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Week 46  1 Corinthians 11

Paul said that communion is a time of remembering & proclaiming / showing & honouring the Lord.
Then he added a couple of related issues. Advisories.
1. He gave a warning about not taking communion unworthily. The unworthiness Paul’s talking about could relate to what he’d already criticized: some of you hurry to eat without sharing with others. People in the church in Corinth needed to ask: is this worthy behaviour? (2000 years later churches might be doing different kinds of unworthinesses.)
2. Paul offered advice about dealing with communion-unworthiness: examine yourself before eating. Self-assessment that looked for unworthy actions.
3. He also (worryingly) said that unworthy behaviour at communion is a kind of magnet for divine judgment: for if you eat the bread or drink the cup without honoring the body of Christ, you are eating and drinking God’s judgment upon yourself. That is why many of you are weak and sick and some have even died. So…not a distant-future / post-mortem judgment. Here-and-now physical weaknesses or sicknesses or maybe even death.
Paul ended with a do-able tip on taking communion the right way (and avoiding judgment): so…when you gather for the Lord’s Supper, wait for each other. If you are really hungry, eat at home.
Communion is a church-community meal. It’s not an eating free-for-all.
Communion is a church-community meal with two aims: a) to remember & demonstrate & honour the Lord and b) to enjoy a meal together.

Note: quotes from 1 Corinthians 11:27 21 28 30 33 (NLT)

Week 46  1 Corinthians 11

The sacrament of communion was a bit different in the church in Corinth than in the church that I go to. From the look of it a Corinthian Lord’s Supper was a full church-community meal.
It’s hard to know for sure if the community meal was the actual sacramental celebration or if the meal was a pre-event – a preliminary – that was followed by a more religiously-focused gathering that emphasized the Lord’s death.
Either way one of the problems in Corinth was that what was supposed to be a share-and-share-alike meal had turned into a bit of an every-man-for-himself type of gathering where some go hungry while others get drunk.
So Paul spelled out a couple of the primary things that were part of the communion meal.
First there was a remembering function in communion: do this in remembrance of me (a kind of Remembrance Day for the Lord).
Second there was also an announcing function: for every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, you are announcing the Lord’s death until he comes. Other versions say proclaiming or showing. So maybe a demonstration symbolizing a) the Lord’s death and b) his return to life and c) his coming back again.
And one other feature of communion was honoring the body of Christ.
So it looks like these basic parts of communion – remembering & proclaiming & honouring the Lord – were featured elements in Corinth’s eating & drinking free-for-all.

Note: quotes from 1 Corinthians 11:21b 24-25 26 & 29 (NLT)

Week 44  Romans 16

Paul ends his letter to the Romans with a dense & fairly complicated passage. I counted 9 important clauses. It was an intricate mix but I figured I could make some sense out of it. And as it worked out I ended up finding a pretty helpful synopsis of the bible.
I itemized the verses like this:
1. Now to Him who has the power to establish you
2. according to my Gospel
3. and the preaching of Jesus Christ,
4. according to the revelation of the mystery
5. which was kept secret since the world began
6. but now is made manifest,
7. and by the Scriptures of the prophets,
8. according to the commandment of the everlasting God,
9. made known to all nations for the obedience of faith.
So now I had these 9 linked-statements that together are pretty tangled & complicated.
Q #1: could I uncomplicate them? A #1: I thought so.
Q #2: how would I simplify the passage? A #2: something like this: the Lord had a plan from the beginning. But he kept it quiet. It was a mystery. Even though the Lord did tip off OT prophets about the mystery and gave them some hints he didn’t comprehensively divulge the specifics of the plan. But now (in the NT) the plan is fully revealed.
Then I whittled it down even more and got this one very simple bible reader’s condensed version: the OT is fairly mysterious. But the NT demystifies things considerably.

