I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on John 19-21.

    Near the end of Jesus’ trial before Pilate, Pilate tried to find a reason to release Jesus (if for no other reason than that he did not like being used by the Jewish leaders to get rid of their enemies). As part of that he asked Jesus if He understood that Pilate had the power to either have Him crucified or released. Jesus’ answer applies to us as well. Pilate only had power over Jesus because it was given to him from God. The same is true for us, government authorities, or anyone else, will only have power over us in as much as God has given it to them. Then, in a final attempt to get out of sending Jesus to be crucified, Pilate asks the priests if he should crucify their king. Historically we know that the priests had been vehement about defending their symbolic independence from Rome (they had no actual independence, but they tried to pretend that the Roman authorities needed their cooperation), crucifying their king ran counter to that. Their response goes even further, becoming a rejection of God. When the priests stated that they had no king but Caesar they were denying God’s kingship over themselves. Today, many Christians do something similar when they rely on the government to do things which Jesus said were the job of the Church.

    I know that I can credit Don Francisco for this, but every time I read John’s account of the empty tomb through Peter’s profession of love I get choked up. That song allows me to feel the strong, confused emotions the disciples would have felt that morning. First, grief and fear, followed by a forlorn hope, and finally joy beyond their ability to express. I want to note that once again it is a woman who is first to see the risen Jesus and feel the joy which came with the realization. Then we have the story of Thomas. I think Thomas is the disciple with whom I most identify (both from here and other places he appears in the Gospels). When the other disciples told him they had seen Jesus he was not willing to believe. I think that is because he did not want to have his hopes smashed one more time. He was afraid the other disciples were believing an hallucination. He wanted to be sure that his desire to believe did not lead him to do the sames. Finally, when Jesus asked Peter three times if he loved Him, you can just see how Peter is feeling, “Because I denied Him those three times when He needed support the most, Jesus won’t believe that I love Him now. He will never trust me again.” Yet, after the third time, Jesus makes it clear that these three professions of love were for Peter for him to profess his love once for each time he denied Jesus. The final thing is that after that third time Jesus tells Peter that the next time he is called to risk all for Jesus he will rise to the challenge.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on John 17-18.

    I really want to comment on Jesus’ prayer which John recounts here, but every time I start a chain of thought I get distracted and lose my train of thought (which I always take as an indication that God wanted me to go in a different direction). One of the key elements to this prayer is when Jesus states that this prayer is not just for and about the disciples who were there with Him, but for everyone who would believe in Him through their message, which includes us if we truly believe. I am going to touch on two other points among the many which Jesus makes in this prayer. Jesus prays that the world will hate us because we do not belong to it. Further, He does not pray for us to be taken out of the world, or even for our safety as the world understands it. He prays that we be kept safe from the evil one. This safety will be accomplished by our holding to God’s word. Jesus also prays that we will be one as He and the Father are one. That unity is accomplished by being in the Father and the Spirit being in us. It is worth noting that while Judas was not present when Jesus prayed this, those present would have considered him one of them at this time.

    Once again there are a lot of things in this passage which can be explored. Today the only other thing I am going to look at is John’s account of Jesus’ trial before Pilate. One thing I never noticed before in this account is that those who brought Jesus to Pilate for trial never specified charges against Him. Even when Pilate asks them the charge they just say that He is a criminal who must be executed. Pilate assumes, correctly, that the charge is sedition, claiming political power not derived from Rome, but when he asks Jesus about this, Jesus’ response confuses him and he asks why the Jewish leaders brought Him to Pilate. At which point Jesus says that His Kingdom is not of this world, which is why His followers do not fight for political power. Pilate seizes on this to ask Jesus if that means that He is a king. The first sentence of Jesus’ answer contains a double meaning. The first is that He is not challenging Rome’s political or military power. The second meaning to His answer is that “king” is the closest word we have to describing what Jesus is.
    However, the rest of Jesus’ answer is why I wanted to go over Jesus’ trial. The most important part of Jesus’ answer here, where he offers Pilate an opportunity to step out of the role which history gave him, is when He says that He came to speak the truth and that those who love the truth will listen to Him. Pilate hears the offer, but rejects it when he asks “What is truth?” When he says that Pilate is rejecting the idea that there is such a thing as truth. I could easily see Pilate saying, “The truth is different for different people.”

