From today’s reading of Matthew 5-7

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. – Matthew 5:43-48

Is this not among the most difficult commands in Scripture?

Our God is perfect in both love and justice. We are made in his image, with the brokenness and cracks that come with our fall from grace. The perfect balance of Godly traits designed into us has been upset, and that is one reason, I believe, that we find justice more appealing than love.

We watch movies and read books looking for the satisfying ending when the hero has vanquished his enemies, brought them to justice, and rescued his woman. Most of us are very sensitive to injustice, and most especially when it has been perpetrated against us or ours. We are, or course, generally far more blind to injustice when we are the perpetrators of it.

Our love, on the other hand, is generally very selective. You can see this in the way we use the language. Almost by definition, the word “love” conveys preference. “I love tacos”, “I love you”, “I love my dog” – you could replace the word “love” in each of those statements with the word “choose” and they would convey nearly the same meaning, correct? As parents we try to teach our children to love well, and very fundamental to this skill is the ability to choose well. Choose good friends. choose good activities. “Make good choices”. This is all, for the most part, healthy, wise, and good.

Yet Jesus here says “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” He is basically challenging our DNA, isn’t he? Loving one’s enemies, when thought of in the context of love as preference, is impossible. Who prefers the company of their enemies?

I think there are answers to this riddle, some easy, some hard. The first step is realizing that the love that Jesus is talking about is a thousand miles away from our emotion-driven feelings of strong preference. It is intellectual, it is intentional, it is zealous, it is active. Its direction and focus are outward, rather than inward. And, though at first appearing to our darkened minds as foolish, it is wise. Have you ever devoted spiritual energy to praying for your enemy or physical energy to doing good for your enemy? It is energy well-spent, and after a time you may find that you no longer have an enemy.

All this being said, fundamentally the best answer to the seeming impossibility that Jesus is calling us to is this: the love he is here describing is the love of the Father toward us.

We don’t prefer the company of our enemies. Jesus, our Immanuel, intentionally and zealously sought to be with his enemies: us. We find praying for our enemies difficult. Jesus prayed for his enemies as the blood clotted in his whip-wounds and the nails shot agony through his body. We find that doing good to our enemies clashes with our sense of justice. Our Lord on the cross was God’s Magnum Opus, a symphony of perfect love and perfect justice, perfectly harmonized and with such power that the earth cracked open, veils were torn, and the dead were raised.

We are called here to love as the Father loves by the one who was and is the ultimate expression of the Father’s kind of love.

From today’s reading of John 5

In today’s passage Jesus heals the invalid at the pool of Bethesda who, unlike the paralytic from my previous post, did not have a community around him to carry him to where healing was. The majority of the rest of the passage recounts Jesus’ interaction with religious leaders who should have been celebrating with joy over this healing but instead were upset that the healed man carried his mat on the Sabbath.

How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? – John 5:44

This was Jesus’s statement to these joyless men toward the end of his discourse; a statement to men unable to see the life-changing miracle of healing that has just occurred.

Why were they unable to see?

Jesus words strike at the core of people-pleasers like myself. These men considered themselves, I am sure, to be both faithful in lifestyle and full of faith in conviction, yet Jesus unearths for them here both their unbelief and the true motivation of their actions. They lived to receive glory from men and that is what they chased after.

They were unable to see because they weren’t looking in the right direction.

Glory and affirmation from people is like a drug for people like me. If I am not careful to set my heart on the Lord alone, man-made glory and affirmation becomes the driving force of my life. “Gosh, I hope they like me” becomes the internal loop running through my mind, set on permanent repeat. It is Like-Me Meth, and it is deadly. Jesus reveals, over and over in the gospels, that many of those who opposed him did so because they cared only for the praise of men, rather than the glory of God and – did you catch it? – glory from God.

Glory from God! Can you imagine? What is this golden treasure Jesus speaks of?

The sin of people-pleasing, like almost all sins, is really just a twisting of something good. We were all designed to love our neighbor and love and glorify God, and even buried underneath the composting layers of fallenness and sin that desire can still be found. In my desperation to fulfill this designed-in calling I often morph it into a weak-water counterfeit. Instead of loving my neighbor and glorifying God, a drive to patronize and flatter my neighbor, to do good works before my neighbor, to impress my neighbor is born, so that they will glorify me. What’s worse, the concept of “my neighbor” becomes very selective. My “neighbor” becomes only those who are able to give me meaningful praise and glory.

