The Good Fortune of Others ...

Cancer still kills.  On the 29^th of May, my wife took our dog Oscar to the vet to see what could be done to help a pain he had developed in his leg.  Oscar never came home again.  It was not just some ordinary ache or pain, or even a case of treatable arthritis.  Instead it was the same aggressive cancer that killed his sister Layla only a few months ago.  It seems Oscar had it as well, for perhaps even a longer period of time, he simply had a higher tolerance for pain, so we never knew.  We were not prepared for this loss.  As is often the case, death comes and interrupts, what you were thinking.  And we did not lose Oscar without prayer, I had been praying for him since his sister got sick, never knowing just how much he needed that prayer, and was being sustained by it.  But cancer still kills.  And I have lost more than just a family pet, I have lost a nurse dog who stood beside me, and leaned against me anytime I was too shaky to attempt standing.  He would steady me as I moved.  One of the side effects of my medication is a shaky short-term memory, so when I would forget to take my medicine, Oscar would come and remind me.  He only did that when I needed it.  Otherwise he was content to sit on my feet while I work, even closer when it rained.  My dogs were very obedient, even learning to go to the bathroom on command.  They were full of love, and were fierce protectors of my family.  I cannot imagine life without them, and so will be looking to reclaim them once again in a Kingdom yet to come.

For now, while my life yet goes on, I will begin my search for another Akita breeder and hope I can do as well despite my doubt that will ever be possible.  These two have set the bar quite high.  It is somewhat ironic that my wife spends her career helping those with cancer.  It is her passion, even if there is no way to translate it to the animals in our circle.  Very often she brings home the need of a given patient and their family for prayer, as science has only been able to go so far.  And cancer still kills.  So we pray for them.  I seldom know their names, as HIPPA must be maintained.  But she knows them, and God knows them.  What I know, is that “horse lady” is in full remission.  But a “young man” recently died, an atheist his whole life, until a series of encounters with a few Christians including “horse lady” as they both got treatment.  There will be a star in her crown, even if she does not know it.  The “young man” came to know Jesus before the end took him.  “Frank” who chose to tell me his name, believes in God so strongly that he prefers to live on prayer, even more than treatment.  Much to the frustration of his Hindu cancer doctor.  But Frank still lives.

And it occurs to me, not all my prayers are answered.  As not all the prayers of those in that cancer treatment center are answered as they asked them.  And I wonder, do the families of those who have suffered loss, take great joy in those who still remain?  Or does our own loss so cast shade in our hearts, that the blessings of others are not cause for celebration, but only of mystery.  Why them, why not all?  Can we truly find joy in the good fortune of others, or is our joy constricted only to the good fortune poured out upon us?  For me, it brings me extreme comfort to know the blessing of remission for the “horse lady” my wife is so fond of.  And amazement with even greater joy, to know that Frank lives what he believes even against the advice of medical science.  That could not have been an easy decision for him or his family.  It could still go south, but then, it already could have gone south.  So each day that Frank lives, is a testimony to the love of God for a man I have never met.  And Frank’s life will lift up my faith, no matter the outcome, it already has.  It continues to, and I will continue to pray for him, because he needs it, as do I.

I wonder then, if it is different for you, if you are young enough, or blessed enough, not to have suffered many losses so far.  In those instances, I wonder if the good fortune of others, is something you take great joy in or not?  I fear sometimes we are so busy, that what joy our neighbor experiences never even touches our doorstep.  We post a like on Facebook, and continue to scroll.  In real life, our neighbor is not someone we socialize with, and so hear their happy and sad stories only on rare occasions.  But you would think the church might be the one place where the joy and the sadness come together for the sharing with the rest of the body of Christ.  I don’t think it is.  We have very structured worship services.  We ask for participation in the joy, and offer no venue for the sadness.  We do hold the funerals from time to time, so the ultimate loss might be shared.  But prior to that it is made of prayer requests, and brief 30 second explanations of what might be profound struggles we deal with.  My wife is terrified that without Oscar I am going to wind up falling through our glass tables, or will continually forget my medicine being distracted by work at home.  Those are real fears for her.  But the church as it sits, is not the place for her to share them.  It would take a weaving of personal conversations there with people who take a personal interest, otherwise she might come and go, and no one be the wiser.

That is how the modern church is today.  We ask for believers to come and share their joy.  To participate in worship music.  To try to get a sense of the positive from having gone to church.  We mask the sadness, and ignore it.  And then we wonder why people lose interest in coming.  Does church offer a place to meet the need?  What if your problem is ongoing?  What if you are struck down by inabilities that shape the very fortunes of your life?  Luke in chapter thirteen of his gospel letter to this friend Theophilus about what we believe and why tells of a woman who suffered for 18 long years without the ability to fully extend her body.  She was perpetually hunched over, severely.  Yet she still struggled to go to synagogue every week.  She sought God.  Even if the church, governed by the iron hand of men, was not a friendly venue for a woman to find God.  Even if her fortunes were judged as punishment for her vast sins, by an angry God.  She was at best a cautionary tale.  A horror story parents told their children would happen to them, if they did not obey.  But that was not true.  And Jesus had something to say about the image of an angry God, and the insensitivities of men who thought they ruled the church which He founded.

Luke picks up in verse 10 saying … “And he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath.”  You will note, the failure of the church both then and now, does not prevent our Lord from going to meet us at church on His Holy Day.  This is yet another of the many texts that show Jesus attending church on the Seventh Day Sabbath He ordained for such joyous occasions.  Not only attending, but teaching, the true image of His Father and our Father God.  Imagine what it must have been like to hear the Truth of God right in front of your eyes and ears.  Way better than any worship music.  Way better than offering calls, and children’s stories, and a regimen that does not have the time for an individual.  When Jesus spoke, He spoke right to your heart.  He cut through the noise of life’s distractions and reminded you what Love was.  He reminded you why you were not only worth saving to God, but that God had made it His number one mission to save you, despite anything you encountered in life. 

Your fortunes are not governed by disease, or bad luck, or natural consequence.  They are a tapestry, woven together, to save you as well as everyone you encounter.  My wife told me how much her “young man” hated God when he entered that cancer treatment area of the hospital.  He encountered other patients, some of them Christian who died before he did.  But what they said lived on in his ears, and their lives became a celebration in his own heart.  They did not pass without meaning, but instead their passing offered him a greater perspective on the next life possible with a loving God.  It was only then that his encounters with the “horse lady” would seal the deal.  And now his own life remains a testimony to the all the medical staff who knew him, touching their hearts and lives, and standing as a firm candle to the light of God.  I wish our churches had time for sharing like this with each other, beyond the greetings of hello and goodbye, but real time to listen, and comfort, and pray.  That kind of real sharing might do more than rekindle interest in going to church on Sabbath, it might change the body entirely for the better.

