James and the Cycle of Life and Salvation

See the cycle of death that sin creates. LUST gives birth to SIN which gives birth to DEATH.

Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted by evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each one is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desires. Then when desire conceives, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is full grown, it gives birth to death. (James 1:13-15 NET)

Why does this matter?

• Our irrepressible talent for self-deception leads us to blame others for our own choices.
• The Deceiver deceives. The Enemy kills, steals, destroys. That’s what he does.
• We KNOW this, but we let our unspiritual desires lead us astray, and we BLAME God for it.

Do not be led astray, my dear brothers and sisters. All generous giving and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or the slightest hint of change. By his sovereign plan he gave us birth through the message of truth, that we would be a kind of firstfruits of all he created. (James 1:16-18 NET)

The cycle of death comes from our own choice to partner with the Enemy.

The cycle of life comes from the Father of Lights (a Jewish euphemism for God as Creator), who is different from his creation in that whereas light comes and goes… the Sun and Moon and stars leave and come back… The FATHER of Lights never fades.

There is a conflict behind the scenes. Job 1 gives us the briefest of glimpses of a conflict between the satan and the Living God. The satan does not believe that the love of God is enough for Job. God’s plan, in a nutshell, is to glorify Himself by proving to all Creation that His Love IS powerful enough to overwhelm anything and everything that sets itself up against the One who IS Love.

Notice the last line of the James quote above…

• By his sovereign plan — because of His purpose to set the cosmos to rights by Love alone
• He gave us birth through the message of truth — what does sin give birth to? What does God give birth to?
  • and how does He do it? By the “message of truth,” which is the NEWS that Jesus of Nazareth is Christ and Lord of all Creation (Romans 1:2-5)
  • WHY? Why has He given us this Life in Christ?
• that we would be a kind of firstfruits of all he created — the firstfruits are the FIRST part of the harvest, that were by faith DEVOTED to God because His people love and trust Him to bring to completion the work he has begun!

Those who belong to Jesus — who have been given life from above — are being set on display before the world as a preview (thanks, Bryan Dill, for this metaphor!) of what is in store for the whole creation! What He began in the resurrection and ascension of Jesus continues to take root in us, for the sake of the whole creation, and will be consummated when He returns. In the meantime, we who share in the life of Jesus have a calling, a responsibility, a blessed opportunity!

Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters! Let every person be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger. For human anger does not accomplish God’s righteousness. So put away all filth and evil excess and humbly welcome the message implanted within you, which is able to save your souls. But be sure you live out the message and do not merely listen to it and so deceive yourselves. For if someone merely listens to the message and does not live it out, he is like someone who gazes at his own face in a mirror. For he gazes at himself and then goes out and immediately forgets what sort of person he was. But the one who peers into the perfect law of liberty and fixes his attention there, and does not become a forgetful listener but one who lives it out – he will be blessed in what he does. If someone thinks he is religious yet does not bridle his tongue, and so deceives his heart, his religion is futile. Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their misfortune and to keep oneself unstained by the world. (James 1:19-27 NET)

Getting Our Minds Ready: 30 Days in 1 Peter

Let’s all take a deep breath together, shall we? The last few weeks have been about as chaotic and crazy a period of time as American culture has seen in my lifetime. I know that those of you who lived through the turbulence of the 1960s may have a deeper perspective on these events, but I was born in 1973, so this has been about the most chaotic I’ve seen it.

Things were pretty turbulent for the young church in the early chapters of Acts, too. In Acts 4, the church is dealing with the aftermath of the healing of the crippled man at the beginning of chapter three. The apostles have been tried by the high priest before the Sanhedrin, threatened, commanded not to preach anymore about Jesus, and released.

