Show us a sign

I wonder what to think of the above statement. Here was Jesus, God in flesh, and all they wanted was a parlor trick of sorts. Well, that is most likely not very fair – many desired healing of the flesh that had tormented many of their families and friends, and even themselves, for so long. It’s not unlike using a pressure washer to clean your car – it’ll get clean, but the paint that you have may not survive the onslaught. And yet, many were healed in those days, till Jesus was tired and had to often escape. But what we find in Acts is that many, in real fact most, never made it past that initial flesh.

One of my favorite stories in all the NT is that of the blind man that was healed by Jesus. Here was someone who had for so long bore the stigma of not only blindness, but also the weight of an inheritance of sin that had “caused” it. He finds himself in an interesting spot after all of this healing goes down, as the next thing you know he is before the ruling spiritual elite. They go back and forth, with the Pharisees trying to get the man to “give glory to God, for this man [Jesus] is a sinner”. The former blind man responds to the contrary. He tells them to seek this truth – to let it define them – to call them out of their very white washed tombs – just like it called Lazarus. But they don’t want any part of it – just as the people in the fields really did not want to know this man beyond the healing that He might provide for their flesh. And he eventually is put out, or literally kicked out of the synagogue for good because he defends Jesus. He soon meets Jesus (whom we assume he has never physically seen – having been sent to the pool to wash his eyes), and soon is a believer. Jesus simply asks, much as He asks Martha two chapters later in John, “do you believe?”.

If the gospel was any simpler – I know not how. These works, these signs, are only given so that man would believe – and know this Creator once again (Jn. 10.37-38). So the sign becomes real manifested truth. Truth never really mattered to anyone before they see that man. What we knew as truth was stripped away on that day in Eden where we exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for the form and knowledge of corruptible man. So He gave them over. He gave us over – but then picked us out, healed our wounds through bearing them upon Himself. Why – who really knows but Him? What we do know is that we still, after learning the truth, having seen this manifested truth – we still call out for a sign. When none is forthcoming, we find ourselves wondering about Him. In those times, maybe it would be best to go back to the blind man before the Pharisees, “…one thing I do know, that whereas I was blind, now I see”. And it’s fitting Jesus’ statement after that man’s salvation...

“For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see; and that those who see may become blind.”

Luke 24.17…and they stood still, looking sad…

What was it like to be these two men on their way to Emmaus? What were their thoughts? A tendency is to think the disciples as scatter brained followers of Jesus – unsure, unaware, foolish perhaps – we look at them with oft disapproving eyes. We would have known – faith would have been easy. He was right there – He told you everything beforehand. But one aspect of their lives is often left out in all of this – Jesus had called those whom He wanted - and the fact that Jesus called those people friends. At the very least they were that – intimate acquaintances with the Son of God. Nothing revolutionary there you say. But follow with me for a bit here. He came wrapped in flesh, born in a stable, raised a carpenter’s son – He laughed, cried, moved, ran, played…he was really flesh – incarnate flesh mind you – but flesh like you and me. Skin and bones. It was probably not all seriousness with the disciples – you have to wonder what they did in the off times – you know, the stuff John talks about in the end of his gospel. The world could not contain the books…or so it was said. They laughed, talked about the weather, felt fear, wept, were tired (that shows up a couple times). These men walking on this road had not only lost a leader – but a dear close friend…so they stood still, looking sad. Is it any wonder that they doubted? Sorrow probably overwhelmed them. He was dead – they had seen it with their own eyes – and to heal a blind man was one thing – but death...this was not like Lazurus – He had to somehow save Himself. Expectations washed away in a day, on a hill, among trash and surrounded by thieves. What were they to think?

And there He stood, and they did not see Him. He gently rebukes them. Foolish men and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken – was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory? And He walks a bit with them, again He was reprised to the role of the teacher, teaching them everything that had been said before He showed up on a dusty square of earth where He was to be mistreated, challenged, mocked, followed, abandoned, and loved without a word of refusal on His behalf.

That must have been quite the moment. To have He who wrote the scripture lay it all out piece by piece. So nightfall approached, and though He acted as if He needed to go on, they invited Him in (entertaining angels indeed - imagine that), and then He broke the bread….

And everything changed.


Suddenly man could see His redemption. Things started to fall in place. The times that they had spoken on such things with Him flashed back into their minds. The sermon on that mountain, the feeding of the five thousand, the rebuking of the demons on that island. What was it that he had said on that road not an hour ago? It probably would be a bit much to say they understood it all right then – that was to come. But these men would never be the same. Nor would the world. Their dear friend had returned.

