Monthly Archives: December 2024

Chapter-a-Day

Mountains

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After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with him and led them up a high mountain, where they were all alone. There he was transfigured before them.
Mark 9:2 (NIV)

This fall, Wendy and I were invited to join friends at their place in Park City, Utah. We happened to be there for four days when the fall colors exploded in the mountains. The weather was gorgeous, and one day we drove to Sundance and rode the series of chairlifts to the top. The views were definitely not what you’ll ever see in Iowa. It was definitely a mountaintop experience in multiple ways. (I took the featured photo on today’s post as we were riding the chair-lift)

I mentioned in yesterday’s post/podcast that I’ve been listening to a series of podcasts about the meaning of mountains throughout the Great Story. And, it’s true that there are so many stories and events in the Story that happen on mountains. Mountains on which action takes place include, but are not limited to, Mount Sinai, Mount Carmel, Mount Tabor, Mount Horeb, Mount Zion, and the Mount of Olives. Mark has mentioned that Jesus commonly retreated up a mountain to be alone and pray. That was Mount Arbel off the coast of the Sea of Galilee.

Now I’ve been to Israel and I’ve been to the top of Mount Carmel, Mount Zion, and the Mount of Olives. Make no mistake, they are no Sundance Mountain. They are more in line with the bluffs in Iowa that line the Missouri and Mississippi River valleys. People who live anywhere near the rockies would laugh at the thought of them even being called mountains.

But the “mountains” in the Great Story are not meant to be accurate examples of scientific, geological definition. Building on yesterday’s post/podcast, the “mountains” are metaphors. They are high places that stretch toward the heavens relative to the area surrounding it. They are thin places where the veil between the physical and spiritual are more transparent. Mountaintops are isolated and exclusive places, in part because they require effort and sacrifice to access them. Like the narrow road that Leads to life that Jesus talked about, few are willing to do what’s required to reach the top.

In today’s chapter, there is one of the funkiest stories in the entire Jesus Story. Jesus takes his inner circle of three disciples (Peter, James, and John) and goes up a “mountain.” While there, Jesus is “transfigured.” In other words, his physical human form is transformed into the spiritual, heavenly, glorified, Light of the World that was His reality before He came to earth to be born a baby in Bethlehem. Then Moses (Law-giver) and Elijah (Prophet) appear and have a chat with Jesus. There’s a cloud that envelopes them all.

In order to understand this mountaintop moment, it’s necessary to know about Moses’ mountaintop moment on Mount Sinai where God began something new with the recently freed Hebrew slaves. On Sinai there was light in the forms of lightning and what looked like fire, and a cloud that covered the mountain. God gave Moses His guidebook for Life for the Hebrews, a blueprint for how to conduct themselves as individuals and as a community in order to be an example to all the other nations. Just as the Law came through Moses, Elijah was the great prophet who had his own mountain top experiences on Mount Carmel and Mount Horeb. He represents God’s prophets and prefigures John the Baptist.

Everything in the transfiguration event connects to the larger Story. This is a fulfillment moment that has been thousands of years in the making. It’s Mount Sinai 2.0. God Himself has come to, once again, announce that He’s doing something new. Jesus says it Himself in today’s chapter. God’s Son is going to suffer and die a human death, just as the prophets like Elijah had prophesied. Then, He will conquer death and the grave and be resurrected, pour out His Spirit and usher in a Kingdom age of grace.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”
2 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV)

In the quiet this morning, I’m thinking back to mountain top memories like ascending Sundance mountain Utah with our friends and climbing Arthur’s Seat with our daughter Taylor in Edinburgh, Scotland. But I’m also reminded all of the ways that mountains are metaphorically layered with meaning. When the ancient Hebrews traveled to the Temple in Jerusalem to worship, they considered themselves ascending Mount Zion where they would worship God. As they made their way up the “mountain” to worship, they would sing “songs of ascent” as they journeyed. Some of them are in the Psalms, like Psalm 121:

I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
    where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord,
    the Maker of heaven and earth.

