Trouble is Coming!

Trouble is Coming!

 

Matthew 24:15-28 – The Message - “But be ready to run for it when you see the monster of desecration set up in the Temple sanctuary. The prophet Daniel described this. If you’ve read Daniel, you’ll know what I’m talking about. If you’re living in Judea at the time, run for the hills; if you’re working in the yard, don’t return to the house to get anything; if you’re out in the field, don’t go back and get your coat. Pregnant and nursing mothers will have it especially hard. Hope and pray this won’t happen during the winter or on a Sabbath.

“This is going to be trouble on a scale beyond what the world has ever seen, or will see again. If these days of trouble were left to run their course, nobody would make it. But on account of God’s chosen people, the trouble will be cut short.

“If anyone tries to flag you down, calling out, ‘Here’s the Messiah!’ or points, ‘There he is!’ don’t fall for it. Fake Messiahs and lying preachers are going to pop up everywhere. Their impressive credentials and bewitching performances will pull the wool over the eyes of even those who ought to know better. But I’ve given you fair warning.

“So if they say, ‘Run to the country and see him arrive!’ or, ‘Quick, get downtown, see him come!’ don’t give them the time of day. The Arrival of the Son of Man isn’t something you go to see. He comes like swift lightning to you! Whenever you see crowds gathering, think of carrion vultures circling, moving in, hovering over a rotting carcass. You can be quite sure that it’s not the living Son of Man pulling in those crowds.

 

                In today’s passage, Jesus continues to address the disciples’ question about end times and the second coming.  It’s important to realize, though, that while Jesus is describing His second coming, the disciples haven’t quite wrapped their mind around the notion that Jesus is leaving in the first place.  They most likely heard His words filtered through an expectation that Jesus’s “coming” is what is in process as He speaks to them.  It won’t be until after Jesus is crucified, dead and risen that they are able to hear these words the way Jesus intended.  Decades after Jesus’s resurrection, Matthew recalls Jesus’s words and hears them in their proper context. 

By the time Matthew writes these words, the temple has been destroyed just as Jesus said it would.  The “monster of desecration” has come and defiled the house of God (the destruction of the temple in AD 70 by the Romans) and the people still mourn this event to this day.  The “trouble on a scale beyond what the world has ever seen” has occurred.  The people did run for hills when it happened.  And there were multiple “fake messiahs” that showed up, attracting crowds and claiming to be the promised deliverer; all of them were either quickly disgraced or killed.  Matthew writes for people who knew Jesus was crucified, died, was resurrected, and then forty days later, ascended into Heaven.  When Jesus uttered these warnings, Matthew Himself did not understand them, but decades later, Matthew’s readers would understand more fully.  Jesus will return and their belief was that it would be soon. But the trouble they were altogether too familiar with had to happen first. 

                Matthew’s message was to hold on. Jesus said this would happen.  It is terrible, but it is not the end.  It was a message that Matthew’s first readers needed to hear.  It is still a message that needs to be heard today.  The worst trouble we can imagine is not the way the story ends.  The story of God and God’s people will not end in destruction, but restoration.  As the saying goes, the “worst thing is never the last thing.”  God has a plan and the invitation is trust God despite what we see and think we know.

                We’ll have more to say about Jesus’s message about the “end of days” next time, but for now, meditate on the truth we’ve just mentioned; “the worst thing is never the last thing.” 

 

Questions:  What is the worst time you’ve ever experienced?  Looking back on that now, how did it affect your faith?

 

Prayer:  Eternal God, we often don’t understand the horrific things that happen during our lifetimes.  Our only hope is to trust that You have the last word about all of it and that last word is good news.  Grant us the ability to trust in that despite what we see with our eyes and feel in our hearts.  Amen.

 

Prayer Focus:  Today, whenever you hear or read about people that you don’t know who are experiencing troubled times right now, stop and pray for them.

 

Song:  How Long O Lord – Sovereign Grace Music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5c65B3JUmos 

The Gospel of Matthew: Endgame

 

The Gospel of Matthew: Endgame

 

Matthew 24:1-14, CEB - Now Jesus left the temple and was going away. His disciples came to point out to him the temple buildings.  He responded, “Do you see all these things? I assure that no stone will be left on another. Everything will be demolished.”

Now while Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately and said, “Tell us, when will these things happen? What will be the sign of your coming and the end of the age?”

Jesus replied, “Watch out that no one deceives you.  Many will come in my name, saying, ‘I’m the Christ.’ They will deceive many people.  You will hear about wars and reports of wars. Don’t be alarmed. These things must happen, but this isn’t the end yet.  Nations and kingdoms will fight against each other, and there will be famines and earthquakes in all sorts of places.  But all these things are just the beginning of the sufferings associated with the end.  They will arrest you, abuse you, and they will kill you. All nations will hate you on account of my name.  At that time many will fall away. They will betray each other and hate each other.  Many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.  Because disobedience will expand, the love of many will grow cold.  But the one who endures to the end will be delivered.  This gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the world as a testimony to all the nations. Then the end will come.

 

                Following Jesus’s last public address in the Temple, Jesus and His disciples leave.  As they are walking out of the Temple, the disciples make comments about the beauty of the Temple.  Jesus shocks them by announcing that the Temple will be reduced to rubble.  As Jesus predicted, the Temple was destroyed in AD 70, a few decades after Jesus’s crucifixion. It would never be rebuilt again.  All that remains of that Temple is a portion of the western wall, now called the Wailing Wall, where millions of people from multiple faiths go to pray every year.  People stuff small pieces of paper with their prayer concerns written on them in the cracks of the wall.  I did this myself when I was in the Holy Land some years ago. 