Note: quote from Romans 16:25-26 (21st Century KJV)

 

Week 44  Acts

Miracles are big in the book of Acts: a) there are quite a few of them and b) they’re all pretty convincing & spectacular.
The apostles performed many signs and wonders
Everyone was filled with awe
A lame man is instantly healed and people were filled with wonder and amazement
Stephen performed great wonders and signs among the people
When the crowds saw Philip’s healing miracles & exorcisms they all listened to what he said
Peter told a paralyzed man Jesus Christ heals you – and he was healed. And the people who witnessed the miracle turned to the Lord
Peter called a dead woman back to life and many people believed in the Lord
Paul worked many miracles – direct & indirect: even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured.
S0 there were quite a few exceptional miracles.
I can only speak from my experience in southern Alberta. But miracles like this don’t happen in my church.
That’s not to say that a flood of spectacular miracles aren’t currently happening in other places. That’s possible.
It’s also possible that miracles come in batches (a lot of them in a short time-period followed by a break or a pause).
So maybe there’s certain times and places for miracles. If so Acts definitely sounds like one of those times and one of those places.

Note: quotes from Acts 5:12 2:43 3:11 6:8 8:6-7 9:34-35 9:42 19:11-12 (NIV) Reading report for November 1/24: 89% of reading completed in 83% of the year.

Week 44  Acts 1-8

One thing that’s happening in the church is that it’s expanding.
Luke is tracking growth between chapter one and chapter eight.
The first actual number he gives is when Peter addressed a roomful of people and 120 believers were present. Were there more than that? Maybe. But there weren’t less. 120 people is my starting point.
At a public gathering Peter spoke to big crowd and 3,000 people came to belief. So 120 + 3000 = 3120.
In spite of religious opposition more-and-more people kept joining the church so that the number of believers totaled about five thousand men, not counting women and children.
The number has got to be bigger but I decide to stand-pat at 5,000. That’s maybe just as well because after chapter 4 Luke starts ball-parking his numbers. He says things like:
More and more people believed and were brought to the Lord
The believers rapidly multiplied
The number of believers greatly increased in Jerusalem.
Expressions like more and more or greatly increased tell me almost exactly nothing. I decide (arbitrarily & out on a limb) to add 1,000 for these three occasions: 5,000 +1,000 + 1,000 + 1,000 = 8,000.
I figure there were more than 8,000 believers by chapter 6. But that’s beside the point because in chapter the church came into the angry crosshairs of the angry religious establishment and all the believers except the apostles fled.
And just like that the church census in Jerusalem dropped by way over 99%.

Note: quotes & facts from Acts 1:15 2:41 4:4 5:14 6:1 6:7 8:1 (NLT)

Week 44  Acts 4

I found a few more things that were going on in the church at the end of chapter four:
1. believers were one-in-heart
2. believers were one-in-mind
3. no one claimed that their possessions were private
4. people shared
5. the apostles possessed great power
6. they preached about the resurrection of Jesus
7. God was powerfully at work
8. there were no needy people in the church
9. people with property sold it to help people in need.
I decided to try tidying up Luke’s list by reorganizing it into four ideas:
1. believers were united in heart & mind
2. no one claimed personal ownership (they shared everything. Property was sold and the proceeds were redistributed by the apostles. There were no needy people in the church!)
3. the apostles’ message was the resurrection of Jesus
4. the apostles’ tremendous zip was God’s power at work.
I think my tidying-up project – compartmentalizing Luke’s elements by topic – was likely a mostly bogus way of kidding myself that I was Analyzing the Passage. My big concern about Luke’s mixed-up list probably – in real life circumstances – came together in a pretty seamless way.
Anyway…out of the four items the one about social concern stands out the most. It’s definitely talked about the most (maybe because the ominous Ananias-and-Sapphira story is coming up).
But there it is: if my church isn’t helping people who are in need then my church is acting differently than the church in Acts.

Note: the list is in Acts 4:32-35

 

Week 44  Acts 2

What was the church like in the book of Acts? That was my main question. The answer started with a five-verse summary in chapter two:
• people educated themselves about the apostles’ message
• believers fellowshipped (a not-so-common word. More-than friendship. More-like comradeship. Companionship. It’s like the church is an alliance of like-minded people who aren’t all best-friends but are on the same page and they’re pilgriming along in the same direction)
• They broke bread together (another not-so-common expression that might mean a) having a meal together or b) celebrating the communion sacrament)
• They prayed together.
Luke adds a couple of other details like getting together publicly (at the Temple) and in small-groups (in people’s homes). There’s also some serious share-and-share-alike features – people selling personal possessions to help people in need.
The big idea I get from Luke’s introduction is Togetherness.  Even though he mentions a couple of personal things – the believers had glad & sincere hearts and they praised the Lord – Luke’s focus is on Togetherness practices.
I noticed a couple of differences between the church-then and the church-now.
A) people met in the temple (a practice that got permanently cancelled)
B) there were lots of spectacular miracles (the high-volume & high-quality of miracles has tailed-off)
C) the church held things in common (I get the impression that community-minded concerns were a higher-priority then )
D) the church had good public approval ratings (less so now).
So Acts 2 was a nice starting point.

