23 July 2026 - parables in a china shop

 

Today's Readings
(Audio)

“Why do you speak to the crowd in parables?”

Why not just be straightforward about the message? If he wanted them to get it, why speak about it obliquely? If he didn't, why teach the crowds at all? Even though the disciples often heard the parables explained in private they still made it clear that they found the teaching style of Jesus to be difficult. When they finally heard something that sounded simple and direct they got excited, saying "Ah, now you are speaking plainly and not using figurative speech!" (see John 16:29). It seemed easier to respond when Jesus was more direct. The disciples in that particular scene from the Gospel of John seemed to believe that they had attained the next level of faith. But it didn't actually help them remain faithful when they were tested during the hour of Jesus. 

The parables, by contrast, required an investment of effort that was less likely to lead to overconfidence or arrogance. Even with the full explanation one was never quite sure he understood how all the pieces fit together. Even in the parables that seemed simple one was never certain he had exhausted all of its possible applications or ramifications. What means Jesus used to teach in a particular instance, understanding was not an automatic result in his listeners. Whether he spoke in parables or directly his words required the Spirit to create true understanding in his listeners. The Spirit was the one who enabled eyes to truly see and ears to truly hear. But the advantage of the parables was that it kept the limits of the understanding of the audience at the forefront so they would know their need to look to a deeper level for enlightenment. 

In a way, the parables were so close to the crowds, drawn from the examples of daily life. But this was similar to Jesus himself, who, though close to them, contained hidden depths. If one explained those depths too directly the risk was that people would think they got it before they really opened themselves to understand. Jesus held back the fact that he was the messiah for similar reasons. It wasn't always helpful to just state the fact without the Spirit to aid in understanding.

Because knowledge of the mysteries of the Kingdom of heaven
has been granted to you, but to them it has not been granted.
To anyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich;
from anyone who has not, even what he has will be taken away.

When one was willing to open himself to understanding (that is, standing under, rather than above) the parables, he had a starting place from which to grow. It required and therefore demonstrated docility before Jesus the teacher. The parables required a posture of humility that was off-putting to the experts but often amicable to the unlearned. Can't those of us who are somewhat educated imagine that difficulty accepting a popular movement of this kind? How could such rabble think they understood better than ourselves with our college degrees? Nowhere else in society would we be happy to see such a reversal. But Paul made it explicit, writing, "God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise" (see First Corinthians 1:27).

By contrast, those who try to pierce the parables with their own intellectual prowess would find themselves repulsed by their own effort. The more they tried to master them the more they would be rebuffed. They would find them overly simplistic, stating in a convoluted way that which could have been said directly with more clarity. They seemed to put a mask of mystery over what need not be complex. More to it, the evident solutions didn't even line up nicely with the imagery. They just never seemed to work in a way that was entirely satisfactory to the intellect. They were, in a way, like the koans of Buddhism. They called for transcendence more than a correct answer. 

It's no wonder that many people encounter the teachings of Jesus with some initial curiosity but end up looking elsewhere, just as many people did in the time of Jeremiah. The risk of forsaking the source of living waters is ever present. The Spirit himself is the living water whom we must not forsake. So let us instead run to him, and drink deeply of the only source that can truly satisfy our thirst.

Two evils have my people done:
they have forsaken me, the source of living waters;
They have dug themselves cisterns,
broken cisterns, that hold no water.

Vineyard Music - The River Is Here

 

22 July 2026 - I have seen the Lord

Today's Readings
(Audio)

Mary Magdalene was acting out the response of the bride from Song of Songs, seeking him whom her heart loved. She continued to seek Jesus even when hope was gone, even if just to find his body so she could treat it with due honor. This refusal to let go could be excessive in situations of merely earthly attachment. But when the source of the attachment was divine love it was inevitable that it would be eventually vindicated, though, of course, she could not realize it. Even in her own eyes what Mary was seeking seemed hopeless. But at a higher level, one based on faith, she continued the pursuit of her beloved. She enlisted the aid of the disciples, making sure they were aware of the most recent development. 

And they said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?"
She said to them, "They have taken my Lord,
and I don't know where they laid him."

