At the Opening

Train children in the right way, and when old, they will not stray. (Proverbs 22.6)

We most often hear this wisdom in conjunction with faith formation. Pastors and lay leaders quote it to urge parents to invest time in teaching their children godly ways. There is a promise in this verse—a guarantee, if you will, that the child who learns to value spiritual principles at an early age will follow them for life. I can’t attest to its validity in other families. But it proved itself in my own. My folks took this promise to heart, and their two sons—along with nearly all of the 50-plus young people they welcomed into their home and nurtured as surrogate parents—grew up to be committed believers.

Still, applying this verse to a strong faith foundation and leaving it there strikes me as shallow. I’m convinced it's meant to stress the importance of an overall solid education. A better translation of the Hebrew is “Initiate the child at the opening of his/her path,” encouraging parents to ensure their children enter adulthood with a strong start. When we couple this with Christ’s repeated command that we, as individuals and a community, care for our children, we are scripturally obliged to meet their educational needs with the best we can offer.

Every child deserves a strong start. Our forebears believed this, which is why they implemented public institutions and laws to provide every American child with a quality education. Yet, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics, nearly one in 10 young people drops out of school. The rate more than triples in many urban areas, meaning thousands of children never reach the opening of their paths. As the Harvard Education Letter recently described, the reasons our children aren’t in school and others receive substandard education are myriad and complex, with most of them directly tied to poverty. Combined with the runaway costs of higher education and enormous debt we inflict on university students at the opening of their paths, it’s all too evident we’ve turned our hearts from what God expects of us. We’ve abdicated our scriptural duty to remove hurdles that prevent our youth from being trained in the right way. Since our neglect isn’t a new phenomenon, we’re already coping with its toll on our young, as well as the prices we pay personally, as communities, and as a nation. We can readily trace the connections between undernourished education and the socioeconomic—and spiritual—malaise that plagues us. And this is chiefly because the American response has been to move away from areas where substandard education is the norm, rather than invest the time, energy, and money to secure first-rate educations for all young Americans.

Most often, our politicians position their education policies in the context of “competing in the global economy.” They seem to believe we can’t be moved to remedy education gaps without threatening loss of profitable trade and innovation that has held the US on the top of the heap. But there’s more to it. Providing children with a strong start is God’s will. For believers, the mandate is non-negotiable. It’s not about us—or our pocketbooks. It’s about our children. If we commit our all to initiate them at the opening of their paths, when they’re grown, they’ll walk in productive, prosperous, and healthy ways.

Certainty and Its Dangers

How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge? (Proverbs 1.22)

Black-and-White

What makes certainty dangerous is that we seek—and find—it in all the wrong places. Wherever we encounter a patch of gray, our hard-wired survival instinct immediately compels us to transpose it into black-and-white. We formulate an opinion and block out any possibilities there might be another answer, or many answers, to help us decipher what we’re looking at. We crave certainty, because certainty makes complexity simple and simplicity aids decisiveness. And after we distill complex challenges and situations down to a chosen response, we underscore our certainty by claiming it’s “the right thing.” Put that way, craving the reliability and comfort of certainty sounds foolish. Laughing at other possibilities seems reckless and unwise. And in Proverbs 1.20-33 (Sunday’s Old Testament reading), we’re explicitly told such stratagems are indeed foolish, reckless, and unwise. 

In my own life, the tension between craving certainty and living with uncertainty has been most strongly felt in my faith. I come from a tradition that prides itself on iron-clad certainty based on a literal reading of sacred texts and a definitive theology that orders everything in life, from the workings of the cosmos down to minute moral dilemmas. When the need to find community among accepting, supportive believers drew me to the Reformed tradition, I experienced genuine culture shock. I’d never heard ministers and theologians confess they didn’t have all the answers. I wasn’t accustomed to people questioning the validity of Iron Age concepts and customs. Where I came from, one didn’t complicate matters by asking questions. You accepted everything the Bible says as written (based on your reading of it) and you called that “the truth”. Such an approach raises a really big question, however, and introduces an elephant to the room that one must choose to ignore.

When we rely on certainty that reduces everything to black-and-white, we remove faith from the equation entirely and settle for human religion. It’s taken me years to detect the inherent contradiction in professions like, “I know without a shadow of a doubt.” Removing doubt’s shadows—or refusing to acknowledge them—erases any need for faith’s light, a dangerous proposition by any measure, as it diminishes the Holy Spirit’s power to speak to us in new and relevant ways through God’s Word. We must be unwavering in what we believe, but we must never confuse faith for certainty. That’s when we find ourselves reflected in Proverbs 1.22: “How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge?”

A Cautionary Tale

Sunday’s Gospel (Mark 8.27-38) spins a cautionary tale about certainty’s pitfalls. Jesus and the disciples are in the region of Caesarea Philippi, a Roman outpost not far from Galilee. Everywhere they look they see temples and altars erected to pagan deities, and the sight of such religious diversity may be what prompts Jesus to raise a question out of the blue: “Who do people say that I am?” The disciples rattle off a list of names they’ve heard associated with Jesus: John the Baptist, Elijah, and other famous prophets. Then Jesus asks, “Who do you say that I am?” All of them, save one, don’t know what to say. Only Peter replies, “You are the Messiah.” (v30) In Matthew’s version, his certainty is rewarded. Jesus ordains Peter as the founder of His Church. But we see something very different in Mark. There is no praise for Peter’s certainty. Jesus tells the disciples not to tell anyone about Him. And in short order, we see why this is.