Luke continues in verse 11 saying … “And, behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself. [verse 12] And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and said unto her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity. [verse 13] And he laid his hands on her: and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God.”  Hold the phone.  Stop the sermon.  Interrupt everything.  Through the crowds that gather, in the very back of the synagogue in the places set aside for the women, (so that they do not disturb the men, because it is only the men who matter), is a woman unable to straighten herself up.  You do not see her head bobbing up and down with all the others.  Instead you catch a glimpse of it at waist or knee level of the others, intently listening, but unable to move well.  And she had been like this for 18 years.  But this was not a genetic disease.  It was an actual demon inhabiting her and causing her great misery.  This demon thought if her misery was high enough and struggle hard enough she would not even try to go to church.  But she did.  And this week she was hearing about the Love of God in words so clear, they cut her like a knife.

But then the unexpected happened.  Jesus stopped everything, and called to her.  Just His voice, gave her strength she had never known.  She obeyed without question and went to Him.  And He told her, “Woman, that art loosed”.  With that, the demon was sent spiraling out of this church and far far away.  The woman remained, but the years of damage to her body had now taken their toll.  So Jesus reaches out and puts His hands upon her.  He helps her up, and His creative energy flows through her, correcting bone, muscle, and joint.  She is restored to what she was intended to be.  This is the testimony of salvation for us all.  First to rid us of the devil in us.  To take the burden of sins from us and loose those chains that bind us.  Then to restore what has been made deformed over so many years.  To restore us to what He intends for us to be.  That is the very nature of salvation.  And when you finally allow yourself to experience it, through the submission of your will to Jesus, you will explode, like this woman exploded, no longer silent, but glorifying God for all to hear.  Her joy could not be contained.  It could not be pushed back into the rear of the building and muffled so as not to disturb the men.  It was right there in center court, loud for all to hear, and God was lifted up in praise that could not be denied, for she had been saved in spirit, heart, and body.

All of this in the middle of church, in the middle of church service.  Jesus made time for this woman’s grief and sadness.  He stopped teaching to demonstrate healing.  The needs of the one sheep, the least sheep in the flock, became more important to him, than the other 99.  Jesus wants the full 100 to be restored.  But alas, the elders who value tradition, reverence, and rules, did not share in the good fortunes of this woman.  They did not join her praise to God, but rather became angry at all this flaunting of so many years of established tradition and male dominance.  Luke continues in verse 14 saying … “And the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because that Jesus had healed on the sabbath day, and said unto the people, There are six days in which men ought to work: in them therefore come and be healed, and not on the sabbath day.”  How many times have I heard that.  How many times has true “ministry” been criticized because it dared to be seen on Sabbath in His church.  True “ministry” looks too much like real work.  Why not wait till the other six days of the week to conduct it.  Why attempt it when Jesus is there in the building.  And today we make “work” our excuse not to minister, so that we can hurry up and leave to go to the nearest restaurant where we have no problem being served by those who would benefit from time away with our God.  But this leader of the synagogue not only did not share in the good fortune of this woman, he actively condemned it, and condemned Jesus for creating it.

Jesus responds in verse 15 saying … “The Lord then answered him, and said, Thou hypocrite, doth not each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering? [verse 16] And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day? [verse 17] And when he had said these things, all his adversaries were ashamed: and all the people rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by him.”  Jesus knows it is “work” to feed the livestock, but he also knows it is work that cannot skip a day.  It is ministering work that reflects a love for our animals.  I never actually thought it was work to take care of my dogs.  Oscar was so close in my heart, he was like another child, with special needs and rewards that only he could offer.  His hunger was never something to be categorized as work to me, it was only hunger, and needed to be addressed.  And his love for me was never in question.  People sometimes have a hard time loving others like that, myself included.  But Jesus was making a greater point.

Why did this woman suffer in this synagogue for 18 years, instead of only 1 week?  Why didn’t the leaders of this church lay hands upon her, and call for Father God to heal her, and drive out the demon within her?  They did not, because they cared not.  Women were just not that important to begin with.  These leaders were too timid to publicly demonstrate their lack of faith, never believing it was even possible.  And they did not visit her on the other six days they recommended for this kind of work either.  No, instead they were content to let her suffer and blame her for her suffering.  Has anything changed?  If God is supposed to be praised in our services, don’t you think we could offer those in need, and those who are suffering a reason to experience new joy.  Why instead do we mask their suffering, and pretend it should not exist.  Why not uncover their suffering, and offer the healing ministry of Jesus Christ to see it removed, once and for all.  Isn’t that what church is supposed to be all about?  If you want to see explosive joy today, get off your butt, and interact with God, to bring Jesus into the life of the suffering, so that they have reason to explode in praise to God.  When Jesus pointed these things out to the leaders there, they were ashamed.  As should we be.  If we are content to see the suffering, continue to suffer, we should also be ashamed.  For we know the cure, we know the medicine, it is Jesus Christ and Him alone.

But there is hope.  For the believers who knew this woman, and attended church with her, shared in her joy.  And they too began to praise God.  An act of Love as demonstrated by God Himself, to interrupt even church for the sake of one in need, touched the hearts of those in attendance.  News of it would spread far and wide.  Relieving suffering was even more important to God, than delivering His own sermon and Truth.  He could take the time out to see suffering relieved.  The sermon would be waiting till He was finished changing lives.  That was the priority of the Son of God, and His Father, and His Holy Spirit.  Why is it not ours?  Why do we so value and treasure structure in church, that we make no time for those in real need.  If we cannot demonstrate the love of Jesus in real time, to real people, we are nothing more than noise.  We need to adjust how we think about church.  We need to adjust our ideas about why people praise, and become more active in giving them reason to.  Let our own tapestry make more of a difference.  And as my wife reminds me, take joy in the lives of others, even when you have suffered loss in your own.  The families of patients who have passed on, still celebrate the lives of those who have not.  Those families have suffered horrific loss, yet they can share joy with others who have not.  Not all of them Christian.  So should we do any less?  Would that in church we grieved more together, and then sought the Lord to relieve our grief, until we have reason for overwhelming joy.  It has happened before.  It will happen again.

 

Broken Babies ...

It is easy to see our dogs as the perpetual babies of our families.  Why?  Because just like babies, they love, all the time, and know love more than those of us who are jaded by age and “responsibilities”.  After a hard day, it is the dog who comes to lick you better.  They are not certain if dog kisses will really change your day or your future, but you seem to need one, so let the shower of dog kisses commence.  And if you ever show even the slightest hint at wanting to play; well you have an ever-willing and excited partner in the dog.  Pick up a ball.  We dogs will chase it.  Pick up a tug of war rope.  We dogs will grab the other end of it.  And if you lay down on the floor near us; we dogs will jump all over you continuing that shower of dog kisses you interrupted the last time you moved away to “clean up”.  The love of dogs is constant, even forgiving, and often more healing than we humans might first learn to appreciate.

