Tag: life of Jesus

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Bible Challenge Week 40: Messiah – The Last Days

Jesus is still rock-star famous: that splashy entrance into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey signals that something BIG is about to happen.  The inner circle knows it, the followers know it, the casual observers know it, and what’s more–his enemies know it.  You can almost sympathize with them, at least looking at it from their point of view.  To them it looks like the relative political stability that allows their Roman overlords to leave them in peace is about to be overturned, with serious consequences not only for them, but for the nation.  (Think of the opposition party’s response to the election of 2016 and you may get an idea of what that felt like.)  Personal animus aside (of which they had plenty), for the good of the nation, the man must be stopped.

But when the ruling class and the crowds expected Jesus to upset the political order, they were thinking way too small.  He was out to upset the cosmic order, and by Thursday night there would be no turning back.

For a one-page printable of this week’s challenge, including scripture passages to read, questions to think about, and activities for the family, click below:

Bible Reading Challenge Week 40: Messiah – The Last Days

(This is a continuation of a series of posts about the “whole story” of the Bible.  I plan to run one every week, on Tuesdays, with a printable PDF.  The printable includes a brief 2-3 paragraph introduction, Bible passages to read, a key verse, 5-7 thought/discussion questions, and 2-3 activities for the kids.  Here’s the Overview of the entire Bible series.)

Previous: Week 39: The Road to Jerusalem

Next: Week 41: The Lamb of God

 

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Bible Challenge 39: Messiah – The Road to Jerusalem

He’s a sensation.  He attracts people, not just for what he does but for what he says.  And, in some sense, what he is.  Though probably not especially handsome or prepossessing, don’t you imagine there was something about him–some literally otherworldly quality–that drew crowds?

Then, at the height of this rock-star ministry, he takes a turn.  A literal turn: Luke says, “He set his face toward Jerusalem.”  The verb indicates a very purposeful, no-looking-back journey toward a particular destination.   And for a particular reason, which he shares with his inner circle.  At least three times he tells them plainly what his purpose is, and they refuse to believe him.  His disciples, and probably everyone else, assume he’s going to claim his crown.  They’re right, in a way; they just don’t know what kind of crown it will be.

But first he has to get there.  And the Road to Jerusalem begins with the most vital question anyone can ever ask.

To find out what the question was, click below for the printable .pdf of this week’s challenge, with more questions,  scripture passages, and activities:

Bible Reading Challenge Week 39: The Road to Jerusalem

(This is a continuation of a series of posts about the “whole story” of the Bible.  I plan to run one every week, on Tuesdays, with a printable PDF.  The printable includes a brief 2-3 paragraph introduction, Bible passages to read, a key verse, 5-7 thought/discussion questions, and 2-3 activities for the kids.  Here’s the Overview of the entire Bible series.)

Previous: Week 38: Messiah – Signs and Wonders

Next: Week 40: Messiah – The Last Days

 

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Bible Challenge 38: Messiah – Signs and Wonders

One thing almost everyone knows about Jesus, if they know anything about him at all: He performed miracles.  He healed leprosy with a touch, made the blind see and the lame walk, cured every kind of disease, often with just a word–on one occasion, from a word spoken miles away.  It was word of these spectacular events, even more than word of his singular teaching, that drew “great crowds” everywhere he went.  But it may surprise you to know that the word miracle, or rather its Greek equivalent, is never used in connection with these supernatural happenings.  Instead, the word used to designate them is sign.

Our reading this week will be all in the Gospel of Mark, and if you read carefully, you’ll notice that Jesus could not possibly have healed everyone, and not all the healings were accomplished with great fanfare.  In fact, he continually told people not to tell how their blindness or lameness or illness had been cured.  These “signs” were to testify to his authority, for those who personally witnessed them.  Like the Kingdom of Heaven, they were super-powerful, yet semi-secret; motivated by compassion, but also by something else.