Jesus explains what being the Messiah will entail—and it’s nothing like the picture Jewish teachers have conjured up based on literal reading of the Prophets. There is no divinely ordered coronation in Jesus’s version, no overthrow of oppressive regimes, no end to violence and political strife. In fact, what Jesus describes is the exact opposite of what the disciples expect. Verse 31 says, “He began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” This rocks Peter’s world. His black-and-white certainty is suddenly blanketed in shades of gray. He pulls Jesus aside and rebukes Him! Jesus turns and looks at His followers, as if to say, “Watch this,” and blasts Peter in return. “Get behind me, Satan!” He hisses. “For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” (v33) In a mere three verses, certainty downgrades Peter from a divinely inspired confessor of Christ to a foolish simpleton. He scoffs at the idea of Jesus’s death at the hands of the very people who, according to his understanding of Scripture, should hail Him as the Messiah. He rejects the knowledge Jesus lays before him, that death is not the end of the story. Christ’s power will be revealed in bodily resurrection—a concept so alien to Peter that he finds it intolerable.

Nothing’s as Simple as We’d Like

After this decidedly uncomfortable exchange, Jesus calls the crowd around Him and issues a startling edict: “If you want to become My followers, you must deny yourselves and take up your cross and follow Me.” The context is plain. Self-denial in pursuit of discipleship begins by letting certainty go and following Christ by faith. It’s simply not essential that we know the workings of our faith without a doubt. Indeed, from Peter’s example, we learn that certainty is faith’s enemy. It can only entertain possibilities that agree with its limited understanding. It wants to simplify everything so that every detail in life is predictable and clear-cut. And that’s not how God works in the world or our lives. Peter is right to proclaim Jesus as Christ. Where he goes wrong is to confuse faith for certainty, to embrace a set of human expectations of how things should be at the expense of trusting God’s supreme knowledge of how things are.

We can’t know everything for certain and we won’t. All we need to know is that nothing’s as simple as we’d like it to be. What seems laughably absurd to us is serious business to God. And, as Proverbs says, we hate knowing that, because it jettisons us into gray patches that resist black-and-white reasoning. Not having answers is the cross that we, as followers of Christ, must bear. But thanks be to God for all of life’s gray areas and the myriad questions we can’t definitively resolve. Without them, we’d have no need for faith and the wisdom to accept what we can’t possibly understand or explain.

Without questions and doubts, faith cannot exist. 

While We Wait

Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. (Daniel 10.12-13)

Gateways to the Ineffable

My mom occasionally warns me about overthinking Scripture. “Let It speak,” she says, “and then give yourself time to let what It’s telling you sink in.” There’s more to her counsel than a mother’s concern her son’s too busy burning up brain cells to get the point. The real wisdom buried in her advice reminds me approaching God’s Word purely on an intellectual level often erects barriers to hearing what It wants to me know, because modern mentality isn’t always amenable to accepting what It says.

Certain aspects of Scripture defy human comprehension. They always have and always will. Yet the Bible is also crammed with supernatural events—visions, miracles, out-of-body experiences, and natural disasters—practically begging us to debunk them with scientific and literary analysis. We don’t need much to get really smug really fast. We pity our forebears for naïvely taking these tall tales at face value. We look down at those who ignore common fact and theory to believe everything in the Bible occurred exactly as recorded. That’s tough for many of us. For example, it’s a stretch to concede the sun and moon actually halted in the sky, as Joshua 10.13 says, to give Israel extra time to win a battle. It may be the crude account of a solar eclipse, or a clumsy metaphor for God’s intervention. We’re good with whatever it is, as long as it saves us from taking it as written. If what Joshua reports truly transpired, it would have hurled the planet into deep space. Since it obviously didn’t, it’s obviously not what happened, and it’s a joke to imagine it did.

If we’re not careful, though, the joke will be on us, as we fall prey to the same fault we disdain in illogical literalists by imposing literal logic on everything we find in the Bible’s pages. Implicit in my mom’s advice is a wise precaution to know when Scripture invites us to forget facts so faith can appear. Its incredible tales shouldn’t discounted as no more than big-fish stories—including the big-fish story of Jonah for which fantastic yarns are named. The Bible’s mind-bending accounts are given so we’ll discover something greater than ourselves. They’re gateways to the ineffable, that mysterious space where God lives and moves in our behalf. Doubting their accuracy or granting them poetic license is fine, if doing so moves us past logic that cripples faith. Getting hung up on Biblical impossibilities defeats their purpose, however. It bars us from entering a place of illumination with no other means of access. And whether or not the stories are real, where they take us is as real as real can be.

21 Days

Logical literalists won’t find very much to digest in the Book of Daniel. The straightforward narrative portions read like fairy tales. Daniel starts off as a young Hebrew captive in Babylon whose prophetic gifts vault him to heights of power and favor. Envy drives his rivals to plot his demise. They throw him to lions, toss him into a fiery furnace, and constantly test his scruples in ways that might anger the king. Yet Daniel survives every attempt unscathed. Those unable to swallow his outrageous exploits won’t have a clue about what’s going on when the book kicks into high gear. It turns out that Daniel’s a true-blue mystic, and chapter after chapter relates his visions and encounters with celestial beings. It’s like he’s in a perpetually altered state that opens his eyes to a secret dimension. Is all of this legit? Or is Daniel an excitable crackpot? Either way, he’s pretty spooky. But if we can get past trying to figure him out, where his story takes us is amazing.

