Tag Archives: Kingdom

Chapter-a-Day

Kingdoms Fall

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Kingdoms Fall (CaD Ezk 26) – Wayfarer

… therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am against you, Tyre, and I will bring many nations against you, like the sea casting up its waves.
Ezekiel 26:3 (NIV)

This past Sunday I delivered a message among my local gathering of Jesus’ followers and I voiced the fact that the entire Great Story from Genesis to Revelation is really about the conflict between God’s Kingdom and human empire.

Human history is a study in the rise and fall of human empires. Some are long-lasting like that of the Byzantine Empire which lasted of 1100 years. The rise and fall of the Third Reich in the 20th century was, by grateful comparison, a blip on the radar at 25 years.

When it comes to the ancient Hebrew prophets, it’s really about human empires, and there was a slew of them rising and falling during the period of the prophets from 875-430 B.C. When reading the prophets like Ezekiel, it helps to have some historical context to inform the reading of the text.

The Kingdom of Tyre (modern day Lebanon) was a prominent and wealthy trading port north of Israel. There were actually two cities. One was a fortified island just off the main land. The other was on the mainland itself. The Kingdom was known for their cedar forest and those cedars were exported by kings in the region for their pet building projects. Solomon used the cedars of Tyre for building his temple.

The relationship between ancient Israel and Tyre was testy. Evil Queen Jezebel was a princess of Tyre who was married to Ahab as a political alliance. She famously tried to rid Israel of the worship of Yahweh and import her native Baal worship. God raised up the prophet Elijah to oppose Jezebel and things didn’t end well for her.

Today’s chapter is the first of three prophetic messages against Tyre. In Ezekiel’s day, prophesying the fall of Tyre would probably have made his listeners laugh. Tyre seemed indestructible. First, it was a major trade port, the source of tremendous wealth, and strategic trade partner with it’s ships bringing in goods from all over the Mediterranean and northern Africa. Then, of course, was the fact that it was two cities. If you destroyed the mainland city, you still had to figure out how to lay siege to the island city.

Ezekiel prophesies that “many nations” would come against Tyre and lay siege to it. Verses 8-9 are a very succinctly detailed description of the stages of siege warfare in that day (Ezekiel and his fellow exiles were living witnesses of how it worked):

He will ravage your settlements on the mainland with the sword…

A big part of the success of siege warfare on a walled city was to starve the people inside. The army would start by getting control of the settlements around the city that helped provide crops and food inside the city. This broke off supply lines and starvation would ultimately occur within the walled city.

…he will set up siege works against you, build a ramp up to your walls and raise his shields against you.

The next phase of the siege was to get to the top of the walls to take out the city’s defenses. Defenders would stand on the wall and shoot down at the sieging army or pour boiling oil on top of them. A ramp was typically constructed leading up a section of the city wall and “siege towers” would be constructed and rolled up the ramp to get to the top of the wall and eliminate the defenders there.

He will direct the blows of his battering rams against your walls and demolish your towers with his weapons.

Once in control of the top of the wall, the siege army could concentrate on breaking down a section of wall so that the army could flood in. There were multiple ways they could accomplish this. The gates were so fortified that sometimes it was easier to ram through a weaker section or to dig a tunnel under the wall to weaken the wall and cause it to collapse.

Ezekiel’s prophecy was actually fulfilled. Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Tyre for thirteen years. He destroyed the city on the mainland and was particularly ruthless given how long it took. Babylon didn’t have a lot of experience with naval warfare and he failed to take the island city. A hundred or so years later Alexander the Great would come through and finish the job. He was even more ruthless than Nebuchadnezzar, and historians were aghast at the slaughter. He killed 10,000 men, women, and children, sold 30,000 into slavery, and had all the young men of fighting age crucified.

In the quiet this morning, it leaves me pondering the rise and fall of empires. My friend, Chuck, was head of marketing for Billy Graham films when they made The Hiding Place. It’s the story of Corrie Ten Boom whose family helped hide Jews from the Nazis. Her whole family were sent to concentration camps. She was the only one who survived, released from the camp because of a clerical error. When Chuck asked her why she wanted to make a movie of her story she answered, “To prepare American Christians for what they are going to have to go through someday.”

Chuck told me this when I was in high school. It’s seemed crazy back then. After the last eight years or so, I’m not so sure. I am pretty sure that it’s much like the people of Ezekiel’s day thinking he was crazy to predict the fall of Tyre. History teaches me that kingdoms rise and kingdoms fall. Sometimes the fall is sudden and unexpected. Who knows what the future holds. I prefer to know and trust Who holds the future.

