2 Thessalonians 3: May the Lord Give You Peace!

There is so much to be thankful in a day.  There are days I doubt that, but then something usually happens to remind me of the abundance in which I live and how minor my concerns are compared to so many people around me.

I am blessed to have three families, all of which are precious to me in various ways.  I am blessed with a wonderful wife and two great boys who are gifted in their own ways and who are growing day-by-day into great young men.  What a blessing to have the friendships, teaching, and worship-filled encouragement that I do at the church I attend.  My job at a Christian high school is hardly a job.  It is part ministry, part church, and three parts family.  I am blessed to spend my days alongside my dearest friends and mentors doing God’s work in Memphis.  I have so many other blessings — health, wealth (at least a bit), freedom, comfort, and safety — but all of these pale in comparison to the people who make each day more blessed.  You are some of those people, so today (and most other days as well) I say thanks to God for you.

Paul ended this short, second letter to the Thessalonians with the words that hang outside my classroom door as a greeting and that express my wishes for you today:

Now may the Lord of peace give you peace always and in every way.  The Lord be with you all. (3:16)

What did the Thessalonian letters teach you? 

John 17: Focused on Others Even at the End

It was the last night before Jesus’ death.  By noon the next day he will be dying on a cross, the sins of the world weighing him down.  He has been eating with his closest friends and students.  Jesus uses this moment to pray one more prayer in front of his community, a prayer that no doubt taught them volumes.  John 17 is that prayer.

What would your last public prayer be about?

When remembered in this context, I am always struck by how focused Jesus’ last prayer is on his disciples.  When many of us might pray for ourselves — and for good reason; Jesus was about to be beaten, humiliated and murdered; wouldn’t it be normal to prayer for yourself? — Jesus is focused on his friends.  This man filled with love is exuding that love even down to the end.

I’m praying for them. . . . I’m not in the world any longer, but they’re still in the world; I’m coming to you.  Holy Father, keep them in your name. (17:9a, 11)

What caught your eye?

Matthew 9: Bring a Friend Along

Caravaggio, "The Calling of St. Matthew"

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting in the tax-office.

“Follow me!” he said to him.  And he rose up and followed him.

When he was at home, sitting down to a meal, there were lots of tax-collectors and sinners there who had come to have dinner with Jesus and his disciples.  When the Pharisees saw it, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax-collectors and sinners?” (8:9-11)

Matthew wasn’t exactly the ideal candidate for a disciple to an itinerant Jewish rabbi.  He would have been a Jew, but many would have labeled him a traitor.  As a tax collector he was working for the enemy, the Romans.  Good Jews wanted out from under the Roman thumb, and Matthew was only perpetuating foreign tyranny.  Not to mention the assumption that Matthew was likely skimming a bit of the tax money off the top for himself, just like every other tax collector did.  So just the fact that Jesus would call Matthew to be a disciple was unexpected.

It is what Matthew did next that struck me today.

Matthew is leaving his life as a tax collector.  He is about to start a very different kind of life, dissimilar in ways he probably doesn’t even realize.  Still, he calls his friends to his house for one last party.  We can tell from verse 11 that this group of friends was composed of fellow tax collectors and other unsavory people.

Yes, Matthew is leaving his profession and even this town.  But he doesn’t just drop everything.  He is starting a new life, but he chooses to include his friends in this new life too.  It seems he wants his old friends to meet his new rabbi.

Did some of these friends become disciples too?  Did they come along with Jesus and Matthew?  We don’t know, but we do known that Matthew’s first act of witnessing was to his very own friends.  He wanted his friends to know Jesus too.

Good reminder.

What struck you in this active chapter?  

Mark 6: A “Deeply Sorry” Giver

“All right,” Jesus said, “it’s time for a break.  Come away, just you, and we’ll go somewhere lonely and private.” . . . When Jesus got out of the boat he saw the high crowd, and was deeply sorry for them, because they were like a flock without a shepherd.” (6:31, 34)

Well, I am afraid I wouldn’t have been feeling “deeply sorry” for those crowds if it had been me.  Maybe, resentful.  Fed up.  Used.  I think I could have mustered up one good martyr syndrome at that point.  I think I would have gotten back in the boat and rowed faster, somewhere else.

I don’t like this sort of all-consuming busyness Jesus seemed to be in the middle of.  (Okay, maybe my ego does a bit, but that is a different post).  Crowds pressing in.  More and more demands on my time.  Everybody wanting something more from me.  I plain hate it.  It turns me into a grump.  It makes me less human and humane.

And I guess the more I think about it, it makes other people less human to me too.  They become a deadline or a need to fulfill or a to-do list item.  They become work.  I don’t like to admit that, but I don’t think I am alone in this pathology.

Jesus just wants a little recuperative time with friends.  This is absolutely essential for a healthy spiritual life.  And Jesus regularly took such time.  Maybe the constant crowds are what drove Jesus to seek solitude early in the morning and late at night.

Still, he saw their needs and was filled with compassion.

In one way, Jesus’ death didn’t first happen on a cross.  It happened as he stood at the edge of Heaven just before his birth when he “emptied himself” of his glory and took “the very nature of a servant” (Phil. 2:6-7).  Death occurred in the desert with Satan as he took the hard, sacrificial, life-giving way to recognition, power, and popularity.  Death happened once more this day on the seat of a small fishing boat as they pulled into a small port hoping to find solitude only to be greeted by the hungry masses looking for a meal.  Maybe compassion will not come until we begin to die to our own wills.

Easier said than done, I know.

What situation in your life today needs a “deeply sorry” response, not exasperation?