R.P. Nettelhorst's Blog, page 55

Gentiles, too

“Right then three men who had been sent to me from Caesarea stopped at the house where I was staying. The Spirit told me to have no hesitation about going with them. These six brothers also went with me, and we entered the man’s house. He told us how he had seen an angel appear in his house and say, ‘Send to Joppa for Simon who is called Peter. He will bring you a message through which you and all your household will be saved.’

“As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit came on them as he had come on us at the beginning. Then I remembered what the Lord had said: ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ So if God gave them the same gift as he gave us, who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could oppose God?”

When they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God, saying, “So then, God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life.” (Acts 11:11-18)

The universe can change for us overnight. What’s old can become unexpectedly new again. When Peter saw Gentiles filled with the Holy Spirit, Peter remembered Jesus’ words. And it changed his perception of their meaning. When Jesus left, he promised that he would send the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. Peter knew what the Spirit’s arrival had done to him—how it had made him the fearless preacher of the Gospel instead of the man who had denied Christ three times.

So when he witnessed the same thing happen to Gentiles that had happened to him at Pentecost, he realized Jesus words meant far more than he had imagined. Peter suddenly realized that his prejudices against Gentiles and his beliefs about the nature of God had been completely wrong. He realized that as much as Jesus’ words predicting the coming Spirit had been for him and the other disciples, Jesus’ promise was also for the entire human race. Peter suddenly reinterpreted what Jesus had said. He saw Jesus’ words in a whole new light.

Jesus’ words had not changed. What Jesus meant by his words had not changed. But what Peter had understood about them did. What we think we know of God and the Bible may on occasion turn out to be completely wrong—or just incomplete. Like Peter, we need to be ready to listen to Jesus all over again.

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Happy New Year!

A new year is about to begin, a new year that will be filled with both the good and the bad. We doubtless will face a number of crises, our politicians will regularly make a mess of things. We will be inspired, and we will be discouraged. For some of us, our favorite sports team will do well, and for most of us, we’ll end the season by saying “wait till next year.” Some of us will experience loss and mourning, and some will experience hope and joy. Some of us will face both. For most of us, the coming year will simply be the same old, same old: mostly boring. Boring is good.

The new year of 2015 promises to be a very good year for space fans. Come April the spacecraft Dawn will arrive at the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest of the asteroids that circle the sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Dawn spent a year orbiting Vesta (the second largest asteroid) in 2011and 2012 and in 2015 will begin a yearlong circling of Ceres, which may have a bit of an atmosphere, probably has a lot of water ice on it, and perhaps even a subsurface liquid ocean. Doubtless our scientists will discover wonderful and unexpected things.

Come July, New Horizons, which left Earth in January 2006, will at last arrive at its primary destination: Pluto. When New Horizons launched, Pluto was still classified as a planet, rather than a dwarf planet. That changed within months. About six months prior to launch, astronomers had announced the discovery of Eris on July 29, 2005. Eris is located about three times further from the sun than Pluto, in a highly elliptical and eccentric orbit (Pluto’s orbit is likewise very eccentric and elliptical—it actually spends 20 years of its 248 yearlong orbit closer to the sun than Neptune). Eris is slightly larger than Pluto and initially people thought that it would be labeled as the tenth planet. But instead, it forced astronomers to re-evaluate what Pluto was—because Eris wasn’t really alone in these weird objects away far away from the sun: there are several rather sizeable objects besides Pluto and Eris orbiting the sun beyond Neptune that are large enough for their gravity to have made them spherical: Makemake, Haumea (which an ellipsoid because of its rapid rotation), Orcus, Quaoar, Sedna, Ixion, and Varuna, plus many others that are still unnamed and merely numbered at the moment. Rather than continuing to think of Pluto as a planet, it dawned on the scientists that Pluto was actually just the first of this whole class of bodies that existed mostly beyond the orbit of Pluto and stretching out toward the even more distant Oort cloud, the home of the long period comets. Thus, the decision was made by August, 2006 to reclassify Pluto not as a traditional planet, but rather as one of thousands of Kuiper Belt objects. Astronomers have found other stars also have Kuiper Belts, just as most also have planets.

