Not Categorically Unclean, but Holy [Matthew 1.18-25] (27 November 2011)

The countdown to Christmas begins today, the first Sunday of Advent 2011. Four Sundays of Advent and then comes Christmas, the day on which we celebrate the birth of God with us – Jesus. During the next few Sundays, till the middle of January we will be dealing with traditional Advent passages, meeting along the way some of the major characters leading upto, during and following the birth of Jesus.

Today our focus is on Joseph, the enigmatic parent of Jesus. Really, I wish we had more information about this man. But we have to deal with the fact that, for some reason or the other, our Gospels tell us next to nothing about him.

But Matthew tells us that Joseph was a ‘just’ or ‘righteous’ man. And we have to go with that. Matthew tells us this fact right after Joseph find out that Mary was pregnant and in the context of his decision to divorce her.

Now Mary was found to be pregnant. And Joseph knew that he had not slept with her. Last week I spoke about how we are scientists at heart. We want evidence before we believe things. Spontaneous pregnancy is not part of our experience today. And neither was it in Joseph’s day. The only conclusion he could come to was that another man was involved.

So what was Joseph to do? Remember, we have been told that he was a ‘righteous’ man. This means that he would have done as the Law of Moses would have prescribed. We cannot forget that Joseph was a Jew, not a Christian!

So what does the Law of Moses prescribe? We find the prescriptions that might apply to Mary’s situation in Deuteronomy 22. Here we find three situations that might have applied to Mary. 

First, she might have willingly slept with another man. If this were the case, the Law of Moses prescribed that she should be stoned along with the man whom she had slept with. If Joseph were a ‘righteous’ man according to the Law of Moses, he would have had to haul her before the elders and have her stoned. But he did not. Which means, he believed that Mary was not the kind to willingly sleep with another man. He trusted the character of the woman he had earlier decided to marry.

The second option in Deuteronomy 22 is that of a woman who is raped within the city limits. Here the idea is that, if you are in city limits, your cries would be heard by someone who would then come to your aid. Hard to believe these days, when people just watch others get murdered without batting an eyelid. But those were more honorable times I guess. So if Mary was raped within city limits, she would have cried out and would have been saved. If she did not cry out then she was guilty and had to be stoned.

So if Joseph believed she had been raped within city limits, then he would have had to haul her before the elders to be stoned because she did not cry out. The fact that he did not indicates that he did not believe this was what happened.

The third option in Deuteronomy 22 is that of a woman who is raped outside city limits. Here the idea is that, if you are out of the city, your cries would not be heard by anyone. So the woman is not held guilty if she were raped outside the city limits. 

Now, Deuteronomy does not tell us how such a woman must be treated. But divorce was an easy procedure for the husband in those days. Men would divorce their wives if they cooked something incorrectly. Surely the very idea that she had been raped would give them reason enough to put her away. So the Rabbis deliberated about this and concluded that a woman who was raped outside the city could not be divorced. This was to protect the woman. And so this option was not even available to Joseph. For if Mary had been raped outside the city, she would have proclaimed that and Joseph would have had to marry her. That he was even able to think about quietly divorcing her meant that she had said nothing about rape.

So here we have righteous Joseph, without options. The three possible applications of the Law of Moses had all drawn blanks. He knew that Mary had neither willingly nor unwillingly had sexual relations with another man. 

This is an important point. We often believe that the angel is the one who led him to this truth. But simple logical inferences and a healthy amount of trust would lead us to conclude that we were faced with something out of the ordinary. It is only a refusal to place ourselves in the shoes of a person who is devoted to the Law of Moses and who does not want to take the selfish and easy way out by accusing the woman that allows us to draw any other conclusions.

Joseph would have like the writings of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle I think and the style of Sherlock Holmes. On many occasions Holmes tells Watson, “Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

And so here Joseph, facing the impossibility of thinking poorly of Mary’s character, concludes that something weird and strange and out of the ordinary had happened.

Now weird and strange and out of the ordinary are just what defined things that are ceremonially unclean. Ceremonial uncleanness has nothing to do with dirt on your body. It has to do with the right things being in the right places at the right time and in the right way. Uncleanness was a simple matter of the thing not living up to some expected norm. Uncleanness, in other words, had to do with things that were different, things that were bizarre, things that were abnormal.

For example, eating pork was forbidden not because the pig wallows in mud but because it did not chew cud. Eating crustaceans was forbidden not because they were filthy but because they did not have fins and scales.

Making blended fabrics was forbidden not because mixing them would make the cloth more difficult to clean while washing but because the yarns were obtained from different sources.

Things that were out of place, that were out of the ordinary, were considered unclean. They did not fit. They did not belong. In other words, anything for which one could not find an appropriate category was considered unclean.

And what was happening to Mary had no appropriate category. The three possibilities had been discarded by Joseph and he was left with a situation that he could not define, that he, being a righteous Jew, had to conclude was unclean.

And so he thought of divorcing Mary secretly. That makes no sense. You cannot divorce someone secretly. Divorce is something done in front of others, just as is a wedding. Divorce has to be sanctioned by society. Like a wedding, a divorce is a public event for society must know that the two who were husband and wife, are now no longer that to each other.

What could it mean then that he intended to do this secretly? Simply that Joseph planned to divorce her keeping the knowledge that what was happening to her was unclean to himself. No one would question either of them since Jewish law permitted him to divorce her even for trivial reasons. He would simply divorce her on some trivial grounds and both could part ways. To society, her pregnancy would not raise any eyebrows since the grounds for divorce were not infidelity.

But both of them would know that something abnormal was happening in her. Only they would know that they could not classify what was happening to her, that what was happening to her was, therefore, unclean.

Is there any evidence for this? When someone breaks from a norm, it is a sign to pay attention. In our case, when Matthew breaks from his norms, we must be sharp to see what he might be telling us. This is the only place in which he separates the words for spirit and holy. The result is that v. 20 could have two readings. 

On the one hand is the translation as in all the versions: “What is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” On the other hand is a tantalizing second possibility: “What is conceived in her by the Spirit is holy.” The word order indicates the second reading. But the conjugations indicate the first. And hence there is an ambiguity to the way in which we should read the end of v. 20.

Why would Matthew confuse us when he is perfectly capable, in every other reference to the Holy Spirit, of being unambiguous? Perhaps he wants us to hold both readings together, both applicable: This baby is holy because the Spirit is Holy.

And so now Joseph has a category in which to place what was happening to Mary. He knew the initiator of her situation. He knew that this was not a result of sorcery, witchcraft, black magic or a curse. This was not unclean, this was not profane. 

But his understanding went even further. He realized that what was happening to Mary was not even just clean and ceremonially acceptable. This was different, unique, separate, the invasion of the mundane sin entangled human existence by the creative mercy of the living God. This was holy.

The Genuine Article [Luke 8.22-25] (6 November 2011)

I teach Mathematics to students aspiring to succeed at the Joint Entrance Examination conducted each year for admission to the Indian Institutes of Technology. The examination is easily one of the toughest at the pre-university level in the entire world and students begin preparing as early as the 9th Standard. The questions are much more difficult than those encountered elsewhere. And I have found a very disturbing trend, even among very bright students. When they see a question, they immediately plunge into attempting to solve it. And when they do, sooner or later, if they have not thought things through, they find themselves at a dead end, unable to finish what they had started.

Jesus speaks of a similar thing in Luke 14.28-30. [Read here] Or in the case of our stuck student, “This student began to solve the problem but was not able to finish.”

I do not wish to re-narrate the episode or to give a blow by blow account of what happened. That could be done in another message. But not today. 

Neither do I wish to focus on the parallels between this episode and the episode where Jonah was asleep in a ship while a storm raged all around. There are some remarkable parallels that could be dealt with in a bible study perhaps.

