A surprising eulogy for God

Ephesians 1:3–14, Part 1

Here’s some insider pastoral info for you: when we counsel the family of the deceased, and when we officiate their funerals, we pastors sometimes straight up lie, talking about how great they were and how for sure they are in heaven.  In reality pastors do not know that for a fact, and might be just trying to comfort the family in their time of grief, an act of comfort that is not necessarily a bad thing. But it still might be a lie.

Have you ever attended a funeral, listened to the eulogy of the deceased, and thought to yourself, “There’s a whole other dark side to them that didn’t make it into the eulogy.” 

This week we study, Ephesians 1:3–14, a passage which Bible teacher N. T. Wright titles, “A Shout of Praise.” Here’s verse 3,

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,”

So right away, Paul starts this letter on a very upbeat note.  “Praise” is the word we get our English word “eulogy” from.  Because we only hear eulogies at funerals, that might sound very odd.  But think about it.  A eulogy is a short talk in praise of the deceased. And like I said, many eulogies don’t tell the whole truth, and some baldly lie.

In Paul’s case, he is eulogizing God, who is very much alive, and about whom Paul does not have to lie at all.  In fact, this eulogy is Paul gushing about the amazingness of God.

In the original it is one loooooong sentence.  He is so full of praise, he just goes on and on and on without stopping.  You know anyone like that?  People who have the gift of gab. When they get excited, they really go off.  You can hardly keep up with them, and want to interrupt them and say “Breathe!  Slow down.”

My daughter sometimes gets in that mode.  I teach a class at her university on Tuesday evenings, and we meet up for dinner in the dining hall before class. I’m often me sitting there eating, nodding, uh-huh-ing, while she talks and talks and talks.  I love it. 

Paul’s eulogy is a bit like that.  He is excited. And he just gushes on and on about the amazing blessings God has given us.

What we are about to hear then is a very interesting eulogy, a eulogy that I believe could result in us jumping for joy in praising God, to the point where we want to tell other people about this eulogy. 

Join me back here tomorrow as we begin to hear Paul’s eulogy of God.

Photo by Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash

It was 57 degrees in our house, and I was…

Ephesians 1:3–14, Preview

As I type this, I’m sitting on the sofa in my living room.  It’s 11:30am Friday morning.  Why am I not sitting in my office?  Normally I would be.  I’m at home because this morning we woke up to the feeling of cold air inside our house.  

Nothing was wrong. Last night when we went to bed around 11pm, we suspected the house would be cold in the morning.  The reason is that the inside temp was already down to 65 degrees when we turned in for the night.  Not that we wanted it to be 65.

Again, nothing was wrong.  We let the temps drop simply because we didn’t tend to the wood stove.  Wood is our main heat source, which means that during the cold winter months, we must think about and plan to keep the home fires burning, literally.  Last evening, we just got a bit lax.

Then the cold winds kicked up.  Because we live next to open fields, the west-facing side of our home often gets pounded with strong winds, and we really have to pay attention to the wood stove.  

When we went to bed, even though the wood stove was stuffed full and burning hot, we were starting at 65, and knew that by morning the house would be cold again.  It was 57 degrees inside when we awoke. 

That meant I was going to be working from home this morning, keeping the fire raging to get our house temp up to something comfortable.  That reality has me feeling grateful for many reasons: 1. I can work from home, mostly because I’m working on my sermon today; 2. We have a wood stove; 3. We have firewood. Finally, 4. In just a few hours time, the house temp is now at 70 degrees and rising.  As I sit here on my sofa next to the wood stove, I feel the heat radiating my way, and I am thankful to God.

I mention this story because in Ephesians 1:3–14, Paul starts by saying, “Praise be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us…”  I feel blessed when I feel the heat from my wood stove.  How do you feel blessed today?  How did the Apostle Paul feel blessed?  In our second week in the series through his letter “Ephesians” Paul has a long list of blessings, a list that has him saying, “Praise be!”  

I look forward to this coming week, as we’ll study this passage together. It will be a joyful expression of God’s blessings that he has shared with us.  

A profoundly important description of church

Ephesians intro, part 5

A close friend from church and I work out on Tuesday and Thursday mornings with another guy.  Recently that other guy, who is not part of our church, told us that he was reading the Bible over the weekend and thought the passage he was reading sounded like our church. I perked up. This could be good or bad.

What Bible passage reminded him of my church?

