Tag: Luke

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Giving Thanks :: Weekend Reading List

“I have been thinking of something that stifles thanksgiving,” wrote Elisabeth Elliot almost 30 years ago—and, though it was neither politics nor family struggles, her insight cuts right to the heart: “It is the spirit of greed—the greed of doing, being, and having.” Elliot explains:

When Satan came to tempt Jesus in the wilderness, his bait was intended to inspire the lust to do more than the Father meant for Him to do—to go farther, demonstrate more power, and act more dramatically.

This lifestyle of greed metastasizes in every corner of our soul—often expressing itself as we think of the worldly things for which we are thankful. But what if Thanksgiving was defined not by what we have accumulated but by rest from the demands of commerce and striving? Elliot continues:

The enemy comes to us in these days of frantic doing. We are ceaselessly summoned to activities: social, political, educational, athletic, and—yes—spiritual. Our “self-image” (deplorable word!) is dependent not on quiet and hidden “Do this for My sake,” but on the list the world hands us of what is “important.” It is a long list, and it is both foolish and impossible. If we fall for it, we neglect the short list.

Temptation comes also in the form of being. The snake in the garden struck at Eve with the promise of being something which had not been given. If she would eat the fruit forbidden to her, she could “upgrade her lifestyle” and become like God. She inferred that this was her right, and that God meant to cheat her of this.

Then there is the greed of having. There is no end to the spending, getting, having. We are insatiable consumers, dead-set on competing, upgrading, showing off (“If you’ve got it, flaunt it”). We simply cannot bear to miss something others deem necessary.

So the world ruins the peace and simplicity God would give us. Contentment with what He has chosen for us dissolves, along with godliness, while, instead of giving thanks, we lust and wail, teaching our children to lust and wail too.

Elliot’s soft rebuke reminds me of David Foster Wallace’s This is Water. Wallace, like Elliot, demands we question the “normal” and expand our thirst for what is possible when we give up the relentless pursuit of self.

I was also reminded of Abraham Joshua Heschel’s work The Sabbath. The rabbi parses the spiritual life in the realms of space and time—drawing us beyond the materialism that defines our modern world. “The solution of mankind’s most vexing problem will not be found in renouncing technical civilization, but in attaining some degree of independence of it,” Heschel challenges. He explains:

Technical civilization is man’s conquest of space. It is a triumph frequently achieved by sacrificing an essential ingredient of existence, namely, time. In technical civilization, we expend time to gain space. To enhance our power in the world of space is our main objective. Yet to have more does not mean to be more. The power we attain in the world of space terminates abruptly at the borderline of time. But time is the heart of existence.

The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments. In a religious experience, for example, it is not a thing that imposes itself on man but a spiritual presence. What is retained in the soul is the moment of insight rather than the place where the act came to pass. A moment of insight is a fortune, transporting us beyond the confines of measured time.

So as we prepare to give thanks this week, may we find space. In the midst of travel, of difficult conversations, of the joys of friendship and family—may we find the holy moments where we can experience the power of the divine.

In this way we will experience Thanksgiving as an extension of eternity—a taste of the holy rest that awaits us. “Unless one learns how to relish the taste of Sabbath,” Heschel cautions, “one will be unable to enjoy the taste of eternity in the world to come.”

Weekend Reading List

Today’s Reading
Amos 7 (Listen – 2:45)
Luke 2 (Listen – 6:11)

This Weekend’s Readings
Amos 8 (Listen – 2:16) Luke 3 (Listen – 5:24)
Amos 9 (Listen – 3:08) Luke 4 (Listen – 5:27)

 

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Christ—Ruler of Political Leaders

By N.T. Wright

You shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” — Luke 1.31-33

In trying to understand that present reign of Jesus, though, we have seen two apparently quite different strands. On the one hand, we have seen that all the powers and authorities in the universe are now, in some sense or other, subject to Jesus. This doesn’t mean that they all do what he wants all the time, only that Jesus intends that there should be social and political structures of governance.

Jesus himself pointed out to Pilate that the authority that the Roman governor had over him and been given to him “from above.” Once that has been said, we should not only be shy about recognizing—however paradoxical it seems to our black and white minds—the God-givenness of structures of authority, even when they are tyrannical and violent.

Part of what we say when we say that a structure is God-given is also that God will hold it to account. We have trained ourselves to think of political legitimacy simply in terms of the method or mode of appointment (e.g., if you’ve won an election). The ancient Jews and early Christians were far more interested in holding rulers to account with regard to what they were actually doing. God wants rulers, but God will call them to account.

