Bible Verses That Freak Me Out # 27 – You SURE you want to pray that? – Matthew 6:12

Lurking within the most well known prayer in scripture is a soul-wrenching challenge.

“Our Father, who art in heaven,” we say, and proceed smoothly along, asking for his kingdom to come, will be done, daily bread, and then, apparently we all have a moment of insanity, or we haven’t been listening closely.

“And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”

Wait, back up. Asking God for forgiveness – right, got it. Totally normal. But there’s a condition in there that we normally just skip over. In the Lord’s Prayer, we are asking God to forgive us in the same way and to the same degree that we have already forgiven the people around us. That's what the "as" is for. And behold! As we have already forgiven our debtors - past tense!

Are you sure you want to pray that? In case we missed it, Jesus helpfully adds after the prayer; “For if you forgive men their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.” Matt. 6:14-15

Great. Very clear – in a "makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck" kind of way. I like F.F. Bruce's comment in Hard Sayings of Jesus: "The meaning is unambiguous, and it is unwise to try to avoid its uncomfortable challenge."

So, how are you doing at forgiveness? Well enough to ask God to follow your lead in the way He forgives you?

This theme runs all through the New Testament. Our relationship to others is the true yardstick by which we can judge our relationship with God.

“If someone says , ‘I love God’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.” – 1 John 4:20

Tangent: When praying this in a communal setting, I can never anticipate whether we are going to say “debts,” “trespasses,” or “sins”, with the corresponding “debtors,” “those who have trespassed against us,” or “those who have sinned against us.” I always wait and let the first one go by before joining in for the last part. If you ever get to lead a Lord’s Prayer, you can freak everyone out by mixing and matching – start with a trespasses and switch to debtors for the closing! They’ll never see it coming!

Tangent off the tangent: In Greek, the word is literally “debt.” You know, the money kind. It can of course have the meaning of an offense, as verses 14 and 15 show, obviously expanding on "debts." In Aramaic (what Jesus was likely speaking) the word for “debt” and “sin” is the same. What a fun difference that makes in the prayer! “And forgive us what we owe you, as we have forgiven the people who owe us money.”
Ahem.

So – forgiveness. Hard to do. One reason I think we have trouble with the idea of forgiveness is that we have mistaken expectations of what forgiveness entails. We imagine it as a “once for all” deal. “I’ll forgive you, and then I’ll never think about it again.” Well, that doesn’t work even for minor offenses, much less major trauma. Similarly, we imagine that forgiveness is the same as saying, “No harm, no foul.” We think it is saying that we “pretend it never happened.” We think forgiveness is denial or willful ignorance of sin. We think it means there are no consequences.

God can forgive and forget. We his creations can approximate only the forgiveness part. Like grief, forgiveness is a process. Like grief, it may have to be dealt with on a regular basis as it continues to lessen in intensity over time. Especially when who and what we must forgive is something and someone who has caused us grief. And it does not mean that there are no consequences for sin or wrongdoing. So, what does it mean?

C.S. Lewis describes forgiveness in Mere Christianity in a way that is helpful to me, in a meditation on the parallel idea of “loving your enemies” (Matt. 5:43):

“We might try to understand exactly what loving your neighbor as yourself means. Well, how exactly do I love myself?

Now that I come to think of it, I have not exactly got feeling of fondness or affection for myself, and I do not even always enjoy my own society. So apparently “love your neighbor” does not mean “feel fond of him” or “find him attractive.” I ought to have seen that before, because of course, you cannot feel fond of a person by trying. Do I think well of myself, think myself a nice chap? Well, I am afraid I sometimes do (and those are, no doubt, my worst moments) but that is not why I love myself. In fact, it is the other way round; my self-love makes me think myself nice, but thinking myself nice is not why I love myself. So loving my enemies does not apparently mean thinking them nice either. That is an enormous relief. For a good many people imagine that forgiving your enemies means making out that they are really not such bad fellows after all, when it is quite plain that they are…

In my most clear-sighted moments not only do I not think myself a nice man, but I know that I am a very nasty one. I can look at some of the things I have done with horror and loathing. So apparently I am allowed to loathe and hate some of things my enemies do. Or, as Christian teachers long ago would say, hate the sin but not the sinner.

For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life – namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself…In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man.

Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them. But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, somewhere, he can be cured and made human again.”

And that, my friends, is precisely the way God forgives us.

“Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ has also forgiven you.” Ephesians 4:32

Bible Verses That Freak Me Out # 25 – Mo Money, Mo Problems - “Render to Caesar to things that are Caesar’s” – Mark 12:13-17

Happy tax day, everyone!