And I certainly do not wish to debate whether miracles are possible or not. As Jesus said elsewhere, “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” In other words, we all cling to what we believe even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Events can be explained away as miracles or as coincidences depending on your point of view.

What I would like to do is focus on what we learn about Jesus in this passage and what he is teaching us though it. So we will focus on the words spoken by Jesus. In the short passage that is the scripture text for today’s message, Jesus speaks twice. Before we deal with the first occasion, let us consider the second. 

Jesus asks his disciples, “Where is your faith?” A simple question, with absolutely no difficult grammatical issues. But we must ask ourselves, “What does this word ‘faith’ refer to here?”

Is Jesus asking them to have faith that they too could have commanded the wind and the water and brought the calm they desired? At another point in his ministry, Jesus tells his disciples that they would do greater works than the ones he had done. Surely this interpretation does not violate Jesus words! Moreover, later in Jesus’ ministry and in the Acts of the Apostles we see the apostles perform all sorts of wondrous deeds – healing sick people, raising people from the dead, etc. Indeed in Acts, we do not have a single instance of a follower of Jesus failing in a miracle he intended to perform.

From these episodes in the Gospels and Acts, a whole school of thought within Christian circles has developed that upholds the notion of ‘name it and claim it’. The idea is that if we only had faith – or enough faith as the case may be – we would simply be able to make things happen by saying them out. 

After all, did Jesus not say, “I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son”? So is Jesus asking, “Why do you not simply believe that you have authority over the elements?”

Or is Jesus telling the disciples that they should have faith that he would protect them? The first three Gospels, also known as the Synoptic Gospels, record this incident. But each tells it in a wonderfully different way. In fact, a whole series of studies could be done simply on the different foci these three authors have when narrating this one episode. Unfortunately, we do not have the luxury of that much time.

So let us focus on a single word. When the disciples address Jesus, Matthew places the word κύριος, meaning lord, on their lips. In Mark, the word is διδάσκαλος, meaning teacher. 

Luke uses a very interesting and rare word here, used only by him in the New Testament and in less than five percent of the places where he could have used it. In Luke the word is ἐπιστάτης meaning protector. And only Luke has the word repeated. If they believed that Jesus was their protector, surely Jesus could not have meant that they lacked faith that he would protect them! 

Moreover, if we actually read the Gospels carefully, we would be hard pressed to find Jesus stating anywhere that he protects us. When we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, the Good Shepherd will be there with us. But there is no guarantee that we will emerge from that valley alive. The idea that Jesus is someone who protects us from harm is a sentimental view not really found in the scriptures. Rather, the guarantee he gives us is this: In this world you will have tribulation.

So we can conclude that the fact that Jesus asks them, “Where is your faith?” indicates that whatever faith they had in calling him ‘protector’ was not the faith that Jesus was referring to.

While it is perhaps quite evident, I think we should eliminate the idea that Jesus was referring to faith that he is the Son of God or the Messiah or the Second Person of the Trinity. Those questions arose only much later and were not something that the disciples were even thinking of. Neither had Jesus yet mentioned that he would be dying on the cross and would be raised from the dead. So even belief about what happened on Good Friday and Easter would not be what Jesus is talking about.

So what is Jesus referring to? And now we get to the first time Jesus speaks in this passage. In v. 22 he tells his disciples, “Let us go across to the other side of the lake.” Once again, a very simple sentence, with no difficult grammatical issues. And because it is simple in almost every language, the tendency is to just skip over it as though it were just an empty statement. 

But the sentence is far from empty! It contains the interpretive clue to the question, “Where is your faith?” What could this interpretive clue be? Hold on to your horses! Before we are ready to have that unveiled, we must ask ourselves why we do not see something that stares us in the face.

If you go to any bank or any ATM, you will notice posters placed there that remind us of the various security measures that are involved in the printing of the Indian currency. With counterfeiting becoming a precise science, all countries follow suit. The United States has a whole section of their Secret Services website devoted to training the public to detect counterfeits.

But all these measures have one thing in common. They tell the reader what the genuine article looks like. They focus on visual cues such as holograms and aspects of various marking. They focus on the texture of the currency such as the kind of paper or embossed regions. They focus on various elements like magnetic inks or inserted threads. 

The simple reason is this: There are many ways of doing something wrong, as the majority of Math students realize, but only one way of doing it right!

But if you deal with only ways of getting things wrong, you will never be able to appreciate the genuine item. A person who always buys fake designer wear will not have the skill to distinguish the real item.

And this is what has happened to us. We have gotten so used to the fakes, that we do not appreciate what is genuine. We have been told time and again that inflation will be brought down. But it keeps going up. We have heard many election promises, only to realize that none of these elected persons actually intend to fulfil their promises. We were told that security to the country has been tightened only to have our cities terrorized time and again. We have been told that we will not negotiate with terrorists only to hear later of underhanded dealings. 

We have been told and we have been told. But we have allowed ourselves to be duped into not realizing that we have not been told, but have been told off! We have been shown so many varieties of fakes that we do not recognize the genuine article.

But here in our passage is the genuine article. Jesus says, “Let us go across to the other side of the lake.” It is a clear declaration of intent and promise. Jesus is telling his disciples, “Now we will get into a boat and we will get to the other side of the lake.”

But in the face of the storm, the disciples say, “We are perishing” or “we are dying” or “we are going to drown”. I don’t know about you, but if one of them drowned, that person could not have reached across the lake. Perhaps his body would have reached across, but he would not have. In other words, the disciples are saying, “We are not going to reach the other side of the lake.”

And that is when Jesus asks them, “Where is your trust?” You see, the Greek word πίστις could mean ‘faith’, ‘faithfulness’ or ‘trust’. Given what we have seen today, it is most likely Jesus is asking them, “I told you we would cross the lake. How is it that you do not trust my word?”

But like us, the disciples immediately lost what Jesus was saying. They focused on the miraculous aspects of what had happened. “Who then is this, that he commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him?” If there had been no storm, as perhaps had happened many times given that Jesus ministered in the entire region of Galilee, they would not have remembered it! They remembered this even because of the miracle, while Jesus was trying to tell them that the event was memorable because unlike all the fakes we encounter on a daily basis, he is the genuine article, who lives up to his word.

Bridging the Gap [Luke 7.11-17] (18 September 2011)

We humans have the tendency of painting things either black or white without seeing any nuances, any greys. Recently, the popularity of Anna Hazare led to the views among many of his supporters that, if you are not on their bandwagon, you are implicitly supporting corruption. It takes only a little thought to realize that this is not a logical conclusion.

In a similar manner, we who have multiple copies of the bible – probably in different languages and versions – perhaps shudder when we think of those dark days before Johannes Gutenberg introduced the idea of movable type and printed the Gutenberg bible. Those were the days when scripture was not readily accessible by people – by even literate people. “How could a person of faith survive?” we might ask ourselves. What would happen to our daily devotions? And because of this, we perhaps think that the invention of movable type was and is the best invention ever. Many people have indeed made just this claim.

Don’t get me wrong. I do not wish to return to the days when books were not readily available. I am glad to have bibles in a number of languages and versions. But there is a downside to this. As printing became easier, printers took it upon themselves to do something that the last book of the bible warns us not to do. They added to scripture.

They added cross references to make bible study easier, when the study of scripture is nowhere said to be something that should be easy! They added red lettering to tell us which words were spoken by Jesus, as though the words not spoken by him were less authoritative. And worst of all, they added breaks by dividing scripture into subsections and gave us nice neat headings so we don’t really need to pay much attention to what we’re reading. “Jesus raises a widows son” Ah! Easy-peasy lemon squeezy! I know what this is about. What’s next? Jesus and John the Baptizer? Too confusing! I’ll just skip that.

