Boy Jesus
The account Luke gives us of 12 year-old Jesus in the Temple is the only account we have of Jesus as a boy. Slow down and read it again--it is such a human story. Can't you just see Mary and Joseph's growing panic and exasperation when they realize they've left their eldest son behind in Jerusalem?
(By the way, it seems likely that Mary was one of Luke's eyewitness sources. Look at the times Luke tells us that Mary "treasured all these things in her heart." Each of the strange occurrences of Jesus's childhood was remembered by Mary and pondered over years afterward.)
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Because They Were Poor
Luke tells us that Mary and Joseph presented Jesus in the Temple as a newborn and made a sacrifice of 2 birds. Why is this significant? Because as explained in Leviticus 12:6-8, if you can afford it, the appropriate sacrifice after the birth of a firstborn child is a lamb. But, if you can't afford a lamb, then 2 doves or pigeons is acceptable.
What does it mean that when the Savior came, he came to a poor family?
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Christmas Shepherds
Apparently, shepherding was not a reputable occupation at the time of Jesus: shepherds were considered shifty, filthy, and not respectable. Guess who were the first people to be told of the birth of Jesus? Shepherds.
When Jesus shows up, the nobodies are included.
To whom do you need to reach out today?
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John Wild
Just like Elijah in the Old Testament, John the Baptist lives in the wilderness until he begins his ministry (Luke 1:80). Why is that detail important? Because Luke is showing us that the Gospel is the continuation of Israel's story--God made promises to Abraham, and he is fulfilling them through Jesus.
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How Does the Old Testament Connect With the New?
Mary understands that the baby she bears is God's fulfilled promise to Israel. Reflecting on her pregnancy, she sings:
He has helped his servant Israel,
remembering to be merciful
to Abraham and his descendants forever,
just as he promised our ancestors.”Luke 1:54-55
How does the Old Testament connect with the New? Through Jesus. Jesus is the answer to all of God's promises to Israel, and so the New Testament is part 2 of Israel's story, in which God moves to bless the entire world, both Jew and Gentile.
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"Okay, I'll Do It"
Contrast Mary's reaction to the angel Gabriel with Zechariah's reaction:
When the angel comes to Zechariah, Zechariah is hesitant to trust God's word;
When the angel comes to Mary, Mary says--in effect--"Okay, I'll do it."
Sometimes it's just that simple.
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Luke's Gospel Begins
For the next several months, we'll be reading Luke's Gospel together. Some quick points:
- After reading Matthew and then Mark, I've noticed how different Luke's style is. Compared with Mark's vivid immediacy, e.g., Luke seems much smoother and more elegant.
- Luke tells us in his prologue (Luke 1:1-4) that he has studied other sources (other Gospels?) and deliberately arranged his account in a way that will help us readers have confidence that Jesus is the Lord. Note that Luke doesn't say that he was in some kind of trance when he was writing; rather, God used Luke's free will and hard work to give us this Gospel.
- Zechariah disbelieves the angel's promise that he will have a son (John the Baptist) in his old age. Note that Zechariah's disbelief doesn't keep God's word from happening; Zechariah's disbelief keeps Zechariah from having the joy and peace the come from trusting God at his word.
Over and over, scripture tells us not to be afraid. Don't let your worries rob you today of the joy and peace that God's word brings.
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Did the Resurrection Really Happen?
Did the Resurrection actually happen? The Apostle Paul, writing in sometime in the 50's A.D., had this to say: "If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith" (1 Corinthians 15:14). In other words, Christianity rises and falls with the Resurrection of Jesus. But, the issue for many modern people is that though the Resurrection seems like a nice story, we know that dead people stay dead and that it couldn't possibly have happened. So, did the Resurrection happen, or not? I think it did, and here are three reasons why.