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

Chapter-a-Day

Trust the Story

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Trust the Story (CaD Ezk 17) – Wayfarer

“‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I myself will take a shoot from the very top of a cedar and plant it; I will break off a tender sprig from its topmost shoots and plant it on a high and lofty mountain.’”
Ezekiel 17:22 (NIV)

As I write this, the 2024 Presidential election is 47 days away. Yesterday morning, Wendy and I found ourselves finding other news to read. We are so tired of reading about the election and the prognostications about what will or won’t happen if one candidate or the other wins. There’s also the daily clairvoyant journalistic pieces about our enemies and what they must be thinking and preparing for should one candidate or the other win. It reminds me of 2004 when The Guardian published a piece about official predictions that in less than 20 years major European cities will drown under rising seas and Britain will become a Siberian-like climate. Well, it’s now 2024.

Editors know fortune telling and doomsday predictions always make good click-bait.

The political intrigue is, of course, real. Nations and empires are always posturing and looking out for their own interests. This has always been true in human history. Ezekiel’s prophetic message in today’s chapter is predicated on it.

Jerusalem and the nation of Judah happened to lie right at the crossroads between empires. Egypt to the southwest, Babylon and Assyria to the northeast, and the infant Greek and Roman empires soon to be birthed to the northwest. Empires, of course, compete with one another in a global game of King of the Mountain to control the most territory and wealth. As Ezekiel is writing the two super powers are Babylon and Egypt. Babylon has the upper-hand and Jerusalem is a vassal state of the Babylonian empire with a treaty to be loyal subjects.

The king in Jerusalem is a man named Zedekiah. He’s playing political poker and has gone all-in with Egypt, breaking his treaty with Babylon. Interesting to note that some scholars claim that treaties like that between the king of Babylon and the King of Judah were vows made to their respective deities, such as, “May my Lord slay me if I break this treaty.”

What’s fascinating about Ezekiel and the other prophets of his day, is that God is spiritually at work behind the scenes of the history taking place. The book of Daniel makes it clear that God is at work in the person of Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar. God is taking an intimate interest in the individuals and the empires.

In today’s chapter, Zeke’s message is an allegory addressing Zedekiah’s betrayal of his treaty with Nebuchadnezzar. God takes Zed’s betrayal personally and considers that Zed had broken a covenant with God himself, lending credence to the notion that when he swore an oath of loyalty to Nebuchadnezzar it was an oath made to the Lord. Once again, Zeke is delivering bad news. Jerusalem and Zedekiah will pay the consequences for Zedekiah’s bad gamble.

For the second chapter in a row, however, Zeke’s message ends with a Messianic prophecy of hope. God declares that He Himself will plant a sprig on top of the mountains of Israel that will grow into a proverbial Tree of Life. It’s branches will bear fruit (sound familiar?) and “bird of every kind” will nest in it and find shelter in its branches.

As a disciple of Jesus, I once again find in Ezekiel’s prophetic message some comfort in our own crazy political climate. I do believe that all of human history is part of the ebb and flow of the Great Story that God has authored from Genesis to Revelation. I do believe as a disciple of Jesus that my citizenship is ultimately in God’s Kingdom, and that I have a responsibility on this earthly journey to respect the human authority under which I reside. I’m called to honorably live and participate as a citizen. If I really believe what I say I believe, then I can trust that no matter what happens 47 days from now it is part of the Story.

I trust the Story.

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

Chapter-a-Day

Politics and Religion

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Then Paul, knowing that some of them were Sadducees and the others Pharisees, called out in the Sanhedrin, “My brothers, I am a Pharisee, descended from Pharisees. I stand on trial because of the hope of the resurrection of the dead.”
Acts 23:6 (NIV)

It is a major election year here in the United States, which means that politics is already at a fever pitch and it’s only going to get worse. Both the trials of a former President and a number of important appeals before the Supreme Court with regard to hot political issues and elections have put politics and the legal system on a collision course.

Another hot topic of late is a new book by Salman Rushdie regarding his miraculous survival of being attacked and stabbed 15 times. Rushdie has famously been living under the threat of a fundamentalist Islamic fatwa calling for his death for decades.

Politics and religion are both kingdoms of this world and I have long observed that they often intertwine. They came to mind this morning as I read the chapter. Paul is on trial before the religious ruling council in Jerusalem, the same body that tried Jesus and had Him executed some 20 years earlier. Now it is Paul who has threatened their power and fundamentalist religious politics.

