How to Experience the Glory of God... Like a Woman

Matthew 28:8-10 

And they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy and ran to report it to His disciples. And behold, Jesus met them and greeted them. And they came up and took hold of His feet and worshiped Him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and take word to My brethren to leave for Galilee, and there they will see Me.”

Several weeks ago, I wrote about Experiencing the Glory of God like a Shepherd.  Shepherds were the some of the lowliest members of Jewish society at the time that Jesus was born, and yet God chose to appear to them in the fields through the presence of angels.  He didn't go to the rich, the powerful, the famous.  He went to the stinky nobodies, and brought them to His Son, who was born in a place to house animals.  With this in mind, it is really striking to realize that at the end (sort-0f) of Christ's life and the beginning of ours in Him, God chose to announce the resurrection to others who were lowly in the eyes of the society of the day: women.

You would think if Jesus was to resurrect, the first people He'd tell were His disciples.  Especially the three He was closest to: Peter, James and John.  It seems as if Peter and James were the first men to find out about the resurrection, but the first to find out were the women who went to bring spices to the tomb.  I am not an expert on Jewish customs or the political situation of the times, but I wonder why it wasn't the men who were bringing spices to what would have been believed to be the rotting, stinking corpse of Jesus.  It is kind of like how women are usually the ones washing dishes at a church gathering, I think.

I know that women in that culture and that day were socially inferior to men.  They had less rights, were less educated, and generally did not have any sort of social power.  Yet, the God of the Universe and the God of that people decided to tell them that Jesus had risen from the dead through another angel, and Jesus Himself even appeared to them.  I find it even more interesting that their first reaction was to worship and know who Jesus was while the men did not recognize him at first (such as on the Road to Emmaus) and some of them, like Thomas, doubted fiercely the news. 

In fact, in Luke 24:8-11, we find out the women were trying to tell the disciples about the resurrection of Jesus.  Verse 11 says, "But these words appeared to them [the disciples] as nonsense, and they would not believe them."  Finally, after Jesus revealed himself, it seems the disciples accepted what had happened.

I don't know that this scenario is necessarily about gender.  I don't think God favors men or women one above the other.  I think, instead, that this God-act reveals an aspect about the nature of God that we can see in his revelation to the shepherds.  God's ways aren't our ways-- He didn't go to the powerful and obvious, but He revealed Himself to those who would take joy in His presence and worship Him.  He valued the women, who in that society would have lesser value, so much that He chose to trust them with the revelation rather than the men who spent so much time with Him. God chose to reveal Himself first to the lowly and the humble, to those who were not self-sufficient, and those who would be receptive to him.  Then He opened the eyes of the rest.

In today's circumstances, this translates into purposefully seeking to have a heart that is receptive, so we can be the first that God reveals Himself to--His thoughts, and His glory.  It is also a demonstration of how we ourselves are to love and view others.  If we value those that God marks as valuable, if we have open, receptive hearts, if we pursue the right things such as going to the tomb (rather than whatever the disciples were doing, inside, away), then  we, ourselves, can experience the glory of God like the women at the tomb.

Snakes and Scorpions: Gifts from the Father

Luke 11:11-13 Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead?  Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?  If you the, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?

I have always thought these verses would make the best short film.  You have this cute African American kid sitting at a counter top in a multi-million dollar home, drinking some milk.  It’s morning, and Dad is in the kitchen opening cupboards, and then the fridge.

            “What you want for breakfast, little man?” the father asks in a deep, throaty voice.

            “I would like an egg,” the kid says in the most adorable, high pitched voice.  It melts your heart like the butter the dad throws in the pan the next moment.  The kid drinks his milk, and you hear the sound of sizzling like an egg frying.  You can imagine the wonderful smell.  There is nothing more wonderful than the smell of a hot breakfast in the morning.

            You see the kid, sitting at the counter, expecting a nice, hot egg fried in butter.  Then you see the father come toward the kid with a frying pan.  You don’t see the contents of the pan, but you know it’s the egg.  What a wonderful, touching moment.  The African American kid sings a song to himself about how yummy the egg will be.

            Suddenly, the camera zooms from the kid’s perspective and the father drops something on to the kid’s plate.  It is so fast, you can’t see it at first, but all you hear is the kid screaming at the top of his lungs.  The camera cuts to a different angle, and you see a live scorpion on the plate while some sort of horror music plays. 

            Suddenly, the camera cuts to a close-up of the father laughing in an evil, mad-scientist sort of way.

            The short film ends with white words on black:

“If your kid asks for an egg, will you give him a scorpion?”

            New screen, white words on black:

            “How much more will your Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”

            It’s evil, I know, but I cannot help but picturing this short film every time I read this verse.

            It’s kind of random, but while I was on a Bible-reading schedule, I could not help but notice that on the same day, I read several other verses about scorpions that seemed to fit right into the idea of God’s good gifts to us.  Not too much earlier, in Luke 10:19, Jesus says:

“I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you.”

            Imagine if the father in the short film was able to empower the son to trample on snakes and scorpions the way that Jesus empowered us and His disciples.  I think the film would have quite a different ending.

