Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:07 Welcome to that makes total sense. A podcast dedicated to exploring God's generosity and justice. I'm Alexis besetting the Christian, aiming to ask good questions and encouraging you to do the same. Every one of us is wired by God to live out generosity and justice, but the how sometimes alludes us that makes total sense is a way for us to get together, posture ourselves as learners and challenge one another to practice generosity and justice in a tangible way. Every day, we are almost to Christmas of 2020, and I think there was a time when probably each of us thought, Oh dear is 2020 going to end. Are we going to make it? Are we going to make it? But here we are almost to Christmas. And as I reflect on the year, I was thinking if 2020 has brought anything to light for me, it is the reality that we all live intention.
Speaker 0 00:01:15 At the beginning of the pandemic, I had just started an incredible time of doing a zoom Bible study with three of my closest girlfriends. We met way back when we were in college and the four of us now live in three different States. And this actually wasn't because of the pandemic that we had started meeting this way. Um, but it ended up being just like really great timing. And so each week before we delved into the book that we were studying and, you know, asked an answer those hard questions, those, those faith questions of one another, we each kind of took some informal time and gave an update as to how our regions were doing. And at that point it was the beginning of the COVID pandemic. Um, one of my girlfriends lives in New York. And so her answers even in March and April felt and were very different than my friends who were living in central Oklahoma, and even their experiences differed from mine in Houston.
Speaker 0 00:02:27 And those times of discussion with these women that I love so much highlighted some of that tension for me and it highlighted it in the virus itself, right? Like here was this mysterious illness that affects people in really drastically in sometimes dramatically different ways. Um, we were hearing at the time that there are some people who have the virus, but they barely experienced any symptoms at all. And, and then other people at the, at the other end of that spectrum ended up passing away. And then there's everything in between from feeling like you have a bad flu to being on a respirator in the hospital. And to be honest, all of that tension really reminded me of how we're living right now. This, this, this time we're living in right now, which is a time of kingdom now. And not quite yet, I was reading through the gospels and I was reading through Luke recently.
Speaker 0 00:03:43 And this gave me some perspective because not unlike us, Jesus was also born into a time of yes, the kingdom is now and it's not quite yet. Yeah. As we're celebrating this advent season and we're waiting some of us like my six year old, not quite so patiently for Christmas. We remember the time when the birth of Jesus was announced to Mary and God had been silent on the scene for like four centuries and the earth was feeling it's pregnant anticipation of the Messiah. And then when Mary accepted the assignment brought to her by Gabriel, I think like the rest of us, she just, she didn't have the complete concept of what it would mean to host the savior in our very beings for her. It was physical for us. It's a spiritual reality, but we just can't wrap our mind around what that means to host the savior in us.
Speaker 0 00:04:59 Sometimes the two millenniums removed from the events about Christ's first advent, we forget about things like this. I know sometimes I get the idea that everybody who was present at the time of Jesus had a full realization of what was happening. We negate that in their humanity. They like us. We're not omniscient. They couldn't see their various ends from the beginning. We have a couple of thousand years of previous theologians work on display in our Sunday school classes. And I think sometimes with all of that having been done before us, we get this preposterous notion that all of the messages of all of the profits of old would have been readily available in the minds of first century, everyday people just like they're shopping for groceries or taking care of their animals or cleaning their houses. And they're, and they're just kind of thinking, you know, about, about the profits words and what that would mean.
Speaker 0 00:06:05 And it's like, we think, well, we know who Isaiah was referring to when he spoke of the wonderful counselor. I mean, didn't, they, I don't think so. I don't think it was quite that easier, quite that simple. The reason why I think that is in part because of John the Baptist, the writers of the gospels tell us that he was sent in the spirit of Elijah to prepare the way for Jesus and even John the Baptist. Wasn't exactly sure of what he was seeing. It was from prison that he sent word to his cousin asking for clarity. Um, I'm sure I'm butchering this, but I'm thinking like, um, so Jesus, are you the long anticipated one? Or should we like, you know, keep on the lookout for somebody else.
