When Jesus had to prove he’s alive.

Luke 24.35-43.

To western thinking, this happened the very same day Jesus was resurrected, but late at night. To middle eastern thinking, days are from sundown to sundown, so it’s the next day. But John remembered it as being the same day, Jn 20.19 maybe right before sundown. I’ll discuss John’s point of view another time.

It happens right after two students had just got back from Emmaus after a Jesus-sighting. They show up, they tell everyone what they just experienced… and then this happens.

Luke 24.35-43 KWL

35 The students are telling the other students

what happened on the road,

and when they recognized Jesus in the breaking of bread.

36 While the students were talking about these things,

Jesus stands in the middle of them,

and tells them, “Peace to you all.”

37 Becoming startled and afraid,

the students are thinking they see Jesus’s ghost,

38 and Jesus tells them, “Why were you freaked out?

Why do objections rise up in your minds?

39 Look at my hands and my feet, because I am myself.

Touch me and see!—for a ghost doesn’t have flesh and bone,

as you see I have.”

40 Saying this, Jesus shows them his hands and feet,

41 yet they don’t believe Jesus, wondering in joy.

Jesus tells the students, “Does anyone have food here?”

42 They give Jesus a piece of roasted fish,

43 and taking it, Jesus eats it in front of them.

Jesus just appears. John says he just appeared in the middle of a locked room; Jn 20.19 there was no way for him to get in except through the windows, and he didn’t go in through the windows. He was just… there.

There are a billion different guesses as to how he just appears, but let me remind you none of them are bible. Neither Luke nor John says how he appears. So don’t go insisting you know exactly how he did it, and everyone else’s theory is wrong. You don’t know. I don’t know. And it might blow your mind for me to say this, but maybe even Jesus doesn’t know. Must we know? Nah.

Obviously when a man just appears in front of everybody, people tend to freak out, and the suddenly-appearing person has to tell them “Fear not!” Lk 1.13, 1.30, 2.10 lest they soil themselves in terror. I suspect that’s a lot of the reason Jesus doesn’t blink into a room like this with just anyone. But it certainly didn’t help his argument that he’s not a ghost; sudden appearances are the sort of things we expect ghosts to do, right?

Attendance and membership numbers, and institutional dishonesty.

The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Evangelical denomination in the United States. That’s why I pay attention to its goings-on: What the Southern Baptists are up to, is usually what a lot of Evangelicals are up to. Even though Christians are supposed to follow Jesus, not the crowd, we have a bad habit of following the crowd, and the SBC makes up a big chunk of this crowd.

Lifeway Research is the SBC’s research firm. They do surveys and find out what the current trends are in the SBC and United States. It’s data you can use—assuming you don’t immediately go into self-defense mode or denial when it tells you what you don’t want to hear.

And this week Lifeway Research reported how things are going with Southern Baptist numbers. Attendance is up by more than 5 percent, baptisms are up by more than 16 percent, and giving is up by almost 2 percent. All welcome news. Membership, however, is down about 3 percent—and that was their headline. As was Religion News Service’s headline, when they summarized Lifeway Research’s report.

Attendance is nice, but membership is a bigger deal to Baptists. Because the common belief is members commit. Attendees visit the church, but we’ve no idea whether they’ll still be around after the summer, or if they’re not visiting four or five churches in town at once. Attendees might volunteer to pitch in here and there, and might put money in the offering buckets, but we can’t really count on them to be there every month like members.

Well, that’s the expectation. It’s not been my experience. I’ve been to churches where some members haven’t attended in years. They became members because we were having a membership class, so they went, took the classes, signed the papers, and officially joined. Then they got “too busy” over the summer, or over Christmas, or over tax season, or whatever. They left to go somewhere else. Exactly like the “attendees” supposedly will.

These mayfly members really oughta be removed from the church rolls, but aren’t. Usually because the church bylaws say they can only formally quit, or have to commit some sort of mortal sin, followed by due process… or not. Or they do get automatically removed after a certain period of non-attendance, but it’s an awfully long period, like years. Or there are no official rules, but leaders keep ’em on the rolls because maybe they’ll be back. But they won’t.