And so today I find myself becoming a victim of this division. Does this incident have nothing to do with what came before it – the healing of the centurion’s slave? Does it not relate to what comes after it – the discussion about John the Baptizer? Is it even possible to make sense of these seven verses without the entire Gospel according to Luke? And even then perhaps we are restricting ourselves.

Repeated subjugation by powerful empires such as Assyrian, the Babylonian, the Macedonian and the Roman resulted in the situation where most Jews did not understand Hebrew, the language of their scriptures. So powerful was the thrust of Alexander the Great to make everyone speak Greek that even under the Roman rule, the language most commonly spoken in the Roman empire was Greek.

To address this situation, the Jews decided to translate their scriptures. And between the 3rd century BC and the 1st century AD they completed what is known as the Septuagint – a translation of the Hebrew scriptures, what we call the Old Testament, into Greek.

As you all know the New Testament was written in Greek. And so linguistic comparison between the Old and New Testaments is best done with the Septuagint at the ready because that lets us know how the Jewish translators around the time of the New Testament understood their scriptures. But why even bother? Why with this seemingly easy passage should we bother about all this boring language based nitty-gritty?

Well, for the simple reason that in next week’s text we have John the Baptizer, the one who formally announced Jesus to the world, wondering if he had made a mistake. And then in the text for October 2nd, Jesus quotes from Malachi 3:1 to explain the ministry of John the Baptizer, and through that his own ministry.

What was it that Jesus was doing that made John uncertain? Last week we saw that Jesus healed the slave of a centurion. He had extended his ministry to the Gentiles – indeed to the Roman oppressors! To John the Baptizer, this was confusing. Why would Israel’s Messiah deal kindly with the oppressors of Israel? It just did not make sense. More to the point, as we will see, Jesus is doing something that points in a direction different and unsettling from what John the Baptizer had expected.

And so now, after Jesus has helped a Gentile, we find him at the gate of Nain. I do not wish to focus on the healing. We have read the text. Jesus restores to life the only son of a woman.

There are two occasions in the Old Testament where an only son, who had died, is restored to life. The first is in 1 Kings 17, where Elijah does this at Zarephath in Phoenicia, in Gentile territory. The second is in 2 Kings 4, where Elisha does this at Shulem which was south and slightly east of Nazareth, well within the kingdom of Israel. And here we encounter a problem.

Elijah ministered to a poor widow, while Elisha ministered to a rich barren woman. Elijah ministered to a Gentile, while Elisha ministered to an Israelite. Elijah ministered outside the territory of Israel, while Elisha ministered inside Israel. Different situations for both of them. 

When we consider Jesus at Nain, we get contradictory cues. Jesus ministered to a poor widow. But she was Jewish and lived barely two kilometres from Shulem. Most of the parallels seem to indicate that Jesus was functioning like a new Elisha. And that would be in accord with John himself being the new Elijah.

But Jesus had ministered to a Gentile before this. Did that mean Jesus was the new Elijah? And that there was someone else after him? You see? John’s confusion stems from the strange fluidity of Jesus’ ministry. 

But more than the Elijah-Elisha confusion is the fact that once we settle that confusion, we realize, as John did, that Jesus’ ministry was progressing in a direction hitherto unexpected, certainly unforeseen, and perhaps even sacrilegious to Jewish minds.

Luke helps us with the Elijah-Elisha confusion. What John found confusing, we need not find confusing because Luke tells us how to interpret Jesus. And this is where the Septuagint is immensely helpful. Given three stories, two in the Septuagint and one in Luke, with very similar plots, we would still expect the wording of the stories to differ considerably – especially when you reach the resolution of the story. You would like the resolution to be different, right? Who would remember your story otherwise?

But here Luke does something out of the ordinary. At the point of resolution, after the boy has been raised, Luke tells us, “And he gave him back to his mother.” Six words in Greek. And the identical six words from one of the accounts in the Septuagint. 

This striking parallelism at the moment of resolution tells us which one – Elijah or Elisha – is the one, in light of which we should view the incident at Nain.

Luke resolves his account in exactly the same manner as the account about Elijah. So what Luke is telling us is that this is not just restoring a young man to life. Nor is it just that a woman who had lost her only son has been comforted because he has been brought back to life. No! 

So how are we to view this event? Here the Greek language itself helps us. The word for ‘widow’ is derived from the word for ‘chasm’. In those days, to be a ‘widow’ was to have a big, yawning chasm in one’s life. It was a state that left a woman utterly devoid of the protection she would otherwise have received from her husband. It left her open to all sorts of abuse at the hands of individuals and society. It was a state of total powerlessness, where one knew that the reality one was experiencing was not the reality one had experienced. 

Something had been lost. There was a big gap in one’s life – a gaping hole, a chasm, a grand canyon.

And so, when Luke tells us, “And he gave him back to him mother” we are to view this as Jesus’ giving this widow back the means by which she could bridge the chasm in her life, as though in some highly symbolic way, the revived son was now stretched across the chasm in his mother’s life so that she would be able to enjoy the life she was supposed to enjoy.

But by interpreting Jesus as taking on one of Elijah’s acts, Luke is telling us that we should view this event not as just another miracle. When Jesus draws from an act of Elijah – the person whom John the Baptizer was most associated with – it is something out of the ordinary. He is making an exception. And so this act of Jesus should be seen as a prophetic sign act, something quite different, like Ezekiel lying on his side or Jeremiah breaking the clay jar or Isaiah walking around naked. 

In other words, this event at Nain is not just a miracle for Luke. It is filled with soteriological meaning, that is, meaning related to the method of salvation. But we must be careful not to view a prophetic sign act as an analogy. In an analogy there is a one-to-one correspondence between elements in reality and elements in the sign act. But in a prophetic sign act, the elements of reality are there, but we have to put them in order correctly so that they make sense.

In this incident, as in our lives, there are three critical elements. A parent who had lost a child to death; a person facing a huge gap between reality and destiny; and a person who bridges that gap.

Jesus, in line with the Old Testament prophets, was doing something that pointed to something greater. And here it is the fact that the Father had lost each one of us to death on account of our sin. Also, each one of us faced a huge wide chasm between the life we experience and the life we were supposed to enjoy. 

Like the unnamed widow, we were destitute, powerless, consigned to being preyed upon by the forces of evil. And we needed someone to come and step in and bridge that gap so that we might enjoy the life we were created to enjoy. And Luke is telling us here, “Someone did. Read on!” 

Today, as we participate in Holy Communion, we do so because Jesus did step into the gap. And so as we prepare for it, let us spend a moment in silence, considering what our state would have been had Jesus not stepped into the gap.

Heavenly Father, through my sinfulness I had reached a state in which there was a chasm fixed between you and me. This separation from you made me easy prey to the forces of evil. And through sins of both omission and commission, I made it all the more impossible to experience your love – the love I your created me to experience. Yet you, through in your wisdom and mercy sent your only Son, my Lord Jesus, to die for my sins. Lord Jesus, you placed yourself as the bridge between me and the Father. As a result I can now experience that love I was created to experience. Yet I still stumble and sin. But by your mercy I do not fall. Forgive all my sins since the last time I asked for forgiveness. And as I approach your table, enable me to know how wonderful your forgiveness and love are. Let my participation at your table be a reminder always to me that you did what I could never do – you stepped in the gap. In your name I pray. Amen.

Count Your Blessings, Count on Jesus [Acts 4.1-22] (10 July 2011)

I have often had my attention gripped by the sign boards that read “Church of God (Full Gospel) in India”. Very common in Kerala and now even in Bangalore, the boards imply that there might be something as a not full gospel, or an incomplete gospel. And indeed there is. The text we read today indicates what such an incomplete gospel would be.