Wendy and I live on the Iowa prairie. I confess, there’s nothing resembling a mountain physically nearby. Yet every week as we gather with others in our community to worship we metaphorically and spiritually ascend a mountain to a thin place where “two or three are gathered” and Jesus Himself is in our midst by His Holy Spirit just as He promised. It is there that I am being transfigured and transformed into the person He is calling me to be. It is there that new things come. It is there that I catch a glimpse of the Light and Glory to come on another mountain where God is preparing an eternal City and a place for me there.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

These chapter-a-day blog posts are also available via podcast on all major podcast platforms including Apple, Google, and Spotify! Simply go to your podcast platform and search for “Wayfarer Tom Vander Well.” If it’s not on your platform, please let me know!
Chapter-a-Day

God’s Base Language

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God’s Base Language (CaD Mrk 8) – Wayfarer

Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked them: “Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear?”
Mark 8:17-18 (NIV)

I’ve recently begun listening to a brilliant and fascinating podcast series about what “mountains” represent throughout the Great Story. It reminds me a lot of three messages I gave a year or so ago as part of a series exploring the seven “I Am” statements that Jesus made (e.g. “I am the gate,” “I am the bread of life,” “I am the resurrection and the life”). With each of those messages, I unpacked that the metaphors Jesus was using (bread, gate, resurrection) were metaphors that are woven throughout the entire Great Story from Genesis to Revelation. To understand the power and completeness of what Jesus was claiming with those statements, I have to understand each metaphor in the context of the entire Great Story.

Those who have followed this blog for any length of time are probably sick of me saying this, but God’s base language is metaphor. A metaphor is simply something that represents something else. In his letter to the followers of Jesus in Rome, Paul explains that creation itself is a metaphor of who God is, it is an expression of God’s very person. How often did Jesus use creation and every day pieces of life as a teaching device? Mustard seeds, weather, pearls, sheep, sons, gates, shepherds, wine, debt, and bread.

In today’s chapter, Jesus makes a simple statement to His disciples in telling them to watch out for the “yeast” of the Pharisees and of Herod. Remember, it’s become plain to the disciples through their recent experiences that the Pharisees are actively working against Jesus, and they all know that Herod had recently executed Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist, at the whim of his step-daughter. The disciples, however, are perplexed. They think Jesus’ is somehow upset with them for forgetting to buy enough bread for their cruise across the Sea of Galilee.

I picture Jesus rolling His eyes and slapping His forehead in frustration.

These are good Jewish boys who have been brought up in the Hebrew tradition and learning the Law of Moses. The Law of Moses is repeatedly clear about eating unleavened bread, bread made without yeast. It’s an important part of the most important ritual in the Jewish tradition: the Passover seder. Jesus had also used yeast in His teaching. Why?

It’s so simple it’s profound. Anyone who has baked bread knows that you take this tiny amount of yeast in order to get a large amount of dough to rise. I get it that most readers today may have never baked bread, but for Jesus and the disciples, the act of baking bread was as daily a routine as brewing coffee or tea is today. They all knew the concept that a little bit of yeast spreads to a whole lot of dough. So, the “yeast” of the Pharisees and of Herod was their hard hearts, their refusal to repent, their clinging to the things of this world like wealth and power, and the resulting outcomes of each of their forms of evil. It was the same evil but wore the different cloaks of human government and religion.

The disciples were struggling to understand that to get at who God is and what God is about, one must learn and know God’s base language of metaphor.

In the quiet this morning, I’m grateful for the dawn of this new day, which is a daily metaphor of resurrection. I’m also grateful for my warm office and my Pella windows as I hear the icy winter wind howling against them right behind me, which is a metaphor of God’s provision and protection. That icy wind of winter is an annual metaphor of death which is a natural part of life, what Jesus called me to in today’s chapter, and what physically awaits me at the end of this earthly journey. Along this life journey, I’ve learned that God is speaking to me everywhere, every day, through every thing. It’s all connected. I just had to learn to hear and interpret the language God speaks everywhere, every day, at all times.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

These chapter-a-day blog posts are also available via podcast on all major podcast platforms including Apple, Google, and Spotify! Simply go to your podcast platform and search for “Wayfarer Tom Vander Well.” If it’s not on your platform, please let me know!
Chapter-a-Day

Big Dogs and Bad Dogs

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“The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus…”
Mark 7:1 (NIV)

When I began my career over 30 years ago, I had zero experience in the fields of market research or quality assessment, which are the two primary services our company provides. This was intimidating, to be honest. I was a young man entering a world I knew virtually nothing about. Our company’s founder and CEO explained to me that he was not hiring me for my acumen in research and assessment, which I would learn, but rather for my gifts in communication.