You’ve got to hand it to Paul. He was a lawyer trained by the very system that is now trying him. He knows that system and its internal politics as well as anyone, and he makes a brilliant political move. Paul knew that the ruling council was politically divided into two major factions who hated one another. He also knew that the major divisive issue between the two factions was whether there was a resurrection and life after death. So, he loudly proclaims “I stand on trial because of the hope of the resurrection of the dead.”

It was a shrewd political play. Suddenly, he shifts the focus from himself and Jesus and stirs the festering theological rancor that divides the ruling council itself. In making a stand for “resurrection,” he makes allies of every Pharisee on the ruling council while tearing off the scab of a festering conflict within the ruling body itself. The entire ruling council erupts, turns on each other, and Paul is whisked away by the Romans amidst the tumult. Paul was a Roman citizen, and he knew that the Romans would politically refuse to let the Jewish ruling council harm one of their citizens.

Paul is safely placed under the political protection of Rome, while 40 of his fundamentalist religious enemies take an oath to neither eat nor drink until they’ve murdered him. I can’t help but think that Paul and Salman Rushdie could have a fascinating conversation about living under the threat of death from fundamentalist religion.

Politics and religion. Two kingdoms of this world combine to make a combustible cocktail. It was true in the events of today’s chapter. This is true in current events. All I have to do is read the headlines.

In the quiet this morning, I am once again reminded of the contrast between the kingdoms of this world, and the Kingdom of God that Jesus brought to this world. The Kingdom of God on earth is focused on each individual disciple who is empowered and called upon to live and relate in a manner consistent with Jesus’ teaching and opposite the kingdoms of this world. If my personal faith in Jesus and my focus on daily living as His disciple transforms into being just another member of an earthly, collective religious system then my faith withers on the Vine and I become just another religious minion subject to a kingdom of this world.

Note: I will be out traveling on business for the next two days. Lord willing, I will plan on posting again on Friday, April 26.

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

Chapter-a-Day

Path and Purpose

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Path and Purpose (CaD 1 Sam 20) – Wayfarer

So Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David, saying, “May the Lord call David’s enemies to account.”

“As long as the son of Jesse lives on this earth, neither you nor your kingdom will be established. Now send someone to bring him to me, for he must die!”
1 Samuel 20:16, 31 (NIV)

Along my life journey, I’ve been aware of the paths on which I was led. God’s hand has guided my steps. In a few cases, the direction and guidance were as unmistakable as an exit sign on the interstate. In most cases, I was simply moving forward step-by-step, and it’s only in looking back that I realize that I was being led the entire time.

A strong sense of purpose is one of the tell-tale motivations of an Enneagram Type Four, so I get that I may sense it more deeply and recognize it more clearly than those who are motivated in other ways. I believe deeply that every life has purpose which may also be the reason I observe and consider the paths I see others taking.

I have always observed with fascination when children’s paths and purpose are placed upon them by parents and family. I have observed some individuals whose life was tyrannized by parents who demanded their children walk the path prescribed for them. It appears to be more common when family legacies, businesses, and kingdoms are involved and at stake. How fascinating it’s been to watch England’s Prince Harry try to separate from the royal family while living off the privilege of the very life he says he wants nothing to do with.

But those are the big examples. They come in quiet, everyday examples as well. I know at least one individual who was specifically raised to take over the family business, a fate for which he had no desire and for which he was never really suited. He eventually attempted to commit suicide.

What I found fascinating in today’s chapter was the motivations of father and son, Saul and Jonathan, which bring the story to a climactic event. King Saul is trying to have David killed, and he tells Jonathan that he’s doing it to preserve the throne and kingdom for Jonathan himself. And, I tend to believe that it’s more about Saul’s self-centered pride than it is about an altruistic desire for his son’s future. Jonathan, meanwhile, knows that his father is a poor leader, knows that David is God’s anointed, and appears to approach the situation with a desire for God’s purposes to prevail. Jonathan makes a covenant with “the house of David,” meaning that he is choosing loyalty to David and his descendants. He is abdicating any “right” to ascend his father’s throne.

