by God’s Spirit) to drive to Champoeg Park. I found that the road I was on was all torn up with “no through traffic” signs. As I idled there, wondering what was next, a big dark green American sedan drove through in the opposite direction, and the driver leaned out and said, “Don’t worry, you can make it through.” I heard the voice of Jesus in that, and I turned around and went back to church. 

It’s obvious that Jesus could have said that to me during open worship in church, but it wouldn’t have had the long-lasting impact of the acted parable of my drive to Champoeg. Jesus often says to those of us who need healing, “Stretch out your hand.” 

Jesus was angry as he looked around at the congregation, who didn’t affirm the healing, saving nature of God (and of God’s Law), but at the same time he felt sorry for them, because they were so stubborn and so wrong. So he healed the man.…The Pharisees went out, met with their political enemies, and together they made plans to kill Jesus.

When We Are Righteous

One of the sporting events in the Christian world is badmouthing the Pharisees and identifying whoever opposes our ideas with them. But have I ever been angry at other believers because they are so wrong and so stubborn? Well, yes. (In fact, this sounds a bit like marriage …) So I need to make the effort to identify with the Pharisees.

Sabbath was hugely important to the Jewish people. And among them, the Pharisees were carefully observant because they believed that if Sabbath were properly kept just once, Messiah—king, healer, and liberator—would come. Three major prophets—Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah—singled out Sabbath-breaking as the reason for the Jewish nation’s collapse and exile, and called Jews back to keeping Sabbath.

So it is no wonder the Pharisees are so angry when Jesus breaks Sabbath as he does in this chapter. They believe he has just made it impossible for Messiah to show up on that particular day. Ironically, and perhaps this is why Jesus is compassionate towards them, their King, Healer, and Liberator is right there among them. They can’t see him because of their anxiety and fear.

I wonder what I carry around that is like the Law about Sabbath. What moral obligations occupy me and prevent me from seeing what God is doing by unexpected people and means? What moral obligation fills me with fear and anxiety so that I do not help, heal, save life? What am I so stubborn and so wrong about? Is there anyone that I object to God pouring out grace and healing on?

It is clear that healing and setting people free disrupts the systems of religious and political power, and that these principalities take it ill. But it is also important to know that Jesus does what he does because he is God, not because he’s a rebel just for kicks. In point of fact, what Jesus does is exactly what Sabbath is about—healing and freedom. He fulfills the Law and the Chosen One of God has come.

A large crowd followed Jesus—descendants of Jacob from Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem, descendants of Esau from Idumea, Gentiles from Tyre and Sidon. They were drawn by the stories of what Jesus was doing—healings and exorcisms—and the crowd was so great it nearly crushed him. It is clear from what happened to Jesus that healing and setting people free was hugely attractive to masses of people, so attractive that it drew ancient enemies into a single crowd pressing ever closer to Jesus—so many that it was a danger to Jesus and those close to him.

Jesus ordered the evil spirits to be quiet about who he was. As evil spirits, their shouting was meant to derail God’s messenger and his message of healing and freedom, perhaps to bury him in notoriety, to disrupt his ability to teach who God is and how God loves.

So, rather than embracing the enthusiasm of crowds, Jesus went up a hill, called the Twelve to him, and commissioned them to be with him, to preach, and to drive out evil. Then Jesus went home. The crowd there was so pushy neither Jesus nor the Twelve had time to eat. And teachers of the Law from Jerusalem were saying, “He has the spirit of evil in him, and that’s why he can command demons.”

So Jesus told them a parable, the punch line of which is this: “No one can break into a strong man’s house and take away his belongings unless he first ties up the strong man.” Meaning, I have obviously tied up the strong man. You have seen that I am stronger than the devil, than evil, in any fight, which is why I can set free the people evil is trying to destroy.

Then Jesus warned them: When you see God’s Spirit at work healing people and setting people free from oppression by evil, and you say that work is done by the devil, you have just stepped outside the possibility that God’s Spirit can work in you. And you will never be able to recognize or understand how God loves and forgives.

Do I look at the healing work done by others and suspect them of being motivated by selfishness or evil? Do I look at others working for freedom for others from oppression and question their priorities?

