Tag: spiritual development

The All-Sufficient One (Genesis 17:1-13)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless. Then I will make my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.”

Abram fell facedown, and God said to him, “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.”

Then God said to Abraham, “As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. For the generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner—those who are not your offspring. Whether born in your household or bought with your money, they must be circumcised. My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant. (New International Version)

There were 13 years between the events of chapters 16 and 17 of Genesis. God’s servant, Abram, did not hear from God in those years. Then, all of a sudden, the Lord showed up, with a new self-reference as “God Almighty.”

“God Almighty” (“El Shaddai,” the all-sufficient God) appeared to Abram. The Lord brought a self-revelation to Abram as the all-competent God, the adequate God, the God who has the big picture and knows what to do with it.

Within those 13 years before El Shaddai showed up, Abram tried his own plan for acquiring an heir to God’s covenant promises. It didn’t go quite as designed. Along with Abram, people in every age need to discover or recover the presence of God Almighty, El Shaddai, the Lord who is completely sufficient for anything and everything in life.

Our role, much like Abram’s, is to bring a wholehearted devotion to our walk with God – not looking for some extra supplement to the Lord, as if divine resources and help is inadequate or untrustworthy. We are to have a sincere and obedient stance toward God Almighty.

Too many people seek to serve two masters, as if this will help cover all the bases of what we need. But Jesus was savvy to this, understanding that it only complicates things:

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.”

Jesus (Matthew 6:24; Luke 16:13, NIV)

God Almighty wanted Abram to know and believe that El Shaddai doesn’t allow any dual allegiances – mainly because all of us can only really serve one master.

This realization and determination to serve God Almighty alone elicits El Shaddai giving Abram a new name: Abraham. Knowing God in a new or different way always changes us, as if we are new people with new names. For Abram, now Abraham, the change is one of moving from the “exalted father” who had his own ideas, to the “father of many nations” who will bless all those with the same discovery and determination to let God be God, without all the puny human interference.

And You Shall Circumcise the Flesh of Your Foreskin, by Gerard Hoet (1648-1733)

With any seminal change of life, a very real and tangible sign is important, in order to never forget who God is, and who we as people are. For Abraham and those born to him, circumcision was that sign.

And what a sign it was! God actually told Abraham that all the males in his household were to have their foreskin removed. If anything, this was a sign given which could never get lost! It was enduring, always there, and unforgettable. It is a constant reminder that the people of Abraham, the Hebrews, are to be different and singularly devoted to El Shaddai.

In Christianity, we are to have a circumcision of the heart, and not necessarily the flesh. It is the heart, which is to be completely devoted to God Almighty, that is, the entirety of a person’s life. The whole person is to be oriented to one master who rules both body and soul.

A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a person’s praise is not from other people, but from God. (Romans 2:28-29, NIV)

The one devoted to God Almighty in Jesus Christ is to use body, mind, emotions, and spirit for good divine purposes. Christians are meant to rely solely and completely upon Christ. They are to take every action, every thought, every feeling, every imagination and make it captive to Christ.

To be circumcised is to be set apart for good and noble purposes, to have a heart fully devoted to God Almighty as the ever-living, ever-loving, all-sufficient Sovereign of the universe.

God Almighty, open our eyes that we may see; incline our hearts that we may desire; and order our steps that we may follow the way of your commandments, now and forever, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit are one God, for all time. Amen.

All Who Come and Touch are Made Well (Matthew 14:34-36)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment

They crossed the lake and came to land at Gennesaret, where the people recognized Jesus. So they sent for the sick people in all the surrounding country and brought them to Jesus. They begged him to let the sick at least touch the edge of his cloak; and all who touched it were made well. (Good News Translation)

Jesus showed up. That’s all it took. The very presence of Christ emboldened people to act. And these were not just the religious folk. They were on the other side of the lake – which for us means the other side of the tracks. In other words, the people of Gennesaret were poor and needy with lots of sick persons, as well as spiritually pagan.

This wasn’t a place that pious people visited. It was far from being a destination vacation spot. But it was just the sort of place that Jesus would visit. It was for people like those at Gennesaret that Christ came.

Jesus Recognized

In the previous story of the disciples on the lake during a storm, Jesus walked out on the water to them. When they saw him, they didn’t recognize him. But here, in today’s story, a bunch of people who weren’t following Jesus around, knew who he was straightaway.

