Starting in August (this Wednesday) we will be looking back at our readers’ favorite posts of the year. We still have room for your submissions! Follow this link to submit. You can submit more than one post by refreshing the form when you are done. — John

Scripture: Mark 12.28; 34
One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.

Reflection: The Gift of Noticing
By John Tillman

Among all the debates and arguments with Christ that are recorded in scripture, one has always stood out to me and grown more important as I’ve grown older—the wise teacher of the law.

When I was younger, I was more interested in who this man was. Could it be Nicodemus, who came to Jesus at night? Could it be Joseph of Arimathea? As I’ve grown older, I care less about his identity and more about his amazing gift of noticing the good in a perceived enemy.

Our culture is so adversarial, every interaction seems a zero-sum game. A guaranteed, click-driving word for content is “destroys.” (As in, destroying your opponent. Sometimes this motivates people to literally attempt to destroy your opponents.)

Our culture sees debate not as a learning experience but as a path to the domination of others through destruction. We have little in common with the rabbinical system of religious debate and question-driven teaching that Jesus knew. This process was normal and typically genial and healthy. We see it with Christ’s first visit to the temple as a child and throughout his ministry.

There were times (including in this chapter) Christ’s enemies attempted to get Jesus to say something that they could use to prove criminal intent. But, as the other religious leaders lost their objectivity in their attempts to discredit Jesus, the wise teacher found a better path.

Matthew’s account of this event leaves out the context of Mark—causing the question to seem more adversarial. But in Mark, the interaction plays out as more of a search for knowledge than an attack. The men connect with each other across their differences through the gift of noticing.

The wise teacher is not listening to attack or to destroy. He is not listening to craft a counter-argument. Through opposition and questioning we see him find in Jesus a kinship and common ground of faith. The teacher notices Jesus; Jesus notices him.

Jesus came to seek and to save not to seek and destroy.

When we face opposition, when we question and argue, when we are confronted in debate, may we receive from the Holy Spirit the gift of noticing. May we notice our opposition, seeking to understand them, seeking to see them as Christ does. When we do, we will find how greatly they are loved by Jesus, who sees them.

Prayer: The Greeting
Whom have I in heaven but you? And having you I desire nothing upon this earth. — Psalm 73.25

– Prayer from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Prayers from The Divine Hours available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Jeremiah 26 (Listen – 4:04)
Mark 12 (Listen – 6:10)

Additional Reading
Read More about Choosing Gentleness Over Violence
By posting, liking, and retweeting articles about our ideological rivals being “destroyed” we are revealing not our ideological righteousness, but our theological sinfulness.

Readers’ Choice
In August we will look back at our readers’ favorite posts of the year. Submit a Readers Choice post.
Tell us about a post and what it meant to you. What post made you think?

Scripture: Mark 9.50
“Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again? Have salt among yourselves, and be at peace with each other.”

Guided prayers and meditations are a common part of Christian spiritual practice. Return to this prayer through the day or over the weekend, as it will be a different experience based on your mood and surroundings. — John

Reflection: Humble, Welcoming Servants :: A Guided Prayer
By John Tillman

We confess to you, Lord…

When our immaturity demands miracles on our terms
When we struggle to accept the people whom you are calling us to accept
When we take offense
When we are ungrateful for how much you have transformed our lives
That, so many times, it is our own ambitions and selfishness that stand in the way.

Just like the twelve, just like any numbered group, we are concerned about being number one. We argue and attempt to dominate one another.

He asked them, “What were you arguing about on the road?” But they kept quiet because on the way they had argued about who was the greatest. — Mark 9.33-34

Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all. — Mark 9.35

Help us to serve all and humbly welcome those whom you place in the center of our gatherings.

He took a little child whom he placed among them. Taking the child in his arms, he said to them “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.” — Mark 9.36-37

Help us to support those outside our groups who are willing to work in Christ’s name.

We told him to stop, because he was not one of us.”

“Do not stop him,” Jesus said. “For no one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, for whoever is not against us is for us. — Mark 9.38-40

Lord, it is not what we see that causes us to stumble, it is our own eyes. It is not what we touch that causes us to stumble, it is our own hands. It is not what we lust for that causes us to stumble. It is our own heart.

If your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell. — Mark 9.47

Help us to remove from our lives what causes us to stumble.
Help us to humbly work with those who will work with us.
Help us to be servants to all-comers, not contestants against all-comers.
Help us to remember with thanks the transformative work you have done in our lives.

Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons
Know this, the Lord himself is God; he himself has made us, and we are his; we are his people and the sheep of his pasture. — Psalm 100.2

– Prayer from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Prayers from The Divine Hours available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Jeremiah 23 (Listen – 7:13)
Mark 9 (Listen – 6:16)

This Weekend’s Readings
Jeremiah 24 (Listen – 1:54) Mark 10 (Listen – 6:42)
Jeremiah 25 (Listen – 6:12) Mark 11 (Listen – 3:59)

Additional Reading
Read More about Prayers of Woe and Weeping :: Guided Prayer
Weep with Christ prophetically. He weeps that our hypocrisy not only harms us, but blocks the path of redemption for others.

Readers’ Choice
In August we will look back at our readers’ favorite posts of the year. Submit a Readers Choice post.
Tell us about a post and what it meant to you. What post made you think?

Scripture: Mark 8.11-12
The Pharisees came and began to question Jesus. To test him, they asked him for a sign from heaven. He sighed deeply and said, “Why does this generation ask for a sign? Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to it.”

Reflection: A Sign of Immaturity
By John Tillman

The immature demand signs because they walk by sight—not faith.

However, the Pharisees and religious leaders, the most outwardly spiritually mature Jews of their day, were often the ones demanding a sign from Jesus.

In this chapter we see Jesus perform signs and miracles, but the Pharisees don’t see them. Not that seeing a miracle would guarantee faith. Elsewhere in scripture we know the Pharisees witnessed many of Christ’s miracles. We also see that the crowds that witnessed large public miracles (such as feeding the 4000 and the 5000) failed to develop mature faith.

Multiple times Jesus attributes his healing miracles to the faith of the person healed, so we can conclude that sometimes signs and miracles may grow from a deep faith. However, signs and miracles rarely grow a deep faith for those who witness them. Those who begin walking by sight have a hard time transitioning to walking by faith.

This frustration must have weighed on Jesus and may be the source of the deep sigh of frustration Mark records. Few were ready when the long-awaited Messiah appeared and many did not recognize the hour of visitation.

The religious leaders were not mustache-twisting villains. They were good and well-intentioned men. The Pharisees sought actively to do God’s will as completely as humanly possible.

As Christians, Pharisees would be the most frequent attenders of your church. They would not be similar to “cultural Christians” whose only identifying mark of Christianity is on a census taker’s form. In fact, they would probably look down on such uncommitted believers.

What was dreadfully wrong with the Pharisees was not on the outside, but the inside.

The Pharisees’ outward behavior had the practiced discipline of tradition and the polished veneer of virtue. But they neglected the more important parts of the law. Practices that should have inspired humility and mercy, instead lead to pride, superiority, oppression, and cruelty.

Christ had mature followers among all varieties of people—including among the religious leaders and Pharisees. At the hour of his death, it was two of these followers who risked death to tend his body and lay it in the borrowed tomb.

May we, through our spiritual disciplines, develop a mature faith that cultivates signs and miracles of mercy and grace for others, not an immature faith that demands signs of favor and blessing for ourselves.

Prayer: The Greeting
You, O Lord, shall give strength to your people; the Lord shall give his people the blessing of peace. — Mark 9.35

– Prayer from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Prayers from The Divine Hours available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Jeremiah 22 (Listen – 5:07)
Mark 8 (Listen – 4:29)

Additional Reading
Read More about the Milk of the Word, A Precedent to Growth
Prioritizing the basics of faith—Bible reading, reflection, prayer, and corporate worship—is a spiritual intake process that matures with us, leading deeper into scripture as we repetitively read and absorb God’s Word.

Readers’ Choice
In August we will look back at our readers’ favorite posts of the year. Submit a Readers Choice post.
Tell us about a post and what it meant to you. What post helped refresh your faith?

Scripture: Mark 7.37
People were overwhelmed with amazement. “He has done everything well,” they said.

Reflection: Doing All Things Well
By John Tillman

Mark’s seventh chapter begins with Pharisees, who never seemed to think Jesus did anything right. It ends with Gentiles in the Decapolis who proclaimed with amazement that Jesus did all things well.

The Pharisees were a culture within a culture. Paul uses his pharisaical background as a superlative, calling himself a “Hebrew of Hebrews.” The Decapolis was a region of Gentile cities that many observant Jews would avoid.

Jesus models for us a comfortable and powerful confidence that allows him to move with freedom and authority between these two different cultures. He is equally comfortable exposing the inward sinfulness of the religious elite as he is exposing the bright light of the Gentiles’ faith and both groups’ desperate need for the gospel.

That Jesus would even spend time in Gentile territory would be scandalous to the Pharisees. That he would claim that the only true God is the God of Israel would be scandalous to the Gentiles. Christ’s teaching of the gospel shocked everyone. His gospel was not watered-down, feel-good niceties. It offended easily. But it was, and is, the only source of life.

As we follow Christ, we are meant to take on this mantle of confidence and comfort. This is not a confidence in our ability or a comfort in our own power, but an indwelling, filling, and freeing expression of the Holy Spirit with us.

