Medicine Hat Joe

Week 33  Luke

A couple of years ago I discovered that Luke structured his gospel along geographic lines. Chapters 3-9 take place in Galilee & the northern regions. The next ten chapters are about Jesus’ last trip to Jerusalem.
For me it’s hard to believe that Luke 10-19 all happened on that one trip. On the other hand it’s Luke who’s telling the story.
For example let’s say I walk from Medicine Hat to Vancouver. Then in a travelogue I tell the story:
…Progress is good. If the weather holds I’ll get to Revelstoke tomorrow and stop there for a day. I like the place. I remember passing through about ten years ago. I was in a cafe eating a bacon-and-egg sandwich and when an old guy at the next table started talking. Said he’d panned for gold in the area when he was in his twenties. Told me a creepy story about a time he was working a stream that came down out of the mountains. He was alone and it was getting late in the day…
Technically speaking the old man’s story has nothing to do with my actual trip. But it enhances and contributes to my story.
When I read the gospels I basically want just one thing: an account that’s true. Beyond that it’s Luke’s story to choose the elements he chooses and tell the way he tells it. So I can go along without a bunch of analytical nitpicking & second-guessing.

Note: see October 1/21 post near the end

Week 33  Luke 2

Simeon approached Mary & Joseph & the baby Jesus. He told Mary: this child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and as a sign to be opposed…to the end that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.
The phrase about Jesus being a sign to be opposed made me wonder. Other versions agreed that Jesus would be opposed. He’d be:
spoken against
contradicted
not accepted
rejected.
But why did Simeon use the expression a sign to be opposed? Why not just say ‘this boy will meet opposition’. That would be simpler and clearer. If there’s some technical reason for saying Jesus would be a sign to be opposed instead of ‘Jesus will be opposed’ I don’t know what it is.
Anyway my bigger interest was that Jesus would not just be opposed but that the opposition would reveal something about opponents. Opposition against Jesus would be to the end that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed. So opposition showed two things. There would be the actual and obvious animosity & hostility. But opposition was the outgrowth of what was going on inside an opponent’s head. Simeon seemed to be saying that opposing Jesus was an external demonstration that verified what was going on inside a person. Jesus would be a lightning rod for a person’s private & (usually) hidden convictions.

Note: quotes from Luke 2:34-35 (NASB and KJV21 DRA ICB NET)

Week 32  Luke 1

Like a bolt out of the blue an angel appeared to Zacharias and told him he would soon have a son:
He will be great in the sight of the Lord…He will be filled with the Holy Spirit…He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord…He will go on before the Lord…to turn the hearts of…the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous – to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.
The angelic visit is pretty striking. What got my attention was that the forecast uncovered a couple of things about the current state of religious affairs in Israel. First off whatever all else was going on in first-century Israel Gabriel made it clear that people in Israel had gotten into a serious state of disconnection from the Lord. How long that had been going on prior to John the Baptist’s arrival is hard to say. But people had gradually decoupled from the Lord. And John’s responsibility would be to convince some of them to come back.
The second thing was that the people who’d drifted away had lapsed into a serious state of unpreparedness. Religiously & psychologically they weren’t primed or conditioned for Jesus’ arrival. So John needed to help rectify that situation. He had to get things ready for the Lord. Clear the ground. Stir things up. Get people thinking. Tune up religious senses.
John was a prophet to people who were unplugged & off-guard.

Note: quote from Luke 1:15-17 (NIV)

Week 32  Luke 1

Luke begins:
Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.
Luke was writing to Theophilus so that Theophilus would have more confidence in the gospel story. Theophilus was maybe uncertain. Or indefinite. Or had some questions about the gospel. Luke wrote to help him with his reservations. Theophilus – like a lot of people – seemed to be on-board…but still had concerns.
Luke also said that ‘many’ other people had already written biographical accounts of Jesus. It sounds like those accounts (like Luke’s) were second-hand – the writers didn’t witness the events (by contrast Matthew & John both wrote about what they had seen firsthand).
Luke says his method was to interview eyewitnesses. He said he ‘carefully investigated’ to separate the wheat-from-the-chaff. So some discrimination went into his gospel composition.
Luke also said his story was an ‘orderly account’. That might not necessarily mean a chronological account. It might imply that the sequence of events wasn’t willy-nilly – wasn’t haphazard or all-over-the-map. Luke sequenced them in a systematic way.

