Thought for Today
Isaiah 45:7 I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the LORD do all these things.
Psalm 140:1 Deliver me, O LORD, from evildoers; protect me from those who are violent, 2 who plan evil things in their minds and stir up wars continually.
Ephesians 1:7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace 8 that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and insight 9 he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ,
I wrote about plans on Wednesday, particularly God’s plans. As I thought more about plans and planning this morning, I realized that every year I think about planning during the period between Christmas and Easter.
Much of my first career involved planning and scheduling. Each engineering and construction project involved extensive planning and scheduling of the most minute details. We created workflow charts for every aspect of the engineering, for the preparation of every drawing. There were staffing charts and even office space plans and schedules. The most detailed planning was often during the construction phase of the project. Manpower had to be coordinated with material and equipment deliveries in exhaustive detail. And, of course, there had to be cashflow plans and schedules.
For me, Christmas and Easter are bookend events for Jesus’ ministry. It’s not that I ignore the rest of our liturgical year and the important events during each liturgical season. Rather, this current period of our liturgical year focuses my attention on the beginning and the end of Jesus’ life and ministry. When I think on that, I have to wonder, did Jesus have a detailed plan and schedule for the task to which God had commissioned him to accomplish.
John 3:16-17 paints Jesus’ mission in broad strokes. God sent Jesus as the ultimate demonstration of God’s own love and plan. God planned for our salvation through our faith and belief in Jesus.
Think for a minute about Jesus’ ‘assignment.’ I wrote yesterday about Jesus’ being a reformer. Jesus did not set out to establish a new religion. In some sense, it might have been easier to do so. Jesus could have just written out a set of rules, regulations, beliefs and practices and then gone about preaching his new religion. But, Jesus was a reformer. Jesus set out to reform a faith that even then was thousands of years old. The Bible is a tad vague on exact dating. Paleontology and archaeology are marginally useful in dating some aspects of the Bible; but, it is not really possible to establish the exact date of the founding of Judaism. Science cannot accurately confirm there was an Exodus; and, if there was an exodus of Hebrew slaves, science cannot agree on the exact date it occurred. Suffice it to say, by the time of Jesus’ birth, Judaism was thousands of years old. The various books of our Old Testament were written and assembled hundreds of years prior to Jesus’ birth.
My mind, conditioned by my first career, cannot image how Jesus could have dreamed of reforming such a well-established faith without a detailed plan and a detailed schedule for every sermon, every lesson, every miracle. Yet, when I do a word search in my Bible software for “Jesus planned,” I find no results. I can only find a single verse (in the Old Testament) for the word ‘scheduled.’
Does messiahship include an instinctive, intuitive knowledge of the necessary plans and schedules? Or, since I accept and believe John’s words in the first chapter of the gospel, did Jesus’ being a part of Creation itself mean that Jesus was fully integral to and aware of God’s own plan?
It is tempting as we read the New Testament, to assume that things just happened, without any planning or scheduling. As I read about Jesus’ life and ministry, however, I see a plan; I see things occurring on a scheduled timeline. We have little information about Jesus’ youth and teenage years. We have the birth narratives, the story of Jesus’ being left behind in the Temple, and then John the Baptist appears announcing Jesus’ imminent ministry. During those ‘silent’ years, I believe Jesus experienced a growing understanding of who he was and of his mission. And, I believe that Jesus did begin to plan. I believe Jesus thought carefully about who he would choose as disciples and where and when he would reveal himself and his gospel. Christendom was not an accident. Christendom is the result of the careful revelation of God, God’s love and God’s plan for it all.
Stay safe, get with God’s plan, trust God,
Pastor Ray