Jesus, Healing, Sabbath

One of the things I found in Christopher Wright’s book, Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament, was an interesting little fact about Jesus, healing, and the Sabbath.

Whenever people came up, or were brought, to Jesus to be healed he would heal them. But he did not normally seek people out and attempt to heal them without being asked. Except on the Sabbath.

On the Sabbath, Wright points out, Jesus went out of his way to heal those who were lame or ill. A good illustration is found in Luke 13.10-17.

¹⁰ On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, ¹¹ and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. ¹² When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.” ¹³ Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God.

This act of healing was not done simply out of a feeling of compassion; by going out of his way to heal on the Sabbath, Jesus was provoking controversy in order to make a point. So, the inevitable happened.

¹⁴ Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue leader said to the people, “There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.”

¹⁵ The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? ¹⁶ Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?”

¹⁷ When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing.

Very often in the West, as well as in the churches here in Africa, the Sabbath is thought of as a holy day, set aside in order to rest and worship God. While there is nothing wrong with this thinking per se, it all too often becomes mixed in with the kind of legalism the Pharisees were so famous for. Which is to say, if someone decides to do something on the Sabbath (which for us has become Sunday) which does not conform to that strict pattern, they may be severely chastised.

What Jesus goes out of his way to demonstrate in his own Sabbath activities, is that “It was the day above all days for bringing blessing and healing. Yes, it was God’s day – but it was given for human benefit.” (Wright, 175)

Not rocket science, but worth thinking about once more.

Four Motives

One nice thing about quarantine (when you are feeling well) is you have more time to read. These days one of the books I have been reading is Christopher J. H. Wright’s, Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament. Wright was recommended to me by my OT prof at Taylor Seminary, Dr. Jerry Shepherd, and I have really learned a lot from him.

In my own book, God Calling, I make the argument that we cannot take the experience of the OT saints and their communication with God as a one-to-one guide to our own experience. Because of that, I was then asked whether the OT is still relevant to Christians today. Of course it is, in many ways, and Wright does a marvelous job in helping us understand how.

One big thing the OT does is help us understand Jesus better – who he is, why he came, how he understood his role, and so on. Jesus himself famously claimed continuing relevance for the law found in the OT (in Matthew 5.17-20).

At one point in his book (164-175), Wright offers us four motivations for keeping the law, and I would like to share that with you here, since I think it offers us a helpful point of view, and they closely touch on the teachings of Jesus.

The law as a whole, of course, is a gift of grace. God does not just want us to obey it (Wright says), but to have the correct motivation for obedience. It is meant not just to impact our outer experience, but our inward selves.

The first motive for obeying the law is simply gratitude for what God has already done for us. God commands his people to be compassionate to foreigners, for instance, because they were themselves foreigners being poorly treated, and God rescued them from that. “Do not ill-treat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt” (Exod 22.21).

Moses giving the Law

“‘When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God. . . . I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt.” (Lev 19.33-36)

I find these words especially powerful given the fact that I am now a foreigner here in Cameroon, and that both governments in NA are struggling to formulate viable immigration policies.

A second motive for obeying the law is that in doing so we might become more like God himself. Wright talks about this in terms of holiness: “Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy.” (Lev 19.2)

Wright then gives examples of several classes of law which tell us what God is like. These include: generosity to the poor; fair treatment of employees; compassion for the disabled; respect for the elderly; care for the integrity of the judicial process; precautions to prevent endangering life; ecological sensitivity; equality before the law for ethnic minorities; and honesty in trade and business.

Jesus picks up on this idea in many places in his teaching. “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful,” he tells us (Luke 6.36).

A third motive is simply to be different from other peoples around. Just as God was a different kind of god than other people worshipped, so his people were called to be different. The word usually associated with this idea was “holiness.” To be holy is to be set apart for some specific purpose.

In Israel’s case, God said of them, “Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” (Exod 19.5). This is also true of Christians today, as Peter makes clear (1 Peter 2.9). This does not mean we are “holier than thou” in a self-righteous kind of way. No! It is, rather, a call to priestly service for the sake of the peoples around, to show them what the kingdom of God is like.

Finally, as Wright tells us, the laws were ultimately given for our good. When we obey them we receive blessing – not as a bonus or reward, but just because they work in accord with the way the world works. Thus, good health generally comes as a by-product of right living, in accordance with the laws God has laid down.

Of course, laws can be misconstrued, and need to be properly understood. This was certainly the case with the Sabbath law in Jesus’ day. That law, he said, was meant to be a blessing to people, especially the poor. As Wright puts it, “Yes, it was God’s day – but it was given for human benefit.”

Thus, with respect to the law, we may pray with the psalmist, “The earth is filled with your love, Lord; teach me your decrees.” (Ps 119.64)

Early Reflections in Cameroon

“This theme brought to you by Jetlag, official sponsor of travelling insomniacs everywhere.”

Yes, we have been afflicted by jetlag – though I really don’t mind it much. I like getting up early, which is the effect jetlag has for me coming to this side of the globe.

