Medicine Hat Joe

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 and 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. But 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 was: 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 12-verses 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 just the 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 triple-space with the bracketed note: [Shorter Ending of Mark]. The shorter ending of Mark is five lines long and ends with Amen.
There’s a note at the bottom of the page: 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 a copier made a mistake. Maybe “tap” instead of “tab”.  “Age” instead of “rage”. A couple of extra lines. 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 practicing the qualities of Childhood World 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 (because 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 what it says.
I think the choice is pretty clear between: a) doing nothing for the Lord and b) doing something in the name of the Lord while I’m – for instance – not a very good communicator.
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)

 

 

Week 37  Matthew 19

I noticed this verse last year and I noticed it again this year: many who are first will be last and many who are last will be first.
Working at being first in this world (or being right up there near the top spot) is pretty important.
Avoiding being last in this world is also important.
My guess is that almost everyone in the world has these two rules in the back of their minds: 1) I need to try to be as high up in the upper half as I can get. 2) I need to try to stay out of the bottom half (and if that’s unavoidable I need to be as high in the bottom half as I can be). The General Rule in every case is: being higher is better than being lower.
So while I’m living by the General Rule this niggling verse comes to me in a cautionary way:
• Many people who seem to be important now will not be important later
• Many people who don’t seem to be important now will – later on – be important.
It’s a reminder about how different the rules of the game are in the two spaces (Here vs. There) and in the two time zones (Now vs. Later):
#1 Guy Now might only be #1,000,000 Guy Later.
Top Guy Here might be Bottom Guy There.

Note: Matthew 19:30 (NIV)

Week 37  Mark  4

Jesus used many stories and illustrations to teach the people as much as they were able to understand. For instance:
• the Kingdom of God is like seed growing in a field
• the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed
Mark says that in public the Lord only taught in parables but behind-closed-doors with the disciples he explained the meaning to them. It seems like a kind of secret society: For Members Only.
I wonder why the Lord publicly taught in riddles. Was he purposely keeping people in-the-dark (and then privately telling the secret meaning to his disciples)?
That doesn’t seem to jive with what Mark already said – that the Lord used many stories and illustrations to teach the people as much as they were able to understand. That seems like the logical thing to be doing – teaching people to help them actually learn. (Even if there was a ceiling to people’s understanding I can’t see any benefit to the Lord in lowering it.)
It makes a lot more sense to me thinking that a) the Lord was teaching people so they would learn rather than b) he was teaching people so they wouldn’t.
Of course it does look like there was a lot of uncertainty with the parables. But for me the question isn’t: why are people kept in the dark? I think as good a question  to ask is: why do people seem to prefer to avoid the light?

Note: Mark 4:33 34 (NLT). See 4:26-29 &  30-32

Week 37  Matthew 19

A wealthy young man asked the Lord what he had to do to inherit eternal life (he obviously figured that good actions in the here-and-now would assure him of a good & happy post-mortem life).
So the Lord told him: you can receive eternal life if you keep the commandments – for example:
No murder? > Eternal Life
No adultery? > Eternal Life
No theft? > Eternal Life
No lying? > Eternal Life
Honouring your parents? > Eternal Life
Loving your neighbour? > Eternal Life
The young man listened…mentally checking all the boxes. He’d done them all (yes!) But he didn’t want to count his chickens before they hatched and so he double-checked: what else must I do?
Selling everything is not one of the Ten Commandments. In fact as far as I know selling-all-my-possessions isn’t required anywhere in the OT. The Lord just made-up the commandment for this man. A personalized law. Made-to-measure.
In one way it seems like an unfair thing for the Lord to do. On the other hand the guy had asked what good things must I do to inherit eternal life? So it was fair game (and I guess it hit-the-nail-on-the-head).
Afterward the Lord told the disciples that it was almost impossible for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God. He went on to say that humanly speaking, it is impossible. And if he hadn’t added that with God everything is possible it might have looked like the end-of-the-road for a lot of wealthy people.

Note: Matthew 19:17 20 16 24 26 (NLT)