Medicine Hat Joe

Week 35  John 4

In John’s long story about Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well there’s one exchange that really jumps out: the woman said, “I know that Messiah…is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you – I am he”.
Generally speaking (maybe 99-times out of 100) Jesus was very reluctant to make any claims about being the messiah. But not on this occasion: I, the one speaking to you – I am he (in other words ‘I am the messiah’).
There’s an important side note & question for NT readers: who-in-the-world is the Messiah? It’s a good question. The OT is fuzzy on Messiah. Then in the gospels he just magically appears.
I checked online: in the period of Roman rule…the Jews’ expectation of a personal messiah acquired increasing prominence. Okay. Then it says that the messiah was the expected king of the Davidic line…who would deliver Israel from foreign bondage and restore the glories of its golden age.
So a well-developed theory about the Messiah had evolved in the ~400 years not reported in the bible between Malachi & Matthew. Looks like first-century Jewish readers were schooled in the idea. By contrast a modern bible reader has no familiarity whatsoever with Messiah. That information is outside the bible.
Anyway the point here is that Jesus broke precedent at Jacob’s well when he said emphatically that he was Messiah.

Note: quotes from John 4:25-26 (NIV) & Britannica online (Messiah August 25, 2026)

Week 34  Luke 4

Quite a bit of Jesus’ activity took place in Galilee – the northern section of Palestine – and Matthew Mark & Luke all tell a story about Jesus going back to his hometown there. The stories are similar and sound like they’re describing the same event:
• the location is Nazareth
• the townspeople are surprised when they hear Jesus
• they’re skeptical – him being a local boy and all
• they take offense
• Jesus refers to the familiarity-breeds-contempt proverb
With Matthew & Mark the point seems to be Jesus’ reaction to being rejected – he accounts for it by quoting the proverbial saying: a prophet is not without honor except in his hometown.
Luke’s much longer account agrees but has another point to make. Jesus reminded the crowd of two famous OT stories:
1. Elijah’s miracle for the widow of Zarephath (a Sidonian)
2. Elisha’s miraculous cure of Naaman (a Syrian).
The thing worth noting in both cases is that Elijah & Elisha reached out past national borders to help foreign people. There were plenty of destitute people in Israel…but Elijah helped an alien. There were lepers galore in Israel…but Elisha cured a foreigner and an enemy.
So right at the front-end of Luke’s gospel there’s a subtle tip-off that the intensely nation-centric view of Israel in the OT is set for a reboot. From the look of it Israel wouldn’t be absolutely excluded. But soon enough they won’t be the exclusively privileged ones anymore.

Note: quote from Matthew 13:57 & Mark 6:4 (ESV)

Week 34  Luke 4

The first two things that Luke reported about Jesus as an adult were that a) he was baptized by John and that b) he was tempted by Satan. Then right away he began his public work in Galilee. One of his early stops was his own hometown – Nazareth.
Jesus was instinctively able to read-his-audience: I know what you’re going to say… ‘We heard of great happenings in Capernaum; do things like that here, in your own country!’
It’s hard to make sense of the comment without reading the same story in Matthew & Mark and getting a bit of background…
Matthew: (Jesus) did not do many miracles there (Nazareth) because of their lack of faith
Mark: (Jesus) could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. He was amazed at their lack of faith.
So Jesus had already done public miracles in Capernaum. But he couldn’t replicate them in Nazareth.
It’s something to keep in mind. It means if someone asked whether there was anything Jesus couldn’t do the answer would be: “Yes. For instance he couldn’t heal a person who wouldn’t believe he could”.
That said I also tend to think that – strictly speaking – the Lord could overpoweringly and irresistibly force a miraculous physical cure onto a sick guy who had no faith. But what would be the point?

Note: the Nazareth story is in Luke 4:16-30. Quotes from Luke 4:23 (NTFE)  and Matthew 13:58 & Mark 6:5-6 (NIV)

 

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 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 eerie tale might have nothing directly to do with the trip. But it enhances my story. I leave it in.
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 what 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)