Adventures in the Word

Here’s a close-up shot of the fries that I took just this afternoon. I bought these fries one week ago today on Friday June 22, 2007. See the post with that date below.

Earlier this week I put them in a glass jar/vase without a top. I don’t know if it matters if the fries are covered or not, but just in case you know that I’m not going to give them any special treatment, I got a jar/vase with no cover. Any germ or bacteria out there will have no problem getting to these things.

Spoken at Nora Christian Fellowship on April 15, 2007

Luke 13:1-21
This passage describes three ‘towers’:

The first tower is the literal Tower of Siloam in Jerusalem that collapsed and made all the news headlines of the day. This tower symbolizes that the whole world stands under the righteous judgment of God. No one is exempt: “All have sinned and come short of God’s glory.” The eighteen that died in that tragic disaster could not argue with God at his judgment seat.

The second tower is the figurative ‘tower’ of the fig tree that deserved to be cut down, but instead received mercy. This also describes the attitude and action of God toward the human race: Yes, we deserve judgment, but we also receive his abundant mercy on a daily basis. Israel is pictured here and Jesus is saying that Israel deserves judgment, but instead has received mercy.

The third tower is the ‘tower’ of the ‘Daughter of Abraham’ who lived her life in a bent over condition for eighteen years. Her life appeared hopeless, yet she received the resurrection power of the Lord. This reveals that the way of God also includes resurrection life – life beyond judgment and mercy. Even though death has apparently won – the new life from Jesus, the Messiah, is stronger than death itself.

This woman suddenly stood upright – a clear sign of the resurrection power of God. She is the eighteenth healing of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. He’s helping us keep track of each stitch in his threaded story of resurrected lives. And he ties the knot at the end of the book: the resurrection of Jesus Himself.

Because He lives, so can we.

Ingredients in McDonalds french fries

Potatoes (thank God)
vegetable oil [(partially hydrogenated soybean oil, natural beef flavor (wheat and milk derivatives)]
citric acid (preservative)
dextrose
sodium acid pyrophosphate (maintain color)
dimethylpolysiloxane (antifoaming agent) See below.
salt

Prepared in vegetable oil; [which] may contain one of the following:
Canola oil
corn oil
soybean oil
hydrogenated soybean oil
partially hydrogenated soybean oil
partially hydrogenated corn oil with TBHQ and citric acid added to preserve freshness)

CONTAINS: WHEAT AND MILK (Natural beef flavor contains hydrolyzed wheat and hydrolyzed milk as starting ingredients.)

I didn’t know that french fries spanned so many of the six food groups. With a little more work, McDonald’s may be able to mold it into the perfect food!

But on the other hand, according to Wikipedia dimethylpolysiloxane (see above) is also used in such diverse products as:

knuckle replacements
silicone caulk
breast implants
silly putty

Just thought you’d like to know.

I thought I was pretty sure that I knew how to read the Bible until I started reading N.T. Wright. A passage from his book The New Testament and the People of God really struck me.

The New Testament, I suggest, must be read so as to be understood, read within appropriate contexts, within an acoustic which will allow its full overtones to be heard. It must be read with as little distortion as possible, and with as much sensitivity as possible to its different levels of meaning. It must be read so that the stories, and the Story, which it tells can be heard as stories, not as rambling ways of declaring unstoried ‘ideas.’ It must be read without the assumption that we already know what it is going to say, and without the arrogance that assumes that ‘we’ – whichever group that might be – already have ancestral rights over this or that passage, book, or writer. And, for full appropriateness, it must be read in such a way as to set in motion the drama which it suggests.

Notice in particular these phrases:

‘appropriate contexts’
‘within an acoustic’
‘its full overtones’
‘different levels of meaning’
‘read . . . as stories’
‘rambling ways of declaring unstoried “ideas”
‘to set in motion the drama that it suggests’

This makes the fifth N. T. Wright book that I’ve read, so you can tell that I really like him. For more on him, look here.

Context is content.

About two years ago, Jane and I saw the movie Supersize me! by Morgan Spurlock. It’s a documentary about Spurlock’s experimental 30-day, McDonald’s-only diet. Breakfast, lunch and dinner, for 30 days! It’s quite eye-opening and funny at the same time. Spurlock’s doctors tell him half way through to stop the diet or he may die!

Here are the fries I bought today:

But in one of the special features on the DVD, Spurlock collects various McConald’s food items: Big Mac, Filet-O-fish, french fries, etc. And he puts each one of them in a jar. Then over time he records what happens to them. They all eventually mold and get quite groady, all EXCEPT, that is, THE FRENCH FRIES! They refuse to give up the ghost. After about 8 weeks they still look fresh! (Unlike another plate of fries from a normal restaurant – those fries blackened in about a week.)

I actually tried this experiment myself about two years ago with similar results. I bought a small bag of french fries from the Golden Arches and put them in a plastic bottle. After about nine months, they looked exactly the same! I finally threw them out, concluding that they would be that way forever.

