Jesus wasn't Doing it Wrong

“You’re doing it wrong!”

I always hate criticism, but I really hate being told I am doing things wrong when I know I am doing them right. When patients come in and try to “educate” me on why I should give them antibiotics for a cold or why vaccines are harmful the conversations seldom end well.  I am an imperfect person who occasionally makes mistakes and some questions are appropriate, but I have a hard time when people do not appreciate who I am and what I know.

It is one thing to challenge an experienced physician about how he practices medicine. It is a different thing altogether to challenge God about how He does religion. As foolish as this may seem, it is something Jesus experienced all of the time.

This week in our men’s study of Matthew 9 we reviewed the passage where the disciples of John the Baptist approached Jesus with the question, “How come your disciples don’t fast like we and the Pharisees do?” Implicit in their question was that they thought Jesus’ disciples should have been fasting and were less spiritual because they didn’t, and that as their teacher, Jesus should address the problem.

Jesus answer was interesting. Using the analogy of a wedding celebration, he said, “Can wedding guests mourn while the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.” Matthew 9:15 ESV

In our study we paraphrased his response by saying, “If the purpose of fasting is to spiritually focus and draw near to God, why would you fast when God Incarnate was with you?”

In Jesus’ response, and in the verses that followed, Jesus made it clear that the old ways of religious thinking and acting were inadequate, and that things were different in the kingdom He was bringing. Jesus told a culture that celebrated external religiosity that their old ways and habits needed to be reexamined.

Lest there be any doubt, Jesus followed his words by acting in a way that was new and strange to them. He was approached by a religious leader whose daughter had just died. The grief-stricken man pleaded with the Savior, “Come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.”

The presumptuous request of the man would not have been lost on the audience. He was asking Jesus to touch his dead daughter. Touching a dead body would render a person spiritually unclean and barred from temple worship for 7 days. Religious teachers of that day would never do this. Being clean was too important.

Jesus was not like the other religious teachers. His actions revealed a different set of priorities, Matthew wrote that “Jesus rose and followed him, with His disciples.” Spiritual cleanness, shallow skin deep righteous, mattered little compared to the life of the girl and the love of her father. Jesus immediately went to see the child. (And ultimately healed her and brought her back to life.)

Jesus willingness to be considered “unclean” in service to others was further demonstrated as he traveled to see the dead child. As he walked along a woman with a “discharge of blood for twelve years came up behind him and touched the hem of his garment” believing that even this small touch of Jesus would be sufficient to heal.

As dramatic as it was for Jesus to be willing to go to the dead child, the woman’s actions similarly defied cultural explanation. Jesus’ decision to touch the child would be His, the resultant uncleanness His to bear, a consequence of his personal choice. The woman, ceremonially unclean and separated from others, had no right to render another unclean by her touch. The duration of uncleanness was shorter than that for touching a dead body (one day instead of seven) but her imposition of uncleanness onto a Rabbi, a religious teacher, was extremely inappropriate. No one would have faulted Jesus if he had taken offense at the woman’s actions. Jesus instead reacted with His characteristic grace. The woman was healed, and Jesus validated her by saying, “Your faith has made you well.”

In his words and responses Jesus demonstrated that serving God is about loving people, not about religious rituals. This lesson is still relevant today. We have a tendency to think we know “how it is done”, to rely on traditions and to judge others based on those traditions. When we do, we are no different than the Pharisees Jesus so often corrected.

Bart

Being Right, Doing Wrong

Doing the right thing has always been important to me. As my children grew up two of my most oft repeated sayings were, “Never count the cost of doing the right thing” and “The right thing and the easy thing are almost never the same thing.”

For most of my life doing right has been ego protective for me. I think it has a lot to do with my upbringing. I grew up in a highly critical home with mockery and put downs an essential part of my upbringing. Parental abuse can destroy self esteem and I defended myself against it by working hard to be and do the best I could. In my head I countered negativism by telling myself, “You did the right thing.”

This thought process has persisted throughout my adult life. At times it has led to me to stand alone, even against superiors who had the ability to harm me professionally. I could handle the thought of harmful repercussions, what I could not handle was facing myself in the mirror if I compromised my values. This commitment served me well in the vast majority of circumstances.

