Acts 9:1-6, (7-20) first published 25 April 2004
In 1988 and 1989, my family lived in South Africa, during the waning
days of apartheid. I had worked in an inner-city church for several years
beforehand, so I was somewhat conscientized to the plight of the poor and
oppressed, but seeing gross injustice day in and day out made a profound
change in my life. While there, I began reading books by liberation
theologians, as well as The Kairos Document and its sequel, The
Road to Damascus. Since I was raised as an evangelical, I was familiar
with the idea of conversion as a renunciation of sin and personal
commitment to Jesus. I learned that the liberation theologians had a
different view of conversion, as a profound change in attitude that occurs
as a result of a divine encounter, often through exposure to poverty and
injustice. If my first conversion experience was evangelical in nature,
my second might be called liberational in nature. Paul had an experience
on the Damascus Road that completely changed his life. Where others saw a
bright light or heard a loud noise, Paul saw a revelation of Jesus Christ.
Although his change in orientation was almost instantaneous, requiring
perhaps three days, it took him several years to work out his exact
calling: to become the missionary to the Gentiles. Not all Christians
will have the same type of conversion experiences, but all can have
transforming encounters with Christ. Conversion often happens
unexpectedly, but it comes to people whose hearts are prepared for it.
We can't force an encounter with Christ, but we can prepare ourselves for
one by being sensitive to God's voice speaking through circumstances,
people, and scripture. After Paul's conversion on the Damascus Road, he
changed the world. Are we in need of conversion in order to accomplish
what God has in store for us?
Psalm
30 first published 25 April 2004
More than 100 American soldiers killed in Iraq in the month of April
. . . Israel assassinates the leader of Hamas . . . A
new SARS outbreak in China . . . Two trains collide in North
Korea, killing dozens of people . . . . Sometimes it seems
like all we hear about is bad news. It would be wrong to deny that many
bad things happen in the world every week, but it's not necessary to focus
exclusively on the bad news, either. The gospel that we preach should be
good news, even in the midst of terrorism, murder, disease, catastrophes,
natural disasters, economic downturns, etc. What can we offer people who
are suffering? How should we behave when we suffer ourselves? The
psalmist knew about suffering, and today's psalm alternates between
flights of praise and cries of anguish. In every case, however, joy
overcomes sorrow. "Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes in the
morning." To some extent, whether we are optimists or pessimists is a
matter of perspective. When U.S. newspapers report on the violence in
Israel and Palestine, a typical headline reads: "Israel launches attack on
Palestinians in retaliation for suicide attack in Jerusalem." The
implication is that the Palestinians started it, and the Israelis are just
striking back. What if the headline read: "Palestinians say suicide
attack payback for Israeli helicopter assault on Gaza mosques"? Then it
would appear that the Israelis were primarily to blame, whereas the
Palestinians were simply responding. It's all a matter of perspective.
Just as Christians need to learn to see through the bias in the media
(both Israelis and Palestinians are at fault for acts of violence against
one another; from a Christian perspective, violent retaliation is just as
wrong as the initial assault), we also need to learn to see through the
media's penchant for just reporting the bad news. More importantly, we
need to remember that sorrow and suffering are not the end of the story.
When people lose jobs, there is always hope for new employment, and there
is joy when it is found. When people are sick, there is hope for
recovery, and joy when the worst is over. Even when illness results in
death, God can intervene and work good in the midst of sorrow. Buddhists
say, "Life is suffering"; Eliphaz says, "Man is born to sorrow as the
sparks fly upward." Both are right, but that's not the whole story. Life
is also joy and happiness and love and hope. As God's people, let us
learn to look for the positive, even in the midst of suffering, as the
psalmist suggests.
Revelation 5:11-14 first published
25 April 2004
Symbols are powerful. The day after the space shuttle
Challenger crashed, cartoonist Doug Marlette published a drawing of
a bald eagle with a tear rolling down its cheek. Without a single word,
that picture captured the sorrow of a nation, and it won him the Pulitzer
Prize. The first time I read the book of Revelation was on a Sunday
night, during a sermon. I don't think that the pastor was preaching on
Revelation, but I had just gotten a copy of the Good News for
Modern Man, a new (at the time) translation of the New Testament.
What really caught my attention as a young teenager were the stick-figure
drawings in the book. I was fascinated by the king riding a horse, the
flying eagle, and the knight fighting the dragon, so I started reading.