                The disciples were thrown by the news that the Temple would be destroyed.  It must have consumed their thoughts until they reached the Mount of Olives.  As Jesus sat down there, his disciples ask Him three questions:  (1) when will these things happen?  (2) what will be the sign of [Jesus’s] coming?  (3) What will be the sign of the end of the age?  Jesus’s answers to these questions make up the remainder of chapter 24 and constitute one of the passages in the New Testament that have most difficult to interpret.  There is great disagreement in the scholarly community to this day over the precise meanings of Jesus’s words here.  While we will carefully work through this confusing chapter in the next couple of reflections, the goal is to gain some general insight into what Jesus is trying to convey and not to try an arrive at the perfect interpretation.

                In the passage above, Jesus begins to address question 1, the question of when.  The frustration is that what he offers here is not a precise “when,” but a definite “not when.”  There will be people claiming to be the Messiah;  when that happens, you will know that they are surely lying.  Terrible things that feel like the end will happen.  The end is not then either.  The disciples themselves will be persecuted and killed – not then either.  People will lose faith and fall into hate.  Betrayal will abound.  False prophets will be numerous.  Wars, earthquakes, and famines will be common.  Disobedience will expand to an epidemic level.  Still not the time. 

                It must be said that in every time period since Jesus uttered these words, the idea has been floated that the time period Jesus described is the present time.  When we look at the conditions of the world today, we could make the case that Jesus was talking about the 21^st century.  While that cannot be ruled out, Jesus’s message in this description above was not that we try to read the descriptions of world events and try to match them up to what we see in the news.  The point is essentially is this approach won’t work.  When you think it might be the end, it’s not the end.  Focus on proclaiming the Kingdom to the whole world, not on trying to predict the end.  Persevere through the catastrophes.  No matter what happens or how bad it gets, those who do this will be delivered.  Let the end be God’s concern. Keep the faith.  That’s our job. 

                As I already stated, we have just begun to explore Jesus’s response to the disciples three questions.  But for today, let’s focus on what Jesus says should be the focus – perseverance and proclaiming the Kingdom. 

 

Questions:  What does persevering in the faith men for your circumstances right now?  What is your role in “proclaiming the kingdom?”

 

Prayer:  Lord, we know that the advancement of your kingdom is the real news we should be paying attention to in the midst of all we see today.  Help us to see how You are moving in our circumstances, our community, and the larger world.  Give us strength to persevere and be faithful.  Amen.

 

Prayer Focus: Pray for those who have left the faith in recent years

 

Song:  Won’t Back Down – Tom Petty

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2h9HPZhqHE

Jesus’s Public Goodbye

 

Jesus’s Public Goodbye

 

Matthew 23:37-39, CEB - “Jerusalem, Jerusalem! You who kill the prophets and stone those who were sent to you. How often I wanted to gather your people together, just as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. But you didn’t want that.  Look, your house is left to you deserted.  I tell you, you won’t see me until you say, Blessings on the one who comes in the Lord’s name.”

 

                Jesus completes His address in the Temple with a lament.  This is the last time He will be in the Temple and the last time He will formally address the public.  He is aware that, in only a couple of days, he will be betrayed by one of His closest friends, arrested, tried multiple times, beaten and crucified on a Roman cross.  As he looks over those gathered, from Passover pilgrims to Pharisees, you can hear the growing sadness and foreboding as He wishes things could be different.  I invite you to read the above passage again aware of Jesus’s heart breaking as He speaks.

                Jesus’s words sound like a mother who has done all that she knows to do to bring her wayward children under her protection, but her children’s apathy and/or rebellion rebuffs the offer.  Accepting that things cannot be different, Jesus publicly says “goodbye.”  He informs those who hear Him that He will not return again anytime soon.  What Jesus knows is that the Temple itself will be reduced to rubble before He returns and this surely adds to His sadness.

                Too often, God’s demeanor towards rebellion is portrayed as angry and vengeful.  To be fair, some of those portrayals stem from Old Testament texts.  Without disregarding those scriptures, Jesus adds more insight into the heart of God when people ignore and rebel.  God is sorrowful toward those who will not heed spiritual guidance and wisdom.  God’s heart is to protect them, not smite them.  That is Jesus’s final public word. 

                I find comfort in this because I have been among the apathetic and rebellious at times.   That apathy and rebellion led to my own pain in some cases, something God would have helped me avoid if I had been more responsive.  Fortunately, those times of struggle have been instructive and serve as a constant reminder that I am prone to wander.  I’m reminded of the great hymn, “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” particularly words from the final verse:

Oh, to grace how great a debtor

Daily I'm constrained to be

Let Thy goodness like a fetter

Bind my wandering heart to Thee

Prone to wander, Lord I feel it

Prone to leave the God I love

Here's my heart, oh take and seal it

Seal it for Thy courts above

May this hymn be our prayer today as we hear Jesus’s heart for those of us who are “prone to leave the God [we] love.” 

 

Question:  Are you aware of any apathy or even rebellion towards God in your heart this day?

 

Prayer:  God forgive us for own insensitivity to Your Spirit’s call. Take our heart and seal it in Your mercy and love.  Quash any rebellion in us.  Help us accept your guidance this day and every day.  Amen.