This commitment to doing right may sound noble but it isn’t. In many ways it was self-serving. There is more to doing right than being right.  Doing right isn’t just about what we do, it is about how we do it.

I was reminded of this last week when I made the mistake of reviewing old patient reviews online. While my reviews are for the most part very positive some of my older reviews are quite harsh. More than one patient described me as “arrogant” or “condescending.” As I read the reviews I came to a difficult realization. Some of these patients were probably right. I have no doubt that there were times that I was so focused on being right that I forgot to be kind, to listen carefully, to understand or to empathize. While my diagnosis and treatment plans may have been “right”, my incomplete communication and sense of compassion wasn’t. The reviews left me with a sense of sadness. I wish I had done better, had been better.

Reading these reviews left with a renewed commitment to not only do right, but to do rightly. At times this may involve treating patient fears and not just their symptoms. Other times it may require listening to unjustified criticism, responding to unreasonable demands or allowing unjustified anger to go unanswered. Being right does not give me the right to point out every wrong I see in others.

I am learning that I am called to not only be right, but to be righteous. As the prophet Micah so beautifully said, “He has shown you, O man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you- to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” Mercy refers to treating people with kindness even when they are in the wrong. Humility leaves no room for arrogance when I am in the right and demands that I put the needs of others before my own.

By the grace of God I can say that I am a better man than I was many years ago. May he give me the grace to become a better man with each passing day.

Bart

Do You See Who Jesus Sees?

Matthew was a tax collector. He made his living by taking money from his fellow Jews and giving it to the Romans. To be more specific, if he was like other tax collectors he made a living by taking more than required from his fellow Jews, giving the required amount to Rome and then keeping the extra for himself. It is not a stretch to assume that he was not a well-liked man.

Tax collectors were despised by the religious leaders, considered unworthy. Which makes Jesus’ choice of Matthew to be one of his 12 closest disciples remarkable. Why would Jesus pick him? Didn’t Jesus know Matthew’s history?

There can be no doubting that Jesus knew. Matthew was sitting in his tax collection booth at the moment Jesus called to him and told Matthew to become one of his followers! Why would Jesus do this?

The Bible does no specifically answer this question but in Matthew’s account of this interaction, found in Matthew 9:9, there may be a clue. Look at how Jesus’ actions are described-

“As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him.” Matthew 9:9 ESV

Take note of what Jesus is described as seeing. “A man called Matthew.”

Jesus saw Matthew as first and foremost a man, not as a tax collector. It appears that to Jesus, Matthew was a man who happened to be a tax collector, not a tax collector who happened to be man. I think this is how Jesus sees everyone. He sees us as people, created in the image of God, deserving of love, and he desires to enter into relationship with us. What we have done is insignificant when compare to who we are.

Jesus’ attitude was the polar opposite of the attitude of the religious leaders of that time. We see in the passage (and a parallel passage in Mark 2) that after calling to Matthew Jesus went to a dinner at Matthew’s home. They were joined there by several of Matthew’s friends. See how the pharisees described the members of Jesus’ dinner party-

“And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” Matthew 9:11 ESV

It seems that the pharisees saw the men and evaluated their worth first and foremost on their past actions, not on their humanity. Their judgmental attitude led to their judgmental response.

Makes me stop and think about how I look at people. When I look at others, what is the first thing I see? What do I see as their identifying characteristic?

If I want to be a follower of Jesus, I need to first see their inherent value as people, created in the image of God and worthy of love.

-          Bart

This post is one in a series of midweek posts based on lessons learned from my weekly men’s bible study. Other posts on non-religious topics are usually shared on weekends.

Life isn’t Boring

What makes living worthwhile? What gives value to a life?

This week came the story of a man with a pistol taking the lives of 11 people in a bar. In an Instagram post written during the killing spree the murderer gave his reason for taking the lives of others. “Life is boring, so why not?”

A few days later my wife and I participated in the “Walk to end ALS.” (ALS is an always fatal progressive neurologic disease, also known as “Lou Gehrig’s Disease) We walked in support of a friend from church who has battled the disease for the last four years. Over 30 of our church friends walked together, each with their words, steps and donations saying to our friend, “Your life matters, you matter.”

