The Sabbath Was Made for Man
Jesus makes a startling statement in today's reading: "the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath". In other words, God gave the Sabbath to humanity for the purpose of blessing us, not harming us. What if all the laws and commands of God have been designed to work the same way? What if they are all for our benefit?
They are.
Today’s Scripture
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New Wineskins
What Jesus is doing won't fit in the old categories. The Kingdom of God is not something with which I accessorize or decorate my house; it is the priceless work of art that causes me to pull down all the old walls so I can build a new place all around it.
21 “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. 22 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.”
Mark 2:21-22
Today's Scripture
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Jesus Forgives & Heals a Paralyzed Man
In Mark 2, Jesus first forgives a man of his sins, and then heals his paralysis. Why? Because the man needed both–spiritual healing and physical healing. Jesus clearly knew that if he had only healed the man’s legs, the man would still be lacking. It would be false to say that our material needs don’t matter–the baby would never have been born in Bethlehem if God didn’t love the material world–but it is true that our deepest problems are spiritual. (Think about it, if the material world was all that mattered, then all rich people would be happy.)
The good news: the God who is Spirit entered into material reality and fixed our problem himself.
Today’s Scripture
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A Solitary Place
Reading Mark, one gets the sense of how exhausting ministry must have been for Jesus. This is why he routinely tells people--and even the demons--to keep quiet about his identity: when word gets out--as it inevitably does--he is hounded by the crowds.
I'm not thronged by crowds when I leave the house, and neither are you. But, I do face a challenge Jesus did not face: through the little phone in my pocket and the access it provides to the wider world, millions of people are clamoring for my attention.
If Jesus needed to withdraw to a solitary place to be alone in the mornings, what about us?
(And don't take your phone with you.)
Today's Scripture
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Jesus & the Demonic
Mark tells us that the central message of Jesus was that the Kingdom of God has arrived through him. This message provokes immediate conflict, and one of the forms this conflict takes in Mark's Gospel is spiritual conflict with the demonic powers. For many modern Americans, the idea of demonic oppression is lunacy. Yet, I don't think you can read Mark and conclude that the conflict Jesus has with demons is merely metaphorical. I have personally never seen a demon, but I do know that Christians in other parts of the world have a much wider view of spiritual conflict than most Americans, and I know enough about life to admit that there do seem to be evil forces at work warping and tempting human desires. That said, however, the point of today's reading is not the reality of evil, but the power of Christ over evil. I find this comforting: Jesus is stronger. Period.
Today’s Scripture
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The Gospel According to Mark
For the next 2 months, I'm going to be reading and blogging through the Gospel of Mark. Here's what you need to know.
These Are Saint Peter's Memoirs
The earliest tradition we have (dating from the end of the 1st century AD!) links Mark to the Apostle Peter, and Marks's Gospel is filled with the kind of eyewitness details that one would expect from Peter's preaching: details that do not make any difference to the plot, but are the kind odd details an eyewitness would remember. For example, when Jesus is about to feed the 5,000, Mark tells us, "Then he commanded them all to sit down on the green grass" (Mark 6:39, emphasis added), or when Jesus heals Jairus's daughter, Mark, who is writing in Greek, records the Aramaic phrase that Jesus actually used: "Taking her by the hand he said to her, 'Talitha cumi,' which means, 'Little girl, I say to you, arise'" (Mark 5:41). Neither the detail about the green grass nor the recounting of Jesus's literal words makes any difference to the story; they are the kind of details that Peter the eyewitness would never forget. There are many more eyewitness details like this.
Mark Has Arranged Peter's Preaching to Make a Point
And yet Mark has done more than just put down on paper Peter’s eyewitness testimony about Jesus: Mark has shaped his material to bring a particular question into prominence. That question is the central question of history, Who Is Jesus? That is the question that Jesus puts to Peter, “Who do you say that I am?” (Mark 8:29), and it is the question that ultimately every person must answer for himself or herself.