Note: quite a bit of paraphrasing from Acts 2:42-47

Week 42  John 9

The disciples saw a man who was born blind and they asked Jesus whose sin made this man blind: a) his own sin or b) his parents’ sin?
It was a pretty theoretical question – how would anyone know for sure? But one thing that wasn’t debatable was that someone must have done wrong otherwise the guy wouldn’t be blind. The rule was: people suffered because wrong-doing got paid-forward.
I spent the first eight months of this year reading the OT and I can understand why the disciples asked the question. There’s quite a bit of OT content that pretty definitely spells out the idea that the way I live my life has consequences. But it looks like by Jesus’ time the basic principle had been developed & expanded into a hard-and-fast rule that suffering people suffer because they’re bad people.
It seems like a handy diagnostic tool:
Is a guy crippled?
Does he have MS?
Leprosy?
Well…he’s a bad guy.
So the Lord had to bring the disciples up to speed. This man was a) not blind because he sinned and b) not blind because his folks sinned but c) was blind so that the power of God could be seen in him.
A basically correct OT idea had been reworked & reformulated over time to the point of nonsensicality.
Like with the Sermon on the Mount the Lord had to scrape off a layer of barnacles to get to the real OT.

Note: quote from John 9:3 (NLT)

Week 42  John 4

I’ve been wondering about the title Messiah and why some bible versions use it and others don’t. I decided to run a comparison test.
I chose the verse where the Samaritan woman says to Jesus I know the Messiah will come.
I checked an online site where I could compare this verse in 63 bible versions. Almost all of the versions used the word Messiah (or Messias of Mashiach). The other four used another name (Anointed One or the Christ). So about 94% of the versions liked Messiah in John 4:25.
So then I looked up a second verse. It was the time when people came to John the Baptist and asked who he was. He said: I am not the Messiah. Out of the 63 versions 23 used Messiah (37%). The other 40 used the Christ (or something else).
After I was finished counting it occurred to me that the exercise was a bit of a waste of time. But there’s a couple of useful takeaways:
1. One obvious thing: there’s lots of bible versions and each one uses different words & ideas in re-writing the bible
2. One not-so-obvious thing: all the different people who write different bible versions have different ideas and make their own decisions about what to say. And it isn’t always clear to a bible-reader what’s behind those ideas and decisions.
3. One personal reminder: give it some thought before landing with both feet on one version.

Note: quotes from John 4:25 1:20 (NLT). My online resource was biblegateway.com

 

Week 42

Yesterday I was thinking about The Messiah – mostly wondering why people in the 1st C were so interested in a character the OT hardly mentioned (I’d checked and knew The Messiah was only mentioned twice). But the follow-up problem was that my wordbook only mentioned The Messiah twice in the NT too. So today I took some time trying to figure out why such a low=profile character was so high-profile.
First (and an important background point): for several years I’ve read the same bible version – the NASB. And my wordbook is a listing of words found in that version.
Second: this year I’d switched versions to the NLT – which uses a bunch of words that are different from the NASB.
Third: I had to find a wordbook for the NLT.
Fourth: surprise! The NLT version uses the word Messiah 86-times.
Fifth: (this was my detectiving step). I randomly chose 4-verses where the NLT used Messiah (but the NASB didn’t). I found that where the NLT used Messiah:
NASB used the Expected One (margin: Coming One)
NASB used the Christ (margin: Messiah)
NASB used the Christ (margin: Messiah)
NASB used Christ (the margin: nothing).
So…because the NLT version uses the name The Messiah a lot more frequently than the NASB I get my explanation about why 1st century Jewish people were very interested in The Messiah.
But even though my question got answered the pay-off – unfortunately – seemed pretty minimal to me.

Note: quotes from Matthew 11:3 16:16 22:42 & 27:22 (NASB)