Unending Wisdom--by Linden Malki

At a senior adult Bible study group, a lady came up to the group leader and said, "I want you to know that I still have the faith I had as a small child." The group leader said she had to bite her tongue to avoid answering , "Oh, you poor thing!"  I remember talking and praying with my kids as children, and being amazed at the questions they asked; they had come up with most of the classic questions that we don't have answers to, like "Who made God?" by the age of six. This is one of the times in our lives when we are asking the hard questions, and being disappointed that nobody on this earth has the answers. I love talking to these kids, but we don't want them to stay "stuck" at that spiritual age. It can happen, however, that people get  "stuck" in an early stage of Christian knowledge.  I have heard comments from folks who feel they had the kindergarten level of belief down pat but needed to go on to first grade.
The Jewish community realized during their captivity in Babylon, 2500 years ago, that they needed to make a special effort to keep their knowledge of God alive even without the city of Jerusalem and its Temple. This is where the Jewish synagogues got their start;  the community could gather to pray, to read, to study, and to keep the traditions and their relationship to God alive in a pagan environment. Even after many of them were able to return to Judea and rebuild the temple, they still maintained the synagogues as a source of study and celebration. We know that Jesus normally went to synagogue services on the Sabbath, and he was often asked to read the Scriptures to the gathering.  The Jews of the Greek and Roman periods were, as far as we know, generally literate, especially  the men. There are passages in Acts that have the Temple establishment dismiss Jesus' followers as uneducated, but I believe that they were being classed as not being professional scholars like they (and St Paul) were.  Today, Jewish boys (and girls, if they want) are expected to be able to read Scripture in public by the age of 12 or 13. This has evolved into the Bar Mitzvah event, where those being welcomed as being responsible for their own religious life recite a passage of Scripture in Hebrew, indicating their status as adults.
We have the interesting story in Luke about a trip to a major celebration in Jerusalem when Jesus was 12 years old. I suspect that included in the event was the equivalent of a Bar Mitzvah, We do know that he passed the "test" with flying colors, and the head priests and scholars at the event were so impressed at his knowledge of Scripture that they wound up discussing it with him for three days.  (When Mary and Joseph finally figure out where he was, his answer was that he needed to be "about His Father's business".)  He had apparently had the lessons that were normal for his time and place,  but He also had a direct line into the Source of wisdom, which He kept open until the end of His time on earth. He didn't make a big show out of His mastery of Scripture, but  He did have it at His fingertips as needed. Our challenge: do we keep this connection open as well? I recall my grandmother still reading her Bible to the end of her long life (she lived to be 93, with mind completely clear).  No matter how often we read it, we will keep finding new insights and challenges it--and it will keep us growing in faith as long as we are open for it.

The Younger Brother--by Linden Malki

Jesus told a story about a man who had two sons; one of whom asked for his inheritance and blew it; while his older brother stayed home, worked hard, and knew he was a better son than his brother.  Jesus was looking around at his older brothers as he told this story;  the people he had grown up with, who saw themselves as the good, obedient sons of God. In fact, these good guys kept reminding Jesus that they were the sons of Abraham and Moses.
The early Church had to deal with this attitude as well; many of the Jews who had followed Jesus also lived as the obedient brothers and looked down on the outsiders who pushed their way into the fellowship without bothering with the Law. They took seriously their position as God's chosen people, as it is written in the Torah: "You are a people holy to the Lord your God. Out of all the peoples on the face of the earth, the Lord has chosen you to be his treasured possession." (Deuteronomy 14:2) They had been scandalized first by the casual way Jesus occasionally pushed the Law beyond what they saw as the limits, but when his followers welcomed not only Jews but Gentiles to have a relationship with God without any effort to observe the Law that they had lived by for generations. They remind me of the older brother in the parable; he did everything right, and is promised his inheritance--but he watched his younger brother, the one that blew his share of the inheritance, get the party and the fatted calf.
This was a problem in that original organization. When Jerusalem appeared to be on the crosshairs of the Roman army, the original church based in Jerusalem watched James, Jesus brother killed, and they fled across the Jordan into the hinterland.  Eventually, that church faded out, but its younger brother flourished all around the Mediterranean, and is now almost everywhere on earth. Paul used the metaphor of adoption to explain what had happened here; they were the other brothers that God reached out to and brought into His family even without the Law. It may sound easier, to not have to deal with the traditional Law, but it demands not just the superficial obedience that the Jews had finally figured out, but adoption also means that we are also given the gift of the Holy Spirit, who will live in us and keep us in the right relationship with God the Father.
Adoption is a very old practice; we see it as early as Moses, who was raised with advantages that his birth parents couldn't give him, but he ultimately was the redeemer of his original birth family (and incidentally, the younger son.) I have two grandchildren who are adopted children, and they are delightful young people who are greatly loved.  As adopted children of God, we are also greatly loved, and owe God our greatest thanks for bringing us into His family.

What is Truth?--by Linden Malki

We live in a society that claims to be obsessed with "Truth" but tosses around accusations and judgments as if yelling louder made a difference.  Jesus was arrested and put on trial because the authorities of His day were afraid that the fragile balance of power they had been balancing on would collapse if He was taken at His word. The man on the spot, Pontius Pilate, whose main interest was keeping the lid on the simmering pot that was Judah, listened to the accusations, asked this one question: "What is Truth?" and washed his hands of the situation. It is ironic that he is primarily remembered for being the man on this particular spot.