His family heard that Jesus had gone mad, so they went to take charge of him. It is clear that devoting one’s life to healing and setting people free worries the family—it looks crazy.

Someone in the crowd said to him: “Your family is here and they want you.” Jesus said, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers? … Whoever does what God wants is my brother, my sister, my mother.”

Since I can’t be Jesus, I want to be Jesus’ sister. So it is important to see what it is that God wants me to do. Jesus insists everywhere that God wants me to help, not to harm; to save life, not to destroy it; to set free, not to leave imprisoned. And Jesus illustrates by example that standing by and doing nothing when I can do something helpful is in fact doing harm.

And God wants me never ever to use the Law—the Bible or some other code of moral behavior—as an excuse to ignore those being harmed, destroyed, held prisoner by evil.

And who does God want me to be? Someone humble enough to bring my paralysis into public view, someone obedient enough to stretch my hand out when Jesus tells me to, someone open enough to God’s Spirit to see God at work in all healing, liberating actions, someone aware enough to recognize that God has compassion on my opponents and is eager to forgive.

Jesus insists everywhere that God wants us to help, not to harm; to save life, not to destroy it. Our globe is full of problems that seem so complex that we are paralyzed, but our daily lives have in them ways we can be on God’s side, doing what we can to help, to heal, to save lives, disrupting those who do harm, who inflict pain, who treat other lives with cavalier carelessness. We can live into our absolute dependence on listening to God’s Spirit each day and doing what God’s Spirit tells us to each day. Remember that Jesus has tied up the strong man and now we are free to liberate those he oppressed and imprisoned. God’s Spirit helps us recognize where God is at work healing and setting people free so that we can join in.

Queries for Open Worship

How have I experienced the healing, freeing Spirit of God?

How have we as a congregation experienced the healing, freeing Spirit of God”

What opportunity is in front of me to join in with God’s healing, freeing mission in the world?

The Law Is Nailed to the Cross

Preached at South Salem Friends Church
May 21, 2017

I’m a missionary kid. My parents went to central Africa, right at the end of WW II. I was born in Kansas, but went back with them at 6 months old. Eventually, they put me in a School for Missionary Children, a boarding school. I was seven.

At boarding school, I had to make my bed, tidy my drawers and surface spaces, dust and sweep my room every morning. While I was in classes, my dorm mother inspected the rooms, and if they were not up to her standards, we came back to find our names in the doghouse. We had to clean it to passing standards right away.

If we got put in the doghouse three successive days, we were confined to our rooms for the time between school and supper. I can’t remember what happened if our tidiness still didn’t meet standards, but I’m guessing it involved more of the same.

It was embarrassing to be put in the doghouse and have the fact posted in public. But even worse was the consequence for wetting the bed. My roommate was a chronic bed-wetter, and every morning she had to drag her soiled sheets up to the laundry room and wash them out by hand. Again a public event. One night I had a bloody nose and had the same consequence. I told everyone who would listen that it was a bloody nose, not wetting the bed. This public humiliation was hard to bear.

And once in school, still seven years old, I didn’t have my homework done. I was so afraid of the teacher’s response that I wet myself, and the urine ran into a puddle under my chair. But I remember in this case that the teacher scolded the boy who laughed at me and made him clean it up, and she sent me to the dorm to change my clothes without berating me.  After school, she asked me why I was so frightened, and I explained that I had heard her scold a different boy who didn’t do his homework and threaten him with a spanking, and so I expected the same. She said, "He almost never does his homework."

And that same year, I deliberately broke a rule by reading a Nancy Drew mystery under my covers with the flashlight after lights out. My roommate told on me, and I had the book confiscated and was in significant trouble.

This is vivid to me because at seven, I entered a system of law different from what I had previously experienced. I didn’t know before that time that I should make my bed. I doubt if I knew how to make it, even. I didn’t know about homework. Learning to read with my mother had been a game. I was unaware of obligation, to a large extent, though of course my parents had a few rules. And since at home we had to turn off our electricity at 9 p.m. or so, I may have been reading by flashlight without penalty before I went off to boarding school.

