1. John 11:35: the shortest verse in the Bible.
2. Recent Team Pyro blog entry based on that passage: fairly long.

I don’t usually read the Team Pyro blog. A friend, however, emailed and pointed me to that blog post that I linked to above. He commented that it was well-written and moving, until he got to the end where the following paragraph sits:

Pondering the universality of death and the inevitability of it, I have to wonder what certain Emergent leaders could possibly be thinking when they systematically try to downplay the hope of heaven and urge Christians to be more concerned with earthly matters.

Here is a stirring post about the death of a friend from cancer, tied in to the pain Jesus felt at his friend’s death, and that little zinger at some other Christian camp is the chosen denouement.

For those of you calling for more scripture, simply follow the link to John 11:35, read two words, and see if, out of all of that, you can come up with what Team Pyro managed to eke out.Or this time, perhaps, a full passage of scripture (which lends the context of the story but is generally not favored to the “give me a proof verse!” crowd) might be more beneficial. In that case, John 11.

One of my favorite passages about Jesus, is John 11.

Granted, Team Pyro provided links for more scripture, including the very powerful John 11:25-26, but oddly enough, following that link brings me right back to Team Pyro’s blog post. What is the message to the reader, or the person who stumbles there unaware, when scripture links back not to the scripture referenced but to the blog post?

Jesus wept.

From that verse, or even the whole passage, I do not find any ammunition to go after Catholics, Baptists, Emergents, Pentecostals, or the Church of God. Instead, I find that it is acceptable to cry, and to not be happy all the time. If there is anything that all of humanity knows, it is to weep.

I have no doubt that Team Pyro was not trying to be witty, considering the close and dear subject matter of the post. However, a very brief verse inspired a fairly long blog post in which it sounds to me as if Team Pyro wasn’t exactly relying upon Sola Scripture to make a few leaps:

Have you ever wondered why He was weeping? It could not be just grief over the loss of Lazarus, because He was about to bring Lazarus back to life. Yet it’s clear from Scripture that His tears signified real sorrow.

So what was He mourning about?

Surely He was grieving over the effects of sin on people He loved. He was sorrowing over the ravages of evil on His creation. He was thus identifying with those whom He loved, even in their anguish.

All that, from “Jesus wept.” It sounds to me as if there is a little deciphering, putting into context, imagining, trying to relate scripture to life as we know it, a little divining — any of those things, which commonly get nailed by any responsible ODM when someone like Warren or McManus or Bell or any other favored whipping boy lifts a few verses and interprets them what he believes them to mean.

Perhaps, rather than gloating or priding themselves on “being right”, they ought to be weeping more, if they truly believe all of these other Christians are not truly saved. The tone of their blogs, their writing, their responses, their entire being — if they really feel as Team Pyro seemed to feel at the beginning of the post — should be more about about weeping than cutting.

How can anyone use words like “grieving” and “sorrowing” and “anguish”, and within four paragraphs, show that peculiar arrogance the self-appointed remnant so unabashedly reek? My email response to the friend who originally pointed out the Team Pyro post was much shorter than this:

“Jesus wept” is the shortest verse in the Bible, yet he managed to read a whole pile of theology into the reasoning behind his weeping, and then use that to zing his theological adversaries.

I know why Jesus might weep.

Perhaps there is a reason why that verse is so short, why much was left unsaid. Brevity is powerful and all-encompassing and easily misused by those looking for quick weaponry.

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him.”

When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Christ was to be born. “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:

” ‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for out of you will come a ruler
who will be the shepherd of my people Israel.’”

Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”

Part I: Getting the Whole Story
Part II: The Time of Jesus’ Birth
Part III: Jesus’ Parents
Part IV: The Location of Jesus’ Birth

Of all the kings in the history of the land of Israel, none has ever even approached the wealth of King Herod the Great. In today’s dollars, even Bill Gates would be a pauper in comparison to Herod’s wealth. While Solomon, known for his wealth and power, had to enlist slave labor for all of his projects, Herod paid all of his workers from his own pocket (supplemented with taxes), and he was respected by many of the non-religious Jews and immigrants throughout Israel. Despite this, he has been relegated to the role of a baby-killing tyrant, and a bit player in the coming of the King of the Universe. What you may not realize is how he and his wealth figure into the Christmas story.

Background

Herod was an Idumaean (a descendant of Esau, whose lands were to the south of Israel, sometimes called Edom) who, through a great deal of intrigue and intermarriage became the King of the Jews (declared by the Roman Senate) in 37 B.C. As a descentant of Esau, he was seen as an illegitimate ruler of the religious Jewish community from the start, but his family connections, his brutal quenching of zealot insurrection in the Galilee, and the marriage to his niece, Mariamne, of the Hasmonean clan (the family of the Maccabees) cemented his rule in Israel.

