Tag: Exodus

Luke 20.17b
[Jesus said,] “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.”

Psychologist John Gottman “can predict with up to 94 percent certainty whether couples … will be broken up, together and unhappy, or together and happy several years later.” What’s the key? Kindness, he says. 

“There’s a habit of mind that [the together and happy] have, which is this: they are scanning the social environment for things they can appreciate and say thank you for. They are building this culture of respect and appreciation very purposefully. [The broken up, the together and unhappy] are scanning the social environment for partners’ mistakes.”

In the parable of the tenants, a man leases his vineyard to tenants and then goes abroad. When the harvest arrives, he sends his servants one-by-one to collect fruit from the tenants. But the laborers do not welcome the servants — they beat some and kill others. 

Jesus concludes, “Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my son, whom I love; perhaps they will respect him.’ 

“But when the tenants saw him, they talked the matter over. ‘This is the heir,’ they said. ‘Let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.”

In the face of their contempt, the landowner is kind. This is kindness — that God bore with great patience the rejection of his people, sending prophet-by-prophet until finally he sent his Son. 

“Could God, would God, overcome his cherishing, admiring, treasuring, white-hot, affectionate bond with his Son and deliver him over to be lied about and betrayed and abandoned and mocked and flogged and beaten and spit on and nailed to a cross and pierced with a sword like an animal being butchered?” John Piper asks. “If he would, then whatever goal he is pursuing could never be stopped.”

Prayer
Lord, your habit of mind is to scan our hearts for Christ. Yet we confess that we often show contempt for your kindness and forbearance, not knowing that your kindness is meant to lead us to repentance. For on the cross we see that we are so sinful that Christ had to die and so loved that he chose to die. Forgive us for presuming on the riches of your kindness, and empower us to be kind to others. Amen.

Images of Faith
Part 5 of 5, read more on TheParkForum.org

Today’s Readings
Exodus 17 (Listen – 2:30)
Luke 20 (Listen – 5:07)

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This Weekend’s Readings

Saturday: Exodus 18 (Listen – 3:54); Luke 21 (Listen – 4:18)
Sunday: Exodus 19 (Listen – 4:04); Luke 22 (Listen – 7:58)

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Luke 19.16-17, 20, 24
[Jesus said,] The first one came and said, ‘Sir, your mina has earned ten more.’

“Well done, my good servant!’ his master replied. ‘Because you have been trustworthy in a very small matter, take charge of ten cities.” …

Then another servant came and said, “Sir, here is your mina; I have kept it laid away in a piece of cloth. 

Then the master said to those standing by, “Take his mina away from him and give it to the one who has ten.”

TBT: A Faith for Others | by H. D. M. Spence, 1909

The Servants
We have, in the first servant, the devoted earnest toiler, whose whole soul was in his Master’s work — great, indeed, was his reward.

Second, we have the servant who acquitted himself fairly respectably, but not nobly, not a hero in the struggle of life. He, too, is recompensed magnificently, far above his most ardent hopes, but still his reward is infinitely below that which the first brave toiler received at his Lord’s hands. 

The third falls altogether into a different catalogue. He is a believer who has not found the state of grace offered by Jesus so brilliant as he hoped. He is a legal Christian, who has not tasted grace, and knows nothing of the gospel but its severe morality. 

The Hearers
At first the smallness of the sum given to each of the servants is striking [a mina is 1/60 of a talent]. The paltriness of the sum given them seems to suggest what a future lay before Christ’s followers. No sharing in what they hoped for — the glories of a Messianic kingdom on earth. No rest in repose under the shadow of the mighty throne of King Messiah.

The “very little” (ver. 17) told them — if they would only listen — that their future as his servants would be a life of comparatively obscure inglorious activity, without rank or power, landless, homeless, nearly friendless.

The Reward
The reimbursement (at the end of the story) of a city for a pound hints at the magnificent possibilities of the heaven-life — it just suggests the splendor of its rewards.

Prayers from the Past
Helper of men who turn to you,
Light of men in the dark,
Creator of all that grows from seed,
Promotor of all spiritual growth,
Have mercy on me, Lord, on me
And make me a temple fit for yourself.