I must point out that the incompleteness mentioned in our text is not the incompleteness suggested by the sign boards. The sign boards allude to the perception of that group of Christians that other Christians do not experience what they would call visible signs of the baptism of the Holy Spirit – normally centred around speaking in tongues.

But our text speaks of another kind of incompleteness – the kind that is most rampant today both inside and outside the church. So let us go back to our text with a little background.

Can you imagine what the talking point among the Jewish leaders would have been in the days immediately following Jesus’ resurrection and ascension and immediately following the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost? These were all events that could be dismissed. The first two were private events. Jesus’ resurrection appearances were only to his disciples, not to Caiaphas or Pilate or to Jews who were not in his little group. His ascension too was witnessed only by his disciples. Pentecost was a public event, but they could always blame it on drunkenness.

But the increasingly public nature of this new movement would have been a cause for concern among the Jewish leaders. Peter’s sermon, recorded in Acts 2, would have been really troubling because these former timid people, who had deserted their leader upon his arrest, were suddenly claiming the most extraordinary things. And they were laying the blame for his death firmly at the doorstep of the Jewish leadership.

What the leaders had hoped for had not materialized. The movements around all prior messianic pretenders had fizzled out as soon as that person had been arrested or killed. But this one was like a bad coin that just wouldn’t go away! Jesus had died. But just a few weeks later he was back in the preaching of his formerly cowardly followers.

And now they have themselves seen that the man who was formerly crippled, was walking. As they themselves say in today’s passage, “Everyone living in Jerusalem knows they have done an outstanding miracle, and we cannot deny it.” They would have loved to deny it! But they could not. This event was too public, the former cripple too easily recognized, for them to deny it.

So they come up with a solution. It appears once in v. 17 and then again in v. 18. They warned Peter and John not to speak in Jesus’ name.

You see, when they had first taken the two apostles into custody they had asked them, “By what power or by what name did you do this?” But in v. 2 we read that the leaders were perturbed because the disciples were preaching about Jesus. So they knew the answer. But presumably the leaders were not present when the healing actually occurred. So they wanted the apostles to testify. They perhaps hoped the apostles would incriminate themselves.

Filled with the Holy Spirit, Peter is no longer a naïve person. He asks them if they are interrogating him because of the good deed that had been done. This puts the leaders in a Catch 22 situation. They know they cannot deny that a good deed had been done. But they cannot then say that they have detained the very persons through whom the good deed had been done because that would mean that they do not approve of such healings.

We will hold off on the rest of Peter’s response and continue to the final command of the leaders. They do not ask them to discontinue the healings, but to discontinue preaching in the name of Jesus.

There are many within the church who are willing to do this. This is because most people simply want the healing – no questions asked. In the words of one paraplegic person who attended a healing crusade, “We’ve tried everything. Feng shui, wind chimes, crystals and positive thinking. We really wanted to give this a go.” Another, born with spina bifida and now suffering scoliosis thought that maybe the pastor could do something for her.

Our country is filled with such religiosity, such searching for blessings and miracles. People make pilgrimages to this and that holy place seeking for all kinds of blessings – a new job, a child, restoration of a marriage, healing from a devastating disease. And I am not talking about non-Christians only.

They go to these holy places and holy people at holy times of the year to hear something like:

Come in! Please have a seat. What can I do you for? Uh! I mean, do for you? Oh that? That is not a problem. But one must show that one is genuinely asking for this. Just sign here. Good. Consider it done.

That’s all Peter and John needed have done and things would have been smooth sailing for them. They would have been allowed to set up shop in the temple precincts itself. A good miracle once in a while is always good for religious business. And the very fact that a miracle is supposed to be rare would only make people who do not experience a miracle get disappointed. But they would not question the whole enterprise. No! Rather, they would come back at the time of the next big miracle crusade.

Most humans are like that – extremely gullible. When they are at their wits end, they will believe anything. And so many peddlers of healing would make King Midas seem like a pauper and many sites of religious pilgrimages are bursting at the seams with the offerings of people who come with anxious and expectant hearts.

And if only Peter and John had realized it, they could have made a real killing, instead of getting themselves killed later. Instead, what does Peter say? “This man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead. There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”

Now we must understand something of the language Peter is using. When he speaks to the former cripple in chapter 3 he says, “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk.” The phrase “in the name of” does not mean that they are using Jesus’ name in some incantation.

Nor that they are using it as some kind of formula. They are not saying that if we repeat “Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner” - the Jesus prayer – often enough he will forgive us. The view that the very name of Jesus and its utterance have power is not supported in the bible. Moreover, it is quite a ridiculous view when you consider that Jesus was not really his name. It is an Anglicized version of his name. No one ever called Jesus, Jesus!

What “in the name of” means is “by the power of” or “by the authority of” or “as the representative of”. If you think that this lessens the meaning of the phrase let me offer you a few things to consider.

First, a name is not unique. Many others in the New Testament itself bore the same name as Jesus. This is why Peter has to add “of Nazareth” to specify which Jesus he was talking about. If it is the name itself that had power, then it would have had power regardless of ... ah but that would be to give the game away!

Second, the authority of a person is bound to the person’s being in a position from which he could act decisively. So Mr. Vajpayee, Mr. Gowda and Mr. Gujral, although having held the position of Prime Minister, no longer have the authority to issue orders as the Prime Minister.

Third, representation of a person cannot take place after that person has died. In legal practice there is such a thing as a durable power of attorney under which a person is permitted to act for another person – the latter called a grantor. However, once the grantor dies, the power of attorney no longer has effect. This is because a dead person cannot act for himself, nor can he delegate others to act for him.

You can see now how devastating the phrase “in the name of Jesus” is. If the phrase only meant that Jesus’ name could be used to work miracles, the leaders would have had no problems.

If Peter and John were promulgating Jesus’ name as some kind of fetish or totem, the leaders would have had no issues precisely because fetishes and totems related to people almost always have to do with people who are dead.

But the Jewish leaders understood the language being used. Peter and John were not saying that Jesus’ name had power, but that Jesus had power – right then and there. And that could only mean one thing – he was alive at that time and in a position of authority. When Peter says “in the name of Jesus” what he is saying is this: Jesus is right now in a position of authority, meaning that right now he is alive.

The resurrection is central to the Christian message. When we pray “in the name of Jesus” we are confessing to the world that Jesus is alive and we are telling the Father that we believe he raised and exalted Jesus.

For Peter and John, the option that the leaders gave them was unthinkable. They could not stop speaking about Jesus, not because not using his name would have made them powerless. Rather, they say it quite matter-of-factly, “We cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard.” They could ask the former cripple to stand up only because of what they had seen and heard. They had seen Jesus raised from the dead and they had heard him tell them to do similar things as what he had done. They knew that it was Jesus they were dealing with because he looked like Jesus, talked like Jesus and had the same priorities as Jesus. And as the saying goes, “If it walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck.”

If Peter and John were around today, they would have something to say to people who clamour for blessings of various kinds. A vow here, a pilgrimage there, a fast here, some self mutilation there. The things people do could form an endless list.

But to us Peter and John would say, “You must go, like we did, in the name of Jesus.” But we can only represent a person we have met and whose mind we are thoroughly familiar with. This means that anyone who intends to use the words “in the name of Jesus” must have a living, vibrant relationship with this Jesus. And then to those millions who mindlessly grasp at miraculous straws, blindly hoping that something might work we can say, “If you want to count your blessings, you must learn to count on Jesus.”