 

Prayer Focus:  Pray for the people of Ukraine and Russia today as war begins within Ukraine’s borders.

 

Song:  Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing – Chris Rice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTCTzF5Yj8I

The Eight Woes – Part 4

 

The Eight Woes – Part 4

Quick note:  I apologize for not posting this yesterday as scheduled.  I had it written and somehow, in the midst of interruptions, thought I had sent and posted it.  OOPS!  I will be posting the one for today later today.  Be looking for it.  

 

Matthew 23:29-36, The Message - “You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You build granite tombs for your prophets and marble monuments for your saints. And you say that if you had lived in the days of your ancestors, no blood would have been on your hands. You protest too much! You’re cut from the same cloth as those murderers, and daily add to the death count.

“Snakes! Cold-blooded sneaks! Do you think you can worm your way out of this? Never have to pay the piper? It’s on account of people like you that I send prophets and wise guides and scholars generation after generation—and generation after generation you treat them like dirt, greeting them with lynch mobs, hounding them with abuse.

“You can’t squirm out of this: Every drop of righteous blood ever spilled on this earth, beginning with the blood of that good man Abel right down to the blood of Zechariah, Barachiah’s son, whom you murdered at his prayers, is on your head. All this, I’m telling you, is coming down on you, on your generation.

 

Matthew 5:10-12, The Message - “You’re blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God’s kingdom.

“Not only that—count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens—give a cheer, even!—for though they don’t like it, I do! And all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company. My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble.

 

                Our contrast between the blessings of the eight Beatitudes at the beginning of Jesus’s ministry and the condemnation of the eight Woes at the end concludes today with the persecuted over against those who persecute them.  More to the point, Matthew 5 describes those who have so embraced God’s message to them brought by God’s messengers that they are willing to endure ridicule, shame, and even worse instead of renounce the truth they have embraced.  Matthew 23 describes those who not only reject the message of the prophets, but they also harass, flog, and even kill the messengers.  Reading through the first passage above, one can sense the rising emotion in Jesus’s voice for He knows that He, Himself, is one of those messengers who will be rejected, flogged and killed.  He knows it will happen in the matter of a couple of days.  He feels the hate that will motivate these actions emanating from the leaders he is presently condemning. 

                I’ve asked us to work to receive Jesus’s warnings in these eight Woes as personal warnings.  Perhaps of all of the Eight, this one is the hardest to personalize.  We like to think of ourselves as people who would never reject God’s message, much less persecute the messengers.  I do want to remind us though, that the leaders hearing Jesus’s words in the Temple that day, liked to think of themselves that way too.  This is why Jesus specifically addresses what He knew they were thinking:

“And you say that if you had lived in the days of your ancestors, no blood would have been on your hands. You protest too much! You’re cut from the same cloth as those murderers, and daily add to the death count.”  (v. 23:30)

Put yourself in the Pharisees place for a moment.  They have just been told that they are no longer necessary as mediators of God to the people.  They have been told that they are hypocrites in every way possible.  Jesus’s words are a repudiation of everything their lives have been about since they were children and they have received this judgement in front of the people they have had the responsibility of leading.   To the extent that we can squarely put ourselves in the place of these condemned leaders, we can almost understand the holy rage they will unleash upon Jesus in the coming days.

                To place ourselves in the Pharisees’ place is to connect with the emotion of being confronted with truth that beliefs you have held strongly for most of your life are unfounded.  Maybe you are familiar with that emotion and maybe you are not.  But regardless, God’s truth continues to confront wrong-headed beliefs.  To say that it is impossible for us to be people who are sometimes on the wrong side of God’s truth is to make the same mistake that the religious leaders of Jesus’s day made. 

                Don’t do that.  The Beatitudes guard against falling into the Woes.  Humility. An openness to others suffering. Meekness. A passion for God and people.  Mercy. A pure heart.  Peacemaking. Conviction that withstands persecution.  These are the ways of the Kingdom of Jesus. 

 

Question:  How open are you to the possibility of being wrong?

 

Prayer:  Lord forgive our arrogance and hard-heartedness.  Help us see your Truth being revealed in the present time even if it challenges long-held practices and/or beliefs.  Install the beatitudes in our heart.  Amen.

 

Prayer Focus:  Pray for peace where there is war today.

 

Song:  (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding  - Nick Lowe & The Southsea Alternative Choir

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1yfkye_qR4

The Eight Woes – Part 3

 

The Eight Woes – Part 3

 

Matthew 23:23-28, NRSV - “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others.  You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.  You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may become clean.

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth.  So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

 

Matthew 5:7-9, NRSV – “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.  Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

 

The practice of mercy.  Purity of heart.  A heart to make peace.  The hearers of Jesus’s first public teaching, the Sermon on the mount, heard the vison of those who sincerely follow God.  In Jesus’s last public address, the so-called leaders of the followers of God called out for living out and teaching others the total anthesis of God’s vision.  The Pharisees stress tithing while taking advantage of the poor – a total repudiation of mercy.  They maintain a spotless image of piety that hides widespread corruption in their ranks – their hearts are far from pure.  They have not brought peace to God’s people, for they are only looking out for themselves and their position. 

                It’s important to remember the setting here. Jesus is speaking in the temple in front of many people with the various groups of leaders present.  This polemic against the religious establishment is directed at leaders, but clearly, Jesus wants the people to hear it. Just before he turns to the leaders, he talks about them to the people.  Jesus instructs them to do what they say, but avoid doing what they do.  Then the Eight Woes talk specifically about those “doings” that people should avoid.  This is the word for us today as well. This is easier said than done.

