Well, I’m overwhelmed. I am awash in kind words and well wishes. I’m so enjoying reading all your stories and comments. So much so that I’m going to need another day to respond to them all. Thank you to everyone who took the time to comment.
I remember when Mark Heard died there were hundreds of comments — many deep, and personal — on his Facebook page, and I couldn’t help but think how sad it was that he never got to read them. I feel like I’m getting to read some of mine without dying!
If you care to send a gift, a donation to the Catch would be much appreciated.
Oh no, John has another birthday! How many is that now?
We ended yesterday’s Catch with a quote from this passage; today we start with it because it shows us the Jesus no one was expecting.
“But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market places, who call out to the other children, and say, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.’ For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon!’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’” Matthew 11:16-19
Ever been around people you just can’t please? No matter what you do, they’ll find something wrong with it. Well that was the Pharisees, as it is with anyone who lives by the law. The law makes you sour. It makes everyone else your business. It always makes you the judge, because if you are going to live by the law, you must show that you are following it, and that is most easily done by pointing out those who are not. Enter the judge.
Marti and I attended a Los Angeles Angels vs. Houston Astros baseball game last night from a different perspective — at least different for me — from Suite 42 on the club level; the Charles Schwab Suite. We were the guests of a Charles Schwab representative whom I had met over 45 years ago when he was Director of Student Ministries at Azusa Pacific University, a position he held before eventually taking his current job at Charles Schwab. He had heard about me from a mutual friend of ours and wanted to see me after all these years and tell me how much he had been impacted by the event where we first met. It was a conference for chaplains of Christian colleges nationwide, and apparently one of the things I did was lead some music during a communion service. And as memory would have it — at least his memory — I got a number of the chaplains up and dancing around the communion table.
“My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.” John 17:15
Our friend, Arnold, who is newly born again at the age of eighty-one, is in the hospital with influenza A, which, for the rest of us, is basically the common flu. It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but for someone in Arnold’s condition, it is. For Arnold, the common flu could be deadly. He’s been in intensive care now for two days. We may have to start wearing surgical masks around him; not for our sakes, but for his. We would be protecting him from us. We could have a touch of the flu and hardly know it but still pass the germs on to Arnold.
I have loved you even as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love. When you obey my commandments, you remain in my love, just as I obey my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. I have told you these things so that you will be filled with my joy. Yes, your joy will overflow! This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you. There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn’t confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me. You didn’t choose me. I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for, using my name. This is my command: Love each other. John 15:9-17
These red letters form part of Jesus’ final words to His disciples. They took place in the upper room where they had their last supper together and Jesus gave them the sacrament of the bread and the wine to remember His death. They are recorded in John chapters 13-17 and being that they were Christ’s last words to His disciples, they carry an extra weight of importance. In less than 24 hours of speaking these words, Jesus will be hanging on a cross.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.”
Why is this a revolutionary agenda? Because it announces that God is on the side of the little people — people with issues — people on the hurting side of life, those left holding the short end of the stick. Since when are we championing the poor, the captives, the blind and the oppressed? Since Jesus came.
When he came to the village of Nazareth, his boyhood home, [Jesus] went as usual to the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read the Scriptures. The scroll of Isaiah the prophet was handed to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where this was written:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released,
that the blind will see,
that the oppressed will be set free,
and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.”
He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the attendant, and sat down. All eyes in the synagogue looked at him intently. Then he began to speak to them. “The Scripture you’ve just heard has been fulfilled this very day!” (Luke 4:16-21)
This is Jesus’ revolutionary agenda. What a moment this must have been! He was on earth to fulfill this agenda both in physical, real terms (the poor, the blind, the oppressed), and in spiritual terms (the poor in spirit, the spiritually blind, and the spiritually oppressed).
Who else came for these people? What great leader was sent to the poor, the blind and the oppressed? For that matter, what popular figure ever went after this crowd? What leading personality, with the exception of maybe Johnny Cash, has cared about the prisoners serving time? These are the focus of Christ’s physical ministry. If you’re a free, relatively healthy individual with a job, a home and a future, and you got Jesus, consider yourself fortunate indeed. You were definitely on God’s mind, but you were not on the primary invitation list.
Or perhaps you are poor in spirit, blind to God’s will, captive to sin, and/or oppressed by the enemy … in which case, you’re fortunate. Welcome to the club. Jesus is for you. Jesus is for the last, the lowest, the weakest, the poorest, the least desirable. If you are none of these, don’t bother; Jesus will not make sense.
Looking for hope in a hopeless world
Trying to find love in these hateful times
Try to stay strong but my mind is weak
Looking for hope in a hopeless world
“Trying to find love in these hateful times.” That one line from Widespread Panic’s “Hope in a Hopeless World” says it all. That’s your and my mission today — that’s right, this very day — to make love easier to find in these hateful times. We can’t change the hateful times we are in, but we can make love easier to find.
Looking for hope in a hopeless world
Trying to find love in these hateful times
Try to stay strong but my mind is weak
Looking for hope in a hopeless world
Churches are full, but the prayers are not heard
Saturday’s child don’t want to to go to Sunday school
Whatever happened to the golden rule
It takes hope in a hopeless world
From the song, “Hope in a Hopeless World,” by Widespread Panic
“Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets.” Matthew 7:12
Don’t you love it when a secular rock band nails us with a prophetic message that hits the target? “Churches are full, but the prayers are not heard,” harkens to the prophets in the Old Testament who warned the Jews about bringing burnt offerings when their hearts were far from God. This song charted at #13 in 1997 — twenty years ago — and already, in the success of larger churches packed with rock and roll worshipers, there was a noticeable disconnect — an absence of the kind of behavior from Christians that Jesus championed in the red letters. In fact, the “Golden Rule” is probably one of the most widely known, least followed, examples of the red letters even unbelievers know about.
John Fischer The Catch 