Incarnate these Words: the Missional Values of Trinity Covenant Church ~ Matthew 22:34-40 (Living Into series)

 

One of the hardest things about communication is misunderstanding, particularly when we hear something that was more than what was said. When my wife and I were first dating she had a house and I lived in an apartment so I would come over to do laundry. We were both still dealing with the effects of having spouses who left us which often caused us to hear things in our former spouse’s voice. The first time I did laundry at her house, which was in the garage, I came back in and said, “Wow. You have a lot of spider’s in the garage.” Marianne quickly responded, “Well, you try and clean the garage with three young children and full time job.” She was incensed at my apparent criticism. I responded, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. I’m not suggesting that you need to clean the garage. I’m afraid of spiders.” So we learned that we needed to take time to do that simple response, “What I hear you saying is . . .” And today, I would like to do that with Jesus’ words about the greatest commandment. "Jesus what I hear you saying is . . ."

Incarnate these words

For thousands of years, daily, when awakening and when retiring, the observant Jew recites aloud a creed, which is lifted from the book of Deuteronomy 6:4-9. It’s called the Shema, the first word of the creed, meaning “Hear.” It reflects the heart of Jewish spirituality and formation.

⁴ Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. ⁵ Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. ⁶ These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. ⁷ Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. ⁸ Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. ⁹ Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

This is the first prayer that Jewish children are taught to say and the quintessential expression of Jewish belief and practice. It sets out the purpose and means for spirituality, Scripture reading, prayer, what God wants, and who we are designed to be. As a good Jew, Jesus would have prayed this creed himself twice a day. So no one would have been surprised that he shares it with both his enemies and to his followers as critical for our spiritual formation. And before we get into the content of the creed itself it’s worth getting at the getting – how do we learn it and embody it? The spiritual pedagogy of Judaism and Christianity, anchored in the creed, and illustrated by Jesus hinges on one word: incarnate – literally “enfleshed” or embodied. And that has two essential components:

1.     First, incarnate words are ones that you live in your body. Words are meant to be practiced, impact choices, and shape how we conduct ourselves. The opposite is what we mean when we say, “It’s just words.” Words without a body mean nothing. But that also doesn’t mean they are unimportant. No, in fact, we’ve also seen what happens when someone’s unkind or hurtful words anchor in a body. They can possess someone for great harm. God’s ultimate act of love was to embody his own love for us by being present, in the flesh. Jesus was a walking Shema. So to learn this creed means looking to Jesus and taking real, practical steps to acting them out. It’s understanding that what one believes is expressed by what one does. And that leads me to the second component of incarnate.

2.     The second meaning of incarnate is that the practice of learning, the way we learn, must connect physically with who we are. This creed is full-bodied belief demanding our intellect, our emotions, our spirituality, and our resolve. It’s for the young and old to be talked about and discussed, at home or on the road, written on our hands, our heads, our doors, our gates. They belong in our mornings, our evenings, and wrapped around and weaved into our lives. Words are to touched, tied, written, and walked. We’ve become so technocentric we’ve forgot that the symbology of these physical acts of learning were more than metaphor for our ancient forebearers. Observant Jews wore phylacteries, tacked mezuzahs to their doorposts, hung texts of Scriptures around their necks. 

 

     They understood spirituality to be an incarnate reality much the same way modern advertisers with slick jingles do, though with less savory motives. We were made to habitually embody the words and beliefs that we hold most dear and the only way to do that is to bring our bodies into our learning. You must shape and bring with you all that you are to this task. Can you imagine me telling my wife, “I love you but I only want to hang out two hours on a Sunday, okay, sound good? Excellent. Oh and here’s a few bucks. Bye.”Commit to saying the Jesus Creed – morning and night. Commit to discussing our values with others, your children, your friends your spouse. Take this card and do something creative with it so that it becomes a feature of your day, a part of your prayer, a purpose of your life. Let its verbs activate your body, its nouns name you daily, and always remember that the purpose and goal, the beginning and the end, the one thing God desires is love.

There is no spiritual substitute for love.

Have you ever tried to substitute something in recipe. It can be a disaster changing the entire taste or texture of what you were trying to make. I found a website that documents people’s comments on failed recipes. They’re pretty funny. 