When you think of your church, what passage Bible comes to mind? This week we have been studying the introduction and conclusion of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. We’ve come to the last two verses of the conclusion. They should sound familiar to the introduction, and they are verses that should describe any church.

In Ephesians chapter 6, verses 23 and 24, Paul writes:

“Peace to the brothers and sisters, and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace to all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with an undying love.”

Grace and peace, just like the intro in chapter 1, verses 1 and 2. But the conclusion adds love.  In verse 23, love from God to the people.  In verse 24, love from the people to God.

God is love. Love is not one of his characteristics.  He simply is love.  We can rightly say that everything else about God modifies his love. 

God is gracious love.

God is peaceful love.

God is merciful love.

God is holy love.

Love is his all in all.  And God wants us to experience his love.  God wants us to know that he loves us.  This is why John 3:16 is such a wonderful verse, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Or consider how Paul writes about God’s love in Romans 8:37-39, “We are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

But this is a blog series about Ephesians, so let’s conclude with a statement of God’s love from Ephesians.  In Ephesians 3, Paul writes a profound prayer.  Look at Ephesians 3:17–19, right in the middle of the prayer, where Paul says, “I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

God very much wants us to know and experience his love in our day to day lives. 

Groups of Christians form church families, and together we receive the grace, peace, and love of God. Then we share God’s grace, peace, and love with each other and the communities around them.  When we share grace, peace, and love in the places we live and work and play, we Christians are small working models of the new creation that God desires for all people.  We are not the full-blown new creation that Jesus will bring when he returns.  We are just a model of it.  But we are a working model. The real thing in small scale. 

There you have it.  Churches are to be grace, peace, and love amongst ourselves and with the other humans around us.

Back to the friend who was reading the Bible and said he thought of my church. He wasn’t reading Ephesians. He was reading Jesus’ parable of the Sheep and the Goats found in Matthew 25.  That’s the one where Jesus says that his true followers will reach out to those in need of food and clothing.  Jesus’ followers visit incarcerated persons in prison, care for the sick, and welcome strangers.  He said that he read that and it hit him in a new way, “That sounds like Faith Church.”  It was very encouraging, and it has much affinity with the grace, peace, and love that Paul writes about in Ephesians.

How can you keep that grace, peace, and love going in your church?  Who do you need to give grace and peace to?  In what new ways do you need to learn to live in and walk in the grace, peace, and love that God has for you? 

Photo by Sam Balye on Unsplash

When mail arrived, they threw a party

Ephesians intro, part 4

We are so used to snail mail being a mundane affair. Mostly we get junk mail anymore. If it even hints of being junk, I usually just toss it straight into the garbage. Our meaningful communication in 2026 is now pretty much all online, accessible through our devices.

The reality of junk mail got me thinking. Look at all those mail trucks in the picture. Guess how many vehicles the United States Postal Service operates? It’s mind-boggling. The answer is at the conclusion of this post. I wonder how postal workers feel about the reality that a massive amount of their work is transporting what amounts to garbage. They are like reverse sanitation workers. Postal workers deliver trash to you. Sanitation workers take it away.

In the ancient world (and much more recently in the contemporary world too), snail mail served an important purpose. That reality of ancient snail mail relates to the conclusion of the book of the Bible we began studying this week, Ephesians. In the previous posts, I talked about the introduction, chapter 1, verses 1 and 2. Now skip ahead to Paul’s conclusion, and I’ll think you’ll see why I am covering both the introduction and the conclusion this week. 

In Ephesians chapter 6, verses 21–22, Paul gives us a bit of insider information about how life and ministry worked in the early church:

“Tychicus, the dear brother and faithful servant in the Lord, will tell you everything, so that you also may know how I am and what I am doing. I am sending him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are, and that he may encourage you.”

Tychicus was one member of Paul’s missionary team.  Tychicus has a very important role in regard to this letter because Paul is in prison when he writes Ephesians. Some believe Paul is on house arrest in Rome.  Others believe he is in prison in Ephesus.  Either way, Paul is writing a letter because he himself cannot travel around. 

Furthermore, the ancient world had no postal system like we are used to.  Sending letters was a really big deal in Paul’s day.  Tychicus has to physically travel with the letter, and likely Tychicus is the one reading the letter to each group of Christians.  As verses 21 and 22 indicate, Tychicus can hold Q & A sessions with everyone who hears the letter. Thus Tychicus would travel from city to city, and from house church to house church in each city (because there were no church buildings at this time) reading the letter.