This has me thinking back to my own path in life, and to my own choices as a parent. I’m blessed that my parents allowed me to choose my own way and placed little, or no, expectations on me (Thanks, Dad and Mom! I’m grateful.). Likewise, my heart’s desire for both Taylor and Madison was that they follow the path God had for each of them. I’ve always tried to provide guidance and wisdom, but I always believed that my role as a parent was to steward them to become the person God intended for them to be, not tyrannically demanding they become the person I envisioned or desired for them to be. I’ve discovered that entrusting my children to God doesn’t end with choosing a college or a major. It’s a life-long process.

In the quiet this morning, I am so respectful of the choice Jonathan made. Breaking with family, especially a son choosing against his own father, can be incredibly difficult. With the covenant he makes in today’s chapter, Jonathan seals his father’s fate, as well as his own, and his descendants. In so doing, he opens the path to God’s stated purposes and the eventual ascendence of David.

But the story isn’t finished. As I’ve experienced in my own life, sometimes God’s purposes take years to germinate, take root, and grow before the fruit appears. Saul is still on the throne. David is now headed into the wilderness, living life on the lam. God’s path almost always leads through the wilderness. I’m looking forward to following David and reminding myself why.

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

Chapter-a-Day

Faith in Justice

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Faith in Justice (CaD Na 1) – Wayfarer

The Lord is good,
    a refuge in times of trouble.
He cares for those who trust in him,
    but with an overwhelming flood
he will make an end of Nineveh;
    he will pursue his foes into the realm of darkness.
Nahum 1:7-8 (NIV)

The world has watched in horror the past week-and-a-half as Afghanistan quickly fell into the hands of the Taliban. No matter which side of the political aisle one stands, and setting aside the argument of whether NATO forces should have been at all, there is no escaping the brutal realities of life under the Taliban. It’s been hard to read and hear the eye-witness accounts. A woman shot in the street for not wearing a burka. Another woman burned alive because she was considered a bad cook. When a mother is willing to throw her own baby over barbed-wire in an effort to ensure that he/she will have a life elsewhere, it tells me something.

Much of the story of what we refer to as the Old Testament is really about how one people, the Hebrews, lived and survived throughout several centuries in which one empire after another sought to control the world: Egyptians, Medes, Persians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans.

The ancient prophet, Nahum, lived in a time when the Assyrian Empire was the largest the world had seen to-date. Its capital city, Nineveh, was the largest city on the planet. He was probably writing his prophetic poems during the reign of Assyria’s last great king, Ashurbanipal (see featured photo). The Assyrian army was particularly brutal. Ashurbanipal’s records speak of him flaying enemies (removing the skin off of bodies) and draping the human skins over piles of corpses and city walls. The Assyrian armies would leave piles of dismembered limbs and dead bodies impaled on stakes as calling cards telling everyone they’d been there.

Enter Nahum, a prophet who both seeks to comfort his people and encourage them to trust God, but who most warns the Assyrians/Nineveh that God will see to it that their mighty empire will fall. In today’s opening poem, Nahum establishes God as both kind and stern. He predicts Ninevah’s fall and Judah’s joy when it does.

The Great Story is layered with recurring themes. Justice is definitely one of them, and Nahum is a mouthpiece for God’s message that the mighty empire of Assyria/Nineveh with its record of violent oppression and brutality will not last. Their just downfall is coming. But that same message also exists on a grand scale of the larger eternal epic of the Great Story. The night before Jesus’ crucifixion, He tells His followers that “the prince of this world stands condemned.” The end of the Great Story is about eternal justice on a cosmic scale. Wrongs are made right. Justice prevails. Love wins.

In the meantime, the story continues. The journey goes on, and the kingdoms of this world perpetuate injustice, violence, and brutality. Jesus tells His followers to be agents of a very different Kingdom marked by blessedness of those who are poor in spirit, the mourning, peacemakers, the meek, those who hunger for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, and the persecuted. He asked me to be marked not by power, anger, vengeance, violence, hatred, but love that is manifested in joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control.

Being a follower of Jesus is a faith journey, and that faith includes believing that justice will prevail, just it did for Nahum. After Ashurbanipal’s reign the Assyrian Empire quickly fell apart. Its decline was swift and historians argue to this day how could so quickly fall apart and recede. So, I believe, the end of the Great Story will come just as prophesied.

In the meantime, I press on doing what I can to act justly and with love. One simple agent of a different Kingdom journeying amidst the kingdoms of this world in faith that justice will ultimately prevail, and that Love wins.