 

This is more than silly. In my own life I have often tried a lot of substitutes for God’s main ingredient of love. I’ve tried obedience. It’s not a bad substitute but when I’ve used it I have often found myself outside the party with the older brother complaining about the fact that I have no party and that others who are at loss obedient are enjoying. I’ve tried theological certainty and I discovered people with a lot more fruit in their lives who believed differently from me. I’ve tried militant purity and found myself constantly holding stones ready to zing them at any and every sinner I encountered only to have Jesus disarm me time and time again. Listen to me well. None of those things are bad, in and of themselves, but they are not what the recipe calls for. Substituting the best mayonnaise in the world for heavy cream when making icing won’t make it taste better. Substituting good and holy things for love can’t replace love. If we use a plant analogy, the only thing that will produce fruits of love is roots of love. The Apostle Paul would remind us: every good spiritual thing done without love is nothing (1 Cor. 13:1-3). So Jesus what I hear you saying is “There is no spiritual substitute for love. O and to stop putting kale in the carrot cake.” FYI One chef pro-tip – I want to confess that love isn’t simply one thing. I’ve seen love sweet and sour, hot and cold, cubed and diced. I’ve seen it sprinkled, poured, baked, and fried. Love isn’t served only one way and it’s a tricky ingredient – easy to misuse, undercook, or burn. But you can’t get away from using it. And you should listen and watch Jesus as much as possible. And don’t be afraid to ask another trusted chef, “Hey, can you taste this?”

Finally, we get to the Jesus Innovation: There’s only “like” one love, one commandment, and one neighbor.

Perhaps the most astounding element of our passage is that Jesus innovates and adds to Israel’s creed by taking an obscure passage from Leviticus 19:18: “‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.” Now, on one level it takes a lot of hutzpah to add to any sort of sacred thing. Imagine someone adding to the Lord’s Prayer or the Pledge of Allegiance. But Jesus is a wiley spiritual teacher. He knows that, despite incarnational realities and the element of love, it’s quite easy to say and even perform acts which look like love – particularly for a God that we cannot see or touch – that don’t equate to loving.  And it’s important to understand that he is not adding Leviticus to rest alongside or be secondary to the commandment to love God but is telling us what loving God actually looks it. In other words, Leviticus 19:18 isn’t the cherry on the top of God’s love sundae. It’s hot fudge that’s been poured over, blended in, shaken, stirred, and mixed by Jesus into it and can’t be undone.  He does this mixing by saying, “and the second is like it . . .” Friends, loving God will like always lead you to people and loving people will like always lead you back to God. I’ve spoken to before about how the ancient church created a symbol for this reality – a wagon wheel with spokes. They understood God was the center and that as we moved toward the center you also came to be closer to the spokes but also if you draw near the spokes you become closer to God.

Do you want to know if you love God? Asks people if they feel loved by you.

And Jesus’ Shema and Leviticus mixing and melding creates two important realities as we seek to worship God and love others.

1.     First, everyone is neighbor. When you wish to love God you will discover that everyone is made for love and deserving of love. So don’t try to asks, “Who’s my neighbor?” in order to pick and choose or curtail that love. It won’t work. Remember in one of the versions of the Greatest Commandment Jesus will use a Samaritan, one of the more hated people of Israelites, to both define who a neighbor is and to praise for offering neighbor love. So we worship God and love Republicans, Democrats, LGBTQ+, Beaver fans, Duck fans, church members, church haters, skeptics, believers, etc. Loving others – loving all neighbors IS our worship. A worship song that we must sing often and loud was written by a Presbyterian minister. I think you know it.

It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood,
A beautiful day for a neighbor,
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?

It's a neighborly day in this beautywood,
A neighborly day for a beauty,
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?

I have always wanted to have a neighbor just like you,
I've always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you.

So let's make the most of this beautiful day,
Since we're together, we might as well say,
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?
Won't you be my neighbor?

Won't you please,
Won't you please,
Please won't you be my neighbor?