She even unintentionally involved angels in her search. She was so preoccupied with Jesus that she didn't seem to notice their glorious appearance, but treated them as any other ordinary people she might have encountered. Most people would have been moved to awe by the presence of angels in their midst. But Mary didn't have any additional bandwidth for that. It was all consumed by her focus on Jesus himself. It was an all-encompassing obsession that refused to be satisfied until Jesus was found. On one level, she knew that she could only hope to find his lifeless body. But the motivation she showed demonstrated that she held unto a subconscious hope for more.

She thought it was the gardener and said to him,
"Sir, if you carried him away,
tell me where you laid him,
and I will take him."

Amazingly, even with all of her focus and fixation on seeking out Jesus she was not able to recognize him when he did cross her path. Of course this was, in some way, intentional on the part of Jesus. Like the bridegroom from Songs he was acting playfully aloof and evasive. But like the bridegroom the point of this was to make their reunion all the sweeter.

Jesus said to her, "Mary!"
She turned and said to him in Hebrew,
"Rabbouni," which means Teacher.

Thus we see that the resurrection is not something we discover primarily by analyzing lifeless historical artifacts, so much as it is a revelation given to us by God. The tomb was indeed empty. And that was evidence of something, Mary knew not what. But it was the presence of her beloved alone that proved what had taken place. It was not something her grief, her obsession, or her single-minded seeking, were able to attain by themselves. But it was precisely the negative space created in her by this refusal to surrender that Jesus himself desired to fill with his own loving presence.

Stop holding on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.

Jesus was physically risen from the dead and thus could be held. But even in spite of her great love she was not meant to cling to him in this way. Even though she had only just feared she had lost him forever, the solution was not now to hold on and never let go. The context of the relationship had to change from an earthly friendship to a heavenly one, which, though different, was no less real. This freed Jesus to ascend and be present to the whole world, even unto the end of the age. And it freed Mary Magdalene to become the first evangelist, the first person to announce the Gospel message: "I have seen the Lord".

We are meant to share this motivation of Mary Magdalene since we too have come to share the same conviction that she possessed, the one described by Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians.

The love of Christ impels us,
once we have come to the conviction that one died for all;
therefore, all have died.
He indeed died for all,
so that those who live might no longer live for themselves
but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

Very Early Sunday Morning

 

21 July 2026 - bigger on the inside

 

Today's Readings
(Audio)

 

While Jesus was speaking to the crowds,
his mother and his brothers appeared outside,
wishing to speak with him.

From outside could have come anyone, with any worldly status, even a king or a high priest, and Jesus might have responded similarly, saying that it was within, within the courts of his presence that were found the members of a truly royal priesthood. No goods that were found in the world outside could be compared with those that were found in Jesus himself. This was the reason that he said that "among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist" but that "Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he" (see Matthew 11:11).

Someone told him, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside,
asking to speak with you.”

We might hear this and assume that Jesus was minimizing the importance of his mother. But this was not quite right. He was minimizing the importance of her natural blood relationship to him within his Kingdom, but not her relationship entirely, nor even her motherhood. Mary, more than anyone else in history was one who consented to and cooperated with the will of the heavenly Father of Jesus, and precisely for this reason became his mother in a spiritual as well as a physiological sense. With her things happened in a way that reversed the normal order of the world where the natural came first and the spiritual had to build on such foundations as it supplied, however robust or inadequate. But precisely in order to begin the true process of reconnecting the world of nature with the spiritual order of heaven a reversal and a change was needed. Thus it was with the fiat of Mary to the archangel Gabriel that the story of our salvation reached its final phase. Nature had proven itself unable to claw or crawl its way back to God on its own. So God empowered a lowly virgin with grace in order that the world could be renewed from the inside out. He truly cast down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly. It was never primarily about what Mary brought to the table, but rather about what God had already done for her, and the way she responded and cooperated to that fullness of grace that had been bestowed.

“Here are my mother and my brothers.
For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father
is my brother, and sister, and mother.”