(By the Way: It Wasn't a Spiritual or Emotional Resurrection)
As a way around the difficulty of the Resurrection, some people say that what the Gospels report is some kind of spiritual or emotional sense that Jesus was still with his disciples after his death. This view does not at all match what the Gospels themselves say, namely that after the Resurrection:
- Jesus ate food (Luke 24:13-32 & John 21:1-14) and
- Jesus made physical contact with the disciples (Luke 24:36-43 and John 20:24-29).
The Gospels are very clear: the Resurrection was a bodily resurrection, and not a vague spiritual sense that Jesus was still alive.So, what reasons do we have to believe that the Resurrection happened?
Reason 1: The Women Witnesses
All the canonical Gospels agree that the first witnesses to the empty tomb and the Resurrection of Jesus were women. In our world, that detail doesn't surprise us, but in the ancient world this would have been a shocking detail because women weren't considered reliable witnesses in the ancient world.If you were making up a resurrection hoax in the 1st century Mediterranean world, you would never say that women were the first witnesses of your story. So, why do all the gospels insist that women were the first witnesses?The simplest reason for the inclusion of the women witnesses: because the Gospels are merely reporting what actually happened. The inconvenient truth of the women witnesses is a detail that argues for the plausibility of the Resurrection.
Reason 2: The Deaths of All Involved
Many people have died for lies that they believed were true, but groups of people do not die for what they know is a lie.Virtually all the disciples of Jesus were martyred for their faith in him. If they were making up the Resurrection, then they would have recanted their stories at the point of death. But they didn't.
Chuck Colson, one of the Nixon men involved in the Watergate break-in, had this to say:
I know the resurrection is a fact, and Watergate proved it to me. How? Because 12 men testified they had seen Jesus raised from the dead, then they proclaimed that truth for 40 years, never once denying it. Every one was beaten, tortured, stoned and put in prison. They would not have endured that if it weren't true. Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world-and they couldn't keep a lie for three weeks. You're telling me 12 apostles could keep a lie for 40 years? Absolutely impossible.
Chuck Colson
The martyrdom of the early Christians is a strong argument in favor of the truth of their claims.
Reason 3: It Was Testimony, Not Legend
Modern people will say that the Resurrection is a legend, a folktale that took shape over generations and that consequently grew in the telling, like George Washington and the Cherry Tree.The problem with this theory is that it doesn't fit the facts: the letters of Paul began to be circulated around 20 years after the death of Jesus, the Gospel of Mark within 40 years, and the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John within 60 years (at the latest). In other words, Christians were publicly talking about the Resurrection within the lifetime of its witnesses. Anyone who wanted to investigate the truth of the Resurrection merely had to talk to its witnesses.A legend takes generations to develop, but the Gospels (and other New Testament materials) were written down and circulated within a generation or two of the events of that first Easter Sunday, i.e., way too soon a time for a legend to develop.Rather than being a legend, the Resurrection was testimony.
Testimony is a valid form of historical memory. People who experienced the events say, "I was there. I saw it." January was the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, and there are thousands of people who lived through the Nazi concentration camps who can still testify today to their experience, 70 years later. One of the reasons Holocaust deniers have a hard time gaining a hearing is because there are people who can point to their blue tattoos and say, "No, it did happen: I was there."
Just as the remaining Holocaust survivors' testimony is available to anyone wanting to investigate the Holocaust today, so the Resurrection witnesses' testimony was available to anyone wanting to investigate the Resurrection at the time that the New Testament was taking shape.
Conclusion: the Resurrection is Plausible
The Resurrection cannot be proved in a laboratory. But, we can examine the facts and decide that it is more plausible that the Resurrection happened than that it did not happen.Now, some people will accept the above and yet still insist: "We know that dead people stay dead, and therefore the Resurrection could not have happened." The problem with that position is that history is full of events that seemed impossible and that actually happened. I admit that the Resurrection is unique as an historical event, but that doesn't mean that it is necessarily impossible. In any historical inquiry, we have to look at the evidence and see where it takes us. In this case, I believe the evidence argues in favor of the Resurrection.The reason discussions like this are important are not because they can bring anyone across the threshold of faith (only God can do that), but because I've found that some people won't even approach the door of faith if they believe that the claims of the faith cannot possibly be true; arguments can't cause someone to believe, but they can knock down bad reasons for not believing.Here's hoping this little post might help someone somewhere come a bit closer.[originally published Easter 2015]
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The Church of the Holy Sepulcher
The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is in Jerusalem, supposedly built over the tomb of Jesus, and we visited there in February. The more I've read about it, the more convinced I am that this is really where Jesus was buried--this actually happened.
