A Historical Day

Today is perhaps one of the most important days in Church history.  It was on this day in 1517 that Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses on the door of the church in Wittenburg protesting some of the practices of the Catholic church and hoping to bring about reform.  As a result, Luther was called before a church council, the Diet of Worms, to be held accountable for his writings and teachings.  It is the act that sparked what came to be known as the Protestant Reformation.

This clip from the movie Luther is of Martin answering the accusations being brought against him and is one of my favorite movie scenes.

Who are some modern day Martin Luthers in the church that are bringing about a new reformation?  What is it that needs reformed?

Friday Photo – Qumran

 You are probably familiar with Qumran as the place where the Dead Sea Scroll were discovered. It is believed to be a settlement where a group of Essenes lived in a communal lifestyle and where the scrolls were copied. The photo is of Cave 4, one of the 11 caves where the scrolls were discovered.

“Friday Photos”

One of the things you may not know about me is I love taking photos.  Mostly I love landscape and wildlife photography.  I have been thinking about sharing some of the thousands of photos I have taken on my trips to Israel with you and decided that having a “Friday Photo” post may be a great way to do that.  Some of the photos I like simply because of the photo, some may not be a great photo but will have some significance either historically or personally.  My plan is to comment on the photo, or provide a link to some background information for you.

Let me know what you think about this idea, as I love your feedback.

 

Todays “Friday Photo” is of Masada.  There is too much of a story to tell in a short blog post, so if you don’t know about Masada, take a second to check out the link. 

 

Jesus did what? Part 2 – “Children’s food for dogs”

Today I want to continue the theme of looking at passages in the Gospels where we find Jesus doing or saying something and are left asking the question “Huh?”  These are passages that we often skip over or misinterpret when sometimes a quick study of the culture can shed a bit of light and turn what appears to be a confusing passage into an amazing lesson that is not that complex.

I believe this is the case for the passage I want to examine today. Mark 15:21-28 deals with the Canaanite woman who comes to Jesus and asks him to heal her daughter.

 Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession.”  Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”  He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said. He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs.” “Yes, Lord,” she said, “but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table. Then Jesus answered, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed from that very hour.

This is a passage I struggled with for a while.  Why is Jesus calling this woman a dog?  Why after that does she continue the conversation?  Why does Jesus change his mind and then heal the girl?  There are lots of questions about this short passage. 

However I have come to understand that this is not really that complicated a passage if we look at it through first century eyes. Jesus was not being rude when he did not interact with the woman, but simply observing the cultural practice that Jewish men did not interact with gentile women.  When we read the story without the cultural understanding we begin to misunderstand this passage at this point.

By the time we get to Jesus’ comment “it is not right to take the children’s food and toss it to the dogs” we have most likely have let our culture interpret this passage for us and are focusing on the wrong things.  Our reaction is probably something like this. “Jesus was really rude when he ignored this woman and made things worse when he called her a dog.”  And we ask ourselves “Huh?  This doesn’t make any sense and doesn’t seem like the Jesus I know.”

Jesus did what? Part 1 – “let the dead bury their own dead”

Have you ever been reading along in the Gospels and come across a passage where Jesus said or did something and you found yourself asking “Jesus did what?” If I take the time to really read the text, I often find myself asking that and many other questions. I find that the more questions I come up with, the more I interact with the Word, the more interesting it becomes and that I want to dig deeper to find out what it really means.

Over the next few posts I am going to explore some of the passages where Jesus says or does things that make you go “Huh?” We may look at the context of the story in Scripture, other references in the text, the cultural practices of the day, or other resources to help us try to understand the picture Jesus was painting for his original audience and for us.

The first passage I want to look at is from Matthew 8:21-22.

Another disciple said to him, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”

But Jesus told him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”

 

As I read this passage in the context of the chapter, it seems like a pretty harsh statement by Jesus. A disciple comes up to him and asks to bury his father, and Jesus appears to say if you want to follow me that’s not an option. So does Jesus not care about this disciple’s family and their grief? Could Jesus really be this crass? Or, is something else going on here? Let’s take a look at the cultural setting because I think there is an explanation for Jesus’ statement.

Shema

The Shema has been called the central prayer of Judaism.  You may not know it as the Shema, but if you are a follower of Christ you are probably very familiar with his teachings regarding it.  Just as it is for Jews today, the Shema would have been the centerpiece of Jesus’ daily prayers.  The Shema consists of three passages of Scripture in the Torah that are prayed every morning and every evening.  It was also common to pray the Shema throughout the day. The Shema was so core to the Jewish faith that one would hope to pray the Shema as their last words when dying. 