It is not only Mary who is invited into the spiritual family of Jesus but all of us. Despite how the invitation of Jesus may sound ("whoever does"), it does not come about in the first place on the basis of our effort. Rather, as with Mary, it is a response to the grace we have first received, in our case through faith in baptism. Thus it is as a gift that we become sons and daughters through the Spirit of adoption (see Romans 8:15). But like Mary we must not only receive the grace but make our lives a response to the grace in order for it to be real in our lives. Without that it is but wasted potential.

 

Jars Of Clay - They'll Know We Are Christians

 

20 July 2026 - by de-sign

Today's Readings
(Audio)

 

“Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.”

Just show us one more thing and we'll finally being convinced. We just need one more sign and we'll finally make a serious response. Is this only the scribes and the Pharisees? Or is this us as well? 

An evil and unfaithful generation seeks a sign,
but no sign will be given it
except the sign of Jonah the prophet.

Like the people of Nineveh, we have heard the voice of a prophet. But the people of Nineveh repented because of the preaching of Jonah, who did not even want them to repent or be spared. But we who have heard the voice of Jesus, who is one greater than Jonah, and who came to us freely and from his compassion, are still waiting for more. We continue to dally with sin and the ways of the world, pretending we don't have sufficient grounds to do something more drastic and make a more comprehensive response. That, we tell ourselves, would require some special sign from God, or a particular indication that he desired it. But the sign that we need is one we have received. Jesus came and preached repentence. So let's get after it.

Just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, 
so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth
three days and three nights.

We may be surprised that the people of Nineveh took Jonah as seriously as they did. After all, he didn't want to be there and his message wasn't particularly verbose or articulate. He didn't go to great lengths to specify God's desired response. All he said was in fact, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" (see Jonah 3:4). And yet, we read immediately that "the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them" (see Jonah 3:5). But if they knew the story of how Jonah came to be among them it might make more sense. If they saw the real danger in trying to stand athwart the purpose of God even as a chosen prophet, that in itself might have in itself been compelling. If they realized that Jonah had died in the belly of the fish and had been resurrected on their shore to deliver his message, well, how could they not give their utmost to respond?

The supernatural beginning to the spread of Jonah's word to them does potentially explain the response of the people of Nineveh. But we are a people who have received a Gospel that had an even more profound beginning. The word of Jesus was vindicated by his own resurrection from the dead. This sign ought to be all sufficient to motivate any change to which we are called by the Gospel, and to sustain any level of effort for our response to Jesus. It ought to be easier for us, since Jonah apparently preached a message of destruction, whereas Jesus explicitly taught that he came to save rather than condemn. But because Jesus came with a message of love we tend to take him for granted and minimize the real demands that love places upon us. It all feels less serious and more negotiable than fire and brimstone. But it ought to provoke from us a greater response than fear could motivate, not a lesser one.

At the judgment the queen of the south will arise with this generation
and condemn it, because she came from the ends of the earth
to hear the wisdom of Solomon;

We will often go a long way and put in a lot of effort to pursue things that interest us, that appeal to our curiosity, or titillate our intellect. But it is precisely the casual and inconsequential nature of such things that makes them feel like safe pursuits. We don't find the motivation to pursue things that are every bit as intellectually interesting, and yet more serious and with more real life ramifications, as easily as we do mere curiosities. There is nothing as objectively interesting as the word of God. How could there be? Yet our study of God's word often feels more like an obligation than a passion. And why? Is it perhaps because we haven't realized how great the subject of the word of God, Jesus himself, truly is? Compared to him, the wisdom of Solomon was at best a prelude, and at worst a distraction.

there is something greater than Solomon here.

Though we are called to make a response to Jesus with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength, it is nevertheless not complicated. What is asked of us is still only that which the prophet Micah handily summarized:

You have been told, O man, what is good,
and what the LORD requires of you:
Only to do the right and to love goodness,
and to walk humbly with your God.

 

Newsboys - Belly Of The Whale

 

19 July 2026 - together until harvest

Today's Readings
(Audio)

  

The kingdom of heaven may be likened
to a man who sowed good seed in his field. 