People love to quote (or misquote) Jesus'  teaching that "the Truth will set you free."  Most people don't know the context of this statement.  The actual beginning of the teaching is "If you are my disciples, then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free". The Jewish "experts" replied that they were Abraham's decendants and had never been slaves. They seem to have forgotten what they had been commanded to remember: that they had at one time been slaves, and had been set free--to be witnesses to the world of the power of God. They did not know that they were being set up to be witnesses to Jesus' words that  He was "the Way, the Truth, and the Light, and no man comes to the Father without Him."  What they had thought was a conflict between their tradition and Jesus' words were actually an opportunity that they missed, similar to what Paul tried to explain to the Galatians: that the conflict between the traditional Jewish law and the promise of grace and salvation brought by Jesus would explode into a movement that would eventually be preached to the whole world.

In one way, this is a truth that needs to be shouted to the world, but it also has its place in each individual family: we are also to witness to the Truth of salvation brought by Jesus to each household; that the truth needs to be not only taught but witnessed to by parents, especially fathers, who are called to be the guardians of truth in their families. The family is under attack in the world we live in today, and we are called to stand for truth in each generation--the truth that sets us free to live in the grace of our Heavenly Father.

Growing Under Pressure--by Linden Malki

We are fortunate that we not only have Paul's Letters to the  churches, but background on Paul himself and also the men and women who were part of the team that changed the world. Paul, after his encounter with Jesus spent some time in Damascus, but then after a short time in Jerusalem, where he spent time with Peter and James (the brother of Jesus, who had assumed leadership of the Jerusalem church,) and then disappeared for several years.  James himself was martyred in Jerusalem in 62, shortly before the Roman conquest. He was thrown off of a parapet of the Temple wall and clubbed to death at the bottom.  The church there took the warnings of Jesus in Matthew 24 seriously and fled to Pella, across the Jordan River .

When a church began to grow in Antioch, Barnabas knew that Paul was the man that was needed, and where to find him.  Over the next few years, Paul was on the road (or boat) in Asia Minor, and then  Greece, and then Italy.  The first journey was with Barnabas and his nephew John Mark; and then they were recalled to Jerusalem.  There, the church was in a major discussion about the question of the relationship between the traditional Jewish law and the call to faith in Jesus and His salvation through faith. Peter was there as well, and he had had his own vision from God about the issue of the food laws and God's acceptance of faith without requiring the traditional Jewish law—but Paul later called Peter out for being intimidated by Jews who claimed to follow Jesus but insisted on requiring following the old law as well.

Over the years, Paul travelled  not only with Barnabas and Mark, who later were founders of churches in Cyprus., but also with Silas, who as with Paul when they wound up in prison in Philippi. Silas wound up assisting Peter, was possibly in Rome when Peter and Paul were martyred under Nero. Timothy was sent to Ephesus, where he was eventually martyred.  Luke joined Paul in Troas, and travelled with him back to Jerusalem and then Rome.  He is said to have lived to be 84, and is said to have been buried in Thebes, Egypt.

Paul was blessed with other associates as well, who worked with him, travelled with him, wound up in leadership of churches all over the eastern Mediterranean, and many were themselves martyred.  Churches were pressured, but most survived. And Jerusalem itself was conquered and destroyed, and Rome itself was eventually sacked as well. The stories of the early churches were chronicled and kept, and it has been said that there are records still available to us with enough references and quotations to reconstruct virtually the entire New Testament, in the same words that we have in our hands.

The Right Man with the Right Message--by Linden Malki

Jesus' followers knew Him well; possibly too well. They had been through ups and downs with Him; seen impossible things happen, and they had seen how desperately those who should have recognized the Power of God refuse to believe that God was up to something that was both new and the culmination of their long history. The message He brought was that the Law could only bring them one step toward God; they could not get where God wanted them without going beyond the Law to a relationship of faith and forgiveness. The religious establishment not only rejected Him; they had Him killed.

This was only the beginning.  He had raised the dead on more than one occasion, but nobody was prepared for what happened next. Those who had feared Him the most were more worried about what might happen next, but even armed guards as His tomb couldn't prevent what did happen: He came back, more alive than before. Jesus Himself was taken back to the presence of God, but His enemies kept up the pressure: they killed a young follower named Stephen and persecuted others. One of the most zealous of the persecutors was a young Pharisee named Saul, of Tarsus.

Jesus' follows were spreading the story of Jesus beyond Jerusalem. Saul was travelling to Damascus with instructions to arrest any of Jesus' followers there, when Jesus Himself appeared to Saul and changed his life. The hunter became the hunted--Saul preached the Good News of Jesus there in Damascus; was smuggled out of the city in a basket over the wall, and became a powerful voice with a powerful message  to the Greek-speaking Eastern Mediterranean provinces. Jesus had reached beyond the Jews with His teaching; and Saul (now known as Paul, in Greek) spread the news that Jesus had come to bring them into a relationship with Him and overcome their sins through His power and grace.  Paul had the education in both Hebrew and Greek to speak and write to Jews and the wider Greek/Roman world, and the faith and relationship with Jesus and His Father through the Holy Spirit to change his world.
 Paul, with the power of God, has spoken powerfully to literally millions of people over almost two thousand years. It is amazing that we have the records we have virtually unchanged for so many years, and the writings of not only Paul but many others with messages that tell the same story through different eyes and inspirations, but it is the same message that has spoken to many different people, places and languages.