What happens next? The church prays! But they don’t just pray for the sick, or ask God to guide, guard, and direct them until the next appointed time… Out of their rich understanding of the Psalms, they pray in the way someone talks out loud in order to try and sort out what’s going on in their head and in their world. From the well of Scripture stored up in their hearts, they draw forth one of the most popular passages of the time, and they let its spirituality explain to them what’s going on and how to respond…

And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, “Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit,

“‘Why did the Gentiles rage,
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers were gathered together,
against the Lord and against his Anointed’—

for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”

They pray Psalm 2:

Why did the Gentiles rage,
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers were gathered together,
against the Lord and against his Anointed’—

They assign characters to the drama that unfolds in that psalm:

truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel,

And they let the message from God reshape how they see the world:

to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

Because if the REST of Psalm 2 is true (this was a common way of teaching appearing all over the New Testament called REMEZ — quoting part of a passage assuming that the audience will be able to deduce the fuller meaning), then the events swirling around them could not possibly have surprised their Lord. As a powerful writer and teacher wrote yesterday, “God is never afraid. He is never surprised. God’s Kingdom is never threatened. If your faith feels threatened, that’s not the Spirit of God.”

---

One of the apostles in Acts 3-4 who was tried and beaten by the Sanhedrin later wrote a letter to churches experiencing serious upheaval and chaos because of their surrounding culture’s attitude towards their faith in Jesus. I want to spend the next 30 days reading the letter called 1 Peter every day.

Why?

Because in it, the apostle challenges us to, “Get your minds ready for action by being fully sober, and set your hope completely on the grace that will be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed.” (1 Pet 1:13 NET)

1 Peter was written for such a time as this, and I know that I need to get my mind right, so that when I pray, I can wholeheartedly and fearlessly ask God — not for safety or comfort or rescue — for the very same thing that those believers in Jerusalem requested:

Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.

What do you think? Feel free to post questions or ideas that we might touch on over the next month!

in HIS love,
nick

Communion, Meditating on South Carolina

Snatching Victory from the Jaws of Defeat?

Usually this idea means that one opponent is losing badly, but takes advantage of some miscues by the team in the lead and finds their way to a surprising victory.

Sometimes people think of the Cross and the Resurrection that way – that the devil was winning the battle but fumbled the ball at the one-yard line and let Jesus escape with the win. And make no mistake – there WAS a battle going on between Jesus and the forces arrayed against God and his good will, but this win was no lucky bounce – this was Jesus standing firm, letting Death and Darkness and the Devil do their worst to him – and coming out the other side having defeated them all.

Many texts in the NT mention this battle and victory but one that I particularly like is Hebrews 2:14 that speaks about Jesus partaking of flesh and blood so “that through death he might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil.”

The New Testament portrays Christ as doing battle with the devil and the forces of evil that hold this world captive. This particular focus on understanding the atonement would come to be called by the term Christus Victor.

In the Gospels the battle with the devil can be seen from the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry.  His temptations set the theme for all that would follow.  Sometimes his confrontation with evil was in the form of evil spirits, but more often it was in the form of sickness, prejudice, violence, and sinful actions or attitudes.  The battle was fierce.  Often he would withdraw to pray.  Finally, we see him, as Isaiah prophetically said, “despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief … we esteemed him stricken, smitten, and afflicted … he was wounded for our transgressions … bruised for our iniquities … he was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth …” (Isa 53).

GIVE THANKS FOR THE BREAD

As Jesus hung upon the cross all appeared to be lost.  His disciples thought so.  The women mourned and the men ran away in fear.  Peter denied him.  It appeared that the forces of evil had won.  Jesus was dead — really dead and buried!  Defeated! But then the temple curtain was torn in two from top to bottom, because Jesus’ blood had opened a new way for all to come to God!  But then angels rolled away the stone and God raised him from the dead — an authoritative, resounding victory!  A victory not “snatched from the jaws of defeat,” but a victory so thorough that its light lets us look back and see that this is how God always planned to win – by overcoming death with love.

As a result we have freedom from death, hope for the life of the age to come, and peace with God. And we have FREEDOM from FEAR, so that we can look death in the eye and LOVE, LOVE even the one who kills us.

This is the victory that led Paul to express our praise in 1 Corinthians 15:
Death is swallowed up in victory.
O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?
Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

Luke and Paul

Law vs Grace? Law and Grace Coexisting? Or Law Fulfilled by Grace?