I know dogs are not humans.  I know humans are more important in the circle of life.  But I also have witnessed many an adult making silly coo-ing noises when they kiss a baby’s face, just the same as they make high-pitched loving speech when they pet the dog and show affection.  Offering love to anything that is bound to return that love is a lure most of us are suckers for.  And frankly, we need that kind of unconditional love in our lives.  Babies become precious to us for this reason just like dogs do; that we are able to establish a bond of love that seems impervious from the world.  And so we look to protect them.  Take care of them.  Meet whatever needs we believe they have even if that means trying to guess what they are (babies and dogs have a hard time getting their speeches understood).  The greatest horror of our lives then is when we encounter a “broken” baby, no matter what the species.  Fixing what is broken then occupies our mind like nothing else.  And when we find we are actually powerless to fix what is broken, we have then only one hope.  A hope in Jesus.

Again I know the feelings for a human baby will always far outweigh those for a dog.  That is as it should be.  But love need not be a competition.  And loss, or potential loss, is crippling no matter what kind of love you risk losing.  There may be degrees of loss.  But no one looks to experience it.  And everyone wants to make the suffering get better, no matter who or what is suffering.  That too, is as it should be.  If you are able to look upon suffering and remain unmoved, it is possible you have never felt the love you should have in your own life.  Something Jesus would love to change.  And something His followers should be aiding Him in doing.  When hope dwindles, there is only prayer.  For some of us, prayer is a constant.  For others, we turn to prayer when there is nowhere else to turn.  But that does not change where God is throughout the process.

We think sometimes that our grief, and our worry, and our suffering is “only” ours.  We presume in our pain, that our God does not share any of it with us.  That kind of image of God would have Him far away and unmoved and uncaring about the pain that exists in our very up-close personal world.  But that could not be farther from the truth.  Before for the first glimmer of sadness hits your heart, it was first in our God’s.  He aches first, and much deeper.  He is forced to watch us make choices to pollute our world, ourselves, and each other.  He is unable to “make” us choose to love, without first making us nothing but robots.  Robots is not what He created.  Babies are.  We are the babies of our God.  The creatures that populate our world were supposed to be the babies we were to take care of and love.  But sin broke all that.  And further sin makes it even worse.  Leaving us where we are.  Leaving God forced to watch it all unfold, until at last it must be forced to an ending.  Prior to that day however, there remains grief.  Grief in the heart of God, as there is grief in our own hearts.  Some grief God is able to undo in the course of His will and our requests.  Some grief He is forced to endure on a scale of broken heartedness we will only ever share a glimpse of.

And imagine the scale of it.  Imagine the grief of your own life, now magnified across 7 billion others, across more than 6000 years of our history.  God has endured the grief of Adam, to the grief of you.  And His pain is infinitely deeper than our own, as His love is infinitely deeper than our own.  So when we come to Him to ask for deliverance; we do not come to a cold unfeeling God unwilling to get involved.  Instead we come to a God already in way deeper pain than we feel.  A God who longs to grant our requests to “fix” the broken babies of His life.  He is not unmoved; He is very moved.  And where the greater will of our God to save us all can accommodate it; He is quick and happy to move to our deliverance.  That is who we serve.  That is who we have always served.  A God who invented love, who is comprised of Love, always wishes to treat His “babies” so much better even, than we would treat our own.

Take a case in point in the gospel of Luke chapter five of the letter to his friend.  Picking up in verse 12 it says … “And it came to pass, when he was in a certain city, behold a man full of leprosy: who seeing Jesus fell on his face, and besought him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.”  Here is one of God’s babies finding Him, and begging for deliverance from a disease there was no medical cure from in his day.  Why this man?  I cannot answer that.  Why not every leper in Israel?  Not having lived at that time, I cannot say for certain if that is eventually what occurred.  But I can trust in the love of our God.  Then and now.  The question we all then ask, is why not me?  To that I can only say, our lives are mortal because of the entrance of sin in our world.  Whether sooner, or later, an ending faces us all.  But only a temporary ending, for in the world to come, no sin will ever rise again.  No evil with it.  And perfect peace and happiness because of the absence of disobedience, and the effects it brings upon us all.  But to the question of this leper there was an immediate answer.

Luke continues in verse 13 saying … “And he put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will: be thou clean. And immediately the leprosy departed from him. [verse 14]  And he charged him to tell no man: but go, and shew thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing, according as Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them.”  Jesus does not question this man about his faith.  Nor does He ask the man to recite the ten commandments, or recite the prophecies, or to bow down and worship Him as the Messiah.  This is not about the man’s heritage, or his doctrine, or his faith.  It is about instead the love of our God, who LONGS to do this restoration to all of us.  He does not withhold blessing based on some pre-cursor the man must offer.  It is given quickly and without reservation.  The first thing Jesus does is to reach out and touch the man (the way this disease spreads from person to person).  Jesus has no fear of contracting what this man has, but instead MUST show him physically that he is loved.  Then instead of demanding worship to Himself, He asks the man to keep quiet.  Jesus asks the man to go and fulfill the process the priests have had all along to heal this disease through the power of God.  Something the priests have long since abandoned losing faith it works, or that our God cares.  So many lepers exist in Israel where none should.  This is what happens when we lose faith in our God’s keen desire to do what is impossible for us.  When we lose sight of ourselves as the “broken” babies of God, we lose faith in His desire to do anything about it.

But silence was not what occurred despite the asking.  Luke continues in verse 15 saying “ But so much the more went there a fame abroad of him: and great multitudes came together to hear, and to be healed by him of their infirmities. [verse 16]  And he withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed. [verse 17]  And it came to pass on a certain day, as he was teaching, that there were Pharisees and doctors of the law sitting by, which were come out of every town of Galilee, and Judaea, and Jerusalem: and the power of the Lord was present to heal them. [verse 18]  And, behold, men brought in a bed a man which was taken with a palsy: and they sought means to bring him in, and to lay him before him. [verse 19]  And when they could not find by what way they might bring him in because of the multitude, they went upon the housetop, and let him down through the tiling with his couch into the midst before Jesus.”  The fame of Jesus as a healer spread throughout Israel like wildfire.  The salient question; why has that wildfire gone out in our church, and in our hearts?  Why do we let an image of a remote God become the norms of our thinking instead of the aberration of Satan’s design that it should be.  Jesus has not changed.  Why have we?

