Next week promises to be busy. Sunday is Hebrews 3 for the whole church and Wednesday is Matt 27 for the small group. Last night, when our small group leader said that he would be out of town, he asked for volunteers to lead the small group. The other two guys in the room pointed at me. I hesitated and then pointed at one of them and I didn’t see what mrtool was doing.

Gadzooks, I’ve been drafted.

Our minister likes Greek, so there are a couple points that can be made with Greek for Sunday. I’ll tell you what my Greek teacher told me in school after dealing with me for four semesters: You are a tremendous scribe, each letter is almost perfect. I asked about my various translation work. He reiterated the praise for my penmanship. I think I am better at it now because of my independent study of linguistics and language, but I do not consider myself an expert in any way shape or form.

I enjoy small groups these days. We are studying the events of the Passion Week and four simple questions keep us going as we progress through the events. (These are now the right questions).

1. What catches your eye as you read this passage?
2. What do you think of Jesus from this reading?
3. How could this story continue today?
4. What does this story require of us?

In looking at the trial of Jesus, one thing sticks out: Responsibility. Jesus is the only one that really takes any responsibility in both trials. Jesus says under oath that he is the Messiah. That convicts him of blasphemy. The Sanhedrin says they can’t take money back from Judas because of the law, but fail to follow the law in regards to the trial at all. Pilate washes his hands of the whole thing. The scene is painted as if the whole city had lost their mind.

As my wife pointed out, it’s scary how the hysteria of the moment can grip everyone. Pilate, completely out of character, tries to appease the crowd. (Skeptics still point to this as a criticism of the gospel account.) Peter, who was slashing at servants the night before is freaking out at being identified with Jesus. (I would, too.) The Sanhedrin is in such a hurry to find Jesus guilty, protocol gets thrown out the window. The crowd wants a murderous zealot back. Again, who’s the only sane one in the chaos?

We also talked about some conjectures and it was neat to think about. Personally, I thought about why Judas was stealing money in the first place. If he was buying food, it would have been pretty noticeable. (Say there Judas, where did the five donkeys loaded down with dates, olives, wine, cheese, and lamb come from?) The same with expensive things. (Say there Jesus, should we really be carrying around all these gems and jewelry? I thought the great pearl was more of an illustration.) The only thing I know that requires a lot of money with nothing to show for it is gambling. A perfume worth a year’s wages could pay off a lot of gambling debt. But that is wild speculation, there’s no real support for it.

Anyway, I’m off to prepare for the week ahead. I keep thinking of the Greek word for exhort from Hebrews 3:13

παρακαλέω par-ak-al-eh’-o; to call near, that is, invite, invoke call for, (be of good) comfort, desire, entreat, pray.

The heart of the matter is that I enjoy facilitating a discussion. I look forward to what folks have to say on Sunday. I best understand the Bible in the context of a discussion with someone else. I have strong opinions, but hearing a different perspective is usually pretty enjoyable. (I think you guys know of possible exceptions.) I hope folks have a lot to share. At the very least, I’m hoping for someone to share something unexpected.

I have a bunch of old, conservative commentaries. Most of them are in agreement about the 19 verses of Hebrews 3.

1. Jesus is Greater than Moses.
   Moses is a servant, Jesus is the builder (and owner) of the house – this makes Jesus greater than Moses.
2. Warnings about remaining faithful and not giving up.
   Encourage each other, guard against sin because it is deceitful.

There’s certainly a lot there to consider, especially the importance of moving forward as opposed to moving backward. I don’t mean this in a “focus on the solutions, not the problems” type of way. The original recipients of the letter were looking at abandoning the Christian faith and returning to their roots in Judaism. Moving forward to them was a matter of perseverance, not overlooking real issues. That’s why encouragement is so important. How much easier is it to hold on to your faith when surrounded by a community of people that believe God has provided and will continue to provide in every difficulty?

Compare this kind of encouragement to “you can do it” or “God is in control, he knows what he’s doing” or “repent so that God can bless you”. There’s a world of difference. “You can do it” shifts the focus to you away from God. God promises many things to us, amongst them, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit gives us words to say, strength, comfort, helps us to pray, communicates to God on our behalf, and more. “God is in control” makes God an autopilot. In my religious background, this phrase was used to imply that God had a good reason for allowing the difficulty and that you would understand why when the difficulty passed. Usually understanding why God allowed something to happen helped us to become better Christians somehow. This is not what happened to Job – God made a point to demonstrate that his reasons are not as simple as we make them out to be. Sometimes his reasons are unknown to us. I would be hesitant to say that Job was a better follower of God after his ordeal. “Repent so that God can bless you” again makes God’s providence conditional on what you do. It’s as if God will not work on your behalf because a sin committed recently. Really? When did the promise of the Spirit change? When did God change his mind and forgive a person’s sins up until he or she saved, but makes all future forgiveness conditional from that point on? (This is a non sequitir. God’s forgiveness has nothing to do with ‘when’ a person is saved.)

But back to the point.

Conservative commentaries say largely the same thing and what they say is valuable and largely trustworthy. But I also have a really strange Bible Handbook that is “out there”. Every once in a while, this handbook provides a good insight that fits the text of the passage, but comes from a completely different direction. I do not know what it says about Hebrews 3, but this handbook is the closest sensation I have to hearing something that is unexpected.

See some of you Sunday. Otherwise, I hope to share more next week.