LaterComesQuickly

Happy Monday to all! Let us start off the work week with some thinking, doesn’t that sound fun?

In the last few months, I have been studying Buddhism off and on and as the majority of you know, I have been (and continue to be) a Christian since my adolescence. I am not studying Buddhism to convert to any new religion but instead I find that many of the concepts are helpful in my attempts to understand Christ’s teachings better.

Sidenote: Ghandi once said that “God is Truth”, but then later said that “Truth is God”. I believe that there are universal truths that are consistent in every pure religion, that these truths are laws as sure as gravity and physics. I believe that the teachings of Christ and Buddha can compliment each other to the benefit of those that practice either.
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So he replied to the messengers, “Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.” (Luke 7:22)

Some time ago i was reading this verse (and the surround passage) and it hit me on a few levels at the same time. Sometimes when I read the bible, it is difficult to think of people as real. They seem mythical and too perfect at times. But here was a time that arguably one of the more important people in the bible displayed their humanity. Here was John, cousin to Jesus, a man whose faith led him in complete opposition to the culture and powers of the times; a man willing to criticize the religious leaders of the times to their faces…yet at his lowest point…he sends a couple of his followers to ask Jesus “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?” (Luke 7:18-20)

John was there when God himself validated Jesus out loud as a voice from the heavens said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:17) If anyone should have known who Jesus was, it was John. Yet as he sat in prison, he was weak and in his weakness, questioned everything his faith had led him to. I would almost expect Jesus to rebuke the followers of John for the lack of faith…yet Jesus does something very different. Going back a little, the first person to plainly refer to the Messiah in Jesus’ presence was the Samaritan woman at the well. As she spoke to Jesus, she knew that she lacked the knowledge to discuss things such as worship and religion with a Jew so she says, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” And Jesus says directly, “I who speak to you am he.” (John 4:25-26) Yet as John was plagued with doubt, Jesus replies very differently.

“So he replied to the messengers, “Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.” (Luke 7:22)

He wasn’t going to give John an easy answer, because perhaps even if Jesus had answered plainly, he might have still doubted. Instead he wanted John to consider the things that were happening and then decide for himself if Jesus was the one they had been waiting for. The evidence would speak for itself.

This has been in the back of my mind for awhile. It feels like Jesus gave us a description of what it looks like when God works and through that, we can validate God’s hand in it and yet when I look at the common picture of ministry that we see today… it doesn’t seem like it meets the description Jesus gave. I see ministries that focus on the supernatural…and it seems like they are flaunting a vanity and materialism that defies spiritual reason. Take one well known minister that sent a letter to his supporters requesting giving to put a down payment on a $40 million private jet (Doubt me? Sadly, no longer have the brochure asking for the initial donations.). I have a feeling that’s not exactly preaching the gospel to the poor. And then on the other hand there is an increase in the focus on poverty and the poor, yet it seems that the miracles are missing for the most part. Now these are just my own observations (well, the jet part is fact) and somewhere in my heart I long for a balance between the two. That the emotion-induced faux-spirituality is replaced by genuine miracles…not for generic head and back aches but in the blind seeing, the deaf hearing, the lame walking and the dead being raised and at the same time, that the invisible line between the broken and discarded masses and the educated, weekly-tithing, shiny car driving church-goer is demolished.

It is a scary place to be, seeing things in such a way…because I have always believed that when your eyes are opened to something wrong with the “system”, you become some how responsible for the solution. I have never been afraid of the ministry, though I haven’t always felt worthy of it. Yet it feels like God is sort of prodding me with a stick, to see if I am still alive, and saying, “you have purpose, start getting ready…”