Thu 8 Oct 2009

Matthew 22-28

Posted by stead under Biblical Literacy
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As I wrap up Matthew, I ran across one of my all time favorite parables. I would point to this parable as one that started on a path of fiscal responsiblity and stewardship in my own life. I very much enjoy the ever famous parable of the talents.

In Matthew 25:14-30, Jesus shares the parable of the talents. This is the story of a man going away and giving three of his servents bits of his property to take care of. The first gets five talents, the second two, and the third  gets only one.

The first two invested the money in some way. The third dug a whole in the ground and hid the money. The two that invested ended up with more, and the third servant had the exact same amount. The master expresses how pleased he is with the first two, and to the third he says, “You wicked, lazy servant!”

Ouch.

One thing that I paid closer attention to on this reading of this parable was the wording of the master to the two servants who had invested. It’s exactly the same. Copied and pasted. Tape recorder playback. Broken record. The only difference in this interaction is that the servants were entrusted with different amounts. All of the servants in the story are given something.

I am convinced that if the servant that was given one talent would have also gone and invested it, the response from the master would have been with the same pleasure and celebration that the other two received.

Some of us have a lot, others not much. Whether we’re talking about money, possessions, influence, anything. It’s important to remember that these things have been given to us by God. That alone shifts our thinking about what we have. I’m always more careful when I’m taking care of something that belongs to someone else. There’s nothing worse than breaking something a friend has lent to you.

Beyond realizing that it all belongs to God in the first place, we see in this story that keeping what we’ve been given to our selves isn’t enough. We need to use it, multiply it, produce more, or share it.

So, what have you been given? How can you use it responsibly and increase it for the purpose of the Kingdom?

I don’t think the return needs to be in the same currency as the gift either. I am fortunate to have a car. It wouldn’t make sense for God to have given me a car with the expectation that I multiply my car ownership by his return. Instead of “How many cars do you have for me now?”, I think he is and will be asking, “How did you use that car to advance the kingdom?” or “How did allow that car I gave you that rusts and falls apart to participate in everlasting kingdom moments?”

I hope that with what I’ve been given, I will be responsible, not just for the sake of taking care of what I’ve been given, but also to increase the Kingdom of God in Bellingham and on the earth.

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Wed 30 Sep 2009

Matthew 16-22

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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.

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Wed 23 Sep 2009

Matthew 12-15

Posted by Stead under Biblical Literacy
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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.

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Fri 18 Sep 2009

Matthew 7-11

Posted by Stead under Biblical Literacy
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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.

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Fri 11 Sep 2009

Matthew 1-6

Posted by Stead under Biblical Literacy
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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.

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Mon 7 Sep 2009

The Stead Halstead School of Biblical Literacy

Posted by Stead under Biblical Literacy
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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!

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Mon 10 Aug 2009

On Campus

Posted by Stead under Campus, the INN
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I’m on campus again. Feels great. Today I’m spending two hours up here to brainstorm some ideas, passages, and thoughts on heaven for my talk next week at the INN.

Campus is quiet, but it’s nice. Sitting in the skybridge, open to distractions. This is one of my favorite spots. Not really the skybridge, but the library in general. A combination of quiet, productive, and lots of free space. On top of all that, it puts me in the middle of those I’m attempting to serve.

Updates soon. And probably a blog move to a new spot because of my templating woes with blogspot. Besides that, steadwald.com has plenty of free space.

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Fri 10 Jul 2009

Messy Faith

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This is something similar to my talk I gave at the Summer INN two weeks ago. It’s not totally the same though due to different audiences, and a fair amount of additions during the talk. For more details on the INN, check out our website at www.theinnministries.org or find us on twitter at twitter.com/theINN 

I’ve been moving for the last few weeks. I’ve moved out of where I lived during the year, and into a new spot that I’m subletting for the summer. In late august or early September, I’ll be moving again to a more permanent location here in Bellingham. All this means a whole lot of cardboard, piles of stuff, and missing important things. On top of all of this mess in my room, I decided to go down to my parent’s house in maple Valley to fetch a few of those boxes that I haven’t really thought about for the last few years. They’re the things that we’ve all got, like gifts from the last few years, yearbooks, and all sorts of things.

I care about these things, of course, and they have some good sentimental value, but on the other hand, they’ve been in a box at my parent’s house for the last four years and I haven’t thought about them once. I can’t bring myself to get rid of them, but I also can’t figure out how to keep them.

