A Fresh Perspective

When Jesus said that loving God and loving neighbor constitute the essence of God’s will, he clearly tied together the relationships we have with one another with our relationship to God. These two areas of relationship – with God and with each other – are so interlaced, so intricately woven together they cannot be separated. Of course, there are many folks who are not aware of this connection, but for those of us who are how we think about, imagine, and relate to God has a huge impact on how we relate to others.     Our passage in Luke 13 begins by pointing out that bad things happen all the time which God does not cause to happen. God is not poised over a zap button waiting for us to mess up. And yet Jesus warns, “Unless you repent, you will all perish just as the unfortunate folks who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time due to no fault of their own.” Before I talk about what that means, first I want to say something about what it doesn’t mean. There...

“When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home”  (John 19:25–27). John’s Gospel is full of words and phrases that have multiple meanings and convey a rich symbolism. Many interpreters argue that these words of Jesus from the cross to his mother and the beloved disciple should be understood symbolically and theologically, rather than historically. In fact, these words closely resemble the formulas used for rites of adoption in the ancient world. Jesus had other blood brothers who had been present alongside his mother in Cana and they would have naturally been the ones to care for their mother. Assuming that Joseph had been dead for some time, Jesus’s mother would have been in their care. Jesus’s mother appears twice in the Gospel of John, at the beginning and end of his ministry: at the ...

“Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus makes three statements from the cross. The first we considered  in the last blog : “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” The second word above is also a word of lavish grace uttered to a criminal hanging on the cross next to Jesus. Only Luke has this promise of Jesus to the criminal. In Mark and Matthew both criminals ridicule Jesus. It’s possible that Luke’s version was part of the oral tradition passed down to him, though I think it is more likely that Luke intentionally altered Mark’s account to give us a snapshot of the gospel as he understood it. According to Luke this criminal exonerates Jesus: “We are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Three times in Luke’s passion narrative Jesus is exonerated. First by Pilate, then by this criminal hanging with Jesus, and finally by the centurion at the end of the crucifixion scene ...

“Father forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” Can the spiral of violence that plagues our planet and fractures relationships, ravaging families, communities, and whole societies, ever be neutralized and overcome? Are we caught in a web from which we cannot tear loose? Jesus refuses to get sucked into the spiral of violence. On the night of his betrayal and arrest, one of his disciples draws his sword and strikes the slave of the high priest, cutting off his ear. Jesus exclaims, “No more of this!” And to make his point, he touches the man’s ear and restores it. Violence never brings healing. Never. It may, on some occasions, bring an end to overt violence, but it often causes the violence to escalate. It cannot heal or redeem. There is no redemptive violence. Only forgiveness can exhaust the constantly spinning spiral of violence and offer redemptive possibilities. But we rarely do it, because it is so costly. Look at Jesus on the cross, bearing the viol...

The devil has been the subject of many jokes. For those of you my age or older who can forget Flip Wilson on “Laugh in” poking fun saying, “The Devil made me do it.” I heard about one lady who purchased a very expensive dress and when she got home her husband asked her why she bought it. He said, “You know, we can’t afford that.” She said, “Well, honey, the devil made me do it. I was trying it on in the store and he whispered, ‘I’ve never seen you look more gorgeous than you do in that dress.’ Her husband quipped, “Why didn’t you say, ‘Get behind me, Satan?’” She said, “I did” and the devil said, “It looks great from behind too.” I try to avoid two extremes in reading this story. There are those, on the one hand, who read this literally or factually. There are others, at the polar opposite who dismiss it as legend or fable. I don’t take it literally, but I take it very seriously. This is a story of the struggles that we all face in the quest to discern who we are and what we are a...

Even if you are not a baseball fan you may have heard about the blown call by umpire Jim Joyce during the 2010 season that prevented Detroit pitcher Armando Galarraga from pitching a perfect game, which is an extremely rare occurrence. Any major league pitcher who pitches a perfect game cements a place in baseball history. With only one batter left to face, umpire Joyce called a runner safe at first, when in reality (as instant replay conclusively demonstrated) he was out by half a step. You can imagine the splash this made in sports media. What might be missed, however, is the story that occurred afterward. Galarraga couldn’t believe the call; he knew the batter was out. He knew the implications of what just took place. And yet, he was calm—no emotional outburst, no blame (he left that for the manager), just a smile and back to work to finish his job. Galarraga’s restraint from the perspective of professional sports was truly an exercise of grace. Then after the game when ump...

The story of Jesus presented in our canonical Gospels has transformative power. Minister and author John Ortburg tells about a friend of the family who became really upset when her daughter told her that someone at school had been talking to her about God. She wanted nothing to do with God, or so she thought. Nor did she want her daughter to have anything to do with God. That night, however, she couldn’t sleep. For some reason around midnight she got up, went downstairs, and picked up a Bible. She couldn’t remember the last time she had even held a Bible, let alone read one. But like many folks who are not religious she did have a Bible in the house. When she opened it she noticed it was divided between an “old” part and a “new” part. She decided to start with the new part. So, in the still of the night she began to read the Gospel of Matthew. Several hours later when she was half-way through the Gospel of John she realized that “she had fallen in love with the character of Jesus.” Sh...