 

2.     Second, you must come to believe, as a lover of God and lover of neighbor, that you are also a neighbor worthy of love. If you can’t see yourself as one deserving of love you will never actually be able to offer it well to others. So inherent and implicit in our vision statement is the profound belief that could be stated “We worship God and love ourselves by living into these values.” So part of our work as a church remains each of us learning to be a neighbor to ourselves.

Friends, family, brothers and sisters, Trinity Covenant Church, incarnate these truths – there is no substitute for loving God and you love God by loving every neighbor that you meet. The second is like the first. We worship God and love others by living into these values. Let the vision begin.

To check out our Missional Values click HERE

The Best Bible Reader: Reading with the Spirit (part 2) ~ Romans 14:1-17

 

Most you know that I am an avid rock climber. And despite being a bit overweight, and not as strong as I used to be, it’s something that I’m quite passionate about. Apart from doing it every week, both outside and inside, I talk about it all the time, watch videos about it, focus friendships on it, read climbing books, and try to talk anyone who will listen into trying it out. I sometimes find myself in a teaching role in gyms when I see new people trying to climb who need a few pointers and who are frustrated by being unable to do something that can be remedied by a certain technique. Regardless, I always share with the new climber a common quote, “The best climber is always the one having the most fun.” It’s the recognition that while there are a lot of things to learn and practice, despite some suffering and fear, the point – the goal – the purpose – of climbing is to have fun. Well, I thought about this as I read Paul’s discussion about how to read and hold convictions and handle disagreements about disputable matters in the church. And I imagine that Paul would say, “The best Bible reader is always the one having the most love.” What he actually says in Romans 13:9-10, quoting Scripture and channeling the perspective is Jesus, is: “⁹ The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” ¹⁰ Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.”

 

And in Romans 14, Paul will talk concretely about how that love should be practiced and what it looks like.  And I would like to summarize what he says and then unpack it. And hopefully, have a little fun. Here’s my summary: Read the Bible freely for yourself with others in mind so that people hear the good news of Jesus, crucified and risen, and experience righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Read the Bible freely for yourself . . .

Paul’s discussion in Romans chs. 14-15 is deeply personal with the Apostle both addressing and instructing individuals as well as outing himself on his own personal beliefs. In ways that are not the norm for much of Paul’s writings, which often focus on the church and “you” plural, Romans 14 is mostly about “one,” “another,” “you” or “each” (all in the singular), throughout the entire passage. In fact, where the plural is introduced it’s because the NIV translators thankfully desired to include women where the male singular was used and so opted for “they” in order to be inclusive.  

And Paul grants quite a bit of freedom to these individuals who are seeking to understand Scripture and follow Jesus as Lord and Savior (which is what creates freedom in the first place). That singular “you” in the passage is: encouraged to think for yourself in order to honor God (vss. 5, 7-8), permitted to develop convictions about significant matters (vss. 1-3; 14), told not to judge others or hold in contempt anyone who belongs to God (3-4), implicitly allowed to recognize one might potentially be wrong (vss. 14-15), and admonished not to force anyone to change whose mind is made up (vs. 23). In fact, you are called to read it with integrity such that you are to remain faithful to your understanding and mustn’t harm anyone by manipulating them to believe something that they don’t believe to be true (vs. 14). And all of the topics mentioned (food, days, wine, etc.) Scripture had something to say about. I’m not suggesting that we should read the Bible in a cavalier way – anymore than one should be cavalier about rock climbing. Both are incredibly dangerous and demand respect, practice, conviction, skills, techniques, and humility. And you are also responsible for your own safety and to engage Bible reading haphazardly, without convictions, Paul says, can make even something that is not sinful actually sinful (vss. 14, 23). But we don’t have to do it exactly the same or always draw the same conclusions.

What we have to do, however, is read it. What we can’t do is imagine that we can have a spiritual discussion without it. Do you know the most common thing Jesus says about Scripture (7 times to be exact)? It’s actually a question and not a statement: “Have you not read?” So more than anything I want to encourage you to read the Bible. Our denomination was started as a movement by a people who believed that each of us must read it for ourselves. They held that Bible reading was an honor, a privilege, that was offered to everyone. It has always been considered a serious and indispensable thing.

