He said to them, "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery." - Mark 10.11-12

A recent financial advice column asks the romantic question, "Should you get a divorce now or later?" The piece goes on to analyze several impending changes in the income tax code and weigh each in the balances of whether it would leave someone richer or poorer after splitting up a marriage. Spoiler alert: Nobody really seems to know.

I don't understand economics. I've always sympathized with President Harry Truman, who lamented, "Give me a one-handed economist. Mine all say, 'on the one hand. . .but on the other hand. . . ." What I do understand is the logical fallacy of the false dilemma: The headline asks of divorce only "when" without leaving any room for "whether." 

Another thing I understand is that Jesus thinks divorce is a really bad idea. Yes, Scripture does allow for exceptions to this guideline. Yes, circumstances count and passages like this one have been used repeatedly to entomb women in abusive relationships. But at least Christians should be able to agree that the couple's tax bracket is not the place to begin pondering. A prenuptial agreement makes as much sense to me as buying the extended warranty: I always want to ask the guy, "So, you're telling me your product is such a piece of junk that I should bet on it breaking down?"

I'm not talking to those who have suffered through the dissolution of a marriage. I know few people who despise divorce quite as much as those who have been its victims. And we do well to remember that the woman in John 8 appears on trial alone and Jesus takes her part against an unjust system. But I don't think it's too much to ask that Christians, faced with the question, "Should you get a divorce now or later?" would answer, "No."

Now the works of the flesh are. . .envy. . . .I am warning you, as I have warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. - Galatians 5.20-21

In an article in the New York Times, columnist Tim Herrera asks if the reader has ever felt angry when outperformed by a friend. "It's O.K.," he soothes. "You're not a bad person. Our brains are programmed to feel that confusing mix of pride and jealousy, and we have self-evaluation maintenance theory to thank."

Well, that gets nearly everything wrong.

You are a bad person (a "sinner," in the blunt old language of the Bible), it is your soul that is (hay)wired to think that way, and you have human depravity to thank. Fancy concepts like "self-evaluation maintenance theory" may explain the mechanism involved but that makes as much sense as saying that a drunk can blame his boozing on the theory of fermentation.

Envy, as sins go, ranks right up - or down - there. It shows up on the most-wanted poster of the Seven Deadly Sins and Paul slaps it in the lineup card of the works of the flesh. It's worse than greed (another of the Maleficent Seven); greed wants what someone else has while envy just doesn't want the other person to have it. And Herrera's "solution" only compounds the problem: When a friend one-ups you, try to think of something you do better so that pride can soothe your envy! It's like curing warts by bathing in acid. 

The problem with envy is that it is an attitude, not an action. "Thou shalt not murder" is pretty easy: don't slip arsenic into anyone's salad. Jesus, of course, makes it harder when he says, in essence, don't even wish you could, or think it would be a nice idea if someone else did. Envy adapts well to the nice things we might say to or about the person of whom we're jealous; it can piggyback on our kind actions and hijack them with ease. 

When frontal assaults fail, it's time for the insurgent warfare of spiritual discipline. Practices of withdrawal, like silence when we would like to drop the denigrating observation or offer the poison-apple praise, solitude when we'd rather seek the solace of the rest of the bitter losers, and fasting when we yearn to stuff our insecurity with Twinkies, can cut the supply lines of our raw ego. Practices of engagement, like offering some anonymous service to the one we envy, or thanking God in prayer for that person's accomplishment and the good that will come from it, or maybe just attending the small celebration of the recent achievement, are a flanking maneuver around the entrenched position of evil. Of course, attacking the sin of envy begins the same way as the battle against all sin: Calling it sin, repenting of it, and pleading the blood of Christ not just as a cover-up, but as a cure. The fruit of the Spirit, which Paul names next in Galatians 5, grows out of a deep relationship with Christ and starves out the dandelions of our old flesh.

So to paraphrase an old Country/Western song, if you find the good fortune of a friend (or an enemy or someone you hardly even know) starts to make your brown eyes green, don't psychoanalyze, don't justify, and don't rely on self-control. Repent and seek Jesus. (And don't worry if your friend is also better at that than you are!)

And a superscription was written over him in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew, 

This is the King of the Jews.

- Luke 23.38

On May 14, 2018, the United States moved its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. One week earlier, street signs went up to guide travelers to the new location. They were big white arrows that said, "U. S. Embassy" - in Hebrew, Arabic, and English.