Now the apostle Paul has some interesting things to say about sin and law in Romans 5:12-21:

I need to make some things clear, says Paul.

Before a command was given, sin was in the world, but it wasn’t counted against anyone.

(To connect this to my story, my not making my bed was not a disgrace before I went to a school with rules.)

Paul says: Sin is not part of the reckoning without law. However, until God gave the Law to Moses, death had the upper hand even over those who did not directly disobey God’s command as Adam did.

(For me as a little girl, even though I wasn’t penalized for messiness before I went to school, there was in fact messiness, and someone had to clean it up. Messiness does rule if no one cleans. And when there is a rule against messiness, shame arises. And shame is a kind of death.)

In fact, the Law came in so that we humans could see how sinful we are, how prone to error; but where sin increased, grace hyper-increased, grace filled and overflowed the deficit caused by sin.

Adam is a prefiguring of Jesus Christ In his effect on those who came after.

And if Adam involved all humanity in sin and death, how much more does Jesus involve all humanity in the grace of God. Adam’s trespass brought a condemning judgment, but Jesus’s free gift brings many trespasses into favorable judgment.

Just as through one human, sin, error, trespass, disobedience came into the harmony of the cosmos, with sin came death, and death passed through all humans because all sinned—to repeat: if by one man, Adam, death ruled over humanity, how much more will life gain the upper hand, and people will receive abundance of grace and the gift of being set right with God and will reign in life by the one man, Jesus.

Therefore, as by the disobedience of one man all were condemned, so now by the obedience of one man all are set right with God and brought into life.

  

So just as sin has ruled through death, even more grace rules because grace makes people who they are meant to be even into eternal life.

Paul is very repetitive about how grace through Jesus Christ dominates and dismantles the law and with it shame. But it’s hard to imagine living without rules. So who can we look at to see what that kind of life is like? We can look to Jesus.

Jesus himself said, I have come not to blow up or break apart the law, but to demonstrate what it looks like when someone understands its true intent and fulfills that intent. Matt 5:17-18 (fulfilled = completed, filled up, satisfied, accomplished) Paul, reflecting on the work Jesus did, said, “Christ in his flesh abolished the law” (Eph. 2:15).

This is what it looks like for Jesus to fulfill the Law: Jesus and his disciples were not scrupulous about following the law to wash up before eating. Jesus violated Sabbath restrictions and had the nerve to say that both he and his Father were still working. He said work done to help was holy and not a violation of the Sabbath laws. Jesus said that God had set up Sabbath laws for the welfare of humans, rather than creating humans so they could obey Sabbath laws. You break Sabbath in order to circumcise, to cut a person up; yet you want to kill me for breaking Sabbath to make a person completely whole (John 7:22-23).

Jesus touched the dead and the lepers. Both made him unclean—unable to participate in temple worship. The same is true for the woman who was bleeding.

Jesus did not condemn a woman taken in adultery, stoning her to death as the law required, but instead told her not to make that mistake again. Jesus called the Pharisees to account for their marriages and the hardness of heart that destroyed their married unions, but when he met the Samaritan woman, he brought her serial marriages into the light but did not scold or condemn or shame her.

Jesus consistently told people to examine their own hearts and behavior before judging how others were being obedient. Did Moses give you the Law, and none of you keep it (John 7:19).

The Law was given by Moses; grace and truth came by Jesus Christ (John 1:17).

Whoever loves another fulfills the Law, and love works no harm for another (Romans 13:8-10).

Jesus showed us what it means to love another and thus fulfill, or fill up, or satisfy, the Law.

The Law foreshadowed good things to come but could not bring them about (Heb. 10:1).

Paul says that the Law is useful like a schoolmaster.  The Law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, but now we are children of God by faith, and in Christ there is no Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female, but all are one in Christ (Gal 3:24-29).  We are dead to the Law by the body of Christ; we are delivered from the Law (Romans 7:4-6). The earlier commandment has been annulled and replaced by a better hope in Christ as our high priest, through whom we draw near to God (Heb 7:18-19).