This is not our first time in Cameroon, of course, but having just arrived a few days ago (last Sunday night), it is a good time to make some early reflections. Or, more accurately, some reflections on earliness here.

Generally speaking, everything starts much earlier here than in North America. Since the sun is pretty much on a 6 to 6 schedule all the year round (rising around 6 am, and going down 12 hours later), and electricity is not a very stable thing in many places, people here tend to get up early and go to bed early – just as Ben Franklin advised.

Sonya took this picture on an early morning walk

This past week, coming from the capital city, Yaoundé, and now quarantining in another, smaller, city, I have noticed something else. The big city birds get up later than the country birds! Its true: in Yaoundé the first birds I heard began their singing around 6 am. Here they started around 4:50 am. I suppose the worms also get up earlier here, but I did not go out to inspect the evidence.

I love the sound of the birds, and there is sometimes a rooster or two that you can almost set your clocks by (in the small village where we stay in Nigeria, they had one that would get me up for devotions at 4:45 every morning; it was great).

Birds are singing somewhere in this fuzzy tree

Even the sounds of the city waking up is a nice sound to me. Over here honking your car horn is an expected and essential part of travel in the city, so that becomes part of the city sounds even early in the morning.

Unfortunately, the church bells are not very pleasant here in this city. They ring at 5, 5:30, and then again at 6 am – but it seems as though they come from a recording over their loudspeaker or something. For some reason they don’t give a nice clear bell ringing sound. Up north, where we’ll be in a couple of weeks, those bells will be replaced by the muezzins, calling people to prayer. That can be pleasant or noxious depending on the particular muezzin.

I hate to say it, but perhaps the most unpleasant early morning sound here are the preachers who broadcast their sermons over their church sound systems (usually between 5-6 am). I do not mind sermons as a rule, even ones early in the morning, but I do not enjoy preachers who yell – and for some reason, a lot of the preachers here have got the idea that yelling really early in the morning is the way to best get the message across. (Possibly they have never come across Proverbs 27.14.)

Happily, the people with whom we work tend to preach in normal, speaking voices, usually from a seated position (I imagine Jesus preaching like this). I am very much looking forward to hearing that in the mornings; Lord willing, in a couple of weeks.

Thoughts on the Movies (or, Do You Need a Hero?)

I make no secret of the fact that I love movies. When I was a seminary student, reading a ton of non-fiction for class, I had to forgo the pleasure of reading novels, so I turned to the quick fix of film to satisfy my hunger for story, and have not really turned back since.

The big thing in films these days – from what I can gather – are the DC and MCU blockbusters coming out (these are films based on comic book heroes and heroines). These days it is Wonder Woman 1984 which is making a splash. I have not seen it yet, so this will not be a comment on it per se (though so far the reviewers have not been kind).

Thinking of film as an art form, there is the question of whether art imitates life, or whether life imitates art. Personally I think there is a generous dollop of both going on.

With that in mind, what I find interesting these days is the fact that so many of the bigger movies being made in the last couple of decades deal with super-human heroes. What is going on in our world, that it seems to have a need for these kinds of beings?

It should come as no surprise that the first sign of Superman in the comics came in 1938 – just as Europe was wrestling with a virulent form of Nazism, and the western world was deciding how it was going to meet the challenge. In those days it must have seemed that the problems of the world were more than mere humans could handle, and so an alien was sought out to help with the situation, kicking off the modern superhero genre to boot.

My belief is that, in these past couple of decades at least, the western world is experiencing a similar sense of underlying anxiety and fear. Things like climate change, religious radicalization, globalization and xenophobia, all contribute to a perception of problems which are far too big for mere humans to handle. At the same time, those issues are not somehow far away from me; they all are seen to have a direct affect on how my life is governed.

Hence the need for a hero or heroine who is somehow more than human. Enter Superman, Spiderman, Batman, Batwoman, Wonder Woman, the Guardians of the Galaxy, Deadpool, the Justice League, the Avengers, the Titans, WandaVision, all the mutant X-Men and Women, Flash, Falcon, and probably a couple dozen more I am blissfully unaware of.

On the one hand, I don’t mind all this. Super hero action movies can be fun and entertaining to watch. Lots of times they are about saving something or someone, and I like films with redemptive themes in them (as I tell my kids, they are very spiritual).

On the other hand, the presence of these kind of films tells me something disturbing about the state of the church in the west. When the church is strong, and being salt and light in the world (so my theory goes), the world does not normally require the level of super hero fantasy escapism we are seeing today.

Christians look to Jesus for spiritual salvation. In addition, our message ought to be that a life lived in conformity with his lordship makes the world a much better place physically (this is what I gather from scripture). It does not seem we are doing well these days in sharing this message with the world. By that I do not mean that individually we are poor evangelists; the issue is much broader. I mean the picture of God’s kingdom we are proclaiming and living out is not the compelling depiction we find in scripture. Next time I am enjoying watching my copy of Guardians of the Galaxy, vol. 1 (which I really like, by the way), I’ll be thinking of that truth.