Leftovers

•March 14, 2012 • 1 Comment

Sometimes you hear someone say something, and you’re left shaking your head – I can’t believe I just heard that.  You are shocked, dismayed, even appalled.

This is one of those odd moments:

A Woman’s Faith

24Jesus left and went to the region near the city of Tyre, where he stayed in someone’s home. He did not want people to know he was there, but they found out anyway. 25A woman whose daughter had an evil spirit in her heard where Jesus was. And right away she came and knelt down at his feet. 26The woman was Greek and had been born in the part of Syria known as Phoenicia. She begged Jesus to force the demon out of her daughter. 27But Jesus said, “The children must first be fed! It isn’t right to take away their food and feed it to dogs.”

28The woman replied, “Lord, even dogs eat the crumbs that children drop from the table.”

29Jesus answered, “That’s true! You may go now. The demon has left your daughter.” 30When the woman got back home, she found her child lying on the bed. The demon had gone.

I can’t believe Jesus said that.

Who is this Jesus – at first reading not the one I recognise.  To not just refuse to help her, but to insult her in the process. Tyre and Sidon are in the far north of the Jewish territory – and the Jews despised all who lived there, they regarded them as the bottom of the barrel.  Surely Jesus wouldn’t turn away a woman in need just because of her ethnicity…

Tom Wright reassures us that Jesus is just sticking to the order of things, he has come first and foremost to fulfil God’s promise to his chosen people, the Jews (p 76).

In fact the woman shows that she understands this, but what she does want is to be part of what is left over, when they have had their fill – or indeed the bits carelessly thrown on the floor, perhaps by those who don’t want what Jesus is offering, or don’t realise they need it.  There did after all seem to be plenty who didn’t seem to want what Jesus was offering, so there would be plenty left over for others. The woman is staking her claim.

She comes in humility – “Have mercy on me”, and recognises Jesus as “Lord”.  She has the utmost respect for him – something that others should have done and didn’t.

Maybe you and I would walk away at that point at which Jesus turns here away.  This woman has to decide how much she wants the healing for her daughter.  How deep is her need, how deep her belief that Jesus would help.

The woman responded by sticking around.  She showed Jesus the depth of her faith.  She was not a glory-seeker or someone looking for an easy ride.  This was her daughter who she loved so much she would throw herself at the mercy of Jesus for.  This was Jesus who she had ultimate faith in.

The challenge for us?  Do we love and care enough to stick around.  To plead to Jesus on the behalf of others, or ourselves?  The reading leading up to this passage are about tolerance and love.  Widening the gates of faith to those who may not conform to what we consider acceptable, but who may show us new ways and new depths of faith.  How do we respond?

This is certainly a passage to make us think!

Tom’s prayer for today (p 77):

Draw us deeper,

Gracious Lord,

into your purposes and your plans,

so that we may learn to pray energetically

for the good things you have in store for us

This year, I am again following the Big Read using Tom Wright’s Lent for Everyone – Mark.  I’ll reflect here – if you’re following it too, or even if you’re not, please share with me.

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It’s Not What You Eat…

•March 13, 2012 • Leave a Comment

There is an ongoing debate about sell by dates on food.  We need to be careful we don’t poison ourselves, but are manufacturers over-cautious in their labelling?  Is food perfectly ok beyond its sell  by date, and is much food wasted because of it?  We need to exercise care of what we eat, but are we sometimes too careful?  Bad food will not do us any good, and anyone who has every had food poisoning can testify to that!  But do we always come to the right conclusion about what is bad.

As Jesus continues on from yesterdays lesson about what is clean, he turns thoughts to what is eaten:

What Really Makes People Unclean

14Jesus called the crowd together again and said, “Pay attention and try to understand what I mean. 15-16The food that you put into your mouth doesn’t make you unclean and unfit to worship God. The bad words that come out of your mouth are what make you unclean.”17After Jesus and his disciples had left the crowd and had gone into the house, they asked him what these sayings meant. 18He answered, “Don’t you know what I am talking about by now? You surely know that the food you put into your mouth cannot make you unclean. 19It doesn’t go into your heart, but into your stomach, and then out of your body.” By saying this, Jesus meant that all foods were fit to eat.

20Then Jesus said:

What comes from your heart is what makes you unclean. 21Out of your heart come evil thoughts, vulgar deeds, stealing, murder, 22unfaithfulness in marriage, greed, meanness, deceit, indecency, envy, insults, pride, and foolishness. 23All of these come from your heart, and they are what make you unfit to worship God.

Jesus continues to radically redefine issues of purity and impurity (Tom Wright p 72).  He wants the focus to be on lives not rules.