The Strange Wonders of God [Acts 2.1-13] (12 June 2011)

I was introduced to The Lord of the Rings very late in my life. It is true that we had a copy of The Hobbit at home but the cover of the book, which depicted a deformed frightening creature, just wasn’t inviting enough for me to take the plunge into Tolkien’s rich world. So I was well into my twenties before a friend at seminary recommended the books to me. Both of us were persuaded that non-violence was Jesus’ way and he recommended the book telling me that it was a critique in prose of the atomic bomb. Of course, after reading the books I actually read the foreword in which Tolkien clearly refutes any such intent on his part. Yet, for many even today, the Ring of Power represents atomic power, something that ought to be unmade and never used.

If ever there was a passage in the bible that has been interpreted in a similar one-dimensional manner and given rise to a lot of controversy, it is this one. Whole theologies have developed around what happens in the first few verse in Acts 2. And entire families of denominations have sprung up, each with a slightly different take on the significance of the events recorded here. It would be presumptuous if I thought we would settle these issues here in a few short minutes. And hence, while I enjoy a good debate, and enjoyed many lengthy ones with some of my good friends at seminary, we will not open that one-dimensional can of worms today.

You see, it is unfortunate that this passage has been high jacked and made one dimensional, as though it referred to only one thing, when in actuality Luke has woven many threads into his narrative. As people who believe that this is scripture, it behooves us to follow as many threads as possible, so we may understand this Father who gave his Son for us, this Son who is now our Lord, this Spirit who moves in and among us even today. We obviously cannot follow all threads today! But we can follow one.

After the Spirit had been poured out and the first disciples experienced the effects of that outpouring, the other people were divided into two groups. One group, Luke tells us, was amazed and perplexed and asked, “What does this mean?” The other group ridiculed the disciples and said, “They have had too much wine.”

The same behavior of the disciples caused different responses in the observers. But what does the first group refer to? And why do the second group come to the conclusion that the disciples had had too much wine?

Was it some sort of ecstatic behavior  This is the claim of those who focus on the charge that the disciples had had too much wine. The idea is that they were drunk and their drunkenness caused them to behave unbecomingly. However, no sane person would ever be amazed and perplexed at someone’s drunken behavior  I mean, it you saw a drunk tottering down the road, are you going to be perplexed? Are you going to think, “Could this be God’s doing?” 

So those who were ridiculing the disciples were not referring to their behavior  If not their behavior  then to what were they referring? What could cause the responses “how can that be?” and “you must be drunk!”?

The only clue we have is the declaration, “We hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues.” Too much ink has been spilt – not to mention blood – because of the focus on the words “tongues” and “languages” – both the same word in Greek. 

Now we know that it is not difficult to acquire a new language if we put our minds to it. Many of us have perhaps learnt a new language well into our adulthood. So these people would not have been amazed that Galileans had learnt to speak languages other than Aramaic. And surely no one who heard her own language being spoken would say that the speaker was drunk! I mean, if Santosh suddenly spoke excellent Malayalam, I might ask him where he learnt the language. But I certainly would not say, “You’re drunk, man!” So the amazement and ridicule must be not be because another language was being spoken.

What then could it be due to? Here Luke is an excellent storyteller. Suppose I told you, “A week ago Uncle Ken and I had a conversation. He had invited me to the ACTS office. I reached a little early. But he got there since we were supposed to talk about things. Some others also came. And then we spoke.” What would your response be?

Luke does a similar thing with the reader. In v. 4 he tells us that the disciples began to speak in other tongues. Then in v. 7 the people ask, “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans?” and then they go on, “how then do we hear them in our own language?” And by this time we are asking, “What were they saying?” In other words, Luke is telling us where to focus. The people are not commenting about the languages being spoken but about the content – the wonders of God.

Now Luke tells us that the people who responded were God fearing Jews from the world over. What would cause such people to either be amazed or scoff? Consider this. I am a Christian. I visit a church in Mumbai over Christmas. Would I be amazed if I heard about a virgin giving birth to a baby boy? Certainly not! That is already a part of my faith. I would agree with it. But I would neither be amazed nor begin to scoff. What I already know and acknowledge to be a wonder of God will not cause me to be amazed or to scoff.

No! Amazement and ridicule are reactions when presented with something new – something that does not fit the mold  something we did not expect. For example, if I visit a church and the preacher proclaims that Jesus had returned, I would perhaps scoff, knowing my skeptic nature. Another person may be amazed. And we know that many people have lost their lives believing that Jesus has returned. The questioning attitude and the dismissive one are human responses to something new and unexpected.

And so we must ask ourselves, what is this something new and unexpected that these first disciples were speaking about? What had they experienced and witnessed that would have been new and unexpected to a Jew?

They had just witnessed the death of Jesus. But the death of a would-be messiah would be neither new nor unexpected. Every few years the Jewish people presented a would-be messiah to their oppressors only to see that person quickly silenced. No, the death of Jesus was quite expected.

The manner of his death too would have not been much of an issue. The Romans had crucified many messianic pretenders to deter future messianic pretenders. But it seems that had as much success as many of our modern schemes of deterrence!

What was unexpected was the resurrection of Jesus. Why was it unexpected? To answer that we must understand what was expected. Let us understand this visually with the aid of some timelines. 

First, the Jewish timeline. This is the template for all timelines based on the might is right view of life. See for yourself. Here is the World War II Allied timeline. Exactly the same apart from context specific details.

But what the disciples were announcing amounted to a different timeline. Here is the New Testament timeline.

There are some remarkable differences. First, the Messiah – the deliverer – is rejected and killed. This was not supposed to happen. How could God work through a dead deliverer? Second, this rejected Messiah undergoes a resurrection. Resurrection was supposed to be after the defeat of God’s enemies and the inauguration of the Messianic kingdom. How could it happen while rebellion against God continued? Third, the Spirit had been poured out. This was supposed to happen only to righteous Jews who were raised after the inauguration of the Messianic kingdom. How could this happen while Jerusalem was still under pagan rule?

These are world view altering claims. No one can truly hear them and remain unresponsive. A person who listens will respond – either with a dismissive attitude or an questioning one. Either with “you must be drunk” or with “how can this be?” Either with “no way” or with “show me the way.” When faced with something new and unexpected, humans respond in two ways – disbelief and belief.

We have perhaps lost the ability to see how shocking this timeline is. How can we say our God is victorious when we see evil all around us? The corruption that Anna Hazare and others are fighting against is just the tip of the iceberg compared to the evil that lurks in the human heart. We know it for we too have the thoughts well up inside us, thoughts we may not act on, but thoughts that are nonetheless ours. How can we say our God is victorious when our struggle against evil continues? What does it mean to say that Jesus has conquered death when our loved ones still die, when people are murdered, children killed daily? How can we say that Jesus is king when millions suffer due to illnesses and injustices?

These are the questions that cause people to scoff when the “wonders of God” are told to them. Because they are not blind. They can see evil inside and around them. The scoffing is a genuine response to the bizarreness of the gospel. If we mean to address even those who scoff, we must not be complacent with our answers. The coexistence of a victorious God and widespread evil is something we should not deal with lightly. Rather, we must once again engage the other question: What does this mean? For it is in going back and being surprised anew by the bizarreness of the gospel that we learn what is good about this news we are called to bear.

The Clueless Prophet [John 11.45-53] (25 March 2011)

Can you imagine the scene? Jesus has just raised Lazarus, another miraculous sign that points toward who he is. He is the resurrection and the life and so he is able to bring Lazarus back to life. This is the last miracle Jesus performs before he is crucified, crowning his ministry by healing Adam’s disease – death itself!

But the response of the Jewish leaders is to want to destroy him. Seems strange that Jesus had just restored life and in response people wished to take his away.