In one of our identity text, The Bible & Christian Freedom, denominational leaders stated:  “each person has the right to be himself/herself as an individual in Christ, and each person makes his contribution to the freedom of the entire Christian fellowship. This means that we show our brother or sister the courtesy of hearing and of seeking to understand both his/her words and their meaning and that we do not judge him without allowing him the opportunity of stating his case. It also means that we exercise care in our use of words with possible emotional overtones and that we never use disagreement with our brother/sister as an opportunity for personal advancement as his/her expense.” So you are free to think carefully, critically, thoughtfully, with the help of the Holy Spirit in order to discern what the Bible is saying about a whole hosts of things. And friends, we need you to do it.

But reading the Bible freely and making up one’s own mind does not mean that belief is private nor individualistic. Your freedom and your Bible reading are for the purpose of considering and loving others (13:8-10).

Read the Bible freely with others in mind . . .

You are invited to read the Bible and hold convictions about disputable matters – freely – without being badgered or belittled or shamed. Be free. However, the Apostle wants to orient you toward an understanding of freedom that doesn’t first and foremost look at yourself but others. A lot like climbing, you don’t climb alone but have a partner that you are responsible for. You both need each other to stay safe.

How do you know that you are reading the Bible with others in mind? How do you know if your hermeneutic is really a “love your neighbor as yourself” way of reading the Bible? Ask yourself 4 questions:

Can I accept someone who loves Jesus yet thinks differently than I do? (14:1). Paul argues that you cannot fire a servant that you aren’t the boss of in the first place. If God accepts them, how can you reject?

Am I more worried about being right than be loving and encouraging? (13:9-10, 19). If you want to check yourself, ask the person how they experience you. Are they experiencing righteousness, peace, or joy from a conversation with you?

Is my posture curious or confrontational? (14:3-4, 13).

Am I harming someone’s relationship with Jesus? (14:15)

To ensure that we are reading with others in mind means to lean into a relationship that can allow for us to share our thoughts – Paul will share his thoughts (vs. 14) but also allows others to hear the thoughts of others in an atmosphere of mutual respect, understanding, and love.  To read the Bible differently focusing primarily on our relationship in Christ is to seek the other person as an ally in approaching the problem rather than the problem itself – to make the problem an “it” rather than a “you.” The denomination states “Unless we wish to stifle all emergent spiritual vitality, we must be sure that people within our fellowship will be free to express themselves in ways which are different from the majority position without the fear of being labeled as disloyal.” Friends, Jesus and Paul would remind us that unity is not a luxury in Bible reading and discipleship, it’s a necessity.

Read the Bible freely with others in mind so that people hear the good news of Jesus, crucified and risen, and experience righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Our passage begins with Paul’s admonition to accept others and not to “quarrel about disputable matters.” By the way, if I was to right down what Christians have agreed upon and disagreed upon, which do you imagine would be longer? If you were to point to the center what would it be? So there is a center here, a shared conviction that all share which for Paul remains indisputable – the Lordship of Jesus Christ. So anything that doesn’t categorically challenge the fundamental Christian belief that Christ died and was raised to be Lord over all, even the living and the dead, might rightly be said to fall in the disputable category (vss. 8-9; 15:5-7). Now, that neither makes all positions right, nor unproblematic, or even helpful. There are plenty of beliefs that I would hope you would never entertain nor practice and we can and should talk about them curiously with one another in a context of love and mutual encouragement. Rember that it is “belonging,” Paul says, to the Lord and one another, that was the reason Christ died and returned to life (vs. 9). This position is a guiding center for us. Friends, the gospel message of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, is not about God demanding that we get things right in order to be loved but the story of God’s willingness to come, to suffer, to die for those who disagreed with him so that they might belong. Jesus is God incarnate seeking to be in relationship with those who are incredibly wrong. That story is our faith – so read accordingly, offer love, and please, o please, have fun.