There was a supposition that what was eaten could make a person “clean” or “unclean”.  That had nothing to do with health and hygiene and everything to do with more controlling laws.  What you eat is not going to effect your eternity.  Food laws were to keep you well, not make God like you or not.  And so the lesson is not so much be careful what you eat, but be careful what you do and say.  The food you eat doesn’t make you the kind of person you are, but how you behave and what you say do – that is what we should be more concerned about.

When we stop and look at our lives, do we concentrate on the right things, or do we worry too much about trivialities?  Do we focus on the core things Jesus asks of us, or spend too much time and energy on the things around the edges that are more personal preferences than gospel truths?  Are we distracted by outer trimmings rather than what is going on in hearts?

Yes, we are asked to pause and reflect, but we need to make sure we reflect on the things that matter to God, not to anyone we think is looking over our shoulder.

Is your heart right with God?,

is the fundamental question.  If anyone else is worried by other things, that is their problem, not yours.

Tom’s prayer for today(p 73):

Give us courage,

Gracious God,

to follow you,

this Lent and always,

on the path that leads to full purity of heart

This year, I am again following the Big Read using Tom Wright’s Lent for Everyone – Mark.  I’ll reflect here – if you’re following it too, or even if you’re not, please share with me.

Posted in Jesus, lent
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Picking and Choosing

•March 12, 2012 • 1 Comment

We are all taught as children the importance of washing our hands – before you eat, when you’ve been to the toilet, when you’ve touched pets, as well as when they’re dirty.  When there’s a public health scare, we are reminded of them, when norovirus hits, during the bird-flu epidemic or any time you visit a hospital – all very sensible health precautions to stop germs spreading.

It was a practised by the people of Jesus day too…

Mark 7:1-13

The Teaching of the Ancestors

 1Some Pharisees and several teachers of the Law of Moses from Jerusalem came and gathered around Jesus. 2They noticed that some of his disciples ate without first washing their hands.

    3The Pharisees and many other Jewish people obey the teachings of their ancestors. They always wash their hands in the proper way before eating. 4None of them will eat anything they buy in the market until it is washed. They also follow a lot of other teachings, such as washing cups, pitchers, and bowls.

5The Pharisees and teachers asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples obey what our ancestors taught us to do? Why do they eat without washing their hands?”

6Jesus replied:

You are nothing but show-offs! The prophet Isaiah was right when he wrote that God had said,

“All of you praise me

with your words,

but you never really

think about me.

7It is useless for you

to worship me,

when you teach rules

made up by humans.”

8You disobey God’s commands in order to obey what humans have taught. 9You are good at rejecting God’s commands so that you can follow your own teachings! 10Didn’t Moses command you to respect your father and mother? Didn’t he tell you to put to death all who curse their parents? 11But you let people get by without helping their parents when they should. You let them say that what they own has been offered to God. 12You won’t let those people help their parents. 13And you ignore God’s commands in order to follow your own teaching. You do a lot of other things that are just as bad.

…except that the clue is there that we are talking about something more than regular hygiene, but something that had become another set of complex rules to follow, concentrating more on what was done and how, than why.

They always wash their hands in the proper way (Mark 7:3),

and

They also follow a lot of other teachings, such as washing cups, pitchers, and bowls. (Mark 7:4)

They quickly jump on Jesus’ disciples for not washing their hands, not it appears because they are worried for their health, but because they are not

obeying what our ancestors taught us.

They are not playing by the accepted rules – again!

Jesus cuts right through all their blustering – this isn’t about keeping God’s laws, but about having an opportunity to show off.  Then he turns it right around.  They are, apparently, so concerned about this law, doing something that everyone can see; but not nearly so concerned about the law of looking after their elderly parents!  People were claiming that they couldn’t help, because what they had was “offered to God”.  What a cop-out!  If their belongings were really offered to God, they would be using them to support those in need.

And so the question hangs, how can they be so meticulous about some things, and totally lax about others?

They were picking and choosing which of God’s laws they would make a fuss about – and making their choices by public display rather than helping those in need.

Do we pick and choose which of God’s ways we are going to follow and which we will ignore?

Are we more impressed with public showy acts than with real sacrificial giving to those in need – which we probably will never know about?  Are we more concerned with tradition, than God’s commands? Do we praise God with words, whilst not thinking about our actions?

Something for us to reflect on?…

Lord

forgive me the times

when I blinded by the grand looking things I see people do,

without considering if the rest of their life measures up.

Forgive me

when I am more concerned about looking good,

than behaving as you ask me to.

Forgive me

that I pick and choose

which of your requirements I follow.

Lord,

may my worship of you

not be about good sounding words,

but true and good actions.

This year, I am again following the Big Read using Tom Wright’s Lent for Everyone – Mark.  I’ll reflect here – if you’re following it too, or even if you’re not, please share with me.

Posted in Jesus, lent
Tags: , , ,

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