The fact that we can’t keep the Law, in other words, creates in us the awareness of ourselves as sinners in need of grace, and the need for grace drives us to trust in the character and work of Jesus Christ. And when we put our trust in what Jesus has accomplished through his death and resurrection, and we trust God’s Holy Spirit to lead us every day, we live in freedom, not under the law.

We are justified by the faith of Christ, we believe in the character and work of Jesus Christ; we are dead to the Law so that we may live to God; we are crucified with Christ, and now Christ lives in us and we live by the faith of Christ who loved us and gave himself for us. We do not reject the grace of God by saying that righteousness comes through the Law (Gal 2:16-21).

Keeping the Law does not justify, but we are justified freely by grace through the redemption accomplished by Jesus; justified by faith in Jesus, not by works of the Law (Romans 3:20-24, 28).

The Hebrew and Greek words we often translate as “sin” have in them a number of pictures that help us understand this theological concept.

Sin is To Miss the Way, to Stumble, to Wander, to Misstep, to Slip, to Stumble.

Sin is To Miss the Mark, to Miss the Goal.

Sin is To Fail at the Assignment, To Avoid, to Neglect, to Overstep.

Sin is To Run the Wrong Way when Terrified, To Lose Oneself.

Sin is To Bend, to Make Crooked, to Distort God’s Truth.

Sin is To Overturn God’s truth, To Trespass, to Rebel, to Break Away From, to Defect.

You can see that “sin”—or trespass, or iniquity, or transgression, or other synonym—is a living word that works on several levels of intentionality. 1) We can try to do right and end up messing things up even if we have given ourselves to God, and 2) we can decide to do wrong, and 3) we can deliberately assert that we belong to ourselves, not to God. All are kinds of sin. The last is most dangerous.

As John says in the first letter, if anyone says she or he is without sin, they lie. But if we confess or own up to how we have messed things up and gone the wrong way and avoided what we know God wants from us, God is faithful and just and will forgive us our sin and clean us up and set us straight. This verse is about how those who want to belong to God can keep themselves moving with rather than against God.

There is a path God wants us to travel through our lives; there is a purpose toward which God wants us to aim; there are things God wants us to do; there are things God wants to make plain to us; there are principles God wants us to live by. What are these?  Jesus said the two great commandments are to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves. How do we do this? We live out of love as much as we can, we ask God how to live out of love and we do what God puts before us to do, and we try not to harm our neighbor or ourselves. And when we fail, we confess it to God and let God work to help us do better the next time we have an opportunity to show love. We live under the law of liberty and we count on our gracious God to help us use our freedom lovingly.

Speak and act as those who will be judged by the law of liberty (James 2:12).

For in Jesus Christ all that counts is faith working through love (Gal 5:5-9, 13-25).

God chose to birth us through the word of truth; we need to humbly accept that word which is planted in us and which can save us, and obey it, the perfect law of liberty; be quick to listen and slow to speak and slow to become angry (James 1:18-25).

But if we really are living and walking in the Light, as He is the Light, we have true fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ the Son cleanses us from all sin and guilt. If we say we have no sin, we delude and lead ourselves astray, and the Truth is not in us. If we admit we have sinned and confess our sins, He is true to his own nature and promises and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness  (1 John 1:7-9).

I started out talking about the shame of finding myself in the doghouse because I couldn’t measure up, and about being humiliated for my human frailty. I added in the fact that sometimes I deliberately broke a rule. However, I did not want to own myself rather than to belong to God. This kind of active rebellion can occur in church-goers and in atheists, and it prevents the rebels from knowing that God is Love.

The Law helps us realize we have missed the mark and are sinners in need of grace. However, when the Law brings us to the point of trusting Jesus, it has done its work and has no more to say to us. We know that Jesus is the answer to our frailty, our imperfect attempts to do the right thing, our mistakes, and even our deliberate wrong-doing. We know that when we come to Jesus, he does not condemn, even when he does instruct. Sadly, we can also turn our backs on God and insist on owning ourselves, of earning our own way, and when we do this, we cannot grow in grace and we rely on keeping rules rather than obeying the Holy Spirit of God.

Let us give ourselves to God, accept the grace Jesus gives, and live guided by the Holy Spirit. Let us embrace our freedom to live out love for God and neighbor.

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