1 Corinthians 10:16-17: Letting The Drawbridge Down

Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all share the one loaf. - 1 Corinthians 10:16-17

There are somethings in life that cannot be done alone. We participate in the body and blood of Christ, not alone, but together. Paul reminds us that "we give thanks", "bread that we break", "we...are one body" and "we ... share the one loaf."

While studying Pietism for the Church History class at BCCL, we found that when the church is faced with a hostile situation in the world, there is a tendency to retreat even from other believers and do what we can do by ourselves. This leads to richer devotional life and divinely guided self-reflection. It also leads to an awareness of those around us who don't participate in Christ. 

But sometimes it can come at the expense of compassion and perseverance. We stop feeling like we need another person and that they need us. We build up stockpiles to keep us nourished during the long siege of the soul but we do not do so well at letting the drawbridge down and admitting even our allies to close quarters.

Matthew 12:38-44: Asking, Never Intending To Change

Then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from you.”

He answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now something greater than Jonah is here. The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon’s wisdom, and now something greater than Solomon is here.

“When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. - Matthew 12:38-44

 There are many fakes out there. If I read the headlines from various facebook posts, they all claim to possess some hidden or secret knowledge that, if I were just to listen, would change my life. From one of my early blog posts, a reader sent me a note to let me know that he was one of the few people to recognize that Lazarus was the author of the Gospel of John. He had the secret knowledge.

The problem is that we become numb to what is real while we try to protect ourselves from what is fake. The world is required to prove itself to us before we will believe. That is, our default answer is "No"

Jesus said that his listeners were "a wicked and adulterous generation" to ask for this sign. Somehow their asking was not a genuine request for information but rather, from the context, a dig for dirt to use against Jesus. In other places in the gospels, we saw that "They hoped to catch Jesus in something he said, so that they might hand him over to the power and authority of the governor" (Luke 20:20) and in another place "they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath." (Mark 3:2) That is, it wasn't that they asked the question that was the problem. It was that they asked without ever intending to believe!

They were the enlightened. They knew that nothing important (like a Jesus) came from Galilee. As the enlightened, it was their responsibility and their joy to expose Jesus either as a fraud, as misguided or as dangerously inflammatory. In today's passage, Jesus gave examples from foreign nations (Assyria for the first, Egypt for the second) where people responded with genuine curiosity and a willingness to change. But not Jesus' audience. They asked without ever intending to change their lives.

It is a cynicism that threatens to cripple my life as well, because the enlightened (like me) never feel the need to change whereas the humble always sit at the feet of Jesus to learn.

Psalm 146:1-10: The Illusion of Political Control

Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord, my soul.

I will praise the Lord all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.

Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save. When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing.

Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God. He is the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them—he remains faithful forever.

He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets prisoners free, the Lord gives sight to the blind, the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down, the Lord loves the righteous. The Lord watches over the foreigner and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked.

The Lord reigns forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations. Praise the Lord. - Psalm 146:1-10

Politics is a dangerous beast, especially in democracies. It was easy to place hope in kings, princes, rajahs and emperor, knowing that what was required for true change was the enlightened heart of an individual. And, if that didn't happen, then we knew exactly who to blame. But in democracies, we are taught that the future is in our hands because we can vote on it. Unlike monarchies, we can do something about our lack of hope. If the current representative doesn't fulfill our hopes then we can place our futures in the hands of the next representative. Every problem that we see, we can imagine that the solution is within our grasp, if we can only be persuasive enough. That illusion of control over our futures is the false god of democracy. If we sacrifice enough, it will reward us with control over the future, with our policies in place to ensure justice. 

But ultimately, justice was not in the hands of the kings or in the hands of democratic representatives. It was in the hands of God. And those crucial issues: the poor, the oppressed, the prisoners, the ill, the foreigners, those without a family-those who traditionally are overlooked in any system of government seem very interesting to the God of the universe.  Will the government really care more for them than God does? Elected officials are out of office in 2, 4 or 6 years but, "The Lord reigns forever...for all generations."