And of course there are always dishonest leaders who keep ’em on the rolls so they can claim, “I pastor a church of 500!” when it’s really more like 300 on our better Sundays.

So membership’s in decline. Has been in decline since 2006. There were 16.3 million SBC members back then; there are 13.2 million members now. Last time it was this low was 1978.

Okay, but attendance is up! That’s good news, right? How many attendees did the SBC churches have in 2022? Let’s see… 3.8 million?

They’re fretting about only 13.2 million members, but nearly TEN MILLION MEMBERS AREN’T COMING TO CHURCH. Shouldn’t that be the headline?

Okay, to be fair, we just had a pandemic, and a lot of people have been watching their church over the internet instead of attending in person. But by now, if they haven’t come back, if they’re not making any regular effort to stay in contact with fellow church attendees, they’re gone. They quit. Hope they’re going somewhere, but they’re clearly not going to your church. Heck, my church had a board member who did that.

Remember what I said about dishonest leaders? That’s what Lifeway Research’s numbers are revealing. The Southern Baptist Convention is not 13.2 million strong; they’re less than a third of that. The attendance number is the real number. The rest is padding.

Yeah, okay, some of it might be justifiable. Shut-ins who simply have to watch the services over the internet, who stay connected with their churches through email and texts and Facetime and active social media interactions, should still totally count as members. Depending on how interactive they are, I’d even count them as in-person attendees: They’re participating in the service nearly as much as the in-person folks. Sometimes more! But even if we generously add a million of them to the attendance total, we’re still talking about a third of the reported membership number.

What Lifeway Research’s data unfortunately reveals… is that Southern Baptist leadership, beginning at the local church level, is not honest about the real number of people in their church bodies. Maybe this dishonesty is the result of a technicality—“But the bylaws say we can’t get rid of these 200 non-attending members!”—but it’s dishonesty all the same. And if the church is institutionally dishonest about something as small as attendance… what else is going on with them?

Well, a lot actually. The SBC has had a lot of scandals lately. Google ’em. It’ll depress you.

A “servant heart.”

SERVANT HEART 'sərv.ənt hɑrt noun. Or servant’s heart: The humble attitude one expects to find in someone who is beneath them.

One of the complements we Christians pay one another is to describe someone as having a “servant heart” or “servant’s heart.” Meaning they’re happy to serve.

Ever been to a restaurant where the service was just fantastic? Your waiter was immediately available when you wanted her, and stepped away whenever you didn’t. She took your orders, and made useful suggestions to make your meal better. She brought you everything you wanted—sometimes before you even knew you wanted it!—and brought extra, just in case. She kept the drinks filled and plates cleared. And, believe it or not, wasn’t doing this for a tip (though you absolutely should tip such people), but because she wanted you to have a good time, and was happy to do whatever it took to create it.

Or perhaps you’ve been to a store where the clerks show you just what you’re looking for, offer you a discount you weren’t expecting, and accomodate all your needs and then some. Or hired a contractor and she finished the job early, under budget, using the best materials, expertly done. Or a housecleaner who does likewise.

And these people don’t undermine you, don’t say horrible things about you when your back is turned, don’t grumble the whole time about how they hate their jobs, don’t do shoddy work or try to slip you a defective product, and don’t demand extra pay or extra tips or five-star reviews regardless of how lousy a job they did. I’ve seen way too many people who expect praise for the least amount of effort, who are clearly not meant to be in the service industry… but unfortunately they lack the humility to do anything else, which is why there are way too many of ’em in the service industry. But enough about them.

Jesus taught his Twelve, and all the rest of us Christians, this:

Mark 10.42-45 NLT

42B “You know that the rulers in this world lord it over their people, and officials flaunt their authority over those under them. 43 But among you it will be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of everyone else. 45 For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

If you wanna be great in God’s kingdom, it doesn’t work like the world’s kingdoms—with people jockeying for position, and making their subjects show them honor. That, Jesus says, is not for us. It’s not the leadership style he himself models. Our Lord came to serve humanity. Still does. And when he rules the world in person, he’s still gonna be that way; don’t get any weird ideas that everything Jesus teaches goes out the window once he’s in power. He’s still gonna be our example of the very best of servants.

