Paean To A Woman's Intuition

As I reflected on this topic, I was tempted to save the thought for Mother's Day... but... why wait? So here it is.

There is an old joke that goes like this... "A woman must do twice as much as a man in order to be considered half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult."

All laughs aside, this blog reflection is on a woman who saw, more or less, not what two men could not see, but rather what twelve men pretty much could not and/or would not see. This blog is about a woman worth, in this regard, more than twelve men.

Who was the woman? Mary, the sister of Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead. And what did she see? That Jesus was going to die.

The scripture reading from the church lectionary for today is from John 12, where Mary anoints Jesus' feet with a terrifically expensive perfume. Apparently it was worth something approaching a year's wages. In today's terms, we're talking about something in the ballpark of $20,000 or perhaps $40,000 per bottle. She poured a whole bottle of this stuff on Jesus' feet.

For people like me, this incident is a great reminder that sometimes "it's not about the money." I tend to obsess about not wasting money, but it's good to remember that when Jesus is present nothing done on his behalf is too extravagant. Let that lesson overwhelm me like the scent of that perfume.

But moving on, the thing that hit me full force for the first time in my life is this: Mary got it. She knew Jesus was going to die soon. For all these years I have had this running assumption that Jesus re-interpreted her actions "for her" so that she unwittingly had given him a dying dignity. Not so. Jesus was clear about it, and I'm not sure why I never saw it before. Mary knew Jesus was going to die.

Then? Then there are the twelve disciples. Oh... there are few clues here and there that they understood that they were heading into danger. But no strong sense that they understood and accepted that Jesus was going to die. The only person who seemed truly to have not only made peace with this reality but also to have made preparation for this reality is Mary. A woman.

How did Mary know? Hard to say! Not a lot of detail to work with. But after the fact we can note that Jesus had not exactly made a secret about the matter. (See, for example, Matthew 16:21... and 16:22 for a classic case of a disciple in denial!) Maybe Mary was just the only person listening. Maybe a few other things tipped her off. The fact that he visited her and her siblings itself is a clue. Jesus knew time was short. Who did he visit? A few "best friends." Perhaps his face reflected his knowledge of what he was coming up against. Perhaps his words reflected his anticipation of sufferings not far off...

In any case, hats off to a woman's intuition. Where twelve men could not go a woman arrived in splendor. Jesus gave Mary a special (and well-earned) honor for her act of simple and extravagant adoration.

Mark 14:9
"I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her."

This blog bears testimony to the fact that Jesus was right on that score.

No shock there.

Why They Call Them Mommies

So there I was, sitting on the driveway, changing Luke's bike configuration...

Luke is the last of four kids to shed his training wheels! Judging by the progress on his first lap down the block (with me panting next to him engaged in a continual battle to keep both him and his bicycle upright) this transition from four wheels to two may prove not only the last one for the family but also the easiest one. Our other three children experienced emotions ranging from terror to catatonic shutdown on their first no-training-wheel outings. Luke, in contrast, was mostly just excited and elated!

But I digress... there I was, removing the training wheels, and Luke suddenly brought out a pearl of wisdom to share. Out of the blue. Without context. No explanation for how he arrived at this glorious insight.

"Daddy," he shared elatedly, "I know why they call them Mommies now!"

"Wow!" I thought, "I wonder what the answer to this mystery is going to be?"

"They call them Mommies," Luke explained, "because it rhymes with salamies."

So there you have it.

In case you ever wondered.

Free In My Depravity

Celebrating My Depravity might have been a catchier title for this reflection, but that would have been going too far. That said, I am struck today by a wonderful thought, and it is freeing.

I have made peace this morning with something I cannot change. I am depraved. Needless to say I wish I were not. But since I am, and since I cannot change that.... there is a great freedom in recognizing and acknowledging the situation for what it is.

I am free in my depravity.

Free to do what? Free to abandon the hope that tomorrow I might become perfect, and free today to fall headlong before God and seek his mercy.

Why today? Isn't this a rather fundamentally obvious thing? Did I need to reach the age of forty before realizing this? Well, there's a difference sometime between what we say with our mouths, what we know in our brains.... and the deceptions we hold in our heart. The lies we are captive to.

I've been dealing with a delicate situation over the past twenty-four hours. As I have struggled to handle the situation in a way pleasing to God, I've been burdened by my inability to do everything perfectly — and by that I include not only my actions and words but also the attitudes and motives of my heart.

As if that were possible!!!!

But that is what I was burdened by. And somewhere lurking in my heart was a hope that on another day (perhaps in just a few years?) I might be able to sail through this situation perfectly.

Right.