Therefore in Paul’s day, the first century Roman Empire, when Tychichus showed up with a letter from Paul, it was an event. I wonder if the Christians in a given house church threw a party. Perhaps they sent people around town to let everyone know, “Come quick, Tychicus is here with a letter from Paul! We’ll have dinner together. Hurry!”

For further insider info about the early church and letters, consider what Paul writes at the conclusion of his letter to the Colossians. He refers to a circular letter when he tells the Colossian Christians, “After this letter has been read to you, see that it is also read in the church of the Laodiceans and that you in turn read the letter from Laodicea.” 

What letter from Laodicea? There is no Pauline letter to Laodicea in the Bible. Some scholars wonder if Paul is referring to the letter we call “Ephesians.” Other suggest he might be referring to a letter he wrote to the Laodicean church, a letter which is now lost to antiquity. And that begs the question, might there be even more? We don’t know. 

My point is that Paul’s letters get passed around, and it is fascinating to consider that they are still being passed around today, as Christians all over the world for centuries have read and studied his letters.  Consider the massive impact of these 13 letters!

In the next post, we look at what Paul writes in verses 23 and 24, and I think you’ll find they sound familiar to the introduction.

Photo by Sam LaRussa on Unsplash

The USPS operates 257,894 vehicles. See data here. Imagine how much junk mail those vehicles transport every day.

The healing energy of grace

Ephesians intro, Part 3

Paul’s greeting in his letter titled “Ephesians” uses two words that he starts 13 of 13 letters with. These are two exceedingly important concepts for Christians. 

We read the two words of this greeting in Ephesians 1, verse 2.  “Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Grace, one scholar writes is “a favorable attitude of good will”. (Louw & Nida)

Peace, the same scholar suggests, is “a set of favorable circumstances involving peace and tranquility.”

Favorable attitude and favorable circumstances.  It is especially important that both the favorable attitude of good will and the favorable circumstances of tranquility are Paul’s request of God to the people.  They are not from Paul.  They are from God. Paul wants the people to experience God’s grace, and God’s peace. 

Over the years I’ve increasingly come to believe that these two concepts, grace and peace, are vital for humans.  I would still say love is the most important of all, and we’ll get to that in the next post.  But grace and peace are so important.

Why grace and peace?

Grace is important because we need God’s favor in our lives. And he is quite willing to share his grace with us.  Primarily, he gives us his grace in the person, life, teachings, and work of Jesus, culminating in Jesus’ death and resurrection by which we can have new life.  Then God fills us with his Spirit, an unfathomable gift of grace.

In fact in the language Paul wrote in, ancient Greek, “grace” is charis, and “gift” is charisma. Notice the link, the wordplay.  Charis and Charisma.  In Romans 12:6 Paul himself connects the two when he writes “We have different gifts, according to the grace given us.”

Of the many wonderful aspects of grace, I love its energy.  Maybe that’s how the English word charisma became a word about energy.  I don’t know.  But grace, rooted in a favorable attitude, has a healing energy.  By God’s grace, we are healed from what Paul describes in other places as “enslavement to sin.”  By God’s grace, we are set free.  It is as though Jesus goes before us and sets us free.  That’s grace.  It’s especially gracious, because it is not due to anything we do.  He goes first.  He does it. 

We then live in his grace and we likewise give grace.  We are receivers of grace and givers of grace.  Grace is the healing energy in broken relationships. 

In addition to grace, Paul asks God to convey his peace to the people.  Peace is rooted in the Hebrew concept of shalom, which is that expansive rightness and wholeness God desires for all things.  God wants peace between himself and his people.  Between people and other people.  Between people and creation.  As with grace, God is the initiator of peace.  We have peace with God through Jesus. 

It is astounding to think that God looks at each one of us with grace and peace.  Personalize that.  When God looks at you and thinks about you, his posture toward you is grace and peace.  God has a favorable attitude toward you.  God wants favorable circumstances for you.  He does not choose or desire harm for you.

Clearly, our life circumstances are not always favorable the way God wants them.  Sometimes that is the result of our poor choices, sometimes the result of others’ poor choices that affect us. Sometimes the result of the broken and fallen world we live in.