                Our tendency as humans is to expend a much energy in “image management.”  We all want to be seen as “good people.”  There’s nothing wrong with that desire.  But what God looks for in us is not our surface image, but the condition of our hearts, a condition that is often hidden from others because external image would be “tainted.”  People who are truly merciful are often seen by others as weak.  People who work to keep their heart pure are often accused of being “goody two shoes.”  The great peacemakers of this world often endure much vitriol from the very folks with whom they are seeking to make peace.  It’s much easier to appear merciful, pure in heart, and peacemaking than it is to actually BE those things.  So, all too often, we settle for appearances. 

                God cares much more about the real condition of our souls and the real substance of our living than the public appearances we maintain.  Jesus points out in the Beatitudes and Woes that there is blessing in the real work of faith and there is misery in the never-ending quest for the perfect image.  Jesus message to the people standing in the Temple that day (and to us) was to aim for the blessings, not the misery.   Be merciful even when it’s not popular.  Keep your heart pure even though it means you might have to say no when everyone else is saying yes.   Do the work of making peace even when it’s runs against the tide.  Align your heart and action with the heart and action of God.  God does not promise to do so is to avoid pain, but God does promise there is blessing in the Beatitude life and misery in living the opposite.

 

Questions:  How much energy do you expend “keeping up appearances?” How might some of that energy be better used?

 

Prayer:  Lord, help me see the ways in which I am only “going through the motions” for appearance sake.  Help me rediscover the your ways of blessing.  Reinstall the beatitudes in my heart and action.  Amen.

 

Prayer Focus:  Pray for people you know who are fighting discouragement right now.

 

Song:  Act Justly, Love Mercy, Walk Humbly – Pat Barrett

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk7llf2LkKc

The Eight Woes – Part 2

 

The Eight Woes – Part 2

 

Matthew 23:15-22, NRSV - Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. “Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘Whoever swears by the sanctuary is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the sanctuary is bound by the oath.’  You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the sanctuary that has made the gold sacred?  And you say, ‘Whoever swears by the altar is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gift that is on the altar is bound by the oath.’  How blind you are! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred?  So whoever swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it;  and whoever swears by the sanctuary, swears by it and by the one who dwells in it;  and whoever swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by the one who is seated upon it.

 

Matthew 5:5-6, NRSV – “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”

 

                Those who have spent anytime using a copy machine know that a copy of a copy loses some quality.  The quality of the copy decreases with every “copy of a copy of a copy.”  This is similar, in my estimation, to what Jesus is saying about the religious leaders of His time.  They are all about attracting followers, but since they are already a copy of a copy, their followers are even worse than they are.  This is why Jesus makes it clear that there is no longer a need for people model themselves after spiritual leaders.  They now have the “original” available.to them, the original being Jesus.   In these “Eight Woes.” Jesus pointedly asserts that the eventual result of primarily following the Pharisees and other religious teachers is expanding hypocrisy. 

                The religious establishment cared more about how many followers they have than how many followers God has.  As further evidence for this hypocrisy, the fourth woe issued concerns the religious leaders instructions on swearing oaths.  They taught loopholes on vows.  If you swore an oath only generally on the sanctuary, this is an oath that is breakable; if you swear by the gold of the sanctuary, you have the keep that promise or else.  This is legalism at its finest, and Jesus rightly condemns it. 

                These third and fourth woes recall the third and fourth beatitudes listed above.  The meek don’t seek to build kingdoms of followers for themselves.  They humbly accept the blessings that naturally come to them when they welcome the kingdom of God.  They “inherit the kingdom” by forsaking the building of their own.  Likewise, true followers of God aren’t looking for loopholes that excuse them from keeping their vows.  True followers seek to be righteous as Jesus is righteous.  They are driven by gratitude for what God has done for them and because of that, they seek to live the way God teaches.  They “hunger and thirst for righteousness.” 

                We live in a time when our value and the value of our organizations are often measured by the number of followers on social media, the number of subscribers podcasts have, or the number of views livestreams receive.  Often lost in the mix is whether or not our efforts are actually drawing others into meaningful relationships with God and people.  In such a time, loopholes abound for every kind of behavior.  The root meaning of “righteousness, “which is “right relationship,” takes a back seat to technicality arguments and drawing moral “lines in the sand.” To put it more bluntly, the goal of the Christian way of life is not to hold a perfectly right position on every hot-button issue; the goal is a relationship with God and people that is primarily characterized by love as demonstrated by Jesus.  This is the “righteousness” that “fills” people according to the beatitude promise. 

 

Questions: Have you ever been guilty of “majoring in the minors?”  Have you ever found yourself putting more stock in what a leader says than in what Jesus says?

 

 Prayer:  Have mercy on us Lord, for we often don’t see our own hypocrisies.  Point them out to us as we look to the teaching of Jesus Himself, the Author and Finisher of our faith.  Amen.

 

Prayer Focus:  Pray for peaceful resolutions of conflict around the world today.

 

Song:  Give Us Clean Hands – Mark Schultz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0kX05CqPsY

The Eight Woes – Part 1

The Eight Woes – Part 1

 

Matthew 23:13-14, NKJV - But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense make long prayers. Therefore you will receive greater condemnation.