But! There you have it. A lie exposed. And as is so often the case, once you put it on paper it becomes pathetic in the telling. Who'd believe this lie? Oh.... just me.

So I will never arrive at perfection on this side of heaven. The burden I carried yesterday was not one I need to carry today. The burden of my sin is a burden Christ bore for me. I can put it down.

Seek perfection? Yes. Seek holiness? Yes! Expect to arrive? No. Beat myself up for lack of perfection? NO!

I am free in my depravity. Now let God work his holiness into me, and indeed his righteousness too. And let God get the glory for whatever he accomplishes in this depraved soul.

The God Of Second Chances

I've already written about Judah recently, and that was because I cheated and got a bit ahead of myself on the lectionary readings. But here I am today again on this moving passage in chapter 44 of Genesis, where Judah pleads for the life of his younger brother Benjamin.

The scriptures never cease to amaze me. I've been reading them for thirty years and the new discoveries keep rolling in. Once again my Study Bible drew my attention to a new facet to this story. New to me, anyway.

Joseph's brothers had despised him because he was "Daddy's favorite." So in their jealousy they sold him as a slave to the Egyptians. So what did Joseph do to his brothers when their paths crossed again? He tested them on this topic — to see if they had grown up any. For starters, he showed them that he knew the pecking order, which really threw them for a loop. How did he know?? Then he proceeded to exhibit tremendous favoritism toward the youngest and most favored son Benjamin.

Genesis 43:33-34
Joseph told each of his brothers where to sit, and to their amazement, he seated them according to age, from oldest to youngest. And Joseph filled their plates with food from his own table, giving Benjamin five times as much as he gave the others. So they feasted and drank freely with him.

The stage has been set. What does Joseph do next? He sets Benjamin up so that his brothers could quite easily "sell him to the Egyptians too." Would they take the bait? As I relayed this new insight to a good friend on Sunday, he laughed and said he was already well aware of it. "It's the first recorded sting operation in history," he noted.

Yes, the bait was there. But the brothers did not take it. Instead of throwing the second favored son Benjamin under a bus, they came to the firm conviction that God was still punishing them for their sins against the first favored son Joseph. The kicker, of course, is that Judah, the one who for his own benefit sold Joseph as a slave to the Egyptians, sought this time to buy Benjamin's freedom — and offered himself as a slave to seal the deal.

...Which leads me to my excited words of hope for today. God was not done with the brothers, and certainly not done with Judah. God is a God of second chances. It is deeply reassuring note also how in this story God accomplished his divine purposes by means of moral failures and acts of righteousness. Is there hope for me too?

Yes.

My mistakes are not going to screw up God's plans. That's an encouraging word there for screwballs like me who keep fouling things up and need seven (or perhaps seventy times seven) at-bats before I even connect with the ball.

Superior In Every Way: Part I (Suffering)

Isaiah 53:3
He was despised and rejected — a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief.
We turned our backs on him and looked the other way.
He was despised, and we did not care.

These are fitting words to ponder during the season of lent. The whole of chapter 53 is worth memorizing. But here I focus on the first phrase in the verse — acquainted with deepest grief.

I started this blog some months ago with the intent of getting some thoughts about Jesus down on "paper" — and yet I find I have not gotten far on that project yet. This entry is meant to begin the process of rectifying the situation!

My intent was, and is, to reflect on the superiority of Jesus Christ. In particular, I have been pondering for years about how he overcame in his life what we succumb to in our own lives.

What does it mean to say that Jesus was acquainted with grief?

My hunch is that, in essence, Jesus faced all the basic kinds of pain and suffering anyone ever faces. And triumphed over them all. My thesis is that we have a Lord who knows every kind of suffering and was familiar with all of our griefs. There is no kind of evil we face that he did not face too — and frequently under circumstances worse than our own.

Truth be told, I don't know that this is true. It's indelicate to say the words, but did Jesus endure sexual molestation as a child? Probably not. But I do hope to eventually wander the full landscape of suffering and reflect on how Jesus may (or may not have) endured it. Perhaps in the final analysis the core woundings involved in sex abuse are wounds he did receive, even if perhaps not by that route.

For today, however, I begin with something simpler: the loss of loved ones. Simpler? Yes. Easy? Far from it.

My mother passed away when I was 24 years old, just a month after I got married. Losing a mother when you are "relatively" young is not something I'd wish upon anyone. I shudder to think of losing her when I was 14. Worse still at the age of 4.

Some time ago I became intrigued by the silence in the matter of Jesus' father Joseph. The last we hear of Joseph is that Joseph and Mary took Jesus to the temple when Jesus was eleven years old. After that? Silence.