What is amazing is that we can experience God’s grace and peace in the middle of our circumstances.  Which is precisely what Paul was communicating to the people when he said “Grace and peace to you from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

That’s how Paul introduces the letter. In the next post, we skip ahead to his conclusion.

Photo by adrianna geo on Unsplash

Is “Ephesians” possibly an incorrect title for the New Testament epistle traditionally titled “Ephesians”?

Ephesians intro, Part 2

Paul says he is writing to Christians “in Ephesus.”  Ephesus was the second largest city in the Roman Empire, behind Rome.  Ephesus was in a part of the Roman Empire known as Asia Minor, modern day Turkey. Want to take a tour of the city of Ephesus? You can do so from the comfort of your home thanks to YouTube. This 30-min video shows you the astoundingly well-preserved Roman ruins of the once bustling city where numerous famous members of the early church lived:

Ephesus is located on the southeastern Aegean Sea.  It was a city of approximately 250,000 in the first century, of which estimates suggest 60,000 were slaves.  It’s temple to Diana/Artemis was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

Tradition holds that Mary the mother of Jesus lived there till she died.  Timothy would eventually become pastor in Ephesus, and John the Apostle lived there till his death. Ephesus was a very important city for early Christianity. If you want to learn about Paul’s time in Ephesus, you can do so in Acts 19.  I’m not going to talk about that story, because there is something else very interesting we need to know about this letter called “Ephesians.”

Look in your Bible at Ephesians 1, verse 1. Do you notice a footnote right after the word “Ephesus”.  In the New International Version (2011 edition), there is little letter f?  That f indicates that there is a note about that word.  Look just below at the bottom of the page, find the f, and it says, “Some early manuscripts do not have in Ephesus.”

What that means is that it is possible that the words “in Ephesus” were added later, and that Paul didn’t write those words.  If that is true, this letter was a circular letter intended for all Christians. 

If so, Paul was writing, perhaps not just to the Ephesians, but intentionally for all Christians, meaning that this letter is probably not so much addressing specific issues in a specific church, with specific people in mind, which is definitely the case for many of Paul’s letters.  Instead, Paul is writing with a much wider view, a view for the whole church.  That is not to say that we cannot or should not read and learn from his much more situational letters. We can and we should.  What I am saying is that in Ephesians Paul seems to be giving Christians a sense of what God wants for all churches. 

This is why Bible scholar N. T. Wright calls his book about Ephesians, The Vision of Ephesians.  In Ephesians we get God’s vision for the church. Here’s a brief video of Wright talking about the book:

And that vision, Wright says, is for the church to be “a small working model of the new creation.”  Hold that thought.  We’ll talk more about the church as small working model of the new creation in the next few posts, and we’ll talk about three ways the church actually works.

Photo by Deniz Demirci on Unsplash

The church is a model

Ephesians intro, Part 1

In my previous post, I talked about the joy of Legos.  The imagination, the seeking, the finding, the designing, the building.  Using persistent creativity to make models.

I’m starting a blog series through the New Testament epistle titled “Ephesians,” which scholar N. T. Wright says is about the church as a small working model of new creation.  The church as a small working model of new creation?  What does that mean?  We’re going to find out.

Here’s how the letter begins, chapter 1, verse 1.

“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To God’s holy people in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus”.

The author Paul begins by introducing himself. This might seem odd to us, as we contemporaries begin our communication by addressing the recipient. But what Paul does is typical for ancient letter writing.  Who was Paul? 

He started his ministry career as a Pharisee who was adamantly opposed to the Christians.  Then in Acts 9, we read that Jesus appeared to him and totally changed Paul’s life.  A massive 180-degree change. In an instant Paul went from being the person Christians feared most to the person helping more people than any other become Christians. 

Paul would become the most impactful missionary of the early church.  We read about some of his missionary travels in the book of Acts. He traveled all over the Roman Empire, talking about how Jesus rose from the dead, inviting people to follow Jesus, and then starting churches in numerous cities.

That missionary bio is why Paul describes himself in verse 1 as “an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God”.  An apostle is an entrepreneurial missionary, one who starts new ministries and churches.  Additionally, when Paul writes that his apostleship was “by the will of God,” he hints at how Jesus surprisingly broke into his life bringing dramatic transformation.

Paul was not just a traveling church planter.  He was also a bible teacher and scholar who did a lot of writing about the bible and theology. Throughout the past centuries, Paul is probably most famous for his letters in the New Testament.