It is a confusing world. One young man in perfect health decides that his life, and the lives of strangers, are worthless. In a matter of minutes he sacrifices multiple lives on the altar of his boredom. To him, human life was insignificant and disposable.

At the same time another man, cursed with an incurable disease, fights for every precious moment. His love of life and love of others is contagious and encouraging. To him, life is a gift from God, full of meaning and meant to be treasured. 

There can be no denying that it is my friend who has the right perspective. Life is not boring. It is precious. 

Bart

Small Town Jesus

I have read the gospel accounts dozens of times. Many of the stories are familiar, so much so that I sometimes catch myself skimming them instead of reading, nodding to myself and thinking, “Oh yeah, this is THAT story!”

Matthew 9 begins with such a story, the account of Jesus returning to his home town of Nazareth. Matthew recounts how he was greeted by Nazarenes carrying a paralyzed man on a mat, bringing the man to Jesus in the belief that Jesus could heal him. Moved by their faith, Jesus did heal the man, but not before first telling the man that his sins were forgiven. This claim by Jesus of the authority to forgive sins was profound, an implicit claim to an authority that resides only with God. The subsequent act of healing was intended as confirmation of that authority.

There is a lot to unpack in the tale, about Jesus’ nature, mission and authority, but it was not until this last week that I became aware of another aspect of the story that had previously evaded me. In preparation for discussing this passage in my weekly men’s Bible study, a question came to mind about Jesus’ return home, “How many people lived in Nazareth?”

The answer is not in the Bible, so I did what any modern-day Bible scholar would do, I googled it. Lo and behold I found an answer. Scholars think the town was very small, so small as to be insignificant to people of the day. According to one article I found, the population might have totaled only 400 people.

This fact dramatically changed my understanding of the passage. In towns of 400 people, everybody in town knows everybody else in town. They know your family, your parents, your skills and abilities. They knew who you were as a child, and watched you grow up. There are no strangers in a small town.

Which means that there is a very good chance that the people who brought the paralyzed man to Jesus knew Jesus. They remembered him as a child, as a carpenter, and probably as a friend. They knew the Jesus who for 30 years had done no miracles, and who had perhaps not even taught in the synagogue. They knew Jesus before he was Jesus the Messiah.

Which means that their faith was different. The other towns Jesus visited were encountering him for the first time. Their first experience with the Messiah was of witnessing a profound spiritual lesson or miraculous healing. For them to believe in Jesus as the Messiah they had nothing to forget, no previous experiences to overcome. For the people in Nazareth the challenge was greater. The Jesus they knew, the man displaying such power, had not manifested that power in their presence before. This man, who could heal the sick and make lame men walk had for some unknown reason not healed anyone, including the paralyzed man, during the time Jesus lived in their town. This knowledge and experience with Jesus meant that for them to believe their faith had to be greater than the faith of those in other towns. I wonder if this is the reason Jesus was so moved by the faith they displayed.

Not only did they remember Jesus, Jesus remembered them. They may have been childhood friends. There is a good chance that he had firsthand knowledge of why the man was paralyzed, including any potential family guilt, remorse or sadness at his plight. When Jesus said, “Your sins are forgiven,” it may not have been a generic, non-specific act of forgiveness. Jesus likely knew specific things that the man had done, perhaps even some things the man considered unforgivable.

Jesus also understood the obstacles they faced in having faith. He knew that they needed to be able to see him as Jesus, the Messiah and Son of God. With this in mind, he prefaced his act of healing with a statement of forgiveness, a statement of Godlike authority that was blasphemous (unless it was true!) In so doing he made it possible for them to understand who Jesus truly was.

Wow! The passage wasn’t as familiar as I thought it was!

-          Bart

I have not made a habit of religious blog posts over the last few years, as I know there are many who subscribe to the blog who may not be interested. Nevertheless, I have been leading a men’s bible study each week and the insights shared by the men in the group have been too remarkable to not share. For the near future I plan on increasing my posts to twice a week. My typical weekend posts will continue, but I am adding a midweek post that will focus on something gleaned from the men’s group. Feel free to read, share or ignore at your leisure!