Where scriptures are silent we must of course trod with care — but it has always seemed rather obvious to me that Joseph must have died some time after that. Perhaps he died while Jesus was quite young. Perhaps much later. But I think it is safe to assume that Joseph passed away some time prior to the beginning of Jesus' ministry. In my thoughts below I'm going to assume this was the case, though it is granted that we presumably can never be sure of it.

Losing a parent is a great and terrible loss. I still mourn that my natural mother never had the chance to see my children grow up. I grieve that here on Earth my children will never meet my mother. But I had no choice in the matter. Cancer took my mother, and I had no power to stop it.

Not so for Jesus. Jesus had a choice. When his father Joseph died, Jesus could have raised him from the dead. Supposing there was a period of illness involved — Jesus could have healed him at any time. Jesus could, in fact, have prevented the onset of illness. He knew it was coming.

But he didn't do any of these things. Why?

Well... I don't know. But my suspicion is this: Jesus came to live among us, and to share in our suffering. Watching a loved one die is one of the worst agonies we as humans ever face. If Jesus had bypassed this dark valley, he would not have not been familiar with our sorrows or grief. He'd have been a bit more of a celestial tourist than a fellow sojourner if he'd taken a pass on this experience.

So Jesus knew what it's like to lose a parent. In fact, he endured what I endured... and more. I had to watch my mother die. He had to let his father die. I had no options in the matter. He did.

Superior in every way.

Everything Is Going Against Me! This Is Wonderful!

Genesis 42:36
Everything is going against me!

Yeah, the bit about it being wonderful is, unsurprisingly, not in the text. Jacob doesn't think it's wonderful at all. His favorite son Joseph is (so far as he knows) dead. His son Simeon is a prisoner in Egypt. And now he fears losing his son Benjamin too. And, oh by the way, the entire clan is facing death by starvation. Things don't look wonderful. They look grim.

But while Jacob can recite the reasons for his desperate frustration, the one thing he doesn't get at all is that it is, in fact, wonderful. Wonderful. God is protecting Jacob and his family from a terrible fate. Jacob's problem is that he doesn't know what he's being protected from.

And who can blame him? For the longest time I didn't see it either. I thought the whole episode basically revolved around surviving the regional famine. But thanks to some commentary in my helpful study Bible, I see that God was protecting his people not merely from starvation but also from assimilation.

Assimilation. It's what every nation wishes for its immigrants. If our immigrants would just become more like us! But God did not want the Israelites to become like their Canaanite hosts. In fact, God was willing to do whatever it took to prevent it from happening. The Canaanites worshipped many gods. They even sacrificed their children to some of them. No, God did not want Jacob and sons to become like their hosts. Something had to be done, and fast. Because the process of assimilation had already begun.

Genesis 38:1-6
About this time, Judah left home and moved to Adullam, where he stayed with a man named Hirah. There he saw a Canaanite woman, the daughter of Shua, and he married her. When he slept with her, she became pregnant and gave birth to a son, and he named the boy Er. Then she became pregnant again and gave birth to another son, and she named him Onan. And when she gave birth to a third son, she named him Shelah. At the time of Shelah’s birth, they were living at Kezib.
In the course of time, Judah arranged for his firstborn son, Er, to marry a young woman named Tamar.

This might seem like parenthetical information, but my Study Bible points out that these verses show "the beginnings of assimilation with the people of the land to help explain why God sent the family to Egypt. The Egyptians were strict separatists; the Israelites would retain their unique identity better in Egypt than in Canaan."

And here all this time I thought it was just about food. Well, on the face of it, it is! Joseph says as much to his brothers.

Genesis 45:7
God has sent me ahead of you to keep you and your families alive and to preserve many survivors.

But Joseph saw something else too. He seems to have understood that bodily survival was not the whole story. Survival of the clan identity was at stake too.

Genesis 46:33-34
Then he said, “When Pharaoh calls for you and asks you about your occupation, you must tell him, ‘We, your servants, have raised livestock all our lives, as our ancestors have always done.’ When you tell him this, he will let you live here in the region of Goshen, for the Egyptians despise shepherds.”

Genesis 43:32 also notes that "Egyptians despise Hebrews and refuse to eat with them." To sum it up, Egyptians despised Hebrews and they despised shepherds. So where does God take his Hebrew shepherds? To Egypt. How did they end up there? By a series of disasters. Would the clan have arrived there by any other means? No.

Disasters have a way of taking us where we would not willingly go. Which is exactly why God uses them in our lives, because sometimes exactly where we don't want to go is exactly where God wants us. For reasons which might not even be on our radar.

Hopefully I'll keep that thought in mind the next time my life derails.