 

                Matthew 23:13-36 is often called the “seven woes” to the Pharisees and other teachers of the law.  You might have noticed that the title of this reflection is “The Eight Woes.”  This discrepancy points to something we have discussed before – textual variants.  Most English translations of the New Testament do not include Matthew 23:14. Thus, most translations only list seven woes.  But if you include v. 14, which I do, there are eight.  This is very significant in the structure of Matthew’s gospel.  This address in the temple is the last public address Jesus will make before He is crucified.  These eight woes correspond to another list of eight that Jesus rattles off in His first public address in the Gospel of Matthew – the eight beatitudes in Matthew 5 that kick off the Sermon on the Mount.  The eight beatitudes talk about the those who are blessed and by contrast the eight woes talk about how the religious establishment of the day have cut off those blessings. 

                Matthew’s intent here seems to be for us to see the ways in which the religious community can become the very opposite of God’s intention.  These “woes” are not as much a “the pharisees are bad” are they are a warning that all religious institutions have these antithetical tendencies.  I believe the proper way to hear these woes is ask ourselves to what extent we are guilty of the very same hypocrisies.  Our next few reflections will proceed with that approach.

                The first beatitude in Matthew 5 is “blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God” (Matthew 5:3).  The first woe condemns the religious leaders for their spiritual arrogance – they have not only rejected the Kingdom Jesus came to usher in, they have tried to lead others to reject it as well.  The contrast is drawn between people who know they need God and those who think God needs them.  It is so easy to become “puffed up” about what we think we know about God and God’s ways.  The pharisees and other religious officials of Jesus’s day had begun to act as though their convictions and their teachings were synonymous with God’s word.  They believed that when they said something, it was as if God had said it.  There are plenty of Christians in our own day in time who act much the same way.  Convictions about where God stands on a particular issue are important, but they should always be held with humility.  We should always leave room for God to reveal something new to us.  I don’t always do that.  I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one.

                The second beatitude is, “blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”  It is the promise that God is about comforting those who are hurting.  The second woe brings an indictment on the religious leaders for doing the opposite.  It points to a practice where Pharisees and other officials would approach widows after their husbands had died with an offer “to help” them.  They would take care of their deceased husbands affairs and care for them.  This practice might have begun with compassionate intent, but by Jesus’s day, it had devolved into the leaders taking advantage of widows and assuming control of their assets.  The leaders actually added to the misery of the widows’ grief – the exact opposite of God’s intention to comfort those who mourn. 

                To be honest, this charge is hard to hear in a personal way.  None of us wants to think of ourselves as people who would take advantage of someone in a bad situation in the guise of “helping” them.  It’s a pretty despicable thing.  But I would encourage us to let down our defenses enough to see that the church today is sometimes guilty of adding insult to injury.  I think of divorcees, LGBTQ community members, and other “sinners” that have been shunned by their congregations.  I think of Christians picketing and harassing mourners at funerals for a number of “righteous” reasons.  And lest I try to exclude myself, I think of the times that I have added to someone’s suffering by failing to respond in compassion in their time of need.  The antidote to this is to see all those who are hurting, regardless of the reason for that hurt, as people God wants to comfort. 

                The thread that runs through the first two beatitudes is spiritual humility; the thread that runs through the first two woes is spiritual arrogance. Spiritual humility was in short supply in Jesus’s day and it is no less true today.  Likewise, there was a need for Jesus to confront spiritual arrogance in His day in the name of those who were spiritually and physically vulnerable.  The same is needed today.   

 

Question:  Not having to share your answer with anyone but yourself and God, are there ways in which you have been guilty of spiritual arrogance or at least lacked spiritual humility?

 

Prayer:  God, show me my own arrogance and inability to see people the way that you do.  Help me align my heart with yours. Amen.

 

Prayer Focus:  Spend some time confessing to God the times that you failed to respond in compassion when you had the opportunity to do so.

 

Song:  The God Who Stays – Matthew West

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHMVSdIjBcg&t=86s

Do What They Say, Not What They Do

 

Do What They Say, Not What They Do

 

Matthew 23:1-12, NLT - Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples,  “The teachers of religious law and the Pharisees are the official interpreters of the law of Moses.  So practice and obey whatever they tell you, but don’t follow their example. For they don’t practice what they teach.  They crush people with unbearable religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden.

“Everything they do is for show. On their arms they wear extra wide prayer boxes with Scripture verses inside, and they wear robes with extra long tassels. And they love to sit at the head table at banquets and in the seats of honor in the synagogues.  They love to receive respectful greetings as they walk in the marketplaces, and to be called ‘Rabbi.]

“Don’t let anyone call you ‘Rabbi,’ for you have only one teacher, and all of you are equal as brothers and sisters.  And don’t address anyone here on earth as ‘Father,’ for only God in heaven is your Father.  And don’t let anyone call you ‘Teacher,’ for you have only one teacher, the Messiah.  The greatest among you must be a servant.  But those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.                       

              

I first heard the phrase, “descending into greatness” used by former mega-church pastor Bill Hybels.  He was giving a talk on the last sentence of the passage above.  The irony of this now is so thick, I can hardly believe it.  Hybels is one of many high-profile leaders that were exposed and brought down by their inappropriate behavior towards women.  Hybels talk, “Descending into Greatness” is another example of what Jesus meant when he instructed the people to do what their leaders say, but don’t do what they do. 