Chapter-a-Day

The Contrast

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The Contrast (CaD Mk 7) – Wayfarer

“Are you so dull?” he asked. “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them? For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body.”
Mark 7:18-19 (NIV)

When I was a young man, I spent a short period of time working in a county office building where I participated in the the legal investigation and documentation of real estate transactions. I did it for less than a year, but it was an eye opening experience. I observed and learned how government worked under the control of a political machine. I observed and learned how people use the letter of the law to circumvent the spirit of the law to achieve their own selfish ends. I learned and observed how people try to use real estate to con others, and once or twice I actually caught people doing it. It was a crash-course in “how the world works.”

In yesterday’s post/podcast I mentioned that it’s easy to get stuck looking at the text with a microscope while ignoring the bigger picture. I can lose the forest in the trees, as the old saying goes. In today’s chapter, what resonated most with me was, once again, not mired in the minutia of Jesus words, but the larger context of what is happening in the story.

Jesus ministry, at this point, has taken place in the rural backwaters of Judea. If I were to use the United States for context, I would say that Jesus has been spending all of his time and energy in fly-over country while avoiding both coasts. All of the miracles, crowds, and exorcisms have Jesus trending off the charts and the establishment powers-that-be have begun to notice. Since the beginning of time, power-brokers at the top of the political, commercial, and religious establishments have known to ceaselessly look for any threat to the stability of their power and the continuity of their cashflow.

I found Mark’s observation fascinating:

“Jesus commanded them not to tell anyone. But the more he did so, the more they kept talking about it.”

The more they talk about it, the more of a potential threat Jesus becomes to the religious powers-that-be. In the beginning of today’s chapter, Mark notes that an entourage of political and religious leaders from Jerusalem come to see for themselves what the hub-bub is all about. They are big fish coming to the small pond of Galilee, but along the blue-collar shores of Galilee they are not in their own environment while Jesus is definitely in His.

The Jerusalem entourage are here to find ways to discredit this threat to their control on the religious institution and the lives of all who adhere to it. They quickly call Jesus out for not washing his hands before supper, which the establishment long ago elevated onto the checklist of religious rituals and behaviors they used to maintain their self-righteous judgement of who is naughty-or-nice, who is in-or-out.

Jesus response resonated with me because He calls them out on a point of legal order. Nowhere in the Ten Commandments or the laws of Moses was ritual hand washing a thing. The religious-types, over time, had created rules that were part of legal codes which codified and expanded the interpretation of the original spiritual principle. Jesus turns this into a very simple illustration that gets to the core of the difference between His teaching and that of the institutional human religious establishment.

The religious leaders made a spectacle of their ritual hand-washing before meals to show how pious and righteous they were. Jesus quickly points out that at the same time these same religious leaders had used the letter of the law to allow children to avoid the obligation of adult children to care for their elderly parents. They allowed people to bring “offerings” as a charitable donation to the religious establishment which would otherwise have been the money needed to pay for their parents needs. They then declare a form of bankruptcy as to escape their financial obligation to their elderly parents with the absolution of the religious institution who benefitted handsomely for it.

This is a version of what I observed and learned in the county office building when I was a young men. This is how the Kingdoms of this World work.

Jesus’ response was a simple word picture. Along with hand-washing, the power-brokers from Jerusalem also had many dietary restrictions which also fell into the category of religious rule-keeping. Jesus’ observation is so simple. Food, he says, goes in the mouth, through the stomach, and out the other end. Whether eaten with ritually cleansed hands or dirty hands, the food never passes through the heart.

From a spiritual perspective, the distinction is essential, Jesus says:

“It’s what comes out of a person that pollutes: obscenities, lusts, thefts, murders, adulteries, greed, depravity, deceptive dealings, carousing, mean looks, slander, arrogance, foolishness—all these are vomit from the heart. There is the source of your pollution.” Mark 7: 20-23 (MSG)

The entourage will return to Jerusalem. Their dossier on Jesus will speak of a popular teacher among the poor and simple masses who follow Him in throngs, hang on His every word, and are won-over by His miracles. He will be labeled an enemy of the institution. He threatens the stability of their power, their control over the masses, and ultimately the stream of cashflow from their religious racket. We are still a couple of years away from this religio-political machine condemning Jesus and conspiring to hang Him on a cross, but the pieces are already moving on the chess board.

In the quiet this morning, I find myself once again inspired by Jesus. The more I read the story, and read His teachings, the more I see the contrast between the heart-principles of the Kingdom of God and the religious rule keeping of the institutions of this world. I am compelled to continue following the former with all my heart while exposing the latter for what it is. In other words, I want to be more and more like Jesus while shunning the religious institutions and establishments who point to their moral codes and religious rules and say, “this is what Jesus meant.”

