Worshiping the Wrong Prophet

Then they hurled insults at him and said,  “You are this fellow’s disciple!  we are disciples of Moses!  We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where He comes from.”  John 9:28, 29.

Odd retort.  I guess it follows hard on their complaint to Jesus that they don’t know where He came from, not at all saying they didn’t know His parents or city.  The fact that they “hurled insults at him” tells me they were threatened by his answers, frustrated in their attempts to discredit Jesus and angry because they couldn’t find anything else to say.

As if being a disciple of Jesus were something bad or foolish, the Jews were almost thumping their chests in superiority.  They followed Moses, a man proven by miracles and writings to be approved by God.

Wait a minute!

Did they just ignore some vital evidence standing right in front of them?

I think they did.  Here’s a man who was born blind now able to see and all they can do is insult the very one God displayed His power through in an unprecedented way.  They were being quite childish, stubborn and slow of heart to believe all that the law and prophets had written.  In fact, like most of us, they used the power of their vehemence to shut him up and shut out the call on their own hearts.

The man answered,  “Now that is remarkable!  You don’t know where He comes from, yet He opened my eyes.  We know God does not listen to sinners.  He listens to the godly man who does his will.  Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind.  If this man were not from God, He could do nothing.”

At this point their pride took over and they threw him out for presuming he could question their conclusions.  Those who listen to the gospel will fall into one of three major categories:  1) acceptance  2)  apathy  3)  outright rejection.  There are, of course, mixtures of these which we won’t go into right now except to say sometimes people accept Jesus on certain levels but not on others.  The man healed gave the best argument he could ever give by being a miracle himself.  His ability to see was beyond question, his past blindness an obvious fact testified by his parents and friends, and his healer was the only one in history who had ever done this type of thing.

What’s the best way to kill a truth?  Shut it out?  Silence the messenger?  Deny it?  Spread rumors about those who support it?

We were all blind in our sins.  If we now see it is only because the Savior put eyesalve on our useless spiritual eyes and showed us the light.  Whatever the Word of God says, we adhere to.  Our study should include the whole of the Bible so that we get a balance between what is required of man in his sinful state and what God’s grace has delivered us from in order that we might become the righteousness of God.

Traditional views said God could not work through sinners.  This is accurate only in so far as it means those who are unrepentant sinners for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God except One.  Since we know that Jesus never sinned, His ability outstrips ours as the Sun outshines the moon.  Yet in Christ we take on His power, His ability, His character and His mind.  We do not become Him but like Him.  Only through Him can we “do greater things than these” for the kingdom of God.  Yet our motivation must never be the need to display “our” power through Christ but to serve the world for Him.

Ignoring his healing the Jews called on their traditional view of disease and misfortune by reminding the man he had been “steeped in sin at birth” or, in other words, completely outside the mercies of God in their opinion.  The fact that he stood there whole as a testimony of God’s grace and mercy failed to move them at all.  They didn’t want to acknowledge Jesus and nothing, not even a miracle could make them question their position.  So they did the only thing left for them to do:  insulted his background and made him an outcast.

It wouldn’t work for them because the power of a testimony that says,  “I was once blind but now I see” is far too effective and powerful to keep quiet by social pressure; especially when God determines it otherwise.  What does Proverbs say?  There is no wisdom, no insight, no plan that can succeed against the LORD.”  Proverbs 21:30.  It’s complete madness to think we can silence God’s voice just by social pressure.  If God wants something done, it will be done.

Jesus Makes His Point

At dawn He appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and He sat down to teach them.  The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery.  John 8:1-11

First, I must say again, the NIV that I have states that  “The earliest and most reliable manuscripts and other ancient witnesses do not have John 7:53-8:11.”  That’s rather interesting to me.  I wondered where it came from and why it’s here.  Then I checked with Jerome, one of my pastors, who is both a Hebrew and Greek scholar, and he told me that the earliest manuscript found in recent years (I believe within the last ten) have a complete set of the other gospels and most of the book of John along with some of the other NT books intact from the late first century or early second.  He says what we have as content in the current NT manuscripts were confirmed by this find.  So it looks like some of the church fathers, after the initial disciples of the apostles, questioned the validity of this story then pulled it.  But if the earliest manuscript found has it in there, it must belong.

Second, Jesus came back to the temple to teach and the leaders decided to trap Him with this adulterous woman ploy.  Once again, I’ll mention the fact that if they caught the woman, where was the man?  Both were supposed to be there and somehow the adulterous guy just mysteriously disappeared?  He either was a plant and helped set her up, or everyone knew he’d been visiting this woman so the leaders blackmailed him somehow for the sake of messing with Jesus.  It could have been a windfall situation for them that they hadn’t expected which they decided to exploit for the moment.  We already know they weren’t allowed to condemn anyone to death for only the Romans could do this.  Whatever the case, they were setting Him up to trap Him.

It seems to me that the only reason they knew they could set Him up must have been His policy and behavior towards sinners.  Jesus hung out with people of all ranks and styles without them feeling condemned in His presence—convicted though, I’m sure, because He was pure and sinless, but He loved them so they felt safe.  Since He taught about mercy, the Pharisees and leaders considered it a good method of teaching Him a lesson about their power and intelligence or else this would discredit Him in the eyes of the public.

No one knows what Jesus wrote on the ground about or if He just doodled.  It doesn’t matter really, the results were the same.  By doing this He allowed all the accusers to think about their actions that day—if they were guilty of instigating adultery, by inference they sinned with the woman and man involved.  Jesus guessed their intentions without worrying about their methods.

But it’s how Jesus handled the woman that facinates me.  He gently asked her about her state of being. “Has anyone condemned you?”  No. “So go now and leave your life of sin.” 

My first thought about Jesus at this point would have be gratitude beyond belief.  If Bonhoffer is right and Jesus mere presence allowed deity to shine through His humanity, many saw it and probably feared it until He told them,  “Then neither do I condemn you…”  God spoke through Him to this woman and gave her hope. 

