Medicine Hat Joe

Week 43  Acts 4

First the church quoted a psalm:
Why do the nations rage?…The kings of the earth prepare for battle against the Lord and against his anointed one.
Second the church said that that psalm exactly described recent events in Jerusalem:
That is what happened here in this city! For Herod Antipas, Pontius Pilate, the Gentiles, and the people of Israel were all against Jesus, your holy servant…In fact, everything they did occurred according to your eternal will and plan.
So a forecast that had been collecting dust for a thousand years alongside all the other predictions-that-hadn’t-happened-yet had all of a sudden just happened.
A prophetic prediction has an Element X and an Element Y.
Element X comes first – it says that something will happen.
Element Y comes later – at the moment when Element X comes true.
Until it happens Element X is stored in the file of Non-Actualized Forecasts (and while it sits there it could be classified by people – realistically – as just a Guess.)
It’s only when Element X is taken out of the file & processed & becomes Actualized in the real world that’s it’s reclassified as an Element Y. The prediction has come true.
Since I’m not party to the “eternal will and plan” all Element Xs are abstract to me until they’re concretized.
But I think it’s safe to say that as far as the Lord is concerned Element Xs – except for the detail of time – are already Element Ys.

Note: quotes from Psalm 2:1-2 / Acts 4:25-26 & Acts 4:27-28 (NLT)

Week 43  Acts 2

I don’t get far into Acts before all of a sudden the Holy Spirit came to the believers in a super-charged audio & visual spectacle. The commotion drew a crowd of outsiders and what they saw & heard was sound coming out of the believer’s mouths. But at that point opinion in the crowd divided into two camps.
People in the Reaction #1 Camp were beside themselves with wonder. They were amazed and perplexed. They could hear their own native languages. At least 15 languages are mentioned so even if there was only one representative from each language group then at least 15 individuals were amazed and perplexed. The reason was that a) they heard the disciples talking in foreign languages (foreign to the disciples) and b) the content was understandable & coherent to the crowd (it was about the wonderful things God has done).
People in Reaction #2 Camp just mocked: they’re drunk, that’s all! There’s no telling how many people there were in the second group. But a bunch of unilingual Galileans talking other languages didn’t cut any ice with them. What they were hearing was just incoherent addiction-driven gibberish.
So there it was: One message. Two Reactions. Which was right? Was it extraordinary communication or lunatical absurdity?
One other difference between the groups is that the Reaction #1 Camp wanted to know more: what can this mean? Reaction #2 Camp weren’t too concerned about exploring meaning. They’d solved the puzzle so no further explanation was necessary.

Note: quotes from Acts 2:7 12 13 11 (NLT)

Week 42  four gospels

Today I was still thinking about the four gospels being similar but different. I was thinking about a difference that sounds like a contradiction:
Matthew says that on resurrection Sunday an angel moved the stone and: then spoke to the women.
Luke’s version of the story says the women came to the tomb and: suddenly two men appeared to them, clothed in dazzling robes and spoke to them.
So Matthew says one…Luke says two. Is that a contradiction?
Let’s say a guy’s fishing during the salmon run. He catches 10 small salmon but 1 big one. So afterwards a guy asks him “how did it go?’ and he says “I caught a 32-inch Coho!” Only the one – the big one – was the story. He highlighted his highlight.
The question about one angel or two seems like this kind of Explainable Difference to me. Maybe Matthew was highlighting his highlight.
An example of an Unexplainable Difference would be something like this:
Matthew says the disciples were out in their boat on a stormy night and the Lord came to them…walking on the water.
But what if Mark says the Lord swam out to them. Or took a rowboat. Or the Sea of Galilee had frozen and he skated out. Or that he didn’t go out at all. That’s not explainable.
A guy once told me the bible was full of contradictions. He seemed pretty certain about it but I’m not exactly sure why.

Note: quotes from Matthew 28:5 Luke 24:4 (NLT)

Week 42  four gospels

Sometimes I wonder about how the four gospel stories fit together. Same basic story…but with differences that make me wonder.
But it’s not like I can’t imagine the same story with differences.
A guy asks: what did you do today?
‘I walked down to the river. The boat was tied to the lop-sided wooden dock and I cast off the lines and let the current drift me downstream while I rowed across to the bend on the other side. The current was moving slowly along the outside curve of the stream and I dropped anchor and started casting toward the caved-in bank, glad the sun was coming around now. Glad to warm up. After a couple of unlucky hours I stowed my gear and idled downstream to a beach. I sat on the sand with half-naked poplars dropping yellow leaves around me. I hadn’t finished my sandwich when a white police launch came around the bend, dawdling upstream at trolling speed. It angled toward me and a husky-looking woman spoke through a megaphone asking if I’d seen two men – escaped prisoners from the minimum security facility…’ 
So then later another guy asks: what did you do today?
‘I went fishing but I got skunked.’
Same day. Same story. But different too. Same but different.
Figuring out why Guy #1 gets one story but Guy #2 gets another is hard to say.
But for starters what isn’t so hard is the idea that different stories can both be right.