Mark's is the Shortest Gospel
Mark begins not with the birth of Jesus--as do Matthew and Luke--nor with a meditation on on the cosmic significance of Jesus--as does John. Rather, Mark begins with the wild prophet John the Baptist baptizing the adult Jesus in the Judean Wilderness. From that startling beginning, Mark's Gospel hurtles forward, skipping over much of the teaching material in the other gospels (there is no "Sermon on the Mount" in Mark, e.g.) and the famous parables of Jesus, all leading up to the horrifying crucifixion of the Son of God. Mark's is a mysterious, powerful little book.
Let's Begin
And so, I'd like to invite you to read along with me each weekday, starting today and finishing on Tuesday, July 2. Each day's reading will take less than 5 minutes to read--you can do this. To help, each weekday I'll write a brief reflection on that day's reading. Here's today's:
The baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan by John the Baptist seems to have been one of the spiritual highpoints of Jesus's life, and the moment when his identity of the incarnate Son of God was confirmed:
9 At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”
Mark 1:9-11
And yet immediately after that moment of spiritual intensity, the Holy Spirit leads Jesus into the desert to be tested:
12 At once the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness, 13 and he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him.
Mark 1:12-13
Here's the point: don't make the mistake of thinking that the hard times you're facing mean that the Lord has abandoned you. In fact, it might be because of his love for you that the hard times have come: diamonds are only made when pressure is applied.
Today's Scripture
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The Great Commission
For the last four months, we've been reading through the Gospel of Matthew, and today we come to the end: the final words of Jesus to his disciples. What follows is a reflection on what those words mean for us today, and why we do what we do at Munger, the way that we do it.
The Mission of the Church
Organizations lose their way when they lose their why.
Michael Hyatt
Why does the church exist? What is its purpose? An uninformed observer, after visiting churches throughout the country, might conclude that the church exists to:
• Host worship services on Sundays; or
• Feed the poor in soup kitchens; or
• Mobilize marchers for a political cause.
And that observer would be wrong. Although churches should host services on Sundays and be in ministry to the poor and work for change in society, none of these worthy activities are the actual mission of the church.
Instead, the mission of the church is to make disciples.
This mission is found in its original context in the Great Commission of Jesus: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20).
A disciple is a student. A Christian disciple is someone who is in apprenticeship to Jesus, so as to learn the Jesus way of living. According to Jesus, this is the point of the church: the church exists to make disciples.
Go Everywhere and Teach Everything
The mission of the church is to go wherever people are and teach them everything Jesus said and did. Jesus does not tell his followers that their mission is to have vibrant worship services or to feed the poor or to be engaged politically; he tells them to make disciples. If we take Jesus’ command seriously, we will inevitably host weekly worship services and be in ministry with the poor and we’ll be engaged politically, but these things are the results and implications of the church’s mission (i.e., discipleship) and not the primary mission itself.
Discipleship to Jesus is emphatically not narrowly confined to what we might call habits of personal piety such as prayers, moral living, and Sunday school attendance. Discipleship is not something we do for a few minutes in the morning before we engage with the real world. Note the words of Jesus in the Great Commission: “teach them everything I have commanded you.” Even the most cursory reading of the gospels shows that Jesus was not merely concerned with matters of personal piety.
Likewise, discipleship to Jesus must be much more than habits of personal piety in our own lives. Discipleship affects all of life, from the personal to the political. After all, from a human perspective, it wasn’t personal piety that got Jesus killed — he was killed because he was a threat to the powers and principalities. Jesus was not killed because he was irrelevant to real life, but because he was specifically concerned with real life.
Put On Your Oxygen Mask First
As a pastor, I’ve seen the following many times: a husband and a wife have children who become the focus and emotional fulfillment of their lives. They would do anything for their children’s happiness, and they often do. Over time, this focus on the children causes the husband and wife to neglect their own relationship, and the marriage begins to wither. One day, the husband and the wife come to the conclusion that divorce is inevitable, and they break the news to the children. Unintentionally, the parents’ apparent focus on the children – at the expense of the marriage – ends up harming the children in the long run.
First things must come first; our problem is that we tend to focus on second things, and wonder why we aren’t getting first results. There is a reason the flight attendant tells you to put your oxygen mask on first, before tending to your child. After all, if you asphyxiate and keel over, there will be no one to help your son or daughter. First things must come first.
