"Fear Not, God Intruding!"

Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have summoned you by name;
You are mine.
When you pass through the waters I will be with you
And when you pass through the rivers,
They will not sleep over you.
When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned;
The flames will not set you ablaze.
For I am the Lord, your God,
The holy one of Israel, your Savior.
Isaiah 43: 1b-3a


We imagine life as a process of becoming our own person taking pride in our self-sufficiency. Isaiah depicts our conceit in an apocryphal carpenter

Half of the wood he burns in the fire; over it he prepares
his meal, he roasts his meat and eats his fill. He also warms
himself and says, “Ah I am warm; I see the fire.” From the
rest he makes a god, his idol; he bows down to it and worships.
He prays to it and says, “Save me; you are my god.” (Isaiah 44:16)

Fending off destruction or just diminution, enjoying plenty, we arrogate determination of worship’s object..

“…From the
rest he makes a god, his idol; he bows down to it and worships.
He prays to it and says, ‘Save me; you are my god.’” (Isaiah 44:16)


We quaver when God intrudes into our existence because He exceeds our control and that implies the possibility of our destruction. His presence confronts us with it. Nothing we know nor anything we have done bequeaths assurance about the outcome of His intrusion. He is not bound by us and only bound to be Himself.

“…he who created you…
He who formed you…” (Isaiah 43: 1a)

“the Lord your God,
The Holy one of Jacobs’s progeny, your Savior.” (Isaiah 43:3)

Isaiah admonishes us to relinquish our fears because God claims us as His creation.

“Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have summoned you by name; you are mine.” (Isaiah 43:1b)

“Fear not,” sounds good. Warm fire, well cooked game, and now, on top of contentment, fearlessness about what lies beyond the pale of the fire and the fullness of the belly. I can keep on, “keepin’ on.”

But Isaiah does not confirm a conceit. God’s redemption frees us from fear. We have “deemed” ourselves self-sufficient; God, has “deemed” us as His. The wood for our fire, our fire, the meat roasted on it--- all that meets our needs and satisfies our wants, God has “deemed” His provision.

Our self-sufficiency is relinquished with our fear, but contentedly sitting by the fire, it’s inconsequential. So, Isaiah, makes it acute: when we face overwhelming physical threats, God provides the same sort of contentment we feel when warm and well fed.

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
And when you pass through the rivers,
They will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire you will not be burned;
The flames will not set you ablaze.” (Isaiah 43:2)

We are saved from the very disasters we most fear as intractable to our ameliorative efforts when God is with us. Isaiah dismisses fear because with God, the disasters are there but the destruction is not.

“…when you pass through the rivers,
They will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire you will not be burned” (Isaiah 43:2)

Thanksgiving Prayer, Thursday, November 25, 2010

Praise the LORD!
For it is good to sing praises to our God;
For it is pleasant, and praise is beautiful.

² The LORD builds up Jerusalem;
He gathers together the outcasts of Israel.
³ He heals the brokenhearted
And binds up their wounds.

Psalm 147: 1-3

We now pray in thanks to You, Lord, because we know it is a good thing to do. This holiday which we celebrate was established for it. Who can deny that goodness and plenty in this land exceed what would be measured out to us if we received only what we deserved? You do not leave our lives to be defined by the foolishness, greed, malevolence, poverty and unfounded discrimination that mark our everyday conduct. Instead You awaken us to compassion by Your mercy on us, to truth by Your faithfulness, to love by Your gifts, to joy by Your presence and to Your coming kingdom by healing.

You have made it pleasant now today to think about how much we have. We are not rich, each of us, in the same things; we are differently endowed by You. But who now lets himself or herself get stuck in comparing what they have to what others have, when we can rejoice that what we have comes from You, the Eternal Creator and always faithful Provider? Who wants to need stuff when, here, today, You offer us the joy that what we have is but a tiny portion of all that You want to give us? Who wants to be gloomy considering today, for now, what he or she might lose, when we can be made glad that the Providential God of the Universe is looking out for our happiness and well being.

