Tag Archives: faith

Advent 22: Friends

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“What do we do? How can we help?”

When we have friends who are in the middle of pain and suffering, when we have friends who have no way to get to Jesus for healing because of the crowds, what do we do? I mean, we can’t heal anyone ourselves. We can’t take away the pain and the doubt and the uncertainty and the paralysis.

The man on the mat couldn’t move either. Even if he wanted to get to Jesus, he couldn’t. He couldn’t move on his own, and the room where Jesus was teaching was full of people, including the teachers of the law and the Pharisees. In other words, the people who desperately needed healing were being kept away by the inertia of the people who were trying to find out whether Jesus was being accurate.

Finally, the friends of the man ripped up the roof and lowered him through the hole.

When you really want to get your friends to see Jesus, to be right in front of him, nothing material matters.

And He knows. And cares. And sees the faith of friends.

(From Luke 5:17-26)

loving through interruptions.

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Jesus is counting down the hours he has with the disciples. He’s facing death. It’s a burden. Though he knows it will turn out okay eventually, he is not looking forward to the process. So he’s covering the important stuff, the ideas that will be on the exam.

Judas leaves the room, Jesus takes a deep breath, and says,

“Okay. Let’s start. This is the end of the beginning. I’m going to leave. Here’s what I want you to do: Love one another. The way that people are going to know that you belong to me, that you are following me, that you have learned anything from me, is by how you take care of each other.”

It’s great teaching. It gives a reason for paying attention (I’m leaving, listen closely).

But Peter wasn’t ready for the command part.

“Where are you going?”

You can’t go, Jesus says.

“But I want to go with you. Why can’t I go? I always go with you. You can’t take a step without me being there. Remember on the water? I was there. Remember the mountain? I was there. Remember identifying who you are? That was me. Getting money out of the mouth of the fish? Me.”

And Jesus says that Peter is going to say he doesn’t know Jesus three times before the next morning.

And then Jesus answers Peter’s question, the one about where he is going.

It’s funny, isn’t it? Jesus rewards Peter’s disruptive classroom behavior. Jesus should have said, “Peter, you aren’t listening to me. Why don’t you go sit in the corner. Now class, let’s talk about this the important thing, loving one another.”

Instead, Jesus showed his love for Peter.

1. He warned him about the upcoming failure.

2. He kept talking to Peter.

That’s what love looks like.

who else is there?

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What makes you stay?

When you are part of a group and public opinion shifts, what makes you stay? How much attention do you pay to the way people are talking? If lots of people are talking positively about your group, does that make you feel more attached? If lots of people start to raise questions, does that cause you to ask questions? If people in the group start to grumble about what they are hearing, about the demands that are being made on the group members, do you start to join in the grumbling?

Why? What drives our attachment?

John 6 captures a few days of teaching by Jesus. It starts with the amazing feeding of a huge crowd. It ends with the odd teaching about eating Jesus. During this narrative, we first see the Twelve. We then see a huge crowd. We then see this crowd sorted into eaters and disciples. The eaters start to leave. Then disciples start to leave. By the end of the chapter, it seems that we are back down to the Twelve.

And Jesus turns to them and says, “You don’t want to leave too, do you?”

[I don't know his tone of voice as he says this. We could suggest that he's pretty defeated. But John says that "Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him."  There is the sense that this isn't a test of Jesus' will, it's a test of the hearts of the Twelve.]

Peter says, “Lord, to whom shall we go?”

As difficult as Jesus’ words were, he was the only one with words that mattered. As challenging as it is was to be around him, it was even harder to be anywhere else.

I don’t think things have changed.

sometimes faith means walking away

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Jesus told a man that his son would be healed.

The man took Jesus at his word and headed home.

Perhaps the man was good at taking direction because he worked for the king. That was certainly true for another healing situation. A centurion (military commander of 100 soldiers) wanted a servant healed. Jesus offered to come. The centurion said that Jesus had the power to command healing without being present, just like the centurion could command soldiers.

Perhaps this dad was used to being told “We’re finished. You can leave.” When Jesus said it, the man left. But you have to wonder what the man wondered. As he walked back home, an overnight trip, what was he thinking?

What do we think in those situations? We ask God for something. Some healing, some wisdom, some help. We finish asking (often with the formal “amen.”) And then what? We often read Bible verses to each other about trust and faith and timing. But most often we wonder. Or at least I do.

The man is getting close to home. His staff meets him on the road with good news. His son is well. The man asks for a timeline and discovers that exactly when Jesus says, “Your son will live,” the fever breaks. And now, finally, the man and his household (family and servants) believed that Jesus was who he said he was.

Our conversations with God are often unfocused. Sometimes we forget to draw lines connecting  events and prayers. We don’t expect that there will be an actual answer. We don’t remember what we asked when. And often, we don’t take Jesus at his word.

This dad did. He walked away from Jesus, trusting as much as he could. He arrived at home a believer.

Between? I bet he wondered.

someday you will understand

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Much happens in our lives that we don’t understand right away.

We have conversations, we watch things happen, we see things in the moment. We think we understand.

  • A person is cranky. We think they are mad at us. Or that they just have issues.
  • A person moves slowly. We think they are lazy. Or incompetent.
  • A person starts laughing. We think they are irrational.

Later, we get more information. We find out that the person just lost a family member to cancer. We find out that the person is living with multiple sclerosis. We find out that the person has is wearing a bluetooth and just heard a joke.

Because we don’t wait for all the pieces, we get the story wrong.

Jesus creates a disruption in the temple, and then tells the leaders that if they “destroy this temple, I will raise it again in three days.”

We have no idea what the disciples thought in the moment. We don’t know whether they were appalled or delighted or amused or confused. What we know is what they understood later.

John says,

But the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.

There are pieces of our lives that we do not understand. There is a disconnect between what we know that Jesus says of himself and what our experience says. It’s challenging to keep walking with him.

That’s what the disciples did. They understood pieces and they kept following, but they didn’t make sense of it until later. They lived with mystery.

They also lived with relationship. Because they knew Jesus, they didn’t have to understand him. Still a challenge. Still possible.