Chapter 10 takes place after Cyrus the Great conquers Babylon and frees the Jews to return to Israel. Having quit government service not long after the liberation, Daniel chooses to remain. (He’s older by now and Babylonian life is all he knows.) He’s swept up by a puzzling vision of a great war that he desperately prays to decode. When no answer comes, he goes into mourning, limiting himself to a subsistence diet and basic hygiene. This lasts for three weeks. Then, while standing at the Tigris River, an otherworldly figure appears to him. No one but Daniel sees him. The messenger says he’s come to explain Daniel’s vision. But first, he explains what took him so long to show up. “Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them,” he says. “But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days.” (Daniel 10.12-13)

Between God and Us

I’d venture it’s better to find all of this incomprehensible than not. And despite scholars doing an ingenious job of working out the vision’s meaning, verifying its legitimacy with historical events that soon followed, this episode opens a gateway that, for us, has very little to do with history. The key is the messenger’s comment about why he’s late. God hears Daniel the instant he prays for understanding and dispatches an emissary to answer his prayer. Between God and Daniel, however, the messenger runs into interference from a malignant force—“the prince of the Persian kingdom,” i.e., a celestial being determined to foment multinational war. He struggles with the prince for 21 days to reach Daniel, who has no way of knowing that the answer is on its way. From where he sits, it appears no answer is forthcoming. So he mourns a tragedy he senses, yet can’t fully understand.

If we’re too smart about Scripture, we’re apt to rule out the reality of wickedness that wedges itself between goodness we pray for and God’s response. While we wait, conflict erupts in the ineffable, invisible realm across which our answers and explanations must travel. That’s what Daniel’s story wants to tell us. As Paul writes in Ephesians 6.13, “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” Delays that disillusion and frustrate us have nothing to do with God or us. We’ve not done anything so wrong that God would abandon us—the very idea refutes all we know God to be. Nor have we presented God with a problem too big or impossible to handle. If just one human dilemma or crisis fit that bill, God wouldn’t be worthy of our faith and trust. When tempted to blame God or ourselves with delayed answers to prayer, we resist by acknowledging there’s more going on than meets the eye.

There are powers of darkness in our world. There are forces of evil in heavenly realms. Entering the ineffable—letting Scripture speak and giving It time to sink in—frees us from logic-bound literalism that would dismiss this truth as myth and metaphor. It’s as real as real can be. Thus, Scripture overflows with admonitions to cling tenaciously to faith that God hears and answers prayer. “I waited patiently for the LORD,” Psalm 40.1 says. “God turned to me and heard my cry.” If we made of list of every prayer we’ve prayed, we could check all of them off as “answered,” though we’d also mark many “TBD” in the “Date” column. Daniel teaches us why surrendering our confidence and hope to powers we can't see is not an option while we wait.

We come to You, O God, fully confident You hear us and move for us without delay. Open our minds to know delayed answers to prayer are neither Your nor our fault. Increase our patience and tenacity to wait. Amen.

Malignant forces wedge themselves between our prayers and God’s answers, causing delays that have nothing to do with God and us. Realizing there’s more going on than meets the eye enables us to wait patiently and confidently.

The Church's First Protocol

Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. (Matthew 18.18)

Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is fulfilling the law. (Romans 13.10)

Benevolent Aliens

On October 19, 1945, almost two months to the day after World War Two ended, George Orwell published an essay, “You and the Atomic Bomb,” serving notice the Allies had won and brokered a “peace that is no peace.” He warned that ideological rivalry between emergent empire builders, the US and USSR—each equipped with potential to annihilate the planet—would grip the world in anxiety. His prescience greatly influenced post-War science fiction, much of which channeled global paranoia into scenarios of technically superior alien attacks—space invaders armed with death rays and whatnot. A few sci-fi writers, however, understood the gravity of Orwell’s predictions. They harnessed the genre’s fantastic elements to imagine a new breed of extraterrestrials—benevolent aliens that journeyed to Earth and offered the young planet wisdom they acquired eons ago. The first notably benevolent alien appeared fully intact in the low budget, 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still.

If you’ve not seen the film or it’s been a while, it’s worth a look. With East-West tensions abated, the Christ parallels can’t be missed. Assuming human form, the alien takes the name “Carpenter.” By choice, he lives in a boarding house occupied by a widow, her son, and several social misfits. He conceals his identity and his presence generates widespread unease about his mission. He won’t speak to political insiders, insisting his message is for all people. He demonstrates command of the elements by shutting down the global power grid. When a suspicious acquaintance betrays him, he’s gunned down before being heard. A mysteriously powerful space companion revives him. His resurrection brings attention he uses to address all nations at once. What he says echoes Jesus’s words in Matthew 18.15-20 (today’s Gospel), and resounds with Paul’s counsel in today’s New Testament reading, Romans 13.8-14.

I am leaving soon, and you will forgive me if I speak bluntly. The universe grows smaller every day, and the threat of aggression by any group, anywhere, can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all, or no one is secure… I came here to give you these facts… Your choice is simple: either live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer. The decision rests with you.

Cosmic Implications

Earlier in the film, Carpenter explains the urgency of his mission. Newly armed with nuclear power, the Earth’s capability to destroy itself also threatens universal balance. If it abuses its powers to conquer other planets, it will foil a cosmic plan for harmony and peace. Learn to get along, Carpenter says, or forget belonging to the Big Picture. This is precisely what Jesus says in today’s passage, first spoken when everything He came to accomplish is due to transpire. The Earth will stand still at His execution. He’ll entrust His mission and message to His followers—Whom He collectively calls “the Church”—after His resurrection and departure. The same power that raises Him from the dead will remain with the disciples after he leaves, endowing them with capabilities unlike any the world has seen.