God made all things and saw that they were good. He sowed good seed in his field. Hence the question: Whence evil? The answer: not from God, but from his enemy. Yet this poses other questions, just as the serpent's very existence in Eden posed questions for Adam and Eve. Was this being a genuine rival to the sower of the seed? Could he actually bring the sower's plans to ruin? The very fact of his presence, and of the existence of evil generally, seemed to suggest a limit to God's power. Why would the serpent be present if God could have prevented it? Why would there be evil in the world if God could have made one without it? If we are honest we will probably admit that we sometimes find it hard to believe in the absolute power and goodness of our God while we are yet surrounding by and ourselves experiencing suffering.

While everyone was asleep his enemy came
and sowed weeds all through the wheat, and then went off. 

The enemy made life and growth more difficult for the wheat. But he was unable to uproot it or to destroy it entirely. His own works were able to survive because they were so intertwined with the good that the sower was doing that one could not be easily extricated from the other. Evil is always parasitic on the good. It cannot not thrive on its own as though it were some contrary competitive force. Therefore a 'rip and replace' strategy was untenable. One could not remove evil without doing damage to the integrity of those crops that were good and desirable. In the first place, it wasn't always immediately clear which was which. This reflects the fact that our own lives are ultimately undetermined before the harvest time of judgment. It takes time and for the distinctions between the weeds and the wheat to become clear. And while God himself could determine the difference at any time it was not possible for the slaves of his household to do so. In trying to eliminate all weeds they would probably uproot some wheat as well. Even if the wheat wasn't uprooted entirely, tearing asunder its entanglement with the weeds would invariably cause damage. For those of us who hope to be proved wheat at harvest time we are meant to grow by means of the freedom we have been given. Other people can't merely turn us to saints by force. But God is different. His miraculous power is such that, when harvest time comes, he can burn away from us all that is not an intended part of his harvest while leaving the core of who we are intact.

If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire (see First Corinthians 3:15).

But could not the master have ensured that the enemy never entered the field in the first place? When the slaves are astounded at the appearance of the weeds the master tells them, "An enemy has done this" without sounding surprised or having to first go and investigate. It must be that he allowed this to happen as a part of a larger plan that was obscure to the slaves. Rather than defeating the enemy immediately he would deliver a greater defeat by using what the enemy intended for evil to bring about something good. Indeed, we know that God only permits evil to bring about a greater good. Do we always see this good from the narrow horizon of plants still growing in the field? No. In fact, to us all the presence of evil seems to accomplish is draining the life from the wheat, causing it to become apparently weaker and less resilient than would otherwise be the case. But we know that the harvest is coming. And we trust that when it comes the reason why God permitted the presence of the weeds will become clear. The fruit that results will somehow be better and greater than it would have otherwise been. Thus, the feast at which the fruit is enjoyed, will more than make up for whatever we must endure to reach that point.

 

 

Elevation Worship Featuring Chris Brown - Trust In God

 

18 July 2026 - he will not contend

Today's Readings
(Audio)

 

He will not contend or cry out,
nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets.
A bruised reed he will not break,
a smoldering wick he will not quench,
until he brings justice to victory.

We may sometimes wonder if it would not have been better for Jesus to do something more demonstrably and indisputably divine, proving himself beyond all shadow of doubt to his contemporaries, and leaving an undeniable mark on history itself. But we can see that the reason he did not do so was precisely because if he did contend or cry out in that way many a "bruised reed" would be broken and the nascent faith of many a "smoldering wick" would be quenched. 

 

If Jesus had chosen to appear as powerful, loud, and impossible to ignore, he would have appealed to precisely the wrong people, those who were least likely to actually internalize his teaching. By contrast those little ones who might have accepted him would have had their little wicks extinguished. So too would people like the Pharisees lose what tenuous grasp on truth that they possessed. They would have either been hardened against Jesus. Or, perhaps worse, they would have supported him because he appealed, not to the better angels of their nature, but to their pride and base instincts. Extracting oneself from serving a Jesus constructed after one's own image and likeness could possible prove harder than being converted from sincerely opposing his message. 