Luke wants to show his friend who will read this gospel letter that the impossible to us, is NOT impossible to God.  First he recounts the story of the leper who was healed merely by asking.  Now he recounts the story of a paralytic who will be more than healed.  Luke continues the story picking up in verse 20 saying … “ And when he saw their faith, he said unto him, Man, thy sins are forgiven thee. [verse 21]  And the scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, Who is this which speaketh blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone? [verse 22]  But when Jesus perceived their thoughts, he answering said unto them, What reason ye in your hearts? [verse 23]  Whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Rise up and walk? [verse 24]  But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power upon earth to forgive sins, (he said unto the sick of the palsy,) I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy couch, and go into thine house. [verse 25]  And immediately he rose up before them, and took up that whereon he lay, and departed to his own house, glorifying God. [verse 26]  And they were all amazed, and they glorified God, and were filled with fear, saying, We have seen strange things to day.”

Many things to unpack here.  First, our Jewish forefathers had one thing absolutely right.  ONLY God can forgive sins.  For anyone else to claim it, it is indeed blasphemy.  When any of our brothers or sisters come to us with sin-laden hearts seeking forgiveness, we must be careful in our language to insure we point them only to Jesus to forgive sins, and assure them if they ask Jesus, they will be forgiven.  We, and no other man, has anything to do with that process other than to point them where they can find forgiveness for themselves from the same source we must use ourselves.  Second, since only God can forgive sins, notice what God did – He forgave sins!!  All of that man’s burdens, weighed down by his sins, were washed away in a moment.  Perhaps we who grieve should take note.  The healing of our souls is perhaps more important than the healing of our bodies.  When we babies break, it is not inconceivable to note our sins do more harm to us, than the damage we incur from disease and tragedy.  To be healed of our sins, is perhaps then even more important than to be restored in our physical frames.

And finally, it was not just the man’s sins that were forgiven, it was his body as well.  Luke reminds us all that Jesus heals us completely both body and soul.  Jesus did not come just to make us better.  He came to restore us to what He intended us to be.  To the image of God He originally intended us to be.  The world, that is the universe He will call us home to, will be one where love itself is the center premise for everything.  Love in our God.  Love in us.  And yes, love in the dogs we so love in our world today.  To have a broken baby is to find our God’s heart aches in alignment with our own.  So to ask His healing, even over something so simple as a pet we cherish; is to unlock His heart on our behalf.  I know that should my dog be healed it can ONLY be the power of prayer that healed her.  And should Jesus elect not to heal my dog in this world, He will restore her to me in the next one.  Something that loves so unconditionally can only be an ambassador of the love the next kingdom will be based upon.  That is a love I have faith in.  And I hope it is a love I will do better at sharing here and now.

 

Trapping Jesus ...

If you accept that there is a lesser of two evils; you have already lost the war.  Throughout our lives, we are from time-to-time presented with a choice, where both outcomes are bad.  We are asked to pick the one that is the least bad, and then expected to make that choice.  To refuse to choose is often an outcome by itself that may be worse than actually doing anything.  It is called a no-win situation.  And so often it is presented, with us falling into the trap of trying to decide how to do the least damage with what we pick.  This trap is not new.  But it represents a lie told by Satan whose premise is quite insidious.  He tells us through these situations, that “you” must control your fate by making a choice where all the options are bad.  The reality is, that while every option “we” could pick is bad, “we” still have another choice … take it to God in prayer, sit back, and watch the power of God at work.  For while humans truly are limited in their choices, God is not, and what God can do can truly amaze.

None-the-less the Pharisees had been very angered by the 3 stories Jesus had told regarding the state of church leadership, and how they might still be redeemed.  The Pharisees believed they were already good enough and had no need of redemption, especially by this upstart with no formal acknowledgement by the system of religion they managed.  This message of light from the outside was not welcome in their tightly concocted inner sanctum.  So they responded by creating three traps of their own, one by each of the main groups or sects of their religion.  This would insure fairness among them, as well as diversity of thought, so that even if one line of thinking failed there would still be another to attempt to catch Jesus up in what He said.  But underlying all their attempts would be the common premise of presenting two choices where no matter what He picked, He could be embarrassed in front of the people.  Their problem was they reasoned as men, and forgot, or refused to admit, Jesus reasoned like our God does.

The first trap would come from the Pharisees who considered themselves preeminent among their peers.  These masters of the Tora would seek to catch Jesus up in a popularity dilemma.  The topic was taxes, just bringing up the very word “tax” to an Israelite at that time, was to kindle anger of the deepest variety.  They may have picked this particular topic, because Matthew, the author of this very gospel to his Hebrew contemporaries, was a former agent of Rome collecting taxes from his brethren.  Tax collectors had earned a reputation lower than harlots or sodomites in this day and age.  They were in effect traitors to their people, doing Rome’s work, and then profiting off of it besides.  If Caesar demanded a single penny from a farmer, the tax collector may very well take two, and keep one himself.  This made the process even more onerous, and the tax collector more hated, perhaps rightly so.  So the Pharisees figured there would be no way to discuss taxes with an honest Jesus and not embarrass Him immensely.

Matthew begins in chapter twenty-two picking up in verse 15 saying … “Then went the Pharisees, and took counsel how they might entangle him in his talk. [verse 16] And they sent out unto him their disciples with the Herodians, saying, Master, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest thou for any man: for thou regardest not the person of men. [verse 17] Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not?”  Nothing was left to chance in setting this trap.  The Pharisees sent Herodians with their disciples to act as witnesses for the state, in the event that an otherwise honest Jesus decides to get hinky with an unpopular topic like this one.  The Pharisees feared Jesus may just bow to the will of the people on this, so they actually sent government spies to watch in case He did.  They also used a proxy, that is, they sent their disciples to execute the trap so no one could ever directly accuse them of any impropriety in trying to spring a trap like this one.  Perhaps they used disciples Jesus had never met, so He would not see any connection back to themselves.

Then to disguise the trap, the disciples use the highest form of false flattery upon Jesus, first calling Him Master.  Then proceeding to compliment Jesus again on how He ALWAYS teaches the truth.  If they really believed this, they would not be there trying to spring a trap on Him.  They would have joined His ranks and become true disciples of the Most High God.  But they did not believe this, so their words were lies as they crossed the lips of those who did not mean a word of it.  I wonder, do we do the same?  Do we compliment our God in our prayers, bragging about how good He is, and how He is good all the time; yet the minute adversity blows our way, we crumble and blame God for it.  Then our true beliefs emerge as we blame God for every horror that happens on earth, casting Him as an angry God, who is looking to punish us for our deeds, instead of redeem our hearts from them. 

Or worse, we cast Him as a God who just does not care enough to save us from the horror that has come our way.  Never once acknowledging what we do, or sin, or a devil bent on our misfortune as the cause of what we stumble into.  Cancer was not put here by God, it exists because evil exists.  No disease was ever intended to exist.  It is the very presence of evil in our world that permits diseases to become part of our knowledge of good and of evil.  We were intended to be ignorant of them.  But instead we chose to become familiar with them.  This is the knowledge our God thought it best we never understood let alone encountered.  Breaking trust with God resulted in all of this.  But this was not God’s idea, and His number one job is to redeem us from evil, and extinguish the effects of evil on a permanent basis.  Not as a punishment for those who embrace it, but as salvation for those who want no more to ever be a part of it.