I believe that humans will perpetually turn eternal Truth into earthly rules and religious systems. C’est la vie. It’s part of the fabric of a fallen world in this Great Story.

Nevertheless, I get to choose every day which I follow.

“Hang on Jesus. I’m lacing up my shoes for another day. I’m right behind you. Where are we headed?”

Chapter-a-Day

Refuge in Royally Troubled TImes

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Refuge in Royally Troubled Times (CaD Ps 2) – Wayfarer

…Happy are all who take refuge in him.
Psalm 2:12

Saturday morning here at Vander Well Manor is typically a lazy affair. Wendy and I will often take our time getting up and going in the morning. We’ll typically sit in the dining room with our pot of coffee (I might even make a special French Press of the good stuff), our spinach and blueberry smoothies, and we’ll take extra time reading the extended weekend edition of the newspaper while we discuss the issues of the day.

This past Saturday morning I commented to Wendy that I hardly want to look at the paper these days. Between the doom, gloom, conflict, chaos, and crazy that seems ever-present in 2020, there are times that it simply feels overwhelming. Can I get a witness!?

Then yesterday morning among our local gathering of Jesus’ followers, I was reminded that “God’s kingdom is unshakable, unbreakable, and not in trouble.”

This morning’s chapter, Psalm 2, feels like a touch of synchronicity as if God’s Spirit is reminding me of this theme.

The first two psalms are bookended “orphans” (i.e. they have no title) that together frame a thematic introduction to the entire anthology of song lyrics that is the book of Psalms. Psalm 1 begins “Blessed/Happy is the one…” and Psalm 2 ends with “Blessed/Happy is the one….” As mentioned in last Friday’s post, Psalm 1 is all about the individual (the personal, Level 1, if you will). It addresses how I want my personal journey to be. Do I want it to be blessed and life-giving or wicked and death-like?

Today’s psalm is a “royal” song that was likely used during the coronation ceremony when one of King David’s descendants was crowned. God, pictured as the ultimate king and power, adopts the earthly ruler (who holds power amidst the [Level 3] institutions of this world) as a child and representative. The king and all the people gathered for the coronation are reminded that they serve God and God’s Kingdom. Ultimately, it is as Jesus prayed, “your kingdom come, your will be done on Earth.”

Jesus’ followers understood that today’s Psalm was ultimately about Jesus. Peter and John quoted it to comfort and encourage Jesus followers after they had been arrested and then released by the institutional religious authorities who had conspired to have Jesus crucified in Acts 4:25-26:

Why do the nations conspire,
    and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
    and the rulers take counsel together,
    against the Lord and his anointed…

Peter and John, like me, were in the middle of uncomfortable circumstances that were challenging everything they’d ever known and believed. Just a week or two before they thought they’d be picking out the wallpaper for their staff offices in King Jesus’ royal palace. Now they find themselves confronted with the reality that the road is going to be very different and more challenging than they had imagined. But, they weren’t despairing. Psalm 2 was a springboard of faith and encouragement. They found in Psalm 2 a reminder of the resurrected Jesus who was, ultimately, in charge. They began to understand that their mission was that of the King’s ambassadors in a fallen world:

[They prayed] For in this city, in fact, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. And now, Lord, look at their threats, and grant to your servants to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” When they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness.
Acts 4:27-31

In the quiet this morning, I find the Spirit encouraging me amidst my own human weariness with this world. I also find myself challenged to embrace the reality that, like Peter and John, I may have to accept that the road may not be what I’ve always expected it to look like. This world may sink into all sorts of crazy just as it has time and time again throughout the Great Story. But, I know whom I serve. And, His kingdom is unshakable, unbreakable, and not in trouble.

“Happy are all who take refuge in Him.”

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

Chapter-a-Day

I Smell.

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I Smell (CaD Ex 30) – Wayfarer

“You shall make an altar on which to offer incense…”
Exodus 30:1 (NRSVCE)

I typically keep a fragrant candle on the desk in my office. I like scents of vanilla the best. Right now I’ve been trying out a candle labeled as “tobacco and vanilla.” I thought it might remind me of the smell of my grandfather’s pipe. Not so much. I do, however, like the scent.

