THE BIBLE SPEAKS

by Lawrence W. Althouse

ASTONISHING

AUTHORITY

July 6, 2008

Background Scripture:

Luke 4:31-37; 20:1-8

Devotional Reading:

Isaiah 11:1-3...

If you have visited the Holy Land, you almost certainly have been to Kapher-Nahum, which in our Bibles is rendered as Capernaum. This was the city that served as the headquarters of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee. Although born in Bethlehem and raised in Nazareth, more than any other place, he considered this his true home. Today it is an archaeological site much visited by pilgrims. In Jesus, day, however, Capernaum was a busy fishing harbor and Roman military post on the important trade route between Damascus and Jerusalem.

Capernaum was also the home of Simon Peter and his brother Andrew, as well as James and John, the sons of Zebedee---all of them part of his inner circle of disciples. The house of Peter probably served as his headquarters and it was here that Jesus was regarded as “at home,” as well as the site of many of his healings and teachings (Matt. 8; Mk. 1; 2; Lk. 4; Jn. 4).

Visitors today are shown the partially-restored ruins of a fine Jewish synagogue. First unearthed in 1865, it was believed to be the one where Jesus taught. But in 1905, excavations indicated that it was built no earlier than the 3^rd century A.D., although, it probably occupies the same site as the one in which Jesus taught, astonishing the locals with his aura of authority.

DEALING WITH DEMONS

It may be tempting to skip over the account of Jesus casting out an “unclean demon” from a man in the synagogue because the concept of demons may seem out of step with our the scientific sophistication of our times. Although demons are rarely mentioned in the Old Testament, they abound in the pages of the gospels. The Jewish exiles probably brought back the belief in demons from their exile in Babylon and Persia. These beliefs were helpful to them in dealing with experiences of sickness, injury, misfortune and death. Demons were recognized as the enemies of God and humankind and needed to be exorcised.

Just as 21^st century physics has opened the door to a seemingly subatomic immaterial world, so contemporary research may provide us with a framework within we can conceive of human realities that transcend the physical limitations of the body---for example, prayer, worship and healing as non-biological realities that reach beyond the physical limitations of the human mind. Our concept of the supernatural (contrary to nature) may be replaced by that of the supernormal (contrary to our normal experience of nature). world.

In other words, beyond the world of experience bounded by the five senses and the reason, there is something more, realities both good and evil. And whether or not we believe in demons as actual beings, most of us have experienced in our lives that which we may call the “demonic.” (Anyone who works with a computer should find it easier to believe in demons, while those who have received the gift of redeeming love have experienced the angelic!)

WHAT IS THIS WORD?

Demons, however, are not the focus of this episode in Capernaum. Jesus is the focus and he is revealed as the one whose and authority is indisputably superior to the demonic. The demons know him: “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” Jesus replies, “Be silent, and come out of him” and the people watching “were all amazed and said to one another ‘with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out’” (4:34-36). Yes, we need to concentrate upon the power of Christ, rather than our fear of the demonic.

Yet, we should not conclude that people saw him as authoritative because of the exorcism alone. Note that it was before the exorcism that the crowds were “astonished at his teaching.” The exorcism was a convincing display of his authority, but his teaching alone amazed the people and drew them to him as the one who spoke for God.

I, too, am amazed and astonished at the powerful authority of Jesus when I open my life to him as my teacher and savior. In his presence the demonic doesn’t have a chance!

THE BIBLE SPEAKS

by Lawrence W. Althouse

JESUS,

OUR SOTER

July 13, 2008

Background Scripture:

Mark 1:29-45.

Devotional Reading:

Isaiah 61:1-4.

About 40 years ago, just shortly after I had begun a weekly service of prayer for healing

at my church, I encountered a fellow clergyman while visiting parishioners in the hospital. Before we parted, his face assumed a grave mien while he hesitatingly asked, “Larry, is it true that you are conducting healing services at Calvary?” He waited for my denial, but I confirmed what he had heard. For the first time as long as I had known him, he seemed lost for words.

Although today this ministry is acknowledged (if not encouraged) by almost all Christian denominations, it still frequently generates that kind of negativity. Some of that uneasiness or downright disapproval is a result of exposure to the emotional and commercialized excesses of TV and itinerating faith healers. Others shrink from it because it appears to be in contradiction to and competition with the practice of medicine.

Many fail to realize just how much of the ministry of Jesus and his disciples was devoted to healing. The late Olga Worrall, a Russian Orthodox mystic who, with her British scientist husband Ambrose (and to whom I was introduced by a Presbyterian minister!), conducted weekly healing services at a Methodist church in Baltimore. She once challenged me to take a yellow marking pen and highlight all the healing passages in the four gospels. I soon realized what an important part healing played in the ministry of Jesus and the early church.