So it’s a trait every Christian needs to develop, and it’s valid and high praise when someone in the church already has that trait.

Test every prophet.

Every Christian can hear God. (If we listen. Not all of us do, or know how to, or even know to. That’s another article.) And if God gives us something to share with another person, that’s prophecy. It’s not a complicated concept. Every Christian can potentially be a prophet.

No, not specially-anointed individuals who’ve been assigned that specific ministry office by the Holy Spirit. Those folks might be professional prophets, but that doesn’t mean other people can’t do prophecy. Same as monks, and people who run prayer ministries, might be professional petitioners, but every Christian should pray. God doesn’t put limits on who can do what in his church. We do—and shouldn’t.

That said, anybody—literally anybody—can come up to you and say, “God told me to tell you [SOMETHING THEY THINK IMPORTANT].” Or sometimes they’ll go full KJV hairy thunderer and start it with “Thus saith the LORD,” but it’s the same general idea: God told ’em to tell you something.

Well they think God told ’em to tell you something.

Or they don’t think God told ’em anything, because he didn’t, and they’re phonies. Anything real can be faked, especially for personal gain. So of course there are fake prophets, and Jesus tells us to watch out for them. They’ll lead us astray, for fun and profit.

In bible times you could drag them out of town, throw them off a cliff, and throw heavy rocks down on their bodies. And if we could still legally do that, we’d have way fewer televangelists. But we can’t, and that’s probably best. There are a lot of newbie prophets who are just getting the hang of their ability, and they’re making mistakes. Sometimes they’re just plain wrong. We need to be gracious to these people, and get ’em to stop playing prophet till their accuracy rate is the appropriate 100 percent.

And even when they have a 100 percent accuracy rate, they could always slip up. God told ’em one thing, but they put their own spin on his message and said way more than they should have, and bungled the prophecy. It happens. Especially when certain Christians get overconfident, or when politics gets involved. (That’s likewise another article.) That’s why Jesus, the apostles, and the prophets of the bible, tell us to watch out. Every Christian is wrong in one way or another, and we’re supposed to double-check one another anyway. True of prophecy as well.

So here’s how to watch out for fake prophets. And if you wanna dabble in prophecy yourself, you’d better make sure you share the traits of a legitimate prophet.

A very short dinner with Jesus in Emmaus.

Luke 24.28-35.

Last week I wrote about Jesus meeting two of his followers enroute to Emmaus; most likely Emmaus Nicopolis, and most likely the followers were Jesus’s uncle Cleopas and cousin Simon. They didn’t recognize him, partly ’cause they were almost certain he was dead, partly ’cause he was unrecognizable; either veiled, or resurrection had changed what he looked like. If he now had white hair Rv 1.14 instead of the more common black, he might look very different.

They told him they expected Jesus the Nazarene to be Israel’s redeemer, but he was arrested and crucified. Lk 24.19-21 He told them Messiah was supposed to go through these things, and explained how the scriptures said so. Lk 24.26-27 They had a nice long walk ahead of them, so he had a few hours to go into great detail, although Luke doesn’t get into that. But after they reached Emmaus, this happened.

Luke 24.28-35 KWL

28 They come near the village where they’re going,

and Jesus makes like he’s going to go on further.

29 The students force Jesus to come with them, saying,

“Stay with us, for it’s near evening and the day’s already over.”

So he goes into the village and stays with them.

30 It happens while Jesus reclines with the students at dinner:

Taking the bread, he blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to them.

31 The students’ eyes are opened, and they recognize Jesus

—and he becomes invisible to them.

32 The students tell one another, “Weren’t our hearts burning within us

when he was speaking to us on the road?

when he was opening up the scriptures to us?”

33 Rising up that same hour, the students return to Jerusalem.

They find the Eleven and those with them, having gathered together,

34 and are saying this: “The Master is risen indeed,

and appeared to Simon!”

35 The students are telling the other students

what happened on the road,

and when they recognized Jesus in the breaking of bread.

Every once in a while, some Christian balks at when Jesus προσεποιήσατο πορρώτερον πορεύεσθαι/prosepiísato porróteron porévesthe, “makes like he’s going to go on further,” which also gets translated as “acted” or “pretended” or “gave the impression.” They don’t like the idea Jesus behaved as if he was gonna do one thing, when really he was gonna do another. It strikes them as deceptive.