This isn’t the first time this sort of reclassification has occurred. For instance, in the 19th century the asteroid and now dwarf planet Ceres was originally identified as a planet, until the realization that they were simply the largest of the objects we now call asteroids that whirl about scattered between Jupiter and Mars.

Other space related events of 2015 will include multiple launches of cargo ships to the International Space Station. The launches by SpaceX will perhaps be most interesting not for their cargo carrying, but for the tests of the landing system for the first stage boosters. SpaceX will repeatedly attempt to land their booster stages, at first on a floating barge designed just for this purpose, and then, once they become confident of the system and all the kinks have been worked out (some spectacular failures are likely along the way) they will bring a booster stage back to the launch facility for a soft landing. The first successful demonstration of this system will be one of the more significant events in the history of space flight. Up until that moment, rockets have been mostly disposable, each one launched but once and then destroyed after use. If the first stage booster—which makes up about 75 percent of the cost of a rocket—can be landed, refueled and then reused without needing refurbishment, which is the goal SpaceX has set for itself—the cost of space travel will drop precipitously. SpaceX is currently the cheapest ride into orbit. They charge their customers about 61.2 million dollars per launch. The cost of the fuel for a launch, according to the CEO of SpaceX, Elon Musk, is only about 200,000 dollars; the rest of the cost is hardware. If you only need to refuel, rather than replace the whole booster, your cost is going to drop precipitously. The full reusability of the first stage will be a revolutionary change in space travel, making it relatively cheap to get to orbit. Eventually our dreams of ordinary, non-billionaire folk being able to take a vacation in orbit or somewhere else in the solar system will become reality rather than science fiction. 2015 may be the year that we see that future finally begin.

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Thomas

But Thomas, sometimes called the Twin, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples told him, “We saw the Master.”

But he said, “Unless I see the nail holes in his hands, put my finger in the nail holes, and stick my hand in his side, I won’t believe it.”

Eight days later, his disciples were again in the room. This time Thomas was with them. Jesus came through the locked doors, stood among them, and said, “Peace to you.”

Then he focused his attention on Thomas. “Take your finger and examine my hands. Take your hand and stick it in my side. Don’t be unbelieving. Believe.”

Thomas said, “My Master! My God!”

Jesus said, “So, you believe because you’ve seen with your own eyes. Even better blessings are in store for those who believe without seeing.”

Jesus provided far more God-revealing signs than are written down in this book. These are written down so you will believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and in the act of believing, have real and eternal life in the way he personally revealed it. (John 20:24-31)

Healthy skepticism can all too easily become pathological. After all the people Jesus had raised back to life, after all Jesus’ promises, after everyone he knew affirmed it, Thomas’ skepticism is somewhat extreme. He saw Jesus die. And likewise, he refuses to accept his resurrection unless he sees it for himself.

When Jesus appeared before Thomas, he said “Peace be with you!” That was merely the standard Jewish greeting, “Shalom alekem,” the equivalent of “Hi!” Picture a situation comedy, with one character discussing a second character, unaware that the second character has just walked into the room. That’s the situation that Thomas was in: “he’s standing behind me, isn’t he?”

In the midst of the shock of Jesus’ suddenly showing up, Jesus offered Thomas exactly what he asked for. Of course, Thomas wasn’t expecting to actually have to touch Jesus’ nail holes in order to believe. He had simply been expressing his frustration and his need to see Jesus for himself.

When we believe that Jesus lives without the opportunity to see him or touch him we are more blessed than Thomas. How so? Because of the value God places on faith. Trusting God brings its own reward: we can relax in the face of adversity, even when we don’t see a way out, because we have learned to trust God for what is unseen. We have more blessing—more happiness—and less worry than poor Thomas ever had.