OUR BROKENNESS

I also realized that many of us fail to understand that the Greek word, sozo, rendered in English as “to save,” also means “to heal,” and “to make whole.” But when St. Jerome translated the Bible into Latin, for sozo he used a Latin term, salvo, that later was translated into English as “to save.” Many of us have come to regard the word “save” in a very narrow context and to think of salvation solely as the saving of one’s soul. But it is also more than that and when we translate the Greek soter as “Savior,” we overlook the fact that this term also means that Jesus is “the Healer” or “the One who makes us whole.” Jesus came to us as our soter to make us whole and save us from brokenness of mind, body and spirit

Teaching in the synagogue, Jesus heals a man with a demon (Mk. 1:23-26). Afterwards, Jesus goes to the house of Simon Peter and his wife, where he finds Peter’s mother ill with a fever and heals her (1:29,30). That evening, when the Sabbath is ended, the people of Capernaum came to him as a multitude needing and finding healing with him (1:32-34). Later, he heals a leper who comes to him. (1:40-44). Because lepers were regarded as ritually “unclean”, they were segregated from normal contacts and relationships. Jesus saved this man from a sick body, a despairing mind, and demeaning relationships.

FEAR OF FAILURE

Some people reject the Christian healing and wholeness because they are afraid of “failure” when someone is not physically healed. But this ministry is not magic and the healing of the physical body is not guaranteed. Emily Gardner Neale was a newspaper writer who set out to reveal spiritual healing as a fraud. But, as she witnessed many acts of healing, she became a great advocate of this ministry. In one of her books, she says: “No one who properly understands spiritual healing ever turns away from God because he is not healed, for no one who turns to him in faith remains unhealed spiritually. Further, no one who has experienced a healing of the spirit would exchange what he has received for a purely physical cure.”

Over the years I have witnessed (1) many changed lives, people who have come to get help and stayed to give it; (2) many experiencing gradual improvement and cure, including some designated as “terminal”; (3) many experiencing remissions and freedom from anticipated pain; (4) some spontaneous, dramatic healings; and also (5) people who did not improve physically, but were helped to die, not as victims, but as victors.*

The ministry of Jesus is a three-fold: to preach, teach and heal. Ours should be no less.

*See Rediscovering The Gift of Healing by Lawrence W. Althouse, Abingdon Press, 1977, Samuel Weiser, 1983—still available from Amazon on-line).

THE BIBLE SPEAKS

by Lawrence W. Althouse

THE AUTONOMOUS

SERVANT

July 20, 2008

Background Scripture:

John 13:1-20.

Devotional Reading:

Isaiah 53:4-6.

Some months ago in a drawing at the monthly meeting of the Urban Renewal Book Club in Dallas, I won a book. The title was strange, Same Kind of Different As Me,* and the artwork was just as odd. So, when I got home I put it “aside”

I can’t recall just why I picked it up maybe a month or so later. I read a couple of pages and then I couldn’t put it down. I read into the wee hours of the morning---several mornings--- laughing, gasping and even shedding some tears. It is the unlikely but true story of a yuppie international art dealer, Ron Hall, Denver Moore, a black man born into virtual modern-day slavery and the toughest con at Angola Prison, and Deborah, Ron’s wife, who miraculously brought Ron and Denver together in the Union Gospel Mission of Fort Worth TX.

Deborah had had a dream inspired by Ecclesiastes 9:5, a passage about how an entire city was saved by the counsel of a poor, but wise man. Because of that dream she jumped at the opportunity to serve as a volunteer worker in the city’s Union Gospel Mission. On the very first night they were serving dinner there a man went berserk and assaulted twenty people, threatening to kill anyone who tried to stop him. His name, they learned, was Denver Moore

and Ron was undone when Deborah told him that Denver was the man she saw in her dream!

Ron was even more staggered when she told him she wanted Ron to become Denver’s friend!

TRANSFORMATION

Impossible as it seemed to Ron---and just about anyone else---the three of them forged a friendship that transformed their lives. The rest of Same Kind of Different As Me* is about that inspiring transformation and how it touched and blessed the lives of so many others.

So, by now, you may be wondering what the story of Deborah, Ron and Denver has to do with Jesus’ last night with his disciples. And the answer is ‘everything,’ for this is a crystal-clear key to what Jesus meant, when after washing their feet, he said: “If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet” (13:14).

Put yourself in the disciples’ place. They have been very much caught up in speculation as to which of them would be of highest rank in the kingdom of God (Mt. 20:20-28; Mk. 9:33-37; 10:35-45; Lk. 9:46-48). So they were thinking of honors, not lowly service. They had come to this supper with the highest personal expectations. The last thing they were anticipating was Jesus’ humble act and his command for them to follow suit. Serving others always raised the risk of losing one’s own autonomy.