We thank-you that Deb zealously threw herself into being the hands and the cook of these immediate gifts of your bounty for us. We thank you that she worked hard and for days to create this dinner for us, and we ask that Your appreciation will magnify ours and that she will be happy to have done this and restored to the new days’ tasks tomorrow.

We thank-you that you have gathered us who have never celebrated Thanksgiving together to do so today because we know all the claptrap about unchanging traditions of celebrations and traditions with too much specificity serve to divide us and make us compete leaving people more disappointed and frustrated than Thankful. If nothing else, we here, today, are trying hard to live out the lives You have laid before us and we are grateful that you have preserved us with good gifts beyond what we could make for ourselves or demand as our just rewards.

In the Know ???????

For we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of our trouble which came to us in Asia: that we were burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life. 9 Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead, 10 who delivered us from so great a death, and does[a] deliver us; in whom we trust that He will still deliver us, 2nd Corinthians 1:8-10

Wouldn’t most of us have to admit that there are books in the Bible about which we do not know anything? Aren’t there sections of the Bible with which we are unfamiliar? I mean, doesn’t a title like “the Minor Prophets” come right to mind? Wouldn’t we have to admit that we couldn’t be sure if some ancient sounding name were or were not the author of a Book included there?

Come right down to it, isn’t it true that 63 books are a lot of books to remember when most of what is written talks about people and places that aren’t ever mentioned anywhere else- even in any of all the history you had to take in school? I mean, maybe if you study the Bible, you become a better person, but nothing written there changes anything that is going to happen, right? If it did, then people who wanted to know stuff would read it, not just people who want to be good, right?

To be real honest, which we know we are supposed to be, many of us who are Christians think these very thoughts. We know that we share these thoughts with people who make no claim to being Christian. Sure it makes us uncomfortable. Mainly it makes us uncomfortable around pastors, Sunday school teachers, and people that carry around Bibles on the week days in backpacks, briefcases and pocketbooks. Knowing stuff about the Bible is like remembering the code to the combination lock you used in 8^th grade gym class when you are a senior in high school. Some kids do, but you don’t want to go their parties or even have to give them a ride home when your practice ends same time as their club meeting.

Many of you reading this are saying, “Well all that is true, but I know that Corinthians is a book in the Bible, and I know it was written by Paul. It’s read at weddings and funerals Corinthians says really quoted stuff: what’s most important is faith, hope and love-and love is most important of all; or, we know some things now, but when we die and go to heaven we come directly before God everything will make sense. It’s good stuff to hear when you’re hookin’ up with someone for life, or when someone you know just died.

The rest of it is like Paul talking to the people in his day and times. He’s going over stuff with them that leads him to say those famous quotations. It’s a letter and it starts out like letters in those days and ends like letters in those days. It’s how people talked to people not right there in front of them before there was such a thing as texting. How people talked to people before texting?”

Exactly! I like that. Paul was in like NOW mode, “Wazz up? Chillin with my homies?”

The pastors, Sunday school teachers and people carrying Bibles on the weekdays may need Paul to have said, “The greatest of these is Love,” or, “though now we see in part, then we shall see face to face,” but Paul didn’t need to get into history like he needed a good Blackberry. Stuff had happened and more stuff that everyone expected should have happened didn’t happen and he suddenly saw why it didn’t. So he was hot to tell the people he thought were most affected.

Generally, when we hang onto something from the Bible we do it because something that mattered has happened and we want to know if, here, now, talk about God makes any difference. The short answer is that it doesn’t. Talking about God doesn’t make a difference-at least not for the good. Instead, Paul texts about himself and what has happened to him: “Supposed to be with You, NOT. Really weird stuff went down. So whacked out we are like hanging on to God for our lives.” God makes the stuff that matters happen. Paul found it out over and over again. He knew it like a fist in his face: SO HE TEXTED HIS FRIENDS.

Forget all that cranking about God creating the world or working in history. Who is history? It’s like remembering the combination to your eighth grade combination lock in your senior year of high school. What is going on now is what makes anyone talk about God. You talk about God when you can’t help it. He does stuff that matters and you tell people because the stuff matters - not because God did it. Because the stuff matters to you - not to pastors, Sunday School teachers and people who carry Bibles around on the weekdays in backpacks, briefcases and pocketbooks. Ditto, Paul.