That makes sense. People who live in the city, and who visit the city, may speak any one or all three of these languages. Hebrew is the official language of the nation. Arabic is the Palestinian tongue; the marginalized (and, some would argue, native) population speaks it. English is the lingua franca for global trade.

The embassy is a public place of official business and everyone wants to know how to find it.

It worked the same way at Calvary. Pilate posted his sign in the three dominant languages of his jurisdiction: Latin, for official government and military business - a little like Hebrew in modern Israel; Hebrew, for the marginalized native populace - a little like Arabic in modern Israel; Greek - the universal medium for commerce. 

Of course, Pilate's sign didn't tell people how to get somewhere; it told them where they were: in the Roman empire and don't you forget it! 

Still, it strikes me that the crucifixion was as much a public event as the opening of an embassy. That makes sense because it was, in one way, exactly that: The Christian embassy on earth is the cross of Calvary. This is the only place that holds authorization to issue official passports into Jesus' kingdom. So it happened in a place everyone could find, with an explanation everyone could understand. 

It reminds me of the stirring cry of George Macleod: 

"I simply argue that the cross should be raised at the center of the marketplace as well as on the steeple of the church. I am recovering the claim that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves; on the town’s garbage heap; at a crossroad so cosmopolitan that they had to write His title in Hebrew and Latin and Greek … at the kind of place where cynics talk smut, and thieves curse, and soldiers gamble. Because that is where He died. And that is what He died for. And that is what He died about. That is where churchmen ought to be and what churchmen ought to be about."

I was in the spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet.

Revelation 1.10

Two things: John went to church, and the Lord snuck up on him.

I was in the spirit on the Lord's day. (who will dispute anything) dispute the exact meaning of the phrases "in the spirit" and "the Lord's day." The former might refer to the kind of ecstatic experiences mentioned in the Old Testament, or it might simply mean John had chosen to place himself before God in prayer and praise. "The Lord's day" could refer to a time-warp which transported the apostle to the great and final day of judgment so often mentioned by the prophets, or it might just mean Sunday. I tend to lean toward the more prosaic readings: it was Sunday and John went to church. I was in the spirit on the Lord's day.

Of course, he went by himself. In verse nine, John reveals that persecution had cut him off from the seven congregations of Asia Minor who lived so deeply in his heart. Still, he made the choice to join them by carrying out the same spiritual exercises at the same hour. 

I heard behind me. Then the risen Christ appeared to him and glutted his sense and his senses with the wild and whirling visions of the ultimate triumph of the Kingdom of Heaven. But notice how it all begins.  I have been to the Grotto of the Apocalypse on the isle of Patmos in the Mediterranean. Our guide showed us a depression in the back wall, which tradition says John hollowed out by resting his head there when he slept. I have always imagined him facing the back wall, where perhaps he had scratched a cross as a focal point of his devotions. At any rate, when Jesus dropped in, he wasn't standing where John was looking: I heard behind me. 

That should encourage all of us who gather weekly with other saints to celebrate the resurrection. Maybe we didn't feel ourselves to be in the spirit. Maybe we only showed up because it was the Lord's day, our Sunday obeisance of obedience. Maybe the crowd was small. Discipline, dosed with habit, was all we had, so that was what we offered. And maybe we didn't hear trumpet blasts, only the low-end Hammond electric organ badly played by a devout volunteer. And maybe we didn't see seven golden lamp stands, only the flickering luminescence of that one florescent tube that the deacons really should have replaced by now. And maybe we didn't see the resurrected Lord in a blaze of bronze and blinding white with a voice like many waters, only the pastor with his comb-over and middle-age spread and a voice like a dripping faucet. And maybe the sermon didn't reach to the end of time but only seemed that long.

Take courage! Somewhere, behind your back or over your head or right under your nose, Christ appeared and moved with power. And wherever it was, you were there, in the spirit on the Lord's day, a part of that because you did not stay apart from the prosaic pew-sitters, yourself included, who did their Christian duty. As Charles Williams says, "Usually the way must be made ready for heaven, and then it will come by some other; the sacrifice must be made ready, and the fire will strike on another altar." 

One more thing: verse twelve begins, and I turned. Don't insist so hard on God honoring your seating chart. Wherever you hear the voice, turn.