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on John 14-16.

    This passage begins with Jesus teaching His disciples, and through them, us, that He is the only way to God. I will expand on that by saying that I do believe that there are many paths to God…but they all lead to Christ. Jesus said that those who seek will find. A necessary corollary to that is that one must be willing to follow that search wherever it leads. Those who genuinely search for God will eventually be led to Jesus. One does not need to take the path which goes through the Church (although I do believe that the path will eventually lead them back to the Church in some form, because the Church is the Body of Christ). Unfortunately, some will refuse to follow their search through Jesus and turn away looking for a path which does not exist.

    There is another piece to this story which we should find challenging. Jesus tells His disciples that they should believe in Him, and His connection to the Father, because of the works He has done. Then He tells them that anyone who believes in Him will do the same works He has done. Not only that, Jesus says that we will do even greater works. So, when did you last give sight to the blind? Or cause the lame to walk? Raise someone from the dead? Or, even feed 5,000 people? When I started writing this paragraph, my thought was that the works Jesus was talking about were miraculous ones, and in part they are. However, as I wrote those questions I remembered that Jesus said, just before telling us that anyone who believed in Him would do similar works, that God worked through Him. So, while I still think we should expect God to do miraculous things through us, we are doing the same works as Jesus when we work together to teach subsistence farmers how to better feed themselves, set up programs to give out micro-loans so that the impoverished can work their way out of poverty, send well diggers to dig wells to provide clean drinking water in areas of the world that have not had it in recent memory, rebuild homes devastated by natural disasters. When we help those who are sick or suffering we are doing the works which Jesus did. When Jesus fed the 5,000 He took the small amount of food and started passing it out, having faith that God would make it be sufficient, and not only was it, there was more left over than what they started with.

    There is so much I want to write about from this passage, but I do not think I am going to have time. When Jesus promised the disciples the Holy Spirit, He told them that He would reveal Himself to those who love Him. He told us that we can know if we love Him, because those who love Him will follow His commands. When He said this, Judas clearly did not understand. I think that Judas’ response here reveals why he betrayed Jesus. Judas wanted to know why Jesus was not going to reveal Himself to the world at large. Judas was looking for the power which would come from being one of the twelve men closest to what he expected to be the next Alexander the Great. Part of Judas’ misunderstanding stemmed from a false dichotomy he held: the choice was either limiting His revelation to just those present or to the world at large. It never occurred to Judas that others might become part of Jesus’ inner circle. He wanted to be in the position of translating Jesus’ teachings to those on the outside. We can easily fall into the same mistake when we fail to recognize that others have as much to teach us as we do them.

    There is so much more here which could use expounding upon. There is a whole blog post in going over the meaning of Jesus’ vine metaphor and allowing God to prune us so that we can be more fruitful. Then Jesus reminds us that because the world hated and persecuted Him, it will hate and persecute us. Here Jesus also tells us that if He had physically stayed with us the Holy Spirit could not have come to live within us. Finally Jesus tells them that they will soon experience great grief, but that grief will be turned into even greater joy. We see how that indeed happened with His crucifixion and subsequent resurrection. As I read that today, I saw a link between what Jesus is saying here and the shooting in Texas this last Sunday morning. I do not have the time to make the connection, but perhaps you can see it for yourself by reading this article which talks about how Christians see that experience differently than the world.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on John 12-13.

    In today’s passage John tells us a story of Mary, Martha’s sister, anointing Jesus’ feet with expensive perfume. It is not clear if this is the same story as told in the other Gospels, some of the details differ, but not in ways which are distinctly contradictory. I was initially not going to write about it today, but then I thought about Judas’ reaction. It made me realize that many times those who call on us to give to aid the poor are, like Judas here, not so much concerned with helping the poor as they are with gaining control over our money. You see that with politicians who develop programs to “help the poor” which fail to change anything for the poor. You see that with some people who run organizations which supposedly aid the poor. This is not to say that all such programs and organizations have ulterior motives, just that we need to examine them closely. It is never wrong to aid the poor, but there are times when serving those who minister to the poor is a better use of our resources. We should be cautious of those who attempt to make us feel guilty about how we choose to do good with our resources.