I am going to bet you two things. The first big bet: God makes stuff happen in your life.

The second big bet: He does it for reasons really only you can tell us about.

People can guess. And surely they do. Pastors, Sunday school teachers and people who carry Bibles around on the week days in backpacks, briefcases and pocketbooks are real eager to tell you why God does stuff in your life. Maybe they really can ask God or maybe they suggest reasons to you that seem to explain everything. But, if we out here in TV-land are going to know anything about what God does in your life, you gotta tell us. Like, tweet us! “Yo homies, talking real smack ‘bout how this day supposed to go down & the wacked out way it did go down. Can’t all be on me, so listen up!”

So what if I am wrong, and I lose my bet? I lose my credibility with you. You will turn me off like a water faucet. If I win my bet, you are matching stories about God with Paul, and you are the one telling people about stuff that God has done which actually matters that has happened to people we can know and ask questions. Not dead old timers with goofy names.

In Our Times of Trouble

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed— always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So then death is working in us, but life in you.
2 Corinthians 4: 7-12




Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Father of Comfort, God of Mercy:
We come together seeking You in prayer now because we are confronted by difficult, challenging and heartbreaking things and we want your help. In the lives of our friends and our family members and ourselves, we want the goodness which we believe is the stuff of your imminent and coming kingdom to prevail. We also want your comfort, solace and assurance.

We do not ask You to remove what exists by Your permission; for as Paul has written in the first letter to the Corinthians “… we know in part and we prophesy in part.” (1 Corinthians 13:9). We remember that You “…answered Job out of the whirlwind and said…’Would you indeed annul My judgment? Would You condemn me that you may be justified?'” (Job 40:6-8) So we resist the temptation to point out to you what we believe you must want and refuse to claim authority to command You to do it.

We ask that You make our hearts tender toward the people we know who are troubled, who are dying physically, and who are sick-perhaps unto death-spiritually. We ask that You do not let us put aside their troubles tomorrow or the next day, nor let their trouble overwhelm our energy to remain engaged with them and struggle with them. We ask that You do not let them defeat our confidence, overwhelm our joy or take away our rest in You.

We know that while Your Spirit has brought us face to face with these situations and invited us into to them to bear with our acquaintances and family members their pain, (as Paul wrote in Galatians 6:2 “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”), Your ultimate goal is their restoration and perfection with us. As the writer of Hebrews said, “And all these people of faith, having obtained a good testimony through faith, DID NOT receive the promise, God having something better for us that they should not be made perfect apart from us.” (Hebrews 11:39-40).

Enable us to suffer with them, bear with them, and endure with them that Your grace is, and will be ever more, palpable and that we might have with them joy in their eventual restoration.

We acknowledge that we and our words of faith are not their salvation, deliverance or comfort: You are. Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth, “For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves (phew) we are your bond servants for Jesus’ sake.” 2nd Corinthians 4: 5

We know that these things that trouble us did not just happen to us and those that we love, but that You have sent us to live in them, “always carrying around in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our mortal flesh. So then death is working in us, but life in them…” 2nd Corinthians 4:10-12.

Oh, Padre de Nuestro Senor Jesu Christo, free and embolden us to “… lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily ensnares us and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us looking unto Jesus, the author AND finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the Cross, despising the shame and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12: 1b-2)

The Joy of the Lord

Nehemiah said, "Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength."

Nehemiah 8:9-11


Asked, most of us would likely admit that we would like to live lives characterized by the joy of the Lord. I would guess that at various times in our lives many of us have experienced a surpassing exhilaration that seemed to release us from all the weight of disappointment, humiliation, inadequacy and insignificance. When we think about the joy of the Lord, we may recall this experience. For others of you the joy of the Lord may be much less an emotional phenomena; you may recall moments when a personal assurance that God controls everything and has used that to love us and make us His children overwhelmed and supplanted every grievance, complaint and irritation as well as every legacy of victimization, failure and indifference.