To see what that was, download this week’s printable challenge, with scripture passages, thought questions, key verse, and activities:

Bible Reading Challenge Week 38: Messiah – Signs and Wonders

(This is a continuation of a series of posts about the “whole story” of the Bible.  I plan to run one every week, on Tuesdays, with a printable PDF.  The printable includes a brief 2-3 paragraph introduction, Bible passages to read, a key verse, 5-7 thought/discussion questions, and 2-3 activities for the kids.  Here’s the Overview of the entire Bible series.)

Previous: Week 37: Messiah – The Kingdom of Heaven

Next: Week 39: Messiah – The Road to Jerusalem

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Bible Challenge 37: Messiah – The Kingdom of Heaven

 

What was Messiah about?  His contemporaries thought he was all about restoring the Kingdom to Israel, in political terms, and it seems they were half right.  Because as soon as he began his ministry, he kept mentioning the “kingdom”: a phenomenon right around the corner that demanded repentance.  But too much of what he said didn’t make sense.  The kingdom was here, but it was secret.  Its essence was not exaltation, but humility.  One had to go down in order to go up.  And it seemed whenever anyone had a pointed question, he answered with a story.  What sort of kingdom was this?

And what sort of king?

For a free download of this week’s challenge, including scripture passages to read, questions to think about, and activities for the family, click below:

Bible Reading Challenge Week 37: Messiah – The Kingdom of Heaven

(This is a continuation of a series of posts about the “whole story” of the Bible.  I plan to run one every week, on Tuesdays, with a printable PDF.  The printable includes a brief 2-3 paragraph introduction, Bible passages to read, a key verse, 5-7 thought/discussion questions, and 2-3 activities for the kids.  Here’s the Overview of the entire Bible series.)

Previous: Week 36: Messiah – Baptism & Temptation

Next: Week 38: Messiah – Signs & Wonders

 

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Confrontations

One day, as Jesus was teaching the people in the temple and preaching the gospel, the chief priests and the scribes with the elders came up and said to him, “Tell us, by what authority you do these things, or who it is that gave you this authority.” Luke 20:1-2

He has established himself in the same courtyard—as if he owned the place! they keep thinking.  The crowds are thronging, the news is spreading, and alarm among the elites casts a pall over what was meant to be another orderly, peaceful Passover.  The chief priests, whose family lineage goes back to Aaron, the elders whose claim to authority even the Romans defer to, and finally the scribes and their Pharisee allies, who often clash with the priestly crowd, all meet to talk it over.

This disturbance, they all agree, has its roots in John the Baptist, who kept shouting about a new age until his ministry abruptly ended at the edge of a broadsword.  John’s death was a relief—one thing they could think that idiot Herod for—until the rumors of Jesus of Nazareth began circulating and swelling and all but shrieking at them.  Even at that, Jesus might have been manageable if he’d stayed in Galilee, but his appearance in Jerusalem is the worst kind of omen.

(Oh Jerusalem . . . if you only knew what makes for peace.)

Pharisees from those northern regions (those tiresome hicks, with their nattering about the Law and its proper observance) have brought troubling but useful reports about his weird claims and cheeky challenges to the old order.  Also rumors of signs and wonders, which can’t be confirmed even though they persist.  Now that he’s in the city he, doesn’t seem to be healing people (or pretending to), but his teaching is an even greater threat.  The way he talks, about my kingdom, my house, my Father—who does he think he is?

(How often would I have gathered you, as a hen gathers her chicks, but you would not . . . the more I called you, the more you ran away from me.)

There is no help for it.  For all kinds of reasons–political, social, religious–he must be destroyed.  And not in some back-alley garroting, but out in public.  First, though, it’s imperative to undermine his moral authority.  How much moral authority can a backwater preacher from Galilee have, anyway?

That afternoon, as the Nazarene is teaching in the courtyard, here they come: elders, priestly representatives, phariseescholarly scribes and Pharisees in their robes and tassels, marching across the tiles with the rocked-ribbed confidence of a Roman phalanx.  “Tell us,” say the eldest of the elders, whose name is Johannes, “by whose authority did you clear this place and take up this false teaching?”

The teacher doesn’t appear to be alarmed or taken aback.  He doesn’t even take time to consider the ramifications of the question.  “First, let me ask you something.  Remember John’s baptism, which people were pouring out of this city to receive?  Was it by the authority of heaven, or of a mere man?”