 

"Look, Laugh, and Bow their Heads": Reading the Bible with the Spirit ~ 2 Cor. 3:1-6

 

In her poem Mysteries, Yes!, Mary Oliver expresses the profound spiritual intersections between knowledge, understanding, and mystery. She ends the poem exclaiming, “Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers. Let me keep company always with those who say ‘Look!’ and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads.” Of course, this isn’t about two groups of people in which one knows stuff and the other remains ignorant. This is about a greater reality that how one comes to know things impacts the knowing itself. And I think that Oliver’s poem is a helpful lens to Paul’s acknowledgement in 2 Cor. 3:6 about such knowing in which the “letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”

This sermon can’t be captured by one passage of Scripture. And yet it seeks to wrestle with how Scripture and the Spirit work together to bring life. It’s the belief of the early church that reading Scripture well, or “competently” using Paul’s language, demands a deep reliance upon the Holy Spirit to interpret it for us and transform us with it. It’s the difficult reality of naming and acknowledging ways of reading the Bible as life giving rather than soul killing, as Paul states. It’s the reality that anything can be misused and abused, even holy things, in the name of God. This won’t be exhaustive – we’ll talk more next week – but I would like to share three ways of reading competently which marry the word and the Spirit together. The Covenant Church states this reality this way:

“The Covenant Church believes that the effective power of the scriptural word is inseparably associated with the ministry of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit never works independently of the word, and the word is made effective through the Holy Spirit. The union of word and Spirit is a central theme in evangelical faith.” Let’s unpack that union with three statements.

To read Scripture competently is to read with the Spirit-filled recognition that we are the problem. If we ever read with a certain triumphalism that we have the Spirit and therefore all the answers or that we have clear and unfettered access to all of the mysteries of God, we are on dangerous ground that we will use Scripture to oppress and harm others. In such a scenario, we are the God who we read back into Scripture. We see the things, in other words, we want to see which make us holy and others not.  So a Spirit-filled reading is always a Spirit driven project that decenters us. The Apostle will claim that his own competency doesn’t come from himself but from God (2 Cor. 3:5). A Spirit-filled reading is a gospel way of reading in which we read as sinners saved by grace. So we need the gifts of the Spirit like humility, gentleness, patience, spoken about last week, to position ourselves rightly with respect to the Word. We must be careful to acknowledge that the authority of Scripture and a view of inspiration, in and of themselves, haven’t been able to keep the church from engaging in soul killing behavior. In fact, those theories often made believers more self-assured and obstinate. A Spirit-filled reading is not one where I claim first and foremost that I have some special anointing to read it rightly but one in which I offer Spirit-filled words that “in my frailty and sin I stand in constant need of God’s mercy and help” (Words we say at every communion service from the Covenant Book of Worship). If we learn anything by reading the Bible with the Spirit it's that often the worse readers are the ones who imagine that they read it from some privileged place apart from frailty and sin. Reading without graciously acknowledging one’s own sin and frailty is not a Spirit-led reading, it’s always a soul killing one. This is not to say that sin is what’s most important about us but that we read with a Spirit-filled orientation toward grace, which IS the Spirit-filled orientation of dealing with sin. When we read that way, we won’t judge others, won’t condemn ourselves harshly, won’t badger the weak, won’t berate ourselves, but will look for the healing word, the gentle word, the patient word, the word that is love. If your reading of Scripture has people fleeing from God, that is a good indication that it is not Spirit led because the Spirit always leads sinners TO the Father who is good.

To read Scripture competently is to recognize it’s a Spirit-filled, God-breathed project. It’s true that Scripture is God-breathed and remains utterly necessary for recognizing the Spirit, being transformed, encouraging us, educating us, etc. (2 Timothy 3:16-17). Scripture is a primary tool of the Spirit to do those things. The Spirit and Scripture don’t work independently from one another. But it’s also true that we are God-breathed and remain utterly necessary for recognizing the Spirit and reading texts. We must listen to each other, Paul says. In fact, we ourselves are letters from Christ (2 Cor. 3:2-3) and our life-giving or soul-killing stories are critical for reading and discerning the Bible rightly and well. That’s why the Apostle Paul will call every believer to “discern” how the Spirit is at work in the lives of others and through Scripture. The church didn’t wake up one day and simply change its majority-led, oppressive position on slavery or women. Positions held by people who held to its unique authority, believed in Jesus, and studied the Bible with critical, technical tools of history, exegesis, theology, etc. And likewise, those historic changes which ended slavery and promoted women weren’t people simply utilizing new Bible study techniques or tools to draw a different conclusion. It was Bible study born out of listening to the stories of Spirit-breathed, Spirit-empowered individuals and groups of people who spoke of heart-wrenching, soul-killing realities while also offering evidence of fruit of the Spirit. As Paul suggests in 2 Corinthians 3, such people are evidence for the Spirit’s work and thus actual theological proof for a particular spiritual perspective. 