Whatever else it may mean to us, the joy of the Lord probably means to us happiness and freedom or release. Paul liked the word “liberty.” However, I suspect that most of us regret that the joy of the Lord seems so transient. Our lives have “highs” and “lows;” the latter tend to out number the former; and, believers tend to see this as the inescapable consequence of original sin, our sinful nature and our sinful decisions. These irreducibly mar our earthly existence, and the Good News is that Christ died to save us from this marred existence by opening to us a life after death free from sin. In other words, the joy of the Lord will be a permanent condition of eternal life commencing after death.

I have not written all this as a preface to suggesting that with a different understanding the joy of the Lord will be more accessible. Rather I want to share that recently as I was praying, over several days, God just kept putting the phrase, the joy of the Lord, on my heart, in my ears, and even in a vision of the written words. Furthermore, He pointed out to me that if I believe that His joy is a desirable but inherently unsustainable state, I will not seriously pray for it. But He affirmed that it is His desire that we should pray for His Joy, that we should have it, and that it is not He limiting the joy of the Lord to our life after death.

Narrative Issues: What is The Story within the Story

But Jesus said, “Somebody touched Me, for I perceived power going out from Me.” Now when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling; and falling down before Him, she declared to Him in the presence of all the people the reason she had touched Him and how she was healed immediately.
And He said to her, “Daughter, be of good cheer; your faith has made you well. Go in peace.”

(Luke 8:46-48)

The story of the woman with the issue of blood (Luke 8:43-48) interrupts the narrative of Jesus going to Jairus’s house to miraculously raise his daughter from the dead (Luke 8: 41-42, 49-56). Luke’s tale depicts a crowd thronging Jesus treated to the spectacle of the ruler of the synagogue, named Jairus, prostrating himself before Jesus and beseeching Him to come his mortally ill daughter’s bedside to heal her. It stops abruptly with Jesus halting on the way to attend to the woman with the issue of blood. As Jesus finishes speaking with her, people from the synagogue ruler’s house arrive announcing the girl has died.

Must the story of this never named woman, impoverished by persistently seeking a cure for her hemorrhage simply reduce to a narrative foil for the story of a more awesome miracle Jesus performs on behalf of the ruler of the synagogue? Perhaps it functions as more. Luke describes how the woman with an issue of blood worked her way through the throng around Jesus, unnoticed, to touch the hem of his robe. He immediately felt healing power flow out of Him and turning to the crowd asked, “Who touched Me?” The woman with an issue of blood owns up and Jesus says her faith has made her well.

So Luke interjects the story of the woman with an issue of blood into the over-arching Jairus narrative to modestly demonstrate the power of faith the woman’s faith presaging the subsequently even more impressive demonstration of Jesus’s healing power. Now, the reader knows why Jairus should do what Jesus says, “Only believe and she will be made well.” (Luke 8:50) Raising the dead certainly trumps curing a hemorrhage, but it all springs from the same root. The message to the reader is plain: You “just gotta believe” and Jesus can meet your need, too.

Doesn’t it seem just silly that while assenting to go to the sick bed of Jairus’s daughter in time to heal her, Jesus would not only stop and demand to know who touched Him, but that he would then dally listening to the respondent’s whole story? Did He want to make sure she had a pure motive for “touching” Him before continuing on his way? Did he want to be certain before He left her that she was not seeking a cure on the cheap, trying to avoid paying the doctors’ fees? Was he going to “take back” the healing if she didn’t have a good story-before it was too late? “Five-mile” rule (e.g., If you walk five miles after a healing, you can’t take it back)?

Or, is the real story that nothing was more important to Jesus than the healing of this woman whop never gave up hope of a cure even though the pursuit of that hope impoverished her? Is the narrative that, thronged as He was by the crowd, pressed as He was to help the local big shot, ruler of the synagogue, nothing was more important to Jesus than this anonymous woman and her humiliating plight? Could this be a tale of how nothing was more important to the incarnate God than to recognize the woman with an issue of blood at that moment when God- power passed from Him to her?

