Nearly Weekly Bible Study

Add a Comment

19 Comments

Comment by Starr Luteri-Hicks on September 15, 2009 at 3:01pm

James 3:13 - 18

The book of James, with its emphasis on works and right behavior, can be difficult to reconcile with other Christian Scriptures which place their emphasis on faith. This week’s passage from James 3 says that Christians need to demonstrate good works. Chapter 2 is even more confusing, where in verse 18, the writer says, “Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.”

Wouldn’t that just push the Apostle Paul right over the edge? Just think of Romans 3, “For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.” And compare James with Ephesians 2:8, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—“ Both Romans and Ephesians contradict James.

Don’t they?

Martin Luther seemed to think they did, and famously insisted the Book of James should be removed from the Bible. But Luther did not get his way because other Reformers of his time and scholars through the centuries have found more consistency between James and Paul (and John and the other biblical writers) than appears at first glance.

Let’s begin with the apparent contradiction between James’ call for good works and Paul’s insistence on grace through faith. Look again at Romans 3:28. Paul does not discount good works as such, but says no one is justified by the works required by the Law of Moses. Turn a few pages in the Book of Romans and we find Paul saying, “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid!” (6:1-2.) He goes on to say that Christians are “slaves to righteousness.” In other words, we obey Christ in right living, with good works.

If we read the text carefully, we find that James does not say we are saved by our good works, but quite the opposite: our good works are evidence of our salvation. That agrees 100% with Paul’s message in Romans and Ephesians.

We can also look at James' call for peace in verses 17 and 18. Peace is a natural consequence of living in God’s wisdom. In Paul’s writing, this parallels the call to live “in the Spirit” which brings forth the fruit of the spirit, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace . . . “ Galatians 5:22.

There is no disagreement between the Apostles and no strife (or envy or bitterness) between their instructions to believers. Their styles are very different and their phrases take off in different directions. But their roots are set firmly in the rich soil of God’s truth, and they both point unfailingly to the way of the Lord Jesus.

Comment by Starr Luteri-Hicks on August 23, 2009 at 1:36pm

Ephesians 6:10-20

MDH just got back from the "BlizzCon" gaming convention in Anaheim. Since that's all he has talked about since he got home, and all I'm going to hear for the next few days, I may as well work it into this study.

In the on-line role-playing game World of Warcraft, players participate in the virtual world through "avatars," cartoon characters of various species, races and powers. If you are familiar with the fantasy world of J.R.R. Tolkein, a close friend of C. S. Lewis, you can easily visualize the universe of World of Warcraft.

This week's epistle text from Ephesians would translate well into that world. In the game, as in real life, some enemies are "blood and flesh" but the really dangerous enemies are the spiritual (magical) forces. An avatar has to earn each piece of armor, and as one rises in levels, one earns better armor.

Unlike our real world, gamers are able to play several different avatars, both "Alliance," and "Hoard." These are opposing sides, each claiming the good and naming the other evil.

In our world, the lines defining the good guys from the bad guys might be blurred. Good people will disagree as to which side is "God's side," and which people are "God's people." But we cannot play both sides. Ultimately each of us must choose what we are willing to fight for, "and having done everything, to stand firm."

May our eyes be clear and our hearts open to follow, without confusion or distortion, the path where our Lord leads us.

Comment by Starr Luteri-Hicks on August 7, 2009 at 5:03pm

Ephesians 4:25-5:2

Sometimes it is as important to notice what is NOT in the text as to see what IS there. Here in Ephesians, Paul does not say, “never get angry.” And he does not say, “Real Christians are always nice and never raise their voices or disagree about anything.”

Paul actually admonishes Christians to be angry. Really? Yes indeed. Paul writes “be angry but do not sin,” and he seems honestly to believe that is possible.

It would have been easier for the Apostle simply to say, “Don’t get angry.” Easier for him, easier for Christians. As it is, we have to figure out when and when not to be angry, and how to be angry without sinning, and how to get finished with being angry before the sun goes down (does that mean we have 24 hours or just 12 hours? Or just until the next sundown, whenever that might be?) Definitely, it would have been much simpler if we’d been told not to get angry at all, ever. But not better.

Anger can be an extraordinarily good thing. Anger can be the gift of God to the oppressed, giving energy to break free of injustice. Anger can provide the power to stand against evil. Anger can be the motivation for changing the world.