What I learned in those early years is that the research and quality assessment our company provides are complimentary. Our customer research tells a client’s executive team what drives their customers’ expectations and what the company needs to do operationally to improve their customers’ satisfaction, retention, and loyalty. Quality Assessment (e.g. “Your call may be recorded for quality and training purposes…”) helps uncover how the front-line Customer Support and Sales representatives can actually improve and deliver on those customer expectations in their daily conversations and interactions with the client’s customers.

These are two very different audiences.

The executive team members handling operations, sales, and marketing are educated, experienced, and influential individuals. They think about data in strategic and tactical ways on an organizational and operational scale. There’s a certain language they speak and a way that they think.

The front-line representatives who are actually interacting with customers and handling the countless daily “moments of truth” in which customer satisfaction is built or broken, are a very different group. They tend to be among the least paid and least powerful individuals in the company. They have a very different lingo and way they think. They also have the monumental, typically overlooked, task of communicating directly with the customer while applying the policies and procedures that have been dictated down the chain of command from the C-Suite.

And, as Shakespeare famously wrote, “There’s the rub.”

My real job, my boss told me, was the ability to take objective data and effectively communicate the same results to these two very different audiences. These audiences, by the way, typically have little appreciation or understanding of one another. I had to help the executive team understand what the data said and what they needed to do operationally to deliver on those expectations through the company’s policies and procedures. To the front-line sales and support representatives, I had the responsibility to communicate the same data in a way that would help them craft their conversations and communication with customers. Often, that means managing the broken policies and procedures that we had yet to convince the executive team to change.

This came to mind today as I read the chapter, in which Jesus is likewise communicating with two very different audiences who have very different perspectives about everything.

The chapter begins by telling us that an entourage of “teachers of the Law” had come from Jerusalem to hear and inspect Jesus. These are the “big dogs” of Jesus’ religion and culture. These are the execs making a visit to the plant in rural nowhere from the Jewish C-Suite at corporate headquarters. “Everyone be on your best behavior. Look sharp, and busy!”

The big dogs call out Jesus for not following their corporate religious HR policies and procedures. Everyone was expected to wash their hands a certain way, as well as the cups, plates, and utensils they use per corporate policy 4A, sub-section B, paragraph three in the employee handbook. Jesus told his team they could ignore these silly rules. The Big Dogs have come to put Jesus on a corporate Performance Improvement Plan and press Him to get in line with corporate policy.

Instead, Jesus gives the Big Dogs an ear-full about how hypocritical and out-of-touch they are with the day-to-day realities of life for the front-line workers in the sweat shops far from the C-Suite. The policies and procedures are not only silly, but they’re rigged to benefit the corporation and its executives, not the customers or the front-line team members.

This does not go over well.

Not surprisingly, Jesus decides to take some PTO from His base of operations in Galilee. He hits the road and gets out of Dodge for a while. Mark tells us that Jesus first goes to the region of Tyre and Sidon then makes His way to an area known as the Decapolis. These are not places where the Big Dogs hold sway. In fact, these are primarily non-Jewish regions where non-Jewish “Gentiles” live and operate. The Jewish Big Dogs considered non-Jewish Gentiles and their lives to be dirty, base, and unacceptable. They literally called Gentiles “dogs” as an insult. The “Big Dogs” looked down with derision and condescension on the Gentiles. Gentiles were the “Bad Dogs.”

So Jesus, having infuriated the Big Dogs, goes to hang out with the Bad Dogs. While He’s there, a Gentile woman comes to Him begging for Jesus to heal her demon possessed daughter. Jesus trots out the corporate employee HR handbook stating that policy 8C, sub-section A, paragraph two forbids him from talking to or healing a Gentile, especially a female Gentile and deal only with the good Jewish children of Abraham (preferably the men). Why? Because Gentiles, especially women are “dogs.” So says corporate policy.

“But Jesus,” the woman replies. “Even dogs get scraps dropped from the children’s table.”

I can picture the smile on Jesus’ face. This lowly “bad dog” gets what all the corporate “big dogs” can’t see or understand from their corner offices at corporate headquarters. What was intended by the Founder to provide an exceptional customer experience of Life and Love had been lost in a culture of profit and power seeking, bureaucracy, and top-down authoritarianism. Jesus makes the demons leave her daughter.