Note: quote from Luke 1:1-4 (NIV)

Week 32  Mark

Reading Mark this year I noticed the mixed reception that Jesus got when he moved into the public teaching & miracle-working period of his life.
One group of people took to Jesus right away.
A second group showed hard-to-disguise malice.
And a third group stood in the sceptical middle. The undecideds.
There’s the story of the freakishly strong & self-destructive demon-possessed man. He’d been driven out of town and ended-up living-rough in a cemetery. When the Lord exorcised his demons the man was fully on-board with Jesus. But the people in town were hyper-wary. They asked Jesus to leave. Not exactly hard-opposition. But not acceptance either.
There’s another time when Jesus told Jairus that his (dead) daughter was only sleeping and the people at the wake laughed at him. Scorn is a pretty soft kind of opposition. But it definitely showed coolness toward Jesus (the story goes on to say that the people changed-their-tune when the (dead) girl got up).
And there was the time Jesus went back to his own hometown. He’d grown up there and because people knew him they didn’t think he was anything special. Mark says that they took offense at him. Not exactly antipathy. But not hometown cordiality either.
Everybody got to make their own decision about what to do with Jesus. With the undecideds the decision was temporarily on-hold. Some might eventually come onside. Some would settle into animosity. Some would never get off-the-fence.

Note: quote from Mark 6:3 (NIV). Stories in Mark 5:15-20 5:22-43 & 6:1-6

Week 31  Mark 3

Jesus wasn’t universally popular.  The gospels agree on that.
Early on in his account Mark piled several stories one on top of the other where people reacted against what Jesus was doing. I started looking for other examples of hostility & opposition.
Not counting borderline cases where people were uncertain or suspicious or fearful or skeptical I found nine incidents where there was serious opposition. In three of those cases people didn’t just disagree. They started formulating plans to assassinate Jesus.
The Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus
The chief priests and the teachers of the law…began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him
The chief priests and the teachers of the law were scheming to arrest Jesus secretly and kill him.
If Mark wrote his gospel in any kind of chronological order of events then that first Pharisee-Herodian murder plan showed up almost as soon as Jesus began his public activity. Meaning that during most of his public life he was loved & revered but at the same time schemers were plotting his death.
Near the end when Jesus walked to Jerusalem for the last time he told his disciples that: the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death. Intense news for them. But a future he’d likely lived with for quite awhile.

Note: quotes from Mark 3:6 11:18 14:1 10:33 (NIV)

Week 31  Psalm 67

The OT is normally Israel-centric. So when the writer begins this psalm by asking the Lord to bless Israel – he says ‘us’ three times – it’s no real surprise. But his request isn’t for a national blessing-for-blessing’s-sake. There’s a different (or maybe additional) reason: then those living on earth will know what you are like .
The idea is that the Lord is gracious to Israel and so Israel is blessed. But the spillover effect is that other nations see this happen and they (somehow) figure-out something about the Lord. Foreign people will know what you are like.
[The version I’m reading adds a technical linguistic footnote saying that the language expresses purpose/result. When God demonstrates his favor to his people, all nations will recognize his character. They say that another way to express the idea is that the other nations will know your way (but ‘way’ – they say – refers to God’s character.]
Anyway I know that I need to keep the basic notion in mind. The easy default for a bible reader is that the OT’s only concern is Israel. But 67 says it isn’t exclusively about Israel (for-Israel’s-sake). It’s about Israel-for-everybody-else’s-sake too.
Israel lived out it’s own introspective & self-interested life. But it was also a test case. A prototype. A real-life first-case experiment that outsiders could evaluate for functionality. Workability. Utility. Desirability. Preferability. An inaugural experiment in state-building based on a specific set of religious norms. And outsiders got to assess it.