First of all, why wasn’t Jesus gonna go further? You recall in Matthew the angels, and soon after Jesus himself, told the women, “Tell the boys I’ll see them in the Galilee”? Mt 28.7, 10 He might’ve been headed for the Galilee right then for all we know.

But circumstances change. The students παρεβιάσαντο αὐτὸν/pareviásanto aftón, “force him” (or “urge him,” or “compel him”) to come home with them, and he changed his mind. You do realize Jesus can change his mind, right? He doesn’t have a foreordained cosmic plan which he’s obligated to rigidly, deterministically follow. If he did… then yeah, making like he’s going on without them when he really predestined they’d invite him to stay with them, is pure deception on his part. And every single other instance in the bible in which God changes his mind—in which Moses, David, Hezekiah, Ezekiel, Amos, and dozens of other folks talk him out of doing what he totally just said he was gonna do—is playacting. Pretense. Or to use the ancient Greek word for it, ὑπόκρισις/ypókrisis, from which we get our word hypocrisy.

I should also add Jesus has every right to test his followers; to tell them he’s gonna do one thing, but what he’s hoping is they’ll talk him out of it so he doesn’t have to do that. Just like when the LORD told the Hebrews that if they didn’t follow his Law, they’d be cursed. He didn’t wanna curse them! He didn’t wanna do any of that stuff to them. He wanted ’em to repent! But they failed his test. And if Jesus was just testing his students, to see whether they’d invite him into town, they passed—but he wasn’t kidding about going onwards. If they didn’t invite him into town, he’d just go somewhere else. (In fact, when he vanishes on them in verse 31, that might be where he vanished to; either way, that’s where he was going.)

Being an influencer.

No, I’m not writing about me being an influencer. I don’t wanna be. I know that sounds weird coming from a blogger, ’cause isn’t that why people blog? To get followers, and maybe nudge ’em in the direction of your thinking? (Or in the direction of your advertisers?)

And yeah, I’ve been writing op/ed pieces ever since high school, so I do frequently write with the hopes I might nudge people’s opinions in the same direction as mine. But I learned long, long ago that opinion pieces don’t actually do that. People never think, “Well gee, I don’t know what to think about this subject… so I guess I’ll go read a few articles by some strident partisans, and whoever’s got the best argument will win me over.” Never. Don’t kid yourself.

Generally they already have a trusted guru who tells them what to think. So they already unquestioningly think like she or he does, and anybody who says different is just plain wrong. Or they’re waiting for the guru to descend from the mountaintop with freshly-carved tablets, and refuse to make up their minds till then. Your average influencer dreams of being one of those gurus someday.

Or, on the other extreme, people don’t care. I’ve found that to be way more common. Pure, blistering apathy. They have other things they care about, like football. Or who’s winning Wrestlemania this year.

So why am I writing? Because I wanna talk about following Jesus better. I wanna be part of the support system for other people who wanna follow Jesus better. You can take my advice, or not; you can take other writers’ advice, or not. Either way, if you’re gonna follow anyone, follow Jesus. If you want to be influenced by anyone, let the Holy Spirit do it. Do what God wants you to do, as best you can figure out. The rest of us bloggers and podcasters and pundits?—either we help or hinder, either we produce good fruit or we’re just venting our spleens. And by all means, ignore the folks who hinder!

But you shouldn’t be elevating any one Christian, or even a team of Christians, to the status of guru. We have one guru. Or as Jesus puts it,

Matthew 23.1-12 (my paraphrase)

1 Then Jesus says to the crowds and his students:

2 “The ‘bible experts’ and the ‘devout Christians’ stand in the pulpit 3 hoping you do and observe whatever they might say. But don’t do as they do. They don’t practice as they preach.

4 “They strap heavy, hard-to-carry burdens on people’s shoulders. But they would never lift a finger to carry such things themselves. 5 All they do is for public spectacle. Obvious, showy Christian hats and T-shirts. Stylish Sunday-morning outfits. 6 They love being guests of honor at your dinners. They love to sit on the stage in your services. 7 They love to be greeted in public, and have people call them ‘the master.’

