Month: September 2024

Week 40  Luke 24

Two men – Cleopas & an unnamed man – were walking from Jerusalem to the town of Emmaus. They had been followers of Jesus. But Jesus was dead & gone now.
Along the way they chanced on a stranger. They told him about Jesus:
He was a prophet who did powerful miracles, and he was a mighty teacher in the eyes of God and all the people. But our leading priests and other religious leaders handed him over to be condemned to death, and they crucified him. We had hoped he was the Messiah who had come to rescue Israel. This all happened three days ago.
That was it. The gospel from beginning to end. Jesus was a great teacher. He helped and consoled a lot of people. Generous. Kind. Gave wise advice. Great principles to live by. A big following…but powerful & murderous enemies too. So the story came to an abrupt end. Good guy. Good story. A lot of good memories.
But the stranger challenged their gospel story: wasn’t it clearly predicted by the prophets that the Messiah would have to suffer all these things before entering his time of glory?
Along the Emmaus Road Cleopas & his friend were having to rethink their gospel story (and they were flabbergasted to realize the stranger was actually Jesus).
The road trip had been an eye-opener for them. Their Short Gospel Story was a long way from being over.

Note: quotes from Luke 24:19-21 26 (NLT)
End-of-month reading report: 84% of reading completed in 75% of the year.

 

Week 39  Luke 22

Then Satan entered into Judas Iscariot. So just like that – smoothly and slickly – Judas – who was one of the twelve disciples– was now demon-possessed.
There was the before-Satan-Judas. But in 22 Satan entered Judas he became something else. Plain-old Judas was transformed into a dangerous new binary-guy. Judas-and-Satan. Judasatan. On the surface maybe quite a bit the same as before. But now taking cues from Satan.
I thought back to the story of the demon-possessed boy. His father described it: an evil spirit keeps seizing him, making him scream. It throws him into convulsions so that he foams at the mouth. It is always hitting and injuring him. It hardly ever leaves him alone.
I thought back to the demon-possessed guy from the Gadarenes – homeless and naked, he lived in a cemetery…The spirit had often taken control of the man. Even when he was shackled with chains he simply broke them.
With Judas it was different. He was no raving lunatic. He pretty much stayed Judas on the outside. His possession was pretty subtle.
But covertly he:
A) began negotiating with the Lord’s enemies
B) settled on a bounty
C) conspired how to betray Jesus
D) planned an opportunity
Judas didn’t go crazy. Didn’t mutate into a violent monstrosity-of-a-guy. Normal-seeming Judas. Co0l-handed & quietly going about his regular activities. And now locked into his satanic extra-curriculars as well.

Note: quotes from Luke 22:3 9:37-43 8:26-39 (NLT)

 

Week 39  Luke 21

Let’s say three people donate money to a charity:
A) an investment banker donates $1000
B) a middle-class wage-earner donates $100
C) a poor widow donates $10
The question is: ‘Who Gave the Most?’
And the answer is: A) gave most (and he’s followed by B) who gave less & C) who gave almost nothing).
The Lord took a different view: this poor widow has given more than all the rest of them. For they have given a tiny part of their surplus, but she, poor as she is, has given everything she has.
So a second factor has to be considered: Charitable Capacity. The question for a donor is: what is my financial load-bearing charitable capacity? (The Lord called it my surplus).
I can do a simple budget breakdown:
• What is my total income? (I’ll call it x)
• What are my non-negotiable expenses? (they are y)
• What Surplus Cash do I have when my non-negotiables are covered? (x – y = z). Z is my ‘discretionary loot’ (my surplus).
My original question has to be modified to: Who Gave the Largest Percentage of Their Surplus?
And now the answer changes to: C) (the widow by a gigantic margin).
In the short-run the widow didn’t do herself any financial favours. But I’m reading about her two-thousand years later – so she was that much of an exception. It’s maybe true that the Lord helps the person who helps herself. But in this story he commended a woman who didn’t.

