Medicine Hat Joe

Week 39  John 2

One of the business-related features of the temple in Jerusalem was that it was a big Religious Merchandise Mart. So when Jesus drove out the traders and kind of blew the whole thing up there was a lot of belligerent “what-gives-you-the-right?” going on: what sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?
Jesus didn’t answer to the question. But he did say: destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.
If I’d been standing right there on the temple grounds that day and Jesus said that if the temple was demolished he could rebuild it in three days then I’d figure the temple he was talking about was the temple that I was standing right beside. There was no other temple. Every normal person would take it at face value: Jesus is talking about the material temple. And John as he was writing the gospel very well knew that and so added an explanatory note that the Lord was not actually talking about the temple (the temple he had spoken of was his body). But no one would have or could have understood that at the time.
So right away in John I see that the Lord sometimes talked in code. And I get my reader’s reminder that I’ve got to be very careful with what sound like totally & obviously & definitively literal comments. Some things don’t mean what they seem to.

Note: quotes from John 2:18 19 21 (NIV)

Week 37  Luke 17

There’s a short paragraph right in the middle of the chapter where the Pharisees came to Jesus and asked when the kingdom of God would arrive. He replied: the kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed…for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you. So it looks like a) the kingdom of God wouldn’t come with a big fanfare but b) the kingdom of God was already there.
A sidenote in my bible says that in the midst of you can also mean within your grasp or within you. Hmmmm. That muddies things up a bit. In the midst of you sounds different from within your grasp (maybe not totally different…but different). But the other phrase is more perplexing: the kingdom of God is within you. The kingdom-within-you sounds like a) the Kingdom of God has come and b) the Pharisees (the people Jesus was talking to) were it’s recipients. Which is baffling and doesn’t jibe with the usually negative view in the gospels about most of the Pharisees.
To me the kingdom in the midst of you and within your grasp and within you aren’t saying the same thing.
So my question is: what do I make of it?
And my answer is: I don’t know (meaning that about all I can do is shift this phrase into the Elevated Alertness & Unanswered Inquiries column – and hope that things eventually clarify).

Note: quote from Luke 17:20-21 (ESV)

Week 37  Luke 13

A guy in the crowd asked Jesus: are only a few people going to be saved? The Lord didn’t give him a specific answer but he did tell him that many will try to enter and won’t be able. To me many-will-not-enter sounds about the same as only-a-few-will-get-in. (So I guess the guy maybe figured the answer to his question was “yes”.)
Even though the word “many” is numerically inexact I do know that it means quite a few. Many is numerous. Many is a majority. It’s a large number. Many people are not going to be saved.
Jesus went on to tell a story about a house with a narrow door. People want to get in. But there are two entrance requirements.
Requirement #1 was trying to get in. Jesus said people had to make every effort to enter. Other versions substitute make-every-effort with words like strive. Struggle. Try hard. Do your best. So I’ve got to be wanting to & trying to & working at getting into the house.
Requirement #2 was knowing the Lord (and on-the-flipside being known by him). At the narrow door some people are trying to get in (which fulfils Requirement #1). But the homeowner says: I don’t know you or where you’re from. Get away from me. So trying is one requirement. But not the only one.
In the end many people will try to get in. But the bulk of them won’t make it.

Note: quotes from Luke 13:23 24 27 (CSB)

Week 37  Luke 13

As a general rule the gospels don’t report local new stories. But a couple of current event items from Jerusalem come up in chapter 13.
News story #1: Pontius Pilate executed some Galilean pilgrims at the temple.
News story #2: eighteen people had been killed when the tower of Siloam collapsed.
People told Jesus about Pilates’ executions – and waited to see what his reaction would be. But Jesus just asked them: do you think that these Galileans were more sinful than all the other Galileans because they suffered these things?’
And then – even though they hadn’t mentioned it – he asked about the people who’d been killed in the tower collapse: do you think they were more sinful than all the other people who live in Jerusalem?
(I can’t say for sure but I think the audiences’ answer to the questions Jesus asked would have been ‘Yes’. I think that the rule-of-thumb in first-century Israel was that if a guy died unexpectedly or prematurely or violently then he was evil or immoral (evil person = shorter life. Good person = longer life).)
It was an interesting speculative question (but was really a God-only-knows question). And so Jesus didn’t answer it. He just said: I tell you; unless you repent, you will all perish as well.
There’s no reason to think Jesus wasn’t sympathetic with the tragic deaths. But his comment to the audience answered the more important question they hadn’t asked. An answer that was much closer-to-home.

Note: quotes from Luke 13:2 3 & 5 (CSB)

Week 37  Mark 14

Right near the end of Mark’s gospel Jesus said it would have been better for that man if he had not been born. As it turned out that man was Judas.
I got to wondering about how many people there are – that’ve ever been – that you could say that about.
Of course you’d not likely see it spelled out on a gravestone. You’d never see:
Joe Smith
1940 – 2005
Better If He’d Never Been Born
There are accepted rules about commemoratives and one of the common ones is: An Epitaph Should Be Nice. But here in Mark Jesus was concerned with accuracy (not necessarily nicety).
Anyway Judas was born and grew up and he got his chance at life & living.
I tend to think that Judas had a leg-up on most other people. He was in the Lord’s inner circle – one of the twelve really fortunate guys who got to spend more time with the Lord than anyone else. But even though from all external appearances he was solidly part of the in-group he somehow managed to stay on the outside-looking-in. He was resistant to the unusual & spectacular things he saw.
Walking on water?
A boy’s lunch feeding 5000 people?
A dead girl coming back to life?
None of it seemed to matter to Judas. Water-off-a-duck’s-back. He was immune to Jesus.
So in the end his life made no difference one-way-or-the-other. He might as well have not been born.

