The View from the West Mesa

John's writings have common threads whether we speak about his epistles or his gospel. Certainly, one of those is love - the love of God for the world, and the expected reciprocal love of God by people. Perhaps the most famous of his statements is that God so loved the world that He gave His only Son for the world to save it. But there is another thread common among his writings but it is not overly explicit. That is a corrective narrative against what appears to be the beginnings of what would become what we call Gnosticism. Specifically, a dualistic view of Creation. This view, arising from Greek influences argued that the physical world was corrupt and imperfect; destined for destruction. On the other hand, this view held that the spiritual life, or that of the mind was that which was to be perfected and leave the coarse physical reality behind. This view infiltrated the church such that some would teach that what we did in or with our bodies was of no consequence. Our bodi...

Luke's telling of the Annunciation is a story too easy for us to simply read over, thinking we've heard it all before. We do ourselves a disservice if we don't slow down and read the exchange as though there is something there for us. An angel appears in front of a young girl. No, not just an angel - an Archangel. Gabriel. He's been around but today he is entrusted with delivering a very important announcement. And so he appears.Usually in Scripture when an angel shows up, grown warriors fall to the ground and have to be coaxed to their feet. This girl doesn't do that though. She is a bit confused. First, she isn't expecting an angel today and this one is telling her something about her having a baby and her baby being a king for Israel, a descendant of David on his throne. The angel has to repeat himself and expand his message a bit.He even tells her that her aunt who everyone thought to be barren was pregnant. So we have two females who aren't suppos...

The parable of the tenants is one I don't remember hearing much as a kid. Maybe that is due to the presence of brutal murder as part and parcel of the story and our general aversion to exposing young children to sex and violence if we can avoid them. As an adult, this parable has usually been explained in the most obvious application, and that having to do with Israel rejecting Jesus, the Son of God. The fallout of that rejection of course, is the taking of the gospel to Gentiles. So far, so good I suppose. Certainly that is one of the main purposes of the parable. The parable though, doesn't just appear in the text by itself. Rather, it comes as part of a story itself. In this case, Jesus' jousting with the Pharisees. I think it is this story from which we can best use this parable for the church. There are two often left unnoticed statements in the larger story which may have more to say to modern disciples than the actual parable. The first appears to be the res...

Jonah, the guy with the big fish. Or the guy with the scorching heat and the shade problem. The guy directed to Nineveh by his God. The guy who does everything he can not to do what his God wants him to do. If we have read the story and paid attention, we know that it ends with God’s rhetorical question about caring for people - a stark contrast drawn between a God follower and his God. Standard insights and details that most of us glean from this story. But.... Have you noticed these details: Once Jonah gets on the boat, in the middle of the storm we find the Pagans entreating their gods for safety and deliverance.  Once they learn from Jonah that they’re going to have to throw Jonah overboard, these Pagans entreat Jonah’s God not to hate them for throwing him overboard. Once we get Jonah to Nineveh and he delivers his speech, the Ninevites almost immediately – at the direction of their king – repent in “sackcloth and ashes.” Jonah goes up on the hill ...

Some time after Jesus was born, the Magi from the East arrived to worship the Promised One. They had recognized the signs in the heavens and had travelled some distance to see this phenomenon. Having arrived in the general vicinity, they needed some help finding the right location, and so they stopped in to ask the local king. The king in turn, called the prophets and his own wise men and they told both the king and the Magi that Bethlehem was the prophesied location. Thanks all around, and the Magi travel to Bethlehem to marvel at and worship the Promise. The king though, seeing this as a threat to his own well-being, knowing now the location and the time of the appearing of the signs, ordered all the boys two years and younger killed. The intent? To eradicate this threat to his kingdom. In the church calendar, today remembers that slaughter, that attempt to manage and control one’s own destiny through our own might. The world has just remembered with most of Christendom,...

Christmas marks and reminds us of a day a couple millennia ago when the Creator God was born as a helpless human baby. The Creator as creature. He came as the object of promises made by that Creator God from hundreds and thousands of years before; the birth was the fulfillment of promises and mark the steadfast faithfulness of God. God had not forgotten His people, or the world. Birthed to live a life as the Life we are made to live. Birthed to live as an example for us; a life of love and acknowledgement of God. Having lived that life, He is destined to die not simply to effect our salvation, but as the ultimate expression of love for you and me; as the ultimate expression of submission to God as an expression of love. This child reminds us that the world is not foreign to us or to God, but a place to which He deigns to come because He has made it; because He loves it; because He loves you. Loves you and offers you Life with Him. Two thousand years ago,...

Matthew 1.18-25 (with some allusions to chapter 2) Advent is a season of preparing, of getting ready for the coming of our God.  Our text for this week is one of promise fulfilled but it is quickly followed by warning in chapter 2.  Our text tells us of Joseph’s resolution to put Mary away quietly. He could have chosen public humiliation or worse for this young girl but Joseph is a man of conviction, of righteous behavior.  All of us have heard of, or perhaps have acted in “righteous indignation” toward someone or something with which we have taken exception. Righteousness in the first century was roughly equitable with living by the Law, and in this case the Law was quite clear what Joseph’s options were. But Joseph gives us a glimpse of real righteousness, a righteousness that extends grace in the face of insult, of caring rather than condemning. Joseph himself is an image of God. We are reminded that there is anticipation of the coming of the Christ child, the...