Beyond the lies they believe about what Jesus’ preaching includes, the disciples also compliment Jesus on being no respecter of persons – essentially that Jesus would talk to Caesar the same way He talks to a beggar in the street.  This further false flattery is not something they believe, but they are taunting Him into staying true to this course in order for Him to answer the trap badly.  And so after meticulously laying the trap, they spring it – asking Jesus if it is lawful to pay taxes.  Notice they do not make reference to which law.  They could have been talking about the law of Moses, or of Herod, or of Rome, or of God.  They leave this reference unclear so they can combat Him no matter how He answers.  This was the best minds in the country, coming up with the best test, they could imagine.  All to trap Jesus in front of the people.

Matthew continues the story in verse 18 saying … “But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites?”  Yikes!  It is as if a bright light is turned on in a dirty kitchen late at night, and the cockroaches who were all to happy to feast in the darkness are now revealed by the brilliant light, their antennae darting back and forth as they scream to each other “we must hide, we must hide”.  They run for the corners looking to be rehidden by the darkness, but it will not come.  Jesus perceived their wickedness.  He knows in an instant who did this, who was responsible for this, and what they are trying to do.  He calls out their hypocrisy as He knows they do not believe a word they say to Him, about Him at least.  He knows it is false flattery.  And then in bone chilling words He once used with Satan himself, He asks these wicked men, why they are tempting Him.

And do our prayers that say one thing, and our lives that witness another, earn us a similar response?  When we treat sin like gold, and freedom from sin, like a pain we want to avoid – do we not behave the same way as our Pharisee forefathers?  We have countless requests of our God, for the millions of things we think we need.  But only routine prayers to say thank you for food, and even less so when our other requests are granted.  Our prayer life resembles a child on Santa’s lap at the mall.  Our hearts are revealed to the same God who walked among us, as He walked among these Pharisees.  They did not believe they needed to change; how many of us believe exactly the same thing.  We count ourselves “good” enough already, just like they did.

Jesus responds picking up in verse 19 saying … “Shew me the tribute money. And they brought unto him a penny. [verse 20] And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription? [verse 21] They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.”  Hold the phone!!  There is not supposed to be any “good” option in this response.  There is not supposed to be a “good” answer.  This was a trap of bad vs worse, no good option allowed or anticipated.  And this is why you lose.  You, me, the Pharisees back then, all keep looking at situations with human eyes, limited by human thinking, and ideas about what is possible and not possible.  Instead, we could be turning over our “impossible” situations and decisions to God and watch what He can do, instead of trying to dictate to Him what we want Him to do.  Our prayers “telling” God what to do, are as worthless as our trying to take things into our own hands in the first place.  We are in effect, trying to lead God.  When we should be surrendering to God and following whatever He decides – expecting what He does, to not look like anything we would have thought of, and to be a million times better than anything we could have imagined.

The conclusion of this story occurs in verse 22 saying … “When they had heard these words, they marvelled, and left him, and went their way.”  This response is so strikingly sad.  They heard Him.  They were blown away that He had figured a way out of their trap.  And then they left Him and went their way.  Notice nowhere in that response was any sort of change on their part.  They did not become disciples after that.  They did not repent of their intentions.  They scurried back like the cockroach, to plan another attack in the darkness, for darkness is what they craved.  Make no mistake, when you walk away from the light, you are headed for no other destination than the darkness. 

People who treat Jesus as some kind of option, or some kind of alternative – believing that spirituality is all that counts, and doing good all that matters – walk away from His light, into the darkness of deceit.  Jesus offers you a real change in who you are, how you think, and how you love.  You cannot fix that.  You, on your own, may not even believe that needs fixing.  But it does.  It is the self-love that cripples you, and damages others.  And because self is at the center of it, you are powerless to fix it.  But Jesus is a master at re-creating you from who you are now, into what He knows you are capable of being.  He is not looking to leave you in your misery, making excuses for your pain.  He is looking to lift you out of your misery, freeing you from your pain forever.  That is the kind of change we can all embrace.  The free kind.  The kind that comes from submission, instead of control.  Walk away from your own ideas about bad and good, possible and impossible, and turn it over to Jesus, who can do things, and show you things, and make you into something you could never have imagined.  And the word regret will have meaning to you no more.

But the traps for Jesus were not to be ended just yet …

 

Bad Crap for Christians ...

Why do bad things happen to good people?  So that premise is off right from the start.  There are no “good” people, there are just people.  But surely there is a difference between an old fart who has lived a long life and done many misdeeds; and some innocent child who has yet to explore their potential for good or for evil.  Surely the innocent child deserves better outcomes, less pain, less trauma, less anxiety, and a lot less death.  None of us want the old guy to contract cancer, we sympathize with him.  But compare that feeling of empathy with a picture of a toddler in a pediatric oncology unit at a hospital and I dare you to hold back the tears.  Now compound the feeling by imagining that toddler to be your child.  That kind of pain is likely as bad as it gets.  As a parent you would do everything in your power to prevent that scenario from ever happening.  But how?  That disease does not know who you are.  It does not care who you are, or that it is your child who will contract it.  There is no taking their place, because the disease does not move from one victim to spare another.  It stays there, until it kills its host, and never so much as bats an eyelash.  A fully indiscriminate killer, on a murder/suicide mission, with no conscience, and no empathy with which you could plead your case.

Part of the pain you suffer as a parent is helplessness.  Your total inability to do anything to prevent it.  Your total inability to redirect the outcome.  You can participate in treatment.  You can do everything right, and still suffer that ultimate loss.  Where is God then?  Christians who do not understand the nature of God make a distinction between believers and non-believers in cases like this.  Yes, there are Christians who think the value of a believing child is worth more, or deserves more, than the child who does not believe yet.  The disobedient parents must somehow bare responsibility for the suffering of their child.  As if Christian parents make no mistakes, or worse, make the same mistakes as those who do not believe in Jesus, continually.  But this is all wrong.  Cancer does not care if you are a Christian or not.  It ignores belief systems, and lifestyles.  It may be brought on by certain behaviors.  But it is not prevented by any of them.

The vegetarian may avoid the cancers that lay in the meat the rest of us eat.  But the cancers that come from pollution in soil and water, get right into the same food supply we are all eat anyway.  Radiated stuff gets us all, and no government is truthful about where it is, or how well it is controlled.  Sure, smoking is a veritable death sentence from lung cancer, and nearly as lethal is second hand smoke.  But not all air you breathe is as clean as you would wish.  Healthy lifestyles bring a better life, but do nothing to prevent cancer or many other diseases of a lethal variety.  Genetics trumps nearly everything.  You would think Christians can beat most of this, by the power of prayer if nothing else.  And sometimes this is true.  But not ALL the times, so what then.