[I originally wrote the paragraphs above using the more cowardly “we” and “our” language that is tempting to use when describing a sin that may just be peculiar to me. I re-wrote them using “I” and “me”. In re-reading them, it all sounds so sordid and wicked. Truth hurts.]

Jesus drives in the dagger. You aren’t seeking God. How can you even say you believe? You just missed joy, the miracle of a brother’s healing done right before your eyes, and you are refusing to see God, standing right in front of you. Not because you are unable to see, but because your eyes are focused only on yourself and on those who can feed your insatiable desire for your own glory. You do not seek the glory that comes from the only God.

The Lord waits for me to seek Him, because He has, and He is, everything I’ve ever really wanted. He is the only one worth giving glory to, and He will, in ways that may still be mysterious to me, miraculously grace-gift me by glorifying me forever. I will one day take up my mat and walk, fully healed, fully His.

In light of that glory, this never-ending seeking after the approval of men seems kind of silly, doesn’t it? What a colossal waste of time.

From today’s reading of Mark 2

And when he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. And many were gathered together, so that there was no more room, not even at the door. And he was preaching the word to them. And they came, bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him, and when they had made an opening, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay. – Mark 2:1-4

I recently heard a message on this passage from Erwin McManus of Mosaic church *. The part of the message that most impacted me was Erwin’s description of Biblical community, or “tribe”. Somewhere around the nine minute mark he makes the point that the strength of a tribe is not measured by the strength of those who are standing beside us, but rather by the weakness of those that the tribe refuses to leave behind.

Yes, yes, yes.

The example of these four friends of the paralytic is a powerful one. They were not willing to leave their friend behind so they could be free to go listen to Jesus without having to worry about him, his mat, ropes, roofs, etc. No, they were driven, out of their love for their friend and their healthy sense of what real community is, to do whatever it took to get their friend close to Jesus. There’s far more to this passage, and the verses following, than just that one truth. But that truth is what starts it all off. They removed part of the roof and lowered the brother down, right in the middle of Jesus’ teaching, because they knew that Jesus had what their friend needed.

Years ago I was listening to a young pastor cast vision for his flock, telling them where we were going as a community, what the go-forward themes and strategies would be, etc. In that message he exhorted the crowd in this way: “We’re going forward! If you can’t keep up, we’re going to leave you behind!” At the time, that statement bothered me, but not enough for me to work up the courage to confront the pastor.

Now when I think about it, I think it’s one of the worst things I’ve ever heard.

It’s true, in man-made organizations often the individual is sacrificed for the good of the group. But God’s value system is different. God sent Jesus to minister to all and to call out to all, true, but he especially, on purpose, sent Jesus to the losers, the sinners, the low-lifes, the have-nots, the wrong-doers, the rejects, the drunkards, the swindlers, the diseased, the blind, the lame, the paralytics. These people, by definition, will slow down a movement, because they are already so far behind the cultural leaders and societal fast-trackers. They are not the best and brightest. But they are who Jesus was especially sent to: a lonely demon possessed man living among the tombs, a lonely tax collector, a zealous misfit with insurrection on his mind, uneducated fishermen, a woman of ill-repute.

These people don’t look good on the brochure. But Jesus went to them, loved them, gave them the choice seats at the banquet. When the one is lost, the ninety-nine must be left in the pasture so the one can be found.

When a friend is unable to walk, walls need to be climbed and roofs need to be removed. Whatever it takes, to get them close to Jesus.

* The message was released 8/17/2014 – it is called “Tribe: Carry” and it can be downloaded from the Mosaic podcasts page.

From today’s reading of John 2-4

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. – John 3:14-15

The quote above is from Jesus’ famous night conversation with Nicodemus, and comes right before the far more well-known statement of John 3:16.