Our eyes had to see folly
In order to bind us in deep guilt;
Then they stopped our mouths,
And we were as dumb dogs.

We learned to lie easily,
To be at the disposal of open injustice;
If the defenceless was abused,
Then our eyes remained cold…

The once holy bonds uniting men
Were mangled and flayed,
Friendship and faithfulness betrayed;
Tears and rue were reviled
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Letters and Papers from Prison (pg353)

Team Hoyt

From my friend David Wheeler...if this doesn't make you weep, something's broken.

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Team Hoyt is a father and son Ironman team. The son cannot walk or talk. They have competed in more than 300 races. watch.

We all have a father like this.

We all have a father like this.

We all have a father like this.

Stephen

I’ve been reading the defense of Stephen, though I’m more partial to call it in the end, an offense. Defense seems to bring the thought of falling back and raising up pikes like the guys in Braveheart (for some reason my computer doesn’t recognize Braveheart as a word. Must have missed the movie). Even my Bible, in one of those headings we people use to cheat in Bible studies, calls it a defense. Anyway, what I see is one of the most precise retellings of the OT and NT in the whole of the Bible. Noticably absent from the story is the beginning. Adam, Eve, Noah. Nothing there. Stephen starts with Abraham, hits a bit of Jacob and Joseph, then spends a lot of time following Moses (24 verses in all). Then a verse with Joshua, another one with David, and finally one with Solomon, after which the tone changes. But we’ll get back to that.

This story is the one I read as a child in one of those comic book Bibles that everyone should own. A lot of details are left out, but the core of the issue stays the same. These were men of no more note than a simple story depicted via a drawing. The imagination is allowed to fill in the details – the sounds and sights, the loneliness and the sorrow of Joseph in the pit, the joy of men marching around Jericho when it fell. The wonder of the plagues. I remember sitting and singing soft songs as a child to stories like these. I don’t remember what they were all about, but I can sort of tell how they felt. These were stories wrought in time, and very real to me then. As I grew older, went to Bible school, the stories started to take on more of a whole feeling when put together with the NT. But the great thing, the wonderous thing, was that it all fit the stories. And all the stories pointed and prodded and in the case of Ezekiel, Jeremiah and Isaiah, yelled, “Don’t stop here, Don’t go back, repent, return, turn back, He’s coming, He’s coming” “Don’t let the physical overshadow the spiritual, you are missing the hope because you won’t persevere” You know what made Noah, Abraham, Moses, Job, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Amos, and every other prophet of sorts that stood before their fellow man and spoke? Hope.

The ability to see beyond the Words of God for now, even when they had no idea where or how it all worked, and trust a faithful creator in doing what is right. Abraham hoped when he didn’t even have a foot of earth to call his own in a country that he didn’t even know he was going to yet. Joseph was to trust in Him who wills to work His good pleasure in spite of Him being strangely absent in action while he slaved and rotted in jail. Moses to return to a people who had already rejected him as a leader and a judge, and to lead them into a wide desert with no food or water. They all announced a God who provided, Jehovah Jirah. The prophets proclaimed, quite simply, “He is Coming, He is coming, He is coming! Return, return, return!” You see Stephen saw no reason to “defend” what the whole of scriptures had already finished. He lashes out at the Pharisees and condemns them. Not their lack of knowledge, but their resisting of the Holy Spirit. Jesus says in the NT to the rich man in the story of the Rich man and Lazarus (another “cheat” heading) that if they would not believe because of everything in the law and prophets, nothing could be done to make them believe. I firmly believe that Stephen wanted no more than that – to have these men believe. But their hearts would not let them. Do you know the only difference between us and those Pharisees is? Hope. They couldn’t move beyond the Red Sea and into the desert because they didn’t know the God who provided the manna. Or the quails, or the water, or the strength of Samson and the psalms of David, or the wisdom of Isaiah, or the voice of Amos, or the son of a carpenter.

The question is whether we will. When He calls us, to go and not know, to speak when not strong, to lead when no one seems to even care to follow – to do something as silly as walk around a walled city and blow horns, or attack an army of thousands with a torch and a pitcher. To pray and proclaim and obey when death is the only thing waiting outside the window or even right in front of you. Or even to go to a land far away, learn a language when you barely speak English, go to school when there is no money, and to live a life without because you hope in a that you’ve only read about in Bibles that are comics and sang about softly.