Friends, let me be plain. I want you to read what the Bible says about divorce as Scripture that is inspired and God-breathed, profitable, important, and true. But I also want you to read it, humbly, prayerfully, hearing my story as a God-breathed person who has experienced the utterly painful and shaking reality of a divorce and the incredible peace of remarriage. Doing both is what it means to read the Bible as a God-breathed project. This is not an argument that all stories are equal. Nor is it an argument that all portions of Scripture speak with the same authority. Rather, it’s the deep principle, grounded and illustrated in the Bible itself, that God is actively working and shaping believers through the Scriptures by the power of the Holy Spirit. Scripture is a Spirit-driven project. It was the Spirit who creates the word, gives it power and interprets it is the same Spirit who works in and through us.

To read Scripture competently requires that we read with the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:6-16). Paul will provocatively refer to good, spiritual wisdom as having “the mind of Christ.” And that mind is the Spirit at work in our midst through us and Scripture. The mind of Christ refers to the trinitarian reality that Jesus is the Word and the centerpiece and center narrative of the Bible. So to read with the mind of Christ is to locate Jesus and the Gospel as the central story that the Bible wants to tell. A Spirit-filled reading understands the purpose of Scripture is to tell the story of Jesus. Jesus will charge the Pharisees, the Scripture scholars of the day, in John 5:37-40 saying, “You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, ³⁸ nor does his word dwell in you, for you do not believe the one he sent. ³⁹ You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, ⁴⁰ yet you refuse to come to me to have life.”

But reading the Bible with the mind of Christ isn’t simply noting the purpose of Scripture as a gospel project. It’s also a recognition of HOW Jesus read it in a healing and liberating way.  Jesus read the Bible always with the marginal in mind - with the hurting and the hungry. To see an actual incident of Jesus reading the Bible in a Spirit-filled way, a life-giving rather than soul-killing way, one need go no farther than Matthew 12 where the Pharisees oppose him and his disciples because they were plucking and eating grain on the Sabbath, which for them was unscriptural and to be condemned.  Immediately after this confrontation over plucking the heads of grain, Jesus will encounter a man with a withered hand, and the Pharisees will watch him carefully to see what he will do — will Jesus break the Sabbath again!? Jesus responds with a question, “Suppose one of you has only one sheep and it falls into a pit on the sabbath; will you not lay hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a human being than a sheep!” I believe that Jesus’ argument clues us into the significant difference between how he reads the Scriptures versus how the Pharisees read them. See, the Pharisees’ theology works from the abstract: Is Sabbath work forbidden in Scripture? Yes. Is plucking grain work? Yes. Is healing work? Yes. Then we have our conclusion—plucking grain and healing on the Sabbath are forbidden. Jesus’ reading of the Bible, however, also involves the value of the person: Here is a hungry group or a hurting person in front of me. What do they need? How can I help? Ah, but it’s the Sabbath. Let me now take this person’s unique situation to the Scriptures—and when we do that, we can see even more clearly that the Scriptures themselves address real human faces. They accommodate and address human need. And Jesus will argue that the Sabbath itself aims to serve people and NOT the other way around (in Mark and Luke Jesus will say this strongly, “The Sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the Sabbath)! Friends, the same should be said for Scripture as well.

If you’re Bible reading doesn’t leave people liberated, you aren’t reading it as a Spirit-filled project. In the next passage after these two Sabbath encounters Jesus reflects on this controversy over reading Scripture with his disciples and, funny enough, quotes again from the OT, Isaiah 42:1-4, which details the compassionate work of God’s anointed. It says, “He will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick . . .” The Pharisees, because they see no human face when they read the Scriptures, are quite willing to break reeds and snuff out wicks. Is it any wonder then why they missed the word of God with a human face in their midst? If only they had said, “Look! Laughed in astonishment, and bowed their heads.”