Notice the next phrase in verse 1, where he mentions who he is now writing to: “the holy people in Ephesus.”  Some translations describe them as “faithful people.” Who are the holy/faithful people in Ephesus?

Paul is referring to the Christians living in the city of Ephesus. 

He doesn’t mean that those Christians were holy in the same way that God is holy. They are not perfect.  They are holy in their standing as followers of Jesus, just as any Christian is said to be holy.  Again, we Christians are not holy because of something in us or something we did, but because we are faithful followers of Jesus who is holy. 

Another way to put it, and Paul himself will refer to this in verse 5 which we will study next week, is that we are adopted members of God’s covenant family.  When a person is adopted into a family, they are a real part of that family.  Legally and fully a family member. Same for Christians in God’s family. We are real part of God’s family.  Though we are not holy like he is, God looks upon us that way, that we really are part of his family. It’s astounding and beautiful.

Just like adoption, a church family is a small working model of the new creation which is God’s family.

Photo by Asso Myron on Unsplash

Models that actually work

Ephesians Intro, Preview

That picture above is from the lobby at UPMC Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh, where my granddaughter was treated for her heart condition. It is a Lego model of the hospital.  Perfect idea for a children’s hospital, right?  

Yet, how many adults build Lego models?  Many!  I enjoyed building with Legos as a kid, and I enjoyed it just as much when my kids were young.  Now in my 50s, I still love it.  Each year we put a Lego train around our Christmas tree, and it is so much fun. 

Do you build models?  Planes, trains, and more!  Just like my Lego train, your models work.  They fly through the air, and they chug around tracks.

This week I start a blog series about a model that works.  The church!  Not a Lego set of a church.  Though it would be cool to try to make a Lego version of church buildings.  Instead, we are going to learn how the church is a real model. As Bible scholar, N. T. Wright suggests, “The church is a small working model of new creation.”  

New creation? 

What could Wright mean?  For this series, I’m going to be following Wright’s outline of Ephesians, as described in his recent book, The Vision of Ephesians: The Task of the Church and the Glory of God.  You might consider purchasing the book and reading along each week. We’ll have one week per chapter of Wright’s book.  You can watch Wright talk about Ephesians and his book in this short video.

In the next post, we begin studying this very impactful letter together.

Why Jesus said the heart matters

Vertical & Horizontal Morality and the mission of the church, Part 5

In Matthew 15, Jesus is being bold, confronting the religious elite, basically not only telling them off, but also telling the people in the crowd how wrong the religious leaders were.  That makes the disciples nervous, and rightly so, because those religious leaders had power.  It generally doesn’t go well in life when you tick off the powerful.  So the disciples bring this up to Jesus.  Look at verse 12.   

“Then the disciples came to him and asked, ‘Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?’”

Do you think Jesus thought, “Oh…sorry everyone, and sorry, Pharisees. My bad.”?  No.

He just keeps rolling in verse 13, “He replied, ‘Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. Leave them; they are blind guides. If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.’”

Leave them? Wow. Jesus is saying to the crowds, “Don’t follow your religious leaders because they are blind.”  You can see how the religious leaders were extremely upset with him, and eventually killed him.

Then Jesus’ disciple Peter speaks up in verse 15, “Peter said, ‘Explain the parable to us.’” Seems like a normal question. Yet, Jesus’ response could sound cold.

“Are you still so dull?” Jesus asked them. Is Jesus being sarcastic to Peter? This is one of those verses that has me wishing I could see his facial expression, hear his tone of voice. I bet Jesus has a twinkle in his eye, and is laughing at Peter. Jesus goes on to explain:

“Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man ‘unclean.’ For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man ‘unclean’; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him ‘unclean.’ ”

There you have it. Jesus points out that the Pharisees were only focused on vertical morality.  Do God’s will no matter the cost.  If it means not caring for your parents, so be it.  At least your following God’s will, right?

Wrong. It was actually only their version of following God’s will. Jesus corrects them and says that God’s will is deep inner transformation so that what flows naturally out of our lives is goodness.

Notice verse 19. All those sins are relational sins.  They are abusing, killing, hurting, mistreating, physically, verbally, emotionally, sexually, other people.  For Jesus, then, horizontal morality is what will naturally flow from our lives when we have a heart that is transformed by God.

And that brings me back to the mission of Jesus.  We followers of Jesus are people who love God and love others.  Thus we need (1) a vertical and horizontal morality in that pursuit, and (2) to be passionate about developing a deeper relationship with God and extending his love to our community. 