The goal in having all this stuff up here is to be able to work through it, figure out what I do need, what I don’t need, and simplify a bit. I’m really getting bogged down though being in the midst of the mess in my room. I’m tired of waking up and jumping out of bed only to step on several layers of clothes, puzzles and who knows what else. Even though I’m tired of all of the stuff, I’m in the midst of this mess because I know that next year I’ll be much better off having sorted through things.

In a lot of the same ways, stuff piles up in our lives. Not all of it is bad, some is, but all of it makes life a little trickier. It’s worth looking into these messes in our lives, and possibly even realizing that God could be working in the midst of them.

We live messy lives. We’re messy people. As much as we’d like to portray an image that we’ve got it all together, we get things wrong, let others down, and fail to love.

I think the summer is a cool time to be around the INN because of a lot of reasons, but I especially love that there are people here that have been going to school at western as well as people who grew up around Bellingham and are back fro the summer, and people with stories that we haven’t heard. We’ve all been in hard, messy places before and this summer is an incredible time to share this with others in the community. Things go differently than we planned, and we run into hurt and pain in our lives, sometimes that we don’t even know about.

Everything seems to get messy in our lives as some point. Relationships with our parents get messy when we don’t call or visit often enough, relationships with our roommates get tough when we don’t do our dishes or can’t pay rent, and relationships with other people get messy when we don’t love them like we should. As simple as loving God with all our heart and loving our neighbors as ourself is by itself, when we apply it to our lives, things seem to get a little bit trickier, messier, mudier.

With all this terrible realization of how messy our lives get, where does God come into all of this? What could a good, perfect, loving God have to do with people who trip and fall in their life, continuously turning to and from God? Despite the fact that we can’t get it right, God still loves and cares for us. In Romans 5, verses 6-8 Paul says this:

“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

We don’t have to get it all right, and we won’t get it all right. Even though I have a long history of turning away from God and forgetting to love my neighbors, he died for me. For all of us, He died. Not because we had cleaned up the messes in our lives, but because he loved us. God died for us knowing fully how we have separated ourselves from Him.

I did a quick search in the bible for mess when I started preparing. I was a little shocked at first, when 780 results came up. I was a little disappointed though when I saw that almost all the results were not just the word mess, but usually message or messiah. I scrolled through the list anyway, but as my eyes crossed all of these “mess” words, I started thinking that maybe it wasn’t such a coincidence. Now, of course if you go look at some background, or the greek and Hebrew, I’m sure there is actually no connection, but, I found it interesting anyway that God’s message kept coming up, and perhaps the phrasing God’s message has something to do with God entering into our mess, and Messiah has something to do with Christ walking with us and helping us through our messy lives.

The ways that we are challenged to interact with others often causes some messiness in our lives. Loving God and loving our neighbors are concepts foreign to a lot of people around us. Living these things out is challenging. Loving our enemies includes loving those around us that maybe we wouldn’t associate with otherwise. It can mean uncomfortable conversations with people that you don’t know. It can mean stretching ourselves to do something for others without looking for credit. It can mean forgiving others that for largely offensive things when our culture tells us to disassociate with the person. Not only do the actions make our life more difficult or messier, but living the words of Christ gets people talking and most likely questioning what you’re doing.

My room is still full of boxes, piles of clothes and memories from the last 23 years, but I’m working through it. I have to admit though, I haven’t done it all by myself. People have helped me pack, transport boxes, move furniture and more. We shouldn’t be in our spiritual/emotional/relational messiness alone either. We know that God is with us, and it’s important to connect with others in community.

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Sun 14 Jun 2009

End of Season

Posted by Stead under Uncategorized
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Well, the internship has ended! This week is a week off, and then the following week we start up the Summer INN. As sad as I am that the internship is over, I know that some really great things are coming up. The summer INN feels like an experiment in community that is very fluid and student driven. It should be awesome.
As much as I want to write here about the end of the internship, I wouldn’t be able to give a full perspective of our team. For that, you’ll have to check out http://www.theinnministries.org/category/interns/ and read everyone’s final blog posts. 
Perhaps more blogging this summer. Woo hoo!

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Sat 9 May 2009

Posted by Stead under Uncategorized
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Phone pic number one!

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