Along my life journey, I’ve observed that smell is the physical sense to which we give the least attention. Sight, hearing, taste, and touch get the most of our attention. Our olfactory senses aren’t as necessary for human survival as they once were. Nevertheless, a scent can create a powerful response with me. Some experts say that smells plays more of a role in attracting a mate than we even realize. More consciously, it can bring back a memory like the smell of a rose reminding me of my Grandma Vander Well’s perfume. It can create a sense of peace and security like the smell of freshly baked bread wafting up from the kitchen. It also works in negative terms. Some smells give me a headache or can make me feel physically ill.

Incense played a large part in ancient religious ceremonies. In today’s chapter, God continues to prescribe to Moses how the Hebrew tribes will worship. The chapter begins with designs for an altar on which incense is to be perpetually burned and it ends with a unique recipe for the fragrant ingredients a perfumer is to blend the incense. Because the fragrant oil used to anoint Aaron and the priests, and the incense burned in the traveling temple was unique, the smell would become associated in the hearts and minds of the Hebrews with being present at God’s place and giving their sacrifices and offerings. The smoke of the burning incense also became a metaphor for the prayers of God’s people wafting up to heaven.

Incense once again became part of worship in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions in Christianity, though I have head it argued that it was primarily a practical way for the priest to overcome the powerful pungency of body odor emanating from the poor, unbathed masses packing into the church on Sunday. It was never a formally prescribed practice of the early followers of Jesus. In the New Testament, the only references to incense point to either the practice in the Hebrew ritual or else to John’s visions of heaven in Revelation.

The use of incense in Hebrew worship was, however, linked to an important metaphor understood by early believers. In his second letter to the followers of Jesus in Corinth, Paul writes:

But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are an aroma that brings death; to the other, an aroma that brings life.
2 Cor 2:14-16 (NIV)

Once again, I find that the physical bricks-and-mortar (or in this case oil-and-incense) of the Hebrew system matures through Jesus and shifts into a flesh-and-blood understanding of what God is doing. In the former, people came to a central location where the fragrance of the priests and the burning incense reminded them of God’s presence. In the latter, every follower of Jesus becomes part of a “royal priesthood” taking the fragrance of Jesus with us wherever we go and among any and all people with whom we interact in our circles of relationship and community.

I have spent twenty-five years in a career in which I travel and regularly visit our clients in their places of business around the country. I am always praying that I will be the fragrance of Christ while I am there conducting training sessions, making executive presentations, and coaching or mentoring individuals.. What’s fascinating to me is that I have on several occasions had someone literally ask me if I’m a Christian. When I confess that I am, the response is typically, “I knew it. I could just tell.” Equally fascinating to me is that in almost every long-term engagement with a client there is an individual or two who react to my presence with intense animosity. In those instances, I get to practice returning curses with blessings and showing (often unreciprocated) kindness.

In the quiet this morning, I can’t help but think of the message I gave yesterday among my local gathering of Jesus’ followers. Today’s chapter so beautifully illustrates a point I was making. I observe that many are stuck in the old paradigm of a religious institution founded on the notion of bringing God’s Kingdom to earth. People gather to do the regularly scheduled religious bit, then forget about it until my next scheduled appearance on Sunday, or Christmas, or Easter.

Jesus changed all that in practice. He started with getting the Kingdom of God into the individual, transforming the human being into the Temple in whom God’s Spirit dwells. It is the individual who takes God’s Kingdom wherever they go and impacts people in every relationship and circles of influence. I don’t burn incense at the temple, I am the temple from which God’s fragrance seeps out in my love, kindness, gentleness, patience, faithfulness and self-control. Some are attracted. Some are repelled. That’s something I don’t control, though how I respond to it is.

Monday. Another week. Holiday coming up. I have appointments, a little travel, and a weekend full of friends. Hope I’m fragrant in all the good ways.

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

Chapter-a-Day

Pierced

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“And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son.”
Zechariah 12:10 (NIV)

For any reader who has not been following along with these chapter-a-day posts, a quick word of introduction. For the past few months, I’ve been blogging my way through the ancient Hebrew writings that come out of a period of exile they experienced 400-500 years before the birth of Jesus. Jerusalem and the Temple of Solomon were destroyed by the Babylonians and for 70 years all of the best and brightest of the Hebrews were forced to live in the area of Babylon and Persia (present day Iraq and Iran).

Exile is a consistent theme throughout the Great Story, and while the prophets all speak of eventual redemption, restoration, and peace, they are equally consistent in speaking of suffering as the path through which humanity reaches that destination. I just spoke about this in a message this past weekend. Through the entirety of God’s Message, believers are told to expect joy and peace but to expect it within suffering. This was the modus operandi for Jesus, as well. God’s Son came, not to live a life of privilege and prestige, but to be pierced for humanity’s iniquities and inequities.

