Welcome!
Thank you for visiting. I hope you will enjoy the variety of topics and some to enhance your spiritual life. You can read them below or download them and read at your leisure. I have also added my Sunday Homily.
CURRENT TOPICS: The Prophet’s Wife, The Prodigal Sons and Stories From Africa. ENJOY!
24th Sunday OT – Mark 8:27-35
“Who do you say I am?”
Jesus questions his disciples about his identity. Previously, they had asked the question themselves but could not answer. That was in the passage after Jesus calmed the storm and they ask each other, “Who is this that even the wind and sea obey?” In today’s gospel passage, Peter, on the disciples’ behalf, replied that he was the Christ, the anointed one.
Jesus offered no word of congratulation but ordered silence! The reader knows that Peter was correct in using the title but does not yet know whether he used it correctly. He could have understood it in the sense of an anointed royal figure, a David to liberate Israel from the foreigner. He might have thought of an anointed prophet; according to Luke, Jesus had called himself such a messiah in Nazareth.
We do know that Mark’s Jesus did not want to be known as a miracle worker which was common in their time. Hence, it is the reason Jesus tells the persons he heals not to tell anyone about this. Miracle workers were not only common then but are also common today with traveling gospel tent revivals. Another problem with miracle healers in Jesus’ time is that a few can be connected to the devil.
The Christian understanding of Christ has to include the idea of suffering, death and resurrection. Preaching the “Gospel of Prosperity” goes against what Jesus preached and practiced. He tells his disciples that the Son of Man must suffer and die. This is the first open teaching of the gospel, as opposed to teaching in parables! Of course, the Son of Man was a glorious, triumphant figure in the Book of Daniel…who ever heard of a suffering Son of Man? Peter was scandalized and rebuked Jesus in words Jesus used in casting out a demon. Jesus in return rebuked Peter, giving him the name of Satan, the tempter.
Peter was thinking human thoughts, not the thoughts of God. So serious was the misunderstanding of Peter that Jesus solemnly called all the disciples to him, with the crowds, and announced a new requirement for all those who would follow after him. They had to deny themselves and take up the cross after him. They might lose their lives for his sake and that of the gospel. They might even lose their wealth. So much for the gospel of prosperity! I don’t know of anyone who is willing to die for the gospel of prosperity.
With that in mind, Jesus asks us, “Who do you say I am?” That is the core of any gospel message, our personal response to Jesus’ question.
However, if we think of Jesus with too much emphasis on his divinity, then Jesus becomes for us a Greek “Deus ex machina.” This was literally a crane that lifted the hero onto the Greek stage. Is this the savior we want, a Greek hero? Help me Jesus this time and I promise I’ll come back to church. Then we will never grow up spiritually. Religion becomes following the rules and rubrics and salvation is assured.
If we think of Jesus with too much emphasis on his humanity, then Jesus becomes our buddy who is all forgiving and loving and ready to excuse any mistake we might make to the extent we lose control and susceptible to addictions from our own excess. Not much room for growing up in our spiritual life either. Or even worse we become enablers. However, if we understand and accept our own human condition, then we will be more forgiving of others. But this is only possible when we grow in our relationship with Jesus, where even he had to deal with human limitations. But Jesus is God and can do anything. Jesus didn’t save himself from the cross! The High Priests mocked Jesus, “Come down from the cross if you are the Son of God.”
The biggest and longest battles that the Church fought against heresies were Christological. One heresy believed that Jesus was just a man and was adopted by God at his baptism by John, “This is my beloved Son.” Then Jesus became the Christ, the Son of God. Of course, that is how the ancient world perceived their own heroes and emperors and literally canonized then as gods. Another popular heresy is that Jesus was God and looked like a man, sort of the Zombie Heresy, and so forth. It took centuries and many councils and at least three creeds to develop our understanding of “Who is Jesus for us,” as a Church.
The great Church in Alexandria favored Jesus as God before his incarnation and used John’s gospel as their support, a Christianity from above. The great Church in Antioch favored Jesus born man in a manger which favored Matthew, Mark, and Luke, a Christianity from below. Both used the scripture to support their beliefs! Fortunately, it was the great council at Ephesus, which declared Mary, Theotokos, Mother of God that settled the matter once and for all. Mary, Mother of the Church, gave birth to Jesus Christ the God-man, hence she was mother of the whole package.