 

Week 41  John 3

John the Baptist is an important supporting-character in the gospel story. An important secondary person.
John’s secondary status started to show up soon after Jesus arrived because people began leaving John. John’s disciples were pretty concerned: everyone is going over there instead of coming here to us.
So John gave a detailed explanation. First he told his people something that was true about everyone:
• God in heaven appoints each person’s work
Second he reminded them of a couple of key details about himself:
• I am not the Messiah
• I’m only here to prepare the way for the Messiah
• He (the Messiah / Jesus) must become greater and greater, and I must become less and less.
Third John gave a couple of key details about Jesus’ background and capacities:
• He has come from heaven
• He’s greater than anyone else
• He’ll tell us about the things he has seen and heard (in heaven)
• He is sent by God
• He speaks God’s words
• He has God’s Spirit in an unlimited way
Finally – as a kind of afterthought – John said several things about Jesus’ audience:
• Only a few people will believe the Lord
• The few people who do believe him will discover that God is true
• People who believe will get eternal life
• But people who don’t believe will never experience eternal life
Of the four items I think I like the third the most because it so decisively separates Jesus from the pack.

Note: quotes & paraphrases from John 3:26-28 30-36 (NLT)

Week 41  John 1

John started his gospel talking about the mysterious The Word. He said that life itself was in him. He also said that this life gives light to everyone. So The Word was the Possessor of Original Life (which in itself is pretty important) but in the next couple of verses John seems more interested in The Life being The Light.
The reason that John is making that point now is that The Word (The Life / The Light): the one who is the true light, who gives light to everyone, was going to come into the world. Up to now he’d been outside the world. But now he was going to arrive.
I’m thinking so-far-so-good but John wasn’t thinking so-far-so-good because he said: but although the world was made through him, the world didn’t recognize him when he came. Even in his own land and among his own people, he was not accepted. John didn’t exactly mean that not a single person in the whole world accepted The Light because he said that: to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. But it looks like believing in The Word and accepting The Word was going to be a minority opinion. Some did believe. But most didn’t. Which seems strange. If someone told me I could get transformed into a Child of God I think I’d jump at the chance. But lots of people obviously didn’t.

Note: quotes from John 1:4 9 10-11 12 (NLT)

Week 41  John 1

John starts by talking about the mysterious and unidentified The Word.
He says that The Word created everything there is. It’s hard not to think back to Genesis where God created everything. John says here that The Word created everything.
John also says that life itself was in him. When I first read this I think it works like this: Life is in The Word and The Word then transfers the Life to non-living things. So in Genesis there aren’t any living things at first but then all kinds of living things get created and come alive (hummingbirds & giraffes & people). But if that’s what John meant then he likely would have said: “Life itself was in him, and this Life gives Life to everyone”. Which he didn’t. He said: life itself was in him, and this life gives light to everyone. Light is part of the mix.
It’s always possible that Life and Light are two words for the same thing. But it sounds to me more like all Live Things universally got their life from The Word. And then there’s a supplementary thing that The Word had – Light – which could be an add-on to the Life that Live Things already had.
My sense is that all Live Things had Life. But the Live Things didn’t necessarily have Light. They could be Alive. But still be operating in the Dark.

Note: quotes from John 1:3 4 (NLT)

Week 41  Luke 20

The Sadducees said to the Lord: let’s say a woman married a guy. The guy died so she married his brother. He died so she married a third brother…And on & on through seven marriages to seven brothers. Then she died.  Question: in the afterlife which guy would be her husband? (So it was a seven-option multiple-choice question.)
Because it was likely a dumb hypothetical question the Lord didn’t answer it but he did say a couple of interesting things about death & the post-mortem world:
Marriage is restricted to people in the material world (in the post-mortem world no one gets married)
In the post-mortem world people don’t die
Since people are immune from death they are similar to angels
It’s a brand new kind of life in the post-mortem world.
This is a pretty interesting anecdote. Not because of the crazy question that the Sadducees had cooked up – they didn’t think about or care about or even believe in life-after-death. The interesting thing is that the Lord did say life continued beyond death in a more-than-material state where people a) would live forever and b) wouldn’t get married and c) would live a new kind of life.
It doesn’t say what other things people would or wouldn’t do after death.
Doesn’t say how people were not like angels.
Doesn’t say what was actually new & different about the next world.
But what the Lord did say is worth knowing about.

Note: the story is in Luke 20:27-40

Week 41  Luke 20

The Lord told a story about a wealthy land owner who rented out his land to some small farmers and the agreement was that they would work the land for themselves and pay the landowner some rent. But when the landowner’s son came to collect rents the farmers murdered him.
Jesus’ audience was offended by the story: God forbid that such a thing should ever happen. But then Jesus asked them: then what do the Scriptures mean? “The stone rejected by the builders has now become the cornerstone”. No one answered the question. I guess nobody knew.
The verse was from the psalms. I flipped back and read: the stone rejected by the builders has now become the cornerstone. I re-read the whole psalm. Then I asked myself: what does that verse mean? And I didn’t know the answer either.
If all I’ve ever read is the OT then I think it’ll be hard to know what to make of that verse. But once I’ve read Luke it changes things. Now it looks like the Rejected Stone = the murdered son (who looks like Jesus himself). And the Builders Who Rejected the Stone = the Pharisees (even they knew that was the spin being put on the story).
Whatever the writer of Psalm 118 might have originally meant the Lord says it also referred to him. He was the discarded stone. He would turn out to be the foundational piece of the whole building.

Note: quotes from Luke 20:16 17 & Psalm 118:22 (NLT)

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.