— Unknown author. Likely a private family prayer, found on papyrus, published 1924.

Images of Faith
Part 4 of 5, read more on TheParkForum.org

Today’s Readings
Exodus 16 (Listen – 5:02)
Luke 19 (Listen – 5:29)

Today’s post is bridged, with updated language, from Spence-Jones, H. D. M. (Ed.). (1909). St Luke (Vol. 2, pp. 136–137). London; New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company.

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Luke 17.6
Jesus said, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.”

When Jesus wanted to create a picture of the potential of faith, he chose the arduous process of uprooting a tree. Jesus regularly drew teaching examples from his environment, but a tree seems odd for this particular teaching. We like to think of faith solving the world’s greatest problems — poverty, slavery, cancer, mental illness — not performing the tasks of an arborist.

The other image in this teaching is curious as well. The sea is an symbol of chaos and death in ancient Jewish culture. In Jesus’ day the sea was a place of tremendous risk and danger. Everyone knew someone who had gone out to sea and never returned.

“Jesus is not giving us some bizarre image of the impossible,” says Oxford’s Religion and Science Research Director, Andrew Pinset. The story is neither an inspirational image of faith or a condemnation for lack of it (for who has ever been able to use faith to cast a tree into the sea).

The story is about Christ himself. Pinset continues, “Jesus Christ, the mulberry tree, which has being maturing for over a thousand years in the spiritual soil of Israel, will be uprooted and re-planted in the bitter, salt water chaos of paganism.”

A mulberry tree is an image of life. Mulberries start out white and turn blood red when they ripen. Each tree’s root system is vast and complex — taking up to three years to develop to the point where the tree can bear its full fruit.

The New Testament’s writers insist that our world’s greatest problems are solved by faith. Jesus taught that it is not the amount of faith — indeed, it could be as small as a mustard seed — but by the object of our faith that saves.

Christ planted himself in the depths of chaos and evil in our world. He obeyed his father to the point of death and gave his blood to calm the waters in which we suffer. 

Prayer
Father, we long for the day that evil, chaos, and death are rebuked and all they have taken is restored. Let us look to you as the one who calms the waters. We pray, as your disciples did, that you would increase our faith.

Today’s Readings
Exodus 14 (Listen – 4:46)
Luke 17 (Listen – 4:22)

Images of Faith
Part 2 of 5, read more on TheParkForum.org

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Luke 16.19-21
[Jesus said,] “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.”

At first it’s easy to separate identity from success. Over time, a person can become radically unaware of themselves apart from any type of success — professional, financial, social, or otherwise.

The rich man in Jesus’ story has no name because his financial success became his identity. Jesus paints a picture of a man who has everything. Although he has done exceptionally well in business and lives in comfort, he soon finds himself in Hades. The parable is careful to note that he is not cast there. 

Hades is exactly what the rich man wanted — he structured his life to separate himself from the poor, the meek, and the last.

In the end he discovers what Jesus promises; it is the poor in spirit who receive the Kingdom of Heaven, the meek who inherit the earth, the last who become first. 

The rich man’s problem isn’t his success. His disconnection from God and his neighbor in eternity is the result of intentionally withdrawing from them while on earth.

“Hell is the greatest monument in the history of the world to human freedom,” C.S. Lewis says In The Problem of Pain. “What do you want God to do? Forgive them? But they won’t be forgiven,” Lewis continues. “What do you want him to do? Leave them alone? Alas, that’s exactly what he’s going to do.”

Jesus calls his followers to examine their lives. The parable ends without exhortation or summary. (It clearly isn’t a quaint tale to encourage tithing or a concrete description of the afterlife.) As he does time and again, Jesus challenges his followers to use their best time and energy to pursue things far more worthy than worldly success. 

One day you’ll get everything you want. 

Prayer
Father, root our identity in you. Let us hunger and thirst for your love, truth, and peace in our lives. Open our eyes to the marginalized, the poor, and the meek. Give us wisdom and courage to invite them in from the outside. Show your love for them through us, your Church.

Images of Faith
Part 1 of 5, read more on TheParkForum.org

Today’s Readings
Exodus 13 (Listen – 3:30)
Luke 16 (Listen – 4:27)

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