But if you think your powerlessness is bad, imagine having all the power in the universe, and then dealing with it.  Imagine being able to fix it, but knowing that fixing it now, breaks it later.  Case in point; Joseph the earthly father of Jesus must have been very loved by our Savior.  It is believed Joseph died at some point in the life of Jesus, before His ministry begins.  Jesus could raise the dead.  Why would He leave Joseph, His own earthly dad, to rot in the earth?  Mary would suffer because of this.  There would be less provisions for her because of this.  Do any of us seriously believe Jesus left Joseph in the ground, because of lack of love?  Why not just pull him out like Lazarus, and just keep on going.  Do it quietly, in secret.  Or at least heal Joseph from whatever disease he had before it got him.  But Jesus does not, despite how much He must have loved Joseph.  He left him in the dirt.  You can bet the heart of Mary broke when Joseph died.  You can bet she wept for the only man who ever believed her and “knew” her story was true.  It appears she never remarried, preferring to wait for reunification in heaven at the end of all things.

We should have thought about this case, and realized the outcomes we would want, are not always the outcomes we get.  What if Jesus raised Joseph, and late in life, Joseph abandons his faith?  You could argue that it is the free-will of Joseph to make that choice.  But the same free-will choice Joseph made at the time of his death, was also his choice, and perhaps then he chose to cling to his faith.  Perhaps if Joseph did not see a decade or two more of Roman horror he remains faithful.  But once raised from the grave the horror of life then changes the mind of Joseph over time.  When is it better for Joseph to die, sooner when he believes, or later when he does not?  Hezekiah begged for more time, and got it.  He did not lose that faith, but his heart was broken by what he saw in the lives of his sons, and his nation.  Was it better for Hezekiah to find a peaceful sleep in the Lord earlier, or cling to life and witness the horror of evil so close to home?

We hate the suffering.  So does God.  God sees how evil is responsible for all the suffering.  For everything from the greed that leads to pollution, to the weakness that embraces self-destructive behavior, to the virus’ and diseases that should have never existed.  God sees how hate leads the powerful to destroy the weak for no reason that could ever matter.  God sees the cycle of sin, that begins so small, and ends so horrifically.  And the mind of God must then be on how best to eradicate sin forever in the universe.  God does not just want to kill the patient, but to kill the sin within the patient, and keep the patient alive.  And God does not just measure life in this world, He measures it in the eternal world as that is the ONLY place that actually matters.  As hard as it is for us to taste death in this world, or see our family taste it, it is a far worse thing to see that become something eternal, instead of something so brief.

So Jesus cannot always do what He wants for us in the here and now.  But He ALWAYS does what we need in the eternal point of view, the one that matters.  And as hard as it is for us to endure the bad crap that comes our way, it is harder for Jesus to see us endure it, and let it happen, in order that it works together for our more important good.  Harder for Him, because He has the power to fix it now.  But must delay, in order to fix it forever, later.  Matthew tells the story of a loss like this.  And it is not just some random friend of Jesus, but His cousin.  This was the first Christian.  This was the first person to carry the gospel to the river Jordan, and cry out to the nation to repent, and make straight the way of the Lord.  John had fire.  John was a prophet.  John was the most effective preacher ever born.  He lived His message.  He was absolutely humble.  He recognized Jesus for who Jesus was.  John believed Mary.  John sent his own disciples to follow Jesus.  John nearly convinced Herod to do the right thing.  But for all his belief, John still died, beheaded as the first Christian martyr.  Sometimes bad crap comes right to your doorstep.

Matthew picks up in chapter fourteen of his gospel beginning in verse 01 saying … “At that time Herod the tetrarch heard of the fame of Jesus, [verse 2] And said unto his servants, This is John the Baptist; he is risen from the dead; and therefore mighty works do shew forth themselves in him.”  This begins as a ghost story.  Herod thinks Jesus is actually John the Baptist back from the dead, doing miracles only a supernatural being could ever perform.  And Herod is afraid, perhaps very afraid.  Miracles tend to unnerve the guilty who have no way to explain them, and every reason to fear them, particularly when they have yet to repent, and yet to change what they were doing wrong in the first place.  Who but a ghost could pull off the deeds of Jesus in the mind of Herod?  Herod missed redemption entirely, so fear alone gripped him for the guilty conscience he held to.

Matthew enumerates further in verse 3 saying … “For Herod had laid hold on John, and bound him, and put him in prison for Herodias' sake, his brother Philip's wife. [verse 4] For John said unto him, It is not lawful for thee to have her. [verse 5] And when he would have put him to death, he feared the multitude, because they counted him as a prophet.”  Herod did not enjoy being called out publicly as an adulterer.  At first he was mad and would have killed John to shut him up.  But having John in prison allowed Herod to come visit him, and the more Herod listened to John, the more he became convinced John was right, and he needed to do something to fix the situation.  While the crowds delayed the hand of Herod at first, a growing conscience within him delayed it later.  And that became a situation considered way too dangerous by the adulterous woman to be tolerated.  Herod may no longer have wanted to kill John, in fact he refused to.  But Herodias wanted him dead on a silver platter.

Matthew continues the story in verse 6 saying … “But when Herod's birthday was kept, the daughter of Herodias danced before them, and pleased Herod. [verse 7] Whereupon he promised with an oath to give her whatsoever she would ask. [verse 8] And she, being before instructed of her mother, said, Give me here John Baptist's head in a charger.”  Salome asks her mom what to ask for, likely interested in jewels or land.  But evil mom knows the truth, if John lives, and Herod repents, they will be sent back to Phillip with nothing, likely ostracized, perhaps stoned.  So if Salone wants to live to spend the wealth Herod may still bestow on her later, they need John dead now.  And a young girl asks for the most horrific thing sin always results in, death.

Matthew continues in verse 9 saying … “ And the king was sorry: nevertheless for the oath's sake, and them which sat with him at meat, he commanded it to be given her. [verse 10] And he sent, and beheaded John in the prison. [verse 11] And his head was brought in a charger, and given to the damsel: and she brought it to her mother.”  Herod was sorry.  The king was sorry.  This was not a gleeful Herod bathing himself in the blood of the man who called him out for his sin.  This was a king worried too much about going back on his word, to do what he knew was right.  So for sake of ego and reputation, Herod did the unthinkable to Herod.  And John was beheaded alone in prison.  Bad crap coming the way of John through no fault of his own.  Unless shutting up is considered the alternative by modern Christians.  Better to shut up than lose life, or jobs, or promotions, or friends, or position in society.  Better to keep your Christianity on the down low than lose what you have through the loss of favor with the world.  But when a Christian loves the non-believer, they are compelled to love them.  How can you keep your mouth shut then?