Herod the Great was, by profession, an incredible engineer, trained in Rome. Combining his passion for building with his family’s vast wealth (gained via the spice trade his family controlled, with the main conduit from east to west going through Israel), he set to make Israel the greatest jewel in the crown of Rome.

Building a Legacy

At Caesarea Maritima (left), he sought to built the greatest port in the Mediterranean – double the size of Alexandria in Egypt – pouring concrete at a depth of 150 feet below the water to create the largest man-made harbor in the ancient world. Around 8 B.C., Herod hosted the Olympic Games for the entire Empire in a huge marble complex built in this city by the sea. (A vain man, worried about how his own people would compete, some scholars record that he added medals for second and third place, a tradition later carried on by the Modern Olympic Games).

With his port at Caesarea, he achieved two goals: 1) He gained Roman favor, by having one of two non-Italian ports in the Eastern Mediterranean at which the Roman Navy could land and transport troops to and from the Via Maris trade route; and 2) He sercured a key port for his family’s spice business, giving way to even greater wealth.

In Jerusalem, Herod saw the Temple and the annual festivals it hosted as a vast, unrealized source of wealth (imagine today, a city that hosted the Superbowl four times a year, every year). Unfortunately, though, the Temple was unable to hold the numbers of people who potentially wanted to visit Jerusalem.

Working with the Sadducee party, and gaining the bonus of nearly free labor (priests, in the service to the Temple), he tore down and buried the old Temple, building a new one – capable of holding more than ten times what the previous one would hold. This Temple, which rivaled any other in existence, both endeared him to the professionally religious crowd (which ruled the people from Jerusalem in most matters), impressed the Romans and other citizens of the empire, and (most importantly) brought even more wealth to Herod.

Besides Masada and other great works, one of Herod’s greatest achievements was the Herodion (see photo at the top of the page for a modern view of the Herodion’s base above Bethlehem). Here, Herod build his personal palace on the edge of the desert, complete with a pool the size of a soccer field, filled with fresh water carried in from the surrounding area.

Today, all that remains of the Herodion is a large hill – its base – which did not even exist when Herod began construction. A 400+ foot-tall tower palace, Herod had his construction workers literally move a mountain of dirt, compact it, and build a tower within and above it, where he, his family and his court could live for months at a time in opulace. Even the Caesars in Rome did not live as lushly as Herod in even one of his many palaces – especially the Herodion.

[It should be noted that Jesus, sitting on the side of the Mount of Olives with his disciples, commented "I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and it will be done." From where he was, between Bethany and Jerusalem, the dominant feature in the landscape was the Herodion, a mountain moved by Herod. After the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D., the Romans destroyed the Herodion, throwing many of its huge stones into the sea...]

To make a long story short – it is hard to oversell the power, wealth and majesty of Herod and his works – especially when adjusted and compared to wealth today.

The Picture

The LORD said to her, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger.” (Genesis 25:23)

The original recipients of the gospels would have been familiar with Herod and his legendary status. And so it is that, in the story of Jesus’ birth, we have the King of the Universe, a descendant of Jacob, born to unwed, poor teenage parents in an unsanitary shepherd’s cave in the shadow of the greatest palace of perhaps the greatest (in terms of wealth and comfort) king in the world, a descendant of Esau.

This, in and of itself, is a picture of Jesus’ life and purpose – that God is not demonstrated in wealth, power, prestige or renown, but in humble service, love and sacrifice. But we miss this picture if we de-sanitize Jesus’ birth…

The house of Jacob will be a fire and the house of Joseph a flame; the house of Esau will be stubble, and they will set it on fire and consume it. There will be no survivors from the house of Esau.” The LORD has spoken. (Obadiah 1:18)

P.S. The Herodion Guard

In an interesting footnote of History, after the death of Cleopatra, her Roman-provided bodyguards – blonde-haired Gauls – were reassigned to Herod the Great and housed in his palace at the Herodion. While there are no records of the Slaughter of the Innocents outside of the Bible, since it occurred in Bethlehem, it is highly likely that this would have been conducted by Herod’s private guard and not Roman guards. Gauls were from Northern Europe, from the region of Modern-day Germany. And so it would have been nearly 2000 years after the Gauls killed Jewish babies at the behest of a mad ruled that the modern Gauls did the same to the descendents of these same people.

Who says history doesn’t repeat itself.

Ken has written a new missive, which could use some correction. For instance, I have rewritten the below paragraph for him, given the fact that he continues to ignore a great sin in our country’s past:

Just think of it! How do you think our wonderful Savior feels as He watches droves of souls as they slide into Hell in our generation? I wonder if we realize that Jesus sees all the Africans being shipped in boats to be slaves for the rich white man–and that–with full sanction by the laws of these United States of America. He sees every type of abuse as it happens.