“For Christ is the end of the law, with the result that there is righteousness for everyone who believes.” (Rom 10:4)

What law did for Israel, Christ Himself does for the church. God’s will is no longer expressed to his people in a code of laws, but by his Spirit through his Son and the Scriptures. Paul argues in Galatians 4 that being under law is just as much bondage as is bondage to sin.

This doesn’t mean in any way that obedience to God is irrelevant, but that it isn’t the quality of our obedience that matters.

“Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”

All that to try and say that I don’t believe law and freedom co-exist, at least not in the sense of a written code.

But at the same time, I don’t believe that the “holy, righteous, and good” law of God should be understood to be fighting against grace. The revelation of the Law was both an expression of grace in itself and an outgrowth of the grace God shared with Israel in the Exodus. The law had a beautiful purpose in the mission of God – a purpose wrecked, like everything God created, by sin. My sin.

What the law could never achieve, Jesus Christ has achieved, is achieving, and will bring to fulfillment in His time. I love him because he first loved me, and I will strive to walk by the law of His Spirit (Rom 8).

Why? Because he was a descendant of David with reference to the flesh, who was appointed the Son-of-God-in-power according to the Holy Spirit by the resurrection from the dead, King Jesus our Lord. (Rom 1:4-5)

Leave Weddings to the… Unbelievers??? Not So Fast!

We are approaching the end of a particularly odd season in my Christian world.

From mid-October through late April, my Facebook feed gets inundated with posts condemning the celebration of Halloween, Christmas, and Easter (somehow Thanksgiving gets a pass — maybe it’s the Pilgrims and the turkeys and the football). The basic framework of the argument goes something like this:

• Major premise: The New Testament does not establish any holy days.
• Minor premise A: The only day the New Testament establishes for religious celebrations is the first day of the week.
• Minor Premise B: Since the New Testament has clearly established the Lord’s Day, no other religious celebrations are permitted.

Supporting evidence is then provided, including, but not limited to:

• Scripture: Texts from Romans 14 and Colossians 2 and Galatians 4 and Hebrews 8 are provided; texts which rightly forbid the REQUIREMENT of celebrating certain days. In a sort of quiet bait-and-switch, these are given as evidence that the celebration itself, rather than the binding as law of certain celebrations upon one’s brothers and sisters in Christ, is condemned by God.
• History: The pagan origins of the particular holidays are expounded upon at length. Halloween is sometimes called the Devil’s Birthday. Christmas is rightly identified as being founded over the top of a pagan celebration begging for winter to end and for the sun to rise again. Easter is laid at the feet of the pagan goddess Ishtar (for whom a terrible movie with Warren Beatty might be rightly blamed, but that’s as far as it goes) — even though it is far more likely that the word belongs to the Germanic goddess Ēostre or Ostara — the goddess of the radiant dawn (according to Jakob Grimm — yes, THAT Jakob Grimm) who actually had bunnies and eggs as some of her symbols.

I have two problems with this argument.

• First, that which proves too much proves nothing. The list of things in our modern world which derive from pagan origins would go on longer than everything I’ve written so far. Names for the days, names for the months, personal names (my own name, Anthony, derives its origin from one of the sons of Heracles! I wish I’d gotten the muscles, too), symbols on our currency, currency itself, mourning veils, wearing black at funerals, flowers on graves, gravestones, birthstones, celebrating birthdays, and — wait for it! WEDDINGS.

Yes, I said it — Weddings. God invented marriage, but EVERYTHING about modern weddings is of pagan origin.

• Wearing Veils
• Bridesmaids and Groomsmen Dressing Alike
• Exchanging Rings
• Vena Amoris (the whole tradition surrounding the placement of the ring on the “ring finger” is of magical, not biological, derivation)
• The First Kiss
• Tiered Wedding Cakes
• Throwing Rice
• Offering a Toast (Even Sheldon Cooper will set you straight on this one)

Furthermore, Scripture describes private exchanges and arrangements between families as how marriages are established — there’s not a single religious marriage ceremony from Genesis to Revelation.

Therefore, by the very logic used to anathemize Halloween and Christmas and Easter, religious wedding ceremonies are also proven illegitimate. What proves too much, proves nothing.