A recurring theme from the opening refrains of the gospels is that Jesus was “appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel” (Luke 2:34). I believe that Jesus knew that he himself would have the largest fall, and also the highest rise. The fall, his deep dive of humility, came first in his voluntarily laying aside of his heavenly throne so that he could be Immanuel, God with us. His ultimate rising is in his exaltation as the risen Savior and in the time to come where every knee shall bow and ever tongue confess that he is Lord. But there is another rising that Jesus is referring to here: the lifting up of the Son of Man on the cross.

Regarding the bronze serpent, Jesus is referring to this strange episode from the wilderness wanderings of the Jewish people:

From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom. And the people became impatient on the way. And the people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food.” Then the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. And the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD and against you. Pray to the LORD, that he take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. And the LORD said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live. – Numbers 21:4-9

Now this is a peculiar happening, isn’t it? God sends fiery serpents among the impatient, complaining people of Israel, and the only healing is to look at a bronze replica of the very thing that is killing them. Yet in the light of the gospel this event takes on glory.

What ails us is us. Jesus came in the likeness of sinful men, though he himself is without sin. His deep dive of humility placed him in the presence of our fiery-serpent sinfulness, to be lifted up on a cross so that anyone who looks to him for healing and salvation will be saved.

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. – 2 Corinthians 5:21

To some of the Israelites’ darkened minds, it made no sense to look at a snake on a pole to be healed from snakebite. To our darkened minds if often makes no sense to look at a condemned man in the form of a criminal, nailed to a cross, to save us from the wrath of God’s justice. Yet that is the only cure. We can try all the man-made healing available to us, but there is no other name by which we can be saved from our snake bitten ways than the name of Jesus. There is no one else lifted up for our salvation. Only Jesus. When Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, he was preaching the gospel. To us.

And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die. – John 12:32-33

From today’s reading of Matthew 4, Luke 4-5 and John 1:15-51

Today’s reading had a lot of action: the temptation in the wilderness (where satan attempted, among other things, to counterfeit the “God can bring _________ out of these stones” declaration of John as part of his temptation – see yesterday’s post), literal cliff hangers, beautiful prophetic fulfillments, first callings of his disciples, and the most insightful early declaration of who Jesus is, among many other things.

But I want to focus on one of those close-in, intimate moments that are sprinkled throughout the gospels.

While he was in one of the cities, there came a man full of leprosy. And when he saw Jesus, he fell on his face and begged him, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.” And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I will; be clean.” And immediately the leprosy left him. – Luke 5:12-13

There is so much about the character of our Lord packed into each of the clauses of this passage.

Jesus was busy. He was on a ministry tour, stopping off in “one of the cities”. The man who came to him wasn’t just a leper, but he was “full of leprosy”. People with skin diseases were unclean and touching them was forbidden, as the person doing the touching immediately became ceremonially unclean himself. Here was a man full of leprosy falling at Jesus feet and begging for healing.

Jesus healed some people without touching them; he even healed from long distance. But he makes the point here of touching the man. He touched a man who had gone a long time without human contact. He gave time and attention to a man who was used to having people run away from him.

You can almost hear the smile of kindness on Jesus face as he replies to the man “I will; be clean”. Immediately the man was cleansed of his disease.

The scene is simple. If you’ve been in church any time at all you’ve heard a sermon on this. You already know about the restrictions on contact with skin-diseased people. You already know that Jesus is a healer. None of this is new to you or me.

But hopefully, in another respect, these episodes in Jesus’ life and ministry are new every day. Every day he answers the desperate prayer of a desperately unclean person: “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean”. And he touches them and makes them clean! That simply doesn’t get old. The problem many of us have is that we don’t see it very often: either we have surrounded ourselves with those who are already (or who already appear to be) clean, or we have isolated ourselves to just the company of . . . ourselves.

There is an entire world out there of people who are longing to be healed. They desperately need the touch of the One who won’t himself become unclean by touching them, but who transfers his cleanliness to them, healing them of their disease.

Even as believers in Jesus, healed of our sin-sickness and no longer slaves to it, we need that daily (hourly, minutely) touch of the great Healer. And we need to, ourselves, carry his healing touch into the world, among the people no one else wants to be around, and – Lord willing – be astonished and joyful witnesses over and over to the work of the Healer.

“Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.”

“I will; be clean.”