What the Church does with the Holy Spirit, however, rests on its shoulders. It can employ the Spirit's power to advance God’s kingdom on Earth. Or it can splinter into ideological rivalries that weaponize the Spirit and Scripture to build doctrinal empires. If the disciples go that route, Jesus foresees total anarchy. His mission will be in vain, His message reduced to ideals everyone admires, but no one lives by. Before responsibility for the Church gets dropped in the disciples’ laps, Jesus wants them to understand every decision and action they undertake is loaded with cosmic implications. They’re part of a divine plan that transcends human comprehension. But using these terms to set expectations the disciples will work together for His sake would sound like science fiction to them. So Jesus issues the Church’s first protocol in language they’ll readily absorb, speaking directly to conflicts and competing interests they’ve not dealt with until now.

The Peter Problem

The days prior to this conversation have been very strange. Everyone but Jesus has the jitters. He keeps talking about leaving them, after which Peter is supposed to take over. He as much as says their future depends on him when He promises to give Peter “the keys of the kingdom of heaven”—i.e., absolute authority—to lead the Church. (Matthew 16.18) The idea of Peter stepping into Christ’s shoes is as terrifying as it is baffling. He’s the most mercurial person in the group. He makes a big deal out of everything. No sooner does he witness Jesus’s transfiguration than he goes off on a tangent about building memorials—a thing he’s neither trained nor equipped to do. He’s useless in crisis. When taxes come due, rather than organize a fishing trip to earn some cash, He takes Jesus’s joke about finding money in a fish’s mouth seriously. (It turns out Jesus isn't kidding; the first fish Peter pulls from the water pays the bill.) He’s the only one crazy enough to believe he’ll actually walk on water because Jesus says so. (Oh, by the way, Peter is the only human known to walk on water.) Then there’s his hair-trigger temper. Why, a few days ago, he got so unnerved by all the death talk he went off on Jesus! And he’s supposed to be their leader?

The Peter problem creates many other problems. James and John—a.k.a. the Sons of Thunder—campaign for Jesus to reverse His decision and put them in charge. (They even drag their mother into it, pushing her to broach the topic with Jesus.) Judas is acting weird lately. He’s unhappy with where things are going. He signed on to overthrow Roman oppression, not to save the world. Mounting dissension and increasingly bolder lunges for power prove all the more unsettling because either Jesus fails to see or He simply doesn’t care about what’s happening. Of course, Jesus sees and cares. Just when tensions among the disciples reach their breaking point, He explains how and why they must work out their differences and stick to His plan.

The Earth-Heaven Connection

If someone wrongs you, talk it out, Jesus says. Don’t risk losing them over issues you can resolve. If they won’t listen, invite one or two witnesses to confirm you tried your best. If that doesn’t work, take the matter before the whole group. If the offender still refuses to acknowledge his/her error, put her/him out of mind. With that, the disciples discern responsibility for the Church’s stability and unity belongs to them. And Jesus explicitly says so in Matthew 18.18-20: “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by My Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in My name, I am there among them.”

The Earth-Heaven connection is where the keys to the kingdom reside. And the protocol for accessing them is so simple it’s a wonder we don’t follow it religiously. Only when we agree are we aligned with Christ’s plan and purpose. Only when we bind forces that contradict Jesus’s mission and message, only when we loose the Spirit’s power to unite and liberate us, is Christ’s presence known and felt among us. The importance of doctrinal disputes and sectarian quirks is wildly exaggerated. It’s not about being right or wrong, but doing what’s right to avoid going wrong. Our power isn't evidenced by controlling others. It’s proven by conquering our desire to seize control. We don’t need a lot of rules and restrictions to secure the Earth-Heaven connection. We need a mind-boggling revelation that penetrates what we think to reach the depths of our understanding.

In a stunning take on why rules aren’t enough to resolve conflicts, Paul writes, “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments… are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.” (Romans 13.8-10) And there it is again: the only way to end our detrimental us-versus-them divisions in the Church is by making them our first concern.

In The Day the Earth Stood Still, Carpenter warned people of Earth that leveraging nuclear power to deepen political rifts not only endangered their survival. Unchecked, it would put the universe at risk. What Jesus and Paul say in today’s texts is no different. The Holy Spirit is given to unite us in purpose and principle. Jesus issued the Church’s first protocol, explaining how and why we must resolve our differences, lest we sever our connection to His divine plan. Paul discredits all notions of legally enforced unity. Love for one another is what binds evil’s power over us and liberates our hearts. We’ve been given a choice and Heaven waits for our answer. The decision rests with us.

Lord, we have heard You loud and clear. We pray Your Spirit will empower us to accept Your Word. May it penetrate what we think to reach the depths of our understanding. Instill in us an insatiable yearning to resolve our conflicts wisely, compassionately, showing true love for one another. Amen.

The Holy Spirit endows us with the power to resolve our conflicts and advance God’s kingdom. Jesus even tells us how to do it. Whether we follow His protocol is up to us.

My Neighbor is Me

When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, He said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” After that no one dared to ask Him any question. (Mark 12.34)

A Sincere Inquiry

Today’s Gospel (Mark 12.28-34) is our earliest available account of what’s widely regarded as the crystalizing moment in Jesus’s ministry, when He distills the whole of Judaism's labyrinthine edicts and codes by blending two lesser-regarded commandments into a unified Great Commandment: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” (Deuteronomy 6.4-5) And, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Leviticus 19.18) Similar passages also appear in Matthew 22.34-40 and Luke 10.25-27, whose authors source much of their material directly from Mark. Yet of all the Gospels, Mark is the most concerned with Jesus’s credentials as a prophet and teacher, and that directly influences how he positions his account.