She was used by men.  No one, of course, knows how she got there, whether it was her doing or someone else’s.  Whatever the case, she was in a bad way with no way out and no way to make a new life for herself or her children.  You didn’t think of that did you?  No contraceptives, folks, and she was an adulterous woman and may be even a prostitute.  Her sexual tendancies may not have kept her married but I’m sure it produced children.

What must it have been like to stand there waiting for the stones to start flying?  In her guilt she knew she deserved what was coming with no hope of reprieve or rescue.  The Romans wouldn’t bother about a whore’s death nor question the right of the Jews to kill her.  I’m guessing that’s why the man wasn’t there to stand trial as well, for the Jews knew the Romans wouldn’t allow a man to be put to death without their ok, but a woman didn’t matter to them.  Her heart sank in front of that crowd where all the faces were set in distaste and condemnation.

Our current society has been “liberated” from the sexual gias of past customs.  We don’t relate to this kind of thinking without the gut reaction of “how backward!” or anger at their utter disregard for human value.  In her world, the best this woman could expect was that men wouldn’t be too rough or that she could win a wealthy paramour to support her while he used her body for pleasure.  She had to know what the men who brought her to Jesus were up to, for people talk without being aware of their servants and those around them they look upon as inferior listening, so it stands to reason she knew her presence was but a means to an end for these men.  In their self-righteousness I doubt they even considered the possibility of Jesus being able to knock holes in their carefully constructed plan.

As she stood there waiting for Jesus’ verdict, His silence must have made her curious after a while—especially when she noticed certain voices calling for an answer growing silent as well.  I’m pretty sure she looked up in surprise when the first of her accusors slipped away—or more likely, slinked away out of embarrassment and shame.  Her gaze fixed on the ground as it was doesn’t mean she couldn’t look from side to side out of the corner of her eyes or see Jesus doodling on the ground in front of her.  If she could read, which is highly doubtful, then she understood what He was writing; if not, then she could read the signs of a man skilled at debate.

He just let the question hang there like some elephant in the room, daring anyone to deny it:  “Are any of you without sin?”

Either she was a victim or a perpetrator.  Women in her day held little place in society but some were clever enough to hold over men the very thing they craved the most–sex.  She could use her sex to get what she wanted.  Nothing tells us how successful she was at this but somehow she got caught.  Tradition has it that it was Mary of Magdala, though really no one knows because John showed discretion by not identifying her at all.  The reason for this discretion?  She might have been still alive somewhere and he didn’t want to hurt her or cause her social pain.

The Master looks up finally after all the men leave and asks in apparent surprise (at least I think He would have done it this way),  “Woman, where are they?  Has no one condemned you?”  In those words hope flared up in her heart for the first time since being dragged into the temple courts.  In fact, she might have known some of the very men condemning her as patrons, so she knew they couldn’t throw a rock at her, but the others who were older, reportedly wiser and more righteous, surely they would have the means of condemning her.  But as they left, a truth dawned on not only her understanding but everyone in the crowd as well, these men were not sinless nor righteous enough to condemn anyone.  The very voices crying out for justice were themselves guilty of sin and deserving of punishment.

Jesus looks at us all bruised and bleeding from the words others have hurled at us and asks,  ”Do you want to be well?”  Then He waits while we sort this out.  God’s way is the best way because only He offers life.  When we agree to let Him heal us, He takes the most thorough route.  To heal burn victims we must debris the skin by peeling back the burnt skin and letting the raw unburned skin underneath grow to be the new outer layer.  This takes sometimes weeks depending on how bad the burns are.  It’s extremely painful and tedious for the patient.  God heals us by taking this path because we need to experience some of the natural consequences of sin in order for us to hate it.

I love this story so much because it shows the Jesus we all serve at His most noble and kind.  The God of heaven who declared the law from a mountain came to earth to show mercy and grace.  So why did He give the law?  To help us understand how debilitating sin is and how much it offends Him.  Sin is a disease and hazardous to our health.  Sin is a choice against God, which in essence is a choice against what life is meant to be.

Notice something else.  Those who accused her left by order of age, the oldest to the youngest.  Why did John mention this?  I think it’s because young people can be rash and over confident in their zeal and self-awareness.  Older people can fall into this trap too but experience teaches us something about the necessity of being real.  They realized before the younger guys just how foolish they were going to look if they continued on their course.  They were looking for an argument and got one—an irrefutable one.  Jesus didn’t debate the issue with them the way they expected but simply asked them to put up or shut up.

They wisely shut up and walked away.

All of us are in the place of the adulterous woman for one sin or another before God’s judgment seat.  The difference between our state and that of the teachers of the law and Pharisees is whether or not we are covered by the blood of reconiliation.  We stand condemned for our past and present, God offers mercy, grace and forgiveness through His Son, which none of us deserve.

So why do we tend to throw rocks at others? 

For a variety of reasons, but mostly because we think ourselves better than those we are condemning, while in God’s eyes we all stand to lose without His Son’s pardon.  In the measure we give, we will receive; the judgment we give will be returned to us in a harder measure.  Our ability to judge means we understand what is right and wrong, which means when we sin, we have no excuse and our condemnation will be deserved more readily.

If we choose mercy over condemnation, we will receive it also, pressed down, shaken together and running over.  Mercy, forgiveness, grace and love produced faith in Jesus for that woman I have no doubt.  I know it does for me.

A Story that Oughta’ Be

(The earliest and most reliable manuscripts and other ancient witnesses do not have John 7:53-8:11.)  NIV translation team.

Which means, of course, the story might not even be true if I catch their drift correctly.  In the years since I first read this footnote above John 8 I’ve been chewing on the possibilities and wondering what to do with the story in the context of Scripture.  You see, it doesn’t really stand out as false in the scheme of the gospel that Jesus would show such grace to someone like this woman, nor does it seem out of character that the priests and Pharisees would stoop to using a known situation to trap Him.

