Lenten Progression

Lent begins with the temptation of Jesus. It serves as an invitation to join him for forty days in the wilderness. Our victory in the temptation comes through confession and the Word. We are also invited to look across the wilderness to the promised land of Easter.

We progress with movement to the cross. Jesus laments over Jerusalem displaying the heart of God. We are invited to put our trust in him and take our victory in Jesus.

Repentance in the face of destruction, in the third week we are invited to seek God in our times of testing, and turn to him while he may be found.

In the forth week, we are assured of forgiveness, the shame is rolled away, the old become new.

Finally we are again reminded of the cross as Jesus is anointed at Bethany. We have seen the reason for the cross and promise of new life. Now we see something new is on the horizon, an inversion. The anticipation is palpable, Easter brings a new world.

Transfiguration

What was Jesus praying about on the mountain when he was transfigured? Was he interceding for his disciples and the world like he did in John 17? Was he pleading with his father? Was he communing with him in mystical union like he did before coming to earth? Was he chatting with the Father and the cloud of witnesses about what was to come? Is that why Elijah and Moses appeared? What was it that kept him up sleepless night after night (for he seems to often go off and pray the night away)?

The disciples he took with him couldn’t pray like that. They dozed off… but hey, dozing off in the presence of Christ and waking to a wonderful communion of the kingdom you are learning to enter is indeed a sweet thing. Still, Peter must have felt a little awkward waking up to this fantastic sight; a little guilty he couldn’t keep praying. What are we here for anyway?

“Master its good we’re here we can build three booths for you and Moses and Elijah.” His idea has echoes of the feast of tabernacles and in its eschatological expectation isn’t far fetched. But God himself tells them why they are there. Not to build booths, but to listen to the shiny one-his one and only Son. Superior to the law and the prophets, the new kingdom turns them on their head with a long expected, yet unexpected fulfillment.

What do we do when we find Jesus in his glory? Or do we ever? Do we ever bother to ascend the mountain with him? Are we too afraid that our falling asleep will disappoint him and the Saints we find with him?

Beatitudes in context of the other readings

Jeremiah gives the curses and blessedness of trust. If we trust in our hearts and mortal flesh we are miserable, but if we trust in God we are happy. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.

The psalmist echoes that strain while extolling the blessedness of delighting in the law.

Paul also tells us not to trust the flesh, but rather tells us that we are blessed because Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.

If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

If we fail to see Christ as risen, or trust the flesh that perishes, we are of all men most miserable. But Christ has been raised and we are counted among the men most blessed.

Dallas Willard suggests that unlike the if then formulation of the blessings and curses that formed prophetic covenants, Jesus is simply stating that those in front of him are blessed because the kingdom of heaven is at hand. He contends that the beatitudes are not prescriptions, but descriptions. See this excerpt.

An excerpt from "The Divine Conspiracy" by Dallas Wilalrd

The Beatitudes as Kingdom Proclamation What then does Jesus say with his Beatitudes?How are we to live in response to them? That is the question we asked at the outset of this chapter, and it is now time to answer it.

We have already indicated the key to understanding the Beatitudes. They serve to clarify Jesus’ fundamental message: the free availability of God’s rule and righteousness to all of humanity through reliance upon Jesus himself, the person now loose in the world among us. They do this simply by taking those who, from the human point of view, are regarded as most helpless, most beyond all possibility of God’s blessing or even interest, and exhibiting them as enjoying God’s touch and abundant provision for their lives.

This fact of God’s care and provision proves to all that no human condition excludes blessedness, that God may come to any person with his care and deliverance. God does sometimes help those who cannot, or perhaps just do not, help themselves. (So much for another well known generalization!) The religious system of his day left the multitudes out, but Jesus welcomed them all into his kingdom. Anyone could come as well as any other….

And on Your list of the Blessed? You are really waling in the good news of the kingdom if you can go with confidence to any of the hopeless people around you and effortlessly convey assurance that they can now enter a blessed life with God.

Who would be on your list of “hopeless blessables” as found in today’s world? Certainly all of those on Jesus’ lists, for though they are merely illustrative, they are also timeless. But can we, following his lead as a teacher, concretize the gospel even more for those around us? Who would you regard as the most unfortunate people around you?

A Silly Side of Salvation? There is first of all, a silly side to this question-which turns suddenly somber. If you look at advertising and current events in print and other media-for example, as you encounter them in supermarket checkouts, newsstands, and bookstores or even on television and radio-you might think that the most unfortunate people in the world today are the fat, the misshapen, the bald, the ugly, the old, and those not relentlessly engaged in romance, sex and fashionably equipped physical activities….

Instead Jesus took time in his teaching to point out the natural beauty of every human being (Matt 6:30)…

This is the gospel for a silly world, all the more needed because the silly is made a matter of life and death for many. Sin, for that matter, is silly. If the kingdom did not reach us in our silliness who would be saved? Lostness does not have to wear a stuffed shirt to find redemption.

So we must see from our heart that:

• Blessed are the physically repulsive,


• Blessed are those who smell bad,


• The twisted, misshapen, deformed,


• The too big, too little, too loud,


• The bald, the fat, and the old -


• For they are all riotously celebrated in the party of Jesus.