The above rewrite shows how the ODMS seem to think that abortion is a worse sin then slavery ever was.

And then this paragraph is funny too:

It makes me angry when I see the minority radicals like the ACLU attempt to make this country “One Nation Without God.” There is simply no doubt that this nation was founded by people who did believe in God. At this point, what they believed about Him is actually irrelevant as incontrovertible historical evidence proves the Founding Fathers of this nation did believe in a Deity.

One man-lover/founder of our country for you, Ken – Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson is famous for the Jefferson Bible, his rewritten version that removed all miracles and the resurrection. It taught that Jesus was a good teacher, not the Son of God. It does matter what he believed. Jefferson was a Deist. He wasn’t even close to being any sort of Christian Ken would fellowship with.

Then, this paragraph shows the love that Ken has for the lost:

So why is it we let people who do not believe in a Creator silence those of us who profess to still believe in Him? If they would like to live in nation where there are no references to God, then they are more than welcome to leave the United States and to merrily go off to start their own country.

If we asked everyone who was hostile to Christianity to leave, who would we minister to? Aren’t our enemies the people we are supposed to be the most welcoming and loving to?

From Verum Serum (Good Stuff)

Frequent visitors to Verum Serum know that we have had our share of differences with the “Reverend” Ken Silva, pastor-teacher and “president” of Apprising Ministries. While I believe that Ken is sincere in his love for and faith in Christ, I also believe that he is so blinded by his compulsion to judge others by his own subjective standards of what the Christian faith should look like, and by his desire to be a “mover and shaker” in the Church, that he only sees things through the prism of personal preference and the need to be viewed as an authority by those with whom he chooses to interact.

Today’s case in point – “Reverend” Silva has decided to rail against Saddleback Church’s Global Summit on AIDS and the Church.

To be clear, here’s the basic statement from the Summit’s website:

What is faith without action? This summit will provide you with the information and tools you need to discover how your congregation, organization, or agency can start to make a positive change. Every element of the summit is designed to start conversations and build networking that will make the movement to eradicate AIDS stronger.

So, in essence, it appears that the goal of the conference is to equip people to put action to their faith and faith to their action, specifically in relation to HIV/AIDS. Ken seems to have a problem with this.

MORE

Ken Silva writes:

Kind of duck and cover time for Christians being accosted by…well, other Christians.

Yeah, its a real shame when Christians attack other Christians. Next thing you’ll be telling is that there’s an entire online cottage industry devoted to nothing but Christians attacking other Christians. Why they might even call themselves “pastor-teachers”, or “Reverend” and they could even go so far as to regularly lie about other Christians.

Whoo, now that’s a grim alternate reality that we can all be thankful hasn’t come to pass.

UPDATE: Here’s the link to the moved article.

This latest post by Silva is pretty amazing, and not in a good way. We’re all aware of how Silva link whores his own personal website every chance he gets, and he attempts to drive google traffic by using the names of well known theologians, authors, and ministers (which is why he can’t mention Nathan Neighbours without also mentioning McManus). But this latest post may be the greatest example of that. So I’ve come up with a formula to determine what is the greatest example of link whoring.

Simply take the number of names not focused on the point being made, add to it the number of times a personal website is mentioned and/or linked to from a different blog, and divide by the number of words in a post (you can copy/paste to word to do the word count automagically). So this particular post gives us a link whore rating of .066 (he mentioned Kimball, McLaren, Apprising “Ministries” mentioned once, Apprising “Ministries” linked 4 times, Haggee and Warren X2 divided by a word count of 151).

So there it is people, if you can beat a link whore index rating of .066 I’ll give you some sort of totally sweet shout out.

****Updated****
I messed up the math. There were 4 additional links to Apprising “Ministries” I missed the first time through thinking they were links to the websites of the people being mentioned to add to google traffic, so the total has been adjusted up to .066, raising the bar for everyone out there.

***Updated 2***
And just like that Silva out link whores himself in his very next post. This post garners a link whore index rating of .074 (no less than four links to Apprising “Ministries” in only 54 words). Congratulations to Silva on his outstanding work in the field of link whoring.

In this article posted at The Expositor, Nathan White of Strange Baptist Fire writes about the evils of Christmas plays in the church. Here are his three basic premises from the piece

• What can be better for our souls than the preached Word?
• What can be better for those outside of Christ than the clear proclamation of the gospel through the preached Word?
• If preaching was completely sufficient to minister and save in scripture, who are we to say that it is now supplemented, at times, by better things? Has market research replaced biblical revelation?

