Month: April 2015

Posted on

How Jesus Happens

After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth.  And he said to him, “Follow me.”  And leaving everything, he rose and followed him.  Luke 5:27-28

Any rabbi who builds a reputation for godliness or learned discourse naturally acquires followers.  When word reaches these bright, ambitious young men, they start making plans.  They’ll need an introduction and references and travel money to get to the great man’s door.  Once there, they’ll need a polished argument on some controversial topic to convince him of their worth.  They plan on four or five years of study at his feet, and then with his blessing they can join some famous rabbinical school and jostle ever-so -learnedly for a reputation of their own.Matthew

Jesus acquires disciples a little differently.  Of course he attracts young men in every town: likely lads, bright as buttons, sharp as tacks, with no family yet and sufficient leisure to take a few months off and tag along with this rising star.  They would be good Jews, with good references, perplexed when he stops at Levi’s tax-collecting table and scandalized at the words, “Follow me.”

But that’s his way: he passes over most of the eager youngsters and seeks those who are right in the middle of their lives: fishermen at their nets, tax collectors at their tables.  He claims them while they’re busy with something else.  Commentators agree that the words “Follow me” were probably not the first that Peter and Andrew, John and Levi ever heard from him, but still.  Jesus happened when they were making other plans.

That’s how he happens to most of us, isn’t it?

For the first post in this series, go here.

<Previous

Next>

Posted on

The Next-to-Last Enemy

On one of those days, as he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem.  And the power of the Lord was with him to heal.  And behold, some men were bringing on a bed a man who was paralyzed, and they were seeking to bring him in and lay him before Jesus . . . Luke 5:17-19

Another day, another town, another teaching.  His teaching has attracted as much interest as his healing, for the house is packed.  Especially “Pharisees and teachers of the law.”  Now they show up, these classicadversaries and hypocrites we all love to look down on.  But they are not adversaries yet—they are just doing their job as religious experts and legal authorities.  Here’s a new teacher, rumored to be Messiah; better check him out.  Word has spread through the Pharisee grapevine, even to Jerusalem, and representatives from the temple school are in attendance.  Some of these may remember that twelve-year-old boy from twenty-odd years back and have wondered what became of him.

Well, here he is, and the power of the Lord [is] in him to heal (5:17).

With all the lawyers present, talk probably turns on the law, and the discussion was likely to get heavy and intense: q & a, back and forth, red meat for the professionals even if the commoners are having a hard time keeping up with the finer points.  The usual contingent of halt and lame are hanging around outside, straining at the windows and listening at the door to catch any hint that the palaver will wrap up soon.  Few even notice the man on a blanket hauled by four others, or hear the groans they make upon arriving and seeing the crowds.paralytic

What are they talking about inside?  What gets the professionals all worked up as they debate the teacher?  Sin, maybe—they’re all against it, but the teacher has some interesting ideas about what it actually is.  While they try to pin him down on types of sin, he’s going on about the origin of it . . . or something like that.  They’re deep into the subject when dust and straw rain down from above, followed by a rasp of stone: a slab of light falls across the teacher’s face.  The light widens and more dirt showers the esteemed audience.  A bulky form temporarily blocks the opening.

Every Sunday school attendee knows this story, which has a special appear for children.  It can’t miss, really: loyal friends, a poor sick man, a kind and gentle Jesus.  Comical, too.  The pictures are usually imaculate but it was probably very messy;  imagine the immaculate lawyers shaking dirt out of their beards and robes while spitting clods of plaster.  They are evidently the witnesses Jesus has in mind when he gazes at the paralyzed (and probably very embarrassed) victim on the stretcher and says, “Man, your sins are forgiven.”

Really? Sin?  Where did that come from?

It comes from the garden and from the heart.  Scholars of the law are quite aware of what he just said.  In the midst of robe-shaking and sputtering they freeze, all with the same thought. Only God can forgive sins.  Who is he claiming to be?  He knows their thoughts and sees the inevitable collision down the road.  But now, after weeks of establishing his authority–over the demonic powers, the fevers and eczemas, the twisted bones and withered limbs–he stakes a claim of authority over sin itself, which is the sting of death–“and the power of sin is the law” (I Cor. 15:56).  This one is for the lawyers: “Rise up, pick up your mat, and go home.”