 

Rather than use excessive strength to try to bring about the Kingdom by force, Jesus demonstrated the fact the he was meek and lowly of heart. The King of kings did not come at his opponents with angel armies, but withdrew. The all powerful God allowed himself to become weak, even though it made it appear that his enemies were winning, because by doing so he might make those enemies into his friends. Is this how we would approach it? Even after two thousand years of saints showing us what is possible Christians still tend to lean on their strength rather than allowing God to work through our weakness. How often do we withdraw rather than fight, especially when we know we are right? Doesn't this sound like a recipe for defeat? Consider that, for Jesus, it was part of the path to victory. So too may it sometimes be for us. The point is not that justice will never come to victory. But, rather, it is that the true victory does not come about by the flesh, since the war is not against the flesh, but rather by the Spirit.

I shall place my Spirit upon him,
and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles.

..

And in his name the Gentiles will hope.

 

 

Hillsong - I Will Run To You

 

17 July 2026 - presence tense

 

 

Today's Readings

(Audio)

Have you not read what David did
when he and his companions were hungry,
how he went into the house of God and ate the bread of offering,
which neither he nor his companions
but only the priests could lawfully eat?

Jesus was the messiah, and therefore the rightful heir to David. David had been fleeing from Saul and his band who desired to prevent him from ascending to the throne. Jesus was being pursued by the Pharisees who similarly did not want to see him succeed in his own mission. David's mission was not merely political. Since he had been anointed by Samuel to succeed Saul, it was at least in part divine. He and his companions was thus permitted to share in the priestly privilege of eating the bread of presence. Jesus was true high priest and King of kings. David's own mission was a prototype of that of Jesus. It thus foreshadowed the coming together of the priestly and the kingly in order to bring about a kingdom where right worship would be perpetually offered to God. In Jesus, in whom the roles of priest, prophet, and king were perfectly united, the normal expression of the rules about the Sabbath did not apply. The Sabbath was, after all, about communion between man and God. But such communion could only be perfectly established by the fulfillment of the mission of Jesus, the perpetual sacrifice of his Body and Blood that he would go on to institute.

Or have you not read in the law that on the sabbath
the priests serving in the temple violate the sabbath
and are innocent?

It was appropriate for temple priests to work on the sabbath, because such work was not a distraction from God, but rather done for his sake. Even more so, then, was it appropriate for the disciples of Jesus to be exempt from the demands of the sabbath for the sake of the one whom they served. The temple was a sign that pointed to God's presence. Jesus was himself that presence on earth. It is hard to imagine a more fitting activity for the sabbath than being together with him, and taking whatever steps are necessary to help facilitate abiding with him. Thus do the priests of the Church of Jesus continue to do work on Sunday, the new sabbath, in order to help his modern day disciples to enjoy communion with him and to experience the true sabbath rest that only he can give.

I say to you, something greater than the temple is here.

Mic drop. This can be nothing other than a claim by Jesus of his own divinity. After all, what is greater than the temple except the God for whose worship the temple exists? More to it, who else but the Lord of all could claim to be the Lord of the sabbath? Only the one who himself commanded the observance of the sabbath could possibly be justified in calling himself its Lord. But Jesus claimed precisely this. He thus possessed the wisdom to direct people toward the sabbath rest he intended for them, whereas the Pharisees only used it as a weapon to make things more difficult for Jesus, and to attempt to hinder his plan. They doubtlessly didn't like being implicitly associated with Saul and his men. And they certainly couldn't stomach the rationale Jesus gave for why they were wrong about the meaning of the sabbath. God himself was revealing that their excessive mean spirited rigor was not what he himself desired, but rather that mercy.

If you knew what this meant, I desire mercy, not sacrifice,
you would not have condemned these innocent men.

Even when we know the right answers genuinely, and not in a distorted way like the Pharisees, we must not abuse this knowledge. From a higher vantage point the truth is always meant to open out to mercy, not to be used as a weapon, or as a vehicle of condemnation. This is not to say we are to ever compromise with falsehoods or partial truths. And yet the more we focus on being doctrinally correct the more we tend forget that we are dealing with real people who are not intellectual obstacles but fellow men and women made in God's image, brothers and sisters in potential if not in fact. So let us keep our focus where Jesus directed it: himself as Lord, and mercy as his desire.

 

Shane And Shane - Psalm 34 (Taste And See)