Month: September 2023

Week 38  Luke 1-2

Compared to Mark (who seemed to be in a huge rush to talk about the Lord’s adult life) and compared to Matthew (who told a couple of fairly short background stories about the Lord’s early life before moving on) Luke spent quite a bit of time talking about what was happening long before the Lord began his public career.
Mark wrote one verse of introduction then he was off-to-the-races with John the Baptist. He was pretty clearly interested in Adult Jesus.
Matthew took about 48-verses before he launched into John the Baptist & Jesus as adults (he squeezed in the popular Christmas story about the wise men. And then about how Joseph Mary & Jesus shifted locations while they were on-the-run).
Luke seemed to have a different priority. He wasn’t in such a hurry. He filled-in a lot of gaps. Without Luke a bible-reader is missing some pretty useful information:
The story of Zacharias & the angel
The Annunciation of Mary
Mary’s Magnificat
The birth & celebration of John the Baptist
Zacharias’ prophecy
The birth of Jesus
The angels & the shepherds-in-the-fields
Simeon’s prophecy
Anna’s prophecy
Jesus in the temple as a 12 year-old boy.
Each one of the sketches (except maybe the 6th) says something unusual or unexpected. Angels appear to people. Miracles happen. Prophetic prayers are prayed. Prophecies come true. Things happen out-of-the-blue.
It takes 152-verses before Luke starts in on the adult stories of John the Baptist and the Lord. But to me it’s worth the wait.

Week 38  Matthew 27

Matthew took a couple of  paragraphs to explain to readers what happened to Judas.
See that after he betrayed Jesus Judas was filled with remorse. Regret. Sorrow. Judas was terribly abjectly sorry. On a Sorrow Scale Judas would be near the very top.
See the attitude of the religious leaders when Judas went to them confessing his sin. What they told him was: what do we care? That’s your problem.
See that Judas threw the blood-money on the floor. It was important to him before. But it was no use to him now.
See how practical the religious leaders were. They picked the money up off the floor (no sense letting valuable money go to waste).
See how scrupulous the religious leaders were about how this kind of money could be utilized.
• Can we accept money that’s been acquired by unjust means?
• How can we legitimately allocate the proceeds of crime?
• Are there legal restrictions or limitations on its usage?
It took a while but eventually they figured out a technically legal way to use the money.
See how Judas resolved his sorrow. When the religious people shrugged him off suicide was the only way he could think of to handle his contrition.
It’s perplexing since real sorrow & real repentance are usually a guarantee of forgiveness. But it looks like Judas had passed a point of no returning.
Judas’ story is one of the saddest in the bible.

Note: quotes from Matthew 27:2 4 (NLT)

Week 38  Matthew 22

The Lord told the Sadducees straight-up: your problem is that you don’t know the scriptures.
So the implication is pretty clear. There are two possible outcomes to bible reading:
Outcome A: I can read the bible but not know it
Outcome B: I can read it and know it.
(Outcome A is a bit tricky because – for instance – I could be reading the bible for the first time and not really get it. That’s completely possible. But even though I’m not getting it I can still be an Outcome B reader because even if I’m not getting it my basic long-range goal is to get it – eventually. It’s what I’m determined to do.)
Anyway since I want to be an Outcome B reader I’ve adopted a couple of basic rules – one is simple but the other isn’t.
The simple one is that when I’m reading the bible I try to keep in mind that it’s a non-fiction book (which needs a different mentality than if I’m reading fiction or fantasy or mythology).
The second rule is that when I read I try to let the bible tell me what it’s saying – not me tell it. (As simple as it sounds it’s a hard rule to remember and harder to do since it’s way easier for me to tell the bible what it’s allowed to say rather than me just listening to it.)