Is this a narrative that illustrates what Jesus meant by his gospel? Did Luke show us the Good News with a story of how Jesus stopped the crowd thronging Him to see Him do His magic for the ruler of the synagogue so that the God-son could announce that the woman with an issue of blood-a “God-creation” invisible to the crowd, separated from community with them by impurity and humiliation-was made well? Did Luke find compelling that what had brought her to this juncture was her persevering hope – a God-belief, faith?

When Jesus said, “Who touched me?” and this woman with an unceasing flow of contaminating blood replied, “I,” Jesus named her “Daughter” –of my loins and seed. It doesn’t presage the story of crowd’s favorite, the entitled and befuddled Jairus. Jairus serves as a backdrop to the story of the woman with an issue of blood. Her narrative presages the story of the criminal who being crucified with Jesus said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” (Luke 23:42)

“Jesus answered him, ‘I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.’" (Luke 23:43)

Only Believe

While He was still speaking, someone came from the ruler of the synagogue’s house, saying to him, “Your daughter is dead. Do not trouble the Teacher.” But when Jesus heard it, He answered him, saying, “Do not be afraid; only believe, and she will be made well.” When He came into the house, He permitted no one to go in except Peter, James, and John, and the father and mother of the girl. Now all wept and mourned for her; but He said, “Do not weep; she is not dead, but sleeping.” And they ridiculed Him, knowing that she was dead. But He put them all outside, took her by the hand and called, saying, “Little girl, arise.” Then her spirit returned, and she arose immediately. And He commanded that she be given something to eat. And her parents were astonished, but He charged them to tell no one what had happened.
Luke 8: 49-51


Luke says that Jesus was enroute to Jairus’s House to cure his daughter when He received word she had died. Jesus replies, “Do not be afraid, only believe and she will be well again,” (Luke 8:50). What was it that Jairus was not to fear? We, who have little familiarity with death and would likely think it was “spooky” resonate with Jesus admonition. But Jairus would not. Death was commonplace in 1st century Palestine.

What problem or question would “only believe” be the answer for? “Don’t be afraid she is dead. Only believe she is still alive?” That’s a problem for believers. If she is still alive then Jesus didn’t raise her from the dead. If she isn’t alive, Jesus is counseling Jairus to pretend that his daughter is alive? What does that help? How is that the gospel? Pretend and it shall be true!

Was Jesus telling Jairus don’t worry about the fact that because the healing of his daughter was not a typical “bedside, hands-on-the-head, prayers up to YAHWEH in the nick of time” healing it wouldn’t work? But why then say, “Only believe!” Why not say, “Who, me, worry?” Or “Watch this!” Or, “Shows you how much you earthlings know!”

Did Jesus need Jairus’s belief to work his miracle? People in Jesus’s village didn’t believe he was Messiah, and the gospel says he couldn’t do much in the way of miracles there. But Luke doesn’t tell us whether Jairus actually believed or not. It would be an appalling error in logical thought for the Scripture lesson to work throughour inference that because the little girl was healed Jairus did believe.

Did the healing consist in the spirits return to the little girl so that she sat up and needed nourishment? Was it the little girl to whom Jesus was really offering healing, or Jairus? Was the fear that Jesus admonished Jairus to abjure, the fear that all he had been and accumulated meant nothing? Was the fear that Jesus wanted Jairus to overcome the fear that if his daughter’s death was not final and irreversible then the real power to truly heal lay outside all his expectations and faith?

Was Jesus saying to Jairus, “Don’t worry about the little girl! I got that covered, bro; but what I do is going to rock your world; it’s outside your expectations; it’s going to make you doubt everything you have known, believed, practiced, achieved and acquired as a ruler of the synagogue. But stay with me, man. All you gotta do here is BELIEVE.

Believe what? Jesus is not a theologian and the Bible is not a theological text. When I can manage to trust Jesus like Jairus,I can say with the evangelist Paul, “I know whom I have believed.” I can say with Job,“I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear,But now my eye sees You." (Job 42:5)