How does one become great through service and humility? I think you already know.  There are people who are high in the ranks of people you and I admire precisely because of their humility and heart to serve.  Mother Teresa is revered as one of the great spiritual giants of all time, but she literally shunned having attention brought to her personally and she spent her life serving the “lowest of the low” in the filthy slums of India.  I think of my friend Fred (name changed to protect the guilty) who literally has spent every available day since he retired serving others. You could add names to the “Humility Hall of Fame,” but of course, that would defeat the purpose.  The crazy thing about humility is that when you have it, you’re the last to know.  But Jesus tells us how we get it – by refusing to exalt ourselves and by always looking to serve. 

Jesus says something else in this passage that is momentous that is very easy to miss.  The teachers of the law didn’t miss it for what Jesus said threatened their prestigious place in the world.  Listen to it again:

 

“Don’t let anyone call you ‘Rabbi,’ for you have only one teacher, and all of you are equal as brothers and sisters.  And don’t address anyone here on earth as ‘Father,’ for only God in heaven is your Father.  And don’t let anyone call you ‘Teacher,’ for you have only one teacher, the Messiah.  

 

Jesus says to us here is basically that you don’t need religious leaders anymore to tell you what to do.  No titles.  Nothing that exalts one over another.  No designated teacher.   Now, you have Me.  You know God because you know Me.  You are taught be God because you are taught by Me.  You don’t need to be “fathered” by a religious leader, because you are parented directly be God. 

                What is momentous about this is that our relationship with God no longer has to be mitigated through an intermediary.  With Jesus you now have a direct relationship with God.  It is this passage and others that form the basis for Quakers having no titled leaders among their ranks.  It is also this passage that has caused me discomfort at being called “Reverend.”  I obviously do believe there is an appropriate role for leaders in the community of faith, but what is clear to me from Jesus here is that it is not to grant others access to God or God’s blessings.  That’s Jesus’s job. My job is the same as your job – to serve humbly.  This is greatness in the Kingdom.

 

Question:  Who are the “giants” for you because of their humble and serving hearts?

 

Prayer:  God, give us humble hearts without us knowing about it.  Help us serve with a glad heart. Help to avoid putting anyone on a pedestal other than Jesus. Amen.

 

Prayer Focus:  Pray for people who provide service to you.

 

Song:  Tim McGraw - Humble And Kind (Official Video)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awzNHuGqoMc

Now I Have a Question. . .Watch Out!

 

Now I Have a Question. . .Watch Out!

 

Matthew 22:41-46, NIV - While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them,  “What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?”

“The son of David,” they replied.

He said to them, “How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’? For he says,

“‘The Lord said to my Lord:

    “Sit at my right hand

until I put your enemies

    under your feet.”’

If then David calls him ‘Lord,’ how can he be his son?”  No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions.

 

For the last few reflections, we have observed different religious groups taking turns trying to stump and discredit Jesus with the crowds in the Temple after Jesus’s arrival in Jerusalem.  In three days time, Jesus will be hanging on a Roman Cross outside the city in part because of the collusion of these very groups.  The questions have been handled brilliantly by Jesus and if fact, have backfired on His questioners.  The crowd is more impressed than ever.  It is the religious leaders who are looking bad about now.

Jesus makes things worse for them when He turns the tables and asks them a question – a question that they will not be able to answer.  As we will see over the next few reflections, this is only the beginning of the misery the religious leaders will endure.  In Matthew 23, Jesus unleashes a torrent of indictments upon them that will fuel their quest to get rid of Jesus.  But for now, let’s consider Jesus’s question:

“What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?”

Jesus knows what they will say because the answer they will give is not wrong.  As expected, they say that the Messiah will be a son of David, meaning that the Messiah will be a human descendant of David.  However, this is only the setup question. 

“How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’?

Jesus then quotes the well-known messianic Psalm 110 to them to support the legitimacy of His question.  Jesus then repeats the question. . . just in case they forgot.  David does indeed address the Messiah as “Lord.”  There is a long silence.  The crowd looks over at the religious leaders, waiting to see how they will answer.  A longer silence.  Crickets.  They don’t even have a guess.  

This is one of those times when the readers of Matthew’s gospel (that includes you and me) have information that the people in the story do not have.  The religious leaders don’t have an answer for Jesus’s question and neither does the crowd.  At this point in the story, even Matthew himself doesn’t have the answer, for He writes this Gospel that we are reading decades later.  But we know the answer, don’t we?

Jesus is a Son of David.  Matthew established that in Chapter 1 with the genealogy of Jesus.  We also know that Jesus is the Son of God, for that has been established multiple times in the Gospel though Jesus often tells folks to hold that under wraps.  If Jesus is a son of David AND the Son of God, then David can address Him as Lord.  We know that and Matthew lets us enjoy the fact that the people who should know better than anyone else do NOT know.  Jesus is now going public with the secret He asked people to keep until now – the secret that we already know.  Jesus is Lord and Messiah because he is both the human son of David AND the divine Son of God. 

The real question for us is not whether we know the answer to Jesus’s riddle, but do we sincerely believe the answer is true?  And if the answer to that question is “yes,” then there is an even more poignant question:  How then, shall we live?

 

Question:  If you believe Jesus is the divine Son of God and the promised Messiah of all people, how does the way you live reflect that belief?

 

Prayer:  Jesus, thank you for revealing Yourself to us.  Help us represent You to others by the way we live each day.  Amen.

 

Prayer Focus:  Pray for people you know from other faith traditions than yours.

Song:  Build My Life - Michael W Smith

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jYMEJ0QNcw

Love God. Love People.

 

Love God. Love People.

