Hello everyone,
Today (Saturday) I went to New Dawn High School to teach the leadership of Sammy’s church. Sammy is the pastor of a church in the slum near the school. It was good to see my driver, Richard, who, all the other times I have been to Kenya, has been driving me back and forth from our guest house to New Dawn. It always has been a joy to ride with him because he wants to milk me to hear what I am going to teach each day and then I give him a summary of what I am planning to do. Then in the afternoon when he picks me back up he wants to know how things went, and then I have to give him a detailed report. Also, last year I gave him the booklet that contained all the lessons I was going to teach at New Dawn, and so I had one prepared this year also, which I gave him tonight when he drove me back.
At the school Pastor Sammy was eagerly awaiting me and he was so excited to see that once again I was bringing him a few commentaries, so that he has quite a library now. At times I have wondered if these commentaries are not way over his head, but the first thing he told me was, “You know, these commentaries are changing the way I preach and our church is changing because of it.” So that was just so very encouraging to hear that they are making a difference in his life and in the life of his church. Pastor Sammy is very special.
Then we went to the assembly hall of New Dawn, where things were set up to for me to teach. We had been led to believe that their would be some 15-18 people participating, but in the end there were some 20 people attending. I think there were three churches involved, which was good, but most were obviously from Sammy’s church where I will preach tomorrow.
Today I began my teaching with the sordid story of the rape of Tamar by her half-brother Amnon as recorded in II Sam. 13. Clearly, here also this passage and the questions I had designed for it, led the class and especially the pastors, to realize that they were actually ill prepared to deal with serious women’s issues. Irene Tongoi, the director of New Dawn, was quite excited about the fact that I am going to use the same material with the teachers of New Dawn next week. She said, “My teachers really need to be able to deal with the issues of rape and abuse.”Last year, New Dawn was able to rent a house for a number of the girls attending New Dawn and let them live there during the school year, because they simply could not be sent home to an abusive situation. Anyway, this lesson was well received and I am excited to contemplate what will come out of this. Since about half of the people there were women it was just special to see them nod and be engaged with the text and the responses from the group to the questions.
The next teaching was on the healing of the paralytic man who is brought to Jesus by his four friends as recorded in Lk. 5:17-26. This story really struck me at first because the culture of the day believed that birth defects were the result of the sin of the parents, like we see in Jn. 9:1-2. Now if that were true, it makes good sense to think about what the paralytic is experiencing when he is lowered through the roof of the house in front of the feet of Jesus. Jesus is sitting there in front of a circle of Pharisees who are there to trap him. It is their belief that Jesus is healing people by demonic powers, that he is involved in immorality because he associates with tax collectors and prostitutes, that he is not pious enough (Matt. 9:14-17), and especially that he is blaspheming God because he forgives sins.
So when the paralytic is lowered down to land between the stern looking Pharisees on one side and our Lord Jesus on the other, the paralytic‘s heart is racing, “What if my parents' sin will prevent me from being healed?” All the while Jesus knows what the Pharisees are thinking about him, that is they believe he is blaspheming God (a capital offence under Jewish law) if he forgives the paralytic’s sins. So the Lord faces this dilemma: He wants to forgive the sins of the paralytic who is lying there in fear that the sins of his parents, or perhaps his own sins, will prevent him from being healed. But if he does, he knows that he will have to deal with the condemnation from the Pharisees who believe he is blaspheming God. Yet Jesus, because of who he is, decides to show his compassion for the trembling paralytic first and says, “Your sins have been forgiven.” Now because Jesus, who is both God and man, knows what is going on in the mind of the Pharisees, he meets them head-on and says, “Which is easier to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’?" Then our Lord places the onus squarely on the Pharisees by forcing them to decide whether Jesus is blaspheming by forgiving sin and/or healing by demonic powers. So he says, “But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins .....” Then he said to the paralytic man, “I tell you get up, take your mat, and go home.” Now the Pharisees are in a bind, because logic tells them that this man called Jesus has the authority to forgive sins because to heal a paralytic is humanly impossible. In addition, the paralytic goes home praising God, so the healing must have been done by the power of God rather than by demonic power. So, instead of falling into a pharisaic trap, our Lord has turned the tables on them, they are amazed and say, “We have seen remarkable things today.”
The class was really impressed by the fact that Jesus demonstrated that showing compassion for this handicapped man was really his foremost concern. Yet, at the same time, with his divine reasoning, he was able, by using this compassionate choice to forgive sins, to put the Pharisees in a bind by also showing the Pharisees decisively that he had divine powers to heal. Logically then, they had to conclude that Jesus was God. So they went home amazed while shaking their heads.
The last passage I taught on was the wedding at Cana, where Jesus changed the water into wine (John 2:1-25). The point of this was that Jesus, here at the beginning of his ministry, showed decisively that changing water into wine was in fulfillment of Jacob’s prophetic blessing on his son Judah (Gen 49:8-12) and by prophets like Amos (Amos 9:13). Just as Jesus filled the empty water jars with water that turned into the best wine imaginable, so he wants to change man's emptiness into a new fullness of life. This story is all about the abundance Messiah brings by his coming, an abundance that is expressed in joy as it was way back then at the wedding in Cana. Perhaps it even hints at a lifting of the curse of Gen. 3:17-18, because with the coming of Messiah in glory, the abundance of Eden will be restored. However, even in this life, glimpses of this can be seen and experienced by the redeemed. (See Gal. 5:22; John 15:11; Jas.1:17. and finally also Rom. 8:18-22.)
This too was well received, though it was a bit more difficult to understand. All in all though, they were extremely happy to have come and they testified they had learned a lot about God's grace, his love for mankind, and yes, even the abused. Also, that to be a good father is hard work and that David failed miserably here. They especially learned the need to be gracious and compassionate to to women that have been abused and the need for more education about this for church leaders.
Well, it was a great day, and now I will have to prepare for the sermon that I will give tomorrow by reading over my notes. I feel pretty good about my preparation though, and it should hopefully be a blessing for Sammy's congregation.
God bless you all,
Hans
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