But let us focus on the words of Caiaphas. John tells us clearly that Caiaphas said something that was prophetic in nature. What does that mean? What does prophecy entail? Is it simply telling what is about to happen? It cannot be in this context. We know that though Jesus did die, the Jewish nation was dispersed and ceased to exist just a few decades later. Caiaphas could not have gotten that wrong and still have been prophesying.

So what was Caiaphas prophesying? John tells us, “He prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the Jewish nation. Caiaphas certainly does not have this consciously on his mind. No! For him “it is better to have one man die than for the whole nation to perish.” He has in mind a diversion of attention. The other leaders had said that Jesus’ popularity would invite Roman wrath and that the nation would be destroyed. But Caiaphas sees a sinister solution. He sees the truth that humans will forget their real problems if they can find a small minority – in this case a single person – who can be blamed for the problems. Wherever you see minorities persecuted, Caiaphas is speaking on his own account. He is the master exponent of targeting a scapegoat so as to sweep the real problem under the carpet. He sees that, if only Roman wrath could be directed at Jesus for a while, the catharsis that resulted would buy the Jewish people some more time. With this wannabe messiah dead the zeal of the Jews would subside and Rome would rule them longer without having to disperse them throughout the empire. Caiaphas knows that Roman wrath and Jewish zeal could be dealt with if one charismatic troublemaker could be made into a scapegoat. That is what he has in mind. One man, Jesus, would die and the Jewish people would be spared from Roman wrath.

But that is not what makes his words a prophecy. No! Prophecy in the Old Testament did not consist mainly in foretelling the future. Rather, the main thrust of prophecy in the Old Testament was on revealing the true nature of things from God’s perspective. 

And so when Caiaphas says, “it is better to have one man die for the people” through him God was speaking another truth. Jesus’ death is not about one man dying and others not dying. It is not about one man tasting death so that others may be snatched from death’s jaws. It is not about Jesus dying in place of others. It is not about Jesus dying instead of others.

Rather, it is that Jesus’ death positively benefits others. It is better that one man dies for the benefit of others, in order to work something positive in their lives, for the express purpose of improving their condition. Through Caiaphas, God was revealing his inscrutable purposes. This death will not be like that of the wannabe messiahs who preceded Jesus. Their deaths only accomplished the short term diversion that Caiaphas had in mind – targeting of a scapegoat. But Jesus’ death would work to positively benefit all of God’s children. Caiaphas had in mind a human solution that had to be repeated every time the people were stirred up. God had in mind a divine solution that would happen once but be effective through time and space. In the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ birth we are told that in Jesus God is with us. But here through Caiaphas God tells us that the only reason God can be with us in Jesus is that God is for us, on our side and that in Jesus he has put that divine ‘for-ness’, that divine favor, into action.

The Flip Side of God's Grace [Jonah 4] (4 September 2011)

Many of you would probably know that India is mentioned in Esther 1:1. But how many of you know that Bangalore is alluded to in the bible? In fact, the allusion is in the passage we just read. If you are not convinced, perhaps a clip from Youtube would convince you.

Bangalore has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left! But jokes aside.

We were in the US when the great towers came crashing down. I had woken up late that day and Alice had already gone to work. As Prayerna slept – Tasha was not born yet – I did something I do not normally do. I switched the TV on. And was utterly shocked and dismayed. Unlike many people, the focus of my thoughts was not on how such an act of terror could have been successfully carried out. No! My focus was on the thousands who had woken up that morning, said goodbye to their families, and then, within hours, had their lives snuffed out. Why? Why such injustice?

Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t then have, nor do I now have, any delusion that the USA was God’s chosen country and could never do any wrong! But does anyone truly deserve to die like that? And why do such things happen?

Within two days of the disaster, while so many people in the USA and around the world were searching and yearning for answers, we had prominent Christian leaders present their view of why the towers fell. Here is one.

Last week, we dealt with Jonah 3 and heard about how the Ninevites repented on hearing Jonah’s message and that God, seeing their repentance, did not destroy the city.

Jonah 4 begins with an angry Jonah remembering what had transpired between him and God the first time God had given him the task to proclaim a message to Nineveh. “I knew,” Jonah says. “I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.” 

This is almost an Old Testament creedal statement. It is almost verbatim from Psalm 145:8. It appears also in Joel 2:13, Exodus 34:6-7, Psalm 86:15, Psalm 103:8, and Psalm 111:4 and with similar ideas, though not verbatim anymore, in Nehemiah 9:17 and 2 Chronicles 30:9. But this occurrence in Jonah is the only one in which the speaker is angry and disappointed and dissatisfied. 

On Jonah’s lips, this statement of faith becomes almost an indictment. It is as though Jonah turns this statement of comfort and assurance on its head and makes it into an accusation. “I knew” is Jonah pointing his finger at God.

“I knew... that is why I did not go.” “I knew... that if I went, that would introduce the possibility that they would repent.” “And I knew... that if they did you would forgive.”

For Jonah, the world is crumbling. The Lord of heaven and earth is not punishing those who deserve to be punished. The Ninevites had not just sown violence, they had been downright evil. Let me quote from the annals of King Ashurnasirpal II who reigned from 883-859BC.

"I slaughtered them; with their blood I dyed the mountain red like wool…. The heads of their warriors I cut off, and I formed them into a pillar over against their city; their young men and their maidens I burned in the fire. … I destroyed, I demolished, I burned. I took their warriors prisoner and impaled them on stakes before their cities. I flayed the nobles, as many as had rebelled, and spread their skins out on the piles of dead corpses… Many of the captives I burned in a fire. Many I took alive; from some I cut off their hands to the wrist, from others I cut off their noses, ears and fingers; I put out the eyes of many of the soldiers.”

So powerful was the Assyrian army and so brutal and inhumane their methods of torture, that whole nations just surrendered rather than run the risk of being tortured. They had taken intimidation and torture to new heights – or perhaps we should say depths.

The Ninevites had sown violence. There was no doubt about that. And Jonah asked, “Why did they not reap violence at the hand of God? Why are they not being punished as they deserve?”

Jonah cannot believe that there is no justice in the world, that God will not be just and do what is right. God is gracious and compassionate to his people because he promised that he would be. But he made no promises to the others right? So he can be the wrathful judge toward the others right?

And so Jonah goes outside the city, makes himself a shelter and sits in its shade. But even here the story drips with irony. No sooner have we been told that Jonah has built a shelter than we read that God provided a vine to give Jonah shade and to ease his discomfort. The shelter Jonah had built was just not enough. Even here, while he is angry with God, it is God’s provision that enables him to live on. And Jonah is quite content and presumably he slept soundly.

But the next day his sleep is disturbed by the simple fact that the vine was inside a worm! God had sent a worm to eat up the entire vine. And that worm is doing a very great job. Before Jonah could even understand what was happening, the worm has decimated the vine.

If Jonah was annoyed then, his troubles were only beginning, for God now sends a sirocco, so hot and dry and furious that all the humidity vanishes and the sun dehydrates Jonah to the point where once again he expresses a desire to die.

In his view, even though he may have run away the first time, he has come around and done what God had asked him to do. In his eyes he is a righteous person, one who should enjoy the blessings and grace of God and not an evildoer who should be punished by God. But in his eyes he is being punished.

Not only has God refused to punish those who everyone would denounce as violent evildoers, but also he now punishes his reluctant, but obedient messenger. And this is an unjust world, Jonah concludes, not one in which he would like to live anymore. 

This is a world in which God allows good things to happen to bad people and bad things to happen to good people. To use the stronger wording of Jonah, God orchestrates bad things happening to good people while at the same time refusing to let bad things happen to bad people. 

