the Steadwich

Continuing on through my trek in Matthew, things are going well. I’m already a little behind of the official schedule, but I feel good about what I’m getting out of the text that I think I would miss if I had actually read 1/4 of Matthew this week.

This has been the hardest weeks to blog and focus. I’m not sure why. I’m making a habit of spending Wednesday mornings in “class” up on campus in the library. During this time I read the text, think and pray about it, and possibly even get this blog written. No luck today.

Now that I’m at home and the day has settled down a bit though, these chapters are speaking a lot more to me. There’s so much in here! I know I say that in every blog post, but I really am blown away.

I am particularly struck this time by the story of the temple tax in Matthew 17:24-27. It starts out with the disciples and Jesus arriving in Capernaum. I imagine the disciples maybe felt a little bit like I do sometimes on arriving to a destination on long trip. A little tired, a little weary, ready to just kind of hang out and do their own thing for a bit to recharge. They’re in the middle of seeing some pretty intense stuff, and are traveling around on foot with the same guys for who knows how long now. I’m sure they’re not in really great moods.

As if traveling long distances in the desert on foot wasn’t enough, in the previous verses, Jesus tells of his betrayal, “and the disciples were filled with grief”. I imagine the walk from Galilee to Capernaum was a quiet, awkward walk, with most everyone wondering if they were to Capernaum yet.

Peter then is hanging out when some temple tax collectors come to him and ask him if Jesus pays the temple tax. Peter responds that Jesus does. Peter then goes into the house where Jesus is, and maybe is going to confirm his answer, when Jesus asks him first about the temple tax. He says, “from whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and taxes–from their own sons or from the others?”

Peter answers, “From others”.

And Jesus responds further by saying that the sons are exempt. Of course sons aren’t going to pay the tax to their kings. In the same way, Jesus probably shouldn’t have to pay a tax to his own father.

For probably a lot of reasons though, Jesus tells Peter that they’re going to pay the tax anyway. Maybe because it would be so offensive for him to not, that it would close doors for future ministry. I think this is a great example of Jesus knowing the truth and still being in the midst of the culture to reach the people he was ministering to.

Lastly, and I’m not sure what to make of it, Jesus tells Peter to go fishing and that the fish he catches will have the coin in its mouth with enough to cover both of them.

Where’s the good news in all of this? Jesus came down to us, and not only became human, but participated in our everyday things like paying taxes, but also used these things to teach us while revealing more about himself and the Kingdom of God.

To help fix a small portion of my scope issue, I’ve limited this week’s studies to Matthew 12-15, instead of Matthew 12-23. I’m not sure what I was thinking with 12-23, but that’s a huge chunk. 12-15 alone is huge and has a lot to process.

In my first pass and study of this set of chapters, I notice that Jesus is performing a lot of miracles and sharing a lot of parables. Lots of accounts of Jesus teaching, performing miracles and heading on to the next city. There seems to be a pattern going on, but then I ran across Matthew 13:54-58. In these verses, Jesus returns to his hometown and teaches and people were amazed. Up until this point, this story looks very similar to the other accounts.

There’s a little twist though. Because this is Jesus’ hometown, people know his family. They start questioning where Jesus could have gotten this knowledge from considering what they know of his family members. Kind of a, “Woah, woah, woah, you’re not who we remember you as!” Then, “they took offense at him.”

Last night at the INN, Lisa spoke on boxing people in. What assumptions we make about people based on how they’re dressed, where they come from, or the assumptions that people make about people who claim christianity. This seems to be a pretty good case of boxing in Jesus. These people think they know him, based on his family, his childhood, and who knows what else. Despite the fact that they were amazed by his teaching, they closed themselves to it because it didn’t fit in the box that they had placed Christ in. It’s some form of doubt they have in him, not believing he is who he is claiming to be, or qualified to teach the things he’s teaching.

Then, the story takes a bigger turn from the other accounts in other cities, because Jesus didn’t perform the all the miracles, or as many anyway, because of “their lack of faith”.

Which makes me wonder what the starting point is then for a miracle. The “I’ll believe it when I see it” mentality doesn’t fit here. Because they didn’t believe it, the weren’t given the opportunity to see it.

Maybe I spend too much time waiting to see something big happen before I believe. Maybe instead I should just believe that God is at work, whether or not I see the signs. Instead, having faith, continuously trying to seek God’s will and continue to look for him at work.

Carrying onward with enormous scope, I’ve been reading Matthew 7-11 this week. To keep in manageble, today I’m looking at just Matthew 9:9-13.

There’s a ton in this chunk of verses. Lot’s of stuff that I’ve heard talked about before, and lot’s of things that could be drawn from the text. In this section, Jesus has called Matthew, the tax collector. Matthew is just hanging out at a tax collector’s booth. Maybe he’s collecting taxes, or maybe he’s taking a break and just hanging out with the other tax collectors. No matter what he’s doing though, Jesus says, “Follow me”, and Matthew gets up and follows him.

The next scene takes place at Matthew’s place during dinner. There are other tax collectors and “sinners” present that are also eating. The Pharisees see this and start asking the disciples why Jesus would eat with sinners. Of course, Jesus hears this and responds with, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

My biggest observation on these verses that I hadn’t noticed before is that Jesus calls Matthew away from the tax collector’s booth, and what I would expect to happen next is to have Jesus and Matthew head somewhere else. Somewhere away from Matthew’s regular, everyday, life. Something like a retreat. You know, a good, solid place to start learning from this great teacher.

