Faith Challenges: It Ain't All Comfort

Yes, I've heard that one before. Then again, the stories my kids loved were the very ones they already knew by heart. Is there much value in telling them over and over again? Maybe so. Maybe not. It depends. See, it depends in part on what story we are telling. It also depends on how we tell it. Then there is the aspect of telling the story differently, instead of always repeating it the same way. Lets try to illustrate it just a little. There is this story in the gospels of Jesus healing a blind man. Well, actually, there is more than one such story. There is the story of the man Jesus healed in two stages, then there is the story of the blind on the road to Jericho. They are at once different stories, the same story, different takes on the story, and different aspects of a larger story. Both Matthew and Mark tell it, but they tell it differently. In Mark chapter 8, Jesus was brought a blind man and asked to touch him. Jesus took the man by the hand and led him out of...

“ But if any of you refuse to celebrate Passover when you are not away on a journey, you will no longer belong to my people. You will be punished because you did not offer sacrifices to me at the proper time. Anyone, including foreigners who live among you, can celebrate Passover, if they follow all the regulations.” Numbers 9:13-14 Passover is an essential Jewish celebration of belonging. It was and is a celebration as essential to Jewish faith and identity as Easter is for Christians. Passover is more than simply a celebration, as it is a reenactment of the seminal event in the formation of the nation with its exit from bondage in Egypt. The celebration was designed to involve the entire family with a focus on teaching the children about their origins and helping them to assume their identity with redemption form Egyptian bondage. Various streams of Jewish celebration yet today focus on the individual finding a sense of belonging, meaning, and participation in the exodus and...

Dads are good at embarrassing their kids. We excel at it, whether intentionally or not. There are times, however, when those embarrassing events come with unexpected lessons and gifts that long outlast the limited scope of our embarrassment. Fourth Grade is a great example. I had been out riding my bike on a weekend afternoon in Jefferson City, TN. I came home with a bloody nose. My sisters and parents were concerned as I told them the story. Three bigger kids, middle schoolers all, had found me riding my bike in the church parking lot and started using a basketball to knock me off my bike. Before I got away from them, they ended up breaking my nose with the basketball. Dad wanted to know who they were. I only knew one of them from the school bus stop. Dad determined to walk with us to the bus stop on Monday. My sisters were ready to crawl under the rug. We tried to talk him out of it. We were all sure we would be embarrassed and never live down that experience. We had no ide...

"Every tree that produces bad fruit will be chopped down and burned. You can tell who the false prophets are by their deeds." Matthew 7:19-20 We generally don't expect to hear Jesus saying things like chopping down and burning trees that don't produce good fruit. This comment comes in the midst of a series of statements with regard to false teachers and improper directions in life. Jesus starts off with a general warning to avoid the crowded rush to follow the wrong paths in life, paths that lead to death. He then shifts to talking about false prophets who encourage that rush towards death. Jesus' words with regard to the trees producing improper fruit is related to those false prophets, teachers who are leading people to destruction. He famously calls them wolves in sheep's clothing, coming to attack those they lead to destruction. He then warns us to beware of them, recognizing them by the fruit of their lives. Jesus was quoting John the Baptist...

“ If you disobey me and my laws, and if you break our agreement, I will punish you terribly, and you will be ruined. You will be struck with incurable diseases and with fever that leads to blindness and depression. Your enemies will eat the crops you plant.” Leviticus 26:14-16 This verse seems to embody the general impression that most have of the Old Testament. An initial read seems to point to God being interested in punishing those who would not obey. It would appear that the obedience suggested might be in regard to issues of worshipping Yahweh, respecting the Sabbath, and not worshipping idols. The problem with that interpretation is the larger context. The entire chapter before this is devoted to what essentially amounts to economic law and policy for Israel. We often miss that a very large portion of the Mosaic legal code has to do with economic relationships and responsibilities. The context here is that Yahweh's laws were about treating one another fairly, meeting...

"God gives such beauty to everything that grows in the fields, even though it is here today and thrown into a fire tomorrow. He will surely do even more for you! Why do you have such little faith?" Matthew 6:30 Faith and fear walk hand in hand, even if they are most often at odds with each other. Faith is about trust and confidence. It is about being able to focus on what God truly desires for us, with the certainty that our needs will be met in the process. Fear is rather the opposite, by which we are more certain than not that our needs will not be met. It is faith in reverse, and often as not mixes with our faith, even while it undermines what faith offers. Fear and anxiety undermine where faith would take us. They keep us from reaching the results that faith would produce in our lives. We allow fear to shape our decisions. We allow our anxieties to direct our steps. We allow worry to keep us from acting on faith, rather than take a step back to see where faith wo...

“ If any of your people become poor and unable to support themselves, you must help them, just as you are supposed to help foreigners who live among you. Don’t take advantage of them by charging any kind of interest or selling them food for profit. Instead, honor me by letting them stay where they now live.” Leviticus 25:35-37 We have seen that Leviticus points to economic justice for all parties in Israel from the priests and Levites to widows and orphans. What we may not have caught is that the laws in Leviticus were to apply equally to economic justice for foreigners as for the people of Israel. In fact, the verse above assumes that foreigners were to be dealt with in equity and addresses an expectation that the people would more likely mistreat the poor than the foreigners in the land. Though we may commonly quote 2 nd Thessalonians 3:10, that those who do not work should not eat. That concept is completely foreign to this text in Leviticus. While Paul was speaking of peo...