I can't say that I understood much of what I read, although, in retrospect,
I don't think my lack of understanding was much greater than that of many
"experts" who write multivolume expositions of the book. Revelation is a
book that is full of symbolism. If you try to understand the book at all
literally, you will miss the true meaning. In chapter 5, Jesus is
described as both the Lion of the Tribe of Judah and a Lamb that has been
slaughtered. What animals could be more different than the lion and the
lamb? The poet William Blake wrote poems in celebration of both the tiger
(which is in the same genus as a lion) and the lamb, and at one point he
says of the tiger, "Did he who made the lamb make thee?" The author is
telling us that Jesus encompasses both strength and weakness, royalty and
sacrifice. Those who push the idea of Jesus' death on the cross as a
literal substitutionary atonement, demanded by an angry God, have robbed
the lamb of its symbolic meaning by confusing analogy with literality.
The view of Jesus' death as a substitutionary sacrifice is powerful, but
it does not exhaust the meaning of either symbol: the cross or the lamb.
The Lamb portrays Jesus not only as a sacrificial victim, but also as one
who is gentle, humble, and powerless (albeit voluntarily). We can see
Jesus' sacrificial death reflected in the deaths of others who were
powerless at the moment of death: Joan of Arc, Jan Hus, Mahatma Gandhi,
Martin Luther King, Oscar Romero, and many others. Yet the paradox of the
Lamb is that by laying aside all power, he becomes immensely powerful,
worthy to receive "power, riches, wisdom, might, honor, glory, and
blessing." One message of the book of Revelation is that death is not the
final word; it is only the beginning.
John 21:1-19 first published 25
April 2004
This passage in John is one of several that is frequently misinterpreted because of faulty hermeneutical methodology. I'm talking specifically about the conversation between Jesus and Peter that takes place after breakfast, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus asks Peter three times, "Peter, do you love me?" and Peter responds each time, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you." Each time Jesus replies, "Feed my sheep," or some variant thereof. It is the variation that is the key to both the misunderstanding and the proper understanding of this passage. The misunderstanding involves the use of two different Greek verbs for love, agapao and fileo. Of the six uses of the word translated "love" in English in this passage, Jesus uses agapao the first two times and fileo the third time, whereas Peter uses fileo all three times. I have heard innumerable sermons and Bible lessons that claim that agapao is a higher form of love, perhaps even an exclusively Christian form of love, and that Jesus is asking Peter whether or not he loves him is this exalted manner. Peter responds each time by using the weaker form of love, fileo, and he is hurt when Jesus switches to this verb in his third question. There are at least four problems with this common interpretation. First, it makes no sense for Peter to be hurt because Jesus chose to use the same word that Peter himself was using to describe his love for Jesus. Obviously Peter thought it was a perfectly acceptable word. Second, Jesus and Peter would probably have been conversing in Aramaic, not Greek, so the distinction between the Greek verbs is a literary device. Third, an examination of the immediate context indicates the author's predilection for variation rather than repetition (viz., "feed my lambs," "shepherd my sheep," "feed my sheep"). Fourth, an examination of the use of the two verbs agapao and fileo in John reveals that they are used interchangeably. In particular, notice the following passages, all of which use fileo: "The father loves the Son" (5:20); "See how much he [Jesus] loved him [Lazarus]" (11:36); "The Father himself loves you" (16:27); "the disciple whom Jesus loved" (20:2; in contrast to other occurrences of this phrase, which use agapao). Peter is upset, then, not because Jesus switches verbs, but because he asked him a third time whether he really loved him or not. Peter's threefold affirmation of his love for Jesus corresponds to his threefold denial of Jesus before the crucifixion. Peter's hurt feeling could be because he wonders whether Jesus will ever believe that he loves him, after his earlier failure, or it may be that the threefold repetition of the question simply reminds him of his earlier weakness. In either case, Jesus responds affirmingly. He seems to be saying, "Yes, Peter, I know that you love me, but maybe you yourself don't realize the depth of that love. I'm sending you out to tend my flock, and you will be faithful doing so, even to the point of death. But that's all in the future. Right now all I ask is that you follow me." Sometimes we, like Peter, fail Jesus, and maybe we think that our sins are so great that God will never forgive us, or that we'll never be useful to God again. The beauty of this simple story is that regardless of our sins, God always stands ready to forgive us and welcome us back into the fold. As he had for Peter, Jesus has one simple question for us: "Do you love me?" If we answer yes, then he has a simple command: "Follow me."