The Man From Nazareth

"And (Jesus) came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, 'He shall be called a Nazarene'" (Matthew 2:23). 

Some of my growing-up years were spent in Duncanville, Texas, a small ranching/farming community a few miles from Dallas. Duncanville is a suburb of Dallas now, with a population of almost 40,000 people, but back then it was just a few old buildings scattered along one side of a wide spot on a country road. A nowhere place. Podunk. Hicksville. The K-12 school I attended had less than 100 students; my class numbered twelve.

Jesus grew up in a "nowhere" place as well, a one-horse town described in a short line in Matthew's gospel: “and he shall be called a Nazarene," i.e., a man from Nazareth.

Remember Nathaniel's dismissive counter, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth”? (John 1:46). And the ironical inscription on the cross: "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" (John 19:19). "You’ve got to be kidding.”

I can find no prophecy in the Old Testament that suggests that Jesus would grow up in Nazareth. The formula that Matthew uses to introduce the quotation seems to refer to the Old Testament prophets in general and not to a specific text (note the plural noun). It is, I believe, a summary of prophetic expectation that Israel's Christ would be unimportant in the eyes of the world.

God has always done his best work through “insignificant” people: "Not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God has chosen...those that are not to bring to nothing the things that are. (1Corinthians 1:26-28). 

Oh, for sure, God has chosen a very few prominent men and women to get his work done.A wealthy friend of mine once quipped that he was glad Paul did not say, "not any." But most of us are unknown, insignificant, unimportant individuals. Yet we have been chosen to bring salvation to the world (1Corinthian 1:19). 

Consider your “Nazareth": A small rural church? A cramped cubicle in an office complex? A tiny apartment in an retirement community? A Stryker Bed?  You can love and pray and listen and live out the goodness of Jesus wherever you are. You don't have to be somebody to be somebody. You can be…well, nobody at all. 

David Roper

2.1.19

Authentic Christianity

• Blessed are the poor in spirit.
• Blessed are those who mourn.
• Blessed are the gentle.
• Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
• Blessed are the merciful.
• Blessed are the pure in heart.
• Blessed are the peacemakers.
• Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness.  —Jesus, Matthew 5:3-10
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I applied for a position in a Christian organization some years ago and was presented with a list of rules. "We expect Christian behavior from our employees" was the explanation. 

The list was a set of expectations with which I could agree for I, for reasons mostly unrelated to my faith, didn't do the things they proscribed. But, I thought, having agreed to their regulations, I should then ask for the right to be arrogant, insensitive, harsh, spiritually indifferent, critical, troublesome and defensive. None of these issues were addressed by this organization's rules. 

The character of those who follow Jesus is not defined by a code. It is a subtle quality of life that is  difficult to quantify, but can best be described as beautiful. 

Jesus' Beatitudes sum up that beauty: Those who are indwelled by and dependent upon the Spirit of Jesus are humble and self-effacing. They are deeply touched by the weakness and suffering of others. They are gentle and kind. They long for goodness in themselves and in others. They are merciful to those that struggle and fail. They are single-minded in their love for Jesus. They are quiet and peaceful and leave behind a legacy of peace. They are kind to those that ill-use them, returning good for evil. 

And they are "blessed," a word that means "happy" in the deepest sense of that word. 

This is the "wisdom that comes from above," a wisdom that arrests the attention of bystanders and outsiders, the only light that some people can see (Matthew 5:14,15). It belongs alone to those who come to Jesus and ask for it. To ask is to receive in due time. 

David Roper

1.27.19

The Winter of Our Discontent

"Now is the winter of our discontent/made glorious summer by the sun..." (William Shakespeare, in Richard III).

“Now learn the parable from the fig tree: when its branch has already become tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near..." (Jesus, in Matthew 24:32).

Winters can be long and severe here in Idaho. I think of C.S. Lewis' description of Narnia: "Always winter and never Christmas." I wait eagerly for the willows to "break" and to see other signs of spring. 

Jesus drew a parallel between cold climes and a world in which “the love of many has grown cold" (24:12), and told his disciples of a day when the "son of righteousness" would rise and our world's winter of discontent and disorder would be turned into glorious summer.

"When will that be?" we ask with Jesus' disciples, a question he doesn’t answer: "Concerning that day and hour no one knows…but the Father alone" (24:36). 

We don't know the day and the hour of Jesus' coming, so we “must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will. Who then is the faithful and prudent servant whom his master put in charge of his household to give them their food at the proper time? (24:44)

Here Jesus defines what it means to be ready: readiness is not loitering, but loving and caring for Jesus’ children as we await his return.

Jesus urges us to set aside our preoccupation with time-lines and end-time scenarios and occupy ourselves with Kingdom business: To sit at Jesus’ feet and learn from him; to show and tell others what we're learning; to feed his household; "to give them  their food" as we have opportunities to do so. 

This is where joy is found: "Happy is that servant whom his master finds so doing when he returns" (24:46).

Fair Pay and Just Compensation

On occasion my father drove into town looking for men to hire as day-laborers. He agreed to give each man a fair wage for a day's work, which he paid in full at the end of the day. This was common practice in Jesus' day as well, and was the basis for a story that Jesus told (Matthew 20:1-16).

It seems that a certain man went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard. They mutually agreed on a denarius for the day—fair pay for a full day's work. The man went out again—at nine, twelve, three and five o'clock—and hired additional workers, agreeing with each one to pay one denarius for the day. When evening came the vineyard master paid every worker the agreed-upon price—one denarius. 

