Who is this guy?

Brewer Closer John Axford being congratulated after Game 4 
of the 2011 National League Championship Series.

Matthew 22:34-46
For Sunday, October 23, 2011
Proper 25


Was Jesus credible?  When reading this passage it's very easy to focus on the first part and forget about the second.  


The first part is certainly compelling.  In his prior at bat, Jesus hit the Sadducees out of the park.  Now the Pharisees, as the other half of Israel's theological "A Team",  decide it's time for them to step in.  They send their Closer ("an expert in the law") to see if this Jesus character can't be brought back down to size.  The Expert comes in hard, high, and fast: "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?"   The idea is to throw Jesus an un-hittable pitch (how could any one commandment be greater than all the others?!)  


Jesus answers in two parts.  First, he says, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind."  Love is the glue that holds the gospel together.  If we aren't willing to love our Heavenly Father with all of our heart, soul, and mind, the exercise of Christianity is really pointless.  The second commandment then naturally follows from the first: "Love your neighbor as yourself."  Good answer.  Jesus has just knocked The Expert's best pitch clean out of the park.  


Yet Jesus does not stop there.  He proceeds to throw the Pharisees a pitch of his own: "Whose son is the Christ?"  "Oh, well, that's easy" respond the Pharisees, "The Christ is the Son of David.  Everybody knows that."  The hanging curve came in looking like a big softball, but then the pitch breaks violently.  Jesus asks, "Okay... if Christ is the Son of David then why would David call him Lord?  If David called him Lord, how could he also be David's son?"  Swing and a miss: "No one could say a word in reply and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions."  For the Pharisees, questioning the validity of the Scriptures was a non-starter.  There was only one other option: The Christ was not only David's son but also God himself in human form, now standing right in front of them.


What holds these two passages together is the question, "Who is this guy?"  Jesus' credibility was being challenged by the best lawyers and theologians in the land and he passed with a home run followed by a shutdown inning.  


So what does this passage call for from us?  For those of us who are not yet Christians this is a call to wrestle seriously with whether Jesus was who he says he was: the Son of God and God's final offer to save us from ourselves.  For those of us who are Christians this is a call to live in light of the truth we know: do our lives reflect the credibility we know Jesus to possess?


Reader's Corner:
If Jesus' credibility was being challenged in our culture, who would be challenging him, what questions would they ask, and how would he respond?  


Author's note:  I have informed Google that the extra spaces their editor is putting between my paragraphs may soon cause me to migrate to WordPress.  Manually editing the HTML has grown tiresome.  I am still awaiting a reply.  Blogger just hasn't been the same since it's acquisition.  

finding our way

Deut. 18:15-20
For Sunday, February 1, 2009
Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany

It's painful to see the predicament our country is in. President Obama is planning a huge stimulus which he says is only one leg of a stool that may have more than three legs. I watched that and thought, "He's not sure himself how we'll find our way forward."

How are those of us who are among the people of God, whether American or from other countries, to find our way? All we have to do is look to our leader. This is the message of Deut. 18:15-20. Israel was poised to enter the Promised Land, and God Himself wanted to serve as their leader. Yet the people said, "God, please, no. The sound of your voice and the fire of your presence is terrifying." God responded, "Actually, that's reasonable. I'll give you Moses today, and in the future, I'll raise up another leader like him." Who was God referring to? Ultimately, Jesus, as the Apostle Peter confirms in Acts chapter 3, when he quotes this passage in the course of arguing to his Jewish compatriots that Jesus really was the long-promised Messiah.

In these trying economic times, which are also trying spiritual times, how important it is for the people of God to have clear leadership. For my American readers, we do, not in Barack Obama or the Republican opposition, but in Jesus himself.

What would Jesus have us do in response to this global economic crisis? First, he is calling us to live within our means. Second, he is calling us to live below our means, so that we can help others who are losing jobs all around us.

Third, he might also be calling us to urge our political leaders to stop trying to spend their way out of this crisis. We're in this crisis because as a country we were living on an illusion of free credit. What we need to do seems clear enough to me: take our medicine. Enough already with illusions of stimulus to cover over the original illusion of credit which has now crumbled in upon itself. All we're doing with bailouts and stimuli is throwing good money after bad. We would be far better off if we just insolvent institutions enter bankruptcy and emerge chastened and cleansed. We would also be better off if we returned to a stable money policy rather than trying to print more money to ease the pain.

The problem is not free-market capitalism, but rather the manipulation of it. The way out of this is not further manipulation, but rather a humble return to righteousness in all matters financial. Father, please grant us leaders who can understand this, live this, and implement this.