John had a higher mission of conversion and ironically he was right on the doorstep of success with Herod.  It was the wicked women who had no use for God that wanted him killed.  Imagine if this story went differently.  Imagine if Herod had the strength to throw those witches out on their butts, and truly repent of what he was doing.  Herod would have become the first Christian King.  And perhaps the sequence that ended the life of Jesus would have had to leave Herod out of the whole thing, lest Herod protect the Jesus, cousin of John, who John introduces Herod to.  Instead of being part of the bad crap that came to Christ, Herod might have had no part in it at all.  But Herod succumbs to his carnal urges, all too easily satisfied by women seeking to protect wealth and standing.  And John dies now, Jesus later.  And faith altogether is lost.

Matthew concludes in verse 12 saying … “And his disciples came, and took up the body, and buried it, and went and told Jesus.”  And here begins the worst kick in the faith His disciples will ever suffer.  Dude!  Dude this is your cousin, the greatest preacher this nation has ever seen, until You that is.  Just go put his head back on his body, and breathe life back into him, and let’s get going again.  We know You can do it, we have seen You do it for other folks.  Over time the disciples will do it too.  So why not just resurrect John the Baptist and show the nation how great You truly are.  We know You care about him.  We know You love him.  He is Your cousin for goodness sake.  And while we are at it, let’s go raise up Joseph too, and make a real showing of how great Your power is.  How can You just sit there?  How can You do nothing for one of Your own?  How could You let this bad crap happen to John, and Joseph, and have the ability to fix it, but do nothing … at least now.

But this is where the lens of the vision of God is so much wider and farther than our own.  Jesus knows He will see Joseph again because He intends to raise him up Himself, in just a little while (from His perspective).  Jesus knows He will raise John again, because He intends to do it Himself, in just a little while.  Both of them raised to perfection to a home in heaven, that will forever allow them to be close to Himself.  He will shower them with love.  And no one will ever be able to stop that shower again.  No more bad crap ever.  Raising them up to a world steeped in Roman horror would not be a favor.  Having them face the decades that follow would not be a benefit to them, only a selfish act to Himself so that He could reduce the pain of their loss in the short term.  It was not best for John, or Joseph.  They would sleep and in the blink of an eye find the glory of His second appearing.  They had no concept of the passage of time.  It would be immediate for them, as it is for every believer who has ever died in the 6000 years of our history.  Dying sucks.  But being dead, is like having fallen asleep at night, in the blink of an eye the morning is here, and you wake up.

Cancer sucks.  The suffering it brings sucks.  Cancer was never supposed to exist, and it is decidedly not the will of God, but the invention of His enemy.  As is all disease and suffering and decay and death.  The pain sin has brought to this world, and to us, is the natural result of turning away from the perfect happiness of God to find “another way”.  Here is where “other” ways end up.  And while bad crap does happen to Christians.  There is something Christians have that is an advantage our non-believing friends so desperately need.  While we may sit in the same oncology units, and even mortuaries, we have a hope and a view of the final state of things not everyone else understands.  We know we are loved, even in our pain, by a God who feels every tear ten times more than we ever will.  Our true “Dad” longs to see our pain gone forever, and He is working to see that occur for us, and in us, and in the patient beside us who may have never heard that hope that way before.  Whether He heals us or them now, or drives all the pain away when we wake up in that resurrection morning, there will come a time of no more pain, no more death, and no more bad crap ever again for anyone.  Perhaps our hope is the testimony the patient beside us needs more than anything else in their world, and we have it to offer today.  Can we shut up, and still say we love them?

 

A Different God ...

Atheists make a point; if there is a God, why does He let “you” suffer?  And Christians set about the task of apologizing on behalf of Jesus.  Mind you, there is truth in the notion that in order for free will to be free, it must permit the choice of that which is bad for us, it must permit the choice of sin.  And sin brings with it pain and death from cause and effect.  It is also true that in a world that recognizes the existence of God, we must equally recognize the existence of His enemy Satan, who has no compunction over causing pain and death to as many as he can.  Stacking up the impacts of our own bad choices, compounded with others, and increased by the deceiver of souls; quite a bit of damage ensues.  Imagine greed unrestricted for a moment, or lust, or anger.  Were there not some level of restriction held back by the four angels of the four winds we might have completely self-destructed long ago.  So even our continued existence is possible only because our God must interfere within limits or witness His creation commit suicide on mass.

But the nature of the Atheist’s challenge is more personal than why does pain exist at all, it is why does it exist for “you”; for someone who claims belief in Jesus Christ.  The challenge is simply why does God who must at least at some level interfere to preserve you, not do a better job at it?  Why does He not answer the most desperate prayers, or prevent the most heinous tragedies from happening at all?  When asked this, most Christians punt.  The most common refrain is, it is a mystery, that only faith can overcome, and trust that whatever happens is in our best interest permitted by a God who we know loves us with a passion we may never understand.  But that answer still leaves the victim a victim.  Rape victims will still have been raped.  Abuse victims still abused.  The dead still killed by others, or by the cause and effect of their own choices.  Our modern faith seems poised to deal with the aftermath, but seems to have a problem dealing with prevention through consistent direct divine intervention.

Now most Christians have a story or two about some point in their lives where divine intervention was done on their behalf.  God keeps us out of the car accident, or keeps our health going when the normal course of events should have taken us out of planet earth.  So the modern Christian, despite not having a comprehensive answer, has at least a partial one.  Our God has been preserving us.  Without Him, we would have been dead already, or in far worse shape than we find ourselves today.  And some modern Christians hold out hope to be favored by the God of Job; who while He permits calamity to occur, He restores our lives after the damage to a much greater point than before the damage began.  But Job’s first set of children were still dead.  Having a new baby is awesome.  But it does not replace the hole in your heart of losing even one of your children, let alone all of them.

Some modern Christians just write off anything that happens in this world as meaning “less”.  From the point of view of eternity, of life without the pain of sin and the death it brings, nothing that happens in this world can ever deter from the infinite bliss of perfection we will come to live in the hereafter.  This perspective is perhaps the most healthy, as it keeps the eye and the priority on what is really important, and what is not.  It also has the side effect of recognizing we need an end to the sin inside of us, to experience and enjoy what an eternity of perfection has waiting for us in the plain of existence God had in mind originally, and is restoring us to.  But even this perspective is lacking something.  It presumes that God will “do a better job” preserving us, only when conditions are finally favorable.  Why does He not do it today, is another question.  And ultimately it is a question where “we” question just what kind of God He is.  It would appear modern Christianity has lapsed into the service of a different God.  Why, and how, spring to mind.