 

Matthew 22:34-40, The Message - When the Pharisees heard how he had bested the Sadducees, they gathered their forces for an assault. One of their religion scholars spoke for them, posing a question they hoped would show him up: “Teacher, which command in God’s Law is the most important?”

Jesus said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s Law and the Prophets hangs from them.”

 

Anyone who knows me knows that this passage is my “big deal” passage.  It is Jesus’s restatement of the sum total of all the Old Testament laws.  It simplifies the Ten Commandments into two (all ten have to do with either our relationship with God or our relationship with people).  At the same time Jesus is summarizing all the laws that have come before, He is also pushing them to a higher level.  As the Apostle Paul will explain later to the Corinthians, you can follow all the instructions of God’s law to the letter, but if you do it without love, it lacks power. 

I love how Eugene Peterson translates what we are used to hearing as “heart, soul, and mind” as “passion, prayer, and intelligence.”  It just seems to imply a greater intensity and action;  I believe this was Jesus’s intention.  The Ten Commandments include a lot of “do not’s.” Do not have idols.  Do not misuse God’s name.  Do not kill. Do not lie.  Do not commit adultery.  Do not envy.  You get the point.  Jesus’s restatement is suggests that it’s not enough to avoid doing unloving things;  the point is to transform the actions of our lives to actively loving God and people.  What we see is that while Jesus has simplified the “ten” into “two,” the two are actually harder to live out.  Jesus has raised the bar. 

What does loving with all of our passion, prayer, and intelligence look like?  It’s looks as unique as our passions, prayers, and intelligence are.  My passion moves in a different direction than yours and your prayer doesn’t sound like mind.  Our intelligence is focused in different directions.  This is a beautiful thing.  By God’s design, the collective passion, prayer, and intelligence of the entire human race is channeled toward loving.  At least that is the divine invitation issued by Jesus in this exchange with the leading religious leaders of His day.  His answer silenced them; they ask Jesus no more questions in Matthew’s gospel after this (as we’ll see in the next devotional, Jesus had one more question for them though).  But in this invitation is the power that will change the world forever. It is still changing the world. Love God and love people.  So simple, but also so difficult.  It’s still the invitation today for you and me.

 

Question:  What does loving God and people with all your passion, prayer and intelligence look like?

 

Prayer: Lord of all people, you showed us what loving with passion prayer, and intelligence looked like in Jesus.  Shape our hearts, souls, and minds to be more and more like Christ.  Show us the specific opportunities we have today to love like Jesus.  Amen.

 

Prayer Focus:  Pray for people today that you have a hard time praying for. 

 

Song:  Love God, Love People – Danny Gokey (ft. Michael W. Smith)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-29WLQ3trA

More Love Than We Can Know. . .

 

More Love Than We Can Know. . .

 

Matthew 22:23-33, The Message - That same day, Sadducees approached him. This is the party that denies any possibility of resurrection. They asked, “Teacher, Moses said that if a man dies childless, his brother is obligated to marry his widow and father a child with her. Here’s a case where there were seven brothers. The first brother married and died, leaving no child, and his wife passed to his brother. The second brother also left her childless, then the third—and on and on, all seven. Eventually the wife died. Now here’s our question: At the resurrection, whose wife is she? She was a wife to each of them.”

Jesus answered, “You’re off base on two counts: You don’t know what God said, and you don’t know how God works. At the resurrection we’re beyond marriage. As with the angels, all our ecstasies and intimacies then will be with God. And regarding your speculation on whether the dead are raised or not, don’t you read your Bibles? The grammar is clear: God says, ‘I am—not was—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.’ The living God defines himself not as the God of dead men, but of the living.” Hearing this exchange the crowd was much impressed.

 

                Once again, Matthew includes a discussion between Jesus and religious officials that provides a contrast between this world and the Kingdom of Heaven.  Today the sparring partners are the Sadduccees, a religious group that denied much of what we would call the supernatural world - spirits, demons, angels, or any kind of resurrection (life after death).  Matthew notes this to point out the disingenuous nature of their question; they like the Pharisees before them, are only trying to make Jesus look bad in front of his followers.  And like the Pharisees, the plan backfires.  The followers are even more amazed and endeared to Jesus because of His answers. 

                The question they ask concerns one Moses’s laws.  In a culture so patriarchal it’s hard to imagine these days, Moses’s remedy for caring for widows was to give the responsibility for their care to the dead husband’s brother.  The Sadducces present Jesus with a preposterous “what-if…” scenario; what if all seven brothers are dead and then the poor widow finally dies.”  If there is a resurrection of the dead, whose wife will she be in the afterlife? 

                There is no good technical answer to the question, which is the Sadducces’ reason for asking it.  Of course Jesus knows this and doesn’t step into the trap.  Instead, He pivots to a much deeper issue, the nature of the Kingdom of God.  “Who was married to who?” is an irrelevant concern in the life after this one.  Though it’s hard to imagine a reality where such would be the case, somehow, in the eternal presence of God, we just won’t worry about such things.  Jesus pulls the rug out from underneath the Sadducces by pronouncing the whole basis for their religious order to be false.  God is a God of the living, a God of resurrection.   Matthew includes this exchange because Jesus is about to prove this truth by being resurrected Himself!

                Most commentaries I have read on this passage focus on the marriage question; will we still be married to our spouses in heaven.  I believe that is falling into the same trap as the Sadducces.   Jesus is trying to present a new vision.  Imagine a reality where the relationship between souls and the relationship between souls and God is so much better than we know now that who we were married to before seems like a silly question.  The very best we’ve experienced in this life pales in comparison to the love we will know in eternity.