In the quiet this morning, I’m so thankful for the “real world” experience my career has given me to observe how systems operate and to interact with individuals on every different level of those systems. It’s been fascinating to try and use data and truth to change the thinking and behaviors of individuals at different levels of an organization in order to facilitate change that will benefit the client’s customers and culture. I’ve learned a lot, not only about business, but also about life and human beings. Jesus was dealing with a very similar system because they are human systems. As a disciple of Jesus I’ve learned that systems typically don’t successfully change without human beings changing. If you change the motives and outcomes of enough human beings, there’s a chance to change the systems they’re in.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

These chapter-a-day blog posts are also available via podcast on all major podcast platforms including Apple, Google, and Spotify! Simply go to your podcast platform and search for “Wayfarer Tom Vander Well.” If it’s not on your platform, please let me know!
Chapter-a-Day

Of Motives and Outcomes

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So Herodias [King Herod’s wife] nursed a grudge against John [the Baptist] and wanted to kill him. But she was not able to, because Herod feared John and protected him, knowing him to be a righteous and holy man. When Herod heard John, he was greatly puzzled; yet he liked to listen to him.

The king was greatly distressed, but because of his oaths and his dinner guests, he did not want to refuse her. So he immediately sent an executioner with orders to bring John’s head.
Mark 6:19-20, 26-27 (NIV)

Along my life journey, I’ve been a part of a handful of regular gatherings of Jesus’ followers that drew large crowds, in a large part, because of the gifted teaching and/or charismatic personality of the leader. Looking back, I find each one of the experiences to have been a living parable of one form or another. Man, do I have some stories.

As I revisit every one of these experiences in my memory, I can quickly conjure the names and faces of individuals who were a regular part of the gatherings. These individuals were prominent members of their communities, leaders of commerce, local government officials, affluent, and influential. I observed over time that many of these individuals led lives that were unabashedly incongruent with Jesus’ teachings. I mention this, not in judgement, because I didn’t know them intimately nor did I know their stories. I was always glad they were interested enough to be there. I rarely, however, witnessed much, if any, change in these individual’s lives in response to what they heard.

This came to mind this morning as I read about King Herod Antipas and Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist. John was a wildly popular preacher. Crowds regularly flocked to hear him preach in the wilderness and to be baptized. King Herod was intrigued and fascinated by the rogue, prophetic, wild man. He liked to hear the preacher. He even carried a deep level of respect for the man.

It’s important to know that Herod, along with his father (Herod the Great) were card-carrying members of the Jewish faith. This was, of course, politically expedient since they ruled over a constituency that was mostly Jewish. Herod, however, did not live like he gave two-bits about the Law of Moses and how God prescribed for His people to live. So, when Herod married his own brother’s wife, John loudly and publicly call him out on it. Herod found it expedient to arrest John to manage PR and control the narrative.

What’s fascinating about the story is that even with John in prison, Herod protected John, and even gave him audience. Mark describes that Herod respected that John was the real deal, a sincere and holy man of God.

Nevertheless, when Herod’s step-daughter performed a dance for him at a party full of the rich and influential brokers you’ll find at the center of any worldly center of power, John makes the mistake of offering her up-to half his kingdom as a reward for her amazing performance. At her mother’s suggestion, she chooses the head of John the Baptist, and he reluctantly delivers.

And this brings me back to those rich and influential local brokers I’ve observed gathering around talented and charismatic teachers along life’s road. One of the things that my observation taught me was to consider both motives and outcomes, first in myself, and then in others. Jesus Himself exemplified this. In John’s biography of Jesus, he records that Jesus refused to “entrust” Himself to the crowds that gathered to listen to Him because He knew their motives. Then when the crowds followed Jesus after He fed 5,000 with a couple of fish and five loaves, John records that Jesus called their motives into question and called them to set their sights on a different outcome:

Jesus answered, “You’ve come looking for me not because you saw God in my actions but because I fed you, filled your stomachs—and for free.

“Don’t waste your energy striving for perishable food like that. Work for the food that sticks with you, food that nourishes your lasting life, food the Son of Man provides. He and what he does are guaranteed by God the Father to last.”
John 6:26-27 (MSG)

Herod may have respected John the Baptist. He may have recognized John as a man of God and protected him. The truth of the situation was, however, that Herod protected John only when it was expedient for him to do so. And when it came to Herod’s daily life, it was obvious that God’s message through John fell on a heart of stone just like Jesus’ parable of the sower and the seed a few chapters ago. And, the evidence is that Herod never changed. Herod viewed John as an amusement, and a couple of years later he would treat Jesus the same way on the morning of His crucifixion, dressing the beaten and bloodied Jesus up in glittery robe and begging for Jesus to entertain him with a miracle.