Jesus asks us, “Who do you say I am?” In the end it is not a relationship up here (the HEAD) but here (the HEART)!
THE DONKEY DOCTOR
In Limuru, Kenya, there were plenty of donkeys everywhere. Usually the men or older boys would use them for any kind of transportation or just hauling things for people in the area. The young boys would haul large water tanks to bring to people who were regular customers. The older men would use the donkeys to haul loads of goods like timber for the local merchants. Unfortunately, there were many abuses and the animals were often injured or even killed. The young boys would often race their donkey against each other that often ended in injury not only to the beast but also to the young boys.
I could see them from our property racing down the bad road that goes past our place, thinking, there is going to be a bad accident one of these days. And there was an accident, but not from the young boys. One of the older men had his donkey cart loaded down with so many bags of maize that the donkey could hardly walk, let alone carry the whole load. The man kept beating the poor donkey, and the animal was trying to avoid his whip heading in the direction that would lead to the edge of the road where there was a drop off deep enough to overturn the cart. The man was using a long black rubber tube to beat the animal, and would not let up until the donkey finally headed off the road and fell into the ditch with the bags of maize falling on top of him. The man was furious and kept beating him. A phrase came to mind, “Beating a dead horse,” that matched the scene, except the donkey was still alive.
The Donkey Doctor would have been furious with the man if ever she was there. If I had her number, I would have called her. She was known in the area as a donkey advocate, always trying to exhort people to treat their animals better, certainly to stop beating them. She told me once that the Kikuyu women beat their men and so the men take it out on their donkeys. I first met her because our guard dog was hit by a car. Since the dog was not technically ours, there was not much we could do about it. The dog survived the accident. I need to explain about the dog more. It was a beautiful black dog, very shy, probably beaten itself. It used to come to our property and “hang out” with our Masai guards. For some reason, the dog loved & trusted them! They would never approach us, but soon as the Masai guards showed up for guard duty, the dog would cross the street and “hang out” with them. It was a strange situation, because the dog still had an owner.
When the dog got hit by a car, it stayed on the other side of the road until it got better, but now it could not walk right. The dog would growl at anyone coming onto the property until the Masai told the dog it was OK. It even growled at us, but since it made a great addition for protection, we let it stay. The men didn’t seem overly fond of the dog and didn’t give it any special treatment or affection. Still, we could see the dog looked forward to meeting our Masai guards. One day the dog got sick and seemed like it was not going to recover. I offered to take it to the vet, who I found out later was the famous Donkey Doctor. She told me that they should have brought the dog to them earlier when it had gotten hit. She did what she could, but the dog’s hip was in pretty bad shape. It seemed that this time all the bones the dog was given to eat were now blocked in its gut, because her hip had made the passage too small for the bones to pass. She was able to remove the bones, but told the Masai to stop feeding her bones or it could kill her next time.
The visit gave me a chance to see her property. It was quite large, as were all properties owned by the Mzungu (or “white man”). Technically, “alien residents”, or the white folks who were in the country at the beginning of statehood from colonization by Europe for many African countries. She raised a certain kind of cattle that originated in Scotland, a beefy animal that was light tan in color. She had dogs everywhere! I would not get out of the car until I saw her approach. When she definitely let me know that it was alright, then I got out. I was very pleased that she led me on a tour of her compound, because I saw that she had rabbits. With all these dogs, though, I was surprised that she didn’t have any trouble. Thus began her lecture on how animals will respond as you want them to, once you give them direction and your expectations. I thought to myself, I wonder if that works with humans. But then I quickly realized why the dogs never bothered the rabbits; they were huge!!! I never saw such big rabbits in my life! The rabbits were as big as the dogs. She had quite a strange place here with the rabbits and her cattle from Scotland, not to mention her attitude towards the donkeys. It may have been accepted and praised elsewhere, but not necessarily here in Kikuyu land. I knew right then, that I wanted to breed her rabbits with ours, to “boost” our breed.