True healing begins with forgiveness.  A wretched sinner, paralyzed in a hardened heart, feels his lifeless muscles waken.  Rise up! makes them tingle, laugh, leap for joy.  All embarrassment forgotten, he bows before his healer while gathering up the mat.  And then he goes home, the happiest object lesson in the world—and a little fable of a future rising-up.  For the last enemy to be destroyed is death.

For the first post in this series, go here

<Previous

Next>

Posted on

“I Am Willing”

While he was in one of the cities, there came a man full of leprosy.  And when he saw Jesus, he fell on his face and begged him, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” Luke 5:12

Some diseases don’t show.  Cancer can eat away at a person’s insides for months or years before it begins to pull their appearance in after it.  People can be sick without showing it, sometimes without know it.

But leprosy—or whatever “serious skin disease” this is–leaves no doubt.  The body becomes a map of its ferocious advance.  The curse is evident, the corruption undeniable.  So when this man (Luke’s first leper) approached Jesus, it’s likely everyone around the teacher fled.  He’s exposed!  And so is the leper, whose faith may be born of desperation but it’s still a powerful faith to brave such a scene.  It’s also a humble faith: “Lord, if you are willing . . .”

Time stops.  Just the two of them, forever.  The leper was driven to this moment: saddled and mounted by a terrible curse that, as soon as he heard the name of the Lord’s, became a bountiful blessing.  Because he can’t hide his need.  He wears his need, not like a sandal or a cloak but like an ear or a nose—can’t hide it, can’t get rid of it.  Need pushed him out of whatever hovel he was living in and steeled his determination against the horrified reactions of others along the way; need took him by the hand and pulled him through the crowd that sprang apart when they get wind of him.  Need quivers like a compass needle, seeking and finding its true North, because North is there to find.

healing hand

The leper is us, all just as disgustingly diseased even if we don’t show it.  But if we know it, by instinct or circumstance or sheer grace alone, this is our only plea: If you are willing—

In the short, aching space between the two of them, a hand reaches out; the healer’s hand.  I would love to see his face—is he smiling?  The words smile.  He came to say these words: If you are willing cues it up nicely.

“I am willing.  Be clean.”

For the first post in this series, go here.

<Previous

Next>

Posted on

Authority, II

And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.”  And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing!  But at your word I will let down the nets.”  Luke 5:4-5

They say a fish is the least able to understand water.

But suddenly, you do.

Life so far: cool/warm, fright/flight, gulp-shimmy-splash.  Out/in, spinning fin; up/down, whip around.  Eyes flick, tail ticks, that’s it!

Until

the light comes.

A seawashed brightness streams electrically along your scaly side.  Muscles flex with the unsuspected pleasure of you.  One could leap; one does.  Aimed like an arrow toward the sparkle-green surface, a powerful tailkick thrusts you into the light—pure fire, live energy, too rare to breathe, but oh!  A twist and a tumble, a silvery flex in the air, a cunning flick of tail—

A salute!

You slide into the element—water—cool and welcoming, stroking your sides with loving attention.  Ancient echoes:

Let the waters swarm . . .fish

It is good . . .

Be fruitful . . .

Multiply . . .

Multiplying, you swarm.  Scales, fins, tails, eager golden eyes bogle all around.  All hungry, not for food.  All desperate, not for escape.  Lead us, bring us, take us!

From the long-ago echo to the right-now call: a voice from Outside, from light itself, heard not by ear but by being.  The voice that calls us to ourselves, the voice that all our brief lives we have longed to hear and with all ourselves respond: Lead us, bring us, take us!

Like a single fist of longing, charging the net, crowding in as much as it can hold, leaving a few desolate slivers outside: Lead us, bring us, take us!  Milling, squeezing, rising, striving, breaking the water at last, at last, to spill upon the hot splintered surface of sunrise near his feet.

Flopping, flipping, meeting our meet, gasping in ecstasy—

The boards shudder as a pair of knees hit the deck and pour out a lament with only one word we understand:

LORD

But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!” . . . . And Jesus said, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.”

When the boat reaches land, other hands pull it to shore and gather the bulging nets.  Two hundred pairs–at least!–of visionstruck eyes gaze steadily, while a handful of sinful men gather a few belongings and kiss their startled wives and follow the light, headed for the greatest fishing expedition ever.

For the first in this series, go here.

<sPrevious

Next>