And the more serious side Then there are the seriously crushed ones: The flunk-outs and drop-outs and burn-outs. The broke and the broken. The drug heads and the divorced. The HIV-positive and herpes-ridden. The brain-damaged, the incurably ill. The barren and pregnant too-many-times or at the wrong time. The overemployed, the underemployed, the unemployed. The unemployable. The swindled the shoved aside, the replaced. The parents with children living on the street, the children with parents not dying in the “rest” home. The lonely, the incompetent, the stupid. The emotionally starved or emotionally dead. And on and on and on. Is it true that “Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal?” It is true! That is precisely the gospel of heaven’s availability that comes to us through the Beatitudes. And you don’t have to wait until you’re dead. Jesus offers to all such people as these the present blessedness of the present kingdom - regardless of circumstances. The condition of life sought for human beings through the ages is attained in the quietly transforming friendship of Jesus.

And the Immoral Even the moral disasters will be received by God as they come to rely on Jesus, count on him, and make him their companion in his kingdom. Murders and child-molesters. The brutal and bigoted. Drug lords and pornographers. War criminals and sadists. Terrorists. The perverted and the filthy and the filthy rich. The David Berkowitzs (Son of Sam), Jeffery Dahmers, and Colonel Noriegas….

If, as a recovering sinner myself, accept Jesus’ good new, I can go to the mass murderer and say, “you can be blessed in the kingdoms of the heavens. There is forgiveness that knows no limits.” To the pederast and the perpetrator of incest. To the worshiper of Satan. To those who rob the aged and weak. To the cheat and the liar, the bloodsucker and the vengeful: Blessed! Blessed! Blessed! As they flee into the arms of the Kingdom Among Us.

Lectionary Blog: Markan Distinctives

Lectionary Blog: Markan Distinctives: Here is a synoptic study of this pericope from proper 9b, when the story came up in mark.

• Position
• Mark alone places this pericope right after a collection of miracle stories – directly connecting the power in those situations with the lack of power in his home town. Matthew has it after a collection of parables.
• His disciples followed him
• Luke places this pericope before the calling of the disciples, as an introduction to his power.
• The placing of the commissioning of the disciples immediately after Jesus is rejected in his hometown in Mark puts the emphasis on the disciples reaction to those who reject them in their ministry. It has been suggested that a preacher preach one or the other parts of this lection, but only in Mark do we get the force of them together.
• On the Sabbath
• Mark, in comparison with Matthew, includes the timing of the Sabbath, making this the congregations regular time of teaching (as in Luke)
• What mighty works are wrought by his hands!
• This sentence is difficult in placement in Mark. The other Matthew makes it part of the questioning and Luke simply implies their unbelief. Perhaps Hooker is right when stating that the force of the statement is a question. Where does he get this power?
• Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?
• Matthew and Luke make reference to Jesus being the son of the carpenter Joseph. In this reading of Mark, Jesus is a carpenter, perhaps the other evangelists thought it too base that Jesus worked with his hands (so Origen).
• Also if the villagers did not mention Joseph as his father, it may be a derogatory reference to rumors surrounding his conception. – Hooker
• And he could do no mighty works there
• Matthew frames it that he would not. Here the lack of faith actually limits Jesus’ ability. If they rejected his teaching at the synagogue, and had no faith, his ability was hampered. Here, as with the woman with the issue of blood, the Markan theme of Jesus’ authority is contrasted with the efficacy of faith.
• Except that he laid his hands upon a few sick people and healed them.
• Presumably those who received his teaching were able to receive healing.
• Not the great works of power demonstrated in Capernaum.

Joy

The Journey with Jesus Foundation takes a great look at Nehemiah and subversive acts of joy.

" In his poem The Revival the Welsh poet and physician Henry Vaughan (1621–1695) challenges us to open our 'drowsy eyes' to experience 'the drops and dews of future bliss.' This is a choice we can make or refuse.

Unfold! Unfold! Take in His light,
Who makes thy cares more short than night.
The joys which with His day-star rise
He deals to all but drowsy eyes;
And, what the men of this world miss
Some drops and dews of future bliss.

Hark! How His winds have chang’d their note!
And with warm whispers call thee out;
The frosts are past, the storms are gone,
And backward life at last comes on.
The lofty groves in express joys
Reply unto the turtle’s voice;
And here in dust and dirt, O here
The lilies of His love appear!

'The greatest honor we can give Almighty God,' wrote the English mystic Juliana of Norwich, 'is to live gladly because of the knowledge of his love.' No matter how bleak the tragic course of history, how unnerving our personal circumstances, or how pessimistic the forecasts of cultural historians, with joy we can expect his love to blossom even in the dust and dirt of our lives."

The Importance of the Word

How do we respond to the word of God? Is it good news? Do we respond to it in that way?

And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, "This day is holy to the LORD your God; do not mourn or weep." For all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. Then he said to them, "Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our LORD; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength."

Nehemiah 8:9-10

The joy in the word is describe by the psalmist,

The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul; the decrees of the LORD are sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the LORD is clear, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the LORD is pure, enduring forever; the ordinances of the LORD are true and righteous altogether.

Psalm 19:7-9

Jesus declares that he has come to fulfill the scripture, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free...

And he said, Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. Have we heard him? Do we rejoice in the fulfiller of the scripture? Do we still hear, do we allow the Spirit to move among us in his way to speak to us?

And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers; then deeds of power, then gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues...

I Cor 12:28

Lord, may we see your word as more to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey, and drippings of the honeycomb. Open our ears to your fulfilled word.