Ruptures in our narrative

On the road to Damascus Saul, who was actively persecuting the church, has an encounter with Jesus and becomes one of the most prolific evangelists in history. This is the ORIGINAL Born-Again story that we can point at and say, ah-ha, all you have to do is have this encounter with Jesus and your life will change dramatically.

At Crossings today, we talked about how our life dramatically and permanently changes when we develop a relationship with Jesus, but not all of us have clear dramatic encounters. Some of our stories are more subtle.

Katie in her message called these "ruptures in our narrative." God does small interesting interfering things in our lives which don't always fit neatly together into a cohesive faith story, but they do bring us along in our spiritual journeys.

Living by the rules

At biblestudy we got into a discussion about rules... Why were the pharisees so bent out of shape about doing things on the Sabbath? People had to know exactly what they could and could not do so that they could make appropriate sacrifices to atone for their sins.

Jesus was wreckless about the rules. He seemed to break them because he didn't follow the letter of the law regarding sabbath. But, he wasn't breaking them, he subsumed them. In speaking to his disciples, he boiled the law down to two rules - love God, love each other. All the other rules are there to help guide people on how to do this.

As Christians, we try to follow these two big rules. We have the 10 commandments which help us understand how to do that. We have the the bible - the old testament and the letters of the apostles to help us understand stand what it means to do that. We are not burdened by the rules. They do not weigh us down as they did the pharisees. Why not? We recognize that we cannot follow the rules perfectly. The rules are there to show us how imperfect we are and how much we need God's help and forgiveness. We don't need to keep track of the millions of ways that we break the rules, because Jesus has already atoned for all of them.

A blessing for mothers

This past mother's day we read stories about how mother's sacrifice, protect and care for their children. In the book of 2 Kings, we find some remarkable stories about brave women who stood up for their children -- one woman's husband died and left her with great debt. The collectors were coming to take her children as slaves. She went to the prophet Elisha and to her neighbors for help. And God provided for her.

Another woman who was childless opened her home to Elisha. After his stay with her, he said that she would have a child. She did and the child grew. One day the child died. The mother would not give up. She laid the child on a bed and closed the door. She went to her husband and said that she needed to go see the holy man. "why?" "trust me" she replied. Along the way people asked about her husband and child. She replied calmly that everything was fine. When she reach Elisha, she threw herself at his feet and told him what happened. Again, God provided and Elisha brought back life to the child.

Mothers have the most awesome task there is -- to shape the future of the world. As they raise their children, they raise the next generation of inventors, scholars, artists, politicians, businessman and teachers. Their example, care and protection leaves a lasting mark on the earth for decades.

Who is the devil?

At biblestudy, we are now reading the gospel of Luke and this week we read about how Jesus was tempted in the desert. This sparked a very interesting conversation... what is the devil?

is it a being?
is it like the holy spirit, but bad -- everywhere all the time?
is it simply the absence of God?

We thought about places where evil exists and think about what shape it takes. Our first images were the grotesque evils of man - the holocaust, wars, terrorism, genocide. But in the story, evil is confronting Jesus one-on-one. It is an individual experience of something that is pulling away from God.

We talked about the things that pull us from God - fear, greed, pride...

But it is an interesting question to ponder. What / who is the devil?

The good shepherd

After Jesus was raised from the dead, the disciples were still a little confused about what they were supposed to do. Not having any better ideas, they decided to go fishing because it was familiar, it was "normal." They were out all night and didn't catch anything and in typical Jesus style, Jesus appears and tells them where to cast their nets so that they may catch a lot of fish.

Recognizing Jesus, Peter, in very typical Peter style jumps out of the boat and swims to shore to greet Jesus. But he does something very peculiar, he puts all of his clothes ON. Why?

Peter is in the doghouse a bit. If we can remember, Peter said he would follow Jesus to the cross and yet on the night Jesus was on trial, Peter denied even knowing Jesus 3 times. So he was eager to "make things right."

Peter reaches the shore and finds Jesus cooking over a campfire. Jesus asks Peter if he loves him. Peter says yes. Jesus asks Peter 3 times - this really hurts Peter's feelings because it feels a bit as if Jesus is rubbing it in. Peter gives up.

"Jesus, you know. You know how I feel."

Then Jesus, who has told his disciples many times that he is the good shepherd and that he takes care of the people, tells Peter to feed his sheep and tend his lambs. Jesus hands over the reigns to Peter and puts him in charge.

The Good Shepherd comes to, restores, forgives, heals and carries each of his sheep even and particularly when they mess up.