Note: quote from Mark 14:24 (ESV)

Week 36  Matthew 22

Jesus tells a fairly long & fairly detailed two-part kingdom-of-heaven parable about a king who invited people to a wedding feast: the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son…
This parable – and parables like it – create a bit of a problem for me because a) I prefer parables that are short and don’t have too many moving parts and b) I prefer parables that Jesus explains afterward (which takes the guesswork out of the story).
In the parable of the wedding feast I have to dope out several things: the king. The feast. The slaves. The guests. Murder of the slaves. Revenge on the guests. The second invitation. A menagerie of guests. The wedding-crasher guy who gets thrown out.
I could go in a couple of directions with all these. But for now I’m sticking with just three elements (and what I think they mean):
1. The wedding feast = the kingdom-of-heaven
2. The invitation = an invitation into the kingdom-of-heaven
3. People who decline the invitation = people who decline the kingdom-of-heaven.
The one Big Thing in the parable is that a lot of people are invited into the kingdom but quite a few decide they have better things to do. I think that’s why the parable ends with: many are called, but few are chosen.
The kingdom-of-heaven invitation list started out pretty large. But there were a lot of no-shows. So the celebration is smaller than expected.

Note: quotes from Matthew 22:1 14 (ESV)

Week 36  Matthew 20

Another one of Matthew’s long parables begins: the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers
for his vineyard. It’s the story about a work-crew that – even though some of them worked all day long and others just worked the last hour – all got the same pay.
The employer’s payment schedule for work hours is the weird element in the parable. It looked like this:
12-hours work: 1 denarius
6-hours work: 1 denarius
1-hour work: 1 denarius
That would never fly in modern labour practice. So it’s easy to side with the disgruntled 12-Hour Guys. Their problem was that the 1-Hour Guys only worked one hour and had not borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.
But the employer’s reply left the 12-Hour Guys without a leg-to-stand-on: friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? So there it is: the 12-Hour Guys had agreed to work for a denarius. And they got what they’d agreed to.
I think two basic ideas about the kingdom show up here. First is that the King gets to make the decisions in his kingdom. Second is that part of my getting acclimatized to life in the kingdom is to a) focus (pretty exclusively) on my own action & performance and b) not get my shirt-in-a-knot over the King’s decisions about anybody else.

Note: quotes from Matthew 20:1 16 17 (ESV)

Week 36  Matthew 18

I found four longer & more complex parables in Matthew. They’re all at least 13-verses and tell stories that are a bit more detailed than the six short parables in chapter 13. But each one says something about the kingdom-of-heaven. This one starts:
The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants…” It’s the story about the servant who had his huge debt cancelled by the king. It’s a pretty interesting parable. The guy had dug himself into a debt-hole so deep that he’d never climb out of it. Situation: absolutely hopeless. But in an act of self-degradation – of fawningly hangdogishly begging-for-mercy – he was miraculously forgiven and given a clean-slate by the king.
So I’ve identified one feature of the kingdom-of-heaven. I personalize it this way: I owe the king of the kingdom a fortune that I can never ever repay. But if I come to him and admit my sorry state…then he might cut me some slack. Might clear my debt.
Being in the kingdom is being debt-free. The only think a debtor can do to get debt-free is admit how impossibly large his debt-load is and appeal to the king. That’s it. Plead for mercy. Hope the king writes-it-off.

Note: quote from Matthew 18:23 (ESV). The second-half of the parable – the sequel – is a disturbing reversal for the servant. It looks like an exoneree doesn’t necessarily become an exonerator.

Week 36  Matthew 13

I found six parables that specifically talked about Matthew’s kingdom-of-heaven. Even though there were six different parables it looked to me like they really only said three things about the kingdom-of-heaven. So I re-arranged the six into three groups of two.
The first two begin by saying that the kingdom-of-heaven:
may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field 
is like a net that was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind.
The second two said that the kingdom-of-heaven:
is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field
is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.
The third two said that the kingdom-of-heaven:
is like treasure hidden in a field
is like a merchant in search of fine pearls.
So I think the six parables are making three Big Points. They are that:
1. the kingdom-of-heaven is operating alongside – or parallel to – what I’d call the kingdom-of-earth. Both of them are chugging along doing what they do. But eventually a distinction & separation will be made between them.
2. the kingdom-of-heaven will start out small but will not stay small – it will expand & grow.
3. the kingdom-of-heaven is a high value site so it’s worth putting effort into getting there.

Note: three of Matthew’s parables are in 13:24-33 and the other three are in 13:44-50. Quotes are from Matthew 13:24 47 31 33 44 45 (ESV). End-of-month reading tally: 80% completed.

 

Week 35  Matthew

I found three things Matthew said about the kingdom-of-heaven.
First thing: the kingdom of heaven is at hand. John & Jesus both said it and it’s what Jesus told the disciples to say.
So at that point-in-time – when Jesus was in human form and walking around Israel – the kingdom-of-heaven hadn’t arrived yet.
Second thing: the kingdom-of-heaven was not totally inclusive.
Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven
Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven
Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven
Only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees…You shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.
So not everybody would be getting into the kingdom.
Third thing: Matthew gave a couple of examples of the kind of people who would get into the kingdom:
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven
…the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven will get in.
So there were some identifiable qualities & actions in people who would get into the kingdom.

Note: quotes from Matthew 3:2 4:17 10:7 (some versions say has come near) 5:20 7:21 18:3 19:23 23:13 5:3 10 & 7:21 (again) (ESV)