Author: Bryan Richardson

Re:Verse passage – Matthew 18:1-4 (day three)

“Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”

The scientific advances in physics which have led to manipulation of electromagnetism to encode information digitally and convey it over vast networks of interconnected devices have all been brought to bear to create this message: “Your call is important to us.” Does anyone alive believe that’s true? We have harnessed the power of the cosmos and we’ve used it to lie to ourselves. Is it any wonder you might think, “Do I matter to another person, even to God?” That’s the haunting thought at the bottom of the old “Who’s the greatest?” query. It turns out that God loves just you – the you absent the meticulously crafted image, behind your defenses, without your escape hatches, like you used to be when you were a child, before the world taught you to hide.

Re:Verse passage – Luke 19:1-10 (day three)

“Behold, Lord, half of my possessions I will give to the poor.”

We’re not privy to their conversation, but it sure seems likely that Jesus gave Zacchaeus a picture of what life on earth could look like as Zacchaeus would leverage his financial acumen to address poverty. Jesus issues a high, holy calling to Zacchaeus to rise up and become an architect of a righteous and just society where the powerful advocate for the poor. That is a compelling invitation for someone of Zacchaeus’s particular skill set. There is no doubt whatsoever that Zacchaeus believed in Jesus for his salvation. But he believed by acting on the beautiful possibilities that Jesus held out before him. Evangelism like this gives people a glimpse of the beautiful world that’s coming, and lets them know that they can be a vital part of that beautiful world.

Re:Verse passage – Matthew 28:18-20 (day three)

“…even to the end of the age.”

During this Age of Men, that is, the age of the human race, one constant remains amid the tumult: the light of the presence of the Christ. But if we expect there to be any other source of light, the night — be it suffering or fear or loss or dreams dashed — will be very disappointing and very, very dark indeed. Perhaps it has seemed that way to you. Were you expecting more light, less darkness? Any sudden flare of physical light will disorient you (think of high beam headlights aimed straight at you in the thick of night on a narrow, unfamiliar mountain road). It’s no different in the spiritual realm. The light Christ gives now will be sufficient.

Re:Verse passage – John 13:3-17 (day three)

“He who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you.”

Jesus declared that Peter had already experienced radical (in the sense of all-encompassing) cleansing. He couldn’t be more saved than he was. Peter’s three years of apprenticeship to the Lord were truly a soul-bath. Every word Peter heard Jesus speak, every miracle he saw Jesus perform, every look he saw Jesus give, every road he saw Jesus walk, every lost person he saw Jesus find – this was Peter’s bath. And this work of Jesus cleansed Peter as Peter gave himself to that cleansing. He often came reluctantly or cantankerously into the water, but he came. Judas never let the water trouble him the way it did Peter and the others. He held himself apart – hygiene-adjacent, but never clean.

Re:Verse passage – Matthew 6:5-13 (day three)

“They love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men.”

Jesus had witnessed the Pharisees’ public theological oratory and prayers. It didn’t do anything for him. Reaching for a way to describe what he saw as spiritual theater, Jesus came up with “actor,” which is what “hypocrite” originally referred to in the ancient world. “What you see there are Academy award-winning performances,” Jesus might as well have said, “but it certainly isn’t true intimacy with God.” Jesus knew that people have pretty good phoniness detectors. They likely already knew that what they saw was often hogwash. But hey, what’re you gonna do? Jesus’s revolutionary teaching declared that they could find God without these thespians. He showed the way to raw, risky, and real life with God through genuine prayer.

Re:Verse passage – 2 Corinthians 9:6-12 (day three)

“Each one must do just as he has purposed in his heart, not grudgingly or under compulsion.”

Tugging at heart strings, appealing to feelings of guilt, and priority-shaming have all served as tools for attempting to bend the will of people toward open-handedness. Sometimes it works. Coercion of any kind, though – even “benign” – will result only in short-term gain, not long-term transformation. Nobody says, “that time I gave more money to the church in order to feel better about my extravagant vacation has made me a person of joyful generosity.” Instead, straightforward and transparent statements of need, reports of gratitude, and questions that ask directly, “What are you willing to do with your treasure?” will place the church in unity with Paul’s declaration that all the forcefulness we can muster is no match for the whisper of the Holy Spirit.

Re:Verse passage – Acts 2:42-47 (day three)

“Everyone kept feeling a sense of awe.”

“Everything is awesome,” as the hilarious song declares in The Lego Movie. Gradually in that storyline, as in real life, one comes to the understanding that no, everything is not, in fact, awesome – at least in the sense of good and beautiful. Perhaps you’ve known of or been part of groups that proclaim with such forceful insistence that their organization is awesome that you wonder whether they might be trying very hard to convince themselves that it is, because they couldn’t bear the truth that it’s not. But here, we find a group of people who lived with a continual sense of joyful astonishment at their life together near God. They had discovered that the Savior called them – not the rulers of this world – to have the last word as they taught Christ to the nations.

Re:Verse passage – 2 Timothy 3:14-17 (day three) 

“…knowing from whom you have learned them…”

Here’s something true about a local congregation: You know these people. Your Sunday school teacher is ­­________. Your fellow committee member is _________. You and _______ became friends at a single adults retreat in 1985 or whatever. The point is that peers, teachers, pastors, ministry project partners – these folks know you, and you know them. And sometimes, you get tired of them. They always say the same thing about certain scriptures. You and they disagree on various issues, etc. Maybe they’d admit to feeling the same about you, too. That’s not good or bad. It’s just everyday church. And it’s in the repetitive, predictable aspects of congregational life that Christ will show himself faithful to you. These people would die for you, you for them, and you teach each other about the Lord. That’s eternal.

Re:Verse passage – Romans 8:15-17, Ephesians 5:22-32 (day three)

“This mystery is great…”

The marriage bond will defy all attempts at formulaic tidiness. You who are married might have begun to suspect as much. With all the heated debate about complementarian this and egalitarian that (what?), and the meaning of “head” and the parsing of “be subject to,” it’s easy to lose the voice of the Spirit inviting you to sit in the paradox and be formed by it. God’s word predates our ways of seeing the world. Paul calls it a mystery. Submission leads to authority, leadership results in submission. Will a wife submit to her husband? Then let her husband lift her to places of authority just as Christ commissioned Mary to evangelize about the risen Lord. Will a husband lead his wife? Then let him from her learn how to submit as Christ submitted to the cross.

Re:Verse passage – 1 Corinthians 12:12-27  (day three)

“If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it.”

In the local fellowship, what happens when grief or hardship or loss descends on the life of a person in that fellowship? In a physical body, injury means that a person will limp in order to spare a wounded foot further pain. There is no shame in a limp; a limp isn’t a defect, but rather a tender response to trauma. The human body will not attempt full range of movement and pretend there is no agony. In the church body, a limp will take various forms. But when a church insists on pretending it doesn’t need to limp, it denies the pain of those in its midst. On the other hand, a church that exists as a wounded body in this world is living in beautiful imitation of its Lord.