As Morgan Spurlock said, there’s something weird going on with these french fries. They simply do not degrade. Why?

You may ask why I’m doing this. Let’s just say I have my reasons and I’ll fill you in as time goes on. Aauuggh! Don’t you hate it when someone baits you like that?!

So this is a chronicle of the McFrench Fries. I’ll keep you posted on their progress.

“But He [Jesus] said, ‘The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.’” – Luke 18:27
Change.
Genuine, life-long lasting change in our character, lifestyle, and habits is difficult; some would say even impossible. But Luke 18 continues to show God’s way out of this predicament. Let’s look at the four stories there and see what the Lord is saying through them:

1 Persistent widow
2 Prayers of the Pharisee and tax collector
3 Infants brought to Jesus
4 Rich young ruler

What are the common threads here? I think Jesus is comparing and contrasting two sides of the same coin. And He summarizes it in the Scripture quoted above. On the one hand the widow, tax collector, and infants all share the same attitude: they know they are powerless. The widow was considered to be the most weak and vulnerable of society and God made it crystal clear that she was to be protected at all costs. Yet the widow in Jesus’ story, even in her apparent powerlessness, overcomes.

The infants that are brought to Jesus are also among the most powerless. Every mother is well aware of the helplessness of her baby. But Jesus lifts up the infant as the epitome of the Kingdom’s true character: ” . . . of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.”

On the other hand, the Pharisee and rich young ruler proudly list their accomplishments:“I tithe, I fast, I have kept, etc” and appear to “have it all together.” But deep down, they know they’re only pretending. And if we’ll be honest with ourselves, we know that we often ‘fake it,’ making a good show of things, not wanting to let on – even to ourselves – that we’re really weak, broken, and confused.

If we want God to do the impossible, including the changing of our lives, we must be willing to take off the hardened exterior and reveal our true, weak and impotent selves. The Lord Himself, like he did with the little babies, will quickly come to our defense and powerfully touch us.

“So I tell you, make friends for yourselves with your ill-gotten wealth, so that when it fails, they may take you into the eternal dwellings.” — Lk 16:9

This is one of the most strange sayings of Jesus, but I think the key to understanding it is in the parables before and after. In comparing this parable to the Parable of the Lost Son, there are five similarities:
1 Both the son and the steward were entrusted with money.
2 Both wasted the money. The Greek word for wasted in verses 15:13 and 16:1 is actually the same.
3 Both reached a financial crisis; they both lost all the money.
4 Both had internal conflicts and reached a clear decision, which they then carried out to the letter. Make sure to get this point; it’s very important.
5 Both were received into homes.

Now let’s compare these five points to the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man (Lk 16:19-31).
Rich? Absolutely. He was the ‘rich man.’
Wasted money? Yes, the rich man wasted his money on himself. He “dressed in purple and fine linen and lived sumptuously every day.”
Financial crisis? He died. The others’ money failed by famine and job loss, but the rich man just sailed right along and simply didn’t see the inevitability of what Jesus said: . . . when it (the money) fails, not IF, but WHEN. Money WILL fail. For the rich man it failed when he died.
Internal conflict which resulted in decision? No. The rich man blithely went to his grave, thinking that he could ignore Lazarus forever.
Welcomed into ‘eternal dwellings’ aka Abraham’s bosom? No. He simply did not use his money to make Lazarus his friend.
We all have ‘three Ts’: time, treasures and talents. And we all have a limited time to ‘waste’ them on others. Although it’s not perfectly clear; somehow, our spending of ourselves here, will have an effect on our welcome there.

Luke 17:5-6
The apostles said to the Master, “Give us more faith.” And the Master said, “If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea.’ and it would obey you.”

Here is another remarkably strange saying of the Lord. The Lord answered the disciples request for more faith by telling them that ‘mustard seed’-like faith would be more than enough. I think I’ve misunderstood this for most of my life thinking that the Lord is only talking about the size of the seed. Indeed some translations include the phrase ‘as small as’ or ‘the size of,’ but this phrase is simply not in the original text. It simply says: “If you have faith as a mustard seed . . .”

This makes me wonder how else faith could be like a mustard seed. Here are three distinctive things:
Size (apparently Powerless). Surely the Lord is highlighting the mustard seed’s small stature — it being one of the smallest seeds. And its smallness hints at its weakness. This seed more than any other is likely to get lost, crushed or forgotten.
Persistence. The fact that this is a seed, also hints that, although the seed is small and apparently weak, it’s still able to survive, even hundreds of years and maintain its potency. Which brings me to the third point:
Potential. I think this more than anything is what the Lord is trying to get at. The fact that the Lord likens faith to a seed – any seed for that matter – is significant. A seed’s value is not in its present state, but in its potential. A grass seed will do you little good sitting on a shelf, but scatter it on the ground and it creates a lush carpet to walk on.

So we can expect our faith to be both weak and strong at the same time. The paradox of the seed should encourage us to put our apparently weak faith to work. In time we’ll see wildly out-of-proportion outcomes because of the power of God in it.