We all know Jesus hung out with tax collectors, even including a former tax collector in his group of twelve disciples. But what did Jesus say specifically about taxes? And what did He mean…

“And they (the chief priests) sent some of the Pharisees and the Herodians to Him, in order to trap Him in a statement. And they came and said to Him, ‘Teacher, we know that you are truthful, and defer to know one; for you are not partial to any, but teach the way of God in truth. Is it lawful to pay a poll-tax to Caesar, or not? Shall we pay, or shall we not pay?’

But He, knowing their hypocrisy, said to them, ‘Why are you testing me? Bring me a denarius to look at.’ And they brought one. And He said to them, ‘Whose likeness and inscription is this?’ And they said to Him, ‘Caesar’s.’ And Jesus said to them, ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.’”

A couple of interesting things about this passage:

1. The Pharisees and the Herodians were NOT friends. They teamed up in “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” move. The first group was anti-Rome, anti-Greek, anti-everything except the Law of God (as they perceived it). The Herodians, as you might could guess, were Herod’s posse. Big fans of Rome. Whatever straight answer Jesus gave “Sure, pay the tax” or “Don’t pay the tax” there was a group there to cry foul.

2. “You defer to no one and are not partial to any” – is their way of saying “If anybody doesn’t care what Caesar thinks, it’s you.” They are encouraging Him to get in touch with his revolutionary side.

3. You want to talk about taxation without representation? The first-century Jews were an occupied territory. Their taxes funded a government that was, in their minds, evil and idolatrous.

4. Speaking of idolatrous, most Jews regarded Roman coins as idolatrous. If the picture of the emperor weren’t enough, the inscription, which in this period probably read “Tiberius, son of the divine Augustus” certainly was. “Son of the divine?” Nice.

5. “Render” here means more than just “give.” It has the specific meaning of giving back someone something that belongs to them.

So, what does Jesus mean? Is Jesus teaching “separation of church and state?” That’s a pretty common interpretation – that Jesus is slyly acknowledging the temporary sovereignty of Caesar, but holding out the true sovereignty of God.

But there’s something else going on here, too. Jesus is saying “no” to a particular way of revolution, and encouraging people to say “yes” to His way. Not paying your taxes is not the way to conquer Rome, Jesus is saying. “Pay back Caesar what is his” may mean “the only appropriate thing to do with junk like this is send it back where it came from.” It may mean “God doesn’t want or need your money. If Caesar wants it, he can have it.”

“Render to God the things that are God’s.” What belongs to God? Who bears God’s image? How do we give that which belongs to God back to Him? Jesus answered those questions in His teaching, His ministry, His death, and His resurrection. That’s the real revolution.

Further reading if want to have your mind blown:
"Hard Sayings of Jesus" - F.F. Bruce
"Jesus and the Victory of God" - N.T. Wright
"The Politics of Jesus" - John Howard Yoder

Bible Verses That Freak Me Out #18 - "He must increase, I must decrease" - John 3:28, 30

“You yourselves are my witnesses that I said, ‘I am not the Messiah,’ but, ‘I have been sent ahead of Him.’ He must increase, but I must decrease.” – John the Baptist, John 3:28, 30

You know who is kind of a big deal? John the Baptist.

All four gospels either start with John the Baptist, or start to explain Jesus’ ministry by starting with John’s ministry. Considering that there aren’t that many things outside of the Passion narrative that appear in all four gospels (the feeding of the 5000 and the cleansing of the temple are the others), that makes John the Baptist a big deal.

And the gospels continue to refer to John. He is even referred to in Acts, when Paul finds Apollos and several disciples in Ephesus – hundreds of miles from Israel, and a decade or more after John’s death – still ordering their lives on the things taught by John the Baptist.

Sinners come to him repentant. Tax-collectors, Roman soldiers, Pharisees, and even freakin’ King Herod are fascinated by him and want to hear what he has to say. He has a large group of committed disciples. People wonder aloud if he is the second coming of Elijah, and even ask him breathlessly if he is the Messiah.

Remind you of anyone?

In Luke’s gospel his going ahead of Christ starts in a prenatal state, as his parents receive an angelic birth announcement in an old-school “barren woman conceives” scenario. Eventually, love him or hate him, everyone in Israel is talking about him. People compare him and Jesus early on, and even after his horrific death “what do you think about John the Baptist” is a sort of spiritual litmus test Jesus gives to his opponents.

I like to think of him as the Last Old Testament Prophet. He plays a central role in the gospels, and yet, we Christian types really don’t talk about him all that much. Why?

Because he did his job, and he did it well.