Arriving two or three decades after Mark, in the wake of the Early Church’s surging popularity, the other writers emphasize Jesus’s divinity, which automatically puts Him above, and in direct conflict with, Israel’s religious establishment. In contrast, Mark portrays Jesus as a rabbi and miracle worker actively engaged in the Judaic faith community. He sees Jesus as God’s Chosen Son—a radically different concept than Matthew, Luke, and John’s belief that Jesus is God Incarnate—Whom God endows with divine wisdom and power. In Mark, Jesus’s gifts and message put Him at odds with the religious and social norms of His day. Mark says God adopts Jesus (at His baptism) and tasks Him with ushering in the kingdom of God on Earth. And nowhere is this divine calling more prominent than in Mark’s rendition of Jesus’s two-tiered Great Commandment.

While Matthew and Luke depict a confrontation, saying a lawyer taunts Jesus to name the most important commandment, Mark describes a friendlier, more respectful conversation—a sincere inquiry about personal priorities rather than a devious ploy to ensnare Jesus in theological red tape. The lawyer has just overheard Jesus invalidate a ludicrous hypothetical question by indicting its askers’ insufficient knowledge of Scripture and God’s power. Because the proposition involves a sectarian dispute, Jesus avoids taking sides by citing a higher principle that moots the question altogether. His deftness impresses the lawyer, encouraging him to ask Jesus, “Which commandment is the first of all?” (v28)

The Law of the Land

Unlike the absurd test case preceding it, the question has very real and relevant implications for Jesus and the lawyer. It opens the door for Jesus to condense everything He's talked about for three years into a concise imperative. It also reveals the lawyer’s earnest curiosity, which Mark greatly admires, distinguishing his account from Matthew and Luke’s versions. They replace Mark’s polite lawyer—whom he identifies as a scribe, an academic—with a sly legalist and, in the process, diminish the moment as no more significant than any other skirmish in Jesus’s ongoing battle of wits with religious adversaries.

Matthew doctors Christ’s reply in Mark to underscore its legal precedence. After quoting Deuteronomy and Leviticus, Jesus adds, “On these two commandments hang all the Law and Prophets.” (Matthew 22.40) In Luke, Jesus doesn’t reply at all. Instead, He tosses the question back in His challenger’s lap. “What is written in the Law?” He asks. “How do you read it?” (Luke 10.26) The lawyer summarizes the Law. Jesus congratulates him for being wise and answers his follow-up question (“Who is my neighbor?”) with the Good Samaritan story. We’ll never know which account most accurately documents the actual event. In terms of impact and clarity, however, Mark’s stands leagues above the others, because the Great Commandment surpasses legal precedent and ethical ideals. It’s the essence of what God’s kingdom is all about.

Jesus’s reply elicits this response from the scribe: “You are right, Teacher; You have truly said that ‘God is one, and besides God there is no other,’ and ‘to love God with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself,’—this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” (v32-33) Everything comes together in the Great Commandment. Uncompromised love for God is expressed in the consuming passion, constant awareness, and tireless devotion that drive our determination to please God in all we do. This in turn fires our relentless quest to love others with the same fervor and faithfulness we desire for ourselves. Whether or not our neighbors are “lovable” or deserving of love never enters the picture. And here’s why: none of us is lovable through-and-through; we are all vulnerable—and we all frequently succumb—to weaknesses and failures that beg more grace, mercy, and tolerance than we could ever merit. That’s also why nothing displeases God more than our polluting love for one another with conditions and expectations. Such behaviors constitute rebellion against God’s sovereign kingdom, where unconditional love is the law of the land and God alone presides as Supreme Authority and Judge.

Get Close

In the kingdom of God, God defines justice and righteousness. There is no court of appeals, no legislative council to amend or reverse God’s law of love, and no legitimate way to please God without total adherence to the love commandment. Jesus need not explain this to the scribe; his response proves he gets it. He answers wisely, whereupon Jesus declares, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” Imposing personal opinions and human logic on love redefines it as something other than love. It becomes a reward rather than a gift—a far cry from what God intends our love to be and what God’s love actually is.

If we truly love God as the Great Commandment teaches, with all the heart, understanding, and strength we possess, we regard every chance to love our neighbors as a sacred opportunity to get close to the kingdom of God. Without love for God and one another, every sacrifice we make and all the talents we offer come to naught. First Corinthians 13.2-3 says, “If I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.” Power, knowledge, and possessions lose all value in the absence of love. Living in a hateful world that worships power, knowledge, and materialism should be more than enough to convince us of that.

Note the stinger on Mark’s version: “After that no one dared to ask Him any question.” Love that gets us close to the kingdom of God silences controversy and ends self-aggrandizing debates. With all respect to Luke, once we internalize the Great Commandment we don’t need to ask, “Who is my neighbor?” In God’s kingdom, my neighbor is me. That makes love a decision that decides itself.

All-loving and powerful God, overwhelm our hearts so they ache for Your kingdom. Cleanse us of the false notion that love is a reward given at our discretion. Obsess us with desire to please You by loving one another and then fortify our resolve to satisfy this most sacred desire. Make us wise. Amen.

The Great Commandment surpasses legal precedent and ethical ideals. It’s the essence of what God’s kingdom is all about—the law of the land.

Secret Heart

You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart. (Psalm 51.6)

Singing Along

Every time I open the Psalms lately, I’m reminded David, Moses, Asaph, the sons of Korah, and other contributors are high-ranking, extremely popular figures—political and religious leaders whose legends precede them. Yet concern for their world, nation, and people drives them to reveal their deepest passions, conflicts, feelings, and aspirations. They cop to weaknesses and attitudes we would never confide to our dearest friends. They model humility by deflecting adoration and honor they receive with rhapsodies of praise for their Creator. At the other extreme, they manifest humanity by complaining to God when things go wrong and, in more than a few instances, accusing God of not caring how lonely, confused, and defeated they feel.

