Pharisees to Jesus: "Why do your disciples play fast and loose with the rules?"
Jesus to Pharisees: "Why do you use your rules to play fast and loose with God's commands?"
Is your heart in it? Do you mean it when you worship God? Or do you use God as a cover for "whatever suits your fancy"?
"It's not what you swallow that pollutes your life, but what you vomit up."
"You, too?" Jesus to Peter, when Peter joins the ranks of the not understanding. "It's from the heart that we vomit up evil arguments, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, lies, and cussing. That's what pollutes. Eating or not eating certain foods, washing or not washing your hands--that's neither here nor there."
Jesus and the Canaanite woman. Disturbing a bit. Why? Because Jesus casts away one who is asking for help. Jesus was rude and silent...but in the silence, was converted, if you will. Jesus didn't answer her first request. He didn't reject it, either. He was silent. And the silence was cleansing of the self-seeking part of her. In the silence, the woman got bare and simply said to Jesus, "Help me." God's silence gives us an atmosphere in which to change our prayers, our position, our petitions, to make them more simple and basic. When Jesus is silent, he is still listening. When he rebukes, he is still loving.
Feeding with 7 loaves. "How much bread do we have?" Do you answer honestly, or do you hold back? (Acts 5, Ananais and Sapphira).
Bad yeast works through a whole batch of dough and pollutes a whole people/harvest/batch. "You find it easy enough to forecast the weather, but can't read the signs of the times." Isn't this a call to prophetic witness, and publicly reading the signs of the times? Don't teach the Sadducee/Pharisee kind of teaching.
"Who do you say I am?" What is it about your relationship with Jesus Christ that others can't live without? Do you have an answer for either question? Jesus. The Christ. The one who brought me back to life, reminded me who I was, when I was lost, unsure of a future or where to turn. Jesus reclaimed me and restored me and breathed life back in me so that I could see myself in God's world picture as opposed to the so very small picture that had become my job, my vocation, and all I could see of my life. Who do you say Jesus is? Seminal question for we who follow.
"Now I'm going to tell you who you really are, Peter." That's what Jesus did for me...told me I wasn't washed up, hadn't failed, still had value and worth (even though my "stuff" said I had, interiorly I didn't think I did).
A yes on earth is a yes in heaven. A no on earth is a no in heaven.
Simon Peter is such an unlikely character upon whom God would build the church. Gives the rest of us hope. Also gives us each the inability to disqualify ourselves from playing a part. If Simon could be used, surely all of us!
"Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You're not in the driver's seat; I am. Don't run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I'll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self. What kind of deal is it to get everything you want but lose yourself? What could you ever trade your soul for?
Acts 22-24
Paul's speech in Jerusalem. He spoke in their language, so they quieted down and could understand. Claimed Rabbi Gamaliel. Passionately on God's side, as you all are. Tells story of his persecuting followers of ' the Way,' and of his conversion on the way into Damascus. Crowd got ticked. Captured by centurians, spread eagle prepared for whipping. "Do you always treat Romans this way, without a fair trial?" Paul was born a Roman citizen, didn't have to pay for it as the captain had. Paul didn't speak with anger or vengeance. He didn't defend himself from the charges. He reviewed his past--using that as material for the future. He talked about his conversion, the invasion of God into his present. Then he talked about his release for the future, to go to the Gentiles, to share his life and the life of Christ with all men, wherever they may be and whatever their racial nature. It was Paul's story.
Clear-conscience Paul, clear before God. Violent conflict in the council breaks out between the Pharisees and Sadducees. Paul sent to cell for safety, visited by Master and told, "Good job." Now do it in Rome.
Seditious sect called Nazarenes. Could we be accused of sedition because of the way we proclaim our faith?
Governor Felix. "I serve and worship the same God served and worshiped by all our ancestors and embrace everything written in all our Scriptures. And I admit to living in hopeful anticipation that God will raise the dead, both the good and the bad. If that's my crime, my accusers are just as guilty as I am.
OH MY GOSH! Paul is a universalist! Or could be a universalist. God will raise the good and the bad. What's up with that? "Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus." Could it be?! Even Paul thought that...Paul, whose letters are used to condemn and divide? Holy Schmoly!
My accusers didn't show. You see, they are cowards. "It's because I believe in the resurrection that I've been hauled into this court! Does that sound like grounds for a criminal case?"
EP: "The trials in Acts 24-26 force us, if we're to stay true to the story we're reading, to give up the notion that the Christian community can catch the admiring eye of the world if we just live rightly and obediently. We have ample documentation by now to disabuse us of such thinking. God's revelation is rejected far more often than it is accepted, is dismissed by far more people than embrace it, and has been either attacked or ignored by every major culture or civilization in which it has given its witness: magnificent Egypt, fierce Assyria, beautiful Babylon, artistic Greece, political Rome, Enlightenment France, Nazi Germany, Renaissance Italy, Marxist Russia, Maoist China, and pursuit-of-happiness America. The community of God's people has survived in all of these cultures and civilizations but always as a minority, always marginal to the mainstream, never statistically significant.
"This gives us pause. If we, as the continuing company of Jesus, have achieved an easy accommodation with our society and culture, how did we manage to pull off what Jesus and his community of followers failed to accomplish? How has it come to pass that after 20 centuries of rejections, we assume that human acclaim is tantamount to divine approval."
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