Doesn’t he look nice?
Rob Bell was born in 1970 and is the pastor of Mars Hill Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is incredibly fresh, but what I like most is that he is a great teacher (see favorite excerpt section). Watch this video: https://www.robbell.com/resurrection/. He’s compelling and makes you think about faith in new ways, but he does so by returning to its roots. He explains his church and writings in this way: “This is not just the same old message with new methods. We're rediscovering Christianity as an Eastern religion, as a way of life. Legal metaphors for faith don't deliver a way of life. We grew up in churches where people knew the nine verses why we don't speak in tongues, but had never experienced the overwhelming presence of God.”
He’s a bit divisive because he isn’t content with a lot of the old ways of thinking and doing things. He writes on the topics of suffering and its relationship to creativity, sex, and modern Christian culture. His teachings are refreshing, because he’s always pushing you deeper into your faith to more closely examine and experience it. His style is a little bit hip, but his writings are not about some pop culture, guru spirituality – it’s about authentic spirituality. For him, Christianity and church is a place of forgiveness, mystery, community, and transformation. Nice. It’s Christianity for the twenty-first century, and Bell asserts that repainting the faith throughout the centuries is essential.
A Favorite Excerpt:
“The tzitzit (seet-see) first appear in Numbers 15 when God says to Moses, ‘Throughout the generations to come you are to make tassels on the corners of your garments, with a blue cord on each tassel. You will have these tassels to look at and so you will remember all the commands of the Lord, that you may obey them and not prostitute yourselves by chasing after the lusts of your own hearts and eyes. Then you will remember to obey all my commands.’
God tells his people to attach tassels to the corners of their garments so they will be constantly visually reminded to live as he created them to live.
The word in Hebrew here for ‘corners’ is kanaf.
The word for ‘tassel’ (or ‘fringe’) is tzitzit.
To this day, many Jews wear a prayer shawl to obey this text. The prayer shawl is also in a lot of interesting places throughout the Bible. One of the most significant is in the prophet Malachi’s prediction about the coming Messiah: ‘The sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings.’
The word Malachi uses for wings is kanaf – the same word in Numbers that refers to the edge of a garment, to which the tassels were attached. So a legend grew that when the Messiah came, there would be special healing powers in his kanaf, in the tassels of his prayer shawl.
Fast-forward to the time of Jesus: A woman has had an illness for twelve years and no one can cure her. She pushes her way through a crowd to get to Jesus, and when she gets close to him, she grabs his cloak. Now remember, Jesus is a Torah-observant Jewish rabbi who keeps the Scripture commandments word for word, including passages like Numbers 15, which means Jesus would have been wearing a prayer shawl. So when the woman grabs the edge of his cloak, she is demonstrating that she believes Jesus is the Messiah and that his tassels have healing powers. She believes that Jesus is who Malachi was talking about.
If you were in a crowd, what would you think about this woman? This woman believes that this man is the Messiah.
She touches his tassels and is healed, just like Malachi said.
But I don’t think the physical healing is Jesus’ point here. I think it is what Jesus says to her as they part ways.
He says to her, ‘Go in peace.’
The word Jesus would have used for peace is the Hebrew word shalom. Shalom is an important word in the Bible, and it is not completely accurate to translate it simply as ‘peace.’
For many of us, we understand peace to be the absence of conflict. We talk about peace in the home or in the world or giving peace a chance. But the Hebraic understanding of shalom is far more than just the absence of conflict.
Shalom is the presence of the goodness of God. It’s the presence of wholeness, completeness.
So when Jesus tells the woman to go in peace, he is places the blessing of God on all of her. Not just her physical body. He is blessing her with God’s presence on her entire being. And this is because for Jesus, salvation is holistic in nature. For Jesus, being saved or reconciled to God involves far more than just the saving of your physical body or your soul – it involves all of you.
God’s desire is for us to live in harmony with him – body, soul, spirit, mind, emotions – every inch of our being.”
Next Week: #2.
Hint: He's French.
No comments:
Post a Comment