Not only do the psalmists put their inner thoughts in writing; they publish them as hymns for all to sing! Imagine a president or pope composing a comparably self-revealing lyric and sending it to a record producer with a note: “Do all you can to make this a huge hit. The world needs to hear this and sing about it.” Are you kidding? But that’s what the Psalms come down to: songs of highest praise and deepest despair by extravagantly brave people who risk comfort and reputation so those singing along with them can profit from their experience.

For Us

Psalm 51 is a huge hit—then and now—that comes with a preface identifying its producer, composer, and date: “For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David committed adultery with Bathsheba.” We don’t need this info to gather the poem’s writer is messed up; the lyrics tell it all. Still, the archivist wants us to know where the song originates so we can personalize its profound remorse and desperation as we sing.

David writes Psalm 51 during the worst days of the worst scandal of a scandalously checkered career. He’s gone wild with lust for his neighbor’s wife, broken two commandments (“Do not commit adultery,” and “Do not covet another’s wife”) by sleeping with her, and contrived to conceal his error by having her husband killed after Bathsheba tells him she’s pregnant. The whole affair—from David’s naughty peek at Bathsheba taking a bath to his abuse of power to commit murder by proxy and hide his wrongdoing—becomes public knowledge when God sends Nathan to pronounce judgment on the king. The prophet confirms Bathsheba is carrying a son. But joy at this news lasts no longer than it takes for Nathan to inform David the infant’s life will be taken to pay for his crime.

In a matter of minutes, David goes from having it all to losing everything dear to him—happy young wife, new son, adoring public, moral integrity, and, most important, favor with God. If he were alive today, his advisors would counsel him to release a statement acknowledging his bad behavior (without accepting blame or guilt) and lay low until the scandal blew over. David’s too big for such a tiny gesture, however. His loss becomes our gain when he reaches for his pen. As we sing Psalm 51, we recognize where David’s at, because we’ve been there too, and the palpable agony of his contrition steels our resolve never to go there again. It’s for us he composes and publishes his classic poem of repentance.

All That Other Stuff

David pleads with God, “Have mercy on me!” (v1) He begs God to cleanse him. (v2) He admits his sin is ever before him (v3) and the severity of God’s judgment is just. (v4-5) What he says next is most revealing: “You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.” (v6) David got his public persona—the image he constructed to win Israel’s confidence and pride in his leadership—and true identity as God’s handpicked surrogate confused. Popular perception he could do no wrong boomeranged. He began to trust what he projected, rather than what he knew, himself to be. He had no reservations about lusting after another’s wife and the subsequent sins that dominoed into a public relations disaster because he's a king and that’s what kings do. When they spy something they want, they use every means to get it. In his heart of hearts, David knew this was a lie. He understood that true kings are servants. They honor their calling to live honestly before their people and remain faithful to their Maker.

All that other stuff—bravado and meeting expectations and embracing stereotypes—is theatrics we attempt to hide behind even though God sees, knows, and desires us to be truthful about who we are. David was aware of this all along. Yet, in an unexpected moment of weakness, he set it aside. As we sometimes say of ruinously disgraced public figures, he started believing his press. And though we may not be lionized in the media, we might as well confess we're no less prone to permit wonderful things said of our public personae to go to our heads, too. Because we do.

Mistaking Role for Reality

The David who loves God with his whole heart, his secret heart, is only happy if he’s aligned with God’s will and serving others. We know this from his story in 1 and 2 Samuel and even more so from his psalms. When everything God desires has his undivided attention, he’s cranking out anthems about God’s majesty and compassion. He’s mountain-high and untouchable. Let him get preoccupied with his role and it all goes to pieces. The genius behind “The Lord is My Shepherd” and “Let Everything Praise the Lord!” shrivels into a pathetic has-been moaning his latest version of “The Nobody-Loves-Me-Everybody-Hates-Me Blues.” David’s out of sorts because he’s out of touch with truth in his inward being. The king-sized heart he displays isn’t the secret heart where he and God connect—where there’s no reason for pretense, as there he’s free to be the humble shepherd boy tucked inside the monarch’s outsized demeanor.

“Teach me wisdom in my secret heart,” David prays. If he lived today, he’d ask, “Help me keep it real.” Seeing the horrible sorrow and shame David suffers by mistaking role for reality should be plenty to caution us against the same error. People we love or try to love, those who love us or we want to love us pigeonhole us into clichéd, disingenuous roles. (We do likewise with them, by the way.) Yet allowing roles we’re assigned to displace the reality of our inner beings positions us to break God’s laws and forget who we are. The secret heart is a holy place. In it reside the treasures of identity and presence of the Creator Who shaped us and calls us to faithfulness and service. Falling into stereotypical behaviors or living up to arbitrary expectations severs our connection with the secret heart. Psalm 51 provides all the proof we need that unwisely ignoring our inner beings' authenticity takes us down a miserable road that often goes from having it all to losing everything dear to us, including our moral integrity and God’s favor.

Dear God, we may never sing like David. Our finest poetry may not compare to his feeblest effort. Yet, like him, we can’t escape being forced into roles that don’t true to our inner beings. Teach us wisdom in our secret hearts. Help us keep it real. Amen.

As David begs God's forgiveness for the foolish sins that pile into his worst scandal, he wisely asks God to help him keep it real. Psalm 51 is a lesson for us.