The situation in many of our churches today is that we are spending our time focusing on good things, but they are secondary concerns rather than our first mission. Let me reemphasize, the problem is not that worship services and food banks and political engagement are bad things. In fact, they are good and necessary things we need to be doing, and things that Jesus commanded. The problem is that putting these outcomes of discipleship in place of discipleship itself means that we are setting ourselves up to fail, like a panicked mother who forgets to put on her own oxygen mask.
For example, hosting a vibrant worship service is not our first mission, though it is a good thing – a very good thing. If we are actively and effectively making disciples, we will have vibrant worship services on Sundays. But, if we come to believe that vibrant worship services themselves are the point and put our efforts toward that end, at best we’ll have superficial shows that lack the power to change hearts, and at worst our churches will be empty.
In a different vein, some American Christians have mistakenly concluded that you can have social justice without discipleship. It didn’t work for the Marxists, and it won’t work for us. This is because social justice is an abstract idea that is impossible without real men and women bringing it about. For example, if we want to see racial justice in America, it won’t happen apart from training men and women to die to themselves and sacrifice on behalf of their neighbors. In other words, it won’t happen without discipleship. To put discipleship first is not to abandon social justice: on the contrary, the only way to move toward social justice is through the ancient practices of discipleship.
There is a reason the world is such an unjust place, and that reason is sin. It makes people selfish and it makes people cruel. The only cure for sin is the gospel, and it is through the journey of discipleship that Jesus “breaks the power of cancelled sin,” as Charles Wesley proclaimed. If the church focuses on training people to be apprentices to Jesus, that effort will unleash ferocious forces of compassion into the world — we’ll do more work with the poor, not less.
Branches Don’t Need Management Consultants
At the Last Supper, Jesus spoke to his disciples about vines, branches, commitment, connectedness, and fruitfulness. Here are a few selected verses:
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower.… Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches.… If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”
John 15:1-8
The branches don’t strain and they don’t strategize; the branches produce fruit naturally, effortlessly, because they are connected to the vine. Jesus promised his disciples that if they stayed connected to him, then their ministry would be fruitful. To see an example of fruitful ministry, we look to the ministry of Jesus himself and we see that through him, “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them” (Matthew 11:4-5). Once again, a focus on disciple-making is not a focus on personal piety: the mission of disciple-making is the only way to actually transform the world.
It Worked!
“How was it possible for this obscure Jewish sect to become the largest religion in the world?"
Sociologist and world religions scholar Rodney Stark asks an excellent question in his book, The Triumph of Christianity:
"[Jesus] was a teacher and miracle worker who spent nearly all of his brief ministry in the tiny and obscure province of Galilee, often preaching to outdoor gatherings. A few listeners took up his invitation to follow him, and a dozen or so became his devoted disciples, but when he was executed by the Romans his followers probably numbered no more than several hundred. How was it possible for this obscure Jewish sect to become the largest religion in the world? [emphasis added].
Rodney Stark, The Triumph of Christianity, 1.
Christianity grew because the followers of Jesus did exactly what he told them to do: they made disciples by going everywhere and teaching everything Jesus commanded.
Churches grow when they make disciples. It’s possible to grow churches through the superficial, but it won’t last — in that case both the people in the church and the church itself will be like the seed that fell on rocky soil. To experience true and lasting growth, we need to focus on making disciples.
One of the criticisms of disciple-making is the charge that the “real” work of the church will be neglected. What that is meant to convey is that if we focus on making disciples we will become inward-focused, irrelevant, and neglectful of those in need.
What’s fascinating, however, is the original disciples trained other disciples, who trained others, and that, in the early days of the church, these fledgling apprentices to Jesus were known even by their enemies for their care for others – particularly the poor. For example, during the plagues that afflicted the Roman Empire, Christians stayed behind in the infected cities to care for the sick, though this action meant that they often died themselves. As Professor Stark explains:
“Indeed, the impact of Christian mercy was so evident that in the fourth century when the emperor Julian attempted to restore paganism, he exhorted the pagan priesthood to compete with the Christian charities. In a letter to the high priest of Galatia, Julian urged the distribution of grain and wine to the poor, noting that ‘the impious Galileans [Christians], in addition to their own, support ours, [and] it is shameful that our poor should be wanting our aid.'"