In today’s chapter, Zechariah continues to eerily foreshadow the crucifixion and suffering of Jesus (see the verses at the top of this post). Zech was not the first to do so, however. King David prophetically described the same in the lyrics of Psalm 22:

Dogs surround me,
a pack of villains encircles me;
they pierce my hands and my feet.

Psalm 22:16 (NIV)

It was also prophesied by Isaiah:

But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.

Isaiah 53:5 (NIV)

Jesus’ disciple, John, was an eyewitness of the crucifixion. He chronicles the fulfillment of these prophetic words in his gospel:

…one of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water.

John 9:34 (NIV)

After Jesus’ resurrection, the disciple, Thomas, says he won’t believe unless he puts his hand in the holes that pierced Jesus’ hands and feet, and the wound in his side where Jesus’ was pierced by a sword, he wouldn’t believe:

Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”

But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”

John 20:24-27 (NIV)

This morning I find myself, once again, intrigued by the mystery of the prophets foreshadowing of actual events. I’m also reminded that God’s Kingdom, as Jesus proclaimed it, runs counter-intuitively the way this crazy world operates. I’m reminded that, as a follower of Jesus, I’m expected to walk in His footsteps. That may mean a certain amount of suffering, in which I will find a peace that passes human understanding and discover a joy that runs deep, to the very core of being.

At the same time, I am mindful that suffering is relative. I am blessed beyond measure, and my momentary sufferings are of but little consequence compared to most of my fellow followers. For that, I find myself whispering a personal prayer of gratitude this morning.

Another work week gets completed today on this exilic earthly sojourn. Enjoy your weekend, my friend. Thanks for reading. See you on Monday.

Chapter-a-Day

A Different Kind of Kingdom

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Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion!
    Shout, Daughter Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you,
    righteous and victorious,
lowly and riding on a donkey,
    on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
Zechariah 9:9 (NIV)

Over the past few years, my local gathering of Jesus’ followers has been focused on the phrase Jesus taught his disciples to pray: “Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” Over a three year cycle, we have contemplated the meaning of God’s kingdom within each of us, God’s kingdom in our community with others, and God’s Kingdom as we are sent to interact with the world around us.

In my own personal contemplation, I’ve found myself meditating on the fact that God’s kingdom operates opposite of the world I live in.

The world I live in encourages me to acquire more and more, while Jesus said that if I really want to be rich in God’s economy I should practice radical generosity.

The world I live in encourages me to hate my enemies, be suspicious of those who are not like me, and fight against those who have a different worldview than mine. Jesus said that in God’s kingdom I am not to repay evil for evil, but bless those who curse me.

The world I live in encourages equitable pay for equitable work. Jesus said that if I want to be part of God’s Kingdom, I have to be willing to walk further than what’s expected, to give more than has been asked, and to be content if and when I see others who seemingly have it better off than me.

The world I live in worships and rewards audacity, wealth, celebrity, and ego.

The prophet Zechariah lived and proclaimed his prophecies during the period known as the Babylonian exile. Babylon had destroyed Jerusalem and torn Solomon’s Temple into ruins. Seventy years later, Zech’s messages and prophecies concerned the rebuilding of Jerusalem and God’s promises of restoration.

In today’s chapter, Zechariah prophetically envisions the “coming king” arriving in a rebuilt Jerusalem, not with the pomp of a royal parade, but humbly riding on a donkey. And, that’s just what Jesus did. Jesus’ followers thought that Jesus was going to wipe out the Romans, give the corrupt religious leaders their just desserts, and set up an earthly kingdom in which they would have positions of worldly prominence. Instead, Jesus suffered cruelly and died violently at the hands of His enemies. After rising from the dead, Jesus reminded His followers of what He’d been telling them all along: They would experience the same fate.

In the quiet this morning I find myself meditating on the economics of God’s Kingdom, which is so opposite the way my world operates. It’s so different than the way I’ve been taught to operate in this world. The media has already trended a million different ways since two weeks ago, but I can’t help but think about Brandt Jean forgiving his brother’s killer in public, then going the extra mile to ask the judge if he can give her a hug.

At that moment Brandt Jean brought God’s kingdom to earth as it is in heaven. He gets it.

God, as I enter this new day, help me to do the same.