After the Party's Over

These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I went with the throng, and led them in procession to the house of God, with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival. Why are you cast down, O my soul? (Psalm 42.4-5)

BFS

Have you ever reached a place in your faith where an unexpected turn knocks you off your feet? I have. A devastating event sends us reeling—a cruel tragedy, disappointment, or discovery that deflates our grandest illusions. A hidden doubt steps from the shadows to throw us off-balance. Sometimes we’re not sure why we tumble. On Monday, faith lights our way. Tuesday dawns and, for no reason, we’re in a fog that saps our energy and purpose. The God Who was everywhere yesterday seems to have checked out. Prayer loses its lift, falling with a thud from our lips. We reach for the Word, but the Word doesn’t reach us. We resort to the spiritual equivalent of pulling a blanket over our heads, where unspoken misgivings and derisive comments from non-believers preempt what we want to hear—what we need to hear.

Unforeseen lurches into despair can intimidate us many times more than looming challenges that provide no option to trusting God’s grace and guidance. When the rug gets yanked from under us—whether or not we discern what triggers it—inability to break our fall can be debilitating. Plummeting from faith’s heights into doubt’s depths raises questions we’re unable to answer. Where is God? Isn’t God looking and listening? While concerns about God’s love and care churn, self-recrimination enters the mix. What’s wrong with us? Were we crazy to imagine living by faith would be any better than living by sight? Is it crazy to think God has abandoned us? Is the whole thing crazy?

Well, my brother and my sister, though it won't spare us sudden bouts of spiritual depression, we take consolation in realizing no believer is immune to bipolar faith syndrome (BFS). Sooner or later, every believer's high-flying faith bottoms out. We’re hardly the first nor are we hardly the last to be alarmed by this. When we don’t know what to say and it seems God won’t say, we turn to what those who’ve been in our shoes say. They’re not hard to find. Psalm 42, for instance, is a first-rate study of someone totally unnerved and nearly done in by a BFS episode.

The Downcast Soul

For undisclosed reasons, the psalmist has suffered a hard fall. He feels hopelessly lost and needlessly insulted. Presently subsisting on salty tears, he aches for a refreshing taste of God’s presence. “As the deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God,” he writes. “My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, ‘Where is your God?’” (Psalm 42.1,3) Isn’t that how it always seems to go? No sooner do we hit rock bottom than the no-help crowd rushes to jump into the pit with us and gloat, “I told you so!” Explaining this is what he's up against—like God doesn’t know—the poet essentially asks, “What am I supposed to say? This is as much about You as me!” (Like God doesn’t know that, either.)

Then, in verses 5-6, we get to the crux of his problem. The poet’s thoroughly unprepared for despondency and derision that inevitably surface after the party’s over, when the soaring ends with an abrupt and rapid descent. He can’t handle where he’s at because he won’t let go of where he was. “These things I remember, as I pour out my soul,” he says, his tone tinged with resentment that what he recalls couldn't last: “How I went with the throng, and led them in procession to the house of God, with glad shouts of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival. Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?” he asks, repeating the downcast soul reference in the next verse and the last (v11).

It’s an oddly revealing question that almost leads us into the same trap that snares the poet’s antagonists. We fight every impulse to fire back, “You can’t be serious! What gave you the idea life’s going to get out of the way of your happiness and peace of mind? You know why you're depressed and disturbed? Because it happens!” Before we launch our tirade, however, the poet disarms us by telling himself, “Hope in God; for I shall again praise Him, my Help and my God.” It’s the smartest thing to say—smarter than any presumably reasonable advice we might toss out, like encouraging him to look on the bright side (there isn’t one), remember the good times (that’s why he’s depressed), or hang in until better days arrive (they will, but who knows when). So we’re wise to quiet down and listen as the poet works all of this out.

Hope in God

Hope in God is the only antidote that lifts the downcast soul. Hope in God changes the conversation from “I did” to “I will.” Hope in God lets the last party go and reaches for the next one. Yet we should note activating hope after we bottom out often requires several tries to work. Once the poet settles on hope in God, the bargaining begins. He talks himself up [“By day the LORD commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the life of my God.” (v8)] And before his amazing faith-boost takes effect, he’s down again, asking why God’s forgotten him, why adversaries oppress him and belittle his faith.

The poet’s yo-yo behavior is common when battling BFS. Convincing ourselves to hope in God while coping with dismay is emotionally and intellectually taxing. The psalmist teaches us to keep at it until we’ve worn out our resistance to the only help we know. Psalm 42 ends with a poignant note we’ve heard in our own lives. Before finally giving up on logical conclusions so he can fully place his hope in God, the psalmist can't help asking one more time: Why am I so downcast and disturbed? There’s just no reasonable answer. It is what it is. So what will it be? “Hope in God” is the safest, sanest decision. The poet sighs as he picks himself up and looks ahead. “For I shall again praise Him, my help and my God.”

When faith hoists us to giddy heights where promise fills the sky and confidence swells underfoot, by all means we should relish the experience, celebrate God’s goodness, and invite everyone to join us. But we can’t get so high on faith that we’re unprepared when the party ends. Faith isn’t a party-all-the-time proposition. It’s just not. It’s a life of learning gained from highs and lows, ups and downs. After the party’s over, it’s time to let it go and deal with what’s in front of us so we can reach for what’s ahead. When we’re prepared to do that, hope we need to pull us back up comes more quickly and easily. We say to ourselves—and anyone nervy enough to kick us while we’re down—“We’re done with what we did. Hope in God fixes our focus on what we will do after this trial passes.”

O God of highs and lows, teach us to party responsibly when our faith is up so we’re fully prepared to hope in You when it bottoms out. Amen.

Faith isn’t a party-all-the-time proposition. It’s just not. It’s a life of learning gained from highs and lows, ups and downs.

