by John Mason | May 7, 2014 | Word on Wednesday
This Sunday is Mother’s Day. Towards the end of the 20th century there were major shifts in the thinking about the role of women and motherhood. Television sitcoms reflected some of these changes – from the nuclear family in ‘Lassie’ with the stay-at-home Mom, through to the late 1980s when 75% of American TV’s female characters worked outside the home.
However, in the last decade or so there has been the realization that the superwoman image of women who strive for perfection at work and at home, is unrealistic and potentially dangerous. The New York Times occasionally runs an article touching on the tension and competition between full-time mothers and full-time professional women.
I suspect it would come as a great surprise to many today to read Proverbs 31:10-31. Considering the things she does and the pace of her life she would make a good New Yorker! However we see here not just characteristics of an ideal wife but also a picture of the Bible’s view of womanhood.
Proverbs 31:10-31 is written as an acrostic, using the letters of the Hebrew alphabet to set out features of the woman it describes. While she is a woman of means with a household staff, there are lessons that apply across societies and time. We see a range of qualities in her life. She is a manager and multi-competent – responsible for the management of her household.
Capable yet caring. The woman of Proverbs 31:14-22 is an entrepreneur, taking on significant responsibilities. She’s a business woman, known in the market place, buying and selling produce and property. She has an eye for property and investment opportunities, as well as trading, turning in honest profits. Physically fit and strong, her lamp does not go out. Yet she is compassionate and caring giving a percentage of her profits to the poor, reinforcing the biblical principle that prosperity is to be shared with those who are less well off. She ensures her family are well clothed and that their linens and garments are the finest quality.
One of the outcomes of her competence in running her household and in getting good returns on her investments, is that her husband is freed up for public life: ‘city gates’ indicates that he may have been a magistrate or judge. Another outcome of her wisdom and her work is that she is economically secure (verse 25). Idleness is not part of her makeup or lifestyle.
Her conversation is not simply small talk or gossip. Verses 26 and 27 tell us that that she uses opportunities to speak words of wisdom to her family and her household. She brings God into her conversation – his revelation and his wisdom for life. In her life God’s teaching is intertwined with her lifestyle. It shouldn’t surprise us that the Bible takes women seriously and treats them as men’s equals, for in Genesis 1:27 we read: God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
What is the key to her success? Her independence? Her entrepreneurial gifts? No. We read in verses 30-31: Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. These words form a fitting conclusion to the Book of Proverbs for they bring us back to chapter 1:7: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; fools despise wisdom and instruction. This is what this woman has learnt – a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
Pray. Every woman is a unique combination of temperament, gifts and passions that demand unique expression. Let’s commit to pray that God’s grace will be so poured out upon the women in our lives that they will receive the praise, respect and honor due to them.
by John Mason | Apr 30, 2014 | Word on Wednesday
Blindness is a dreadful affliction. A blind man begging on the side of the road was a familiar sight in ancient Israel. But the man we read about in John 9 wasn’t blind because of the dusty roads and disease-laden air: he had been born blind. In answer to the disciples’ question about who was to blame, Jesus responded by pointing to the purpose of the man’s blindness – it was so that God’s power through Jesus to give sight might be revealed. Here and elsewhere Jesus implies that physical blindness is an outcome of living in a fallen world.
Sight. Jesus’ stunning miracle is told simply. Significantly, it was another occasion when he didn’t expect ‘faith’ before he acted. He took the initiative. The faith Jesus called for was in response to his command to go and wash. It was only when the man obeyed Jesus’ word of instruction that he came back seeing.
In the neighborhood conversations that John reports (9:8-12), we get the sense that when the man went home, everyone was talking about it. ‘How can you see?’ they asked when he affirmed that he was the former blind beggar. His response is simple and direct: ‘The man Jesus healed me.’ It’s a moving, straightforward testimony, a wonderful model for us all.
Spiritual sight. As John 9 unfolds, it becomes increasingly evident that the miraculous healing of the man’s physical blindness becomes a metaphor for the way God heals our spiritual blindness. The flow of John’s Gospel and the cumulative impact of his narrative, gently but firmly challenge us to ask, ‘Who is Jesus’?