In the quiet this morning, I come back to the only motives and outcomes I can control, and those are my own. What are my motives for going to church, being a disciple, and reading a chapter-a-day? What outcome does it have in my daily words, actions, and relationships? Along life’s road I’ve observed that crowds are fickle, fame is fleeting, what’s popular isn’t typically true, and people are generally attracted to all three like flies to feces. I’m reminded this morning as I head into another work week that Jesus said, “small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

“Just Believe”

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Overhearing what they said, Jesus told him, “Don’t be afraid; just believe.”
Mark 5:36 (NIV)

In our daily prayer together, Wendy and I try to regularly be grateful and recount all of the ways God has blessed us. I don’t do it because “giving thanks” is a command. I do it because when I stop for a moment to consider how blessed we really are, I am both grateful and humbled. And, I need a daily dose of gratitude and humility as much, if not more, than the small bowl of vitamins and supplements Wendy puts in front of me each morning.

As I get close the back-end of my sixth decade on this earthly journey, I have a lot of life and life experiences upon which to reflect. There are numerous waypoints on life’s road where my family and/or I have faced failures, tragedies, challenges, loss, struggles, and needs. In fact, I’m quite sure I have quite enough stories to take up a good part of your day and bore you to tears. After all, Jesus Himself told His followers, “In this world you will have troubles.” We all have them, don’t we?

In today’s chapter, Jesus confronts a trio of individuals in their very different but very real troubles. The first is a demon-possessed man, the second is a woman with a medical condition in which she had been bleeding for twelve-years which made her ritually unclean perpetually and a social outcast. Then there is a leader of the local synagogue who had a young daughter near death. Struggle and suffering come in many forms in this life, don’t they?

As Jesus is walking with the anxious father, word arrives from his household that his daughter had passed away. It was too late. Jesus happened to still be speaking with the woman healed from her bleeding. He was telling her that her faith had been the agent of her healing as He overhears the bad news the father just received. Jesus turns to the grieving father and immediately says, “Don’t be afraid; just believe.”

What a learning moment. The woman’s faith had precipitated her miraculous healing. The father had seen it. He was standing right there. Now Jesus calls on him to have the same kind of faith that the woman had. Not just the faith for healing from a medical condition, but faith to bring his daughter back from death.

One of the things that I’ve discovered along my life journey is that faith grows with every waypoint on life’s road in which one is required to trust and God is faithful in providing, healing, and delivering. By regularly recounting those waypoints and expressing gratitude for God’s faithfulness I am strengthening my faith for the unknown troubles, tragedies, and challenges that may be awaiting me just ahead. With them continually fresh in my memory it’s much more likely that I will react to the next challenge by hearing Jesus words, “Don’t be afraid; just believe” in my heart with faith and reacting with faith rather than fear.

By the way, Angel Studios’ production The Chosen did a masterful job of portraying the events in today’s chapter of the woman’s healing and the little girl’s rising. If you have a few minutes, it’s worth a watch. (There’s a link to it in the description of today’s podcast episode).

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Of Prophets and Plants

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[Jesus] told [His disciples], “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that,

“‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving,
    and ever hearing but never understanding;
otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!’”
Mark 4:11-12 (NIV)

One of the most important themes in the Great Story up through the start of Jesus’ ministry is the heart relationship between God and the Hebrew people. God made a covenant with His people but they time and time again broke their end of it. For roughly four hundred years God’s prophets were center stage warning God’s people to repent and turn their hearts back to Him. They warned God’s people of the consequences of not doing so. The people continually refused to listen. They lost their Kingdom and were taken into exile. They eventually returned from exile and rebuilt their lives, clinging to God’s promised Messiah.

One of the things that is often lost on casual readers of Jesus’ teaching is His relationship to the ancient Hebrew prophets. In Matthew 5:17 Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” If Jesus came to abolish the prophets, then I can justify ignoring the ancient prophets. Since He said He came to fulfill them, then I think I’d better understand the prophets and their message.