Matthew records for us, in his gospel intended for a Jewish audience, a picture of what sure looks like a different God than the one we have come to apologize for.  The Jesus Christ who walked the sands of Israel so long ago sure presents as something completely different than the Jesus Christ we struggle to make excuses for today.  And if Jesus has not, or will not, ever change.  Then perhaps it is us who have shifted while the rock remained right where it has been all along.  Take as an example the story of the immediate aftermath of the Sermon on the Mount in chapter eight of Matthews gospel.  What Jesus had done was simply preach a sermon.  There were many truths within it, most centered on Salvation, and how following Jesus, submitting to Him, sees that occur within us.  There were no quid pro quo sections in His sermon.  There were no fantastic promises of wealth offered there, or of control, or of fame.  In fact, the antidote of these things are found buried in His words.  What He values is not based in wealth, but in service, not in control, but in submission, not in fame, but in humility.  His entire value system is upside down from our perspective.  But what was the response to it?

Matthew opens chapter eight in verse 1 saying … “When he was come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed him.”  The people got it.  Rape victims, abuse victims, those victimized by a church whose leadership abused their control, got it.  Salvation was possible through Jesus Christ and honestly that was all that mattered.  They saw a different God than us.  They were certain about a different God than we appear to be.  They began to show it, revealing Him to us, and revealing what we truly believe to ourselves.  Matthew continues in verse 2 saying … “And, behold, there came a leper and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.”  Aids victim, stage four cancer victim, multiple gun shot victim, pick the terminal condition you equate to the most today, and the ancient equivalent was leprosy.  Highly contagious and not well understood, meant complete social ostracization.  No one wanted you around.  You were going to die.  Any remedy had long been forgotten.  You were dirt.  You were less than dirt.

And at least one of them, comes straight up to Jesus after hearing His sermon from afar, and says to Him Lord, “if thou wilt”.  There will be no medication needed, no team of doctors or nurses required.  The man or woman destined to die will come to the Lord of renewal, and state a fact.  This victim knows what Jesus can do.  Jesus need only will it.  No apologies.  No deterrence of faith.  And what happens next separates the God of that man (or woman) from the God of you or I.  Jesus responds in verse 3 saying … “And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.”  There was zero delay in His answer.  There was zero equivocation in His answer.  There was zero pre-conditions that had to be met in His answer.  The dead, or destined to be dead, was to be restored in that instant. 

Further, Jesus was not some cold, removed, uncaring person afraid to interact with what you and I are too afraid to love.  Jesus touches Him (or substitute her as many women had leprosy as well).  I imagine Jesus reaching right out to the most infected part of the victim He could easily see, and began the healing right from there.  I imagine seeing not just a cessation of the disease, or stopping its progression, and leaving the scars and missing sections that had already rotted and fallen off.  I imagine Jesus begins re-creating the victim, replacing every missing part with a new one created from the fingertips of the Creator.  I imagine seeing the scars and blemishes fade into the normality of perfection at the time.  Full restoration.  Full recreation.  A point not too subtle for us to see where it comes to our salvation, and the need we have to be re-created from the inside out.

But this must be a different God, than the one modern Christians claim to serve.  There was no delay in what the will of Jesus was.  There was no pondering about it.  It did not take a committee to decide what to do.  It took a man seeing his own need and reaching out to one He knew not only could do it, but would do it.  And Jesus did what Jesus wanted to do for him, and longs to do for each of us.  Jesus then does something that continues to be relevant to us picking up in verse 4 saying … “And Jesus saith unto him, See thou tell no man; but go thy way, shew thyself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them.”  The way of healing leprosy had been long forgotten by those who ran the church.  They had been given a method of healing it.  But they forgot it, or abandoned it, or perhaps just like modern Christians, began to doubt what their God wanted done in a situation like that.

The leadership of the Jewish faith in the time of Christ served the same God we modern Christians do.  A God whose will is ever in doubt, or cannot be explained.  A God who does not “do” anything, or does not “do” enough.  A different God.  Certainly a different God than Jesus Christ who did not hesitate a single minute healing the man in need right in front of Him.  That God, that Jesus Christ, did not seem to leave us in doubt as to what He will was.  He was asked.  He healed.  End of story.  No doubts.  No difficulty in explanation, but rather extreme clarity.  Jesus does NOT want us to suffer and die.  Jesus came to reverse those conditions within us.  Jesus is NOT only interested in our spiritual condition (though that is the more important one), He is also equally interested in our physical condition.  He restores us, both body and soul.  This is the work Jesus longs to do.  This is that God.  This would by all accounts appear to be someone different than the God we have evolved in our minds is supposed to be Him.  In asking this man to return to the leadership of the church to be a testimony unto them, He is also asking this man to be a testimony unto us.

The rock does not move, only the sands of self do that.  It is not our Jesus who has changed, or wants something different for us than He did for that victim of leprosy.  He wants ALL of His children restored to Him in perfection, not just in mind, or spirituality, but in the bodies He created us to have.  The rock is still there.  It is us who need to return to it.  To conjure a different image of the God we serve, one absent of doubt, and apology.  An image of Jesus as He truly was, not an image of Jesus today masked behind a cloak of invisibility and doubt of intentions.  His intentions have not changed, only our faith in them.  His abilities to restore have not changed, only our perception of our need.  We no longer ask, either with certainty in what He would will, or with faith that an answer will actually be provided.  We ask with doubt, and with coverage in case what we want is rejected with no.  We offer the excuse of “not yet” to our feeble prayers.  But Jesus did not tell the Leper, I will get back to you.  He just healed the victim who needed the healing right in the moment he asked.

If the health of the body of those who are Christians is in disarray today, the responsibility clearly lies on our own doorstep.  The guidance in His word about what is good and what is not for us to eat is clearly outlined.  We know what we need to do from an exercise, sleep, rest and dietary standpoint.  And when disease comes to us in spite of what directions we follow from the word, we have a God whose will it is to heal us immediately, fully, restoratively and on the spot of our question for it.  That is His will.  That is His will for you, for me, and for the entirety of mankind from Adam to us.  Not just for the good people, but for all of them.  Not just for the folks who understand doctrine perfectly, but for those who are mistaken about nearly everything.  The leper did not have doctrinal perfection, he had a singular belief in the “will” of Jesus Christ.  That is the will of that Jesus Christ who scripture bares witness to.  Who is the Jesus Christ you serve?  Is it the same guy? 

Do you serve that God, or have the shifting sands of your perceptions invented a new version of Jesus Christ, a much lesser version, a version we feel the need to apologize for when the tough questions are posed, because the physical proof seems lacking all the time.  Have we, like our Pharisee forefathers, found a different God; or are we ready to serve the Jesus Christ who even today stands right in front of us as He ever was, His will clear to restore what is broken within us, both body and soul.  Are we ready to ask Him now, seeing our need, and “knowing” His will?  Are we prepared for the yes, we have so long believed was only rarely granted, but now will be our regularity?  I am tired of the different God, I have constructed in my mind, I would rather return to the Rock who has not moved, and the certainty in what He wills.  Is anyone else ready as well?