In John chapter 9, four conversations unfold in the aftermath of this healing. The healed man was ejected from the synagogue by the religious leaders. But Jesus sought him out. ‘Do you believe in the Son of Man?’ Jesus asked. The man’s response was candid: ‘Who is he that I may believe?’ ‘You have seen him,’ Jesus said. ‘The one who is speaking to you is he.’ We can only begin to imagine the awesome implications of Jesus’ words that day. And the man responded: ‘Lord, I believe.’ John tells us the man worshiped Jesus as though he were God.
There are few mountain peaks higher than this in John’s Gospel. The healed man had progressed from speaking of Jesus as the man (9:11); to calling him a prophet (9:17); and then, this man must be from God (9:33). Finally, he worshiped Jesus as Lord. Jesus had not only given this man physical sight but had opened his spiritual eyes.
It’s a picture of the road many travel in coming to faith. Because Christian faith involves a relationship with Jesus Christ, it takes time for us to realize who Jesus really is. We come to see that he is a man – he did live; then we see that he is more than a man – he’s a prophet; then we see he’s more than a prophet – that he is from God, that he is God.
Open our eyes Lord. There is something else here. Just as Jesus took the initiative to heal the blind man, so we need him to open the eyes of our hearts. In our willfulness we are blind to the truth that he is from God, come to restore our spiritual sight and to give us life.
Revivals occur when God’s people pray, not just for themselves, but that the Lord in his mercy will continue his work of opening blind eyes. Let’s commit to pray, and also to playing our part, helping family and friends along the path to a faith that worships Jesus Christ as Lord.
by John Mason | Apr 23, 2014 | Word on Wednesday
Death is not something we usually bring up in everyday conversation. It’s not polite. Some may recall Woody Allen’s words: “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work… I want to achieve it through not dying”. Yet death is the certainty we all face, which is why literature, film and philosophy so often dwell upon themes of our mortality. But it’s rare that anyone claims they can do anything about it – death is taken as an inevitability.
But does death need to be the end of life?
Life had been heating up for Jesus in Jerusalem in the weeks before his arrest and crucifixion – the Jewish leaders had attempted to stone him (John 10:31) for his apparent blasphemy. So he left the city for the region east of the Jordan river. There he learned that his friend Lazarus, brother of Martha and Mary, was dying in the village of Bethany, near Jerusalem.
Learning that Lazarus had died, and against the advice of his disciples who feared the Jewish leaders, Jesus returned to Bethany where he was met by Martha. In the course of talking with her he made this amazing assertion:
“I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die” ( John 11:25).
It’s important we notice what Jesus was saying. He didn’t say, ‘I promise resurrection and life’, or ‘I procure’, or even ‘I bring resurrection.’ He said, ‘I am the resurrection and the life.’ Unless he is one with God, he is the worst charlatan of all.
Pointing out the options we have about Jesus, C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity: “Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
The witness of Jesus’ own resurrection and the New Testament, the evidence of history and the existence of the Christian church, all point to the conclusion that Jesus’ words are the truth. Dr. John Lennox, Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University, has said in a recent article that can be found at the Australian national broadcaster (the ABC): “The Christian gospel is based squarely on a miracle. It was the miracle of the resurrection of Christ that started it going, and that same miracle is its central message.”
The question that Jesus put to Martha at the time of Lazarus’ death, he puts to us today: “Do you believe this?” If you do believe this, what change has this made to your relationship with Jesus? How will this affect your life including conversations with people you meet at work and in the wider community?
A prayer for Easter: Almighty God, you have conquered death through your dearly beloved Son Jesus Christ and have opened to us the gate of everlasting life: grant us by your grace to set our mind on things above, so that by your continual help our whole life may be transformed; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit in everlasting glory. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer, Easter Day)
by John Mason | Apr 16, 2014 | Word on Wednesday
Everyone has regrets. We regret words we let fly in haste; the opportunities we missed or messed up; the relationships we let slip and the ones that we should never have begun. There are all those past actions for which ‘redemption’ seems impossible. Arthur Miller, the playwright, put it this way, ‘Maybe all one can do, is hope to end up with the right regrets.’
A woman at a well in Samaria whom Jesus encountered long ago, would have agreed. Like most of us, she longed for happiness, but happiness had eluded her. Five failed marriages testified to that. Hoping that love and marriage would give her life meaning and happiness, she had thought each new man was Mr. Right. But each time she made the same mistake. Her life was a mess. She felt insecure, lonely, and dissatisfied.