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Alexander & Rufus
"A certain man from Cyrene, Simon, the father of Alexander and Rufus, was passing by on his way in from the country, and they forced him to carry the cross."
Mark 15:21
The identities of the sons of Simon of Cyrene are irrelevant to Mark's story. So, why mention Alexander and Rufus?
Because they were members of the early church, known to Mark's readers. How awesome is that?!
Their dad was forced by the Romans to carry Christ's cross on the way to Golgotha.
His sons became Christ's followers.
WOW.
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Pilate
Pilate knowingly sent an innocent man to die. Think about that.
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The Difference Between Peter & Judas
The difference between Peter and Judas is that Peter, even when he denies Christ, is still trying to say close, whereas Judas runs off on his own.
Be like Peter.
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The Next Time You Are Treated Unfairly
Jesus was not given a fair trial:
55 The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for evidence against Jesus so that they could put him to death, but they did not find any. 56 Many testified falsely against him, but their statements did not agree.
57 Then some stood up and gave this false testimony against him: 58 “We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple made with human hands and in three days will build another, not made with hands.’” 59 Yet even then their testimony did not agree.Mark 14:55-59
The next time someone treats you unfairly, remember: they did the same to Jesus.
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Mark's Self-Portrait?
Many scholars think that Mark wrote himself into his Gospel in this one strange verse:
A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him, 52 he fled naked, leaving his garment behind.
Mark 14:51
Who knows? We know that John Mark was from Jerusalem (cf. Acts 12:12), and would have been a young man at the time of the Crucifixion.
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Judas
I find Judas fascinating.
- Jesus kept Judas in his inner circle, even though he knew he would betray him. Why?
- Judas had been with Jesus for years, and then he deliberately chose to betray him. Why? (He clearly immediately regrets it.)
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The Day & Hour Unknown
Jesus switches from talking about the end of the Temple to The End of All Things. He continues using apocalyptic language, and tells us that because no one knows when the end will come, we all need to be ready.
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The Little Apocalypse
In Mark 13, Jesus is not talking about the end of the world, but an end of the world: the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. In the generation after Jesus (who died circa 33 AD), the Jews staged a revolt against Rome which was cruelly put down, culminating with the destruction of the Temple. The Temple remains in ruins until this day. (The well-known Wailing Wall is a still-standing wall of that Temple.)
Jesus is here foretelling the destruction of the Temple, using apocalyptic language, which is appropriate, because in the time of Jesus, the idea that the Temple would be thrown down, stone upon stone, would have seemed to require the end of the world.
13 As Jesus was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!”
2 “Do you see all these great buildings?” replied Jesus. “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”Mark 13:1-2
I've been to the Temple Mount and seen the great stones that were brought from the quarry into Jerusalem. Even today, their size and scale is astounding. Add to this the fact that, as with the Pyramids, we still don't know how the Temple was built and couldn't build it today, and you can see why Jesus uses the language he does.
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God's Economy
In God's economy, it's not the amount of the gift that matters, but the heart behind it.
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Punished Most Severely
Jesus warns the large crowd that has gathered around him in the Temple courts that hypocritical religious leaders who prove unfaithful will be "punished most severely." Whoa.
No wonder the crowd of ordinary people "listened to him with delight" (Mark 12:37).
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The Stone the Builders Rejected
In the Parable of the Tenants, Jesus quotes Psalm 118:22-23:
The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
the Lord has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes.Psalm 118:22-23
What if God has a redemptive purpose for the overlooked things in our lives?
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