The Year of the Lord's Favor

Hey everyone,
While I am still busy, teaching five history classes from home and doing graduate work, social distancing has allowed me more time to write.  So here my fourth post in a little over a week.  I'm reaching back into my quiet time book and finding things that I had wanted to write about but didn't make the time.  This is one such post. It comes from Luke 4 and tells the story of Jesus in the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth.  He reads from Isaiah 61 and makes commentayr on it.  What he says makes his hometown so angry that they want to kill him.

I read up on the subject matter last summer in Steve Kinnard's King Jesus and then again this week in Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes by Kenneth Bailey. (Both books are excellent if you are looking for something to read other than my blog, during this time self quarantine.) Seeing it again in Bailey's book reminded me of some really cool stuff. 

According to Luke 4:14-21, Jesus reads this from Isaiah 61:
     "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
       because he has anointed me,
     to proclaim good news to the poor.
     He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
       and recovery of sight for the blind,
       to set the captive free,
       to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
Then  he rolled up the scroll, sits and says to the crowd, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."  Jesus was declaring to his hometown, that He, the Messiah, had come. 

There are many levels to this story, and perhaps I will examine other levels in a different post.  I want to focus on what Jesus read and also , what he didn't read.  His audience was no doubt very familiar with Isaiah 61. If you were to look at the passage, you would see that Jesus made a calculated decision to stop where he did.  Isa. 61:2 reads like this:
     to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor,
       and the day of vengeance of our God,
     to comfort those who mourn.

His audience liked this passage, because they believed that the year of the Lord's favor would be to their benefit, and that His vengeance would then be carried out on their enemies.  Isaiah 61 continues with talk of the ancient ruins being rebuilt and strangers and foreigners doing the work, while they reap the benefits and enjoy the wealth of other nations.  So try to imagine Jesus reading one of the congregations's favorite passages, and stopping abruptly just before he gets to the "good stuff," of revenge on their enemies.  They had been happy and agreeing with everything their hometown boy was saying, until suddenly, crickets.  Their reaction to what Jesus is saying will soon take a sharp turn for the worst.  Remember though, that today we are focusing on what Jesus said, and what he didn't say. 

Jesus gave his crowd these things: Good news, freedom, sight and more freedom. Then offered the Lord's favor.  He did not declare the Lord's vengeance.  I think this was good news for them (although they didn't see it that way.)  It is also good news for us.  Jesus offers us good news, freedom, sight and more freedom.  He would much rather give us the Lord's favor than the Lord's vengeance. The Lord's impulse is toward mercy rather than punishment. 
Tom
 

Blessed

Rob Novack recommended a book to me, Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes, by Kenneth Bailey. (It's a great book that I would recommend as well.) Bailey spent sixty years living in the Middle East, many of those years, he taught in seminaries there.  So he had a unique perspective on the thinking in that region of the world. Part 2 of his book is dedicated to the Beatitudes.  He discusses two words from the Greek that we translate as blessed.  The first word is a verb, eulogeo. We use it when we talk about giving a blessing to someone.  For example, Isaac blessed Jacob.  The other word is an adjective, makarios. According to Bailey, this word is not involved in invoking a blessing but is the recognition of "an existing state of happiness and good fortune."  In the old days, it would have been been pronounced with two syllables, "bless-ed."  Today, we say, "I am so blessed," or "Have a blessed day."  It is makarios that Jesus uses in the Beatitudes. Bailey makes a great point about this. (I am going to paraphrase a lengthy passage from his text (p. 68).  His explanation is better than mine, but it is also much longer, so I am going to try.) He say that we often take each Beatitude to mean that, 'if we do X, we will get Y." For example, "if we are meek, then we will inherit the Earth." According to Bailey, we are looking this backwards. Since makarios means "an affirmation of happy state that already exists," we should look at it this way, "Since we will inherit the Earth, we are meek and therefore happy (makarios).  To me, this changes my whole outlook.  Instead of trying to sort of grunt my way into meekness, or humility*, I can live as though I have this great inheritance and be made meek (or humble) and happy because of it.  This takes the pressure, because I am not changing me, God is.  I am just being grateful and happy.  Think about Matt 5:7.  Because I am shown mercy from God, I am made merciful toward others and I am also blessed (makarios) Or verse 9, Because I am called a child of God, I am made into a peacemaker and I am happier for it. 

*The Greek word that is translated here as meek, praeis, could also be translated as gentle, humble or considerate, according to the BDAG Lexicon.

What is love? Baby Don't Hurt Me

As many of know, I have been working on a Master degree in Biblical Studies with Languages, and this year I am taking Greek. I have seen that an understanding of the Greek is very beneficial in understanding some of the nuances  that we don't get in the English translations.  It has been very exciting.
Any way, I was looking at 1 Cor. 13, trying to understand it in the Greek.  I came to verse 7, "πάντα στέγει, πάντα πιστεύει, πάντα ,ἐλπίζει, πάντα ὑπομένει." All but the first phrase were fairly easy to translate. Referring to love, "in allthings trusts, al things hopes, all things endures." The first verb, στέγει, I was not familiar with. I knew that the NIV 2011 translated it as "protects."
I looked at the note in the Greek New Testament I was using. It said that the word was the
3rd person singular present active indicative of στέγω, which means, "to put up with,"

so πάντα στέγει, would mean, "loves puts up with all things."  Ok, “protect” and “put up with” do not mean the same thing. So which one is it? I pulled out my Greek lexicon (aka BDAG) and looked it up. The lexicon's first definition, is: To keep confidential, cover, pass over in silence. then it makes specific reference to 1 Cor. 13:7 by saying, “of love that throws a cloak of silence over what is displeasing in another person.” (BDAG, p. 942) Apparently, “puts up with” is the better translation.  So all these years that I thought I was really loving my family by protecting them, (and I was!) the greater love may have been the times when I merely put up with them. To be honest, the BDAG definition of throwing a cloak of silence over the things that are displeasing in other people is a high calling indeed.  And I hope that my family can πάντα στέγει (always put up with) me.

Shameless Audacity

I have been studying the book of Luke and I recently studied chapter 11, where Jesus’ apostles ask Him to teach them to pray. In verse 5, Jesus tells a story about having a friend come in the middle of the night asking for bread. In verse 8, Jesus finishes the story by saying, “I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.”  I have read this before, but had never noticed the phrase “shameless audacity.”  (This is coming out of the NIV 2011.) I compared it with other translations that I had at hand at the moment.  The NIV 1973 simply translates it “persistence.”  The KJV uses the word “importunity,” a word that I was not familiar with, but have learned from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary means “to press or urge with troublesome persistence.”  I began to wonder which translation was the best.  Using the Greek New Testament, I looked up Luke 11:8 and the word translated from the Greek phrase διά γε τἡν ἀναίδειαν αύτου. The note on ἀναίδειαν at the bottom of the page said “shameless persistence.”  Also, I looked a Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of New Testament Words.  It defines ἀναίδειαν as shamelessness and impudence.  I have drawn the conclusion that the better translation is from the NIV 2011, “shameless audacity”  It paints a much clearer picture of what Jesus is saying that simply using the word “persistence.” What I draw from this is that Jesus is advocating that his disciples pray to God with shameless audacity, not being afraid of annoying the Father with their bold requests, and I have worked to change my prayer life that way. Personally I have seen some bold requests granted.