The crowds in the Decapolis would have known Jesus as a source of transformation and life before he arrived because Jesus had already sent a missionary there to prepare the way. Though not recorded in scripture, it is not hard to imagine that Christ, upon arriving in the cities of the Decapolis, may have been greeted with crowds led by the former demoniac of Gerasene.

May we be so transformed. May we be so sent. May we undertake whatever task is asked of us for the cities to which God sends us. May they say of us as they say of Christ, that we “doeth all things well.”

Hymn:
All the way my Savior leads me;
What have I to ask beside?
Can I doubt His tender mercy,
Who through life has been my Guide?
Heav’nly peace, divinest comfort,
Here by faith in Him to dwell!
For I know, whate’er befall me,
Jesus doeth all things well,
For I know, whate’er befall me,
Jesus doeth all things well. — Fanny Crosby (recording by Rich Mullins)

Prayer: A Reading
So he sat down, called the Twelve to him and said, “If anyone wants to be first, he must make himself last of all and servant of all.” — Mark 9.35

– Prayer from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Prayers from The Divine Hours available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Jeremiah 21 (Listen – 2:35)
Mark 7 (Listen – 4:28)

Additional Reading
Read More about Thankful Workers for Peace
Just as Jesus left the Gerasene man to spread the gospel to the Decapolis, he would soon leave the disciples to spread the gospel to the world, and he has left us here to follow in their footsteps.

Readers’ Choice
In August we will look back at our readers’ favorite posts of the year. Submit a Readers Choice post.
Tell us about a post and what it meant to you. What post helped you connect your faith to your work?

Scripture: Mark 6.4; Jeremiah 20.1-2; Mark 6.27-28
A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home.

When the priest Pashhur son of Immer, the official in charge of the temple of the Lord, heard Jeremiah prophesying these things, he had Jeremiah the prophet beaten and put in the stocks.

So he immediately sent an executioner with orders to bring John’s head. The man went, beheaded John in the prison, and brought back his head on a platter.

Reflection: The Trap of Being Offended
By John Tillman

Our readings today bring us a theme of three prophets whose offensive messages caused them to be rejected: Jesus, Jeremiah, and John the Baptist.

Nazareth’s residents “took offense” at Jesus. The Greek word translated as “offense” is skandalizó and it implies the idea of a trap that one falls into or is ensnared by.

There’s no gunshot like conviction,
There’s no conscience bulletproof,
There’s no strength like our own weakness,
There’s no insult like the truth. — Charlie Peacock

Stumbling into the trap of offense leads to a pattern that we can learn from. All three of these prophets experienced this pattern in some way. If we find ourselves in one of these steps, we need to prayerfully evaluate our hearts to see if we are trapped by being offended.

Step one: Minimize the prophet’s message based on his or her family background, age, race, gender, or history.

Focus on the prophet and magnify any flaw. Jeremiah was a young, unpatriotic upstart. Jesus was an out-of-wedlock, scandalous, small-town kid from a flyover state from which nothing good could come. John was an extremist and was politically insensitive.

Step two: Publicly censure the prophet, inviting shame, scorn, and sometimes violence.

Jeremiah was held in stocks in the Temple. The purpose of such a punishment is to shame and humble an enemy; to make him or her powerless, allowing verbal and physical attacks. This practice is common today. We still love shaming and stoning people. We just mostly do it digitally through social media.

Step three: Conspire with the powerful to have the prophet silenced.

John’s attack on Herod’s incestuous marriage brought him into political crosshairs and set in motion an illegal conspiracy to have him killed. Jesus also was the victim of conspiracy, leading to his shaming, humiliating death on the cross. Jeremiah was tortured many times. The Bible doesn’t record his death, but according to traditional sources he was eventually stoned.

With the exception of Herodias, all of the people who tortured and killed the three prophets we read of today thought they were doing God’s work—disposing of troublemakers.

This should shock us into inner evaluation of ourselves and our motives. Why are we offended? Can we turn our offense and the offender over to God? We must always be cautious and prayerful when we take offense at a prophet.

Prayer: The Greeting
My mouth shall recount your mighty acts and saving deeds all day long; though I cannot know the number of them. — Psalm 71.15

– Prayer from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Prayers from The Divine Hours available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Jeremiah 20 (Listen – 3:07)
Mark 6 (Listen – 7:23)

Additional Reading
Read More about Kingdom Manifestation :: A Guided Prayer
Pray God will use you in healing the infectious, in redeeming the lost causes, and in hospitality to the thieves crucified beside you.

Readers’ Choice
In August we will look back at our readers’ favorite posts of the year. Submit a Readers Choice post.
Tell us about a post and what it meant to you. What post comforted you?