Tag: Jesus

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The Other Thief in the Night

Second Sunday in Lent  |  John 3:1-17

The relationship between Nicodemus and Jesus is strange, as is the story in the third chapter of John’s Gospel.

Candlestick at NightNicodemus comes to Jesus, acting out the role of a thief in the night, though that phrase is not used to describe the messiah in John’s Gospel. In this gospel, the thief comes to steal (John 10:10). Are we to consider Nicodemus as a thief, coming to take what is not his?

Another oddity is the shifting voice of verse 11. Suddenly Jesus is speaking in the plural—we speak of what we know…what we have seen. The same shift occurs at the end of the gospel in 21:24, where we hear the voice of the Johannine community speaking. 1 John 1:1 offers the same plural voice, a similar attestation to having seen. Are we seeing layers in the text, the words of the early community placed alongside the words of Jesus?

How about the reference to Moses and “the serpent in the wilderness” in verse 14? Did anybody really understand the first time this image occurs in Numbers 21:9? It sounds less like faith and more like magic.

Perhaps it is a suitable objection. After all, a great deal of what passes for faith is actually magical thinking cleverly transformed into religion. Magic is the practice of ways to control hidden power, ways to get the deity to do what one wishes to be done. The question is whether that is so very different from the way most of us practice Christianity: if we do this, God will do that.

True faith does not ask for a response from God. True faith is a response to God. Anything else is just us fooling ourselves.

Jesus tells Nicodemus that the Spirit of God is like the wind, coming from places we cannot imagine and going anywhere it likes. The wind, like the rain, does not touch only the righteous. Instead, the wind blows across everything in its path.

Nicodemus found that God was already waiting for him, even in the dark.

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On A Different Mountain

First Sunday in Lent  |  Matthew 4:1-11

Last Sunday the lectionary marked Transfiguration Sunday, a remembrance of the story of a mountaintop experience in which Jesus transformed into a glorious figure. Moses and Elijah made a striking appearance as well.

Valley thru Trees 003For the first Sunday in Lent, we remember a different story of visiting a mountain. This time Jesus has the devil for company.

We know the story of the temptation of Christ, though we may wonder who told the details to Matthew. Jesus has purposefully fasted for forty days and nights. Along comes the devil with three temptations: turn stones into bread for your hunger, throw yourself off the pinnacle of the temple and let the angels catch you, and worship the devil to gain the whole world.

We get that last temptation, because it is reasonably clear to most of us that worshipping anything less than God is wrong, even in order to get everything in the world. The other two, well, it is a little more difficult to find anything wrong with the ideas.

Throwing oneself down from the pinnacle of the temple is not unreasonable, given that one was up there anyway and angels are really going to catch you. No harm done, and it would be amazing. The idea seems to be that one should not put God to the test, just for the sake of doing it. God doesn’t perform circus tricks on demand.

That first temptation, though, is the hardest one of all to understand. What is wrong with having a little bread? Provided one has the power to do it, and nobody in the story seems to question whether Jesus actually could turn stones into bread, why not?

On one level, it seems to be about observing human limitations. Human beings cannot, generally speaking, turn stones into bread. On the other hand, human beings cannot, generally speaking, heal the sick, raise the dead, feed thousands of people with a child’s lunch, or pull tax money out of the mouth of a fish. Yet, in Gospel stories Jesus did all of these things.

Maybe it was also a question of doubt. The devil does not propose the bread simply as food: “If you are the Son of God…” Such a miracle would prove, presumably to Jesus himself or to the devil since no one else is present, that he is indeed God incarnate. Still, self-doubt doesn’t seem to be a problem. The gospels do not record an instance of Jesus wondering about his own identity, except in the eyes of others.

The real problem of these temptations is that they would alter the true nature of Jesus. He was an authentic human, complete, what our species aspires to become. Acts of self-doubt, or self-acclamation, would have torn the fabric of Jesus’ being, would have made him less than he was.

Perhaps that is how we can measure temptations that come our way. Regardless of the hunger that might be filled, or the apparent lack of harm, or the ends that we might achieve, we measure our choices by the injury done to our humanity, to our souls. There are worse things than hunger,  obscurity, and the lack of wealth.

Matthew tell us that Jesus went up on another mountain, and this time he was followed by crowds of people. Maybe when he sat down to speak, he remembered his own temptations.

“Blessed are the poor,” he said. “Blessed are the meek…blessed are the hungry….”

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The Ice On Our Wings

Fourth Sunday After The Epiphany  |  Matthew 5:1-12

Snow On BushIt is difficult to find a passage of scripture more famous than the Sermon on the Mount, and within this passage it is hard to find verses more well known than the beatitudes, the blessings.

In Matthew’s telling (Luke differs), Jesus spoke eight blessings, or nine if you view the two mentions of the persecuted as separate. Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger for righteousness, and those who are persecuted for righteousness. Also blessed are the merciful, the pure in heart, and the peacemakers.

Five of the blessed appear weak or downtrodden. In the midst of these five, Jesus offers three who appear strong and outgoing—the merciful, the pure in heart, and the peacemakers. Are these three offered as contrasts to the other five? Or does Jesus consider all of the eight to be strong in the spirit?

Whatever Jesus considers them, these eight groups get what they desire. Because their hearts are centered in the good, they receive the good.

They get it.

As I write, a winter storm is passing, leaving the ground covered in ice and snow. The night sky is low and the wind is cold, ice flakes filling the air. Strangely, a seagull has landed (crashed?) in my yard. It lingers, chattering, before once more taking flight. Surely it is hungry, and poor, mourning the night and the ice and the cold, feeling persecuted by the weather. I doubt it deems itself blessed. It likely thought that the ground was not where it should be, but that moment of rest was what it needed to continue through the storm.

Blessed are the poor in spirit and the mournful—they recognize their neediness. Blessed are the merciful and the pure—they recognize need, and the good, in others. All of the blessed ones share the honesty to know what they are lacking, what God is waiting to provide.

Somewhere in the darkness, a seagull is still flying with ice on its wings.