Jonah can live in a world in which good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. That is a predictable world in which he would be able to function. Evildoers should be punished.

Why does Jonah think this way? He wants a black and white world, where cause and effect are closely linked. As you sow, so shall you reap. If you sow violence, you reap punishment. If you sow faithfulness, you reap blessings.

So many of us would like the world to work that way. If it were true that you reap what you sow, then we need not be in anguish because someone is suffering or if someone suddenly falls ill or if someone is being mistreated by others. After all, if we reap what we sow then evil and suffering are not mysteries. Rather, they reveal what was sown.

And so how often have we concluded from the situation a person is in that he or she has done some evil, sinned in some way? Have we not entertained the thought that someone’s suffering is due to that person’s sin? We join the ranks of Job’s friends and point the accusing finger.

The clip we saw earlier is unsettling to me. Unsettling because we all have that tendency in us – to greater or lesser degrees. Like Jonah, we are quick to resort to the law of cause and effect when dealing with others. Have we not said – at least in our hearts – God will punish those evil doers, those... and here you can fill in the sin that troubles you the most?

In the clip you are about to see, Gandalf provides a sobering word to Frodo in the Lord of the Rings.

Have we at times been like Jonah, disappointed that evil did not befall those who we think are sinners and evildoers? Have we been quick to embrace God’s grace and compassion when it is directed to us while at the same time yearning for recompense for those whom we believe are sinful?

Jonah ends in a strange way. The story has no closure. It is open ended, the plot unfinished. Because it ends with God asking a question. And the question is directed toward the reader. “Should I not be concerned?” is God’s question. When we find ourselves thinking that judgment will befall a person or a group of persons we are to go back to this book and ask ourselves, “Should God not be concerned?”

And our response is critical. The law of cause and effect is the law of karma, make no mistake. Do we really want the law of karma active in our lives? Do we want that predictable world in which everything can be explained? Or have we readers realized – unlike stubborn Jonah – that God’s gracious compassion is what frees us – and even those whom we consider evildoers – from the tyranny of cause and effect? 

Salvation Belongs to the Lord [Jonah 2] (21 August 2011)

I get a, pardon the pun, fishy feeling when I read Jonah 2. Something just doesn’t seem quite right. Something seems out of place. Let me see if you get that feeling too. Here are some phrases from vv. 2-8:

“I called to the Lord and he answered me.”

“I called for help and you listened to my cry.”

“You brought my life up from the pit”

All of verses 2 to 8 seem to indicate that Jonah is reporting about some event that had already reached its favourable resolution. But he is still in the fish! He may have been saved from drowning, but he’s still not out of troubled waters!

If you have a bible with cross references, you will find a whole bunch of them for these verses. There are links with at least ten Psalms, in addition to Lamentations, 1 & 2 Samuel, Job, Deuteronomy and 2 Chronicles. 

The links are revealing, especially the links to the Psalms. They are from two types of Psalms. On the one hand is Psalm 86, which is a prayer, much like our prayers, in which we use present tense imperatives while asking God to do something. Save me from this situation, deliver me according to your love, etc.

On the other hand is Psalm 18, which is a thanksgiving psalm, in which a person who was in a distressing situation recounts publicly how God delivered him. Here we have verbs predominantly in the past tense. I was in distress and he delivered me, I was surrounded by enemies and he rescued me, etc.

In Jonah we have the strange situation of a person who is still in distress offering a mish mash of elements from the Psalms that sounds like a thanksgiving. Nowhere in the Psalms do we find the situation of a person who is still in distress offering a thanksgiving. The person may make vows and promises concerning what he would do if he were delivered. But he does not offer thanks before thanks is due.

Jonah’s words sound like a knee jerk response to a trying situation. It sounds not quite genuine. It sounds as though Jonah, who seems to have known scripture very well, was simply repeating some of the lines. In other words, in his situation it sounds like religious platitudes.

And though v. 1 tells us that Jonah prayed to God, he begins by saying, “In my distress I called to the Lord.” Does one actually pray to God that way? Do we tell God, “In my distress I called to the Lord?” Does that not sound like something we might hear in a testimonial? In fact, if v. 1 did not tell us Jonah was in the fish and that he was praying, we would quite easily have concluded that these verses belong after chapter 2, after God has actually delivered Jonah.

In fact, some scholars have suggested that we move the last verse of chapter 2 to just after the last verse of chapter 1 so that all these past tense references might make sense. But I think the author of Jonah’s story is making another point and is using Jonah to make it.

Having told us that Jonah prayed, the author tells us actually that Jonah babbled some random verses from the Psalms and other books of scripture. We would be hard pressed to comprehend what Jonah was praying for because there is no such thing as a request in all these verses. There is not even one present tense imperative in the whole passage! There is a promise to fulfil a vow in v. 9, but absolutely no indication of what God’s part of the bargain was!

But the author is a remarkable storyteller. In 1.17 he has told us that Jonah was in the fish for three days and nights. Surely he can’t simply go to 2.10 and have Jonah spat out. No! He needs some time to pass in the reading. 

And the reader would be thinking, “What in the world did Jonah do for all that time?” And the author tells us, “He prayed.” But it is evident that this was supposed to be tongue in cheek. Jonah ‘prayed’ – that is, he repeated some phrases already etched in his mind, but he was actually just saying words.

But through all of this, God was teaching Jonah something. And what that something is, is revealed in the timing used by the author. At the end of chapter 1 we read that Jonah was ready for death by drowning. And just at that time the author tells us, “But God provided a fish.” The strangest of provisions, but enough to spare Jonah from drowning.

But once again, Jonah is in distress. He is in the fish, in pitch blackness. His fate is uncertain. But God commands the fish to vomit Jonah onto dry land. And the author tells us that this happens just after Jonah himself, despite his babbling has voiced the central lesson of the entire book. 

Verse 9 stands as a literary hinge in the book. Just as the reader is beginning to think, “Ok, he’s babbling in the fish. When will this get over?” Jonah finally says, “Salvation belongs to the Lord.”

And immediately he is on dry ground. What the author is trying to tell us is that we may know all of scripture, but that is not going to save us in any way. Rather, salvation is God’s prerogative.

This is something Jonah had forgotten. He ran away toward Tarshish because he knew that taking any message to Nineveh might open a door through which God could save the Ninevites. He ran away to Tarshish because he wanted to have the final say about what happened to the Ninevites. He thought, “If I refuse to go, they will never hear the message and will perish.”

He is even willing to die when he asks the sailors to throw him overboard. In those days, very few Israelites knew how to swim even in calm water, let alone in a churning sea. When he asked to be thrown overboard, he expected to die. However, the author tells us, “but the Lord provided a great fish.”

Jonah may have had plans. But his plans were not going to thwart God’s plans. But God provided a great fish. And Jonah finds himself still alive. 

And when he finally admits what the real situation is – namely that salvation is God’s prerogative – he finds himself ashore and with the same task.

Salvation belongs to the Lord. It is a declaration, not just about God being in control. Rather, it is also surrender. It is surrender to the foolishness of God’s ways. 

Jesus compared himself to only one prophet – Jonah. To those listening to him, Jesus had mentioned his impending death and his resurrection. Everything from Jonah 1.17, where God provides a fish to swallow Jonah, to Jonah 2.10, where the fish vomits Jonah, is used by Jesus as a sign of his death and resurrection.

To those who were waiting for salvation to come to the Jews through military might, Jesus said, “Unless a seed dies, it remains by itself.” And finally that is how God chose to save the world.

Salvation belongs to the Lord.