Stark, 118
A disciple learns from his teacher. The early Christians learned from Jesus to lay down their lives and love their neighbors as themselves. The church’s focus on discipleship meant that the church grew, because the pagans saw the witness of the disciples of Jesus and were convinced of the truth of the gospel.
The gospel is true and actions based on that truth will be effective. If you rotate crops and fertilize correctly, you will have a bountiful harvest. If you base your life on the words on Jesus, the things he said would happen, will happen. The words of Jesus aren’t a theory: they are the truth about the world itself. The words of Jesus are as true as gravity, and as inescapable.
And so for 2,000 years, whenever the church has taken the Great Commission seriously and put its effort into making disciples, it has flourished.
When Jesus used his last words to tell his disciples their mission was to make disciples, he knew what he was doing.
The question is, do we?
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The Empty Tomb
If they could have produced a body, they would have.
Instead, they had to resort to self-evidently ridiculous lies: if the disciples stole the body while they were sleeping, how would they even know that's what happened?
The tomb was empty.
(And it still is.)
Today’s Scripture:
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The Burial of Jesus
We are almost finished with the Gospel of Matthew! Two quick points on today's account of the burial of Jesus:
- Joseph of Arimathea is a good man. His faithfulness probably seemed like a waste--why lavish so much attention on a man who was already dead? But some actions are just right in themselves, and there doesn't have to be a larger point. And, of course, what can seem useless to us won't really ever be wasted by the Lord anyway.
- Pilate and the Jewish leadership try to prevent the Resurrection by ordering a guard to keep watch over the tomb. Talk about a useless gesture: there was no power in the universe that could have kept Jesus in the grave!
Today’s Scripture:
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Jerusalem Video: the High Priest's House
In Jerusalem earlier this year, we visited the site of the high priest's house. Jesus actually walked on these stones!
Don't move too quickly through this Holy Week--take time to let the events of Christ's Passion prepare you for Easter Sunday.
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And You Will Betray People*
I find it fascinating that, when Jesus says at the Last Supper that one of the disciples will betray him, each of them asks in response, "Surely you don’t mean me, Lord?"
I wrote yesterday that if even Jesus can be betrayed by someone he loves, then it can happen to any of us.
But it's also true that any of us could be the betrayer. If we think we are the kind of people who would never betray someone we love, then we need to be careful, lest like St. Peter, we end up doing the very thing we swore we would never do. (That's in tomorrow's reading.)
*There is the potential in each one of us to be Judas. In fact, I think the more we humble ourselves and admit that we're not better than anyone else, the less likely it is that we become the kind of people who sell their friends for 30 pieces of silver.
Pride goes before a fall. So, help us, Lord, become faithful people.
Today’s Scripture:
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People Will Betray You
Judas was hand-picked by Jesus, saw Jesus do spectacular miracles, heard Jesus teach in a way no one has ever taught before or since, and still:
Judas agreed to betray Jesus for 30 pieces of silver.
If even Jesus was betrayed by someone he loved, why are we surprised when it happens to us?
Today’s Scripture:
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You Are What You Do
You known what's terrifying about The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats?
Both groups are surprised by what the master says to them.
The righteous say:
"'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’"
Matthew 25:37-39
And look what the unrighteous say:
"'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’"
Matthew 25:44
In other words, neither the righteous nor the unrighteous are aware of whom they have become. Over time, their habitual actions in either direction have become part of who they are to the extent that they aren't aware of them anymore.
We are becoming what we're doing. Each choice is making us. (And we're not even aware of it.)
What choices are you making today?
Today’s Scripture:
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The Parable of the Talents
I'd never considered this before:
Compare the way the one-talent servant views the master with the way the master actually behaves:
- The one-talent servant thinks the master is "a hard man;"
- Whereas the master is actually really generous and joyful.
If people are convinced that the Lord is cruel and hard, it will be very hard for them to accept his gracious gifts. This is what Jesus means when he says, "For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them" (Matthew 25:29).
If you believe God is gracious and good, you'll be open to receive more goodness and grace. If you are convinced God is cruel and hard, Jesus implies that at the end, you'll get exactly what you expect.
