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Don’t tell it on the mountain

Luke 8:56

“Go Tell it on the Mountain”, an African-American spiritual, is often used as a Christmas carol and was adapted as an anthem for the American Civil Rights Movement. The message of the hymn in whatever form is that we are to proclaim God’s Good News from the mountaintops and rooftops and everywhere that Jesus Christ has come into our world to set people free.

How strange then to see, in contrast, how Jesus shushed down such proclamation, especially concerning his miracles, while he was still on earth. Here he is in this passage, having just raised a dead girl to life, and Jesus is telling, no, ordering the parents not to tell anyone what has happened. Keep in quiet. Don’t tell a soul.

Much has been written about Jesus’ MO (modus operandi) when it comes to PR (public relations) work, or shall we say lack thereof. He wants to bless the poor, he wants to preach good news, he wants to heal the sick and cast out demons and free people from whatever oppresses them. But he doesn’t want the word of all that to get out. Which of course it does anyway.

In short, much of this shushing is because as word gets out about all his miracle work, the crowds swell and the merely curious and awkwardly gawking overload the circuits. Jesus isn’t about building critical mass because he knows that fads can go as easily as they come and these people are very attuned to faddishisms of miracle workers and healers and gurus. What Jesus is looking for is a handful of faithful, available and teachable people who will hang in there clear through the cross even. In fact, this handful is his priority and why he spends three years in ministry instead of just going straight from baptism to burial. It is a priority that comes into sharp focus in the very next verse (9:1).

Jesus is portrayed by the gospel writers as frequently shutting down the PR machine. What is so special this time? His concern in this case is less about the effectiveness of his ministry than the object of his ministry – the little girl who has been healed, raised from the dead. Thus he shoos everyone out of the room save the parents and his own three disciples. Thus he commands the parents not to tell anyone what has happened. Not a soul. Nada.

What an intriguing contrast between these instructions and how he treats the woman with the issue of blood a few verses earlier. That woman, plagued by something we would consider a very private matter, is outed by Jesus in front of a mass of people. It is her faith that has made her physically whole, but that is not the end of the healing she requires. Her sickness has also made her a pariah in polite (and especially impolite) company. She, a woman with a nonstop blood flow, is a social outcast who can’t even get close to Jesus unless she does so without being seen. Now Jesus brings her into the limelight in order to shatter that social cage and force people to face the woman they have imprisoned with their silence and space. Only as she is returned to community is her healing complete.

Such is not the concern Jesus has for the little girl. She will be mobbed, feted, and gawked at, like a pilgrimage destination if Jesus pushes against the PR machinery, much more so if he does not. His stern warning to keep things quiet is to give the child (and her parents) time to recover. He has healed her body. She is not merely revived, she is physically healthy – free of whatever caused her to die in the first place. But getting sick, dying and being resurrected surely has traumatic effect on her and on her parents. Not that I know this first hand. I can only surmise that being resurrected is not something you recover from in a nanosecond. Any extreme, out-of-the ordinary experience must be followed by process time.

She is, after all, a child who in this season of recovery needs her parents’ devoted love and comfort, not their distracted attention. We often forget that even the best things in our lives have impact on us requiring time to restore a sense of balance. Physical healing is not merely physiological. Such is the modern scientific understanding that is proving what faith healing has long understood – that healing is wholistic.

Even without all that, the last thing the girl and her parents need in their lives is a circus. Notoriety will come soon enough. What they must have now is security and stability.

Of the many things I learn from looking at these two intertwined miracles, Jesus is highly creative in his approach to human suffering. Apparently identical needs require very different approaches. The Creator understands that creature concerns are never identical because people are not identical. Jesus refuses to treat the sick and needy as category – always only as unique persons.

Processing a miracle

Luke 8:54-55

I remember the weekend well, some 25 years ago. Alan Wade and I had traveled south through the Ozarks to a church camp in Arkansas. It was a statewide young adult singles retreat and Cecil Culbreth had invited me to speak. But, to our surprise, only a handful of people showed up. I remember a dozen or so, though it might have been 20. It didn’t matter. I was there for those who had come.

I don’t remember my topic, but I do remember opening up one meeting to those with physical needs. I instructed those present that as someone expressed a specific need, one of the others, not me, would lay a hand on the person and pray, simply and straightforwardly, and we would wait and see what God would do in each situation – which is all that faith requires. So after each person was prayed for, we talked about what had happened, particularly when it was the kind of need whose healing could be readily ascertained. It was an amazing night, none like I have ever experienced before or since. Some very serious sicknesses or injuries were healed, but the most astonishing thing was that just about everyone present experienced some specific physical healing. Even Cecil and I were quite surprised. It was as if only those who were to have a need met had come.

I took as the model for my approach that weekend what I imagined Jesus having done in similar settings 2,000 years before, notwithstanding all the haze of distance obscuring the picture of Jesus in earthly action. When I look at a passage such as this one we are dealing with today, what I see is Jesus going about rather simply and straightforwardly, often using creative approaches, but generally avoiding the dramatics that we usually picture with healings and miracles.

Jesus has just chased everyone out of the room except the dead girl’s parents and his own three buddies, Peter, James and John. He’s not assessing the level or quality of faith of the parents or his three friends and certainly not testing the faith of the girl who is quite dead. He has come because the father pleaded with him to come and heal a very sick daughter. When on the way the news that the girl has died reaches Jesus and the father, it is Jesus, not the father, who decides to come on anyway. I wonder if the father had any faith by that point that Jesus could do anything, grief or shock having taken over.

Jesus didn’t heal everyone who died, not even those who were most spiritual or most pitiable. But in this case, Jesus decided to intervene in the natural processes of life. Somehow Jesus knew that he was to bring this particular girl back to life and not another who had died down the street. I know that raises all kinds of flags for some readers – and I fully understand the struggle. Even so, the record shows that for whatever reason Jesus chose to do a miracle for this family.

When the room is cleared of all but the parents and Jesus’ three disciples, what does Jesus do from what we see in the gospels? He brings her back to life. Now move beyond the incredibility of that statement and see how the gospels describe Jesus doing it. As I said, simply and straightforward.

First, he takes her by the hand. Second, he says to her, “Child, get up,” like he was her father calling her in the morning. Luke records that her spirit returned, which would mean that she revived, returned to life.

One time I was standing by a friend when her heart missed a beat. One second she was talking rather animatedly, the next she had slumped to the floor at my feet as if dead. She did not die and may still be alive today for all I know. But the experience reminded me what great distance there is between life and death. So when the girl’s spirit returns, it is obvious she is alive and fully recovered.

At once, she stands up. Mark writes that she also walks around. This is no dead body sitting up in a morgue like all those stories we hear. This is a girl (Mark says age 12) who has become vibrantly twelvish all of a sudden. To the parents who are understandably in shock, he instructs them to get her something to eat. This girl is hungry.

The Wake and the Dead

Luke 8:51-53

As in many cultural settings today, mourners were a common sight in Jesus’ time. The funeral would be quickly dispatched due to hygienic reasons, so the whole process would happen very quickly, as did death itself. This was an age of the most rudimentary of medical resources. A seemingly healthy person in the morning could become sick, die and be buried before sundown, and mortality rates, especially for infants and children, were high.

These paid mourners, probably called by a responsible family member to be on standby as soon as someone was sick, served a functional purpose in society. They aided the essential process of grieving, giving vent to emotions that needed to be expressed by members of the family. At first I think I cannot imagine going through life as a professional mourner, expressing grief at funeral after funeral. Yet such is the role played by ministers, counselors, medical care givers and funeral personnel in our society today. They help those grieving process one of life’s most difficult experiences – the passing of a loved one.

Jesus doesn’t deplore their role, these professional mourners. He just doesn’t want them around as they will interfere with what he is about to do. He also doesn’t want a circus. Miracles are not always to be performed front and center. Word will get around, no doubt about it. As he often does, Jesus puts the break on the PR machinery of the day. No need to fan the flames of curiosity. Faith and morbid curiosity are not the same.

So what Jesus does instead is shut out the mourners – and everyone else. When he arrives at and enters the house, he takes only the parents and his three trusted friends, Peter, James and John. This is a miracle that does not need to be seen to be believed. Rather, it is a miracle to be witnessed only by a select few – the parents who have asked for Jesus’ help and Jesus’ inner circle. The former are there for the daughter when she is brought to life and the latter are there because Jesus, even at his most supernatural, almost never works alone. The father, in particular, is invited, because Jesus has come in response to his specific request.

As Jesus enters the inner part of the house where the daughter’s body lies, he has a word for the professional mourners and for all family and friends who have gathered. “Stop wailing.” I can read this in two ways. One, it is a sharp rebuke. Two, it is a firm yet caring directive. I am inclined to the former by default, though there is no reason to do so, other than that is the way I might have handled it – out of irritation or consternation. But, again, these people are doing nothing wrong or out of the ordinary. This is how you process the passing of life – and there is no reason beforehand to suspect that this case will end differently than any other. I think Jesus was using the second approach.