But – and this is a big “but” – anger must be carefully controlled. Anger must not be allowed to fester into bitterness or to flare into wrath. We cannot use righteous anger as a justification for telling lies, no, not even when we are very angry at a governor or a piece of legislation or a television personality. Dishonesty, personal attacks and accusations beyond the evidence are simply not allowed, no matter how pure the motive or holy the cause.

Is it possible to be angry while also being kind, tenderhearted and forgiving? That sounds pretty difficult, yet it is the standard we must follow when we decide that the time has come to be angry. This is the definition of “hating the sin while loving the sinner.”

A hospital chaplain was on Emergency Room duty when a toddler was brought in, hovering close to death because she had been severely beaten by her stepfather. Then the stepfather also appeared, still blaming the child for “making” him hurt her. The chaplain had to minister pastorally not only to the dying, battered child, but also to the batterer. “Be angry but do not sin.”

Once it has been carefully used, anger has to be set aside and not allowed to become a way of life. This is tough, because anger is like morphine, lifesaving when used correctly, life destroying when misused, and easily addicting.

How can we do this? I think Paul tells us in Ephesians 6:10ff, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.”

Comment by Starr Luteri-Hicks on July 15, 2009 at 3:14pm

A quick thought on the Gospel passage for this coming week, Mark 53 ff. [sorry. that "ff" means "and following verses." ]

So many people trailed after Jesus, hoping for miracles, and mainly for healing. Two thousand years later, and we are exactly the same. We need healing in many different ways, certainly, but especially physical healing. With all our modern medicines, there are still so many of us hoping and praying for miracles! Some things never change.

Comment by Starr Luteri-Hicks on July 11, 2009 at 3:07pm

2 Samuel 6:1-14; Mark 6:14-29

The collection of texts chosen for this week’s lectionary seems very odd, indeed. The text from the Hebrew Scripture (2 Samuel 6) tells how King David danced for joy when bringing the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem. The Gospel lesson is the story of Salome dancing seductively for King Herod and his guests, the demanding the head of John the Baptist as her reward.

Two kings, two dances. One was a dance of celebration and blessing, bringing honor and glory to God, and the other was a dance of sin and death, bringing shame and infamy on everyone involved.

Neither public display nor sensuality was the issue in either dance. We know King David stripped of most of his clothes as he danced (much to the disgust of his wife, Michal -- 2 Samuel 6:20. Judging from the reaction of her audience, we can safely assume that Herod’s daughter also lost a few veils during her performance.

We know that in the past 200 years, certain American churches decided that dancing should be forbidden, along with drinking alcohol, smoking, playing cards or dice and a number of other common pastimes. These activities are not sinful in themselves, and none is forbidden by Scripture. But all of these and many other behaviors can be disastrous when taken to extremes or practiced with evil intent.

Take the example of card games. There’s nothing remotely sinful about the children’s game of Go Fish, or dangerous in group of adults playing Bridge. Yet we all know there are criminals in the streets who are eager to cheat gullible victims. We also know some people cannot stop themselves from waging bets once they begin. An innocent pastime can turn very destructive.

In the same way, occasionally smoking naturally grown and processed tobacco is probably harmless. But smoking many commercial cigarettes every day for year on end is deadly. The same applies to alcoholic beverages and even food.

All things can be received as blessings and practiced to the glory of God. But too much of anything, or anything practiced for evil purposes, can become sin and a source of shame.

In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory. . . . Ephesians 1:11-12

Comment by Starr Luteri-Hicks on July 6, 2009 at 9:21pm

Ezekiel 2:1-5

Reading the Bible can be dangerous to oneself and others.

Just look at this passage from Ezekiel. On a casual reading, what does it appear to say? That the people of Israel are a nation of rebels and transgressors “to this very day. ” That’s pretty harsh. Moreover, the plain, literal meaning of the text says pretty clearly that God really dislikes the Jews. From there it’s not difficult at all to decide that God would be pleased with anyone who punished Jews and put them in their place. Combine this text with Gospel passages like John 7:1, and it’s not hard to comprehend how anti-Semitism with all its horrors became rooted in Christendom.

Holy Scripture is powerful stuff. So we better know what we are doing when we open the book.

What is the larger context of this passage? It is part of a vision in which the prophet finds himself in the middle of fantastical creatures, moving wheels and engines, rainbows and storm clouds. Then he is given a scroll and told to eat it. This is not literature that is meant to be taken literally.

The historic context was the catastrophic destruction of the nation, exile and captivity in Babylon. The people of Judah and Israel were bewildered: why had Yahweh let this happen? Hadn’t God promised that the Kingdom of David would never fall? Were the gods of their enemies more powerful than Yahweh?