In today’s chapter, Mark records Jesus’ famous parable of the Sower who scatters his seed and it falls on different types of soil. The eventual fruitfulness of the seeds was determined by the quality of the soil. When His disciples asked Jesus to explain the parable and why He spoke in them, Jesus quotes the prophet Isaiah:

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
He said, “Go and tell this people:
“‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding;
    be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’
Make the heart of this people calloused;
    make their ears dull
    and close their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
    hear with their ears,
    understand with their hearts,
and turn and be healed.”
Isaiah 6:8-10

The relationship between God and His people had always been like a rocky marriage. Some, like the prophets, had their hearts were in the right place. They were sincere in their faith, and devout in their covenant. But most were hard-hearted and calloused towards the things of God. Jesus claims that He is the fulfillment of the prophets, God’s Messiah who has come to reveal God’s Kingdom and fulfill the promise made through Abraham that through His people would come a blessing and salvation for all people. The irony is that God’s people, the Hebrew people, will continue to be just as they always have been. Some will see it, but many won’t.

The parable of the Sower and Jesus’ quote from Isaiah are linked. Jesus’ own people, especially the institutional religious establishment have rock-hard hearts. Jesus’ words will have no effect, any more than Isaiah’s words did to the royal and religious institutional establishments of his day.

And, of course, that is the whole point of Jesus’ parable for me as a reader. What’s the quality of soil in my heart, mind, and life? Do the spiritual seeds of this chapter-a-day journey germinate? Take root? Grow? Bear fruit in my thoughts, words, and actions during the day? If so, then the fruit of the Spirit will be increasingly evident with my wife, my family, my colleagues, my clients, my friends, and my community. They will experience in me love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, goodness, and self-control.

May it ever be.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

When Rest Becomes Work

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Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the lake, and a large crowd from Galilee followed.
Mark 3:7 (NIV)

Wendy and I are in the process of selling our place at the lake. For those who know us and for those who have followed my blog for any length of time, this may come as a surprise. “The Playhouse” has been a part of my family for over 25 years, and for the past 15 years it has been regular place of retreat, refreshment, and relationship for ourselves, our family, and many, many friends. The featured image on today’s post is our final farewell to the Playhouse as we moved things home.

The truth is that Wendy and I have been praying about the end of this season in our lives for a few years. We’ve talked about it with friends, but circumstances consistently told us that it wasn’t time. This summer, we once again prayed in earnest whether it was time and everything rapidly fell into place in a way that told us the time was right.

One of the themes that God weaves into the Great Story from the very beginning of Genesis is the blessing of rest. God creates everything in six days, and on the seventh day He rests. Then, in the book of Exodus when God through Moses prescribes how His people should live and conduct themselves, He emphasizes rest in multiple ways on multiple levels. This was a radical idea. For 400 years God’s people had been slaves in Egypt without a day off. Now God prescribes that they need a day off every seven days. In fact, whether you’re a believer or not, you can thank God every weekend because the weekend was born when the Roman Emperor, who was a Christian, followed God’s prescription and declared that everyone in the Roman Empire gets Sundays off.

In today’s chapter, Mark’s choice of scenes reveals several things. Jesus’ teaching and miracles are drawing huge crowds from all over. Word has spread and people are traveling from far away places. Between the crowd scenes, Mark shares that Jesus “withdrew” from the crowds. Once He withdrew to a lake. Another time He withdrew up a mountain. What that tells me is that Jesus knew He needed rest from the crowds, the teaching, the miracles, the exorcisms, and the chaos of His Miraculous Mystery Tour.

But Mark plants another seed when he begins by telling the story of Jesus teaching in the synagogue. Jesus challengers, who I wrote/talked about in yesterday’s post/podcast, have now become His outright enemies. No longer simply challenging Jesus, they’re seeking a way to accuse Him, discredit Him, and bring Him down. So, they lie in wait to see if Jesus would perform a miracle on the Sabbath day of rest. Because the good religious fundamentalists had deemed that performing a miracle was work.

Mark says that this “angered” Jesus, and He was “deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts.” Why? Because they had perverted and profaned the plan. The Sabbath, which had been prescribed as a blessing of rest, had been transformed into a burden in which people had to expend time, energy, and resources to track and follow all the rules that had been made around it. What was meant for rest became work.