Pondering in Silence

Know that the LORD has set apart the faithful for Himself: the LORD hears when I call to Him. When you are disturbed, do not sin; ponder it on your beds, and be silent. (Psalm 4.3-4)

Cleansing Power

Childhood fascinations with faith and film collided when, at seven or eight, I first watched The Nun’s Story (1959). Although Roman Catholicism and cloistered life were foreign to me, the picture’s piety touched me on a level unlike any movie I’d seen before—and very few since. I’d noticed nuns on the street and heard about them from playmates. Yet the depiction of their devotion floored me. Upon entering the order, the heroine (Audrey Hepburn) and other postulates are briefed on convent life, including the “Rule of Silence—interior and exterior silence” ridding one’s mind of idle distractions and thoughts. Having never heard such a thing, along with other customs I picked up from the film, it seemed worth a try. To my parents’ dismay (on many levels), I pinned a towel to my head like a veil, made the Sign of the Cross at every turn, and spoke only when spoken to. The role-play ended when my father sat me down and told me, “Son, it’s time to end this. You’re not Catholic. You’re not a nun. Nuns are girls, and”— his greatest concern—“you’re not a girl.” While I didn’t like it, he had a point.

Following that brush with sacred quietness, interest in contemplative silence eluded me, largely due to lack of exposure. As you may know, Pentecostalism (my faith background) is a noisy tradition. Instead of emptying our minds to listen, we were constantly raising our voices in prayer. And there are benefits to vocal prayer. Articulating one’s faith indubitably strengthens it. What’s more, audibly expressing needs and desires to God alerts one to false motives, pride, and vanity tucked into the requests. What goes missing, however, is silence’s cleansing power—a thing I only recently discovered by attending my present church’s monthly Taizé prayer service.

Modeled on the ecumenical monastic community in Taizé, France, the service builds to a 15-minute silence, as everyone sits together, alone in prayer and meditation. The quarter-hour feels like an eternity and an instant. I usually lose a few minutes to thinking about not thinking. Gratefully, such thoughts quickly grow tiresome. My mind rests as silence washes over it. Anxieties and ideas I seldom ponder surface, yet stillness puts them at ease. It becomes a presence that speaks assurance and peace to my innermost being. In the cleansing, I’m reminded troubling concerns belong to the world. Though they affect me, they’re not part of me. The same realization sits at the heart of Psalm 4.

Save It for Later

Signed by David, who notes it should be accompanied by strings, the song finds him holding three conversations at once: one with his God, another with his people, and a third with himself. A rift between the monarch and his subjects apparently inspires the anxious tone at the psalm’s outset. (Resurging idolatry in defiance of his rule is implied.) David begins with a prayer we all pray when dispiriting problems disturb our peace. It’s me again, Lord. “Answer me when I call, O God of my right! You gave me room when I was in distress. Be gracious to me, and hear my prayer,” he writes. (v1) He all but says, “You’ve helped me with this kind of stuff before and I’m sure You’ll show me how to handle it. Still, I need to know You’re there and listening.” With that, David turns to his nation, asking, “How long, you people, shall my honor suffer shame? How long will you love vain words, and seek after lies? But know that the LORD has set apart the faithful for Himself; the LORD hears when I call to Him.” (v2-3) The dejection (“Why are you doing this?”) and assertiveness (“You know God listens to me”) tell us how distraught David is. His mind won’t rest. He’s unable to sleep.

David’s experience in similar dilemmas proves its worth in wisdom he offers his people—and himself. “When you are disturbed, do not sin; ponder it on your beds, and be silent. Offer right sacrifices, and put your trust in the LORD.” (v4-5) This is advice we frequently hear and rarely heed. When troubles plague our waking thoughts and cloud our perception of what’s best to do, it’s best we do nothing. If we’re uncertain what we should say, talking about it certainly won’t help. From the sound of it, something has shaken Israel’s faith. In a panic to rationalize and remedy the situation, it’s talked its way into disobedience. David grants thinking about the problem can’t be avoided. But it can be corralled. “Save worrying for later,” he counsels, “when you’re alone and quiet—when silence can cleanse your mind from trouble that comes from the crazy, confused world outside, and guide your thoughts to peace and assurance residing within.”

Not Obsessing—Accessing

Pondering in silence sounds like the worst possible means of easing anxiety, particularly in an overly anxious age hounding us about suppressed emotions and denial. We spend hours talking about our problems and talking to others about theirs. If it helps—and sometimes it does, though not as reliably as we’re told—negativity we breathe into the air nonetheless poisons our perceptions and dims the brightness of future expectations. By and large, thinking we can talk our way out of troubles talks us into paralyzing pessimism. David observes this phenomenon in verse 6: “There are many who say, ‘O that we might see some good! Let the light of your face shine on us, O LORD!’” (Again with the talking!) While they fret over what they don’t have, David’s silent pondering clears his mind to reconnect with abiding joy, peace, and assurance obtained by trusting his Maker. He verges on gloating as he closes in verses 7 and 8: “You have put gladness in my heart more than when their grain and wine abound. I will both lie down and sleep in peace; for you alone, O LORD, make me lie down in safety.”

How nutty is it that the very thing David suggests our talkaholic culture resists most? What he calls “pondering in silence,” we disparage as “obsessing"! All that reflects, however, is how grossly we underestimate force silence accrues when prayerfully approached. Entering silence to listen rather than talk transforms obsessing about troubles we can’t prevent or control into accessing strength we possess by faith. We say to God, “It’s me again. I know this is an easy matter for You, because we've gone through similar situations before. I just need to know You’re there and listening. Now I’m going to quiet myself to hear what You want to say.” If we start there, silence clears thoughts and anxieties muffling the hushed Voice that imparts calm and confidence and anchors our souls. Chaos surrounding us loses its influence over us once we renew access to sacred joy, peace, and assurance abiding within.

We welcome silence to cleanse our minds of anxiety about troubles we can’t prevent or control so we can access peace and assurance we possess within.