The elder opens his mouth to reply before recognizing the trap.  “One moment.”  With a jerk of his head, he draws the others aside.

“Where did that come from?” a Pharisee wonders.  “How strange—we were just talking about John!”

“Never mind where he got it,” Johannes snaps.  “He probably has his spies everywhere.  What is our answer?”

“The teaching was from men, of course,” one of the scribes whispers.  “John was a lunatic.”

“That’s not what the people think,” hisses Johannes.  “They still believe John was a holy man and a prophet.”

Eliphaz nods.  “Proclaim to the mob that John was mad and they’ll tear us to pieces.  No thanks.”

Maimonides, another elder, throws up his hands.  “Very well, then! Tell him it was from heaven.”

“And what will he say then?”  Johannes glares at each one of them in turn.  “That we should have listened to John!  Should have tossed dust on our heads and put on sackcloth and paraded down to the Jordan for that madman to baptize us.”  A seething pause follows, in which they realize they’ve been outmaneuvered. “We’ll get him next time.”  Turning back to the teacher, Johannes announces, “We can’t say for sure where John—that holy man of lamented memory—got his authority.”

“You can’t?” their adversary repeats.   “Then I needn’t tell you where my authority comes from.”  He nods in dismissal.  “Priests, elders, scribes—until we meet again.”

His disciples and all hearers are delighted to see the snobs put down.  But his closest friends hear a disturbing echo: priests, elders, scribes . . . they have not seen the last of these.

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For the original post in this series, go here.

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Oh, Jerusalem

And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace!  But now they are hidden from your eyes . . .”          Luke 19:41-42

“The place that I shall choose,”

City of David, the anointed shepherd-boy, who madly danced before the ark,

Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, city of the great king.

Jerusalem: Every true Israelite’s heart leapt to see it, the crown of the rock set with the gleaming jewel of a gold and marble temple.

A cry comes—from the donkey?  His startled disciples look up; it’s from the Master.  He’s weeping—actually sobbing, there among the tossing palms and fluttering hands.  The throng can’t see it, surrounded as he is by his inner circle, but the twelve are disturbed, to say the least.  Simon-called-Peter glances at his brother Andrew with eyebrows raised; John reaches a hand toward the Master’s shoulder.  Judas feels uneasiness stirring in his gut: is this how a king behaves?  Heaving shoulders, streaming tears—is this mien of a conqueror?

“Oh Jerusalem,” he sobs.  “City of peace.  If you only knew what real peace is . . . but it’s hidden from you.  All that’s left for you is destruction, because you did not recognize your salvation when it came.”

cleansing the temple

They will wonder about that shortly afterwards, when he’s turning over the money changers’ tables in the temple courtyard and driving out the dealers—with a whip, no less!  No one dares to ask him if this is what he means by “peace.”  But at least he’s taking charge, not sobbing in a corner.

“My house will be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves!”

Amid the mayhem someone sends a message to the high priest, Caiaphas, who comes to check out the situation with his entourage.  Caiaphas is no fool—before charging in with an air of outrage he takes a moment to look on silently, assessing the situation.

He has heard of this man, of course—of signs and wonders and claiming to be something great, perhaps even Messiah.  Caiaphas intended to have him thrown out—a simple order to the temple guard would do it—but the sheer presumptuousness of the man makes him pause.  This Jesus truly acts as if he owns the place, like the master of a household returning from a long trip to find his servants misusing the property.

Caiaphas remembers something . . .

Yes, that boy—that country boy who wandered into the temple school some twenty years ago.  He had amazed the elders and the teachers, even the great Shammai himself, with the maturity and insight of his questions.  Just a peasant, or a tradesman’s son.  With no education beyond the village synagogue school, he had eminent scholars tied in knots trying to agree on their answers.

His parents had found him at last—frazzled they were, wild with worry.  The boy met them at the portal and his quiet answer, picked up and repeated for days afterword, echoed now in Caiaphas’s memory:  “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?”

Everyone expected to hear from that boy again.