The Shema begins in Deuteronomy 6:4-9 with the words:

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.  Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

Here we find the declaration that there is one God, the LORD, and the command to love him with everything in us.  This, Jesus says, is the greatest command (Matthew 22:34-40).  It also talks about the importance of remembering God’s commands, of passing them on to the next generation.  Here we also see the command for the mezuzah and the tefillin.

The second portion of Shema comes from Deuteronomy 11:13-21.

So if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today—to love the LORD your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul- then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine and oil. I will provide grass in the fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied.

Be careful, or you will be enticed to turn away and worship other gods and bow down to them. Then the LORD’s anger will burn against you, and he will shut the heavens so that it will not rain and the ground will yield no produce, and you will soon perish from the good land the LORD is giving you. Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates, so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land that the LORD swore to give your forefathers, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth.

In this portion we read about God’s promise of provision to those who love Him and a warning for those who would turn away and forget His commands.  Also we once again see the command to teach the next generation and for tefillin and mezuzah. 

The final passage of the Shema comes from Numbers 15:37-41.

The Pharisees: If you’ve seen one, that doesn’t mean you’ve seen them all.

(This if part four of a series of posts about the Pharisees. Here are posts 1, 2 & 3)

Today I want to look at some of the differences among the Pharisees and what they had to say about themselves. My hope is that though examining the division among the sect, we can come to a better understanding of the context of Jesus’ criticism of their hypocrisy and better examine our walk with him.

In the last post I wrote that to assume all Pharisees held the same exact beliefs would be akin to thinking all Protestants agree on all points of doctrine.  A brief review of literature about the Pharisees will quickly reveal some of the differences within the Pharisaic movement of the first century.  In fact, a cultural study of the rabbinic model will reveal that there were several schools of thought within Pharisaic Judaism.

These schools, founded by the great rabbis, disagreed on the interpretation and application of scripture and frequently debated their beliefs.  It was in the generation prior to Jesus that two of the greatest rabbis, Hillel and Shammai, lived and taught.  They and their disciples had two distinct approaches to the interpretation of the Scriptures.  The school of Shammai held to a more strict, literal interpretations while Hillel’s interpretation was more liberal and progressive.  There was much debate between the schools as to the intricacies of how to follow the Law, from small details about how and when to say Shema to larger questions such as when is it okay to divorce.

The Pharisees: Where did they come from and why does it matter?

(This post is the third in a series about the Pharisees.  Read the first post here)

“What were you thinking?” That is the question I have been asking myself over the last few days.  What was I thinking when I decided to follow up with a post about who the Pharisees were?  This is an impossible task in a blog post. I realize that.  Entire books have been written on the subject.  So why am I doing this?  Because I think it is important to our understanding of who Jesus is.  Because I think there is a lot we can learn about how to follow Jesus obediently and live out our faith.  And because I said I would.  

The Pharisees are a little controversial. Who knew?

Wow! The post about the Pharisees has been a bit more controversial than I anticipated and after reading some of the comments, I have decided to go in a different direction with the next few posts that what I had intended.  I will take that as an interruption from God and as His way of keeping me on this topic.  So for the next few days I’m going to explore exactly who the Pharisees were from a historical perspective in a way that will hopefully allow us to learn how to better follow Christ.

In order to do this, we are going to have to explore some texts outside of Scripture.  While I fully believe that Scripture is the living word of God and our final authority, it does not answer every question.  It also does not give us a full picture of what culture was like in the time it was written.  I believe an important part of interpreting Scripture is having an understanding the culture of the people who wrote it, and to whom it was written.

How the Pharisees Got A Bad Rep

So when I write the word Pharisee, what is the first word that comes to your mind?  Probably hypocrite, maybe legalistic, but I doubt that any of you thought about the word faithful.  I have had several conversations over the last few days, some in person, some online, that prompted this post.  I think the Pharisees have got a bad reputation and I want to do my part to paint them in a more positive light.  Yeah, maybe I’m crazy for coming to their defense, but I don’t think they have been portrayed very accurately.

So who are these Pharisees anyway?  Well they are one of several religious groups that existed during the time of Jesus.  They believed in the authority of scripture. They believed in obedience to that scripture.  They believed in miracles, angels, and they believed in the resurrection of the dead.  In fact, if we were to compare what they believed to the teachings of Jesus, on most things they would line up.  So why do we view them so negatively?