Ezekiel resolves this confusion: God has not abandoned you, but you have abandoned God. You brought destruction on yourselves, but return to God even now, and you will be restored. This is a very different message than a superficial reading of a handful of verses wrenched from their context.

The message for us, the community of Christ in the 21st Century, is to examine ourselves and our comfortable assumptions. Do we think God is on our side? Will blessings be ours whatever we do? Or are we in grave danger of straying from God’s path?

Holy Scripture is powerful stuff. When we take on the task of teaching, we need to know what we’re talking about.

Comment by Starr Luteri-Hicks on July 2, 2009 at 2:44pm

Mark 5:25-34
Psalm 130
Lamentations 3: 23-26

Perhaps you’ve heard the expression “The elephant on the coffee table.” The “elephant” is an issue that controls the life of an entire family (or a church, or any group) yet is so awful that everyone pretends it doesn’t exist. A classic example would be an alcoholic parent. Everyone is miserable because of the alcoholism, but no one dares mention it.

This story from Mark 5 is very familiar, but there is an elephant in the text that no one mentions. In the King James Version, the woman has “an issue of blood.” The New Revised Standard Version takes the same Greek word rhysis and translates it as “hemorrhages.” For heaven’s sake, the woman didn’t cut a vein, and she wasn’t bleeding internally. The woman was menstruating.

Yes, I wrote the M word. If you think menstruation is unmentionable here and now, Jewish society in the 1st Century was much, much worse. Women in general could not speak to men in public, much less touch a man on the street. But a menstruating woman? You couldn’t imagine anything more unclean. If a man accidentally touched a chair or cloth that a menstruating woman had touched, he would be ritually unclean until sundown.

The woman in this text had been bleeding for 12 years. She might have suffered a disastrous childbirth and never healed from the postpartum bleeding. She might have had menstrual periods that simply did not stop. Or she may have had a prolonged and miserable menopause.

This unclean, menstruating woman should not have been out in public, where any casual contact would ritually contaminate other people. But to have the audacity to intentionally touch the Rabbi? Her action went beyond rude; it was unthinkably offensive. When Jesus asked “Who touched me?” it is no wonder that she came forward “in fear and trembling.” Had the Lord responded with anger, as any other Jewish man would, the crowd could have turned into a mob and killed her. We need to understand how outrageous her behavior was to really appreciate the enormity of Christ’s grace toward her.

There is yet one more element to consider, particularly in light of this week’s other lectionary passages. Both the Psalm and Lamentations speak of waiting on the Lord. And we well know that it is women of faith, far more than men, who are admonished to be patient, passive, silent and submissive. Men may be encouraged to step out in faith, to fight for what they need, to be victorious in competition and battle. But women? Even more than now, women in the 1st Century were trained to accept their lot and suffer quietly with prayer.

Not this woman. She has no recorded name, identified only by the euphemism of her affliction, “The Woman with the Flow of Blood.” By rights she should be known as “The Woman of Courage,” or “The Woman of Great Faith” because she did not wait for the Lord to come to her, she refused to suffer silently or be patient any longer. She broke free from her isolation and ran into the streets. She pushed and shoved her way through the crowd and reached so hard that she fell. Even that didn’t stop her, and she crawled forward in the dirt until her fingers finally brushed the very bottom edge of Jesus’ clothes.

And the Son of God stopped.

Jesus was not offended by her menstruation. Her daring behavior did not upset him. Instead, he praised her faith, and she was healed.

Thanks be to Jesus our Lord for his amazing grace.

Comment by Starr Luteri-Hicks on June 13, 2009 at 6:08pm

Mark4:26-29; 2 Corinthians 5:6-7;Psalm 92: 12-15; Ezekiel 17:22-24

I’ve been puttering in my garden every morning for weeks, which is unusual in June in the Arizona desert. By this time of year, our temperatures usually hover near 110 degrees, and everything is brown and dusty until the autumn rains arrive. This year I’ve been planting and pruning and reciting verses like Isaiah 31:1, “the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.”

So I can identify with the guy in Jesus’ parable, who planted seed then could hardly sleep for jumping up and down to see whether his plants were growing. We just planted a young Oleander tree outside my home office window, and I keep turning to look at it, making sure it isn’t wilting or sunburning, looking for new buds, wondering if I should nip off those lower branches.

In our passage from Ezekiel, God is the gardener who takes a cutting from a choice tree and sets it out to root in a new location. I’m doing that, too, with tender cuttings from several of my favorite plants. The psalm uses trees as a metaphor for long life, and I’m hoping my new young trees survive my own aging. Because, as the writer of 2 Corinthians says, “we walk by faith, not by sight.”