Today’s Scripture:
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The Destruction of the Temple
What Jesus predicts here is actually what happened: the Temple in Jerusalem--a stunning architectural and engineering achievement--was pulled down, stone by stone, by the Romans in AD 70.
When we were in Israel earlier this year, we visited Jerusalem and stood on the ruins of the Temple. It is amazing to walk on those ancient stones and know that you are walking on the exact same stones on which Jesus himself walked. And it's even more amazing to consider that Jesus is actually the true Temple, the place where Heaven and Earth came together.
Today’s Scripture:
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Jesus and Judgment
I appreciate what Stanley Hauerwas has to say about the seven woes that Jesus pronounces on the teachers of the law and the Pharisees:
"The series of woes that Jesus directs at the scribes and Pharisees make for difficult reading in light of the Christian condemnation and persecution of the Jews. That these characterizations of the scribes and Pharisees have unfairly been used to condemn all Jews as well as Judaism is a sign of Christian failure and sin. But the sin is not that Christians thought it necessary to make judgments informed by those forms of life that Jesus's condemns, but that we have failed to apply those judgments to ourselves. We cannot forget that Jesus condemns the scribes and Pharisees from a position of weakness. He has no power to act against those he condemns. Christians betray Jesus when they make judgments--like those Jesus makes against the scribes and Pharisees--from positions of power that transform those judgments into violent and murderous actions rather than attempts to call ourselves and our brothers and sisters to a better life."
Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew
Today’s Scripture:
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Jesus and Hypocrisy
Jesus has talked many times in Matthew's Gospel about the problem of hypocrisy, of not practicing what you preach. Here, he again takes the Pharisees to task, not for what they say--he even says "You must be careful to do everything they tell you"--but for what they don't do: namely, follow their own advice.
If Jesus talks about this so often, it must be important. So, here's the question:
Where today am I not living up to my own principles? How am I not practicing what I preach?
Today’s Scripture:
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Marriage in Heaven?
I heard Tim Mackie make two points about today's reading that I found helpful.
First, the Sadducees were the religious elite who controlled the chief priest's position in Jerusalem. (They were not natural allies of the Pharisees.) Tim Mackie compared them to Scientologists today: a relatively small group made up of wealthy people.
Second, what about Jesus saying there is no marriage in heaven? That seems sad--does that mean we'll have no families in heaven? Tim Mackie pointed out that we have umbilical cords for the first few months of life, and we absolutely need them. Then, after we are born, we no longer need what seemed so essential to us before. In some way, this is what marriage is like: it's necessary here on earth, but will give way to something better in heaven. I don't really understand that or like it, if I'm being honest, but I at least acknowledge it makes sense, and I need to remember that God's plans are always better for us than anything we could have thought of ourselves.
Today's Scripture:
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Giving to Caesar
Jesus is really smart. Like brilliant! Like the smartest-man-who-ever-lived kind of smart. (This is one of the reasons the early church called him Lord.) Most people today wouldn't think of Jesus as being in even the top 10 smartest people who ever lived, but he is.
To cite a tiny example, consider his response to the Pharisees and the Herodians about paying taxes "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's." It is a GENIUS answer, and even his enemies admitted this:
"When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away."
Matthew 22:22
Jesus is brilliant. And there is nothing about your circumstances that bewilder him today--he is completely competent to get you through life, all the way to the other side.
Scripture Passage:
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Two Parables: Sons & Tenants
The Parable of the Two Sons (Matthew 21:28-32)
"God requires productive and obedient living from his people.... How did people ever get the idea that obedience to the will of God is optional?... Any separation of believing and doing is a distortion of the gospel message and is directly confronted by this parable. A person cannot believe apart from obedience....
"This parable also encourages us to remember that initial responses are not ultimate responses. An initial refusal does not have to stay a refusal, and an initial agreement is not enough. It must be lived."
Klyne Snodgrass, Stories With Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus
The Parable of the Wicked Tenants (Matthew 21:33-46)
This is a parable of judgment against the Jewish religious leaders, but it is also a challenge to all of us: what are we doing with the spiritual potential God has given us? Are we laboring in the kingdom to produce more fruit, or are we just wasting its potential? Don't be deceived--Jesus says that we will each be held accountable for our actions.
Today’s Scripture:
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