I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on John 12-13.

    In today’s passage John tells us a story of Mary, Martha’s sister, anointing Jesus’ feet with expensive perfume. It is not clear if this is the same story as told in the other Gospels, some of the details differ, but not in ways which are distinctly contradictory. I was initially not going to write about it today, but then I thought about Judas’ reaction. It made me realize that many times those who call on us to give to aid the poor are, like Judas here, not so much concerned with helping the poor as they are with gaining control over our money. You see that with politicians who develop programs to “help the poor” which fail to change anything for the poor. You see that with some people who run organizations which supposedly aid the poor. This is not to say that all such programs and organizations have ulterior motives, just that we need to examine them closely. It is never wrong to aid the poor, but there are times when serving those who minister to the poor is a better use of our resources. We should be cautious of those who attempt to make us feel guilty about how we choose to do good with our resources.

    The story of Jesus washing the disciples feet has long been one of great meaning to me. The first thing we notice, and the main focus of this story, is that Jesus, the Teacher, the most prominent person present, takes the role of servant and washes everyone else’s feet. Jesus makes it clear that if we want to be His followers we need to similarly serve others. However, there is another point in here which is easy to miss. If we want to be Jesus’ followers we also have to allow others to serve us. When Jesus went to wash Peter’s feet, Peter tried to demur, but Jesus insisted. So, this passage teaches us that greatness comes from serving others, but refusing to allow others to serve us puts us outside of the community.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on John 8-9.

    The story of the woman caught in adultery is not in the earliest manuscripts we have of the Gospel of John, so it likely was a later addition. Nevertheless it is consistent with the other things written about Jesus’ teaching and can teach us some useful lessons. Really the two prime lessons are closely linked. On the one hand, he tells the woman’s accusers that they are only qualified to punish her if they are not guilty of something similar. I like to imagine that after He told them this Jesus wrote in the dust various sins and as each person realized that they had done things which by the letter of the Law would justify them being where the woman was they dropped their stones and walked away. On the other hand, Jesus did not tell the woman, “Well your accusers are gone, go back to what you were doing.” No, He told her, “Go and sin no more.” The love and tolerance which Jesus calls us to have for sinners does not include telling them that it is OK to sin.

    When Jesus tells the crowd, “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free,” the crowds denies ever being anything but free. However, Jesus points out to them that when you sin you become a slave to sin. This is a basic truth which we all struggle with. When we sin we become addicted to sinning. The only way to overcome that addiction is to allow the power of the Holy Spirit into our lives where it will direct our behaviors away from that addiction. The Holy Spirit will fill our lives with good behaviors which will displace the sin. As we allow ourselves to become “addicted” to doing good we will have less and less time in our lives to be tempted.

    I cannot leave today’s passage without writing about the story of Jesus healing the man born blind. In particular the contrast between the way the religious leaders reacted to his healing and his reaction. I know I have talked about this before, often, but it is one of those lessons about the Bible which my father taught me which still greatly influences my thoughts about God. The religious leaders questioned the man in an attempt to find something in his story which they could use to diminish Jesus’ role in his healing. Finally, they right out told the man that Jesus should not get credit for the healing because they knew that Jesus was a sinner (notice, they did not give any specific examples of what sins Jesus had committed, just declared that He was a sinner). The man’s response was, “Well, I don’t know anything about that. All I know is, I was blind and now I see!” When the man insisted that Jesus must be from God, the religious leaders dismissed his judgment since the fact that he was born blind indicates that he “must be a terrible sinner”. They never considered that the same logic which said the man must have been born blind because he was a sinner suggests that he was given sight because he had become righteous (I do not agree with the logic here, but the second follows the first). The religious leaders were so caught up in their own belief about how God acts that they were blinded to God acting in their midst. Let us ask God to open our eyes to what He is doing in the world around us.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on John 6-7.

    John’s account of the Feeding of the Five Thousand contains a piece of information the other Gospels do not mention: the crowd He fed was about to declare Him king and start a revolt against Rome (the latter is not stated, but is implicit in declaring Jesus their king). When the crowd caught up with Jesus the following day, He began teaching that He was the bread of life. Taking part in Communion (or the Eucharist, or the Lord’s Supper) is a reminder of, and a dedication to, fulfilling Jesus’ teaching about eating His flesh and drinking His blood. What Jesus is teaching us here is twofold. One element is that we must be willing to suffer similar to the way He suffered when He was crucified. The other element is that we must imitate what He did by caring for the needs of those around us. Latter in today’s passage Jesus expresses some of this meaning by speaking of giving Living Water to drink to those who come to Him.