Which brings me back to our place on the lake. As Wendy and I prayed and discussed it over this past spring and summer, we realized that things had changed. What was meant to be, and used to be, full of retreat, refreshment, and relationships had slowly become a burden on multiple levels. And, the opportunity arose to pass it on as a blessing to others in answer to their prayers

So, in the quiet this morning I’m reminded that the prescription for rest remains. Like Jesus, Wendy and I need to find our new places to withdraw and find retreat, refreshment, and relationship amidst the chaos of work and worry. We are excited for the new season ahead. And, in the wake of a long and wonderful Thanksgiving weekend, I’m also grateful as I think about what a blessing God has woven into the plan of creation in prescribing, and exemplifying, regular periods of rest.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Opposition!

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Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. Some people came and asked Jesus, “How is it that John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, but yours are not?”
Mark 2:18 (NIV)

One of the things that I have learned along my life journey and in my career is that when you step up into the spotlight in front of a group of people, and you have something to say, you make yourself an easy target. When the something you have to say pushes against the orthodoxy of whatever group you’re addressing, then you’re an easy target stirring a hornet’s nest.

Mark’s biography of Jesus is the shortest of the four biographies of Jesus known as the “gospels” (Gospel means “good news”). In fact it’s 3700 words shorter than the next one on the list as far as word count (John) and almost 10,700 words shorter than Luke’s account.

What that means is that Mark is moving fast through the story and he’s only sharing the essentials. John wrote at the end of his biography that if all the stories were told about Jesus that could be told then all the libraries in the world could not contain them all. So, it begs the question of me as a reader, what can I learn from the choices Mark is making?

In today’s chapter, Mark shares four quick scenes from the early days of Jesus’ ministry. In each of the four, Jesus’ words or actions are challenged by others. Three of the four challenges come from different constituencies.

Jesus tells a man that his sins are forgiven, and “teachers of the law” told him he’d committed blasphemy. “Teachers of the law” refers to Scribes, which can be considered vocational lawyers who spent their lives interpreting the Law of Moses (the first five books of the Bible).

In the next scene, Jesus is having dinner with His new disciple, Levi (Matthew). Matthew was a tax collector, which meant he was seen as a Roman collaborator, he had money, and he didn’t hang out with good, religious Jews. Jesus is challenged by “teachers of the law who were Pharisees.” The Pharisees were a quasi-political party who held sway over the Jewish religion in Jesus’ day. So these challengers were not only vocational lawyers, but they were members of the most powerful political party within the rulers of Judaism. They challenged Jesus for mingling with socially and religiously unacceptable people.

As Jesus is beginning His ministry, His cousin John the Baptist, is at the height of his own popularity. John was rogue preacher. The same religious and political establishment who challenged Jesus, challenged John as well. John had a huge following with a lot of his own disciples. So in this next scene, it becomes clear that John has his disciples fasting and they notice that Jesus’ disciples are not. I love that Mark mentions “some people” who questioned this because along my life journey I’ve had many experiences with being told that “some people” have taken issue with something I’ve said or done. Even Jesus is getting the “some people” challenges from within the constituency of people who would naturally be His likely supporters and followers.

The final scene Mark shares has to do with rule-keeping. This time it is the straight-out members of the Pharisees who challenge the fact that Jesus’ disciples were picking off grain in a field for an afternoon snack. It happened to be the Sabbath, a religious day of rest that Pharisees policed to a fault.

In these four scenes, mark is telling us:

Jesus claimed to have the divine authority to forgive sins, and did a miracle to prove it. The religious establishment called it blasphemy.

Jesus socialized with people who were socially unacceptable to the fundamentalist and orthodox religious set.

Even the anti-establishment, populist types who were followers of John and were keenly interested in what Jesus was doing challenged the fact that He didn’t demand the same rigorous spiritual disciplines that John did.

And Jesus taught His disciples to follow the Spirit of the law of the Sabbath and not worry so much about the rule-keeping bureaucrats who took it upon themselves to police such things and punish the rule-breakers. Those rule-keeping bureaucrats got stirred up like hornets when Jesus claimed that His authority as “Lord of the Sabbath” trumped their authority as bureaucratic, establishment minions.

In the quiet this morning, I’m reminded of a quote by Albert Einstein who said that “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.” I can’t help but be reminded that life is not only full of challenges, but also challengers. Mark seems to be telling me that Jesus Himself was challenged and opposed on all sides by both His supporters and His detractors. In the same way, I can expect to be challenged when I am being who God calls me to be, doing what God calls me do to, just like Jesus.