Well, here he is.  And apparently he’s inherited the family estate: Not “my Father’s house.” My house.

Caiaphas does not give the order, even though his fellow priests are eyeing him expectantly.  This man will have to be dealt with, of course; he’s trouble.  But not now; not at the height of mass hysteria.  As carelessly as he throws words around (My house, indeed!) he’s bound to trip himself up if he hasn’t already.

“Not now,” the High Priest says irritably, in reply to a tentative tap on his shoulder.  “Brute force won’t answer; we need a strategy.  Before Passover, I daresay we can trap him.”

As they turn to slip away, a crowd is already gathered around the teacher, who has cleared a space in the courtyard.

As though he owns the place . . .

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Sunday Morning

When he drew near to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of his disciples, saying, “Go into the village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever sat.  Untie it and bring it here . . .”  Luke 19:29-30

After leaving Jericho, they traveled on to Bethany and may have spent the Sabbath with Lazarus and his sisters.  The “great crowd” of followers–how many now? One or two hundred?–must have overwhelmed the little town, but everyone sensed that the movement was about to come into its own.   Jerusalem was next, and something great would take place there—something fixed, definite, and game-changing.

As the sun went down on another Sabbath, he called two of the twelve to him. Which two?  Shall we pick?  Let’s say it was Simon the Zealot and . . . Judas Iscariot.

They often don‘t get along because of political differences, Judas being a straightlaced, by-the-book sort, while Simon is always popping off about Roman occupiers and the Day of the Lord, meanwhile quoting blood-curdling passages from Nahum.  But both are eagerly anticipating the kingdom, and equally thrilled to receive this commission.

As the Master explains the plan to borrow a donkey and enter Jerusalem in style, the disciples nod, glancing at each other with mutual comprehension.  When they depart, the news spreads throughout the ranks of followers, just now waking up in pastures and barns: He means to ride into the city!  He has never ridden anywhere, on anything!  What could it mean, except that he’s about to claim his kingdom?  A prancing stallion might have made the point better, perhaps, but little villages don’t often offer that kind of conveyance.  No matter; if that’s what he intends to do, they’ll help him do it right.

Jerusalem

At daybreak they are on the road, the sun opening up behind them like a benevolent hand.  Spring breezes play with the new barley sprouting up in the fields and birdsong threads the excitable air.  As they approach the rise known as the Mount of Olives, here come Judas and Simon, leading a little donkey with a gentle, placid face.  “Master!” they shout.  “It happened just as you told us.  As we were untying the colt, its owner came out of the inn nearby and asked what we were doing and we said . . .”

He does not appear to be listening as he places a hand on the donkey’s head and gazes into its dark eyes.  A look of understanding passes between them.  Without any urging the beast moves closer.  Peter whips off his coat and spreads it across the animal’s spine; three of the others follow suit.  The donkey bends its hind legs and Jesus sits on its back, rising slightly over the heads of the surrounding men when the donkey straightens and staggers a little under the unaccustomed weight.

A gasp runs through the onlookers, and then a shout: “Hosanna!  He comes!  Blessed is he!”

Several of them run ahead to spread the news: “Clear the road!  Jesus of Nazareth is coming!”  The road is already thick with Passover traffic, but the travelers have heard of Jesus of Nazareth.  Who hasn’t? They stop and move to the side, craning their necks to see—including a delegation of Pharisees outfitted in prayer shawls and phylacteries.

Young date palms sway along the road.  One of the messengers shimmies up a trunk and cuts some branches, throwing them down to the women below.  Soon bystanders are stripping leaves from other trees and the air fills with a sweet, dusty scent.

As the donkey carrying Messiah crests the hill, this is what they see: a landscape of heaving palm branches and fluttering headscarves, a waiting throng clustered along the way to the Holy City with the road laid bare as a bone.  More people are running from the fields and pastures and the city itself, using their elbows to carve out places to stand and watch.  The disciples can’t help grinning like holy fools—This is their moment!

One man strips off his cloak—his best, tight-woven and dyed russet red—and lays it down before the blessed beast.  Soon the road is patched with them—coats and cloaks and bright sashes, pressed into the ground by careful hooves.  Random cries are beginning to coalesce in a single repeated shout:

“Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!”