Jesus adds by way of explanation, “She is not dead but asleep.” He has not even seen the child, they are thinking, and is jumping to silly conclusions. They know she is dead. In fact, there is no reason to question that fact. But they misunderstand Jesus, who is not denying the state of her body. The gospel writer doesn’t seem to question it either. Jesus is cryptically explaining to the gathered crowd that the reason they are to stop mourning is because death is not the final state of this situation.

Their response is to laugh. Laughter can have many meanings. The short of it is that it is ludicrous to think that the girl is anything but dead and going to stay that way.

While Luke writes very succinctly at this point, the inference, which is confirmed by Matthew and Mark, is that as Jesus enters the room, he sends out all but those he has specifically invited. Assuming there is a door on the room’s doorway – and we cannot assume as much – someone closes this door. Or at least, everyone is chased away from looking in. The setting has no place for distractions.

This is not about proving Jesus’ ability to raise the dead. It is about answering a father’s cry for help. I like that about Jesus – the way he deals firmly but compassionately with distractions, the way he focuses on the need at hand. The woman who earlier was chronically sick was not a distraction; the people now gathered to grieve are. And so, Jesus shuts the door on grieving momentarily so that those present can bear witness to what is about to happen. He doesn’t need their fullest attention to make the miracle happen. He invites their utmost attention so that they can experience the miracle to its fullest.

“She’s Dead”

Luke 8:49-50

He was asked to come and do something about an urgently sick girl. On the way, he was detained by a woman who had a long-term, though not life-threatening physical problem. Actually, to be honest, the woman didn’t detain him – he himself had chosen to do some follow through on her situation. The result for the original urgent need? The girl died.

In this passage in Luke, Jesus was available to help – and he could do something about the situation. He could heal the girl, if only he made it there in time. But Jesus also knew that there was little difference between God’s power to heal a sick girl and God’s power to bring that same girl back to life if she died, though there are far more cases of the former than of the latter, simply because immortality is not a part of our present human condition.

Jairus, the girl’s father, however, did not know any of that. He did not know that Jesus could just as easily bring the girl back to life as heal her. He did not know that Jesus was actually willing to do both in this very case. Even if he had heard stories of Jesus bringing the dead back to life, I’m not sure this synagogue ruler, religiously devout as he was, would have connected that understanding of Jesus with the plight of his own daughter.

As Luke paints the story, just as Jesus is sending the healed woman off in peace, someone from Jairus’ household comes with the news that the girl has died. No sense bothering Jesus anymore, the messenger says. Strange that Jesus would have allowed himself to be delayed, but such is the workings of a Master who has absolute trust in his own Father and that Father’s timing.

We are not given Jairus’ reaction to the news of his daughter’s death, and perhaps it is because Jesus doesn’t allow time for Jairus to react. Anguish, fear, grief, self-doubt – if only I had gone to Jesus faster, if only I had hurried him along more quickly. Jesus does not allow Jairus to go there. Instead, Jesus tells him, “Don’t be afraid.” He doesn’t chastise Jairus for lacking faith, though he does encourage Jairus to exercise what faith he has. He doesn’t even rebuke Jairus for being afraid. He just calms him with a “Don’t go there.”

In fact, if this father had not been welling up with anguish, fear, grief and self-doubt at the news of his daughter’s death, there would be serious questions to raise about the man’s love for his daughter or his own ability to feel God-given emotions. These are emotions that, barring some unusual divine intervention, allow us to cope with inevitable loss, allow us to process human events and experiences as the humans we were created to be. We were all designed to express feelings and emotions that are common to all people and natural for all of life and that bring healing in their own way to the deepest of human pain.

However, Jesus, who participated in creating these very emotions, knows that what will come immediately into that earthly father’s being will be an overload of those same emotions and, more than likely, Jairus will go into some form of shock to shield him from unbearable pain. So Jesus is quick to pull this father back from that emotional brink.

Jesus calms the man with, “Don’t be afraid,” not because those emotions are wrong, but because Jesus knows what is going to happen next and he wants that father engaged for what will surely be the happiest moment of his life. This is not Jesus testing Jairus’ faith to see if he has enough to help Jesus raise the girl to life. This is Jesus bringing calm to an earthly father’s heart so that this man can be drawn into what Jesus is about to do for him.

What happens next leads me to understand that Jesus was going to heal that girl no matter what. The girl’s healing was because of Jesus’ love, regardless of the reactions and responses of those around her. Certainly the girl herself had nothing to contribute to the imminent miracle. She was dead. But Jesus wanted Jairus to know that, while emotions are healthy if expressed as God intended, he did not need to go there, not yet. For the story wasn’t over and Jesus wasn’t finished.

Exorcising Shame

Luke 8:43-48

The woman with the “issue of blood” was standard Sunday School fare when I was a kid, a basic story about some older person who had “women issues”. We kids came away with the impression of an old hag who couldn’t stop bleeding, and because of the nature of the bleeding, we couldn’t ask any more questions. Whether or not it was right to call her a “hag”, we did somehow get that she was as repulsive to that crowd as the derogatory term “hag” implies.

If her hemorrhage was indeed uterine in nature, she was, according to Mosaic law, untouchable. She’d lived a hard life and Mark adds that she’d spent all her money to find a cure that could not be found, getting worse in the process. Her incurable sickness and resulting poverty left her filled with so much shame that even after she was healed, she was reticent to reveal her identity.

But she was brave enough, or at least desperate enough, to make the effort to touch the edge of Jesus’ robe or cloak. People were jammed together, bodies pressed against each other as the crowd moved through the narrow passageways between buildings. It was ludicrous to those around that Jesus was trying to find out who touched him – it could have been one of who knows how many.

And yet this was a significant touch. Jesus knew that power had gone out of him. Most people pressed around Jesus were only concerned with getting through the alleyway. People may have tried to touch Jesus because he was famous or important, much the way people do of superstars today. But such close encounters lacked what this touch definitely had – a release of healing power.

And so she was healed – immediately. No doubt about it. Why then was it important for Jesus to single her out? Surely it would only add to her shame. Let her go in peace – isn’t it enough that she is well?

Apparently, though, there was more to her healing. She realized she could not escape the glare of notice, so she came forward, as Luke notes, trembling and falling “at his feet.” Fear as well as sickness had gripped her for a dozen years. And though she was now physically well, that fear still had its hold. So full of shame she was that she could not dare tell anyone she had been healed, especially not before so many people.

When Jesus asked for her, she realized she had no choice but to come clean. The crowd that had been impenetrable suddenly gave way and a space opened for her. How agonizing that must have been. In her desperation to be healed, she would have done anything. Now, healed, it took even more effort to come forward. As she did so, suddenly all those years of agonizing shame spilled out and she told her whole story. In the presence of everyone.

As she did so, she discovered that the only way to exorcise shame is to let it out – but only with someone who will validate her personhood. Any other time, any other place, and she would have been pushed away, shunned. People (religiously zealous men especially) would have drawn up their cloaks and shrunk back from her in horror, lest they too be contaminated, unable to worship properly. The only thing stopping them from adding to her shame now was the commanding presence of Jesus.

In that presence, all such reactions were repressed. Jesus healed her personhood as well as her physical malady – he accepted her, affirmed her, and emotionally embraced her. “Daughter,” he called her – such a warm affectionate term. He esteemed her, acknowledging that it was her faith that had healed her. And he sent her off with a firm blessing, “Go in peace.” She was affirmed before everyone, the shame was no longer hers to bear.

In processing her healing with her this way, Jesus also clearly identifies for the woman and all witnesses that this healing was not mere superstition – “if I can only touch this holy man’s tassels.” Jesus clarifies that it is faith in God that has healed her, that it is the power of God which has gone out from Jesus to her. No room for superstition about talismans here.

Jesus immediately refocuses on the dying girl, his original mission. Note the contrast in healings. Whereas Jesus heals the girl in private, far away from the prying masses, he makes effort to bring the woman’s healing to light before everyone. Each person’s needs are unique. The masses would have detracted the little girl’s attention away from Jesus, while the public confession was part of the woman’s healing process. Holistic healing was a concept Jesus understood long before its present vogue.

A Momentary Interruption

Luke 8:42b-43

You read along and you come to the verse changes, but when the text is in paragraph form as it is in most present-day Bible translations, you don’t even notice the verse markers. This time, however, your thoughts are arrested. You pause at verse 43.

The Gospel writers tend to take Jesus one story or one teaching at a time. Here is a case where all three who preserve these two particular stories do so in combo – Matthew, Mark and Luke all have the anecdote of this very sick woman tucked in the middle of the narrative concerning Jairus and his dying daughter. Specific details may differ, but they all three pass on intact the idea that the needs of this unnamed woman came as an interruption in the events surrounding the drama of the house of one Jairus, ruler of the local synagogue.

It is a story built for visual effect – the press of the crowd (a fire emergency in a packed night club comes to mind) almost crushes Jesus as he makes his way to Jairus’ house. While he is not running, he is determined and outwardly focused to get to his destination without delay.

I say “outwardly” because even with the apparent concentration of effort, Jesus is ever attuned to what is going on around him. So much so that he senses that someone is touching him. When he mentions the thought, his friends are incredulous.

I’ve been in such crowds. Generally in the USA we don’t experience crushes of humanity. Our interpersonal spaces are not as legendary as the British, but we could not possibly contain the population that China does in a similar geographical configuration – millions would long ago have been pushed out to sea. Go to Asia, though, and you will better understand this story.