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Afterlife

At that very hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem. They found the Eleven and those with them gathered together, who said, “The Lord has certainly been raised, and has appeared to Simon!” Then they began to describe what had happened on the road and how He was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

And as they were saying these things, He Himself stood among them. He said to them, “Peace to you!” But they were startled and terrified and thought they were seeing a ghost. “Why are you troubled?” He asked them. “And why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself! Touch Me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have.” Having said this, He showed them His hands and feet. But while they still could not believe because of their joy and were amazed, He asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” So they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish, and He took it and ate in their presence. (Luke 24:33-43)

The afterlife is physical. We don’t become ghosts or spirits. There had been many witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection: the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, several women, and even Peter. But when Jesus appeared suddenly in the room with them, his disciples were terrified and their first thought—their automatic reaction—was to think it was a ghost.

Human beings are funny things. Sometimes we are very slow to accept reality.

Jesus told them a ghost does not have “flesh and bones,” a standard idiom indicating that he was solid and real, proven when he ate some of their food. The many people that Jesus had raised from the dead should have prepared his disciples for Jesus’ resurrection. The fact that they had already seen him before should have prepared them. But it is just very hard to take a man coming back from the dead for granted.

Jesus resurrection demonstrates that our own resurrection is going to happen. That he was physical and ate food tells us what our resurrection bodies will be like: much like our current bodies. That they recognized him—eventually—tells us that our bodies will be recognizably ours. He still had the scars of his ordeal—but they had been healed. We too, may bear scars from our lives here, but like Jesus’ scars, they will have been healed.

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Emmaus

Two of Jesus’ followers were walking to the village of Emmaus, seven miles from Jerusalem. As they walked along they were talking about everything that had happened. As they talked and discussed these things, Jesus himself suddenly came and began walking with them. But God kept them from recognizing him.

He asked them, “What are you discussing so intently as you walk along?”

They stopped short, sadness written across their faces. Then one of them, Cleopas, replied, “You must be the only person in Jerusalem who hasn’t heard about all the things that have happened there the last few days.”

“What things?” Jesus asked.

“The things that happened to Jesus, the man from Nazareth,” they said. “He was a prophet who did powerful miracles, and he was a mighty teacher in the eyes of God and all the people. But our leading priests and other religious leaders handed him over to be condemned to death, and they crucified him. We had hoped he was the Messiah who had come to rescue Israel. This all happened three days ago.

“Then some women from our group of his followers were at his tomb early this morning, and they came back with an amazing report. They said his body was missing, and they had seen angels who told them Jesus is alive! Some of our men ran out to see, and sure enough, his body was gone, just as the women had said.” (Luke 24:13-24)

There are none so blind as those who will not see. Blindness was a common problem throughout the Gospel stories, both literally and more especially figuratively. Why did Cleopis and the other disciple fail to recognize Jesus on the road to Emmaus? Because the disciples didn’t really know Jesus at all—as Jesus’ question demonstrated.

Of course, Jesus already knew what they were discussing. Because of his miracles, they believed that Jesus was a prophet and a mighty teacher. They had hoped that he was the Messiah who would rescue Israel from the Romans. When Jesus was killed by the Romans, those hopes had been dashed. The odd reports that Jesus’ body had vanished only added to their confusion.

With their confusion and blindness exposed, Jesus could turn his attention to enlightening them. He spent the journey healing their blindness. When their faulty beliefs had been removed, they suddenly had the clarity of mind to recognize Jesus.

We often don’t even know enough to ask the right questions, let alone the answers. Without Jesus’ question to his disciples, those disciples would never have understood what he was trying to tell them. They would never have been able to see Jesus.

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Lama Sabachthani?

From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land. About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”—which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

When some of those standing there heard this, they said, “He’s calling Elijah.”

Immediately one of them ran and got a sponge. He filled it with wine vinegar, put it on a stick, and offered it to Jesus to drink. The rest said, “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to save him.”

And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.