One of the great ironies of the New Testament Gospels is that Jesus often got a cool reception of unbelief amongst the religious insiders in his own homeland, while tending to receive faith from spiritual outsiders in heathen places. Christ initiated a seismic shift and a great transfer of replacing the insiders with the outsiders. This sort of activity was so spiritually scandalous and cataclysmic that it eventually got Jesus killed.

“Many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first.”

Jesus (Matthew 19:30, NIV)

People Respond

The people of Gennesaret demonstrated their faith by acting on the sight of Jesus amongst them. They sent others out into the surrounding countryside to let them know that Jesus was here. That was all it took for the rural folk to not only come but to bring all their sick friends and family with them. Belief abounded, that this man, Jesus, could do the impossible work of curing and healing.

And this is precisely the sort of mentality and heart attitude Jesus was looking for. In telling his parable of the soils, Christ wanted the response of the fourth soil: To not only hear and acknowledge, but to also take the words and ways of God into one’s life in such a way that growth and development happens, fruit matures, and a harvest of righteousness, justice, and peace occurs.

“The seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Matthew 13:23, NIV)

Jesus Makes All the People Well

The most “touching” thing to me in this short account of Christ encountering the people of Gennesaret is that every single person who came to Jesus was made well, without exception.

Such was the faith of the people, that they neither needed nor expected Jesus to come and lay his hands on them or to even say anything. They simply believed that if they could but touch the fringe of his cloak, healing and wellness would happen.

And the people weren’t just seeking their own betterment, but were concerned for everyone they knew who needed help. Whether there was superstition mingled with the faith is really of no concern; just a smidgeon of faith in Jesus is potent and powerful enough to effect a complete makeover of a person.

Moreover, there wasn’t simply individual and isolated instances of wholeness and healing; there was a mass level miracle, a giant group touch of healing and health.

Jesus welcomed them all, and allowed all the people to touch. Most of us don’t want a bunch of strangers touching us or our clothes, at all. That’s too weird and creepy, and likely makes us uncomfortable. What’s more, no respectable person would ever think of touching a rabbi – especially women. That sort of thing was religiously and culturally unacceptable.

Another irony we see is that the crossing of purity boundaries and laws which made people ritually impure is turned on it’s head. Instead, this kind of activity of people touching Christ made the impure folks pure. As something of a rule-breaker at heart, I find this reality refreshing. We need a lot more of it.

Jesus and People Today

Today’s Gospel lesson might seem a nice story that happened a very long time ago. We may also believe it doesn’t have much to do with me today. After all, Jesus isn’t bodily roaming the countryside today. We don’t see mass healings of people. In some places, we rarely see any healing at all from a direct result of faith. So, why even talk about this? Why bring it up? Do you just want to get my hopes up, only to dash them? Isn’t all this stuff pie-in-the-sky thinking, anyway?

Those are legitimate questions and concerns. And we ought not to disparage or make light of anyone asking them. All of us have likely encountered reaching out in faith without any healing or change of circumstance. Rather than going to one of two extremes, by either berating ourselves for a supposed failure of faith, or of discounting God altogether as a figment of the unenlightened mind, we can take a different approach.

The very nature of faith is contact, connection, and care. Faith is up close, relational, and involves touch. Faith is free, yet it is not cheap. Faith always involves a cost: vulnerability and intimacy. If we ever look for faith from afar and have no intention of getting up close and personal – so close as to touch the hem of a garment – then that which we seek will forever be elusive to us.

I’m not talking about a process or a plan that you can predictably access to get the result you want. Rather, I’m referring to real human contact and relationship that can only happen with being open about needs and wants, and is willing to expose one’s inner person to the outside world. I’m talking about putting away the false front we put up for others to see, and let the true self come out. Yes, it’s risky. Yes, it most likely will hurt. And yes, it will lead to healing.

When a person goes to a doctor for a pain they cannot get rid of, and get a diagnosis of needing surgery to deal with the hurt, we willingly allow the surgeon to create more pain for us by cutting into our body. We allow it because we understand that more pain leads to less pain.

And the same is true for our soul. Our broken hearts, our damaged emotions, our racing thoughts, and our hurting spirits need to experience the invisible scalpel of God. Divine intervention is often unpleasant – at least at first – but then later results in wellness for all who invite it’s touch.

May you come with vulnerable faith, confident hope, and active love, to the One who can help you realize your most intimate longings. Amen.