Riding on a bus once in China I realized a pickpocket was trying to get at some loose change in my pants – the crowd was so crushing I couldn’t even reach my own pocket to push his hand away. My stop was coming up. In my best Mandarin I yelled “Thief!” and amazingly the crowd parted just enough for me to slip through and get out the doors. Once off the bus, I realized the thief had slit my pants – which were worth more than the few coins I had lost. I was mad about the pants and less than grateful for the gratuitous lesson in sociological dynamics.

When Luke writes that “the crowds almost crushed him,” I understand what he means. People were packed into that narrow alley like proverbial sardines – bodies tight together, people moving in the same direction whether they wanted to or not.

And in all this, Jesus is focused on getting to his destination – a girl who is about to die unless he reaches her first. When later his friend Lazarus is sick, Jesus takes his time. He knows that a greater story than a “mere” healing is in the making. In this case, Jesus does not hesitate. He makes his way most deliberately.

And yet he allows himself to be interrupted, not because he doesn’t care about the plight of a twelve year old girl or her grieving father, but because he is able to multitask about human need. Nothing communicates care like someone who, in concentrating on a more urgent or more important need, is able to break from such focus and deal with a less pressing, more chronic concern. Well, one thing does communicate care even more forcefully – when this “secondary” need, presented by someone far less connected in life, far more anonymous, is as readily attended to.

Jesus notices a woman who is invisible to all the crush of humanity around her, whose needs have gone unmet for years, who is not taken seriously because she is both a woman and an unclean woman at that. Jesus not only pays attention to her faint touch, he stops his urgent mission and the pushing crowd around him to seek her out. Here is a man both confident in what he is doing that he can break from a life-threatening emergency to deal with a non-life-threatening problem and compassionate enough that the social status of the person in need is not weighed.

When Jesus pauses, the whole world pauses with him – clueless as to his ability to meet more than one need at a time. Here, I sense, is a person who has time for me.

Jairus Unlabeled

Luke 8:40-42

It is easy to stereotype. We see what appears to be a disheveled person on the street and in an instant we categorize him or her as “homeless.” Just as quickly, our minds attach all sorts of meaning to that category, mostly negative. We may be willing to help them, but we have a difficult time doing so without editorializing about them and their situation.

Whether our reaction is negative or positive, we also make instant assumptions concerning people who live in really fancy houses. This weekend I started doing field work for my U.S. Census Bureau job as “Enumerator” – someone who goes around counting people. I was working a census block that included some very exclusive estates – huge houses perched on steep slopes and hidden by exquisite landscaping with driveway gates, closed and far below.

For the most part, it felt as if these people were stereotyping me – drives an ’89 Chevy pickup (poor or at least working class), is doing this job (unemployed), is middle-aged and doing this job (loser). Who knows what they were really thinking? After a few encounters with heads of said households, I found myself starting to peg these people, too, so much so that I was amazed when one of them was friendly, gracious, didn’t make me wait fifteen minutes while they took care of other more important business, and treated me as an equal.

Jesus had an uncanny ability to meet all kinds of people on their level. Jairus, a ruler of the local synagogue, was no exception. Jesus had already met enough rude and arrogant religious leaders that he could have assumed the same for this one. True, Jairus did approach Jesus with what appeared to be great humility, falling as he did at Jesus’ feet. But his only daughter was dying, after all. Children, infants especially, were dying all the time in that day. This one had already reached the marriageable age of twelve and so had come to mean very much to him. He would do anything for her, even plead for Jesus’ help.

We really don’t know much about Jarius’ personal persuasions or attitudes, other than that he held an influential position in the local house of worship. And that is the point made by Luke. Jesus simply takes the man at face value and heads out through the crush of people to go heal this girl. Death could come quickly; there was no time to waste.

Jesus was, as the KJV so quaintly says elsewhere, “no respecter of persons,” meaning he treated people as individuals, not as categories or labels. He took them as they came. We are naturally inclined to want to help innocent children before helping adults with position and status. I don’t think, however, that Jesus moved more rapidly to respond to Jairus’ plea because a child was involved. Jesus did have a special place for children, which set him apart from most. But Jesus had already established a track record of willingly blessing everyone who came to him.

That was Jesus’ defining distinction. He ministered to all who came to him, who were willing to open their lives to him. Nothing else mattered – Jew or Gentile, religious or not, rich or poor, male or female, old or young. He served them all – as long as they came willingly. And, as other stories point out, he was even ready to go the second mile in reaching out to those who were initially unwilling.

We are more naturally drawn to responsive people. Jesus is unnaturally (from our vantage point, anyway) also drawn to those who refuse him. It wasn’t so much that he refused to help those who wouldn’t accept his help. He was just blocked, is all. And the same in this case. He didn’t rush to help Jairus because of his status or because he was more open. Jesus didn’t use people (status) and he didn’t categorize people. His rule of thumb was that he helped whoever would allow him to.

I am so drawn to Jesus. He who takes me as I am. He who accepts me not for what I have to offer, but only for what he has to offer. Regardless of what my need is. No wonder Jairus did not hesitate to come to Jesus when life was so desperate and his emotional pain was beyond bearing. Deep inside he sensed that here was someone who would not label him.

The Madman – Part V

Luke 8:38-39

By this point in the story, the title “Madman” seems inappropriate. He is no longer “mad,” now dressed and in his right mind. In fact, he is totally well. Except that he has no place. By place, I mean more than just housing. He has no community, no job, no relationships, no connectedness. He is suspended in relational air. The process of his reintegration is as much a challenge for his “people” as it is for him. But they are still his people and Jesus chooses to leave him among them rather than take him away with the other disciples, humane as that may seem from our distance.

There are times when leaving a person in the original setting is definitely inhumane, as when further abuse and victimization is immanent or inevitable. Here we have to trust that the Master knows what he is doing and that whatever abuse the man receives (and he will receive abuse) he will be able to handle it. I say his abuse is inevitable because one thing harder than dealing with a perpetrator is dealing with a truly repentant perpetrator. Witness the reception the Apostle Paul received from fellow Christians for some time after his conversion – it was necessary for him to return to his distant home town of Tarsus for a long period of time before he could engage Believers in Jerusalem.

In the case of the ex-madman, Jesus turns down the man’s request (begging, actually) to go with him. There are any number of reasons why the man was insistent on departing with Jesus – fear of how the locals would treat him, fear of the return of the hauntings of the immediate past, a desire to spend more time with Jesus, the thrill of being in a company as wonderful as Jesus and his disciples. Most likely, all these feelings – and more – were at work inside the man.

As I mentioned last time, this story begs a lot of “whys” and one of those is why Jesus decides to leave and abandon this man he’s just rescued. Jesus has had lots of people following him – hundreds perhaps – and it is difficult to find very many instances where he refuses a person who desires to follow him in person. On this particular trip, it is likely that only the Twelve have accompanied Jesus. Just one boat is mentioned. But there were many others who have left all to follow Jesus and are waiting for him on the other side.

In this case, Jesus sensed it was important that the man stay put. I do think his reasoning involved the need for the people in the area to hear the Good News of the man’s deliverance and to see this man live out that deliverance. The whole community had been disrupted both by the man’s madness and by the exorcism, and the man’s presence was needed for healing to go beyond just the former Demoniac himself.

One of my readers comments that in Mark 6:53-56, Jesus may have returned to this precise location. This time, the welcome is very different and the people are more responsive, the reader’s interpretation being that this was the fruit of the former Demoniac’s faithfulness in the interim. And if this is indeed the case, the response was very strong. More likely this is not the same location, Mark 6:53 referring to a place on the opposite side of the lake. We really do not know whether Jesus ever returned to the home of the Demoniac. Like so many others Jesus blessed, this was probably a one-off encounter.

Unlike so many other one-off encounters, what is striking about this one is that Jesus encourages the man to broadcast his healing. “Return home,” Jesus tells the man, “and tell how much God has done for you.” And this is precisely what the man does. We don’t know the response he gets. But surely there are some who receive his good news. Perhaps because Jesus doesn’t intend to return, he is not concerned about the Messianization of his mission here as he is elsewhere.

To rephrase one of my favorite lines from the movie, Field of Dreams, this is not just about everyone else. Jesus has in mind the man’s own well-being when he sends him home. Complete healing comes when the healing he has received is demonstrated in the very setting where he was tormented. His healing, moreover, is not just about demons being exorcised; it is about being restored to community, to place. And that restoration comes full circle – and to completion – as the man carries forth the Good News to others as he himself has received. I suspect that the reason this activity is recorded in Luke 8:39 is because even before Jesus and his companions have cast off, the man is already busy doing just that.

The Madman – Part IV

Luke 8:34-37

If healing the madman wasn’t challenge enough, the encounter was actually only beginning to heat up. The demoniac who called himself “Legion” had met Jesus at the boat. Jesus had cast multitudes of demons out of this man gone wild, and the demons had in turn invaded a herd of pigs which went rushing down the hillside and drowned in the lake.