But that isn’t my big problem — my big problem with this kind of argumentation is theological. Patrick Mead expressed the idea far more succinctly than I could, so allow me to quote him at length:

God told Adam and Eve to subdue the earth. We are here to take this land for Jesus. Early Christians understood this and went out to intentionally and aggressively recast the traditions and places and ideas of men. They were not idiots; they were wise as serpents and harmless as doves (Matthew 10:16). When they found the bulk of Europe celebrating a variety of mid-winter events or gods in late December, they chose to celebrate the birth of Jesus during that time. They knew that Jesus was not likely to have been born on that date or even within months of that date. That was not the point. The point was to take that date for Christ. They took the tree and spoke of eternal life. They took the fire and talked about the light that had come into the world. They took the wreaths and spoke of eternity. They took the songs and turned them into carols. They took the candles and spoke of the Spirit of God. They took the gifts and spoke of the Giver of all good and perfect gifts.

“That’s what we do with pagan things. We take them back, rename them, and give them to Jesus. The perfect love of Jesus has cast out our fear. We do not have fellowship with darkness but we don’t run from it, either. We take it over and give it to the Light.

[LATE EDIT: Tim Archer rightly points out that Patrick’s narrative on the establishment of Dec 25th as Christ’s birthday is probably off-base. There’s an excellent article, How December 25 Became Christmas, that makes a better argument from the historical evidence we currently possess. But what’s more important, I believe, is how the early Christians engaged with the surrounding cultures]

Light does not destroy — it purifies and heals and transforms. Our role as images of God is to reflect His healing light — the love of Christ — into the world and participate in the healing and transformation of things with evil origins into beautiful gifts for our God’s glory.

And for the record, Philippians 4 authorizes you you to celebrate ANYTHING and EVERYTHING “true, worthy of respect, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, or praiseworthy” on any day of the week, month, or year. And if you want to put it on a calendar so that your brothers and sisters in Christ can celebrate with you, go right ahead! The more, the merrier! Just don’t be deluded into thinking that your celebration actually makes the day holy or means that that particular day is holier than every other day — and for heaven’s sake, don’t try to force other people to do it with you. That’s wrong. The Bible tells me so.

World Vision, Priorities, and 10,000 Children

Some, to be sure, are preaching Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from goodwill. The latter do so from love because they know that I am placed here for the defense of the gospel. The former proclaim Christ from selfish ambition, not sincerely, because they think they can cause trouble for me in my imprisonment. What is the result? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is being proclaimed, and in this I rejoice. (Philippians 1:15-18 NET, emphasis mine)

This was a bad week for the public image of the Kingdom of God.

Others have done a far better job than I would do of summarizing what’s gone on this week with World Vision, one of the premier and absolute best charitable organizations on the planet (according to Forbes, $1.07bil of their $1.22bil revenue [2009] goes directly to charitable services — that is an extremely respectable level of leanness and lack of overhead).

I would insert a quote from The Princess Bride here about explaining and summing up, but my heart is too heavy to joke about this. Here’s a thumbnail sketch of the facts as I know them right now:

• Last fall, World Vision‘s Board of Directors made a decision, in World Vision’s hiring practices, to respect the authority of their participating churches, with regard to same-sex marriage. World Vision is registered in the US as a 501(c)3 “religious charity,” which allows them to apply religious moral standards in the context of hiring and continued employment. They require pre-marital abstinence and fidelity in marriage — violation of those things can constitute grounds for dismissal.
• Their decision was basically to say that LGBT Christians, whose marriages were sanctioned by their own congregations, were no longer automatically ineligible on moral grounds for employment with World Vision.
• This decision was not publicized at the time that it was made, and as far as I know, no input was sought from the donors, upon whose financial charity the organization depends for its very existence.
• Christianity Today either ran or was going to run a story, sourced from someone within World Vision who was unhappy with either the decision itself or how the process was handled (or both). World Vision tried to get out in front of the story and explain the rationale behind it.
• Their call center was almost immediately overwhelmed with donors calling to cancel their sponsorships. 2000 in the first 12 hours, almost 10000 within 48 hours — at which point World Vision announced that they were reversing their original decision. The cancellations stopped almost immediately; calls began coming in from people attempting to take back up their original sponsorships, but at nowhere near the volume of cancellations.