At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus’ resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people.

When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, “Surely he was the Son of God!” (Matthew 27:45–54)

The phrase, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” was Aramaic, the language most commonly spoken in first century Palestine. The New Testament, however, was written in Greek, the main trading language of the known world and the language that most people knew. “My God” in Aramaic sounds very similar to the name Elijah. But the Greek word for “my God” does not. So that the Greek readers of the Gospel would understand how the crowd misunderstood Jesus, Luke recorded Jesus’ original Aramaic phrase.

That the crowd, largely made up of those who had always rejected Jesus, misunderstood his dying words is not so unexpected. They had misunderstood him during his entire public ministry. This last confusion was simply one more example of their nearly consistent inability to comprehend Jesus.

The last words of Jesus are given to us to remind us, if we still need reminding, that Jesus was human and that he could identify with all the challenges we face in life and in death. Dying alone on the cross, even though both he and his Father understood fully the necessity for his sacrifice, he was in pain and unhappy. We can never imagine, therefore, that Jesus doesn’t understand our pain, how bad it is for us, or what it means to suffer. He does know, he does understand, and he very much cares.

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From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came ov...

From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land. About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”—which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

When some of those standing there heard this, they said, “He’s calling Elijah.”

Immediately one of them ran and got a sponge. He filled it with wine vinegar, put it on a stick, and offered it to Jesus to drink. The rest said, “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to save him.”

And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.

At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus’ resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people.

When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, “Surely he was the Son of God!” (Matthew 27:45–54)

The phrase, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” was Aramaic, the language most commonly spoken in first century Palestine. The New Testament, however, was written in Greek, the main trading language of the known world and the language that most people knew. “My God” in Aramaic sounds very similar to the name Elijah. But the Greek word for “my God” does not. So that the Greek readers of the Gospel would understand how the crowd misunderstood Jesus, Luke recorded Jesus’ original Aramaic phrase.

That the crowd, largely made up of those who had always rejected Jesus, misunderstood his dying words is not so unexpected. They had misunderstood him during his entire public ministry. This last confusion was simply one more example of their nearly consistent inability to comprehend Jesus.

The last words of Jesus are given to us to remind us, if we still need reminding, that Jesus was human and that he could identify with all the challenges we face in life and in death. Dying alone on the cross, even though both he and his Father understood fully the necessity for his sacrifice, he was in pain and unhappy. We can never imagine, therefore, that Jesus doesn’t understand our pain, how bad it is for us, or what it means to suffer. He does know, he does understand, and he very much cares.

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We Know So Little

We do not know as much as we like to think we do. I get very tired of people assuming they know all the answers.

For instance, Jesus didn’t comment on every possible topic under the sun. He didn’t tell anyone not to get married, he didn’t tell soldiers to stop being soldiers. As attractive as I find the concept of pacifism, I don’t find its expression in the Bible. There really is a difference between murder and what soldiers and police officers have to do, let alone the whole concept of self-defense. In the Old Testament, God himself is described as a “man of war” (Exodus 15:3) and we find an awful lot of divine sanctioned killing of the military sort in the Old Testament–let alone what we see in the Book of Revelation.

Jesus has nothing to say about abortion or homosexuality. In fact, the Bible never talks about abortion at all, and despite all the screaming on the topic, the reality is that the Bible barely mentions homosexuality at all: only in Leviticus 18:22, 20:13; Romans 1:26-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9-11; and 1 Timothy 1:8-11. So yeah, there’s only five sentences in that entire big book that even mention homosexuality–and in those five places it’s probably not talking about the modern expression of homosexuality: think sex slaves, rape and child abuse and you’ll be closer to the mark so far as what I think the Bible is referencing.

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On Purpose

Jesus answered them, saying, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal. If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also; if anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him.