The Gospel passage also can be read as an allegory. Like the seed, Jesus died and was buried, then after three days rose to life. The final harvest will be God’s judging of the whole world.

We do not know how life quickens in tiny seeds, or how they have power to grow into great trees. The more we learn from science, the more we can appreciate the amazing powers of nature. Similarly, we do not know when God will come to gather the harvest, but the more we know of God’s love and justice, the more we wonder at God’s amazing grace.

Wonders are all around us, whispering truth about our Creator. Thanks be to God!

Comment by Starr Luteri-Hicks on June 1, 2009 at 7:10pm

Isaiah 6:1-8

I’ll bet the same thing has happened to you more than once. No, no, I don’t mean the vision with six-winged angels, and getting kissed by a hot coal or any of that stuff. But getting carried away with awe or excitement or an amazing idea, and blurting out, “I’ll do it! Send me!”

Yeah, that part. Volunteering to do a job without finding out EVERYTHING that might be involved. Done it. Couldn’t get out of it. Regretted it.

Like the time I volunteered to organize a dinner for two dozen VIPs. I called one of our favorite restaurants, who assured us they could accommodate the group with no problem. Unfortunately, I hadn’t been to the restaurant for several months and didn’t know they had changed their management and menu. We found ourselves in a back hall by the janitor’s closet, served rubbery beef and stale bread. BOY, was I sorry I’d volunteered!

No doubt about it, volunteering in an excited, enthusiastic moment can lead to trouble. In the case of Isaiah, his entire life changed.

“Here I am! Send me!” Did Isaiah even know what his mission would be? Not before he raised his hand. But the following verses spell out the assignment in terrible terms: “Stop their ears and shut their eyes so that they may not . . . turn and be healed.” Only then does Isaiah ask, “How long, O Lord?” and the answer is not reassuring.

Did the prophet regret what he got himself into? Did he wonder why God would give him such a bitter ministry? Or did the power of the vision and the light of God’s throne stay with him through all the dark weary years of his work?

We can never know. But we do know that Isaiah’s faithful obedience produced results far beyond anything he could have imagined.

“Here I am! Send me!” When the Spirit moves, there is no time for indecision. The heart jumps and the choice is unmistakable. “Hey, I can do that! I’m the one!” Life will never be the same.

Comment by Starr Luteri-Hicks on May 25, 2009 at 4:31pm

John 17:14-18

This passage follows the Last Discourse, in which Jesus, anticipating his immanent arrest and death, prays for the disciples. These five verses are especially interesting. The word world appears 8 times and part of verse 14 is repeated word for word in verse 16. That might be worth investigating.

“They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.”

Let’s start by considering how Jesus does not belong to the world. That seems pretty simple: Jesus is both human and divine; from Virgin Birth to Resurrection to Ascension, Jesus is set apart from all of Creation. But to say that we are also not of the world in this sense does not really fit with the rest of the text. Much later, the Apostle Paul would write of our real life being hid in heavenly places with Christ, but that concept does not quite match the meaning of this prayer.

Looking at the whole of verse 14, the sentence begins with Jesus giving the disciples God’s word. The hatred of the world immediately follows because they do not belong to the world. So it is God’s word that transforms the disciples and triggers the hatred of that to which they no longer belong.

If, having received God’s word, the disciples no longer belong to the world, where do they (we) belong? That answer is found in verse 9 and 10: the disciples belong to Christ and to God. That is the power of the word.

What is this world that hates us because we no longer belong to it? An easy answer might be the physical world of nature. But that would set up a duality between the material and the spiritual. By such a duality is not compatible with the fact that our Lord became incarnate as a real, physical human being. The natural world was created by God and has no hatred for the people of God.

The world in this text most likely is the corrupt and pervasive social and political system, in which the powerful oppress the powerless and the rich consume the labor of the poor. This world system hated and killed Jesus and did indeed hate and persecute the disciples. That hatred was no surprise to Jesus who knew full well he was leaving his followers in a dangerous situation.

And so this was his prayer on our behalf, not that God would remove us from the world – our ministry must be here – but that we would be protected from the evil one. Notice the difference. He did not pray for protection from the world, that could and would destroy the body, but for protection from the evil one, who could destroy the soul. Like our Lord, our ministry is here, but our kingdom is elsewhere. We are in the world, but not of the world. We do not belong to the world, we belong to Christ.

Thanks be to God.

• 1
• 2