Jesus, we learn, was doing something unusual for a Jewish man: he was traveling through Samaria. We read about it in John 4:1-42. He transgressed social taboos – he was a Jew speaking with a Samaritan; and what’s more, he, a man, was having a private conversation with a woman in public. But clearly Jesus was not bothered by social custom. He spoke then, as he speaks to you and me today, with equal concern and equal respect.
Asking the woman for water, he gently directed her to the subject he wanted her to consider – the subject of living water. This gave him the opportunity to touch on the regrets in her life. Through this conversation we begin to see that Jesus offers us water of such vitality that it satisfies our deep inner spiritual thirst.
‘How does he do this?’ we ask. In his conversation with the woman that day, Jesus was anticipating the events of the first Good Friday, his death by crucifixion, which later writers went on to explain. So, Paul the Apostle, in his Letter to the Galatians tells us: Christ died for our sins (1:4). Jesus did not die simply to reveal God’s love for us. Rather he died to make the one, perfect and sufficient sacrifice for all our sins.
The New Testament is consistent and insistent that Jesus is the answer to the regrets and emptiness that gnaw our souls.
- Most of us aren’t willing to admit such a reality, and the woman that day was no exception. We pretend everything is all right, but truth be told, we all live a lot closer to despair than we like to think. We activate all kinds of defense mechanisms against anything that threatens to expose our inward spiritual poverty. Deep down we have a real spiritual longing. If we are going to find Jesus’ answer to our regrets we have to be willing to acknowledge our need and turn afresh to only one who can rescue us.
As the hymn-writer, William R. Newell put it:
Mercy there was great, and grace was free;
Pardon there was multiplied to me;
There my burdened soul found liberty, At Calvary.
by John Mason | Apr 9, 2014 | Word on Wednesday
No one likes failure. You may never have experienced it, but it happens, even to the smartest and wisest of people – physicians when they see a patient die knowing they might have done better; Wall Street brokers when they give bad advice to their clients. And, while we may find it hard to acknowledge, too often we fail those we love most. If we have a conscience, we are embarrassed. A sense of failure can wound us deeply.
As another Easter season is upon us it is worth taking a moment to consider the failure of two of Jesus’ close followers – Judas and Peter.
Judas. We read in John’s Gospel that six days before the Passover Jesus and his followers had dinner with their friends, Martha, Mary and Lazarus. During the meal Mary broke open a jar of very expensive perfume oil and poured it over Jesus’ feet. Judas’s response was to ask, ‘Why wasn’t the perfume sold and the money given to the poor?’ John tells us that Jesus said this, ‘not because he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief (John 12:6).’
Judas’ concern for the poor was hypocritical, for underneath he was a greedy man. And that is why his love for Jesus proved to be conditional. That’s why his kiss at the Passover meal turned out to be treacherous, for he was the kind of follower who supported Jesus as long as he thought there was something in it for him. When Judas saw that Jesus was not fulfilling his expectations he cast him off.
Judas had a choice. He had been a privileged follower of Jesus, but at the end of three years he chose to reject him. His decision was his own, not mechanistically predetermined. The other Gospel writers tell us that later, realizing what he had done, he was filled with self-pity and committed suicide.
Peter’s problem was pride. Luke tells us that Peter denied Jesus three times and at the third denial the rooster crowed. At that, Jesus turned and looked across at Peter (Luke 22:61). What was in that look of Jesus – reproach, disappointment, dismissal? I suspect it was love – love for a failure.
Luke tells us that Peter went out and wept bitterly. His tears weren’t those of a sulky child, or a romantic, wanting to relieve overwrought emotion. His tears were those of a penitent who is honest about failure and desires to turn and follow the right course. Seeing Jesus’ look he was both humbled and repentant.
Judas and Peter. Let me ask: How do you intend to cope with failure? We’ve all disappointed the Lord – betrayed him, turned our backs on him – sometimes for many years. We may have sold him for silver, a career, or a relationship. There may have been times when we’ve denied him and said we don’t know him.
The test is not the dimension of our sin, but our response to failure – self-pity or repentance? God does not forgive remorse but he does forgive the repentant heart.
A prayer of confession: Almighty and most merciful God, I have gone my own way, not loving you as I ought, nor loving my neighbors as I should. I have done what I ought not to have done, and I have not done what I ought to have done. I justly deserve your condemnation. Father, forgive me. Turn my heart to love and obey your will. Strengthen me by your Spirit to live and work for your glory, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