Where does Jesus come into all this? From his own perspective, he was himself both upstaging the power structures of his day and also calling them to account, then and there. That’s what his action in the Temple was all about. But his death, resurrection, and ascension were the demonstration that he was Lord and they were not.

The calling to account has, in other words, already begun—and will be completed at the second coming. The church’s work of speaking the truth to power means what it means because it is based on the first of these and anticipates the second.

What the church does, in the power of the Spirit, is rooted in the achievement of Jesus and looks ahead to the final completion of his work. This is how Jesus is running the world in the present.

*Excerpt from Simply Jesus by N.T. Wright.

Today’s Reading
Amos 5 (Listen – 3:44)
Luke 1:1-38 (Listen – 9:26)

 

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The Reality of the Resurrection

Luke 24.17-19
They stood still, their faces downcast. One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, “Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?”

“What things?” he asked. 

I worked as a paramedic for five years while going to school for my bachelor’s and master’s degrees. One of the idiosyncrasies found in the wake of trauma is the way an injured person’s mind preoccupies itself with inconsequential details. The stress of trauma tricked more than one patient’s brain into looking over a severe injury only to fixate on the loss of a shoelace to my trauma shears. 

Poor decision making is, of course, not limited to trauma patients.

Leaders make bad decisions, in part, because of “inappropriate self-interest or distorting attachments,” writes Andrew Campbell in the Harvard Business Review. “Our brains can cause us to think we understand [situations] when we don’t.”

The final chapter of Luke shares the story of Jesus walking the road to Emmaus with two of his followers. They are unaware of his resurrection. It takes a seven mile walk and part of a meal for them to recognize to whom they are speaking. 

They show their dismay when Jesus asks, “What things?” in reference to the previous days’ events. The trauma of the crucifixion consumes them (rightly so). Yet their reply to Christ also reveals their own self-interest and distorting attachments. 

“We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel,” they lament. For many in Jesus’ day, “redeem Israel” had clear and immediate geo-political ramifications which were unmet. Jesus’ response reorients them.

God’s love did not deny or diminish Jesus’ suffering on earth. Yet Jesus’ words after the resurrection are almost exclusively focused on the meaning of the crucifixion rather than the pain of the event itself.

The reality of the resurrection gave Jesus’ suffering a meaning that could not be taken and a restoration of all that was lost. The reality of the kingdom took what must have felt like a thousand years of pain and eclipsed it with eternal glory.

Prayer
Lord we long for you. Today we hurt and suffer under the weight of a world which is not our home. Come quickly, Lord. Return what has been lost. Restore what has been taken. Heal the brokenhearted. Resurrect the dead. Quench every longing with your presence, Lord Jesus.

Hope in the Darkness
Part 2 of 5, read more on TheParkForum.org

Today’s Readings
Exodus 21 (Listen – 4:44)
Luke 24 (Listen – 6:16)

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The Hour of Greatest Need

Luke 23.55-56
The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee followed Joseph and saw the tomb and how his body was laid in it. Then they went home and prepared spices and perfumes. But they rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment.

The one on whom they had hung all their hope lay lifeless in a grave cut out of stone on the side of a hill. It was customary to embalm everyone who passed away, how much more for him whose hands brought sight to the blind, health to the ill, and life to sinners.

This was a terrible time to take the day off.

And yet, as the sun fell behind the western wall of the temple, the women stopped and prepared to rest for the sabbath.

Modern research shows taking a day off helps refuel mental resources drained by the pressures of work. No doubt the God who makes both body and sabbath also crafts them to work together. But sabbath also transcends this relationship.

“The Sabbath is not for the purpose of enhancing the efficiency of [man’s] work,” observes rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel in his book The Sabbath. Heschel argues for an experience of sabbath that reunites man with God, rather than deepening him in self-centeredness:

“He who wants to enter the holiness of the day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil. He must go away from the screech of dissonant days, from the nervousness and fury of acquisitiveness and the betrayal in embezzling his own life.

“Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else. Six days a week we seek to dominate the world, on the seventh day we try to dominate the self.” 

The grace of resurrection cannot be wrought by the hands of man. When the women return to the tomb after the sabbath they become the first to experience the invitation to rest because Christ labored on their behalf.

Our hour of greatest need, when we find ourselves most helpless, is the best time to rest.

Prayer
Lord we confess that we forget to see sabbath as a gift and reminder of your work and sacrifice. Thank you for inviting us into the miracle of your resurrection. Thank you for the life we find in your grace.

Today’s Readings
Exodus 20 (Listen – 3:21)
Luke 23 (Listen – 6:39)

Hope in the Darkness
Part 1 of 5, read more on TheParkForum.org

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Kindness is Key

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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