Bryan Richardson

Periphery

Re:Verse passage – 2 Chronicles 2:1-12 (day three)

“My servants will work with your servants…”

How does God view the laborers who had no say in the decision to use their bodies for the building of the temple? Are they peripheral? Are there any peripheral people in God’s eyes? There are in ours. We’ll never know their names. Their lives of forced servitude, harsh conditions, and static social position are foreign to those who have never been brushed aside in society. That was long ago and far away, but not to God. Wherever people’s decisions are made for them, wherever grand plans depend on the bodies and skills of those who have little say in the world, we do it again. We will cease such practices when we heed the words of Jesus regarding the temple: “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.”

Riches

Re:Verse passage – 2 Chronicles 1:1-13 (day three)

“I will also give you riches, wealth, and honor…”

The lure of the underdog narrative can command our attention to such a degree that we start to believe that underdogs always win. They don’t. They often have something to teach us about perseverance, faith, hope, and humility, but they don’t command the voice, influence, and authority it takes to shape a society. In fact, the tragedy of the underdog is this: If that person possessed social power equal to character, the kind of triumph that could result would leave a legacy capable of determining the course of history for generations. As it is, though, the world often suffers at the hands of those possessing vast resources but little understanding. “May I learn wisdom at least equal to my net worth for the sake of those I might influence” is a worthy prayer.

All

Re:Verse passage – 1 Chronicles 29:1-11 (day three)

“With all my ability I have provided for the house of my God…”

To live in the state of mind in which you can’t tell whether you or God has possession of a treasured item because you and God are so unified in the intent of how that item will be used – it seems like that would be such a pure way of life. Some people in the Bible appear to have come very close to that state of mind: the poor widow who placed all she had into the temple treasury; Zacchaeus the tax collector; Mary, the woman who anointed Jesus. We see here that same kind of spirit in David, who, for all his mercurial and ruinous patterns of living, was never one to covet wealth. Living with abandon comes with its pitfalls. One of the upsides, though, is generosity.

Life

Re:Verse passage – 1 Chronicles 28:11-21 (day three)

“Then David gave to his son Solomon…the plan of all that he had in mind.”

David’s most painful and harmful behavioral patterns – emotional distance from his family and reckless military buildup (see the census in 1 Chronicles 21), among other things – marked a continuing cycle of spiritual distress and repeated reconciliation with God. War and blood, bodily and spiritual, permeated David’s life, and he found solace with God in between those episodes. Although the temple would be God’s dwelling, it would, in the eyes of the nation, also reflect the character of the one who would set his hand to build it. David reached a point at which he understood that. The temple required the kind of stable foundation that was foreign to his way of living. His life with God was not Solomon’s. That’s neither good nor bad. It just is.

Ground

Re:Verse passage – 1 Chronicles 28:1-10 (day three)

“Now…in the hearing of our God, observe and seek after all the commandments.”

Every stab at enlightenment, every utopian dream, every attempt at higher thought has tried and failed to find a foundation besides God that will support its system of ethics or its theory of the good. One can appeal to empathy, to economics, to enterprise, to eloquence. All these and more have had their turn as the ultimate basis of a new and better way of life. And they’ve all ended up on the ash heap of history. David rightly appealed to God as the ground of all that is good. In the New Testament, Gamaliel echoed his words: “If [it] is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is of God, you will not be able to stop [it].” If we haven’t learned that by now, when?

Need

Re:Verse passage – Mark 3:31-35 (day three)

“Who are my mother and my brothers?”

Did Jesus need the intimacy of family – mother, brother, sister, father? To feel uncomfortable with that question is to recognize that we have deemed need a weakness, a frailty, a liability. But is it? Consider the kind of person for whom fellowship is not an integral part of that person’s being. That person would most certainly not be God, for God is revealed in the scriptures as an eternal fellowship of three persons. Moreover, the only way God is presented to us in the Bible is as a creator seeking fellowship with the created. To distill a “pure” form of God who exists apart from his desire to live with human beings is to suggest a God who doesn’t actually exist. We need fellowship’s intimacy not because we’re weak, but because we bear God’s image.

Shift

Re:Verse passage – Mark 3:20-30 (day three)

“He has lost His senses.”

When one encounters new circumstances, one can wedge those new circumstances into an already existing understanding of the world, or one can change that understanding to accommodate the new circumstances. Therein lies the fundamental difference between those who did not believe Jesus and those who did. The Pharisees – and others who disbelieved – never strayed from their insistence that the world is as they say it is. Jesus’s own family started in this frame of mind. Their reasoning regarding the difficulties and controversies Jesus found himself in shows a family trying to fit what they see into what they know. What they come to realize, though, is that it doesn’t fit. They will have to live with that incongruity, or change their minds. The Bible records the family’s gradually allowing what they see lead them to know something new.

Validation

Re:Verse passage – Mark 3:13-19 (day three)

“And he appointed twelve, so that they would be with him and that he could send them out to preach.”

When God reveals himself, he does so through human beings. We’re frequently looking for revelation in some other form, though. We want a sign, a miracle, or a special effect to erase our doubts and calm our fears. In short, we want God to validate us. Then we’ll know he’s for us. Then we’ll know we’re safe. But here’s the punchline: God’s self-revelation through human beings is itself a validation of human beings. The Incarnation is the most glorious validation of all, followed by the sending of ordinary men and women to proclaim the truth: The Twelve, Mary Magdalene, Paul, et al. God tells you all you need to know about your worth when someone just like you speaks to you about God.

Heal

Re:Verse passage – Mark 3:1-12 (day three)

“All those who had afflictions pressed around Him in order to touch Him.”

There is something poignant about the description of desperate people reaching out for Jesus. The emotional power of that picture doesn’t arise so much from sentimentality, though, as much as it arises from the heart-wrenching reality that Jesus was the only one – the only one – who took the time to address the hardships that burdened people to the point of despair. Where were the attempts to help from those who should have known better – from those who did, in fact, know better? Jesus gave freely of his power; he even told his disciples that they would wield the ability to do greater things than these. The reason Jesus was the only one dispensing heaven’s compassion wasn’t because heaven was stingy and proprietary, but because those in power were.

Teach

Re:Verse passage – Mark 2:23-28 (day three)

“Have you never read…?”

If ever there were an argument for free and unfettered access to the scriptures for all, this is it. The scriptures said what the Pharisees said it said. Jesus opened that lockbox right up. In the hearing of everyone, he posed questions that circumvented the Pharisees’ preferred interpretations. Of course, many people couldn’t read anyway, and that reality presented an opportunity for the powerful to build a worldview on the backs of the powerless. Nonetheless, Jesus’s questions required people to think for themselves, which took power away from the religious establishment. There will always be people – laity and clergy – who will interpret the scriptures in unhelpful ways. Peter says as much in his second epistle. But the Bible is best read in communities where everyone has a voice so that we can all teach one another.