Count your blessings, Count on Jesus [Acts 4.1-22] (10 July 2011)

I have often had my attention gripped by the sign boards that read “Church of God (Full Gospel) in India”. Very common in Kerala and now even in Bangalore, the boards imply that there might be something as a not full gospel, or an incomplete gospel. And indeed there is. The text we read today indicates what such an incomplete gospel would be.

I must point out that the incompleteness mentioned in our text is not the incompleteness suggested by the sign boards. The sign boards allude to the perception of that group of Christians that other Christians do not experience what they would call visible signs of the baptism of the Holy Spirit – normally centred around speaking in tongues.

But our text speaks of another kind of incompleteness – the kind that is most rampant today both inside and outside the church. So let us go back to our text with a little background.

Can you imagine what the talking point among the Jewish leaders would have been in the days immediately following Jesus’ resurrection and ascension and immediately following the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost? These were all events that could be dismissed. The first two were private events. Jesus’ resurrection appearances were only to his disciples, not to Caiaphas or Pilate or to Jews who were not in his little group. His ascension too was witnessed only by his disciples. Pentecost was a public event, but they could always blame it on drunkenness. 

But the increasingly public nature of this new movement would have been a cause for concern among the Jewish leaders. Peter’s sermon, recorded in Acts 2, would have been really troubling because these former timid people, who had deserted their leader upon his arrest, were suddenly claiming the most extraordinary things. And they were laying the blame for his death firmly at the doorstep of the Jewish leadership.

What the leaders had hoped for had not materialized. The movements around all prior messianic pretenders had fizzled out as soon as that person had been arrested or killed. But this one was like a bad coin that just wouldn’t go away! Jesus had died. But less than two weeks later he was back in the preaching of his formerly cowardly followers.

And now they have themselves seen that the man who was formerly crippled, was walking. As they themselves say in today’s passage, “Everyone living in Jerusalem knows they have done an outstanding miracle, and we cannot deny it.” They would have loved to deny it! But they could not. This event was too public, the former cripple too easily recognized, for them to deny it.

So they come up with a solution. It appears once in v. 17 and then again in v. 18. They warned Peter and John not to speak in Jesus’ name.

You see, when they had first taken the two apostles into custody they had asked them, “By what power or by what name did you do this?” But in v. 2 we read that the leaders were perturbed because the disciples were preaching about Jesus. So they knew the answer. But presumably the leaders were not present when the healing actually occurred. So they wanted the apostles to testify. They perhaps hoped the apostles would incriminate themselves.

Filled with the Holy Spirit, Peter is no longer a naïve person. He asks them if they are interrogating him because of the good deed that had been done. This puts the leaders in a Catch 22 situation. They know they cannot deny that a good deed had been done. But they cannot then say that they have detained the very persons through whom the good deed had been done because that would mean that they do not approve of such healings.

We will hold off on the rest of Peter’s response and continue to the final command of the leaders. They do not ask them to discontinue the healings, but to discontinue preaching in the name of Jesus.

There are many within the church who are willing to do this. This is because most people simply want the healing – no questions asked. In the words of one paraplegic person who attended a healing crusade, “We’ve tried everything. Feng shui, wind chimes, crystals and positive thinking. We really wanted to give this a go.” Another, born with spina bifida and now suffering scoliosis thought that maybe the pastor could do something for her.

Our country is filled with such religiosity, such searching for blessings and miracles. People make pilgrimages to this and that holy place seeking for all kinds of blessings – a new job, a child, restoration of a marriage, healing from a devastating disease. And I am not talking about non-Christians only. 

They go to these holy places and holy people at holy times of the year to hear something like:

Come in! Please have a seat. What can I do you for? Uh! I mean, do for you? Oh that? That is not a problem. But one must show that one is genuinely asking for this. Just sign here. Good. Consider it done.

That’s all Peter and John needed have done and things would have been smooth sailing for them. They would have been allowed to set up shop in the temple precincts itself. A good miracle once in a while is always good for religious business. And the very fact that a miracle is supposed to be rare would only make people who do not experience a miracle get disappointed. But they would not question the whole enterprise. No! Rather, they would come back at the time of the next big miracle crusade. 

Most humans are like that – extremely gullible. When they are at their wits end, they will believe anything. And so many peddlers of healing would make King Midas seem like a pauper and many sites of religious pilgrimages are bursting at the seams with the offerings of people who come with anxious and expectant hearts. 

And if only Peter and John had realized it, they could have made a real killing, instead of getting themselves killed later. Instead, what does Peter say? “This man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead. There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”

Now we must understand something of the language Peter is using. When he speaks to the former cripple in chapter 3 he says, “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk.” The phrase “in the name of” does not mean that they are using Jesus’ name in some incantation. 

Nor that they are using it as some kind of formula. They are not saying that if we repeat “Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner” - the Jesus prayer – often enough he will forgive us. The view that the very name of Jesus and its utterance have power is not supported in the bible. Moreover, it is quite a ridiculous view when you consider that Jesus was not really his name. It is an Anglicized version of his name. No one ever called Jesus, Jesus!

What “in the name of” means is “by the power of” or “by the authority of” or “as the representative of”. If you think that this lessens the meaning of the phrase let me offer you a few things to consider.

First, a name is not unique. Many others in the New Testament itself bore the same name as Jesus. This is why Peter has to add “of Nazareth” to specify which Jesus he was talking about. If it is the name itself that had power, then it would have had power regardless of ... ah but that would be to give the game away!

Second, the authority of a person is bound to the person’s being in a position from which he could act decisively. So Mr. Vajpayee, Mr. Gowda and Mr. Gujral, although having held the position of Prime Minister, no longer have the authority to issue orders as the Prime Minister.

Third, representation of a person cannot take place after that person has died. In legal practice there is such a thing as a durable power of attorney under which a person is permitted to act for another person – the latter called a grantor. However, once the grantor dies, the power of attorney no longer has effect. This is because a dead person cannot act for himself, nor can he delegate others to act for him.

You can see now how devastating the phrase “in the name of Jesus” is. If the phrase only meant that Jesus’ name could be used to work miracles, the leaders would have had no problems. 

If Peter and John were promulgating Jesus’ name as some kind of fetish or totem, the leaders would have had no issues precisely because fetishes and totems related to people almost always have to do with people who are dead.

But the Jewish leaders understood the language being used. Peter and John were not saying that Jesus’ name had power, but that Jesus had power – right then and there. And that could only mean one thing – he was alive at that time and in a position of authority. When Peter says “in the name of Jesus” what he is saying is this: Jesus is right now in a position of authority, meaning that right now he is alive.

The resurrection is central to the Christian message. When we pray “in the name of Jesus” we are confessing to the world that Jesus is alive and we are telling the Father that we believe he raised and exalted Jesus.

For Peter and John, the option that the leaders gave them was unthinkable. They could not stop speaking about Jesus, not because not using his name would have made them powerless. Rather, they say it quite matter-of-factly, “We cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard.” They could ask the former cripple to stand up only because of what they had seen and heard. They had seen Jesus raised from the dead and they had heard him tell them to do similar things as what he had done. They knew that it was Jesus they were dealing with because he looked like Jesus, talked like Jesus and had the same priorities as Jesus. And as the saying goes, “If it walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck.”

If Peter and John were around today, they would have something to say to people who clamour for blessings of various kinds. A vow here, a pilgrimage there, a fast here, some self mutilation there. The things people do could form an endless list.

But to us Peter and John would say, “You must go, like we did, in the name of Jesus.” But we can only represent a person we have met and whose mind we are thoroughly familiar with. This means that anyone who intends to use the words “in the name of Jesus” must have a living, vibrant relationship with this Jesus. And then to those millions who mindlessly grasp at miraculous straws, blindly hoping that something might work we can say, “If you want to count your blessings, you must learn to count on Jesus.”