What does happen though after Jesus tells Matthew to follow him is that they head to Matthew’s house to eat with Matthew’s regular crowd. This isn’t really an escape at all.

Maybe in the same way, when Jesus asks us to follow him, it doesn’t as much mean turning away from the everyday regular life, but instead allowing new hope and learning to enter into those situations as well. There is a little bit of turning away, demonstrated by Matthew getting up and leaving his tax booth, but I wonder if this dinner was too different from Matthew’s regular dinner situation.

And even in what may have been a regular dinner situation, Jesus finds a teaching moment to make a statement about why he had come.

The more I look at these verses, the more I realize there is, and what it might mean. I’ll be thinking about this more through the weekend.

Reading through Matthew 1-6 during this week has made me well aware of two big challenges that face my study plan. First, the idea of reading the first six chapters of Matthew and creating a reasonable sized blog post is going to be incredibly challenging. There’s much to say about any single verse, let alone the entire first six chapters. I think there may be some weeks where I need to blog more than once, or be satisfied in limiting the scope of my post to a certain verse.

The second challenge is in my mentor meetings throughout the week and the month. Where do you start a conversation on the first six books of Matthew? These chapters cover the birth of Christ through a chunk of the Sermon on the Mount. Wow. That’s a pretty impressive scope.

A small verse that caught me in particular right in the middle of this chunk was Matthew 4:17: From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” I was struck by the simplicity of the message (and yet really complicated), and that I have heard this said and used before.

The normal context I’ve heard “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near” in is on street corners in cities, on signs, or at the county fair. Usually, it’s meant to mean something about turning from your ways now, because you don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. Almost as if we look at Jesus saying this as a get it right, because the end is near.

Recently, I talked at the last summer INN about heaven. It was the most difficult time preparing and speaking I’ve ever had. Assembling the vast amount of details into some coherent message was challenging, confusing, and stretching. Within the topic of heaven, I crossed paths a few times with mentions of this “kingdom of heaven” and it being near.

In my preparation for speaking, I discovered that the kingdom of heaven has very little to do with an afterlife, but instead so much to do with right now on this earth. While I don’t want to say that the folks at the county fair that are asking people where they’ll go when they die are wrong, I think Jesus might be saying something bigger.

Instead of reading “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near” as “Hurry and get it together because you don’t have much time!”, I get the impression that this might more of a “Something amazing that is going to change the world is coming, turn from those things you’re doing to catch a glimpse of it”.

I wonder if Jesus is simply telling us that something is coming that we don’t want to miss. This kingdom thing. A new way. Something to pick us up out of the mundane, everyday world that wears us down. A kingdom where people look out for one another instead of just watching their own backs. An upside down kingdom, belonging to those who are down and out. Where those who thirst for righteousness will be quenched. This is a kingdom that challenges our default selfishness and sets us as examples and mentors for others. Turn from what you’re doing now, because you don’t want to miss this.

As Jesus told this to people, they listened. Peter and Andrew dropped their nets and left the life that they had likely known for generations.   Don’t miss this. Leave those nets. Your income, family, history, what you know. Leave it. You don’t want to miss this.

I wonder if it’s like two friends standing on a hilltop near sunset. One friend is distracted by a squirrel, or something that seems pretty neat in the moment. The other friend notices the sun setting and brilliant colors splashing across the sky and the land below. With a sense of urgency, this friend can’t help but exclaim to the animal viewing friend to turn away from it and check out the sunset. It’s what they’re there for in the first place.

As strange as that hilltop scene is, I imagine to a great extent, Christ beckons us to “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near” because the reason we’re here is something other than what we’re focused on. Something far more amazing than the things we get wrapped up in every day. Something even more beautiful and dramatic than the sunset above. Something worth dropping everything for so as to not miss it.

It’s finally here! This blog is up, and the week is here for the start of the Stead Halstead School of Biblical Literacy. Wow, that’s a lot of words.

First, a little bit of background: This year, I’m serving part-time as the administrator of the INN. Not that God isn’t working through others in other places, but you know.

I decided to shift my perspective on part time. What if instead of looking at being part time as a not-quite-there/need to find a few other jobs to make it situation, I viewed it instead as the most incredible opportunity to step back from a busy (hopefully) rest of my life with full time work and study some things that I haven’t studied in depth before. Working with a college ministry that is connected with a church and feeling a calling that many more of my years will be spent with this and other non-profits, I decided that I should study the Bible. There are lots of reasons for this, but I believe the Bible is God’s word and it changes lives.

I knew that if I told myself that I was going to just “read the bible” this year, I would get about a month in (if I was lucky), until I faded back into regular devotions and less of an indepth, comprehensive, look at what lies within. That would be alright, but less than I was shooting for.

This year is an experiment. I’ve asked several people that I look up to be my mentors. Each week, I’ll be studying a specific chunk of scripture, reflecting on it on this blog, and meeting with one of the mentors to discuss and dig a bit deeper.

During this year, I invite you to try this out with me. I’m excited to learn a lot through this process, but I’ll need your help. As I put up blog posts each week about my interactions with the text, I encourage you to comment. Tell me what you loved, how it relates to you, stories, what you strongly disagree with, or that I’ve got it all wrong. Those are all ok things. I’m fine with it, and I’m sure we’ll all grow from the experience.

I’m excited for what this year holds. There’s a lot of stuff on the schedule, but I’m excited to see where it all goes. No turning back!