She told me that she fed them calf pellets instead of rabbit pellets. I was not surprised, even though I had never heard of calf pellets before. We just fed them Napier grass and our special mixture of feeds to boost their milk supply, cow and calf. We raised our own rabbits using certain weeds from the garden and certain select vegetables. I found out the hard way that cabbage leaves could kill the young ones. We raised the rabbits to eat, so I could imagine her monster rabbits adding to our food supplement! It took at least four rabbits to make a meal. That meant we could only have rabbits, if there were no problems, at least twice a month! Two of her rabbits would have been plenty.
You could never believe the problems we had raising rabbits, considering the wild dogs that roamed the area and the “Askari Ants”. These ants were everywhere and seemed to know when the mothers were going to have babies. One time I was waiting for one of my rabbits to give birth any day now. Finally, she gave birth to seven beautiful brown babies. But as I reached into the cage to examine them, I realized they were not brown at all, but were literally covered with the infamous Askari Ants, thousands of them on just one baby alone, biting them with their poison and eventually killing all seven! I asked the locals what I should do. They said to spread ashes around the floor of the cages and under the cages. Others said that I needed to grease the legs of the cages with oil, lots of oil. They also said that the Askari Ants knew when the mothers were going to have babies because of the blood in their urine. I needed to make sure that the cages had something under them to catch the urine, at least from the expectant mothers, so that it doesn’t get into the soil and alert the ants.
I never was successful at breeding her rabbits with mine, they were just too big. After killing three of my females in childbirth, I gave up. We continued to visit the Vet every now and then because of our dog, cows, rabbits, and other animals that intermittently got sick. Every once in a while I would visit her just to see the rabbits. Oh, her place was also filled with about five or more donkeys recovering at a time. Some would never be able to pull a cart again, but she still took care of them anyway. We paid her in cash, but would add strawberry jam or strawberry rhubarb pie. One of the brothers would make jam or pie for me to give to her, but a problem arose that I just had not foreseen. It took one of the women from our farm to point it out. Simply put, it looked like I was courting her with the jam and pie. Here out in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of Africa, a Mzungu man bringing jam and pie to a Mzungu woman, looks pretty obvious, except to me. I never thought anything of it. The irony of it all is that a Kikuyu woman had to point it out, and our cultures couldn’t be more different, but Kikuyu women are very smart; African women are very smart! She knew that I would be having problems in the future, so she had to intervene and spell it out for me.
I eventually left Kenya for Zambia, but I have never ceased to be impressed with the Donkey Doctor and her love for animals. The men were afraid of her, called her a white witch. If ever there was a donkey whisperer, she would be it. I missed Limuru with its unique life and beauty, but I was ready to move on. Maybe the further I got from an embarrassing situation the better I would feel. I will always remember her, especially anytime I am around animals, especially donkeys.
THE PRODIGAL SONS
Part Seven“Now that was a wonderful meal, out here in the middle of nowhere,” Abe thanked Telesphor profusely.
“You can thank my wife and my daughters,” Telesphor said pleased at Abe’s delight. “Since they’re the ones who trained our present cooks. We do eat like this at every major stop we make, since it isn’t very often.”
“The spices are different but delightful,” Michael added. “What say you, Eliud?”
“We are used to the spices,” he replied. “They are part of our inventory that we trade in, and some are worth a fortune in other parts of the world.”
“I guess that’s why your caravan travels from one end of the world to the other,” Abe said.
“I wonder if the caravans are what really unite the world in trade and peace,” Michael wondered.
“We surely encourage it,” Eliud said, “since it is good for business.”
“Telesphor, any news from your end of the world?” Eliud asked.
“I was visited by our friend Simon of Cyrene,” he answered. “He did mention you.”
“I would not be surprised if they were still around, out there,” Eliud said with a bit of confidence and a hint of security, looking nowhere in particular.
“My men informed me that he was,” Telesphor said.
Abe looked at him with surprise. “It is good to see that you have these connections, even in the middle of nowhere.”
“In the end,” Telesphor explains, “there really is no middle of nowhere. We are all connected. I believe that the only difference that separates us is our own making.”
“You are right, Telesphor,” Michael joins in. “Even in my many short travels and business trips around our own little world I see many common traits that unites us, usually in our desires for a better life for ourselves and for our families.”