 I’ll be honest; I struggle to imagine such things.  But I have heard first-hand witnesses from people who “died,” spent a few moments in the perfect presence of God, and then rejoined us here on earth.  They always struggle to find language to describe the love they felt surrounding them.  Some do report recognizing those who had died before being there with them, which is comforting to me and many others.  But in almost every case, the one thing the eyewitnesses to “the other side” want to make clear more than anything else is the Love present there.  

                I do my best to hold on to their witness.  I can also add to their witness that the Love that they struggle to describe sounds like the deepest longing of my soul.  A Love that will make all that has come before just melt away.  A Love with power to heal all the imperfections of the past.  A Love that becomes the only currency that matters.  The perfect and complete Love of God.  We get tastes of it but when the Kingdom reaches it’s fullness, it will be the only reality we’ll know.   I hold as much of that vision in my heart as I can.  I pray that you will too.  Because to the extent that we can, we can be part of that vision becoming reality right now. 

 

Question:  What do you really believe about the coming Kingdom of God?

 

Prayer:  We long for so much to be different than we experience right now.  No more tears. No more pain.  No more brokenness.  No more strife.  Plant the seeds of your Kingdom in our soul and helps us nurture the growth of Your Kingdom within us.  Help us experience the fullness of Your Love.  Amen.

 

Prayer Focus:  Spend some time today reminding yourself that our God is not a God of the dead.  The people that we see no more are not really gone.  They are waiting for us in the life to come.

 

Song:  Perfect Love – Planetshakers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bwlDBtGVd0

Between Death and Taxes

Between Death and Taxes

 

Matthew 22:15-22, NLT - Then the Pharisees met together to plot how to trap Jesus into saying something for which he could be arrested.  They sent some of their disciples, along with the supporters of Herod, to meet with him. “Teacher,” they said, “we know how honest you are. You teach the way of God truthfully. You are impartial and don’t play favorites.  Now tell us what you think about this: Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”

But Jesus knew their evil motives. “You hypocrites!” he said. “Why are you trying to trap me?  Here, show me the coin used for the tax.” When they handed him a Roman coin, he asked, “Whose picture and title are stamped on it?”

“Caesar’s,” they replied.

“Well, then,” he said, “give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give to God what belongs to God.”

His reply amazed them, and they went away.

 

                Can you sense the irony here?  The Pharisees are brainstorming a way to get Jesus arrested and/or killed.  So they send their minions to approach Jesus with this ploy.  Say to Jesus, “we know you are a pull-no-punches-kinda guy; we know you’ll be completely honest with us.”  Then they ask Jesus about paying the extremely unpopular Roman tax.  They expect Jesus to speak publicly about not paying the tax, which will get Him arrested.  In other words, they dishonestly go to Jesus asking Him to be honest. 

                It doesn’t take supernatural power to see through this.  I’m sure each of us have had the experience of knowing beforehand when someone is being less than straightforward with us.  Jesus sees this for the trap that it is and so, he sidesteps it. Many scholarly interpreters read some politics at play here in Jesus’s response.  I usually side with scholars when interpreting the context of scripture, but in this case, I’m not convinced.  I don’t think Jesus was trying to make a blanket statement about whether Christians should acknowledge and respect secular governments.  I believe what Jesus is doing here is simply exposing the hypocrisy of the questioners.  The key for me is that Jesus asks them to produce a coin.  They trap themselves when they produce it.  By producing a Roman coin, they prove that they are Roman collaborators.  There were people who honestly believed that paying taxes to the Romans was sinful.  However, those rebels would not even be caught with Roman money in their possession.  The questioners realize that they have been exposed when Jesus makes the point about who image is on the coin they produced.  When Jesus says, “give to Caesar what is Caesar what is Caesar’s,” he is essentially saying “go do what you were already going to do.”  He even calls them “hypocrites” when He does it. 

                The takeaway for me from this passage is to be aware of own hypocrisy.  The Jewish leaders benefited from many arrangements with the Romans.  Likewise, we often benefit from institutions and cultural practices that we publicly condemn.  I hate the negativity and dishonesty that is rampant on social media, but I continue to participate in social media.  I sincerely believe that broadcast media is mostly infotainment catering to specific market demographics, but I still watch “the news” everyday.  I sometimes complain about taxes, but I benefit from all the infrastructure those taxes fund.  To be fair, some of this is unavoidable.  I can’t avoid driving on government-funded roads if I want to get to church.  I think this is the reality to which Jesus refers.  Right now, we are hopelessly woven into the fabric of earthly kingdoms.  But the invitation is to see that we also belong to God’s Kingdom and that Kingdom will outlast all the others.  There will come a day when “Caesar’s money” will be worthless to us, so you might as well give Caesar his portion now.  It won’t matter whether we are an American citizen or a citizen of Pakistan. The only real question will be, “are we a citizen of Heaven.” The challenge is to keep that in proper perspective.

               

Question:  Where is one place in your life where you are aware of your own hypocrisy?

 

Prayer:  God help us see the true allegiances of our hearts.  Point out to us the ways in which we don’t practice what we claim to preach.  Forgive us for our hypocrisy.  Amen.

 

Prayer Focus:  Pray for people you know that work for the government.

 

Song: Living Dangerously In The Hands Of God - Steve Camp  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9Oa0kkq7OU