8 “You should not be called masters, for one is the Master, and all of you are sister and brother students. 9 You should not call anyone in the world ‘my spiritual father,’ for one is the Father, in heaven. 10 You should not call anyone ‘my spiritual guru,’ for one is the Guru, the Messiah.

11 “The best of you will be your servant. 12 Whoever promotes themselves will be taken back down to earth. Whoever themselves stays down to earth, will be promoted!”

You wanna be an influencer? You’re on the wrong track.

The 13 tribes of Israel. (Yes, 13. I didn’t miscount.)

The Old Testament tends to focus on the history of Israel, by which it means the descendants of Jacob ben Isaac, whom a man—probably an angel—renamed Israel after their wrestling match. Ge 32.28 Jacob’s descendants are regularly called בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל/benéi Yišraél, “children of Israel” (KJV “sons of Israel”). Ex 1.1

Jacob had 12 sons through four different women, and all the “children of Israel” are descended from these sons. These sons are also known as “the 12 tribes of Israel,” each tribe named for each son. In English, the sons are

• Sons of Leah: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun. Ge 35.23
• Sons of Rachel: Joseph, Benjamin. Ge 35.24
• Sons of Bilhah: Dan, Naphtali. Ge 35.25
• Sons of Zilpah: Gad, Asher. Ge 35.26

They’re listed in various orders, but Reuben, the firstborn, tends to come first. However, Israel reassigned the birthright—the patriarchal obligations of the eldest son to care for the family after his father died, represented by a double portion of inheritance—to his favorite son, Rachel’s eldest son, Joseph.

Because of Joseph’s double portion, he’s represented by two tribes, named for Joseph’s sons Manasseh and Ephraim. They’re the tribes of Joseph. And you’ll notice Joseph is seldom called a tribe… unless you count that one time in Revelation, Rv 7.8 in which “Joseph” probably stands in for Ephraim, ’cause Manasseh got listed two verses before. Rv 7.6 Anyway. Manasseh is sometimes called a “half tribe,” Js 13.29 not because Manasseh is half of Joseph, but because half of Manasseh’s land was east of the Jordan river, and half west. And since Israel put Joseph’s younger son Ephraim first, Ge 48.17-20 precedence passed to that tribe. The Prophets regularly refer to northern Israel as “Ephraim” for this reason. Is 7.9, 11.13, Jr 31.20, Ho 5.3, 7.8, Zc 9.13

Twelve sons, but one of them is represented by two tribes, actually produces 13 tribes. Which I’ll list alphabetically:

1. Asher.
2. Benjamin.
3. Dan.
4. Ephraim.
5. Gad.
6. Issachar.
7. Judah.
8. Levi.
9. Manasseh.
10. Naphtali.
11. Reuben.
12. Simeon.
13. Zebulun.

So why aren’t they called 13 tribes? Two reasons.

First and foremost: The writers of the bible, and probably God too, really like the number 12. The ancient Sumerians divided the year into 12 months, marked ’em with the zodiac (whatever constellation is highest in the sky at night), and throughout middle eastern culture 12 became the number of completeness, fulfillment, unity, and perfection. Thirteen? Not so much. Not that it’s unlucky; that superstition came from the Romans. But middle easterners liked 12 way better than 13 or 11.

Plus the LORD turned the entire tribe of Levi into a special priestly caste. He gave them “no inheritance”—that is, no land apart from 48 cities. Js 21 Instead of land, Moses explained, the LORD was their inheritance, Js 13.33 meaning whenever people brought food and animals to the LORD as offerings and ritual sacrifices, the Levites, in their capacity as the LORD’s priests, got to eat ’em. Dt 18.1 So they shouldn’t actually need any land for farming and ranching.

So geographically, there are only 12 tribes. Thirteen tracts of land (remember, Manasseh had land on either side of the river—yep, there’s a 13 again), designated for the 12 people-groups descended from Israel. The Levite cities were scattered all over these tribes, and really anybody could live in the cities, not just Levites. Particularly in the larger cities, like Hebron, Shechem, or Ramoth-Gilead.