Now the pig herders were getting upset and starting to broadcast everywhere the news of the exorcism and herd demise, which brought out a lot of local people to see what was going on. What they saw was their local madman sitting at the feet of Jesus, “dressed and in his right mind” and presumably talking with Jesus. The man sitting there like that was a shocking sight in and of itself, for everyone knew the craziness of this maniac self-named “Legion.” He was a legend in those parts and even in his newfound state of composure, people had no trouble identifying him. Most of the locals had arrived without hearing the full story, so eyewitnesses, presumably the pig herders, explained in their own words and feelings what had taken place. The reaction was both immediate and predictable – everyone was filled with fear and asked Jesus to leave.

I say predictable because the natural human response to such events is to become unsettled, expressed in anxiety and fear. We humans don’t like change, even change for the better. We’d rather stay with our known problems than unproven positive solutions. Perhaps those people would rather that Legion had died – a man of such evil is better dead than transformed. Can “that kind” really change? What if it is some kind of a trick or magic – you can never be sure of what will happen in the end. And on top of it all, the pigs – a local economic resource – were gone. It was enough to freak everyone out and people don’t like to be freaked out, even for a good cause.

Since the locals were raising pigs, it is very possible, likely even, that the herders, at least, were not Jews. Greeks and other Gentiles had settled in the area long ago. Whatever the people were, they were not compassionate about one of their own. They cared for the pigs that they were in any event going to kill and use for a profit, but they wanted nothing to do with this man who, sane or not, had caused all sorts of grief.

These locals weren’t abnormal people – in fact they were fairly normal. When it comes to society’s problem people, we often say we don’t hate them. In reality we don’t want to have anything to do with them. Hate is an emotion we sometimes prefer not to waste on others. We don’t want to be bothered. Thus like these locals, we commit a sin worse even than intolerance.

This “don’t want to be bothered” attitude is one Jesus addresses again and again, particularly in the story he shares a couple chapters later, the one we call “The Good Samaritan.” But I get ahead of myself. In this case, Jesus doesn’t confront the attitude of these locals. He simply gets in the boat and leaves.

This story begs a lot of “whys.” As in why Jesus just decides to leave and abandon this man he’s rescued. We’ll get to that next week, too. As in why the people are filled with fear instead of joy. Isn’t joy the way people respond to such miracles? The answer is no. The people don’t want this man well, they want him gone. We all want grace and forgiveness for ourselves, even as we struggle to transfer that same graciousness to others.

We see the narrow-mindedness in these locals, how they treat this man who has been out of his mind, how they treat the man who has come to heal him – and could have healed so many others as well, if they had only given Jesus a chance. We see how their concern for their own livelihood (money was behind any “concern” they had for the pigs) eclipses any delight they could have mustered for this man now freed of his misery.

We see what they themselves could not see. What do we ourselves not see?

The Madman - Part III

Luke 8:31-33

Sometimes I wonder why I set such high standards for myself. Like the one I have for this blog – that I won’t avoid any passage in Scripture, no matter how complex, unresolvable or troublesome it may be. With topical preaching or blogging (as with random Scripture reading), you can get away with skipping certain passages. But when you have committed yourself to a verse by “painful” verse approach, well, there is no getting around it.

And so we come to the story where Jesus casts demons out of the man who calls himself “Legion” (for he has many demons) and the demons invade a huge herd of pigs which then run into the sea and drown. Jesus has traveled with his disciples to the far side of the Sea of Galilee, to the foreign and forbidding Gentile shore where they are encountered by a man berserk with destructive forces. Jesus goes beyond a power struggle to engage the man himself. But in setting the man free, Jesus – Matthew, Mark and Luke all write – gives the demons permission to go into a nearby herd of pigs instead.

Various options present themselves:

1. The story reflects a different worldview than what we can accept today and so must be de-mythified. Even if that were the case, it still begs the question “why”? Why would Jesus in any worldview choose this method of freeing the man? What is the point of all this?

2. Pigs are less valuable than humans. A corollary point is that life itself is infinitely more important than livelihood, the herd of pigs being a source of wealth for the local population. Both statements could be made based on a broader look at Scripture. One, that the soul of a human being is more valuable than the well-being of lesser creatures. While pigs and pig herding were low on the totem pole of human values in Jewish culture, Jesus is not inclined to adhere to the same values, nor is he given to being dismissive of anything other than arrogance and intolerance. Two, that human life itself is much more important than the means of earning a living. But are these the points this story is making?

3. The story is describing the demonology of the day, namely that demons in leaving a person had to go into another living being or else into the abyss. [“Abyss” here speaks of depth or underworld, the place of imprisonment for evil powers.] The demons wanted to avoid the sea which would destroy them, but in driving the pigs mad, wound up in the sea anyway. But whatever can be said about the cosmology of the time, neither the story nor Scripture as a whole seems to bear this out.

4. We don’t need to trouble ourselves with these verses because they are not essential to the story. Granted, we should be cautious in giving obscure passages and ideas too much weight in interpreting Scripture, but that does not mean we can easily dismiss them, especially not when three different gospels present the same story.

So what is the story saying here? I widen the lens to see the whole of the story. Jesus has met a man who is deeply troubled by spirits that prohibit him from responding to the good news of Jesus and living a blessed life. Jesus treats the man as a person, not as a medical or ministry exhibit, and then engages the forces behind the man’s troubles, just as he did the forces behind the storm on the lake. Which is to say, he is dismissive of them: they are to leave this man at once.

So they ask to be sent into the pigs rather than be destroyed. Nowhere else do we see in demonic forces this level of concern about their own fate, but here they recognize that Jesus has such authority, perhaps because of what has just happened with the storm on the lake. In any case, they request to go instead into the pigs. But the pigs are even less able to tolerate the evil spirits than is the man and so they go crazy and drown. And what of the fate of the demons? We are not told, but it should be noted they no longer stir up trouble wherever Jesus has declared his authority – in the man, in the neighborhood or in the sea itself.

Next post we will look at the after effects of this story on the man and his neighbors. Meanwhile, don’t lose sight of this truth – Jesus has come to free the oppressed and he challenges that oppression both in recognizing the person over the problem and in convincingly pushing back the darkness itself. The result is violent and disturbing, but no more so than what has been going on for far too long in this man who has come identify himself only by his darkness. In the end, while there are casualties, there is a new peace pervading the whole area. Ultimately, Jesus himself becomes the casualty – no more animal sacrifices so that humans can be set free. Jesus has come to deliver and restore all of creation.

The Madman - Part II

Luke 8:27-30

Every small town seems to have its crazed person. Everyone else relates to the “Crazed One” mostly by staying as far away as possible – and every kid in the neighborhood quickly learns the rules of the game. Avoid at all costs, joke about to calm fears, and if you do encounter, make fun of or throw sticks and stones. Name calling, at least, is harmless, or so we chant when we are young.

Jesus makes it a point to go out of his way to relate to people others only avoid. There was that odd trip to Tyre and Sidon where he healed the Greek woman’s daughter. And those passings through Samaria – the most direct route to Jerusalem, yet out of the way as people of the day measured convenience. And then there was this madman living in the hills on the other side of the Sea of Galilee. The Master seems to have had no reason to go all the way over there other than to see this man. Go, he does.

As the Gospels put it, the man meets Jesus and his disciples at the shore as they are getting out of their boat. He probably saw them coming off in the distance and like any naturally curious mad man, he went down to see what these unusual visitors were up to. The locals had long ago learned to avoid the whole area.

Jesus seems to have commanded the evil spirits to leave the man first thing. Only after that does the man speak to Jesus, asking him what he wants with him and pleading with Jesus not to torture him. Whether that is the demons’ request or the man’s request is not clear, but in either case, Jesus does not leave him – or them – alone.

The man’s condition was such that he had been chained up and put under guard to keep him from bothering the locals more than to protect himself. Sometimes he’d break the chains and escape the guards, wandering off into isolated places. Such is the case now, for he is unchained and alone when he meets Jesus.

What the disciples vividly remember from this story is the question that Jesus asks the man, “What is your name?” I’ve heard people use this as a basis for asking demons their names before exorcisms. Partly because I don’t see this being a normal practice of Jesus or his disciples and partly because I see something else in the way Jesus relates to people, I rather think that Jesus had a different purpose in mind in asking this question.

This man, this mad man, who called himself “Legion” because he was tormented by so many evil spirits, was as far outside of human community as one could get. The only people who related to him were the guards who feared him and probably reviled him and treated him like an animal.

But when Jesus meets him for the first time, while he is sharp with the man’s unseen tormentors, he treats the man warmly as a human being, desiring to call him by name. To have a name and to be known by your name are important characteristics of being human. Even Adam is presented as giving the animals names as his first assignment from God.

Names establish relationship. Years ago I watched as a friend of mine, Brady Bobbink, asked a waitress her name and instructed, as Brady is inclined to do, that calling a person by name is important. Name basis changes the interaction equation from object to relational.

Furthermore, in giving his answer as “Legion” the man identifies himself by his condition. He had been somebody before, but since the demons had come to torment him, he had lost all identity other than as “the home of demons.” Such is the dehumanizing objective of evil. Jesus, of course, does not leave the man in that condition, but the change starts with helping the man see his own situation.