As a disciple of Jesus, I already know what He expects of me when challenged. It starts in my spirit which He tells me should be love, kindness, gentleness, and self-control. It then comes out in the form of blessing and praying for those who challenge me, hate me, and say all sorts of bad things about me. Jesus said,

“Not only that—count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens—give a cheer, even!—for though they don’t like it, I do! And all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company. My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble.”
Matthew 5:11-12 (MSG)

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Flyover Country

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Jesus replied, “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” So he traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.
Mark 1:38-39 (NIV)

Other than a four year sojourn to the outskirts of Chicago for college, I have lived my entire life in Iowa. As I network for work with business people on both coasts, I find that most people a) don’t know exactly where Iowa is on the map and b) have never been here. Iowa is known as “flyover” country. Business, politics, and culture in America are driven primarily by people on the either coast. Here in Iowa It’s mostly rural farmland dotted with small towns. We’re an easy target for comedians. The only reason anyone pays attention to Iowa is our first in the nation caucuses every four years that kick of the presidential race, and every four years the important and elite talking heads on the coasts gripe in the media about us having that little sliver of the political pie.

In the 40-plus years that I’ve been studying this Great Story from Genesis to Revelation, one of the things that I find lost on most people is the giant cultural divide between the worldly powers of Jesus’ day and where Jesus chose to begin His earthly ministry. For those living in Judea, the center of everything elite and important was in Jerusalem. The city of Jerusalem was New York, L.A., and Washington D.C. rolled into one. Just as people flock to those centers of business, politics, and entertainment to “make it” in the world today, so would those who wanted to “make it” in Jesus day go directly to Jerusalem. Every one who was anyone of power and prestige was in the big city.

The north shore of Galilee, on the other hand, was the “flyover” country in its day. That’s where Jesus chose to begin his ministry. When I visited the area I was amazed how remote it still feels today. To get to some of the little villages where Jesus taught we had to navigate back-country roads to places it’s obvious few people ever visit. It’s remote, isolated, and about as far away from “worldly power” as one could get.

Today our chapter-a-day journey begins a trek through the gospel of Mark, written by a man named John Mark, who has his own interesting story. Mark was a young man when his mother, Mary, became a follower of Jesus. He was among the throng of followers who are often forgotten in the shadows behind The Twelve who got most of the attention. Mark’s mother was among the women with means who financially supported Jesus’ ministry and in the events after Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus’ disciples and followers met at and lived in Mary’s home. Mark is in the background of most of the events of those early years of the Jesus’ Movement. He was with Paul on the first missionary journey, spent much of his adult life living with and assisting Peter. At the end of Paul’s life, Mark is there by his side.

I felt a spiritual connection between person and place this morning as I meditated on the first chapter of Mark’s biography of Jesus. Jesus chose to center His ministry in a rural area dotted with small villages of simple people just trying to catch fish, grow crops, and survive. Jesus’ followers were, for the most part, blue-collar workers with little education and zero prominence in the world. People like Mark, who was just a kid whose mom decided to follow Jesus, and so he lived his life in the background of events that would change the world. He was a stage-hand in the drama of the Jesus Movement – listening, learning, and then sharing Jesus’ teaching. Just one of those names in the program to which no one really pays attention.

And, I think this is the point. Through the prophet Isaiah, God said that His ways are not our ways. He doesn’t do things the way Wall Street, Washington, Hollywood, or Silicon Valley believe that things should be done. God sent His Son to flyover country to simple people living in rural areas who are just trying to make a living and figure out life.

I find something endearing and profoundly significant in this, especially in a culture where popularity, fame, and influence have become the currency of power in an online world that has become an endless cacophony of voices. Jesus’ message has never broadly resonated in the power centers of this world where the kingdoms of politics, education, commerce, and even religion hold sway. I am reminded that at the very end of the Story in Revelation, those kingdoms will still be lined up against God.

And so, in the quiet this morning, I sit in flyover country. Few people can find me on a map, and most people will avoid visiting. The further I get in my life journey the more I appreciate it. Jesus taught that I should seek first the Kingdom of God. Along life’s road I discovered that the closer and more enticed I become with the Kingdoms of this world, the harder it becomes find the eternal treasures that Jesus said were most important. I think Mark understood this. What a great role model; Living life in the background listening, learning, and sharing Jesus’ teaching among simple people who are just trying make a living and figure out life.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.