Note: quote from Matthew 22:29 (NLT)

Week 37  Matthew 21

These two verses caught my attention: if you have faith and don’t doubt you can do things like this (the fig-tree-miracle) and much more…If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.
So there’s Two Guarantees:
Guarantee #1: I can get the ability to do miraculous things
Guarantee #2: I can get everything I ask the Lord for.
Pretty good guarantees…but I notice three things that have to happen first: 1) I have to have faith. 2) I have to not be a doubter. 3) I have to believe.
Looking at the three I figure that ‘faith’ in verse 21 is roughly equal to ‘belief’ in verse 22. So I’ve got Faith / Belief on one side. And on the other side is Doubt.
I visualize two continuums:
First there’s the Faith/Belief Continuum…
Almost No Faith —————————- A Lot of Faith
Second there’s the Doubt Continuum…
Almost Total Doubt ————————- No Doubt At All.
I think the Lord is saying that two (similar) things have to be going on at the same time for the Two Guarantees to happen. I have to be gradually moving along both lines from left-to-right: Boosting my Faith and at the same time Off-loading my Doubt.
This is useful to know. Matthew’s two continuums explain what’s needed so I can achieve the Two Guarantees.
Unfortunately Matthew doesn’t explain the process of how to boost my faith or tamp down my doubt.
So I’ll need to be looking somewhere else for those How-Tos.

Note: quotes from Matthew 21:21-22 (NLT)

Week 37  Matthew 21

The Lord told his disciples: if you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.
Right away I latch onto the phrase you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer. It’s an attention-grabber (subconsciously I do a quick mental paraphrase: ‘I’ll get whatever I ask the Lord for’).
Anyway a couple of questions a bible-reader asks pretty regularly are:
a) what does this verse mean?
b) what does it not mean?
So I ask myself b): what does it not mean? And I see right away it doesn’t mean ‘I’ll get whatever I ask the Lord for’ because the verse doesn’t say that. It says: if you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer. Meaning that I’ll receive whatever I ask for in prayer as long as I believe.
I’ve made a rookie reader’s gaff. I don’t know if there’s an official name for it (let’s call it the Personal Preference Bias). It’s basically that while I’m reading I’m doing two things: 1) I’m latching onto what I like (for instance ‘I’ll get whatever I ask the Lord for’) and 2) I’m skipping over irrelevant-seeming things (for instance ‘if I believe’).
I get a sinking-feeling that the believing part is going to put a serious dent in the asking-and-getting part.
I can ask the Lord for a million things. What I get is what’s caught in the Belief Filter.

Note: quote from Matthew 21:22 (NLT)

Week 37  Matthew 13

Jesus knew some of his stories were hard to understand but he said that: anyone who is willing to hear should listen and understand. So ‘willingness’ was part of the mix. He said ‘openness’ was too (if people are open to my teaching more understanding will be given). Willingness & Openness.
He had already said that the disciples had been permitted to understand the secrets but that other (people) had not.
I wonder about why some people were ‘permitted’ to understand but others were not (it almost makes it look like the Lord is a Big Secret Keeper and he only lets a few select insiders in on the secret). But I figure it’s just as likely (and makes pretty good sense) that the ‘insiders’ were the ones who were Willing & Open. If that’s true then the ‘outsiders’ were likely Unwilling & Closed.
On one side: to people who are open to my teaching, more understanding will be given, and they will have an abundance of knowledge.
On the other: to those who are not listening, even what they have will be taken away from them.
Personally I think it would be nice if everyone was an insider. A kind of inclusive big-tent universal admission to knowing. But what if I was a person who didn’t want to a) hear or b) listen or c) understand? Would I even want to be an insider?

Note: quotes from Matthew 13:9 12 11 (NLT)

Week 37  Matthew 12

Here’s the scenario: first, there’s a guy with a deformed hand. Second: it’s the Sabbath day. Third: the Lord is there. Fourth: Pharisees are watching.
(I checked an outside-the-bible source: the Pharisees were very big on very strictly obeying the laws of Moses. And very big on policing other people to make sure they very strictly obeyed Moses too.)
The Pharisees – with a kind of entrapment question – asked the Lord: is it legal to work by healing on the Sabbath day?
They didn’t ask: ‘is it legal to work on the Sabbath?’
Didn’t ask: ‘is it legal to heal on the Sabbath?’
They asked: ‘is it legal to work-by-healing on the Sabbath?’
But Jesus didn’t answer the question. Not directly at least. Maybe figuring the question was missing the point and an answer would miss it too.
So he didn’t say: ‘yes it’s legal to work on the Sabbath’
Or: ‘yes it’s legal to work-by-healing on the Sabbath’
But he did ask them: it is right to do good on the Sabbath?
Which I think did two things:
1) it hinted that the question the Pharisees should have asked was: is it right to do good on the Sabbath?’
2) it meant that the point was: ‘yes it is right to do good on the Sabbath’ (which I think meant that it was right to do good on the Sabbath even if the good looked like work).