Jesus prefers to speak to even the most miserable and forlorn human as a person created in His Father’s image. And so he chooses to speak to this man on name basis. “What is your name?” asked in calm and warmth is one of the most humanizing questions we can pose to a fellow human being. In contradiction to the children’s ditty, name calling does hurt, but naming can also heal.

The Madman – Part I

Luke 8:26

I read this one verse and go no farther. Something in its few words grabs me. “They sailed to the other side, to that side of the lake.”

“They” are Jesus and his disciples. “The lake” is the Sea of Galilee, a mere 14 miles at its longest stretch, and home to several of the disciples. “that side” is foreign country to them, the land of the Gentiles, a group of Greek towns known as the Decapolis stretching south and east from those shores.

I wonder why Jesus makes the effort to come here. It’s not that far, but he rarely ventures outside of Jewish/Samaritan territory. It is light years away by cultural and religious standards. I know why Jesus has come; I’ve read the passage many times. How he heals the man possessed by so many demons and living in isolation from any form of human community. But that only tells me what he does when he gets there. It doesn’t really answer why he comes and does what he does.

Is it to show that he loves people more than pigs? Any follower of Abraham’s God knew the answer to that one. Is it because he wanted to demonstrate that he’d go to great lengths to reach just one person? Maybe, and it makes a great sermon, but the text doesn’t make this point obvious. Is it to prepare the disciples for reaching beyond their own kind? Lots of good ideas here, but the fact is that the text provides no overtly stated reason.

Greater scholars than me may find something solid on which to hang their shingle. I am left with just a feeling, a sense that whatever cosmic reason Jesus may have had – and the violent storm they had to breach to get there lends itself to a cosmic connection – he doesn’t reveal the reason. He only leads his disciples into Gentile territory to rescue, redeem and restore this wild and crazed man.

Before jumping into the encounter with that man and his tormentors, I linger at the arrival on the shore of Jesus and his band. The disciples must be still in awe of what they’ve just experienced. All three of the synoptic writers link the calming of the storm with this visit to this pitiful loner. There is no reason to doubt the chronology.

You experience something like that storm and how Jesus shuts it down and you don’t move on to something else very quickly. And yet here they are. On foreign turf, forbidding territory, the stuff of uncleanness – and that was before they even saw the man known only as “Legion.”

As a kid there were always places you just didn’t go. You knew better than to get near them – either because your mother said “no” in terms you understood all too well or because the place just left you with the feeling that it was not worth a dare. These guys weren’t the touristy kind anyway, let alone the type that would venture into the land beyond the covenant of protection.

Yet here they were. I wonder what was going on in their minds – something like, “Jesus, you are out of yours”? Or were they in that misty state between having just seen the miraculous and having just entered the unmarked door, the haunted house, and their brains were still in neutral.

They knew better than to let Jesus move ahead without them – no way were they going to allow him out of their sight here. So they followed. They went with Jesus into the unknown.

He doesn’t beckon them to come along, but they do. For they’ve learned that he is the man to follow, no matter what may come.

The Mission

Luke 9

We’re just starting chapter 9 of Luke in this weekly blog, The Gatekeeper’s Key. While I’m finishing a couple of major writing projects, I’m taking a short break from my normal blogging. Here is an excerpt (in the rough) on Luke 9 from my manuscript, Night Shift: On a Mission Crossing Borders in the Night, just sent off to my editor:

[Concerning Jesus’ mission, he] came to earth to die so that we could live, but that dying only took a few short hours. It took him three plus years to accomplish the other part of his mission, which was to raise up a people who would extend his work of Blessing throughout the world. It is this very thing we see Jesus doing in Luke 8-10.

In between parables and other teachings in these three chapters, Jesus calms down the weather, exorcises a mega-demoniac, raises a dead girl back to life, heals an incurable sickness, miraculously feeds the multitudes … and that’s just for starters. Actually it is just for starters, because these teachings and miracle stories are an integral part of a very calculated strategy. Remember Mark 3 where we see Jesus calling his followers to be with himself and to send them out? Well, now we see the sending out.

Look at the beginning of Luke 8, the first few verses. Jesus is traveling about, going from one town or village to another. He is both declaring and demonstrating the Kingdom of God. Now, take note who is with him. The Twelve, of course … [and] several women….

[At the beginning of Chapter 9,] Jesus has just finished a whole package of ministry – declaring and demonstrating what his mission is all about – with this mixed band of followers accompanying him. At the beginning of chapter 9, he calls the Twelve together, gives them authority to demonstrate God’s kingdom in his name and sends them out to declare – just as he has been doing. How do they know what to do? They have just been with Jesus watching him declaring and demonstrating. And, Luke says, that is just what they do – “they set out and [go] from village to village, preaching the gospel and healing people everywhere.” (9:6)

Interestingly, Luke records less of Jesus’ own preaching and miracle-working in this chapter and more of the disciples’ activities. The miracles recorded here, feeding the multitude and healing the boy with seizures, involve the participation of the disciples. This is Ministry Lab 101. Jesus’ teachings become opportunities to help guide the Twelve on their initial endeavors. We see Jesus almost exclusively engaged with all or part of the Twelve in helping them grow in character and understanding of the work, and the chapter concludes with quite an altar call of commitment for the Twelve and for anyone else who might be listening.

Then we come to chapter 10. Here, Jesus starts sending out a whole bunch of other people. He is also beginning to push many other followers out of the nest to do just exactly what he and the Twelve have been doing in the previous two chapters. And lest there is any question of this, they return all excited that they too have the requisite authority to demonstrate the power of the Kingdom. While Jesus without hesitation shares their excitement, he is ever quick to remind them that bragging rights belong only to those who have been granted eternal life and nothing more.
….

Now look at what Jesus sends his followers out to do. As we have been saying, he sends them all on a two-fold mission, to declare the Good News and to demonstrate the Good News. There is around this principle a debate that never quits. Which is more important? Declaring or demonstrating? Some say the essential thing is to preach the Word of God. Some say it is to do good deeds. For God, all this debate is a splitting of theological hairs at best and a robbery of energy from God’s ultimate purpose at worst. You can’t have one without the other. There is no declaring God’s Good News without putting it into action. There is no demonstrating God’s Good News without explaining what it is all about. Word and deed go hand in hand.

Wherever Jesus goes, he both declares and demonstrates the Good News of the Kingdom of God. Wherever his followers go, they declare and demonstrate the Good News of the Kingdom of God. And by the time the gospels end, we get the point that anyone who follows Jesus has the same two-fold mission of declaring and demonstrating the Good News of the Kingdom of God.

We are agents on a mission of grace from an alien race. This then is our mission, to bring God’s Blessing to the nations “far as the curse is found," as Isaac Watts penned famously in the carol, “Joy to the World.” To do so means to cross borders – geographically, culturally, socially, materially and spiritually. Thus part of our training beyond learning how to build altars, how to allow ourselves to dream God’s dreams, and how to become advocates and priest trainers, is to learn how to cross borders – and we learn to do that Jesus’ way. How we declare and demonstrate are not necessarily time or place bound. There are some basic principles, one of which is what is called in bibliospeak, “Incarnation.”

The Storm-Buster

Luke 8:22-25

The plot is simple enough. Jesus and his disciples are crossing a lake, the very same lake several of these disciples have spent much of their entire lives fishing. They know it like the back of their hand. A tricky body of water, it often rises suddenly with much fury and just as quickly settles back down. Even so, these same fishing pros are overwhelmed in battling this particular storm. Jesus, on the other hand, has fallen asleep in the boat, resting blissfully while those around him are worked up into a panic.

Jesus awakes to the cries of the disciples fearing they are about to drown. First he rebukes the storm, then he rebukes his disciples for their lack of faith, and then he moves on. As the storm is subdued, the disciples marvel that Jesus is able to command even nature itself to obey him.

Some readers extract the miraculous out of this tale, others take it as it is. More troubling for me than the “whether” or “how” in this story, however, is the “why.” Why is it in the Bible? What purpose does it serve? The same story is recorded in two other gospels (Matthew and Mark) and a similar story appears in Mark and John, albeit there Jesus is not in the boat to start with, but comes walking on the water to meet the disciples in a storm. In both stories’ cases, Jesus’ presence guarantees the safety of the disciples and affirms him as Master of the Elements.

So is this story about his power of protection and/or is it about his power over nature? Or is it more about the disciples learning about faith, which is clearly mentioned in Jesus’ rebuke to them. Does he expect them to calm the sea themselves or to calmly and with an inner peace rely on him to get them safely to the other side in spite of the storm? Should they have cried out to him as they did, or done so more laid back?

Whatever the case case, the fishermen among them come to realize they are not necessarily masters in their own familiar environment, that what is needed is a faith that goes beyond what they had understood as fishermen. Such a faith is surely needed if this storm is out of the ordinary, supernatural even, the nature of which the disciples have never before faced.

For those who note what follows (the healing of the Demoniac called Legion), the storm takes on added significance as Jesus works through obstructions to get to a man in need of Jesus’ healing and Good News. It is certainly true that all kinds of barriers inhibit people from receiving Jesus’ message and that part of the mission as Believers is to remove those obstacles so that the Good News can effectively be communicated.

All the above may indeed be true about this story. Certainly, the result is that the disciples continue to grow in their understanding of who this Jesus really is. Every such encounter strengthens their faith and expands their vision of their Master, to the point that in the next chapter Peter comes to call him the Messiah.

As I reflect on this story, I realize that when I think Jesus is not responding to my needs, when he doesn’t seem to be present or involved, he very much still is. He is with me in the boat.

I wonder what would have happened if the disciples had not cried out to their Master? Would they have all drowned, including Jesus? I don’t think so. Such an idea fits with nothing I know about God. But all this does remind me that no matter what comes, no storm in life is beyond my Master’s control, and even my expressions of doubt and fear don’t faze him. At times he may ask me where my faith is, but he is still my Master and he always gets me safely to the other side. As the old hymn concludes, “O for grace to trust him more.”

The Sower and the Seed - Part V

Luke 8:19-21

We don’t hear much about Jesus’ biological family in the four gospels, other than during his childhood and around his death and resurrection. The gospel of John alone refers to Jesus’ mother and brothers being with Jesus at the very beginning of his ministry.

There is that famous passage (John 2) where his mother encourages him to do something about the shortage of wine at a wedding. Jesus tries to get out of it, but his mother persists and so Jesus obliges, turning the water into wine and causing stress ever after among Sunday School teachers everywhere. After that wedding, perhaps of some distant relation, Jesus goes down to Capernaum along with his mother and brothers, his small flock of disciples tagging along. But at that point, these family members seem to drop away and Jesus is left alone with his growing following.

Whatever the occasion for their visit now, it follows (in Luke, anyway) the parables of the Seed Sower and the Lamp, and Jesus is pictured using their visit to bring home the point even more clearly that the life of faith is all about how we are to be receptive to God’s Word. This point and the family visit are so linked in the minds of his followers years later that Matthew and Mark also connect the event and the teaching together. It leaves a very deep impression on all who witness it, including Jesus’ brothers.

Jesus has just finished telling his followers to consider very carefully how they listen to God because the more they receive from God the more they are able to receive from God. While Jesus is saying all this, someone lets him know that his mother and brothers are outside, wanting to see him. They can’t get in because the crowd is too big – and perhaps they really want Jesus to come out to see them because they want to talk with him concerning a private matter away from all these strangers.

Jesus’ brothers haven’t yet bought into Jesus’ mission. I suspect they have struggled with Jesus leaving the family business and running around with all these groupies. Jesus is the first-born after all and has an obligation to his mother, if no one else. He really does have familial responsibilities he is ignoring, a concern echoed by another man not much later when that man struggles with his own family obligations and whether he can follow Jesus because of them. What Jesus says to that man is what he himself is now practicing: “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:62) In fact, it this very kind of family divisiveness Jesus will soon enough explain he has come to bring, all in the name of God’s will.

So they come to Jesus, hoping to sort out some matter with him, family-like. Social etiquette of the day says that a person should interrupt his business to respond to a family request. But Jesus apparently doesn’t even respond to them. He simply goes on speaking to his disciples, continuing his train of thought about what it means to really hear or listen to the word of God. What it means is that we don’t just listen, we actually do something about it. Moreover, the only family Jesus has any more, the only people Jesus sees as his mother and brothers are those “who hear God’s word and put it into practice.”

I wonder how many of Jesus’ teachings his biological siblings heard in person. It may be that this was just such a rare message – and it was aimed directly at them. I consider my family, Jesus said, to be those who hear God’s message and actually do something about it.

If that is the case, then it is no wonder that James, understood to be the brother of Jesus, later places such great emphasis on obedience to God’s word, particularly when he writes “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says” (James 1:22). James had heard that clearly enough in that terse sermon so long ago, so much so that he dared add counterweight to Paul’s teachings on grace by declaring that we must demonstrate our faith by our deeds of good will. Even demons believe, he writes, but only those who are true followers of Jesus actually do the will of God (James 2:14-19). James had learned his brother’s lesson well.

The Sower and the Seed - Part IV

Luke 8:16-18

Most times, people consider verse 15 the end of the passage dealing with the parable of “the Sower and the Seed.” But when I look at verse 18, I wonder if all of 8:1-18 isn’t to be considered in the same frame of reference.

The point of the main parable is: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” Jesus then concludes with verse 18: “Therefore consider how you listen.” Don’t just hear what I am saying, but make sure you are listening carefully to what I am saying. The point of the main parable is that wherever the seeds goes, what determines if the seed grows and produces is how receptive the soil is to the seed.

Jesus then continues on in this mindset with a parable that uses a very different example. Instead of seed, we are talking about lamps. For most of the past two millennia, this parable has made perfect sense. But Edison changed all that once and for all when he invented the electric light bulb and lamps became things the relative wealthy of this world only used on camping trips or when the power went out in a bad storm. Even then, such lamps are more and more electrical, like batteries, and not the oil lamps of old.

But the parable still makes sense. No one turns on an electrical lamp and then hides it in a closet or covers it with a blanket. I did that once when I was a kid. Was reading in bed way past “lights out” and so I hid the lamp under my blanket with the lampshade off (too cumbersome, I guess). Burned a hole in my sheet and the truth of my misadventure came to light after all.

We generally don’t turn on lights to hide them. During World War II, my mother and her parents were sailing back to America from China. Enemy submarines followed the ship all the way to the New York harbor and twice it was falsely reported sunk. At night, no lights were allowed on ship. Even a single lighted cigarette could be seen for miles on the darkened sea. Light penetrates darkness.

So what is the point of what we call the “Lamp on a Stand” parable? Is this about evangelism or letting our good works show? It might be taken that way, but the context is much more about hearing and responding to God’s will. Hearing the word of God requires an honesty and receptivity on the part of the hearer. Just because you have ears doesn’t mean you actually hear. And just because you hear what is being said doesn’t mean you are actively listening.

So, Jesus goes on in explaining about the lamp, ultimately you can’t hide anything. In the long run, you can’t get away with anything. You pretend to be listening when you really aren’t. You act like you are receptive when you really aren’t. You look like you have ears, but they are not serving their purpose.

Verse 16 is not about hiding lamps. It is about not allowing things in our lives to come to light, to be revealed, when God shines the light of truth on them. The Word of God comes to us. Some of it we like and we believe and take in and it changes us. Some of it we don’t like and we act like we are receiving it when we really are not. We think we are getting away with ignoring the verses we haven’t underlined. We think we are getting away with underlining other verses when we are selective with what we do about them. But in the end all such evasiveness will catch up with us.

So be very careful how you listen because, Jesus concludes, the more you listen, the better you are able to hear, and the less you listen, the harder it is for you to hear. When we start being selective with what we accept from God and God’s Word, we start shutting God out of our lives and someday even what we think we have from God is lost.

How do we learn to hear God’s voice? By applying whatever we do hear from Him – ASAP. The more receptive we are, the more we can receive. But keep listening, because Jesus isn’t yet finished with this train of thought…

The Sower and the Seed - Part III

Luke 8:11-15

For many of us who grew up in the Christian Faith, we know this passage so well we barely listen to it anymore. It has become a worn groove in our psyche that we warm up to out of impulse even as we no longer respond at a deeper level. At best, we are glad when it is taught. At worst, we are glad only so those newer or lesser saints around us can hear it.

Parables are not allegorical, a labyrinth of meanings. They have but one point. And Jesus doesn’t say much more about them other than to tell them. No explanation, they become point and illustration rolled into one. But in this case, when the disciples corner Jesus because they want to understand the story more clearly, Jesus willingly obliges them. He is, after all, looking for responsive listeners.

The seed itself is the word of God – spoken, written, Jesus himself, whatever form it comes in, it is God’s self-revelation to humankind. This seed, scattered in the farming fashion of the ancient times, falls on good soil and bad.

I love to garden. I’m not great at it, but I’ve learned that if you do it enough, a surprising amount turns out well and earns you applause from friends and neighbors. The life, you see, is in the DNA (or in the “seed”). A seed that is given the right environment (generally light, soil or nutrients, and water) in a healthy balance or mix is going to produce. It is the overarching law of nature. So if something doesn’t come up, it is generally not the seed’s fault.

In spiritual dimensions, the Word of God is always going to produce. The question is whether it comes to “fruition,” meaning whether it bears fruit. Actually “fruit” means the seed the plant produces for the next generation. The Word of God is always going to produce more seed.

The question, then, is whether the seed is in “soil” receptive to the seed. Hydroponics aside, the seed needs soil because there is life in that soil, meaning nutrients the seed can feed on. And the seed needs soil that is free of major hindrances like packed earth or rocks or other blocking vegetation.

It’s amazing where plants can crop up. I’ve been on hikes in the Cascades above the tree line and been surprised to see a flower blooming in something that would be a stretch to call “soil.” Yesterday I checked my son’s car (which we are car-sitting), only to discover something growing out of the space between the back trunk and the car’s main body. We’ve been keeping the car driven, but in the three weeks he’s been away, a seed had gotten in the crack and, in our unusually mild Northwest February, had sprouted.

So what kinds of things hinder the seed from growing and bearing more seed? What the listeners of that day heard and understood was that sometimes the seed doesn’t produce because the ground is too hard (not receptive, been trampled on too much, hardened by other things in life); because the soil has no depth, so that the sprout quickly withers (initial receptivity that, for whatever reason, gives way to waning interest); or because of thorns, which Jesus plainly relates to life’s worries, riches and pleasures – distractions all, that choke out the growing seed.

So the seed is good, but the soil can be less than responsive. Elsewhere, Scripture talks about preparing the soil (or the hearer), but in this case, the parable is a warning to the listeners themselves to “hear if you have ears.” And if you do heed or respond to the word with “a noble and good heart,” the seed will produce in your life. It doesn’t come without effort on the part of the listener, who as Jesus exhorts, must hear, retain, and then persevere – meaning continue to reflect on and apply to all areas of life. It is easy to assume because we have the word growing in some areas of our lives that it is growing in all areas of our lives. But, as this parable illustrates, we too can be a mixed garden.

The Sower and the Seed - Part II

Luke 8:9-10

“Eyes that do not see and ears that do not hear (or understand).”

When a phrase is repeated by so many biblical writers, it starts to carry special weight. This saying is expressed in Deuteronomy 29:4 by Moses, and by three prophets: Isaiah (6:9), Jeremiah (5:21), and Ezekiel (12:2). In the New Testament, Jesus is quoted as saying it in all four of the Gospels (Matthew 13:4, Mark 4:12; Luke 8:10, and John 12:40) and by Paul in Acts 28:26 and in his own writings in Romans 11:8. Whew! Sounds like we better listen up!

It is easy to get to the place where we think we understand when we really don’t comprehend at all. God’s voice to us becomes like so much water off a duck’s back. It doesn’t stick. We no longer listen, treating it as just familiar background noise.

In each of these passages, the message is being given to people who are used to hearing God’s voice. And the message, especially in Isaiah 6:9 from where Jesus is quoting, is that if you don’t heed God’s voice when you hear it, you will eventually stop noticing it. In fact it will become hard work to listen to God.

In this passage in Luke, Jesus has just told the parable of the Sower. As with a couple of his other parables, the disciples stop Jesus and ask him to explain. We get the picture from Mark that the disciples take Jesus aside to inquire privately. Even there that private hearing is not limited to the Twelve. But we get the idea that it is not the whole crowd.

The poor, who make up Jesus’ normal audience love hearing Jesus teach and they grab hold of his parables like they are manna from heaven. They “eat” willingly because they are starving for truth, even though they may not follow it all.

The usual followers of Jesus -- meaning the Twelve, the women and others -- probably catch on to much of what he is saying. But there are times when they don’t quite get his point. At those moments, they either just file it away among “obscure ideas to be explored after the Day of Pentecost” or they just come out with it right then and there: “Jesus, what on earth do you mean?” They aren’t fighting Jesus’ point, they really want to understand it.

This is one of those what-do-you-mean moments. So he careful explains that he is willing to speak clearly to them concerning what he calls “the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God,” but to others he speaks only in parables. It is not that Jesus is trying to hide truth from people. He is merely following his own principle of “not feeding pearls to pigs” (to quote Matthew 7:6) or, in plainer words, not dispensing truth to those who have no regard for the truth.

So does Jesus play favorites? Why does he speak plainly to some and not to others? The answer lies in the very parable he is now explaining. The seed goes freely everywhere, but some receive it more willingly than others. In a minute, they will hear Jesus tell them that to those who receive what is given to them, more will be given (verse 18). For now he is saying that understanding comes to those who are willing to listen, who do not shut their ears to God’s truth.

Jesus has many followers. Some eventually leave him, even one of the chosen Twelve. Why do they, who have seen and experienced Jesus up close and “unplugged,” to use a contemporary expression meaning “off-stage,” why do they later reject Jesus? How can you hear the truth, really hear it, and reject it? There are a zillion things that happen inside each one of us, so there is no way to say it is always this thing or that. But Jesus is explaining that when we continue to hear God’s word and reject it, we stop listening. The best way to keep receiving more from God is to accept what He’s already given to us. To those who refuse to eat, food eventually becomes toxic.

The Sower and the Seed - Part I

Luke 8:5-8

When I was a little tyke, I visited the Abbott farm during planting season. They let me work right along with Mr. Abbott as he planted his Jersey corn. He went down each row, poking holes, I crouching along beyond, dropping three seeds in each hole. I guess I must have covered the seeds with dirt as I went along or else Mr. Abbott went back behind me to finish up. I don't really remember. All I know is, that day I learned how to plant.

Years later, I traveled to a remote area in Northwest China, up into the deeply eroded hills of Gansu. Much of China's uneven terrain has been tamed into terraced hills, but in this arid, windswept wilderness, the hills were too rough even for terracing. And yet I saw fields of grain growing on land so steep it seemed impossible for a person to climb up let alone cultivate it.

How did they sow those fields, I asked my local guide? He said, "They call those plots 'leaving-it-up-to-the-gods' fields." The farmers, desperate to plant any land they could, simply tossed extra seed onto nearly vertical slopes in the hope that even in that scrappy soil, they could reap a harvest. I have no idea how they gleaned those fields, but I have no doubt that whatever came up was indeed harvested.

That Gansu sort of farming is very much like the kind of farming we find spoken of in this parable. No digging holes and dropping in three seeds here. You simply scattered the seed and waited to see what the harvest would bring.

The agricultural revolution was still many centuries in the future. Yet the laws of the harvest instilled at the beginnings of the earth applied as much back then as they do now. What you plant is what you harvest, as Jesus says elsewhere. Then as now all farmers acknowledged a multiplication effect in farming, that any farmer anticipated to reap much more than he sowed. It is the sowing technique, as much as anything, that has changed.

In the planting style of that ancient day, Jesus explained spiritual principles to his listeners. They all knew that at planting time, the person who sowed went out and scattered seed wherever he could. Hopefully most of that seed was going to fall on good soil, places where the ground had been cultivated, either by hand or with oxen.

"A farmer went to sow his seed," Jesus told his listeners all equally hungry for a good story and starving for something more than what life had offered so far. Jesus gestured with his arm like he himself was scattering seed and they watched his hand move through the air, as he said, "That farmer simply tossed that seed into the wind. And as he did, some of that seed fell on his own pathway, where he and others stepped on it and the birds flew down to snatch it up. Some fell among the rocks where it had no chance to take root, and so it quickly withered and died. Other seed fell among thorns where the seeds could grow, but where the little plants were later chocked by the thorns.

"And then there was the seed that landed on the good soil, soil that was freshly dug up, loose and cleared of thorns and weeds. When this seed came up, it produced a huge crop, as many as one hundred seeds of grain for every seed planted."

That was his story. Like most parables, this one was short and to point, something even the simplest of folks could remember long after. The point of the story was something Jesus generally left up to his listeners to sort out. That was the thing about parables. They stuck with you like a thick noodle-mutton-and-bread soup, stirring around inside you for days until, like the seed itself, they started to sprout into new thoughts and ideas. And you came up with the point yourself.

So it was that Jesus left them with this challenge, "If you can hear, then listen to what I am saying." In other words, think about it.

Parable Training

Luke 8:4

It is one of his most famous stories, the Parable of the Sower. Jesus was talking mostly to common folk - not wealthy landowners, but the poor laborers who actually sowed the seed and harvested the crops. These were not urban cowboys who thought milk came out of plastic jugs. These were people who knew what growing grain actually looked like, up close and personal.

Parables were a common teaching tool of the day. Rabbis and itinerant teachers in Jewish society loved it as a unique story form that illuminated larger spiritual truths from everyday life. So Jesus was using something common to the culture where he found himself.

Parables are not allegories along the lines of "Pilgrim's Progress," in which the minutest of details has special meaning. With a few exceptions, parables are stories with but one single point. Where we know we have an exception to the rule is when the teacher or rabbi himself extrapolates or draws out those additional analogies, as is the case with this particular parable. Generally, though, the one-point rule applies. Otherwise parables could mean whatever the re-teller or listener wants them to mean.

Sometimes the main point is obvious in the parable itself. Other times the context helps us. And there are parables that have tended to lose meaning the farther we are from the culture in which they are set. Certainly knowing Jesus, his message and his earthly culture help us to understand his parables - and the parables in turn help us understand his message that much more fully.

Jesus loved to teach in parables because, while to the skeptic or closed-minded person the meaning was obscured, to the hungry hearer the good news came through plain, simple and straightforward. Any message or teaching is going to be more transparent to a responsive student. And this parable draws out this very idea that those who are open are the ones who will receive.

According to Luke's Gospel, Jesus has already been teaching in parables. His earlier ones, such as the "Wise and Foolish Builders" tend to call the listener to a response to the Good News. Now Jesus takes this a step further, concentrating on his followers themselves, those who have already responded to the Good News.

In chapter 8, we see him demonstrating and declaring his message in the vicinity of the Sea of Galilee, an area called the Decapolis (meaning "ten cities"). As he is going about, he has this flock of followers with him - observing, helping and themselves preparing to minister just as Jesus is now doing.

The disciples don't quite yet know that they are going to be declaring and demonstrating the Good News, or at least they don't know how or what all that means. And so as Jesus goes forth with one eye on the ripe harvest of people desperate to hear good news, he has his other eye on his followers who he is preparing to turn into workers to help even more people.

In sharing this parable, he is talking to his own disciples. Verse 4 explains that while a large crowd of people was gathering, Jesus told this parable to those already there. And who was already there but those who had already chosen to follow him?

Jesus wants his disciples, his followers, to understand what the task of spreading the Good News is going to look like. Not everyone will respond positively to the good news. Not everyone is going to be receptive. And so he is setting realistic expectations for those who will soon be doing just as he is now doing.

When I was a college student in Florida, I attended a large meeting of the healing evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman. Kathryn was unique among faith healers of the time because she didn't have a healing line, where she laid hands on the sick as they came forward. At least in the meeting I attended, she only had those come forward who were being healed right then and there in the meeting, generally at their seats.

Close by where we were sitting, an older gentleman suddenly realized he had been healed in a way that was at once obvious, at least to himself. His friends encouraged him to go forward and he did. After he shared with Kuhlman and the audience that he had been healed, he also mentioned that he was not a Believer in Jesus. When Kuhlman asked him if now that he had been healed he also believed, to everyone's amazement he said, "No." He went back to his seat a healed, yet still unbelieving man.

The Good News comes to all whether they accept it or not. Jesus went about blessing people regardless of whether or how they would receive it and he wanted his followers to share the Good News in the same way.

Break: "Tale of My Two Sons"

I'm taking a personal break today from blogging. Besides being a national holiday in honor of one of my boyhood heroes, Martin Luther King, Jr., I am saying goodbye to my son. So instead I've written a short piece on what it feels like for a pacifist-leaning father to say goodbye to his son as the young man joins the army. You're welcome to read my thoughts on my website: "Tale of My Two Sons." I'll be back next week with Luke 8:4ff and the "Parable of the Sower."

Jesus' Many Female Disciples

Luke 8:2-3

Besides the famous Twelve, there were many other disciples of Jesus in his traveling entourage, including, surprisingly, quite a few women. Luke mentions three of these women by name. Mary from Magdala near Galilee Lake, is to modern readers the most well-known of them all as Mary Magdalene. She who had been cured of seven demons seems to have been among the closest to Jesus, being right there at the foot of his Cross and being the first person to whom Jesus appears after his resurrection. Johanna was the wife of a man named Cuza, whom Luke records was manager of Herod's household. Besides having a position of prestige in the Galilean aristocracy, Cuza was a man of financial means. There was also Suzanna, referred to only by name.

As I've already mentioned, there were many such women. Mark in his gospel also includes in this group Mary the mother of James the "Younger" (one of the Twelve) and of Joses, and also Salome. Matthew mentions the mother of Zebedee's sons, James and John. Luke later mentions that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Joanna and other unnamed women were the ones who went to Jesus' tomb on the morning of the resurrection, though Mary Magdalene is the only one to whom Jesus seems to have appeared at the tomb.

These women who were well known to have followed Jesus from Galilee were also with the Apostles and other disciples in the Upper Room when the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost. They were very qualified to act as witnesses of Jesus' life, ministry, death and resurrection, a noteworthy badge of recognition in the New Testament church.

All these women played significant roles in Jesus' ministry, not the least of which was that they supported Jesus and the rest of his entourage out of their own means. As has always been the case throughout the history of the Church, most of Jesus' followers were extremely poor. For while the rich always have so much to lose by publicly following Jesus, the poor receive his good news gladly. "Means" can mean a whole range of things, but the clear implication here is that these women bankrolled Jesus' ministry, covering the cost, for example of basic necessities such as food and shelter.

They were women who had themselves been outcasts, even those who were high on the social ladder, for they had either been sick with some most likely incurable disease or they had been demon possessed. Compare these women with Betty Ford, widow of the former United States President, Gerald Ford, a woman of obvious social and political status, who went through alcohol and medication abuse rehabilitation. As a result of such well-publicized healing, she did much to help others in similar condition. So, too, these women who followed Jesus enhanced Jesus' ministry to others like them.

It is amazing that Jesus willingly attracted people of such questionable reputation. To us more enlightened moderns, physical sickness is not a stigma on the level of drug abuse or demon possession. But keep in mind that, not all that long ago, people with chronic diseases, disabilities and depression were set aside and even denied positions of honor and leadership in our society. Think of Senator Tom Eagleton who was considered unfit to run for Vice President because of previously being clinically diagnosed with depression. Or of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt whose paralyzed legs were a condition to be hidden lest they become a political liability. While supposedly more open-minded people today would not discredit a child born out of wedlock, a child who suffers abuse as a kid can still grow up to find that there is an air of suspicion attached to such a "record," even one made healthy by Jesus himself.

Jesus welcomed people with such checkered pasts, one and all, and even included them in his inner circle. In fact, it was obvious to a relative outsider like Luke that Jesus purposefully chose people who had struggled with spiritual, emotional, mental and physical disabilities. As Jesus said elsewhere, he came not for the healthy but for the unhealthy.

Even healthy women without histories of sickness, disabilities or such were not usually included in follower bands of religious teachers, especially not by name. Here Jesus certainly broke the social code of the day, surprising even his own disciples by relating directly to women. Jesus was all about tearing down access barriers to God's love and grace, regardless of gender and any other human-imposed restrictions.

The term Mark uses in his gospel to describe the work these women did for Jesus is the same term the Early Church later used for what it called "deacons" (cf. Mark 15:41). These women, rescued from lives of pain, oppression and ostracism, weren't just along for the ride. They joined to serve and to make possible the rescue of many others like themselves. In so doing, they to whom Jesus came to minister also became an integral part of Jesus' ministry to others.

Jesus' Plan of Action

Luke 8:1-3

Luke lays out his gospel with certain passages serving as key transitions where strategy ramps up. In the first few verses of Luke 8 is one of the more significant of these transitions.

In Luke 8:1, he writes that Jesus begins to travel around from one town or village to another, basically all over Galilee. What he does as he travels, Luke records, is to declare and demonstrate God's good news.

Jesus is not alone as he travels, for the Twelve disciples are with him. At this stage, they seem to follow along as observers. Everything that happens in the follow chapter is Jesus doing something with the disciples looking on or listening.

They are not the only ones in the official entourage, for there are, Luke takes great pains to clarify, several women who also travel with Jesus and his otherwise male team. Actually, there are many women who are part of this group, a group that seems to have one thing in common besides being women - they've been cured of various diseases and liberated from evil spirits. Plus freed, I should add, from the curse of being female in that ancient patriarchal society and thus left out of things deemed important to the work of God. They weren't just set free from something, they were set free to serve and minister and to be close to Jesus.

This time of going from one place to another is actually Phase II of Jesus' strategy to declare and demonstrate the Good News. Phase I begins in Luke 4 where in his own home town of Nazareth he sets forth his mission. There he quotes the words of Isaiah the prophet, telling his kin and childhood neighbors that right then and there Isaiah's words are being fulfilled. "The Spirit of the Lord is on me," he proclaims, "to preach good news to the poor, to set captives free, heal the blind, release the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." Over the next short period, he goes about doing just that, mostly staying in the vicinity of Galilee Lake.

As he heals the sick and casts out demons and preaches to the poor, he also calls those who he has blessed to follow him. More than just the group we call the Twelve. For Jesus had many disciples. But of the many, Twelve were assigned a specific role as Apostles, specifically tasked with being "sent out". And then there were these many women referred to now in Luke 8:2-3. I'll talk more about them in the next posting. For the moment I want to focus on Jesus' methodology.

Here in chapter 8 Jesus sets out to declare and demonstrate the good news. He does this by fulfilling his mission set forth back in Luke 4 - to declare good news to the poor by proclaiming the year of the Lord's favor, speaking specifically of the Year of Jubilee when everything is made right, and to demonstrate the good news by actually making things right as in healing the sick, casting out demons, and freeing captives and other oppressed people. He has already been doing all this, but now he does so overtly with those he has been pulling together, namely the Twelve and these women. This systematic incorporation of his followers is Phase II of his strategy.

Quite often the chapter divisions get in the way of Scriptural interpretation, being added as they were long after the Scriptures were written and canonized. Luke 8-10 is one place where these chapter changes make good sense. For at the beginning of chapter 9, we see Phase III kick in. Starting with 9:1, Jesus sends out the Twelve to do just as Jesus has been doing. Then in chapter 10, we see Phase IV unfolding. Here is where he moves beyond the Twelve to include six times as many people in the work, disciples who are set out in the same manner. This group is known as the Seventy-Two (or Seventy, ancient manuscripts being hard to decipher on this).

Jesus is not only about declaring and demonstrating the good news. He is as much about calling and equipping others to do the same. Part of the good news is that it is participatory. And the plan unfolds one phase at a time as the group swells in size, less a messy mob than an organized team. Jesus doesn't worry about it being too organized, for human management is less critical than Spirit leading. And human hierarchy is not something Jesus fusses over. He apparently is much more concerned that people are communicating and doing Truth rather than that they all have their organizational ducks in a row. At least he doesn't get uptight when James and John shortly thereafter see some stranger exorcising demons in Jesus' name. Jesus cares little for copyright laws and territorial rights. The Good News is getting out and common people are doing it!