Note: Luke 21:3-4 (NLT)

Week 39  Luke 18

The story is about a widow who brought a legal case before a mean & wretched judge. He didn’t care about her case at all. But she kept coming back. Again & again & again. Until finally he acted.
The story wasn’t really about the law. it was about prayer. Luke said the Lord told the story to illustrate people’s need for constant prayer and to show them that they must never give up.
So there are two lessons about praying:
a) I should pray as much as possible
b) even if nothing happens I shouldn’t get discouraged & quit praying.
Praying but not getting depressed need to go hand-in-hand.
A big factor – at least when it comes to Ask / Request Prayers – is the time element. I go to a coffee shop and I wait a minute or two for my order. Not twenty. With an Ask Prayer it’s a different thing. If I ask and  nothing happens then my normal reactions – impatience frustration annoyance – are counterproductive. They’re more of a hindrance than a help.
Luke is saying that Ask Prayers have different response times. They range from Right Away all the way up to A Very Long Time (months or maybe even years).
No one needs patience for a Right Away response. But years? That sounds like Frustration Country.
Still…my normal reaction – getting mad & quitting because an Ask Prayer isn’t answered – isn’t what Luke recommends.

Note: quote from Luke 18:1 (NLT)

Week 39  Luke 11

Luke says that right after the Lord gave the disciples a sample prayer (the Lord’s Prayer) he kept right on talking about the same topic: then, teaching them more about prayer he used this illustration…  The illustration is about an annoying neighbour. And the point of that story is: keep on asking. A rule for prayer: be persistent. Pray repetitively. Over & over & over.
It’s a helpful tip. I already know that faith is one of the key things I need for prayer to work. Faith is something that I either have or don’t have. If I have it my prayer can be successful. If I don’t have it it can’t. So I somehow have to get faith for my prayer to work. It’s a prerequisite. Faith first…then a successful prayer result.
Anyway the guy in the story goes next door at midnight and hammers on the neighbour’s door again & again & again until he gets what he’s after. So that’s a bit of a different quality than faith. The guy doesn’t seem to need a special gift to keep banging on the door. He just has to do it and keep doing it.
Q: how do I get prayer to work? A: keep on asking.

Note: quotes from Luke 11:5 9 (NLT). Follow-up question: Did the Keep-On-Asking Guy need faith too? Maybe. But it doesn’t say so. Just persistence. (I read Luke 17:5-6 a bit later.)

Week 38  Luke 5

A paralyzed man came to Jesus and Jesus told him your sins are forgiven. If Jesus had just healed the man that would have been one thing. But he told him your sins are forgiven. That was a problem.
In the OT only God could forgive a person’s sins (a regular person couldn’t). That’s why the religious teachers said to Jesus who but God can forgive sins? Everyone knew the answer: nobody can.
This created a dilemma for Jesus since it’s very difficult for a person to prove that he’s God (in fact it might be impossible to prove in a formal or – let’s say – scientific way).
So Jesus used an indirect proof. He illustrated his hard-to-prove & invisible divineness by using his super-normal power in a visible way (his method was based on the principle: if I can’t prove something absolutely I’ll try kind-of proving it).
He explained the logic like this: I’m going to do Impossible Thing #1 (a miracle) so you’ll have a reason to believe I can do Impossible Thing #2 (forgive sin).
Jesus did Impossible Thing #1 (healed the man). The audience now had a real event to mull over: since he did Impossible Thing #1 does it stand-to-reason that he can also do Impossible Thing #2? Decision-time.
Impossible Thing #1 didn’t absolutely prove Impossible Thing #2. But Luke does confirm that when Impossible Thing #1 happened everyone was gripped with great wonder and awe and they admitted that we have seen amazing things today.

Note: quotes from Luke 5: 20 21 26 (NLT)

Week 38  Mark 16

Mark’s gospel ends with two optional endings (the bible doesn’t say Take Your Pick. But that’s kind of what it comes down to.)
I decided to look a bit more carefully at the details recorded in Mark’s Longer Ending. I wanted to see if I could find the details from those 38-lines in any of the other gospels. Would other gospels confirm Mark? Or not? I did a quick survey and found these items in the Longer Ending:
On Sunday morning Jesus rose from the dead
Mary was first to discover the news about the Lord
Mary told the disciples but they didn’t believe her
The Lord appeared to two men on a road
The two men told the disciples but the disciples didn’t believe them
The Lord appeared to the eleven disciples (scolded them for not believing)
He told them to preach the gospel everywhere
He told them that they would be able to do miraculous things:
1. Cast out demons
2. Speak new languages
3. Handle snakes safely
4. Drink poison
5. Heal people
The Lord then returned to heaven.
Only one of the details is new to me. All the rest I could find in the gospels or the book of Acts. That detail? I can’t think of anywhere the bible says poison will not hurt me.
My conclusion? Even if I’m not absolutely sure who wrote Mark’s Longer Ending I can accept it with one exception. The Poison Guarantee.