            You would see the dad come toward the kid with the frying pan, and you would be thinking it was an egg.  You’d still get the surprise of seeing the live scorpion drop onto the plate, but then you would get a further shock of (director’s choice), the kid laughing just as evilly, like it was a good joke, and leaping onto the counter to trample on the scorpion, OR, the child could pick up the scorpion, lick his lips, and eat it with the sound of a crunching exoskeleton (your choice).  The ending screens would read:

“If your kid asks for an egg, will you give him a scorpion?”

            “How much more will your Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”

            “In fact, He has ‘given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you.’”

            I couldn’t help but wonder at the fact that I came across an earlier assurance of God towards his servant Ezekial in regards to scorpions.  In Ezekial 2:6, God tells this prophet, “And you, son of man, do not be afraid of them or their words.  Do not be afraid, though briers and thorns are all around you and you live among scorpions.  Do not be afraid of what they say or be terrified by them, though they are a rebellious people.”

            I could not imagine “living among scorpions”.  That is probably one of the more terrifying things I can think of.  I remember a woman I met whose husband was in the military.  She had just moved to a southern state with scorpions from a northern one without them.  One day, she said she opened the front door and there was a scorpion on her porch.  She screamed, shut and bolted the door and cancelled all her plans for the day until her husband came home and removed the scorpion from her porch.

            I don’t know if I would be that afraid of them, but they are a frightening prospect.  I remember hearing one time of a man who was stung by a scorpion that had climbed on a plane.  I think he had to be hospitalized.  And to have live among them?  That is scary.

            But imagine if you had to live among them, and you were the child empowered by his father to trample on them (or even eat them).  I imagine the short video could end with both the father and son laughing evilly, and then doing battle on the scorpions that lived outside, like some science fiction movie (which would make this short film project pretty high budget, I think, so if I ever made it, I would probably stick to the first two ideas).

            Anyway, the point is that one of the gifts God has given to us is that we don’t need to be afraid when we walk in His authority.  In a sense, God has given us the snakes and scorpions and we own them.  He told his prophet not to fear hundreds of years before he empowered his people to trample on them.  Throughout the ages, His will for us and intent towards us remains the same.

            Maybe we won’t face scorpions on our front porches or for the breakfast entre, but there are many things in life that can be akin to scorpions.  There are many challenges in this world and hard times that might come.  The great thing as that with God, who loves us like a loving father who would give his child an egg if they asked for it for breakfast, we are empowered to face the figurative snakes and scorpions that come our way. And the best gift of all is that we have His presence, which goes with us throughout each day, which is much better than any ol' fried egg.

             

How to Be An Awesome Minor Character, Part 2

Luke Chapter 2 tells about the amazing birth of Christ and how God reached out to lowly shepherds to be the first to announce the coming of the savior.  It also details a second story of Jesus being presented at the temple, and how Joseph and Mary received encouragement and confirmation regarding the identity of Jesus.  Being that Luke, the writer of the book, was a doctor, it is very likely that he included this part to show how outside sources, independently acting people, confirmed the identity of Christ, making the entire story more plausible. 

The first person Luke uses to confirm Christ’s identity is a minor character named Simeon, a devout man who was told by God that he would live to see the Messiah.  Luke also details the story of another minor character with an equally amazing story.  This character was a prophet named Anna, a woman.

I like that God used Anna, merely for the fact that the culture of the time was a male-dominated culture.  I personally think this reflects on an aspect of how God wanted His people.  There is an importance in male leadership, even if this topic might have been distorted over the years by our flesh, and it very well could have been misused by the Jewish people.  Whatever the case may be, God chose a woman prophet as a minor character in the story of Jesus.

In Part 1 of How to Be An Awesome Minor Character, I proposed that while a personal relationship with Jesus is important, it might be more accurate to view the story of our lives as being about Jesus, as the main character, like this chapter, and not with us being the heroes, as our self-centered, fleshliness might like.  With this perspective, it is easier to cast away the sins of pride and fear.  Anna is another example to us as to how we could become awesome minor characters in God’s story.

Anna was incredible as she devoted her entire life to God.  Verse 37 says “She never left the temple but worshipped night and day, fasting and praying.”  That’s dedication for you.  Like Simeon, she devoted much of her time to the Lord.

Anna was very old, so she had lived a long time before we meet her.  What happened in those years, we do not know.  What we do know is that she was married for seven years only and then she was a widow until she was eighty-four.  We do not know at what point in her life she was married, if it was recently or very early on.  We do not know if she had a happy marriage.  We do know that somehow, sometime, she experienced a very deep loss and then she never married again.  What did Anna do with her pain?  She sought the Lord with her whole being.

When Mary and Joseph came to the temple with the Savior of the Universe, Anna was no stranger to the ways of God.  She had saturated herself in His presence.  She could sense the presence of God and told everyone around that he would redeem Jerusalem.  She confirmed the identity of the Savior, she who had lost love and some kind of respectability in her culture, for married women had status and security in those times.
While perhaps not all of us are like Anna or are called to live lives like her, I think we can take from her life the lesson that if we want to be awesome minor characters in God’s story, we need to take what has been given to us, accept what has been taken, and still glorify God for it.  We may not understand pain or things that happen, and life may not go our way, but ultimately if we seek God and keep our hearts soft toward him, we will fulfill our purpose, even if that is to speak one word of truth.  We may not see our purpose at the moment, and perhaps our days may be dark and dreary in the eyes of society, and maybe our days may not be what we would have wished, but ultimately, in the end, the story will be the most beautiful if we surrender our days to God.