They had to have known about this woman’s situation for at least a little while, otherwise they wouldn’t have caught her in the act, but here’s the question that should have been asked in the story and wasn’t:  Who and where was the man in this little tryst trap?

These men had an obligation to the law to bring both parties to justice, especially in the case of adultery for it couldn’t be just one person who committed the sin since it takes two to have sex—excluding masturbation.  The fact they only brought the woman suggests the man was someone known to them, one of their number or the woman was a prostitute.  Tradition makes her into a prostitute, which could explain some of her guilt but wouldn’t necessarily shrug off the elephant in the room:  where was the man?

One of the arguments for bringing just the woman, of course, was that women were expendable in ancient society somwhat.  The Jews were forbidden by Roman law to condemn any man to death but that just means women weren’t included in the prohibition unless they were rich and powerful.  Thus, we have at least one explanation as to why only a woman was brought to stand trial in front of Jesus.  The way Moses wrote the law down, however,  meant the Jews were supposed to take her to either her father’s house and stone her on his doorstep, or to the man’s house where she sinned and both were to be killed.  Since they couldn’t condemn the man to death without Roman approval, and adultery wasn’t a crime the Romans generally considered worthy of capital punishment, they could take her outside the city or anywhere they wanted and deal with it there.

So we’ve addressed a couple of the questions I have about the story, but these questions don’t answer why it was included in the canon later or even if it was part of the original and someone removed it.  In the first century copy of the gospel of John only the first chapter and some fragments of later pages survived, if my memory serves me correctly.  This means we don’t have a clear idea if the story is valid or not.

In my POV it’s the story that ought to be true; it ought to be included in the gospel story.  The message of mercy for the sinner and rescue for the weak permeates the gospels as a continuous thread, so this one story doesn’t stand out as false, at least from a plot stance.  If it isn’t true, it ought to be.  Preferences aside, however, the story of a sinful woman condemned to die makes the message is clear:  Jesus didn’t come to condemn but to save.

Since we don’t know, we’ll assume it is true and move on.

Food for Thought

Meanwhile His disciples urged Him,  “Rabbi, eat something.”

But He said to them,  “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”

the His disciples said to each other,  “Could someone have brought Him food?”  John 4:31-33

Jesus probably sat there bemused and happily content.  I think the Savior of the world found delight in rescuing people from their darkness and pain which gave Him joy.  So much joy that He lost all need for food or water, a fact that disconcerted the disciples.  These poor guys were very much like the rest of us so tied to the physical realities we know that spiritual perspectives lose something in translation.  Jesus told them His food was to do the will of His Father who sent Him.  They couldn’t grapple, as many of us still struggle to do, with the spiritual completely cancelling out the need for the physical at times. 

Their very question “Could someone have brought Him food?”  showed how little regard they had for the woman at the well.  Being good Jews and Jesus being a Rabbi, they didn’t even consider she might have given Him something to eat, so they dismissed her out of hand.  Think about that for a minute:  They were so steeped and blinded by their own religious perspective they couldn’t even consider anything else.  Samaritans were declared unclean by Rabbinical authority, in their minds Jesus wouldn’t have accepted even a drink of water from her had she offered it for fear of becoming spiritually unclean.  Had they witnessed the conversation they would have been astounded and horrified.

When I see Jesus do this kind of thing in the gospel story, it serves as a warning to me that may be our preconceived perceptions of godliness or what God will or won’t do are skewed quite a bit.  For instance I can remember a time when it was almost unethical in American churches for a minister to wear a beard (late 1960s)–not quite a sin but certainly unacceptable.  Why?  What spiritual or Biblical authority gave people the right to claim such an ethic existed much less practice it?  Nothing in Scripture would have supported such a practice, rather nearly every Biblical male wore a beard as did Jesus so this concept was purely man made.  Yet what other programs, traditions and practices do we adhere to without Scripture to back them up?  I’m not saying customs are wrong or unholy, merely placing any spiritual value on them is not about righteousness in God’s eyes.

It’s something we need to be beware of certainly, and avoid as much as possible.

Jesus didn’t say He never needed to eat physical food again merely that at that moment He was sustained by the nourishment of joy.  He looked at the world differently; His view of the world kept spirituality in mind at all times and He instructed us to do the same.  His reference to the “harvest” looked at the town as a field of souls who needed to find life in a different better way.  His means of doing this came through a rejected, dejected and utterly useless soul to anyone else but the God of miracles and One who “called the things that aren’t as though they already were.”  He saw potential in this woman’s testimony and used it to save a whole town of people.

In keeping with His nature, Jesus remained there two days and loved on them.  The results were that those who believed told the woman who brought the news, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”  Jesus met people where they were and saved them from themselves and all their past bad choices.

This is the Savior, friend, Messiah, God and Master I choose to serve.  I love this man deeply and am loyal to a fault.  I fail Him regularly but I know His grace and mercy covers my failures and gives me hope that someday I will not fail Him anymore.  Someday I will only bring joy to His heart and will show Him how important He is to me by bringing others who need Him to a knowledge of who He is and can be for their lives.  Because of one lost, lonely woman a whole town was brought to light.  If this is what the God of heaven can do for them with a small seemingly insignificant person, what can He do with one of us?

Jesus Vs Protocol

Just then His disciples returned and were surprised to find Him talking with a woman.  But no one asked,  “What do you want?”  or  “Why are you talking with her?”  John 4:28.

 Have you ever noticed those established in any form of belief system or organization get kind of cocky about who can join and who can’t?  The disciples were outed by John A quite nicely here.  He showed their prejudices and exclusivism without shying away from them.

It’s one of the big ways God wants to change our hearts, I believe, because He’s not that way nor does He desire followers who behave in such a fashion.  We are not the privileged children of a wealthy person lording over everyone else and sharing it with those whom we like, but the children of an incredibly generous God who owns it all because He made it and wants to restore a relationship with His creation.

Those of you who have children will get this better than those who don’t.  The inherent love we have for our offspring is basic to our nature, which is why someone abusing or using their children is so odd, surprising and offensive to most of us.  God made every possibility which exists in our dimension and probably infinite dimensions outside of us, and like a good father He loves everything and everyone He created.  He craves reconciliation because it’s foreign to Him to be at odds with His creation.  He designed us to live in harmony so much so that it creates a hole in His heart when we live outside this design.

The disciples looked with disapproval on the woman, immediately knowing her past instinctively by the time of day she arrived at the well and judging her because of her race—or lack thereof.  In their small minds, educated as they were by elitist thinkers of the day, she wasn’t good enough or of the right nationality to enjoy Jesus.  It must have torqued their crank to no end to come back to Jesus only to find Him breaking three taboos in one blow.

We do it too.  Watch how you and I react to young believers or outsiders who don’t agree with our particular brand of Christian thought.  You’ll see the same trait everywhere we look because the nature of humanity hasn’t changed for all it’s “progress” in the last two thousand years.  The established norms of who is in and who is out haven’t changed all that much really, they’ve just adjusted sides today as to who is in or out.

These men wanted so badly to rebuke Jesus in one way, at the same time they believed Him to be God’s Son, so they were faced with a dilemma:  If He’s really God’s Messiah, then He can do no wrong and what He’s doing right now is part of the mission.  Distasteful, yes, but necessary.  They had a choice to make here to accept His authority or lose Him.

The same choice is set before us as well.  Will we buy into merely the forms of religious observance surrounding the Christian ethic or will we surrender ourselves to the mission of God through His Son, Jesus Christ?

Do you know a Samaritan woman or man?  We meet these kind of people everyday.  We must be healed of our jaundiced view of the world so we desperately need the eye salve Jesus promised His children (see Revelation 3:18).  Our vision must be cleared of humanism and earthly priorities in order that we might truly recognize the world, for every person alive is worth the life of God.

Now chew on this thought for a while and see with new eyes.

Living Water

The woman said to Him,  “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thristy and have to keep coming here to draw water.  John 4:1-26

She wanted the water that makes you never thirst again.

She wanted desparately to never have to come alone to this well again.

She wanted to come back into society without a stain on her character or a noticeable scar on her soul.

She ached for a time when she could look people directly in the eyes without trying to look defiant.

I suspect this woman’s detailed history is left in the dark because it isn’t important how she got where she was only that she turned away from her hellbent direction and fixed her eyes on the light.  Our pasts matter to Jesus less than we think.

O, I know psychology wants to parade it as the whole of our reason for wallowing in our current state–and sometimes we might even get better.  But to Jesus the past just didn’t count once a person left it behind.  I am not saying that our pasts won’t affect our future even in our present saved condition.  On the contrary, I believe many of our habits will haunt us until Jesus comes again–this educates us to the insidiousness of sin, the disgusting nature of it and the tenacity with which evil clouds our judgment.  None of this matters to the child of God who allows themselves to be immersed in the mind of Christ.  We never have to focus to intently on our faults nor rail against those who wronged or hurt us because our inside world dynamic changes with Christ in control.

It’s our pride which whispers to us that we are unable to find redemption, that somehow our sin is greater than God’s forgiveness, that we are too wicked or evil to be changed.  Nothing we have ever done or could ever do is greater than God’s ability to redeem a soul who is willing.  If we crave His forgiveness, grace, mercy, love and a change of character, He is willing and able to give it to us.  The only blockade standing in His way is our refusal to let Him.  To make our sin greater than God is to make our sin god; to make ourselves irredemable is to make Him out to be less than the Almighty Savior; to make us out to be beyond His grace somehow makes His grace unavailable to us only because we choose it over Him, not the other way around.

Again, our past, present and future sin is not important for these things He has the power to change.

Jesus revealed her past only to show her His power to know her heart and, get this, I’m sure it dawned on her that if He knew her sin, He also knew her pain—how she got started on this demolition race in the first place.  I don’t believe it was by accident Jesus came to Jacob’s well at midday, nor do I think it coincidental He spoke to her first out of all the villagers.  He chose her because she needed Him the most, and, if she could change, the miracle would be like a ripple effect throughout the country.

But besides that, Jesus just loved this gal.  He loved her so much that He came specifically to rescue her from her crazy, out of control lifestyle.  He wanted her to know life to the full.

“Those who have been forgiven much love much.”

In the world’s POV she already had a full life.  In heaven’s view we are all destitute and wanting.

But she’s not done trying to argue and divert Jesus from the point because she doesn’t yet know His heart for her.  So she said, “Sir, I can see that You are prophet. our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

O, clever, clever!  She didn’t want to talk about her problems with some stranger she’d just met so she brought up the oldest and most divisive subject she could muster.  A smile must have played on her lips behind the veil–if she even wore one.  No Jew could have resisted this bait, but she didn’t know whom she dealt with and this was not just any Jew, this was Jesus.

Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.  You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.  Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.  God is spirit, and His worshipers must worship in spirit and truth.”

Woe!  Wait just one doggone minute!  No one, especially a Jewish rabbi, had ever talked like this!  Did you catch it too?  He said the temple and buildings man makes were of no consequence to true worship.  He made several points in fact:  1)Salvation is from the Jews–ie Jesus being the Messiah.  2) God only wants us to worship in spirit and truth.  3) God is spirit, the intangible, antithesis of physical matter (at least in our view).  4) The Samaritans worshiped something and someone they had no authority to worship.  Not that they didn’t have a right but they were going off on a tangent other than the one God ordained.  Jesus made it final and without equivocation that salvation and the worship of God comes from the Jews.

Number 4 eliminates all other ways to God as main veins of thought.  Men might be led to God through them and then to Christ in the end, but nothing matches the teachings about God which come from the Hebrew nation.  Jesus made it solid rock truth.  The “I’m okay, you’re okay” approach to God isn’t from God but is a confusion sent to muddle the stew.  This is the view of Judeo/Christian ethic.  It is exclusively one sided and looks at God one way.  If we accept Jesus as Messiah, God, Savior and Teacher, we must accept what He says as bedrock to our lives and nothing short of complete truth.

God wants us to let go our tendancy for images and tangible objective worship and love.  Jesus spoke God’s heart on the matter:  The Father longs for those who will worship Him for who He is not who they wish Him to be!

The woman is so impressed (I take this view from her reply) she makes a question into a statement, “I know that Messiah (called Christ) is coming.  When He come, He will explain everything to us.”

O, clever woman!  You did what no man to date had ever done on record, you asked Jesus to state His mission and who He was.  In a small country rumors fly around fairly fast, so I’m sure she heard rumors of a teacher out of Galilee or some such thing.  John B’s testimony would have caused a whirlwind of discussion and rumors.  This woman wanted to know.  She hoped Jesus was the one–could it be?  She felt her heart beat faster and must have drawn a sharp breath as she said this. 

How do I know?

I don’t.  But knowing the facts after what Jesus said next, I can deduce the truth.

For the first time in His ministry, and to a gentile foreigner half-breed, adulterous, outcast woman, Jesus confessed, “I who speak to you am He.”

Lightening struck.  Of course!  She stood there stunned and completely unaware of the disciples just coming back from her home town after buying food.  In fact, she was so excited, stunned and completely transported to another realm of being entirely, she forgot herself and the looks of the disciple concerning her sex, time of day she came to the well, and her nationality, none of it affected her at all.

Leaving her water jar she raced back to town to spread the good news.

The disciples didn’t get to hear the dialogue because John A claims they were unaware of the transaction which had taken place.  So they must have just come back after Jesus’ announcement to her because John A says,  Just then the disciples returned and were surprised to find Him talking with a woman.  But no one asked,  “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”

These men didn’t understand Jesus’ mission at all.  Oh, I’m sure they thought they did, but while they were jockeying for first and second position in the kingdom, a little sinner who wouldn’t have been able to hold her head up in their company from the weight of their scorn learned the truth of Jesus and believed.  Because of her a whole town was changed and made better.  I get a picture of everywhere Jesus walking flowers bloom out of season, trees bend to touch Him, the grass bends to soften his footsteps while birds and animals all over dart back and forth around Him in a celebration of their King.

He took this wilted flower of a woman and made her bloom again.

And, doggone it, He never did get that drink…

Outside Fellowship

A man has his father’s wife.  And you are proud!  Shouldn’t you rather have been filled with grief and have put out of your fellowship the man who did this?  1 Corinthians 5:1b, 2.

I never liked this passage much because it sounded so harsh and hard-hearted toward the man under church discipline.  (And, by the way, I’m not using the word “church” as a metaphor, symbol of an organization or a building, it’s the people who follow Jesus as the Christ.)  Anyway, my problem with this passage is that I thought the man would feel ostracized, left out and alienated by the punishment.  I’ve heard some in the body of Christ call this type of thing antithetical to the salvation message, which means they either ignored the Scriptures like this discussing it as additions of a later time or they called it an outright fabrication.

I don’t enjoy making others feel like outcasts or aliens, so my trouble with this subject stems from my desire not to hurt anyone.  Yet I can’t escape the clear presentation of Paul’s argument here.  Considering what the man did I understand his concern, but as far as I grasp the subject, he only took his father’s concubine because Paul didn’t say he took his mother, which in their day meant someone who was a lesser wife.  Since his dad must have had two or more wives, taking one wouldn’t seem all the problematic until one takes into account covetousness and theft of a love and loyalty belonging to someone else.

The punishment goes against everything I’ve been programmed by the sixties leaders of acceptance to believe—i.e. “I’m ok, you’re ok” or it’s all good.  What we call “dis-fellowship” is really making whoever we are pushing out of community feel bad, hurting their self-worth and ostracizing them for their natural tendancies.  The reasoning might sound like this,  “These two people fell in love.  They couldn’t help nature’s demand on them; they had to go with what was good for them…”  You know the rhetoric.  From the text it sounds like this guy was flaunting his choice by bringing her to the dinners and worship times with the other followers of Jesus, yet no one appears to have rebuked him or took him aside to confront his sin.

The believers at Corinth were sincere about their commitment to Jesus.  How I know this is in the the second letter to them Paul commends them for their obedience then recommends they restore the fallen brother to fellowship.  Look at the wording here:  If anyone has caused grief, he has not so much grieved me as he has grieved all of you, to some extent—not to put it too severely.  The punishment inflicted on him by the majority is sufficient for him.  Now instead, you ought to forgive and comfort him, so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.  I urge you, therefore, to reaffirm your love for him.  2 Corinthians 2:5-8.

What was his punishment?  Dis-fellowship.  He was not allowed to continue the sin and remain in the community of believers at the same time.  As long as he justified the sin of adultery with his father’s wife, he could not join in the fellowship time.  This pretty much sums up their punishment.  Now that may not seem so harsh to some and way too harsh to others, but in my view I don’t think we get it as well as we should.

For someone to be dis-fellowshipped they must have fellowship.  To make the point more pointed, for someone to feel the sting the discipline of being outside the community of believers brings, they must have experienced and valued the richness inside it.  If the lesson of being outside the community is going to be effective, first we must make sure that it matters to the person being asked to leave.  This man broke faith with the covenant of those who follow Jesus by doing something outside the nature of his Lord and Savior, therefore he had to be rebuked.  The context of the passage suggests that for a time he stubbornly held onto his stolen wife for obvious reasons, but the determination of the body of Christ isolated his sin like a diseased limb and shut him out from infecting the rest of the them.

I think this is what Jesus meant by “if an eye offends you, pluck it out; and if a hand causes you to sin, cut it off” for neither body part causes sin on a physical scale, rather it is in the context of the fellowship of Christ we see people as spiritual parts of whole body.  It is better to enter the fellowship of the kingdom without a limb or an eye than to let a diseased and infected person who refuses to reform to continue to spread their sickness.  Sin is a disease and Jesus’ presence through the Holy Spirit is the only cure.

For the punishment to do its work, this man had to have experienced solid, rich, loving and deep friendship with his brothers and sisters in the faith, otherwise he would have simply resented and hated them then gone on his way. Now there are many in the world and currently in the church who claim this method is antithetical to the principle of love.  The body of Christ is a hospital for sinners not a haven for saints, right?  Yeah, for sure, but the language we have misappropriated somewhere along the line of history is the separation of the words “sinners” and “saints” as mutually exclusive.  Saints in the Scriptural context are sinners washed in the blood.  The reason they are washed in the blood is because they have sinned, confessed and repented.  Let’s put that last sentence in modern vernacular:  They did wrong, recognized it, admitted it and switched directions with their  behavior through the power of the presence of Jesus.

The man must have returned his father’s wife for it sounds like from the text he repented and now desired fellowship again.  Wow!  That in itself is a testimony to how close these people must have been, how incredibly important their connection became to be to them and what a deep seated love they grew because of their shared relationship with Jesus.  Paul’s firm “expel the immoral brother” turned to “forgive and comfort him” once the dude turned away from his sin.

Here’s another lesson we need to glean from this situation:  They did all this punishment with horror and sorrow!

There wasn’t this severe, condescending or austere “we’re-perfectly-sinless” mentality going on but a real knuckle biting hard decision to deal with someone they all loved deeply who wouldn’t repent.  Stoning someone we don’t care about is easy, but dealing punishment to those we love is distressing to the nth degree.  It should hurt us, it should stress us out and we should never do it unless love is the motivation.

A child who disobeys and runs into the road receives punishment, not out of careless indifference or judgmental harshness but out of a desire to teach them to be more cautious in the future and to preserve their lives in health.  The same can be said of this method of dealing with sin.  Unrecognized sin infects the rest of the church; and by “unrecognized” I don’t mean people don’t know about it, rather they refuse to either bring it out into the open or admit it as sin.  We get so scared to confront those who do wrong we end up over-compensating and running the other way. We do this for various reasons, like we hate confrontations, fear of offending others, fear of hurting someone’s feelings, or fear of being found out ourselves, so we avoid dealing with the problems around us.

I am not sinless and neither are you.  This doesn’t mean we can’t deal with blatant unrepentent sin in our midst.  Look at what I just said, then take it apart:  we deal with sin that is not recognized as such or is being held on to without turning from it.  In other words, the person who sins needs to not only recognize his or her sin but stop it when confronted.  If someone is given to rage, they need to begin the process of learning self-control.  This doesn’t mean they won’t fail and fall back into their old habit, rather every time they fail they admit their failure and release their anger.  After a while of turning toward godly responses of gentleness and self-control, the hold rage has on them will begin to wan.

This is what the body of Christ is for:  heal sinners and make them saints.  But what’s odd about this is that the moment we accept Jesus we are saints.  Our sainthood is based not on our sinless condition but our connection to Christ.

The Elder Brother Syndrome

“The older brother became angry and refused to go in [the celebration of the younger brother's return].  So his father went out and pleaded with him.  But he answered his father,  ‘Look!  All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders.  Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends.  But when this son of your who has squandered your porperty with postitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’ “  Luke 15:28-30.

It’s easy to see where the older brother is coming from, don’t you think?  The younger son rejected the family, spurned the name of his own blood and heritage, then squandered his share of the inheritance on fleeting pleasure.  It seems almost unfair to the older brother doesn’t it?

Until you realize the nature of the father.  If the older son had really been out to please his old man, he would have learned grace, mercy, humility, generosity and inclusiveness rather than this attitude he displayed.   Notice his language to his dad,  “All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders.”  In other words, he thought this is what the Father required and completely missed the point.

Nearly five years ago my wife left me for another man.  I’m not harping on this, mind you, but using a recent illustration from my own life to get my point across.  This guy had a pretty messed up career as a thief,  with drugs, alcohol and a few other bad habits which took him down the road to forced recovery programs.  I don’t know if he entered them willingly or did so by court order and I never asked but I know he was in both NA and AA working through his past and reconciling his future.  In fact, the main reason he contacted my wife was because he wanted to deal with the issue of their daughter, who had been adopted by another family when they were young.  This contact turned into the affair that ruined our marriage.

Two broken people trying to heal the past confused their efforts and messed up the situation even worse.

A part of me detached about this time and hovered watching the drama unfold, while another part felt like I’d been hit in the gut with a baseball bat.  Knowing what was happening, even after my wife found out the baby was ours and moved back in, I realized what my son might be facing for his future.  So I began to pray for him to be a healing factor in many people’s lives.  I know this sounds a bit crazy and probably silly to some, but I wanted him to be the catalyst for change in both my wife’s heart and her lover.  This dude got in my face a couple of times but I prayed for him anyway—after I got over the feelings of wanting to punch him in the nose.

When they broke up, he told me what a wonderful boy Jesse is and how priveleged I was to have a son like him.  I often wonder now if my son wasn’t a point of healing for this guy, an entry to a new life.  God works in some pretty amazing ways, mysterious and unpredictable by human standards, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that whole situation got turned on its ear in order to bring two very broken and selfish people to their knees.  My ex told me he bonded with Jesse the most between her two boys and my son seemed to like him.

Jesse might have been part of this man’s catapult to healing.  I haven’t heard of or seen him since they broke up and it’s just as well, for he was a hot head and not always very reasonable.  Yet though these latter things are true, God can bring even the most closed mind to openness and light through the power of the cross.

It would be easy to slip into the role of the older brother and condemn both my ex and this guy, but what would it accomplish for the kingdom of God?  And another thing:  God is forgiving, slow to anger, not treating us like our sins deserve, merciful and full of grace toward us, how can we justify our being judgmental or condemning?  If we are to be like Christ with a renewed mind, then anything outside of His character will be repugnant to us.

The older brother resented the younger because of the wasted youth syndrome.  But if we take a close look at the older brother, he was no better for he coveted the inheritance which was already his by birthright and wasted his own youth by enslaving himself to buying something he owned as first born.  He didn’t need to live the way he did for his father didn’t require it, so his own efforts and attitude were wasting his life away.  Bitterness steals the life from us and kills our joy.  Notice the older brother couldn’t celebrate or party because he felt slighted and jealous, first off, though I think it went deeper than that because his choice of words was “slaving” to please his father.  I don’t think the older son could have partied without guilt because he didn’t get it—didn’t get his dad’s view of the world.

Jesus spoke this parable to the Pharisees and Saduccees who spurned His message of grace for the sinner and only applied God’s mercy to themselves for their efforts.  In context this tells us they were way off the mark, missing the point by a wide margin.  The son imitates the father by design this is no accident.  Role models are such for the purpose of teaching as much as anything else.  Israel is God’s son, His first born, owning the birthright as the eldest son, yet they spurn God’s character by becoming workaholics and slaves to the law.  At the time Jesus told this parable, they acted resentful of His efforts to reach sinners and bring them back into the family.

We do much the same thing when we condemn the sinner instead of working for their salvation.

What inspired this specific study for me was hearing the parable again from a preacher and following the conclusion through to my own situation.  The guy who took my wife probably deserved to be punished for his crime, but in the scheme of Christian teaching, don’t we all?  Let he who is without sin throw the first stone.  While I certainly don’t excuse or justify what he did, I also know I must pray that the guy finds his way out of that darkness.

This might sound big of me, but let me assure you, it’s really not.  Praying for this guy is about spiritual survival for me because I know to be like my Master I must see others as He does and grow the same heart inside me He had for all.  As scorching as Jesus rebukes were to the Pharisees, His heart ached for them to turn from their hardness.  Why else would He cry out,  “How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a mother hen gathers her chics under her wings, but you were not willing.  Look, your house is left to you desolate.”  Matthew 23:37, 38a.  Hard words, though emotionally heart wrenching.  I’m humbled by His hunger to turn them around, realizing I wouldn’t have the wisdom to know when to call them down in judgment for I’m far too willing to beat those who oppose me to death with either my words or fists.

When we refuse to be forgiving, we die spiritually.  When we choose performance over heart, we die spiritually, for we need the latter before we can hope to gain the former.  So I’m refusing to buy into the Older Brother Syndrome in order to rejoice that even those who hurt me, speak ill of me or slight me find Jesus.

As Paul said to the Philippians, It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill.  The latter do so in love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel.  The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains.  But what does it matter?  The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached.  And because of this I rejoice.  1:15-18a.

The sentiment is clear:  I am not to be grow bitter, cling to angry feelings or hold a grudge against those who oppose or hurt me.  Instead I’m to welcome them when they return to Jesus with open arms and include them in the family of God as brothers and sisters.

It takes greater strength of character to love those who show us hate than it does to reciprocate their feelings.  I intend to be like Jesus, so I will be surrender my agenda and eye for an eye to do it if I have to—which I do and so do you.

A Little Help from My Friend

Hi, folks, this note was put on a forum where I’m a member and this friend wrote about her search for God.  I thought it would work very well here, so I grabbed it because I thought it said everything in such a real and substantial way.  Dani lives in Australia where she’s pursuing a counseling career.  Her journey to this place she talks about below has taken her through some very painful places as well as some pretty bizarre alleyways.  I will use pronouns for the name of the man she mentions but otherwise it is written just as she wrote it.

A christian physcologist meant God as the unknown one when he said “The desire God has placed within us is wild in its longing to pursue the One who is unknown.  Its capacity and drive is so powerful that it can only be captured momentarily, in moments of deep soul communion or sexual ecstasy.  And when the moment has passed, we can only hold it as an echo, a haunting of Quicksilver that flashes a remembrance of innocence known and lost and if we have begun to pass into the life of the beloved, a hope of ecstasies yet to come.”  Previous to this he had mentioned moments of spiritual transcendence from no transcendent sources.

I know these moments, I had my first one 3 yrs ago, with (my friend), me first and only, I have never given to anyone what I gave to (him), the trust, closeness I didn’t even know I had it to give.  We never had a sexual relationship or even kissed, but I feel more “one” with him than with anyone else.  When he ended things I thought I would die.  Living with the pain of unfulfilled promises and desires was so intense it nearly killed me.  Then to make the pain go away I tried to kill the desire, then I tried to fill it with other people and things.  Finally I realised through reading that I needed to learn to live with unfulfilled desire.  That God could use these unfulfilled desires, that they were part of being fully alive.