    I believe that Jesus intended to call to mind the River of Healing which Ezekiel spoke about. As a result, my understanding of what He means by a River of Living Water is that He is referring to the way in which experiencing the love of God causes us to show love to those around us and their experiencing our love causes them to show love to those around them. However, the important point in Jesus’ teaching here which is not presented in Ezekiel’s vision, is that for this river of Living Water to continue to flow each person in the chain must become connected to the Source. While it is true that the results of loving action will be multiplied by the actions of those who experience it, that “water” of love will also become diluted and polluted the further it is downstream from God. The only way for it to stay fresh and pure is for each person in the chain to have a direct connection to God. This is why it is important to preach the Gospel along with doing good for those in need. We do not do good for those in need so that they will listen to the Gospel. However, we preach the Gospel for the same reason that we do good for those in need, because they need the Gospel in order to experience the joy which God intends for them.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on John 4-5.

    As I am reading the story of the woman at the well, I wonder why Jesus asked the woman to go get her husband when she asked Him to give her the water He has. I do not feel that way because a moment later Jesus knows that she has had five husbands and is living with a man to whom she is not married. No, that part I get, He had not bothered to think about her marital state, so it did not enter His awareness. What I wonder is, why would He ask her to get her husband at all? I have two theories on why this might be, both have a certain merit but nothing in the passage gives support to either one.

    Perhaps Jesus asked her to get her husband to avoid scandalizing His disciples when they returned, which the passage certainly implies happened. “Scandalize” is likely too strong of a word, but they clearly wondered what Jesus wanted from this woman. If He did not want something from her, why was He talking to her? Or, closely related to that, perhaps Jesus asked her to get her husband to follow a rule which I know to be a good idea (and this becomes a third theory I have). When it becomes routine for a man and a woman who are not married to each other to meet in private, trouble ensues sooner or later. Just look at the Harvey Weinstein scandal. If it had not been “routine” in Hollywood for a man and a woman to meet in private, many of the women Harvey harassed and assaulted would never have been in a position to be harassed or assaulted. Further, in that world where it was out of the ordinary for a man and a woman not married to each other to meet in private, even if Harvey had been able to engineer such situations it would have been more noteworthy in a way to make it easier for women who fell into his clutches to escape.

    On the other hand, perhaps Jesus asked her to get her husband for the simple reason that a husband and wife are one. I thought explaining what I meant by that would be easy, but I was mistaken. I think the place to start is from a quote I heard a radio personality use (I no longer remember who it was), “An interfaith marriage is a no faith marriage.” That phrase means that if you choose to marry a person from another religion from yourself, you do not really believe what your religion teaches. The only possible exception to that are those who marry someone not of their faith in the belief that they will be able to convert them after they get married (I will not take the time here to go into why that is foolish). In the case of the woman at the well, Jesus may have asked her to get her husband because it would be harder for her to stick to the new faith understanding He would try to impart if her husband did not share it (the reverse would also be true). There is a real need for a married couple to be on the same page about what they believe. Actually, not only is there a real need for that, but my experience says that if the marriage is healthy they will be on the same page whether the couple makes a point of it or not. Of course, resisting being on the same page in their belief systems is one way to damage the health of your marriage.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on John 1-3.

    John is the most mystical of the Gospel writers. John begins by talking about the “Word”. What John means when he talks about “The Word” does not translate well as a single word. Another way that the Greek word translated as “The Word” could be translated is as “The Idea”. That would not be any closer to the meaning John was trying to convey here (actually, it would not be as close), but it contains a part of the idea which “The Word” does not. The concept which John is expressing here at the beginning of his Gospel plays an important role in developing a proper understanding about the meaning of “the Word of God” as used elsewhere in the Bible. While we often use the term “the Word of God” to refer to the Bible, it is very easy to develop an incorrect understanding of what the Bible means by that term when we do so. “The Word of God” is not a static thing. It is a living thing which speaks to us where we are now. When I say this I am not talking about moral relativism. God comes to us where we are, taking into account the society in which we live. I will use slavery as an example. There have been times in history when it was possible for a slave owner to be a godly man, or woman. However, there was never a time in history when it was possible for a person who treated another person as subhuman to be godly, even if that other person was a slave owned by the first. I will further say that a slave owning society falls short of meeting God’s ideal by virtue of allowing that one human can own another. Our modern society falls every bit as short of God’s ideal by its acceptance of the murder of the unborn as the society of the antebellum South fell short by its embrace of race based slavery.