Note: quotes from Matthew 12:10 12 (NLT)

Week 36  Matthew 5

The practical issue of how-do-I-deal with my enemies isn’t simple. In fact it’s a complicated idea muddied-up by real life. It seems unworkable and nonsensical. So I wonder about it.
I tend to operate with a Friend-Enemy continuum in mind. There are Enemies on the left side and Friends on the right.
I have a set of Friend-Actions that apply to Friends and a different set of actions – Enemy-Actions – for my Enemies.
But Matthew makes it sound like the continuum isn’t viable.
I can’t use my Enemy-Actions against Enemies.
Two of the specific Non-Enemy-Action protocols the Lord spells out are that a) I have to love my enemy and b) I have to pray for him.
There’s a couple of tricky questions I’m left with:
Does loving my Enemy mean my Enemy is my Friend now? (I doubt it)
Isn’t treating my Enemy in a Non-Enemy way a bit of a charade? (Maybe. So I wonder if it’s a necessary charade)
Will my love-for-my-enemy-actions be different than my love-for-my-friend-actions? (No doubt).
What it looks like is that Enemy-Love and Friend-Love are two different loves. One is more intentional & deliberate. A kind of necessary-action love. The other is easier & more spontaneous. Love that’s not weighted with requirement.
For now I’m thinking that Enemy-Love looks more like a) doing beneficial things and b) not doing oppositional things. It’s mostly doing what’s the right thing to do – there’s not likely very much feeling involved.

Note: see Matthew 5:44

Week 36 Matthew 5

You have heard that the law of Moses says, Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say love your enemies. When Jesus said that his audience would have felt a bit unsettled. Who in the world loves their enemies?
But what catches my attention is the example the Lord gives of Enemy-Loving. He says the Father-in-heaven shows love for his enemies by indiscriminately giving life & time & advantageous living conditions to everyone. There’s a kind of Generalized Non-Selectivity Rule in play where everyone gets similar treatment. The days and the rain are equal-opportunity universal benefits. No pre-conditions. No behaviour qualifications necessary.
I don’t think equitable treatment for everyone is an endorsement of bad people
I don’t think it means that good and bad people are roughly equal
Don’t think the Lord is happily affirmative of bad people
Don’t think bad people are getting rewarded for being bad
Don’t think the benefit has much to do with goodness or badness.
I think it means the Father gives everyone default access to the basic elements of life.
Jesus was saying: You have to love your enemies because that’s how the Father acts. It’s how he treats people. He’s constantly benefitting his friends and his enemies. He’s running a kind of Welfare-State World. We all get helped.
That was Jesus’ illustration. His point was that if I want to replicate how the Father acts then loving-my-enemies is a good place to start.

Note: quote from Matthew 5:43 (NLT)

Week 36  Matthew 1

Matthew gives readers a choice: you can read the story using the Rules for the Natural World. Or you can use the Rules for the More-Than-Natural World.
I have to decide asap since Mary’s story is in chapter one and I have to decide if I’m willing to suspend my belief about a basic and (I think) universally held biological fact that a virgin – by definition – can’t be pregnant. But that’s the beginning of the story. Mary: while she was still a virgin…became pregnant by the Holy Spirit.
At this point I’m guessing but I think Matthew would likely agree that Rules for the Natural World were correct as far as the Natural World goes (so for example Matthew did understand that a non-virgin couldn’t be a virgin). But sometimes the Rules for the Natural World don’t work so another set of rules – the Rules for the More-Than-Natural World – applied.
It might have helped if Matthew had made that clear right up-front (for instance he could have added a short Preface: Rules for the More-Than-Natural World Apply in this Gospel).
Anyway every reader reading Matthew has a decision to make:
a) the Rules for the Natural World apply always and without exception or
b) there are exceptions to Rules for the Natural World.
If I decide for a) then a lot of Matthew reads like a fairy-tale. If I choose b) then they don’t.

Note: quote from Matthew 1:18 (NLT)