Teacher & Savior

Exodus 20:1-17; John 2:13-22

The “ten best ways,” as we call the ten commandments in Godly Play and Worship and Wonder curriculum, are very important.  I believe they are the foundation of our society together.  It is not that they are put on court lawns or in our court houses, which I do prefer to statues I have seen on court lawns, but that it is the covenant for God’s people.  Let us review, God made a covenant with people, starting within the garden, but accumulating with the great covenant with Abraham and Sarah. 

Then in Egypt, God hear their cry and remembered the covenant.  To make the long story short, salvation from slavery was provided by God’s leadership through Moses.  Then God provided the “Ten Best Ways,” the ten commandments, or better yet the covenant.  This promise was the ways humans should live together.  The first four are about loving the One True God, and the remaining six are about how you treat others, or rather neighbors.

It seems to me  a wonderful Rabbi was asked to choose the most important and he said something like this: 

What you yourself hate, don't do to your neighbor. This is the whole law; the rest is commentary. Go and study. (Rabbi Hillel)

And my savior and the great rabbi Jesus of Nazareth said something quite similar:

He said to him,  "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the greatest and first commandment.  And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-40)

To me Jesus is restating the convenant God made with people, love God and Love neighbor.  Basically Love, and as Hillel states if you don’t get it read on and study.

Thus when according to John, Jesus enters the temple and drives out the money changers, you must realize that they were the most “religious” people he was angry with.  The priests knew that this market place existed, and instead of worrying about treating the neighbor they were only worried about the institution, the rules and the money.  I am sure many were not being fair with their trading practices, but it developed with a need for people to fulfill the law, the commentary.  It made sense, but the anger I believe came from robbing people of the meaning of the covenant, the Best Way, LOVE of God and Neighbor.

Holy Everywhere

Isaiah 40:21-31; Mark 1:29-39

Jesus touches Simon Peter’s mother-in-law to heal her.  He crosses a very strong line, and He implies that is to be done not only for individuals but in the synagogues, the religion as well. The healing was a miracle, but the touching was against the rules of ancient Judaism.  So even if it was good, full of love, it broke the law to touch the unclean. 

We as Christians are not immune to these lines as well.  How we worship, what we think,  we set up lines as well. 

We need to learn from young children who can see the image on a coloring sheet and yet color away with their hearts intent.  If the page is a picture of a bunny they will color across all the lines and say it is a bunny.  It is not that the lines are not important but they are not meant to contain, that which is “unsearchable” as Isaiah says in verse 28.

Let us be like the children, like Jesus, and cross over boundaries and lines to touch others with our crayons of love. 

Is not the cross and empty tomb the ultimate crossing of the boundary?

Time Fulfilled

1 Corinthians 7:29-31;  Mark 1:14-20

Paul writes some provocative statements to the Corinthians.  He is not advocating immoral behavior, he is emphasizing that this world has changed with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  Time has been fulfilled, as Jesus states in this passage by Mark, and emphasized by the immediacy of the first disciples to follow Jesus.  Time has changed.

Originally time was determined by the sun.  This is clearly stated in Genesis with the creation of the first day.  The Jewish people of Jesus’ day, and today, determine the day based on the end of the day.  That is when the sun goes down the day ends, thus the next day does start, hence Sabbath starts at sundown on Friday.  For the original followers of The Way (Jesus) who were Jewish, they would go to the Temple, or a synagogue, or perhaps down by the river in a Gentile city, to worship the one true God, listening to the Torah and the prophets.  They would keep the Sabbath as well if they were able, but on Sunday morning they would be truly back to work (it would had been their Monday). These first Jewish followers of Jesus, would get up early on Sunday, before work and without an alarm clock, to celebrate the resurrection with communion, hymns, baptisms, and worship.  They would do this as the sun rose.  It was like an extra day to their week, empowering them for their work and their lives.  There was an idea that the perfect creation will finally go to the eighth day with the resurrection at the end of all time.  However, the early Christians were understanding that time had changed and the fulfilling morning of worship and sharing His meal was the eighth day. 

I love sunrises, and having been a baker and pastry chef I have seen many.  My favorite still was when I was a teen.  I knew there was a snow storm coming the next Sunday morning.  With 3-4 inches already on the ground it would be wonderful to get up early to watch the sun rise with the snow falling.  So up early I got, and trekked up to the top of a cliff at the edge of the woods.  I took a thermos of hot cocoa and was buddled up.  I found a log to took in behind to protect me from the wind and settled in.  Then it occurred to me I would really not see the sun through the snow.  It was still the most amazing sunrise, so quiet, both the woods and the town below, save the wind.  A few times I could make out a perfect white ball through the clouds. It felt like hours I was there, and it was a while since I remember dusting an inch of snow of myself when I departed.  I treasure that sunrise that I never saw.

Everyday the sun rises, even if we do not see it.  And it is equally true that everyday God’s Son Rises, even if we do not see it.  When Jesus tells us time has been fulfilled he wants us to act as if we are starting the eighth day.  Paul makes it quite clear that the new age started and our actions should match that of the kingdom of God. 

However, we do not live in a kingdom, nor is their one person or power that really has the power on us anymore.  Today we live where our cultures have power over us.  Cultures we choose, and cultures that sneak into our subconscious.  The culture of America, the culture of TV, the consumer culture, the culture of Rock music, the culture of drugs, the culture of politics, the culture of one’s family etc.  Some are very powerful.  Some more powerful than we want to admit.  So I believe time has been fulfilled by the culture of God being near.  We need to live as if we live in the culture of God, and not simply wait to live in heaven, for time has been fulfilled.