Note: quote from Psalm 67:2 (NET)

Week 30  Psalm 66

Psalm 66 has four paragraphs and even though there’s probably a unifying theme tying them together I think each one of them could be it’s own individual psalm.
Of the four I like the last paragraph the most (verses sixteen to twenty). It’s a short testimonial: I will tell of what (the Lord) has done for my soul.
One of the things the writer says is: if I regard wickedness in my heart, the Lord will not hear. A lot of other things in the bible agree with this idea and I accept it as a basic rule or principle.
In my bible there’s a little number beside the word ‘regard’ and I wonder if it will give me a synonym for ‘regard’ (like if-I-embrace sin or if-I-practice sin). But instead the note in the margin changes the tense of the sentence: if I had regarded wickedness in my heart, the Lord would not have heard.
I check to see what a few other versions say. I don’t do a statistical count but quite a few of them also put the sentence in the past. For instance: if I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.
Even though it doesn’t make too much difference to the sentence I wish the translators could agree.
But either way the basic idea is pretty clear – that figuratively-speaking the Lord is deaf to the voice of people who embrace evilness.

Note: quotes from Psalm 66:16 18 (NASB NIV)

Week 30  Psalm 66

The bible I’m reading says that God keeps us in life, and does not allow our feet to slip. I’m interested in that first phrase about the Lord keeping-us-in-life (the note in the margin says puts our soul in life).
I check a couple of other versions. They say that the Lord:
put and kept us among the living
keeps us alive
protects us from death
has kept our soul among the living
preserves our lives
Even though the phrase is translated in slightly different ways I come away with the fundamental idea that God keeps me alive. I don’t know how many things in total that the Lord does for me. But keeping me alive might be the most basic & necessary.
I tend to operate with the idea that the Lord engages with people in their regular life activities. For instance right here in this psalm the writer says that the Lord turned the sea into dry land – Israel’s Red Sea miracle in Exodus. And right near the end of the psalm he says that the Lord hears his prayer.
So the Lord is kind of knee-deep in what’s going on – the events & activities & ins-and-outs of my life. But those all assume that I’m actually alive. And Psalm 66 says that even the life I’m living is being propped-up by the Lord. The Lord has me on life-support.

Note: quotes from Psalm 66:9 (NASB AMPC CSV CEV ESV NET) & 66:6 (NIV)

Week 30  Mark 2-3

I don’t think I’d necessarily title Mark 1 Jesus’ Salad Days but in general the beginning of the story is pretty nice. People are surprised & amazed & impressed by Jesus. Things are fairly smooth and mostly trouble-free. But that soon changes.
Starting in chapter two Mark tells five consecutive stories and in each of them there’s some element of backlash:
• Jesus tells a paralyzed man: your sins are forgiven. Reaction: some teachers of the law were…thinking to themselves…he’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?
• Jesus socialized with disreputable people. Reaction: the Pharisees…asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
• Jesus’ disciples didn’t fast. Reaction: people…asked Jesus, “How is it that John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, but yours are not?”
• The disciples picked grain on the Sabbath. Reaction: Pharisees said to (Jesus), “Why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”
• Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath. Reaction: Pharisees were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath.
In rapid succession Mark lists five events where the Lord is criticized or second-guessed. Mark doesn’t sustain that same rapid rate of reporting – I only found about a dozen other places where he highlights adversity against the Lord. But he makes an emphatic point early-on that Jesus was both a) Popular & Liked and b) Popular & Disliked.

Note: quotes from Mark 2:6-7 2:16 2:18 2:24 3:1-2 (NIV)