"But on receiving it [those who went first] grumbled at the master of the house, saying, 'These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, 'Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius?'"

That’s unfair, we grumble: “Why must we take the heat? We struggle with pain and misfortune; others are carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease.” 

When so challenged, Jesus replied "Am I not allowed to do what I please with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?" (20:15). 

Jesus, who always did his Father's will, had an exceptionally hard life: "The Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified, but he will be raised on the third day" (Matthew 20:19). 

The apostles drank the same “cup" (Matthew 20:22): Peter, Phillip, Andrew and Bartholomew were crucified; James was stoned; Jude and Paul were decapitated; Thomas died on the end of a Roman spear; Matthias was burned at the stake; Matthew was stabbed to death; John, the only apostle who died a natural death, was exiled to a lonely island, separated from family and friends. 

No, we who follow Jesus are not promised “the good life”; we’re promised eternal life. (Note Jesus' confidence: "[The Son of Man] will be raised on the third day” —vs. 19.] This is God’s “generosity” and our just compensation (vs. 15).

All things considered, it's a very good deal. 

David Roper

Wanderlust

When I was in high school, shortly after the earth’s crust began to cool, I joined a local 4-H Club (“4-H” stands for “Head, Heart, Hands and Health," as I recall.) One of my projects was to raise a small flock of Shropshire sheep.

Shropshires are beautiful animals with jet black faces, ears and feet, and sculptured bodies covered with fine-textured white wool. They’re lovely to look at, but mindnumbingly dumb! Horses are smart; dogs are smarter (I don't know, nor would I say, where cats belong on that continuum), but sheep are just plain DUMB.

Case in point; My father and I spent several weeks fencing off a section of choice bottom land, putting up a stout fence with 36” of hog-wire at the bottom, topped by three strands of barbed wire—all for their sake to provide pasture and protect them from coyotes and roving farm dogs. The pasture was green and lush with a little stream flowing through it that provided pools of quiet water. At night I penned them in a shed where they were sheltered from the weather and safe from predators. My sheep had everything a sheep could want: feed, water, shelter and TLC. But it was never enough. 

Prone to wander, they wriggled under the fence where it crossed the stream, forsook their pasture to go where the wild things were. 

Or, they forced their heads through the hog-wire to grab a mouthful of weeds on the other side, though the sweet grass on their side of the fence was better—only to find their heads stuck fast in the wire. (One of my evening chores was to walk the fence-line and push their heads back through the mesh.) 

Knee-deep in clover, my sheep were never content. "Morons!" I yelled at them in frustration and rage.

Not so Jesus: "If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish" (Matthew 18:12-15). 

Jesus’ response to our wanderlust? Relentless love. 

David Roper

1.18.19

Bozo (a Parable) 

It was the summer of 1945, if I remember correctly. My father pulled up to our house driving a 1923 Fordson tractor that he had just purchased from a neighbor. We named the little tractor Bozo. 

Bozo had over-sized, spoked, steel rear wheels with two inch lugs that evoked memories of a WW1 artillery piece. The gas tank was riddled with rust where the paint had worn off and bare metal was exposed. The fenders were pitted, dented and bent.

The little tractor had a four cylinder, inline Ford engine that sputtered and popped and generated great clouds of acrid black smoke that further evoked thoughts of WW I. The engine was rated at a whopping twenty-horsepower, as I recall, and was limited in what it could do. We didn't ask or expect much from Bozo.

The little tractor was hard to start in the summer and harder to start in the winter. It had a magneto and internal coil system and had to be hand-cranked. I recall cold mornings when my father cranked until he was exhausted and Uncle Bob, our neighbor and sometime hired-hand, would take over. (As a boy I wasn’t allowed to help because the crank could break your arm if the engine backfired.) Once started, the little engine had to be coaxed along gently, the spark advanced cautiously, or it would sputter, gasp  and die.

But the old tractor found a place in our hearts. My father used it to plow, pull a few stumps, power a circular saw and carry out a number of small tasks around our place. Bozo was parked in the barn when I left home—antiquated, underpowered, outmoded and outclassed by shiny new tractors, but still useful in my father's hands.

He who has ears to hear let him hear.

David Roper

Holy Hedonism

"You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore" (Psalm 16:11).

Many, many years ago a young philosopher-friend of ours was reading to our son Josh who was, at the time, about three years old. The book they were reading contained the phrase,"fun is good and good is fun." Jack read the line and said by way of commentary, "Josh, that's hedonism!" The critique was profound, but Josh was unmoved, as far as I could tell. 

Indeed the pursuit of pleasure as the highest good and as a philosophy of life, is hedonism, but today I would have to say that, though not all fun is good, I do believe that good is fun in the sense that pursuing the highest good will always give us the 

highest pleasure. "Happiness happens not by denying our desires and eschewing pleasure but by understanding our desires and turning them in the correct, God-focused direction" (Richard Baxter). 

Put another way, while I do not think we should pursue happiness as a goal, I do believe it¡s a good thing to pursue goodness with the goal of being happy, and, as far as I know, nobody doesn't want to be happy! 😆 

To go further, I would say that the pursuit of God and his goodness produces a happiness unlike any other.. C.S. Lewis wrote, in an oft-quoted passage, "If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and to earnestly hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I suggest that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased" (The Weight of Glory).

Emmanuel Kant, as you may know, was a dour old German philosopher who believed that the only truly good acts are done from duty and not because they give us pleasure. Kant was a stick in the mud.

David Roper

1.15.19