“You have surely experienced them, Michael,” Eliud said with interest. “But even those who are homebound still experience the world, just in a microcosm of relatives and friends.”
“And still what variety,” Telesphor adds.
“And a blessing,” Abe admits.
“I’m not in touch as much as when I was younger,” Michael admits. “Any news from your travels,” he asks Eliud, “or you Telesphor?”
“We both know that Jerusalem always goes through its turmoils,” Eliud mentions, “since they are on main routes from Egypt in the south to Syria in the north and beyond.”
“I always try to glean news for my officials, since it is best to know ahead of time what is happening,” Telesphor said. “But things have quieted down since the Christians have been chased from Jerusalem.”
“That is too bad,” Eliud said. “I had hoped they would bring peace to that city of unrest.”
“Now hopefully they will bring peace to the rest of the world,” Telesphor added. “We have seen their peace spread throughout our land.”
“We too have seen the effect on our people,” Eliud said. “There is more brotherly love and understanding between our people and especially the people we deal with, yourself included,” he added.
“I don’t quite know what you are talking about,” Abe finally spoke up. “This is all new to me. Are you talking about this Jesus ben Miriam, Eliud?”
“Why yes,” he finally confirms. “That is what I wanted to talk about at the last oasis, but Simon interrupted, and we needed to move on a little further to put that area behind us for safety’s sake.”
“What make this place any safer,” Michael asked confused.
“As you said,” Eliud tries to ease them, “it is in the middle of nowhere. And trust me, we are well protected here with my men, Telesphor’s men and Simon’s men.”
“In fact,” Telesphor added, “from now on until we reach Egypt, we will be quite safe. I am in no rush to head into Jerusalem with all their problems.” Looking at Eliud, “I do have several extra days to spend with you here before I have to move on.”
“That would be great, since this is Abe’s and Michael’s first trip to Egypt,” he explains. “I wanted to use this time to talk about our Jesus of Nazareth.”
“Oh,” Telesphor was delighted, “that will be wonderful. We both have much to tell.”
“You mean this Jesus of Nazareth and Jesus ben Miriam are the same,” Abe asked.
“One and the same,” Eliud said. “Only his official name is Jesus ben Yosef of the House of David.”
“Although most of his followers call him Jesus, the Christ,” Telesphor added. “I guess that is what really connects us when I think of it. Simon of Cyrene, Eliud and myself are all followers of this Jesus Christ and his way of peace.”
“I was blessed to meet a disciple called Paul while I was in Damascus,” Eliud said. “I’ll save that for another time.”
“I got to know about this Jesus through my father who personally knew one of his disciples called Philip,” Telesphor added.
“And Simon’s grandfather, for whom he is named, claimed that he even carried the cross that Jesus died on,” Eliud revealed.
“What cross?” Abe asked. “You mean he was executed by the Romans’?”
“Yes,” Telesphor said. “This man of peace, who was different from all the others who tried change the world by force, was put to death on the cross by the Jewish authorities.”
“Well, I guess we should say, they arranged for the Romans to have him crucified on a cross, hoping the shame and curse would end his following,” Eliud offered.
“It seems it did the opposite,” Michael stated.
“You said this Simon is a follower,” Abe asked.
“I guess you could put it that way,” Eliud answered.
“He doesn’t seem a man of peace to me,” Abe added.
“The Romans’ crucified his son,” Eliud said bluntly. “He was caught in a round of persecutions encouraged by the Jewish leaders, after one of their leaders was killed, James, I think was his name?”
“I am sorry to hear that,” Telesphor said. “We have accepted the Words of Jesus throughout our land without any bloodshed. Of course, it helped that our King also accepted him fist through my grandfather other disciples that followed.”
“So, your grandfather met this disciple, Philip, and was won over to this Jesus of Nazareth?” Michael asked.
“Oh, yes, it was even more simple than that,” Telesphor was excited now. “He was traveling home from Jerusalem and Philip ran up to him and asked what he was reading?”
“Reading?” Abe asked.
“Yes, my father knew of this Messiah, through the writings of Isaiah,” Telesphor tried to explain.
“I have read Isaiah and I am familiar with the messiah that is to come,” Abe responded, “but I am still looking.”
“Isaiah 42,” Telesphor gave him the passage. “Look no more!”