    The story of Jesus washing the disciples feet has long been one of great meaning to me. The first thing we notice, and the main focus of this story, is that Jesus, the Teacher, the most prominent person present, takes the role of servant and washes everyone else’s feet. Jesus makes it clear that if we want to be His followers we need to similarly serve others. However, there is another point in here which is easy to miss. If we want to be Jesus’ followers we also have to allow others to serve us. When Jesus went to wash Peter’s feet, Peter tried to demur, but Jesus insisted. So, this passage teaches us that greatness comes from serving others, but refusing to allow others to serve us puts us outside of the community.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on John 8-9.

    The story of the woman caught in adultery is not in the earliest manuscripts we have of the Gospel of John, so it likely was a later addition. Nevertheless it is consistent with the other things written about Jesus’ teaching and can teach us some useful lessons. Really the two prime lessons are closely linked. On the one hand, he tells the woman’s accusers that they are only qualified to punish her if they are not guilty of something similar. I like to imagine that after He told them this Jesus wrote in the dust various sins and as each person realized that they had done things which by the letter of the Law would justify them being where the woman was they dropped their stones and walked away. On the other hand, Jesus did not tell the woman, “Well your accusers are gone, go back to what you were doing.” No, He told her, “Go and sin no more.” The love and tolerance which Jesus calls us to have for sinners does not include telling them that it is OK to sin.

    When Jesus tells the crowd, “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free,” the crowds denies ever being anything but free. However, Jesus points out to them that when you sin you become a slave to sin. This is a basic truth which we all struggle with. When we sin we become addicted to sinning. The only way to overcome that addiction is to allow the power of the Holy Spirit into our lives where it will direct our behaviors away from that addiction. The Holy Spirit will fill our lives with good behaviors which will displace the sin. As we allow ourselves to become “addicted” to doing good we will have less and less time in our lives to be tempted.

    I cannot leave today’s passage without writing about the story of Jesus healing the man born blind. In particular the contrast between the way the religious leaders reacted to his healing and his reaction. I know I have talked about this before, often, but it is one of those lessons about the Bible which my father taught me which still greatly influences my thoughts about God. The religious leaders questioned the man in an attempt to find something in his story which they could use to diminish Jesus’ role in his healing. Finally, they right out told the man that Jesus should not get credit for the healing because they knew that Jesus was a sinner (notice, they did not give any specific examples of what sins Jesus had committed, just declared that He was a sinner). The man’s response was, “Well, I don’t know anything about that. All I know is, I was blind and now I see!” When the man insisted that Jesus must be from God, the religious leaders dismissed his judgment since the fact that he was born blind indicates that he “must be a terrible sinner”. They never considered that the same logic which said the man must have been born blind because he was a sinner suggests that he was given sight because he had become righteous (I do not agree with the logic here, but the second follows the first). The religious leaders were so caught up in their own belief about how God acts that they were blinded to God acting in their midst. Let us ask God to open our eyes to what He is doing in the world around us.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on John 6-7.

    John’s account of the Feeding of the Five Thousand contains a piece of information the other Gospels do not mention: the crowd He fed was about to declare Him king and start a revolt against Rome (the latter is not stated, but is implicit in declaring Jesus their king). When the crowd caught up with Jesus the following day, He began teaching that He was the bread of life. Taking part in Communion (or the Eucharist, or the Lord’s Supper) is a reminder of, and a dedication to, fulfilling Jesus’ teaching about eating His flesh and drinking His blood. What Jesus is teaching us here is twofold. One element is that we must be willing to suffer similar to the way He suffered when He was crucified. The other element is that we must imitate what He did by caring for the needs of those around us. Latter in today’s passage Jesus expresses some of this meaning by speaking of giving Living Water to drink to those who come to Him.