Now I am living with the unfulfilled desire and it’s not so much a pain as a hunger for “something” and this hunger is what drives me to try to understand who God is, and what he wants from me.  I NEVER understood what God really wanted it, it didn’t mean anything to me, seemed an abstract concept…. and I would read what everyone wrote on this site and I sometimes envied them.. and I didn’t know what they meant…

Now I do… 2 nights ago, after reading this God told me what HE wanted from me… He simply said “I want what you gave to (your friend)”  and for the first time ever  really understood, I used to sit on the floor rest me arms on (friend’s) knee’s and just look up at him while he talked… I never cared what he talked about as long as we were together, and I could hear his voice, see his smile, breathe his air, I trusted him with all of me.  This is what God wants (and more) but first I need to deal with what I know, and what I know of me – is what I gave and shared with (my friend), and I understand that much and I can give that to God… I had some incredible moments of intimacy with God, that night, I know that they are but a poor shadow of what he wants so share.  But finally it is a concept I understand…

Incredible to think that God used someone who claims not to believe in him to teach me how to love Him… and it’s taken me 3 years to see why he was in my life, and WHY I HAD TO LET HIM GO. God could not come to me and teach me and work with the hunger when I was not hungry…

I get it finally, and the pain was all worth it, God is good,  What lengths he goes to, to pursue my heart

Trusting God’s Call

“I tell you the truth,”  He continued,  ”no prophet is accepted in his hometown.”  Luke 4:24.

But Jesus said unto them,  ”Only in his hometown and his own house is a prophet without honor.”  Matthew 13:57.

The last several years have been an extreme make over for me.  I moved to Portland at the request of my brother, Tracy, to record an album with him and maybe do some gigs locally.  We started on the process until he decided to start his own business, pressuring me to join him.  I know I was pretty clear about my purpose for being in Portland as well as where I saw my life going, but for some reason he and others simply ignored my assertions an put the pressure to join them until I began to doubt my own sanity.  Every time I think of this situation I remember the prophet who died because he deviated from God’s instructions to go straight home.  I am now wrestling my way mentally back to a service ordered life and aligning myself with the call I believe God placed on my life and commitment I made to serve Him.

Yet I faced nothing but discouragement from my family.  No one supported the choices I had made in my life nor the ones I intended to make for my future, so I thought,  ”If those closest to me don’t see what I believe is obvious, then maybe I’m just deluding myself.  May be I just imagined the calling and am full of delusions of grandeur.”  I laid out a couple of fleeces and the answers came back positive on the side of God’s call on my life, but nothing momentous happened to support these answers.  In other words no one around me thought I was reasonable or balanced about where I had set myself to go nor did they think much of my life in general.  After about three years of nothing but negative input and failed attempts to help my brother’s business, it failed, which was also a sign I asked from God:  If He wanted me to move on to full time ministry, He had to kill my brother’s business because at the time Tracy was going through a crisis of faith and I didn’t feel comfortable deserting him.

I now see God’s hand in this loyalty to my brother.  My faith was more settled in some ways, many of the questions he wrestled with at the time I was already on the road to answering so, while I discovered and grew with him, I also had something to contribute to his foundation security.  On the other hand, I also believe God set me up to see what I would do with the pressure and to strengthen my growing faith in His providence.  I may have deviated from the plan I thought was important (i.e. recording an album and touring with it), but God’s plan seemed to be different.  I think He really wanted me to stick around these guys in order to grow some enemic places in my own life as well as demonstrate God’s “foolishness” (see 1 Corinthians 1:27ff) to those who acted like they had it figured out.

Again I prayed,  “Lord, if You want me to continue in construction as my ‘tent making’, You will have to supply the work for I can’t advertise or do anything about it.”  He’s kept me busy in this field for a little over 8 years.  I’ve ministered in several churches, married, divorced and become a dad.  While I don’t have a clear idea what all this means or if I’m being true always to His calling or not, I see His hand in everything I do.  His supply has never wavered or stopped, though He has definitely delayed many times, scaring me out of my wits.

You see I became afraid of the music business years ago because I saw it going a direction which seemed to me self-directed rather than God-oriented.  O, the rhetoric sounded spiritual, but mostly musicians talked about career rather than ministry to the church or those who search for Jesus.  So I wrestled with this issue for about ten years and concluded I was not geared for a “crossover” ministry but meant to simply teach and preach the gospel.  Now I’m nearly 49, way past my prime as a musician (even though one of my buds still calls me “Rocker Jon” with tongue firmly in cheek) and not marketable in the popular sense as anything in the music world.  If I had established a career years ago, I might have been able to continue touring and selling music, but as it is, I’m at the mercy of God.

Here is where you find me.  I now have a 4 1/2 yo boy whom God has given me to disciple and train in Christ, a growing ministry on this blog, the music still happens, though in a different sense than what I dreamed when I was young and only a miracle of God will put me back in a place of service through music He’s given me to publish. 

Sounds discouraging, huh?

Yet I won’t give up on serving Him.  If one door for ministry closes, He opens another; if the road to service bends sharply to right, I follow it.  I know He will use whatever gifts or abilities I have to His glory and for no other reason, so I continue to press on no matter what—even though many in my inner circle get irritated and angry with my “stubborn” refusal see “reality” according to their values.  I might be insane but rest on the truth of God’s Word, which says,  He (Abraham) is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed—the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.  Romans 4:17.  Abraham was considered by many to be insane for leaving his family and going somewhere without a clear idea of a destination.  He might be considered an icon of faith now, but I bet most would look at him if he lived in the present time as deluded and definitely misguided.

Without a doubt I know what many others think of me because, for some reason, they tell me quite bluntly.  Still I know the answers to prayer God gives me daily, how He provides for me constantly, His mercy and grace continues to sustain my life and goals.  I am not successful in the eyes of most people probably, but I know success in the eyes of man is a misnomer anyway.  I trust in Jesus who redeems even my worst mistakes in order to further His work through me for others–and not only for their sake, but while ministering to them through me, He encourages me as well to continue giving of myself for His sake.

I may be insane by the world’s standards, but O what beautiful state of mind to be in when Jesus gives a peace that goes beyond understanding.  If you know God has called you to serve Him in whatever field your gifting indicates, don’t give up or grow discouraged with the naysayers for they would destroy the work of God for the sake of temporary comfort.  Trust God’s call on your life and don’t ever give up.  The rewards are more awesome than you can imagine.