Note: the Longer Ending is in Mark 16:9-20

Week 38  Mark 16

In the bible version I’m reading Mark 16:8 suddenly stops. There’s a break and then it says: [Shorter Ending of Mark]. The shorter ending of Mark is five lines long and ends with Amen.
There’s a note below: the most reliable early manuscripts conclude the Gospel of Mark at verse 8. Other manuscripts include various endings to the Gospel. Two of the more noteworthy endings are printed here.
And sure enough there’s a second heading: [Longer Ending of Mark]. It’s forty lines long.
So I’ve got a Shorter Ending of Mark .
And I’ve got a Longer Ending of Mark.
The reason I’ve got shorter and longer endings to Mark is – roughly speaking – this:
Mark wrote the first & original copy of Mark.
Mark’s one-and-only original got worn out so someone copied it – a copy of the one-and-only original.
Then there was a copy of that copy-of-the-original. Then a copy of a copy of that copy-of-the-original. And so-on-and-on-and-on. Copies of copies of copies. And eventually (it had to happen) one of the copiers made a mistake. Maybe “tap” instead of “tab”.  Or “age” instead of “rage”. There’s no guarantee of an error-free hand-copied text.
Anyway it’s safe to say Mark didn’t write his gospel with two endings. Some unknown copier did that. Meaning some copier made a decision that might have been either a) good or b) neutral or c) bad.
So as a bible-reader I’ve got to be on-my-toes.

Note: quotes from the NLT version.

 

Week 38  Mark 10

Anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.
There are a couple of ways to figure out what the Lord meant by receiving the kingdom like a little child.
On the one hand I can ask: what are the qualities of a child that put me in a position to receive & get into the kingdom? And they might be things like a childlike innocence. Trustfulness. Simplicity. Things like that.
On the other hand I can come at it in reverse. I can think about what n0t-being-childlike is like by looking at my adultlike qualities. Things like being guarded. Suspicious. Defensive. Evasive. Distrustful. Unhelpful. Self-interested. Things like that.
The problem is that  when I grow out of Childhood World and move into Adult World these qualities are necessary because Adult World is such a dog-eat-dog place. Being dishonest? Unfair? Competitive? Ruthless? Critical? Judgmental? Callous? They all just seem like survival mechanisms in Adult World.
Still…the Lord says that qualities of Childhood World practices clear my path to the kingdom.
Anyway for now it might be worth:
A) looking a bit more critically at my current menu of Adult World Qualities
B) assessing how advantageous/disadvantageous those qualities are when it comes to moving into the kingdom
C) doing a cost-benefit exercise to assess what it’ll cost me to re-jig my Adult World commitments (and decide whether it’s worth the price).

Note: quote from Mark 10:15 (NIV)

Week 38  Mark 9

An unnamed exorcist was casting out demons in Jesus’ name. The disciples shut him down (he isn’t one of our group). When the Lord heard he told them: don’t stop him. No one who preforms miracles in my name will soon be able to speak evil of me.
The disciple’s equation was: Doing something in the Lord’s name + Not being part of the group = Not doing something for the Lord.
The Lord’s formula wasn’t as complicated: Doing something in the Lord’s name = Doing something in the Lord’s name.
I wondered about irrelevant factors when it comes to doing something in the Lord’s name?
If a guy was doing something for the Lord could I try to stop him if – for instance – he didn’t understand the gospel very well?
If he was a poor communicator?
If I disagreed with some of his ideas?
If he had weird political views?
It looks like doing something in the Lord’s name is – to some degree at least – a non-correctible & non-criticizable action.
Doing something in the Lord’s name is just that.
I wonder if it’s even possible that if I’m doing nothing for the Lord it’s a bigger problem than doing something in the name of the Lord (while not belonging to the right group).
It sounds like I can legitimately do something in the name of the Lord in spite of personal flaws or limited skills or keeping the wrong company.

Note: quotes from Mark 9:38-39 (NLT)