START SERVING!

n an interview with Bob Gersztyn, Ron Hall said, “I was always one that was more interested in writing checks than getting my hands dirty…than volunteering to feed a bunch of homeless people. I really didn’t have that kind of heart, but Deborah had had that kind of heart for many years. She had served homeless people and other indigent peoiple for years in various forms.” Ron was simplying being honest about something that many of us would choose to hide. One way or another we back off from helping others if it means getting our hands “dirty,” if it means dealing with the poor, hungry and powerless. “You know,” said Denver Moore, “sometimes I believe that it is time for us to start serving instead of judging…Why, when, where, who? What difference does it really make? Let the Christ in you be the hope of glory.”

“When he had washed their feet, and taken his garments and resumed his place, he said to them, ‘Do you know what I have done to you?’” (13:12).Yes, first he showed them what it meant to follow him and then he told them: “For I have given you an example, that you should also do as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master; nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him” (13:15,16).

Jesus put his rank aside and so must we, if for others we are to be’the hope of glory.’

*(Random House, 2006; available in hard and soft cover.)

THE BIBLE SPEAKS

by Lawrence W. Althouse

THE SAME

BUT DIFFERENT

July 27, 2008

Background Scripture:

Matthew 16:13-23.

Devotional Reading:

Isaiah 43:1-7.

A man once asked me, “Why do we have four gospels instead of just one and, if we have to have four, why aren’t they in closer agreement?” Those are both good questions.

Although we usually refer to them as “Matthew,” “Mark,” “Luke” and “John,” the Bibles most of us read include the words, “The Gospel According to…” Gospel or evangel can be rendered as “glad tidings” or “good news,” a reference to God’s plan and act to offer us salvation in and through Jesus Christ. So each gospel is really the Good News of Jesus Christ according to one of the four evangelists.

Note, none of the gospels are designated as “…According to Jesus Christ.” God brings us this good news through four witnesses. As we might expect, these four evangelists tell their stories through the filter of their own perceptions and experiences. All of them are witnessing to the same Christ, but these may vary to some degree. That should neither surprise nor trouble us because, although we may use common terms in speaking of Jesus, our understandings of those terms are never precisely the same. It is like seeing Jesus in four dimensions instead of just one, and for me the four gospels are more authoritative for that reason.

WHY FOUR?

Why four gospels instead of five or six? There were other gospels, but by the second century AD these four were the only ones universally accepted as authoritative. Actually, it wasn’t until the fourth century AD that the New Testament as we know it today was finalized..

I am reminding you of these things because the events of Matthew 16:13-23, are found also in Mark 8:27-30 and Luke 9:18-21, and are referred to topically in John 6:66-69. And there are some differences. Asked by Jesus, “But who do you say that I am?”, Matthew has Peter answer, “You are the Christ; the Son of the living God,” while Luke’s answer is “The Christ of God.” Mark has Peter designate Jesus simply as “the Christ” and in John 6, Peter confesses Jesus as “the Holy One of God.” For some people this is cause enough to “throw the baby out with the bathwater.” But I am not among them and I trust you are not either.

The point I am making here is that what we call Jesus---Savior, Redeemer, Second Person of the Trinity, the Logos or Word, Emmanuel, Light of the World, Bread of Life, and so forth—are simply titles, some of them translated twice-over from the original languages, describing Jesus to us, but do not fully defining him. As H.G. Wells put it, “this Galilean is too much for our small hearts”---and certainly too much for our limited vocabularies.

GETTING THE NAME “RIGHT”?

Recently I heard a clergyperson complain that people were joining the church without even knowing “the correct titles” for our Lord. He suggested we as a church were neglecting our responsibility of teaching new Christians the doctrines of Jesus Christ. I suspect, however, that we might more successfully bring people to personally experience Christ and help them to discover him personally as “Lord,” “Savior,” “Healer,” and Christ.

When Jesus took his closest disciples with him to the largely non-Jewish region of Caesarea Philpppi, it appears that he decided that they had been with him long enough so that they should have some idea of who and what he was. So, it was important for him to ask them--as well as us---“But who do you say that I am?”

When Peter answered, however, Jesus replies in a way no one might have expected: “Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ. From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things…and be killed. and on the third day be raised.” Peter’s strong rebuke suggests why Jesus did not want his disciples to tell others he was the Christ, “The Anointed One”---because many would not understand or accept a Messiah who would experience what Jesus was about to experience.

Discipleship is not determined by the titles we give him, but: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (16:24).