His job, even before he was born, was to fulfill the prophecy and be the voice of one calling in the wilderness, “Prepare the way for the Lord.” To turn the hearts of Israel back to toward their God. To prepare for the One Who Is To Come. To be the forerunner. And then – when the real Messiah stands up – to stand back. The last prophet of the Old Covenant turns it all over to the Living Word of the New Covenant. To prepare the way, and then get out of the way.

It makes sense. But it could not have been easy. I can only speak for myself, but one of the hardest things for me to do as a minister is to stand back and get out of Jesus’ way. To yield the stage, the attention, the ability to influence – to Jesus.

I like attention. I like it when people laugh at my jokes. I like it when people think I am deep, spiritually discerning, and wise. If someone asked me, like they did John the Baptist, “Are you the second-coming of Elijah?” I’m pretty sure I’d be humble enough to laugh and say no, but I’m not sure I’d be humble enough not to let that affect my perception of myself for the rest of my life.

I fantasize about being famous. About being the next Rob Bell, or the next (insert your favorite famous Christian pastor here), or get a VERY big mural with the stuff from Revelation on it and be the next John Hagee, but a moderate version.

Or, if not a famous pastor, I fantasize about writing the children’s book that lives in my head and being the next J.K. Rowling. (I mostly fantasize about the fame, but the money would be nice too.)

Part of that fantasy is the culture that we live in that continually tells us that your worth is based on your name recognition, but a bigger part of that is that I like attention and, most of time, would like to have more of it.

And that’s where John 3:30 comes in. “He must increase, but I must decrease.” John the Baptist was famous, not just in Israel but all over the ancient world. He was talked about with awe, so when he said he wasn’t worthy to tie the shoes of the Messiah, people were REALLY in awe of the Messiah. He was famous, and so when he said, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!,” everyone turned around to look at Jesus – and then didn’t turn back. John handed it over to the one who was all the things he was not. Messiah, Savior, Lord, Son of God, and worthy of worship. We don’t talk about John the Baptist because he did what he was supposed to do – pointed people to Jesus, and then got out of the way.

I apologize in advance for the very, very nerdy example, but I think of the scene in the Fellowship of the Ring. Frodo offers the ring of power to Galadriel, the Elven Queen. She is surprised that he offers it freely, and she gets sort of excited. You can tell she is excited because she starts glowing, talking in a very deep voice, and saying things like, “All shall love me and DESPAIR!!!!”

Then she stops moving toward the ring, stops glowing, catches her breath, gets her normal voice back, and says, mostly to herself, “I pass the test. I shall diminish, and remain Galadriel.”

John the Baptist passes the test. He will diminish, and remain the forerunner.

Another verse that freaks me out about John the Baptist is Jesus' tribute to him, in Luke 7:28: “I say to you, among those born of women there is no one greater than John; yet he who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.”

Let’s break that down:
1)John the Baptist, according to Jesus, was the greatest human being ever born
2)But the one who is lowest on the totem pole in God’s kingdom surpasses him

Interpretation by your friend and mine, F.F. Bruce – being part of the kingdom of God is exponentially more important and more valuable than being great (or famous).

And when it comes down to it my job is pretty similar to John's. To point to Jesus and say, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” – and then get out of the way.

I think we can say with great certainty that the greatest Christians who ever lived are unknown to us. That they made sure to decrease, so that Christ would increase, to the point that they are anonymous, unknown, and forgotten….except to the One who sees what is done in secret.

Belated Purpose Statement: Bible Verses That Freak Me Out #6 - "Wanting to have their ears tickled" - 1 Timothy 4:3-4

A couple of weeks ago I was struck with the idea that there are a lot of verses in the Bible which are difficult. To paraphrase F.F. Bruce in "Hard Sayings of Jesus", some verses are difficult because we don't know what they mean, and some are difficult because we know exactly what they mean.

As an experiment, I read through the Sermon on the Mount with the youth group, and asked them to mentally keep track of how many times they thought to themselves, "Golly, I hope Jesus doesn't mean that exactly like it sounded." We came up with about 20 - in just three chapters.

We all have our favorite Bible verses that bring comfort and meaning to our lives. But I think that it is a healthy exercise to confront those parts of scripture that make us distinctly uncomfortable. Finley Peter Dunne said the job of the newspaper was to "comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable." (He was being sarcastic when he said that. It was his way of saying the media of the time had assumed too much power for themselves.) But I think that phrase describes the role of the Bible pretty well - it is the role of the prophet, or the prophetic text, in a nutshell.

So here's a Bible verse that freaks me out, and encourages us to look closely at the other verses that afflict us as well:

"For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires; and will turn their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths." - 1 Timothy 4:3-4

Paul's challenge to Timothy in this situation is "Preach the word!", "endure hardship," and "do the work of an evangelist." Not a bad challenge at all.