Over the course of the week, I’ve participated in several discussions with other Christians, trying to wrap our heads around all the facets of this nightmare. I’ve gotten angry with folks on different sides of the matter; I’ve prayed, cried, and facepalmed myself into a stupor. I’ve turned things over and over in my head and out loud, and here’s where I think I stand.

NO ONE WAS RIGHT. NO ONE. I’m going to start with where I think World Vision went wrong, but please stick with me all the way through, and please don’t assume, because I make points from the perspective of either WV or those who object to WV’s decision, that you can discern my own thoughts on same-sex marriage. I promise that you can’t, and that my thoughts are different from your thoughts about it (that doesn’t mean I’m right, either — just please don’t create a straw man — let’s talk about THIS and what I think about THIS, not that)

• The board of World Vision was wrong to make the decision on their own. They’re a non-profit whose focus is serving — in the name of Jesus Christ — the most powerless, the poorest of the poor around the world. It is sheer madness to throw your hat into the ring of such a hot-button issue when the stakes are that high. This caused its donors to feel helpless, and that they were deceived into participating in something morally forbidden to them.
• World Vision was wrong to carry out the policy change in secrecy. This added to the sense of alienation and exploitation felt by many of their donors.
• World Vision’s explanation, couched in double-speak and innuendo, did more harm than good. One simply cannot say at the same time
  • we are “NOT affirming same-sex marriage” (emphasis mine), but
  • we NO LONGER consider sexual activity between a legally-married same-sex couple to be a violation of our sexual immorality employment policies
• Were they wrong to backtrack? I’m not sure.
  • On the one hand, once the flood of calls began, it became their only choice.
  • On the other hand, they let themselves be backed into that corner by relying on secrecy and thus allowing a staff member to manipulate the company. In my opinion, a company has every right to terminate WITH CAUSE any employee who allows their privately-held opinions to detract from that company’s mission. Not everyone who wants whistle-blower status is, in fact, a whistle-blower. Some are just angry that they aren’t getting their way.

NONE OF THAT CAUSED IRREPARABLE HARM, TO WORLD VISION OR TO THE KINGDOM OF GOD. I CAN’T SAY THAT ABOUT WHAT FOLLOWS.

• Cancelling the sponsorship of children should have been an ACT OF LAST RESORT, not an initial reflex.
• The donors, no matter how powerless they might have felt, were not IN FACT powerless at all. They could have:
  • Petitioned for redress of their grievances;
  • carried out an #Occupy-style sit-in of the areas surrounding World Vision’s offices;
  • used the myriad forms of communication at our disposal in 2014 to plead and pray for World Vision to change their decision
  • WE ARE CHRISTIANS — WE ARE NEVER POWERLESS. And feeling powerless is never an excuse for sin.
• According to the CEO of World Vision, Richard Stearns, “the people manning their call centers were screamed at, berated, and accused of being Satan’s instruments by outraged ‘Christians.'”
  • The callers in question inflicted their indignation upon the most helpless and powerless employees of World Vision.
  • No matter how angry Jesus Christ became (cleansing the Temple, Matthew 23, etc.), he expressed his righteous indignation towards the powerful themselves, not their helpless servants.
  • As a former waiter, I have experienced the kind of berating that Stearns describes, and it is one of the most horrible and dehumanizing experiences I’ve ever endured in public.
  • For Christians to behave this way TOWARDS SERVANTS, towards helpless low-wage men and women doing their best to be of service, is COWARDLY BEYOND THE PALE.
• The donors in question are by all means free, in Christ, to decide how to appropriately invest the resources over which God has granted them stewardship.
  • THEY WERE NOT FREE TO BREAK TEN THOUSAND PROMISES, without first exhausting all other means of influencing the organization for change.
  • WE ARE CHRISTIANS! OUR simply given WORD (Mt 5: 37) IS SUPPOSED TO COUNT FOR SOMETHING. Promises of sponsorship, made to 10,000 children and their communities, were broken BECAUSE IT WAS EASY. THIS IS SIN.
  • What’s worse is that it compounds itself with the sin of hypocrisy, because it is sin carried out in the name of purity. Claiming to seek purity, Christian men and women made themselves liars to 10,000 children. THIS IS SIN PILED ATOP SIN.
• Christians are NEVER free to choose convenience over commitment.