In classic ODM style, he accuses –well, just read this

“It certainly must be noted that drama in worship is most often employed by seeker-sensitive, Arminian ministries, in an apparent attempt to evangelize…But it must be emphasized that the preaching of the word, the very proclamation of Jesus Christ, is simply not good enough, according to this logic, to attract a wide audience, and so the Christmas play is employed to bring in those who wouldn’t otherwise darken the door. Christmas plays do not offend, they do not divide households, they are generally warm and fuzzy at a very family-oriented time of year, and so they provide a great impetus for the numbers-driven mindset.“ (emphasis mine)

He then makes a pretty weighty statement to backup

“drama in worship, without a doubt, *is* a violation of scripture…God, through scripture, has left drama completely out of His Word and instruction to His Church, and that for an important reason.“

There are so many flaws in this article; I really don’t know where to begin. I am not quite sure how one can say that the reenactment of the word of God is any less powerful than talking about the word of God from the pulpit. We are not talking about a production of The Sound of Music, we are talking about a Christmas pageant. There are so many Christmas shows that often hit you over the head with the scriptures, and are very blatant in their message. I always find it ironic that these pastors complain about arts in the church, but unless they get up and simply read straight from the scriptures and say nothing but the scriptures, they too are using an artistic way to preach the scriptures. They decide how to word ideas and concepts, they choose illustrations, and they craft how we perceive the scriptures every Sunday. It is arrogant to say that only what they are doing is preaching the Word of God, when 75% of the words they give are their own.

Do we labels something as bad or heretical if it does not offend or divide households? That notion is completely asinine, but is all too common among the ODMs. If it brings people together to enjoy the story of Christmas, then it must be wrong. If no one leaves the place offended, someone messed up. And, to argue that something is inappropriate for worship simply because it is not mentioned in the scriptures is not exactly the best logic. Most hymns would be out of the question if we are going to go down that route. But, did Jesus not tell stories as a means to communicate biblical truth? It seems to me that story-telling is one of the most important elements in theatre arts.

As an actor, it is strange to hear someone say that I cannot worship God with the talents he has given me. I have been using theatre arts as a means to present the truth for years. Many of my friends have come to Christ through shows that we have produced that speak clearly the word of God. I am always puzzled as to why the church today is do hesitant when it comes to the arts. It is ok for a man to give a 45 minute monologue about the scriptures, but to present it in theatrical form or paint it is simply out of the question. We live in a world where a television show is worth a million words, a painting is worth a thousand, and words are only worth pennies. Maybe it is time we rethink how present the Word (please note that nowhere did I say rethink the Word itself).

This week Chris Lyons, and Tim Reed discuss some of the advantages and disadvantages of big churches and small churches especially in relation to the Willow Creek studies. Click here to download it, or listen below.

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 Justice and Mercy #16 - Big church, small church: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Dan Kimball talks about hell:

I started the sermon giving some examples from pop culture of how we generally portray or think about hell today – from Far Side cartoons with a red devil and pitchfork, to AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” song and then showed a clip from an episode of Seinfeld which is the one where Puddy (Elaine’s boyfriend) becomes a “Christian” and listens to Christian music on the radio but then he emotionlessly makes comments to Elaine how she is going to hell and he isn’t. He then asks her to steal his neighbors newspaper and he says something like “you’re the one going to hell not me, so you might as well steal it”. And then she explodes and starts whacking him with the newspaper and says: “If I am going to hell, you should care that I’m going to hell.”

One of the big complaints from watchdoggies about our e/e brothers and sisters is that they don’t talk about hell enough. I’m not sure that’s true, but what is true is that when we talk about hell we need to have the proper attitude.
Kimball continues:

But if we do believe in hell, and we believe that people are created in God’s image who would then be experiencing judgment and hell – it should make us grieve, and hurt, be in great concern, care, praying, and doing whatever possible we can to be on the mission of Jesus living out and communicating the gospel to people.

Sadly, the people I see and hear talking about hell the loudest don’t seem to have this attitude. Instead, often, it comes across as an attitude of superiority.

I’m feeling quite under the weather today, but I found myself a bit amazed that I completely agreed with Dan Phillips at TeamPyro – in two articles, nonetheless! – on the subject of religion in politics.

Religion is stacking up to be quite the topic during this election cycle. When questioners bring up the matter of religion, or try to pursue it very far, one of the common preferred responses is, “My religion is very private. I keep it separate from my politics. My religion will not influence me one way or the other in office.”

What’s surprising about this paint-thin response is how often it works. I suppose we can thank the mainstream media’s abysmal ignorance of and incuriosity towards religion or philosophy for that.

This response — if it means anything at all — can only mean one of three things:

1. The speaker is a liar
2. The speaker is a hypocrite
3. The speaker can’t rub two live neurons together

Here is my premise: all men are religious, and all worldviews are religious worldviews.

If you didn’t know any better, you’d think that Dan stole Rob Bell’s notes from last year’s Everything is Spiritual tour.  Regardless, he has some good observations on the topic of candidates who try to distance themselves from their religion…