    I believe that Jesus intended to call to mind the River of Healing which Ezekiel spoke about. As a result, my understanding of what He means by a River of Living Water is that He is referring to the way in which experiencing the love of God causes us to show love to those around us and their experiencing our love causes them to show love to those around them. However, the important point in Jesus’ teaching here which is not presented in Ezekiel’s vision, is that for this river of Living Water to continue to flow each person in the chain must become connected to the Source. While it is true that the results of loving action will be multiplied by the actions of those who experience it, that “water” of love will also become diluted and polluted the further it is downstream from God. The only way for it to stay fresh and pure is for each person in the chain to have a direct connection to God. This is why it is important to preach the Gospel along with doing good for those in need. We do not do good for those in need so that they will listen to the Gospel. However, we preach the Gospel for the same reason that we do good for those in need, because they need the Gospel in order to experience the joy which God intends for them.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on John 4-5.

    As I am reading the story of the woman at the well, I wonder why Jesus asked the woman to go get her husband when she asked Him to give her the water He has. I do not feel that way because a moment later Jesus knows that she has had five husbands and is living with a man to whom she is not married. No, that part I get, He had not bothered to think about her marital state, so it did not enter His awareness. What I wonder is, why would He ask her to get her husband at all? I have two theories on why this might be, both have a certain merit but nothing in the passage gives support to either one.

    Perhaps Jesus asked her to get her husband to avoid scandalizing His disciples when they returned, which the passage certainly implies happened. “Scandalize” is likely too strong of a word, but they clearly wondered what Jesus wanted from this woman. If He did not want something from her, why was He talking to her? Or, closely related to that, perhaps Jesus asked her to get her husband to follow a rule which I know to be a good idea (and this becomes a third theory I have). When it becomes routine for a man and a woman who are not married to each other to meet in private, trouble ensues sooner or later. Just look at the Harvey Weinstein scandal. If it had not been “routine” in Hollywood for a man and a woman to meet in private, many of the women Harvey harassed and assaulted would never have been in a position to be harassed or assaulted. Further, in that world where it was out of the ordinary for a man and a woman not married to each other to meet in private, even if Harvey had been able to engineer such situations it would have been more noteworthy in a way to make it easier for women who fell into his clutches to escape.

    On the other hand, perhaps Jesus asked her to get her husband for the simple reason that a husband and wife are one. I thought explaining what I meant by that would be easy, but I was mistaken. I think the place to start is from a quote I heard a radio personality use (I no longer remember who it was), “An interfaith marriage is a no faith marriage.” That phrase means that if you choose to marry a person from another religion from yourself, you do not really believe what your religion teaches. The only possible exception to that are those who marry someone not of their faith in the belief that they will be able to convert them after they get married (I will not take the time here to go into why that is foolish). In the case of the woman at the well, Jesus may have asked her to get her husband because it would be harder for her to stick to the new faith understanding He would try to impart if her husband did not share it (the reverse would also be true). There is a real need for a married couple to be on the same page about what they believe. Actually, not only is there a real need for that, but my experience says that if the marriage is healthy they will be on the same page whether the couple makes a point of it or not. Of course, resisting being on the same page in their belief systems is one way to damage the health of your marriage.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on John 1-3.

    John is the most mystical of the Gospel writers. John begins by talking about the “Word”. What John means when he talks about “The Word” does not translate well as a single word. Another way that the Greek word translated as “The Word” could be translated is as “The Idea”. That would not be any closer to the meaning John was trying to convey here (actually, it would not be as close), but it contains a part of the idea which “The Word” does not. The concept which John is expressing here at the beginning of his Gospel plays an important role in developing a proper understanding about the meaning of “the Word of God” as used elsewhere in the Bible. While we often use the term “the Word of God” to refer to the Bible, it is very easy to develop an incorrect understanding of what the Bible means by that term when we do so. “The Word of God” is not a static thing. It is a living thing which speaks to us where we are now. When I say this I am not talking about moral relativism. God comes to us where we are, taking into account the society in which we live. I will use slavery as an example. There have been times in history when it was possible for a slave owner to be a godly man, or woman. However, there was never a time in history when it was possible for a person who treated another person as subhuman to be godly, even if that other person was a slave owned by the first. I will further say that a slave owning society falls short of meeting God’s ideal by virtue of allowing that one human can own another. Our modern society falls every bit as short of God’s ideal by its acceptance of the murder of the unborn as the society of the antebellum South fell short by its embrace of race based slavery.