This post opens with a quotation from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the churches in Philippi. He has some extremely negative things to say about some of his fellow evangelists, but the key to this is how the inspired Apostle evaluates the work they are doing. What matters?

CHRIST IS BEING PROCLAIMED.

No matter WV’s stance on homosexual marriage, Christ was being proclaimed into the lives and communities of 10,000 children around the world.

Why wasn’t that the most important thing?

The Table of Unity

This is the table of the Lord, where we gather around to remember Him and what He did for us and for the world. We celebrate the one who has accomplished our reconciliation with God.

We remember the one who died in our place; the one who prayed from the Cross, “Forgive them, Father, for they do not know what they are doing.”

We gather to honor Him. We honor him, we express our love to him and for him by becoming more and more like him. Listen to what he says:

Matthew 5:21-24 “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire. So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.

This is not the altar — this is the table. The altar is where the sacrifice dies; the table is where the people of God gather to consume and enjoy the results of what happened on the altar. Our altar is the Cross of Calvary, where our Passover lamb was slain. This is our table.

But the principle is the same. If we have something against someone here, or if we know we’ve hurt or sinned against someone else, the Lord calls us to do what it takes to reconcile with your family member in Christ, to forgive them and to do whatever it takes to seek forgiveness from the one we have wronged. For this is a table of unity — and if we eat and drink of the table of fellowship while holding something against another person, we are play-acting. And you know as well as I do that the Master has a great deal of patience with everything except play-acting. His word for play-acting? Hypocrisy.

Let me close with Paul’s words to the church in Colossae. Colossians 3:12-13 reads:

Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with a heart of mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience,

bearing with one another and forgiving one another,

if someone happens to have a complaint against anyone else.

Just as the Lord has forgiven you,

so you also forgive others.

This is the table of the Lord. Let us honor and express our love to him by forgiving one another and eating and drinking together.

Who Can Please God? A Study In Contrasts

Then they came to Jerusalem. Jesus entered the temple area and began to drive out those who were selling and buying in the temple courts. He turned over the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves, and he would not permit anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. Then he began to teach them and said, “Is it not written: ‘ My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations ’? But you have turned it into a den of robbers !” The chief priests and the experts in the law heard it and they considered how they could assassinate him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed by his teaching. (Mark 11:15-18 NET)

These are MEN.
These are WEALTHY.
These are EDUCATED

They have every advantage available to them! They rule their culture and appear to be living in God’s blessing! Why don’t they please God? Why have they become THIEVES and REBELS and fallen under the King’s condemnation?

Then he sat down opposite the offering box, and watched the crowd putting coins into it. Many rich people were throwing in large amounts. And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, worth less than a penny. He called his disciples and said to them, “I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the offering box than all the others. For they all gave out of their wealth. But she, out of her poverty, put in what she had to live on, everything she had.” (Mark 12:41-44 NET)

She is a woman.
Not just a woman – a widow – in the eyes of her culture she lives under a curse because God took her husband.
She is poor – another sign to the “common sense” thinking of her day that she is cursed by God.
She is uneducated – especially compared to those in the first passage. She probably learned the Psalms and Deuteronomy before her time as a student in her culture was over.

Why have they become thieves and rebels while she is blessed by the Messiah?

Simply put – she has what they lack. Trust.

Humble.Obedient.Trust

Anyone can please God – man or woman, rich or poor, schooled or unschooled. What pleases God?

Humble.
Obedient.
Trust.

Morning Prayer from Bernard of Clairveaux

O sacred head now wounded
With grief and shame weighed down
Now scornfully surrounded
With thorns Thine only crown

How art thou pale with anguish
With sore abuse and scorn
How dost that visage languish
Which once was bright as morn?

What language shall I borrow
To thank Thee, dearest Friend?
For this Thy dying sorrow
Thy pity without end?

O make me Thine forever
And should I fainting be
O let me never, never
Outlive my love to thee.