It’s a customary shout for festive worshippers entering the temple or gathering palms for the Festival of Booths.  That feast, also known as Ingathering, normally comes in the fall, but they’re celebrating the Ingathering early this year, and why not?  The LORD always said he would gather his people and open the holy gates for them:

Lift up your heads, O gates!

And be lifted up, O ancient doors,

 That the King of Glory may come in!

The delegation of Pharisees sticks out like disapproving schoolmasters.  “Teacher!” one of them calls to the passing procession: “Tell your disciples to pipe down!  This is Passover, not Succoth.”

The disciples can’t help feeling smug as their teacher answers, calling back over his shoulder, “I might as well tell these stones to pipe down!”

And there before them, at long last, is the Holy City, where all their hopes and dreams will come true.

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The End that’s Not the End

As they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace to you!”  But they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit.  Luke 23:36-37

Those two guys on the way to Emmaus—we never found out why they were going there.  But we know they didn’t stay.  “And they arose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem.”  They left Jerusalem in gloom; they return to a buzz of excitement:  “The Lord has risen indeed, and he’s appeared to Simon!”  Everybody’s talking: explaining, expositing, theorizing, speculating, repeating themselves over and over like TV pundits after big breaking news: Unbelievable!

Then Jesus shows up, and it really is.

Luke is sometimes unintentionally humorous—or it just may be that he writes this piece of the story with a smile.  Here they are, babbling on about the Lord’s appearances, and when he actually appears, they think he’s a ghost!  Or a “spirit”—something profoundly uncanny.  What were they expecting?

He probably looks different—perhaps something a little beyond human—but whatever the appearance, there’s enough of Jesus to recognize, yet something more to fear.  Not a tame lion, as we’ve heard tell of another character in Christian lore.  This is not the man they knew, who tramped the hills with them and broke bread with them and talked with them for hours on end.  It’s not (quite) the man who suffered and sighed and bled and died.

And yet it is that man—times infinity.

They couldn’t believe because they had never seen anything like this before.  No one had.  This was entirely new.

And yet . . . in a way it wasn’t.  That seed, planted in the virgin about 33 years ago, that microscopic marriage with a human egg—this unimaginable union of God and man they see before them–started back then.  But no—

Those interminable genealogies, those tedious “begats,” casting the bloodline back through the centuries: from Joseph to Heli to Matthal to Levi to Melchi and so on, all the way back to Adam.  It must have started then.  But no—

Remember when Got bent down and breathed life into a mound of clay, “and man became a living being.”  Surely it started then.  But . . .

Even farther back, Spirit broods over potential; a word trembles on the brink.  The Word.  Time and place have yet to be; all is joy and bliss and glory, filling the infinite.  The Glory has something in mind, and even though there’s no word for it now we’ll call it all things: each particular, various, after-its-own kind animal, vegetable, and mineral.  In His mind, they are made of particles so tiny that learned men in the far future, with all their subtle instruments, will not be able to track them.  But somewhere in the mind of the Maker, he draws a line at the frontier where the universe will begin.

With a “Let there be,” the future Son of Man crosses that line and brings forth all things.

touch-and-see

“Touch my hands and feet; it is myself.  Touch me and see.  For a spirit—as you understand spirit—does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.”

And flesh and bones—as we’ve always experienced it—doesn’t live forever.  But this flesh and bones will.

We have to go back in order to go forward  So he takes them back, maybe as far back as “man became a living being.”  Then forward through the Law and Psalms and Prophets, and they begin to see that in him, all things hold together.*

Soon, Spirit will cross another line.  Luke ends his story with a ragtag group of followers returning to Jerusalem, to be “clothed with power from on high.”  With wind and fire the Spirit will rush upon them, as upon Samson and Saul in the old days, not to work God’s will through them but to be God’s will in them.  But that’s getting ahead of the story—which, we see now, doesn’t really end.

