Archive for April 29th, 2010

A Year of Brokenness

Thursday, April 29th, 2010 | Author: Skip Moen

Oh, you thought this was about spiritual brokenness before God.  Well, it sort of is.  But mostly it’s about the results of everything breaking.  First, the vacuum cleaner.  Not really a big deal.  After holding it together with duct tape (yeah!) and wood screws, it finally quit.  Result: paying for a new vacuum cleaner.  Then, the car.  At 168,000 miles, some things begin to break.  In this case, several things.  $528 later the air conditioning functions again (a necessity in Florida).  OK, so we swallow some unexpected bills this month.  But wait (like the commercial), more to come.  Next came the hot tub (still broken) and then the big one – our central air conditioning system.  Shorted to ground.  Compressor blown.  New system – with lots of help from JT and the people at his company – $6000.  Oh my, I don’t make that much in a month or more.  Now what do we do?  Then my son returns to college after knee surgery – $2500.  Then several appliances quit.  Fortunately April is about over.  Maybe May will be better.  There’s not much left to break.

So, by the time we get to the end of April, we are upside down by nearly $10,000.  Not so bad if you can spread it out over a long time, but what is broken can’t wait to be fixed unless we want to live in a tent in the summer heat.  Physical brokenness leads directly to spiritual brokenness.  “Lord, what are we supposed to do now?”

The Hebrew word for “wait” is hakah.  It is not a passive verb.  Like all Hebrew verbs, waiting is movement or action.  How is this possible?  Don’t we just sit in the doctor’s office, waiting for something to happen?  Don’t we say to ourselves, “Why do I have to wait so long when I could be doing something?”  Apparently, waiting is not doing in our world.  But it is doing something in the Hebrew world.  It is traveling on the continuum from frenetic activity to calm, expectant trust.  Both ends of the continuum are active.  Waiting is active expectation and anticipation.  It is the action of holding your breath in anticipation of God’s arrival.  He is there, just over the horizon, and if we could just stand a little taller, we would see Him coming.  We can hardly sit passively still with this kind of attitude.  We are like the maidens who hear the arrival of the bridegroom.  We are ready to jump up and go at a moment’s notice.  We are sitting in the doctor’s office on the edge of the chair.  The engine is racing but the clutch isn’t engaged.  And when we do pop the clutch, look out!  Whoosh!  We are off.

A year of brokenness provides lots of opportunity for drag strip faith.  Any second God will drop the green light and we’ll be in full throttle, tires burning up the pavement, heading toward the finish line.  But until the green light comes on, we wait!  All of the experiences (and events) that prepare us for the green light are part of the waiting process.  They are just elements of the explosive run to the finish.  In other words, the active ingredients of waiting begin with the first moment of slowing down.  That’s when the vacuum quit.  Everything else simply provided the grounds for active waiting.

You can’t win a drag race if you’re not revving the engine at a stand-still.  Just wait to pop the clutch.

PS – I guess we weren’t quite done.  Now the roofer is here because the water is leaking into the house.  Oh, I can’t wait to pop the clutch.

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Stay in Step

Thursday, April 29th, 2010 | Author: Skip Moen

“A pupil is not above his teacher; but everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher.” Luke 6:40

Fully Trained – If we examine the Greek text, we are likely to conclude that Yeshua’s remark is just commonsense.  Of course a pupil isn’t superior to his teacher.  Of course the goal is to be fully trained so that we can be like the teacher.  But, of course, this reading transports the imagery into our modern idea of classroom instruction.  And that’s not what Yeshua meant.

The Greek word here is katartizo.  It is derived from two other words, kata (with) and artizo (to adjust, fit or finish – from artios – complete).  Generally, it means to put something in its appropriate condition, to establish something or equip it.  Therefore, we have the English translation “fully trained.”

Two things need to be considered as we examine this text.  First, the Hebrew view of the relationship between teacher (rabbi) and pupils (talmidim) isn’t the same as our cultural view, and second, Yeshua would not only have employed the Hebrew concept of rabbinic discipleship, he would also use words from the Hebrew Scriptures to establish the authority of His teaching.  Therefore, we will have to look backward into the past to discover what He meant.

The first step is fairly straightforward.  In the Hebrew model of education, rabbis picked their students.  They picked them because they showed promise.  The education itself revolved around absorbing, through word and deed, the lifestyle, thoughts, attitudes and actions of the rabbi.  This was not information transfer.  A pupil did not reach full maturity until the pupil became what the rabbi embodied – a perfect copy of the teacher.

The second step in our analysis takes us back to Psalm 17:5 and other Hebrew Scriptures.  There we find that the Greek word is a translation of the Hebrew tamak.  Other Hebrew words used for the Greek expression are kun, nathan and nashav.  What can we learn about the similarities between these Hebrew words?  They are all generally about establishing or making firm.  The meanings cover “to appoint, to erect, to take a stand, to place, to set up, to make firm, to support.”  How do these words fill in the Greek idea from Luke?  The concept of “fully trained” means to produce a pupil who is ready to take the stand of the rabbi, who establishes the rabbi’s words and deeds by repeating them, who supports what the rabbi taught by incorporating that teaching into his own life.  In other words, to be fully trained is to walk in the footsteps of the rabbi so long that eventually there is no distinguishable difference between the two.  If we are going to be fully trained by Yeshua, the day should come when an outside observer isn’t able to tell where He stops and we begin.  An outside observer should be able to say, “That man – that woman – they are the hands and feet of their Lord.”  Is that day coming for you?

Topical Index:  fully trained, katartizo, tamak, kun, nathan, nashav, Luke 6:40

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