Which do you lean towards?

Vertical?  “Stand up for what you believe is right, even if it hurts relationships?

Horizontal? “Care so much about relationships that you forget to stay connected to Jesus, and his ways.”

Jesus believed, taught, and lived both the vertical and horizontal. 

Take some time this week and inventory your heart and your lifestyle choices.  

Keep talking, praying, and thinking through this, as individuals, in your families, and together in your churches.  How can you develop a deeper relationship with God and extend his love to your community?  Those two goals are very much connected, yet it can be easy to emphasize one and neglect the other.  Which one is more of a challenge for you?  Strengthen your strong one, and shore up the weak one.  We need both.

Photo by Ryan ‘O’ Niel on Unsplash

Sinus infections, hand-washing, bamboo, and what really matters to Jesus

Vertical & Horizontal Morality and the mission of the church, Part 4

As I type this, I have a sinus infection. I get one just about every year. This past June, I even had a rare summer sinus infection. Outside in direct sunlight, I was shaking with fever chills. Yesterday at a doctor appointment, I asked if there was anything I could do to avoid infection. She said the number one best practice to avoid infection is hand-washing.

I had to laugh because in Matthew 15, Jesus has an encounter with the Pharisees about hand-washing, and I had just talked about it in my sermon this past week, which I am now sharing with you on the blog this week. The previous posts this week have all been an introduction to this passage. I’ve been talking about mission drift, and how vertical and horizontal morality affect Christians and our pursuit of Jesus’ mission. Jesus talks about what is important for staying focused on his mission, and he did so in response to the Pharisees’ accusation about hand-washing. Here’s how Matthew 15 begins,

“Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, ‘Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!’”

Unless I’m doing yard work or something that gets my hands dirty, I never wash my hands before I eat.  I guess the Pharisees wouldn’t like me either.  But my lack of washing my hands has nothing to do with religious rituals.  I’m just much more eager to eat, so I don’t want to wash my hands.  Also, I don’t generally touch my food with my hands.  Except if it’s bread, of if I’m in India. 

What the Pharisees are confronting Jesus about is his willingness to allow his disciples to break the law.  Not God’s law.  God didn’t have a law about washing your hands before a meal.  The religious leaders added that law later on.  But the Pharisees were all about the added laws. Why? Because they didn’t want to break God’s law, so they created new laws designed to keep everyone far from the line of breaking God’s law.

Jesus, though, is not intimidated in the least. Here’s what he says in verse 3

“Jesus replied, ‘And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, “Honor your father and mother” and “Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.” But you say that if a man says to his father or mother, “Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is a gift devoted to God,” he is not to “honor his father” with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.”’”

I love it when Jesus puts the religious leaders in their place by revealing their inconsistency.  He is basically saying, “Knock it off, guys.  Stop confronting me and my disciples.  What really matters is the heart, and not outward appearance.  You guys are the ones with a heart issue, which is obvious by how you get around honoring your parents, which by the way is one of the Ten Commandments from God, not one of your man-made rules.” 

Then Jesus explains what really matters.  Look at verse 10,

“Jesus called the crowd to him and said, ‘Listen and understand. What goes into a man’s mouth does not make him “unclean,” but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him “unclean.”’”

It’s the heart that matters.  He wasn’t referring to our blood pumping organ, by the way.  He was referring to our inner being, our mind.  What matters is that we have a transformed inner being, so that the Fruit of the Spirit is flowing from us.  

What matters is that we stay connected to him, which is what he taught in John 15.  There in his Vine & Branches analogy, he said “Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”

A major ice storm recently hit the northeast USA. We had at least a quarter inch of ice on everything. A quarter inch might not sound like much, imagine how heavy it could be when that much ice covers everything, especially things that are not capable of holding that weight, like tree branches. We had a large pine tree branch break off under the weight, so large I had to cut into four pieces to carry it off. We also have bamboo along one side of our back yard, almost like a natural fence. Iced over, numerous stalks of our bamboo drooped all the way to the ground, creating a canopy. Bamboo bends, but it doesn’t break. When the ice melts, the bamboo, for the most part straightens up, as it remains connected to its roots.

Jesus calls us to be like bamboo, remaining connected to him

Staying connected to Jesus often requires struggle, wrestling with his ways and ideas, as we seek to follow him and live like him in the world.

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash