1 Kings 21:17-29; 1 Cor. 1:20-31; Matt. 4:12-17

Today in Matthew: “When Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to the Galilee.  He left Nazareth and made his home in the lake region in Capernaum.”

It was just a few days ago we talked about this in Wednesday Noon Bible study, and the importance of knowing the land.  Understanding that “Fifth Gospel” – the story the land itself tells, is integral to the story.  If you are really serious about knowing this, joining me on one of my trips to Israel is easy.  The next trip however is the Journeys of Paul.  It’s a Mediterranean Cruise so you might be even more excited.  www.mattmeinke.com/trips Nevertheless, save up for Israel, because everyone should experience the Holy Land at least once in their lives.

When you know the land of Israel, you can easily spot that this verse marks a sudden and significant shift in the gospel’s focus.  John’s ministry was one isolated in the wilderness.  He may have been associated with the Essences, who were interested in purity and separation from the corruption of the Temple guard.  Nazareth on the other hand was in the Galilee.  It was mainly farmers and shepherds, with some artisans interspersed.  But by going to Capernaum though, Jesus sets a tone that says something even more radical: Those who shall see the great light are those who have sat in great darkness, and now on them light has shined.

And who are these new “light-shined people”? Fishermen, tradesmen, and foreigners.  Around this lake are the outcast of Hebrew society.  It is pure Greco-Roman life colliding with Jews, and the furthest thing from the temple imaginable.

This passage all but says God’s rule is coming to those you least expect.  Brace yourself for a bumpy ride, because this story gets crazy.  Indeed it does.  Not only does the Messiah die on a cross, but the inheritors of the kingdom are a rag-tag bunch of misfits, many of which came from this region.  These people were the salt of the earth, literally connected to the land.  They were not the learned people of the temple mount.  They were not the great teachers of the law or morally upstanding citizens.

This passage, while cloaked in esoteric language and code, stands as a beautiful descriptor of the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  It would be much like Oklahomans saying, “And now, even those Texans will see the great light!”  In the most unimaginable place possible, grace and glory shall rise.  (My apologizes to any Shorthorn fans following my blog.  Ooops, Longhorn.  Longhorn.)

May the glory of God shine into all the distant and dark regions of your heart this day.  May you find the good news in the least likely of places.

If you are interested in knowing more about the Holy Land the easiest way is to join my Wednesday Noon Bible study: www.fpcduncan.com

-Matt

1 Kings 21:1-16; 1 Cor. 1:1-19; Matt. 4:1-11

All of you have apps on your phone.  A couple of my apps are these silly addictive games.  No I never got into Candy Crush (thank God!).  Instead I fell into the Clash of Clans craze a few years ago, and all the related games of kingdoms, wars, alliances, and the like.  Most days I want to throw my phone out the car window because of this.

Often I am forming my own city, or a whole kingdom.  Usually there is a chance that when I am not logged in someone might “attack” my city (which I think btw is how they get you hooked so quickly and easily!).  It used to drive me nuts.  Now I just don’t care.

Well as you might suspect, one aspects of these games is forming alliances.  And one of the things I have realized in the midst of this is that allegiances are often hard.

Now you all know me.  My allegiances — to my Christian faith, to the Packers, to OU, to the Thunder, to all my alma maters, and to this country — these are easy for me.  These are a given.  But it is quite another thing to remain faithful to a new alliance that has just formed in my little game, when I question everyone’s motives.  I have seen them cheat and steal and wonder why this time should be any different.

Both New Testament readings today deal with allegiances today.  Jesus goes to battle, being tempted in the wilderness.  Paul takes on the church in Corinth and their divisions of loyalty.

“What I mean is that each of you says, ‘I belong to Paul,’ or ‘I belong to Apollos,’ or ‘I belong to Cephas,’ or ‘I belong to Christ.’  Has Christ been divided?  Was Paul crucified for you?  Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?”

The newness of Christianity might have been in the minds of the people.  Will this all survive?  Who are we?  What are we doing?

Paul equates the struggles of the church not simply to “disagreement” or differing opinions.  Today we chalk up problems in the church this way – as “disagreements” or “individualism” or “personal preference.”  Not Paul.  He declares this to be a matter of wisdom.  “For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’”

Each and every time I encounter Paul’s writings I am amazed at how pertinent they are to our times as well.  The Church is still struggling with proclaiming Christ crucified and understanding how to deal with divisions in the church.  What we learn from Paul most is “how to argue.”  He is brilliant at it.  He seems to win every intellectual argument he makes.

The other part of this is that he keeps talking.  He stays in community – in covenant with those with whom he disagrees.  He remains faithful to the allegiance he made, because he knows it was not to an individual church, but to CHRIST.

What I like about the Presbyterian Church is that we pride ourselves on this.  We follow Christ.  We also believe as part of our polity that we MUST keep talking.  We value the minority opinion in any debate.  To outsiders it may seem like just fight after fight after fight.  “Haven’t you settled that gay marriage thing yet?”  No, we haven’t.  Heck, we haven’t settled that women’s ordination thing yet.  I still hear an occasional rumbling about that.

This is because we are a church that encourages diversity of opinion.  We even value it!  And why?  Because this is how we sense the Spirit of God at work.  In our differences we are able to listen to God and allow the Spirit to work – to speak to us in new and fresh ways.  If we were to silence the minority, we wouldn’t be able to listen to God as successfully and fully.

Remaining faithful to that kind of pledge is quite another thing.  Working out the voice of God takes patience and understanding.  It takes years of listening.  We are a church that is “reformed, and always reforming,” structured in a way that change is possible, in case God decides we need to do things a bit differently to respond to a changing world.

So fights are good?  Sometimes.  If done well!  Perhaps we can take a lesson from Paul, and keep talking in appropriate and healthy ways.

-Matt

1 Kings 18:20-40; Phil. 3:1-16; Matt. 3:1-12

The voice of John the Baptist calls out in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight.”  Eating locusts and honey and hiding out in the desert by the Jordan makes for great political theater.

John is thought by many to be part of the Essences, a radical group of well-learned scribes who took seriously their own ritual purity.  They knew that in order to be pure they would have to escape the “dirty” corrupt Temple guard, as well as the hypocritical Pharisees.  They went to the desert, and functioned very much like a monastery…except they were anything but hermits.  They were attracting a large following and creating a political face-off with the Temple guard.

The gospel writing is letting it be known that John the Baptist was aligned with Jesus.  Right away we know this is going to be a philosophical and political fight.  We have never seen religion and politics intersect (Har Har!!!)  Just kidding, it is all over!

The problem is that the Messiah the Essences was looking for was not the Messiah that Jerusalem was looking for.  It was a political powder keg.  And Jesus blows it up.

Surprise and intrigue.  Theological and ideological battles.  It’s funny how some never get around to discovering that this is all throughout the Bible.  They mistakenly think that the Bible is black and white and leaves no theological position unclear.  These are often the same old souls who shrug on Sunday morning and say “I believe in the separation of church and politics when anyone mentions something Jesus mentioned.”

These same type of folks – the ones who expect life to be simple and the Bible to be in black and white – are the same folks who marvel that anyone could come to a conclusion about scripture that is different than what they believe.  Like the Spirit never moves in mysterious ways.  But the reality is that the Bible is full of stories of theological disputes, differences of opinion, and surprise.

But beware!  Most of the time there are differences of opinion, it is between GOD and humanity.  The Bible, it turns out, is a story of God working amidst the muck of human existence, and saving us despite it all.

Our job in this world is to figure out God’s way.

-Matt

1 Kings 16:23-34; Phil. 1:12-30; Mark 16:1-8(9-20)

He is risen!

Today is the remarkable ending of the Gospel of Mark.  It is my favorite ending of any book in the Bible.  I love Mark, and here it is today in all its splendor.

All along in Mark we have had Jesus’ identity enshrouded in mystery.  No one seems to get it.  Those who do are urged to secrecy: “Shhh, don’t tell anyone who I am.”  The demons are silenced.  The crowd is kept in the dark.  Even the disciples, who have some inkling of Jesus’ identity, either don’t get it, or at the cross, scatter and tell no one.  Where are his 12 male disciples?  Gone.

It is the women who are entrusted with the secret.

Three women show up at the tomb.  They find the empty tomb, and are alarmed to encounter a young man dressed in a white robe who says, “He has been raised; he is not here.”   They run from the tomb, “for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

And that’s it!  The gospel ends there.  Naturally, over the centuries, monks copying the text had decided that was a disaster of an ending.  Not wanting to leave everyone hanging; being uncomfortable with tears, they decided to make up new endings.

Many of you may have Shorter Endings or Longer Endings to Mark’s Gospel in your Bible.  I wish the editors of the text would put them in footnotes on different pages, or not put them at all.  It is clear from textual criticism and study of the manuscripts themselves that they do not belong.  Do yourself a favor and don’t even read them and ruin the ending of a good book!

It ends with “and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”  What a great ending!   What irony!  I mean, certainly they told someone eventually!  Right?  For here is the story before us.

It is a cliff hanger.

It is supposed to be.

Mark wants us to enter the story.  He wants us to claim it for ourselves and write our own ending.  It is like one of those “Choose Your Own Adventure Books” with the last line reading, “Turn to the page in your Journal!”

I also find it interesting that the Gospel of Mark has been filled with men.  Men, men, men.  Now the essential knowledge of Jesus’ power has been encountered in its fullness.  In this new world order, this post-resurrection world, it is women who are entrusted with the good news of the gospel.  It is no mistake.  Mark wants to let everyone know how fully Jesus was breaking down the walls of culture.

And much of what we know of early Christianity, a religion that was underground and met in peoples’ homes, is that it was dominated by women leaders.

Today, the good news is revealed – in all its splendor – to those in the story we might least expect – and who have remarkable success.

The Gospel has power.  And it is upon us.

-Matt

1 Kings 13:1-10; Phil. 1:1-11; Mark 15:40-47

As we near the end of Mark, no one is “getting it.”  The disciples are not understanding Jesus’ identity.  Everyone was giving up hope.  Peter denies Jesus.  Judas betrays him.  The Pharisees and scribes were clueless.  The only ones who understood who Jesus was were the demons, and they were silenced.

One of the first people to “get it” is the Roman centurion.  Watching Jesus die on a cross he exclaims, “Truly this man was God’s Son!”

Today we begin reading Philippians.  What an extraordinary book!  Paul, like Mark, sees things in a different way and amplifies our Christian walk.  Paul begins with a prayer:

“I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy…that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight….”  These Philippians are dear to him, and he states this: “you hold me in your heart.”

Paul rejoices that he shares the gospel with them.  It is an invisible bond, like that of family.  This same joy is also tied up in Paul’s expectation of Christ’s return, a return that will save people from God’s wrath and judgment.  We also learn that he is in prison, which may be prompting this kind of world view.

Nevertheless, Philippians is charged with a kind of hope that our world needs.  Like the centurion who finally gets it, Paul is painting a picture of the Christian life that involves living and growing in the knowledge and love of Jesus Christ.

There is some debate among scholars about sanctification.  Luther and Calvin and Barth all had different ways of seeing it.  But ultimately it is a process of becoming holy in the Lord.  It is a trajectory of grace which began in our baptism and which Paul reflects here at the beginning of his letter.  Study, repentance, and prayer itself become vehicles or reflections of this sanctification.

It is more than just fruitful living, it is the fact that our love will overflow so much that we will find ourselves drown in holiness.  It is hard to escape from God’s presence and grace when one is over one’s head in it!

-Matt

1 Kings 11:26-43; James 4:13-5:6; Mark 15:22-32

Both the Old Testament and our Gospel reading today are filled with rebellion.  Jeroboam and others rebel against King Solomon.  Mark’s is a different kind of rebellion though.

Mark recounts the crucifixion of Jesus.  Jesus’ rebellion against the establishment is unlike any other rebellion we have seen in the Bible.  No swords are taken up.  No poisonous words.  No fighting.  No subversive behavior against those in power.  There are no decisive battles imprinted on our memory.  Jesus goes willingly to the cross.  Nailed to a piece of wood, Jesus only weapon is that of love.

And yet, because of this, Jesus’ rebellion against the temple guard is perhaps one of the most remembered rebellions in all of history.  He effectively leads quite the rebellion, doesn’t he?!  My goodness, it turned into one of the major religions of the world, and is no longer seen as a dangerous, illegitimate sect of Judaism (which is how we began, did you know?).

How is it that one man could lead such a successful rebellion?  One word: LOVE.  For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son….  It is this extraordinary act, and Jesus’ identity, that takes this to the next level.

Once again, Mark is up to his old tricks of telling a great story – with the audience knowing just a bit more than those trapped in the story.  “Those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads and saying, ‘Aha!  You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!’”  Those of us standing on the other side of the cross know that Jesus did that very thing!

He conquered more than just the temple guard in his little rebellion.  He conquered death.  (So much for little!)  He did tear down the temple and rebuild it in three days.  And it was more than just the physical temple of his body.  In three days, he managed to change the temple establishment itself, setting us free from its mentality (i.e. that God lived in the temple).

O heavens!  In Mark, Jesus comes back to life and in on the loose!  God on the loose.  Now there’s a story!

-Matt

1 Kings 11:1-13; James 3:13-4:12; Mark 15:12-21

1 Kings takes a sudden shift, and we move from praising Solomon and his achievements with today’s reading, which recounts some of Solomon’s errors.  Mark is no rosy picture either.  The crowd shouts for Jesus to be crucified, and he is handed over to the soldiers, who mock him, spit on him, hit him with a reed, strip him, and shout, “Hail, King of the Jews!”

Both texts deal with the rejection of a king.  It is graphic at times.  It is sad.  It is moderately depressing.

Life is full of rejection sometimes – unfulfilled dreams, perhaps unrequited love, perhaps disappointment with political leaders (OK, that is an understatement!  But I am not about to compare our people with King Solomon or the Prince of Peace).

And yet amidst the hurts and the heartbreaks of life, it is these dark passages from scripture which illuminate why the biblical text has endured the test of time.  If this was one big happy story, my guess is that it would not be the best-selling book of all time.

The Bible is complex and dark.  It has twists and turns.  It has death and intrigue, rejection and triumph.

As the ironies play out in both testaments, we see the rise and fall of a king.  And yet, as the story plays out, we come to realize that God is in charge, and the king must rise again.  For the Hebrew people, Solomon marks the end of the undivided kingdom.  The good news is that the story goes on.  Despite Israel and Judah’s failures, God maintains the blessing and covenant with the people.  But some darker days are on the horizon.  Exile.

Nevertheless, the story continues.  That alone is good news.

And so it is with the crucifixion.  We read on, because we know there is a story beyond the grave.  It is no longer about the Northern and Southern Kingdom, but about the army of God marching off to continue a battle which has already been won.

It is the good news at the end of the story that keeps us reading.

-Matt