“Now My soul has become troubled; and what shall I say, ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your name.” Then a voice came out of heaven: “I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.” (John 12:23–28)

Jesus was not suggesting that his followers seek out martyrdom. He was not arguing that we should love death. We would have to ignore the context of Jesus’ words about “hating life” to draw that peculiar conclusion. No, Jesus’ paradox that those who “love life” would lose it, while those who “hate” it, would gain it, had to do with eternity. Those who focus all their energy on this life, those who worry about holding on to everything they have here, are fighting a battle they can never win. If all we have is this life, then we are inevitably both miserable and a failure, because all of us will inevitably die. We will lose everything that we have tried to hold onto.

Therefore, Jesus argued that those who serve him, who follow him, who go where he goes, will—even if they die as a consequence—gain the very thing that they seem to lose: life. Those who belong to Christ, who are part of the kingdom, do not stay dead. They will live forever in Paradise with Jesus. Just as a grain of wheat seems to lose its existence when it is tucked into the ground, the reality of a planted seed is something else again. That single grain of wheat comes back far greater and more impressive than it ever was before. It is multiplied a hundred times or more.

Our current lives are nothing compared to the lives we will have with Jesus forever in God’s kingdom, thanks to Jesus’ willingness to give his life for us.

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Christmas!

Christmas time is normally a happy time for me. The world, of course, continues working as it normally does, with events paying scant attention to the calendar. Sadly, even at Christmas time, people get ill, and people die.

And of course there are still the normal, smaller stresses of life: driving children around, doing laundry, paying bills and the suffering of occasional indigestion or sniffles. But mostly, for my wife and I, times are good. We got our Christmas tree up at the beginning of the month, rather than the night before Christmas. I got most of my Christmas shopping done early and even the food for Christmas dinner was already waiting in my freezer long before Christmas Eve. When I put gasoline in my car during Christmas shopping trips to the mall, I almost chuckled rather than groaned—pleased to find that it is actually cheaper to fill my tank this year than it was last Christmas. Certainly not something I would have expected even a month ago.

On the radio, and in the stores, Christmas carols ring. At church, the normal songs have given way to Christmas hymns. Around town, the houses are decorated in sparkling lights and the smell of pine fills many a visited home. On television, the familiar Christmas movies are rerun, while the weekly series perform mostly insipid Christmas themed stories, usually a takeoff on Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, O’Henry’s Gift of the Magi—or maybe something where Santa Claus turns out to be real after all.

Meanwhile newscasters do obligatory stories either bemoaning that not enough people are out spending money and buying gifts—or else denouncing once again how commercialized Christmas has become. Oddly, no one does news stories on how commercialized their own birthdays have gotten—nor have I heard any of them indicate that they do not plan on accepting any of the presents that they might receive Christmas morning. Meanwhile, between stories, they run commercials for all the Christmas sales in the big department stores.

My in-laws will once again descend upon my home, arriving early on Christmas morning to join in the giving and receiving of presents while my wife sets up our video camera to record the whole thing to a DVD that we’ll likely never watch—given that I’ve never watched any of the videos from the previous twenty-one Christmases since our first child arrived in our house. I remember that first Christmas: she’d come to us but a couple weeks earlier, a tiny eight pound four-month old, undernourished and neglected. At nine on Christmas Eve she’d started crying and we discovered she had a fever. It was significant enough that we wound up taking her to the emergency room, where we waited with her until nearly four AM on Christmas morning. Perhaps not the best way to spend a Christmas Eve, but we rejoiced anyway because she turned out to be okay. Now she’s junior in college and never gets sick. And she’s been joined by two sisters, now both eighteen.

In the kitchen, Christmas cookies have appeared. The smell of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and sugar fills the air. The office party at my work is a quiet affair: as a writer, I’m the only one in my office here at home, after all.

Outside, temperatures have dropped. letting even those of us living in California know that Christmas is coming. There’s even some small chance of snow according to the weather service, despite the fact that my lawn is still bright green and needs mowing.

So Christmas for me now is mostly happy and relaxed. I try hard not to take it for granted or lose sight of its real meaning: the best Christmas present of all.

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