The Father speaks, and light appears;

light

the Son enters a human egg and incarnation happens;

fetus

the Holy Spirit pierces a wall of flesh, and indwelling begins.

spirit-descends

He loves a good story, they say. By crossing that line at the birth of time, he began the greatest one of all.  And it goes on . . .

*Col. 1:17

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Emmaus

That very day, two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened.  Luke 24:13-14

 

What a walk that was, Cleopas—emmaus

A long way to haul a heavy heart

With bread for the journey and the bitter herbs

of recollection.  And it showed,

for that was his first remark: Why so sad?

Well, there’s some relief in telling what you know—

enlightening the ignorant, right?—and so

remember our surprise when he enlightened

us.

 

Such teaching!  Such pulsing, winged words

that beat upon our hearts and made them burn;

that joined the rough parts in smooth-sanded turn.

Miles unrolled like a scroll beneath our feet, until

our destination leapt out of the twilight.  Yet

we could not give him up.  Remember?

How he became our host; took bread and

broke:

 

And we saw it all–

 

Prophets, priests, kings; the law, the Lord;

the blood of all sacrifice, ceaselessly poured

into one body.              Taken, broken;

the satisfied sentence, once for all spoken.

We looked and we saw—then, swift as a dart

he vanished from sight and entered our hearts.

What a walk, Cleopas, and at its end,

with bread for the journey, we’d yet to begin.

 

For the original post in this series, go here.

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He Made His Grave among the Rich

Now there was a man named Joseph, of the Jewish town of Arimathea . . . (Luke 23:50)

While the screaming was going on, he couldn’t make his voice heard.

Maybe he didn’t speak loud enough. Maybe he barely spoke at all.  In the heat of the trial—or what the officials were pleased to call that travesty of justice—there were a few dissenting voices, such as that himself and Nicodemus and perhaps one or two others.  They may have tried to turn the tide quietly, speaking to one man and then another, but the odds were clearly against them.  The hour carried the day, and swept a righteous man to his death.

Now it is quiet.  Events have passed by the governor’s palace, which is now returned to a place of routine business.  Joseph, as a man of wealth and influence, has Pilate’s ear, and now that it is quiet his reasonable voice can be heard: Give me the body.

A reasonable voice; an odd request.  But then, this whole business is odd.  Pilate handed the man over for execution just that morning—is he already dead?  The normal procedure would be to throw the remains in a pit near Gehenna with the other two, once death had wrapped its slow crushing grip around all of them.  Then the whole distasteful business would be over and done with.  But if Joseph wants to offer the hospitality of his own brand-new tomb, let him.  Pilate’s permission, once he’s determined the man is dead, is quick and curt.  An odd request, but it seems right.  A fitting end, perhaps.  Though the governor formally absolved himself for the death of an innocent man, it still troubles him.  And though he now goes about his business with a studied show of normality, it always will.

And they made his grave with the wicked

and with a rich man in his death,

although he had done no violence,

and there was no deceit in his mouth.  (Isaiah 53:9)

When Joseph first thought of offering his tomb, did he recall the prophecy?  Probably not; there was so much to do and so little time before sundown.  Supplies must be gathered, servants called to wash the body, strong men recruited to take it off the cross.  (How did they do that?  Prying the nails out would crush the hands and feet.  Perhaps they could just pull the body free, but not without more tearing of tissues—or perhaps, after hanging so long, the holes could have stretched out enough that hands and feet could simply be lifted off the nails once the cross was horizontal.)

joseph-of-a

With all these dreadful practicalities, it’s doubtful anyone was aware of fulfilling any prophesies, even though that particular prophesy is a very strange one: numbered among the transgressors, buried among the rich.  Priests and scribes had probably debated the meaning of that passage through the centuries—set out parameters, debated the particular, and divided into schools of thought.  But when the day finally comes, everyone is too rushed to think or too distracted to connect or too numb with grief to do more than set one foot in front of the other, like the women following the servants of Joseph’s household as they carry the body to the tomb.  Mary of Magdala, Joanna, and Salome assume it will be their last journey with him.  They watch, the observe, they return to the city to purchase spices before the sun goes down. Exhaustion falls on them like the close of day, and they enter a forced and fitful Sabbath rest.

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