Speaker 0 00:07:01 And then there's that part that we miss sometimes, uh, that he sent word from prison. He couldn't go ask Jesus himself if he was the one, because he was locked up. I don't know if John knew at the time that he was on death row, but at the whim of a Royal party, guest orders were sent for his execution. And John, the Baptist as we affectionately call him with all of the hindsight was called, called, was named, was assigned, was given the job to prepare the way for a savior who would not save him. Jesus built a ministry on healing, on performing miracles, on promises to set the captives free while John is relative his friend, the prophet to Israel, and ultimately to the entire world, sat, locked up in a prison cell, never to be released, stories like that. One with John shake me, but they exist because even Jesus was called to live in a time of now.
Speaker 0 00:08:28 And not yet in Luke's account of the good news. He writes this in, um, 19 verse 11, as they heard these things. He being, Jesus proceeded to tell them a parable because he was near to Jerusalem. And because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately. And I think that's not an absurd expectation. The Messiah was with them on the earth. Wouldn't he naturally be bringing the kingdom of God with him, like effective immediately. When the people traveling with Jesus figured out who he was, I think they must have assumed, right. That he was coming to declare his kinship. Some of the gospels tell us as much. And why wouldn't he God's been quiet for over 400 years at this point. Wasn't he obviously waiting for the right time to move. And now here's Jesus. They're like pay attention. He's not like the other teachers. He has authority. Then why does he keep contradicting himself? The kingdom of God is here and it's coming. Which one is it? It's both. The kingdom of God is now. And it's not yet.
Speaker 0 00:09:54 Especially as we come to the end of 2020, I think almost every one of us is searching for some kind of answer to some kind of question that may allude us. Why did God let this happen? Why sickness? Why now? What does this mean for the church? What does it mean for my children? Our stability. We have other questions too, that we're having a hard time even formulating or vocalizing sometimes when I'm feeling lost in a subject or in a talk or in a conversation, I will think to myself, I don't even know enough right now to ask a good question. And I think that's all, some of us feel, I think it will be years or maybe even decades from now that we'll remember this year and we'll have new questions and I don't have any of the answers, not even one really. I just know that we're still living in a time of now. And not yet. Mary gave birth to Jesus in pain.
Speaker 0 00:11:11 Joseph struggled with shame, Anna, the prophetess who recognized Jesus was a widow, Lazarus died. John was never released from prison. And all of this heartache and pain happened in the presence of Jesus, which is not unlike the heartache and pain we've experienced this year. We often can't make sense of what we saw in Jesus' life on earth. He healed some people and others passed away. He spoke clearly to some people and to others in parables. Some he touched and others remained somehow just out of reach. Some were released from prison and others remained captives. But in all of that, I want to say this. There is a very important mistake that we cannot afford to make. When we're parsing all of this out for ourselves, we cannot mistake suffering loss, lament for apathy.
Speaker 0 00:12:33 We can't do it. When Jesus walked the streets of ancient Roman controlled Palestine, he cried with the people who were hurting. He lost, loved ones to his family, had to flee for their lives. He felt the very real sting of betrayal. His first advent showed us in flesh and blood. What we have struggled to understand throughout human history. And that is we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with us. A time is coming when Jesus will wipe every tear and make every wrong, right. It's just that, even though we plead and pray for that time to be, now, we have to settle for not yet, but in that way, we're not unlike Jesus. Jesus had to settle for now and not yet to his birth life, death and resurrection were filled with the joy and pain of being human, as well as the love and power of being God. And even though we, this side of heaven may never fully understand the now and not yet work in the now and not yet kingdom, we can trust the one who does the links for all the resources mentioned in today's episode can be found in the show, notes, music, and podcast production by Seth. <inaudible> be sure to give us a review on iTunes and subscribe at your favorite podcast listening app, you can also visit us at that. Makes total sense.com.
