Peter's Mother-in-Law

 

NLT Luke 4:38-39

³⁸ After leaving the synagogue that day, Jesus went to Simon’s home, where he found Simon’s mother-in-law very sick with a high fever. “Please heal her,” everyone begged. ³⁹ Standing at her bedside, he rebuked the fever, and it left her. And she got up at once and prepared a meal for them.

Why is this ponderable?

The Bible provides few insights about the families of Jesus' disciples. Yet, this single reference to the home life of Peter gives us much to ponder. 

• If Peter had a mother-in-law living in his home, was his wife still alive?
• Was this Peter's house or was he a guest in her home?
• Was this house the home base of Jesus and his 12 disciples whenever they returned from preaching?
• Who were the ones begging Jesus to heal her, and why were they so concerned about her health? Were they stragglers who had followed Jesus to the house seeking a free meal or were they members of Peter's extended family who were normally fed by the ailing mother-in-law? 
• What about Peter’s wife? She is nowhere mentioned. Leaving her out of the story is strange. It is not the way a writer would be expected to handle the incident, since a daughter usually is the one most frantic about a mother’s condition. 

To figure this out, we need to keep in mind why both Luke and Matthew have included it in their Gospel accounts. 

The authors of these two Gospels had a common purpose. They wanted to proclaim the Good News of salvation that comes from faith in Jesus Christ. In order to get this message across to people who never heard Jesus speak in person nor witness his miracles, they had to capture their attention. Citing dogma and theological dissertations would have been akin to a football coach merely exhorting his team to get a good night's sleep the night before the big game. 

So they often led the News with Human Interest stories that their readers could quickly grasp. What married man of that era did not have a mother-in-law? Many were recent widows who were taken in by sons because women did not inherit property and the concept of a Welfare State was unknown. Usually these widows reciprocated by taking on cooking and child care tasks. This "extended family" model survived well into the 20th Century, so these insights of everyday life in the time of Jesus  remained an attention grabber in our times. 

 

Clean and Unclean Food

 

NIV Leviticus 11:46-47

These are the regulations concerning animals, birds, every living thing that moves about in the water and every creature that moves along the ground. You must distinguish between the unclean and the clean, between living creatures that may be eaten and those that may not be eaten.’”

Photo by Gor Davtyan on Unsplash

 

 Why is this passage ponderable?

Depending on how you interpret Old Testament scripture,  you may come away from this passage wondering what God knew about human nutrition that He did not disclose to Moses and Aaron when he dictated the dietary laws in Leviticus 11. This is especially ponderable because these laws are very specific. To people living in food rich countries like the USA, these laws are mostly inconvenient. But to people living in drought stricken countries, any food that can sustain life for another day is fair game. So we can only imagine what those Israelites who had wandered in the desert might have been thinking when Moses and Aaron delivered these directives to them. 

 

Perhaps a recent finding by Duke University gut-brain neuroscientist Diego Bohórquez, provides some clues.  He found that some enteroendocrine cells also make physical contact with the enteric nervous system, forming synapses with nerves. This revelation opens the door to rethinking how we might affect these signals — and might someday change how we treat conditions as varied as obesity, anorexia, irritable bowel syndrome, autism and PTSD.

 

If you were asked where the human body’s nervous system is located, you’d probably answer “the brain” or “the spinal cord.” But besides the central nervous system, which consists of those two organs, our bodies also contain the enteric nervous system, a two-layer lining with more than 100 million nerve cells that spans our guts from the esophagus to the rectum. The enteric nervous system has been called “the second brain,” and it’s in constant contact with the one in our skull. That’s why just thinking about food can lead your stomach to start secreting enzymes, or why giving a speech can lead to your feeling queasy. 

A number of diseases — autism, obesity, anorexia, irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease, PTSD and chronic stress — share a symptom known as altered visceral sensing, or a hyper- or hyposensitivity to gut stimuli. “For instance, clinical observations have suggested that some children with anorexia may be hyper-aware of the food they ingest from an early age,” says Bohórquez. “Under normal circumstances, this process happens without detailed spatial and temporal awareness, but those children can feel what’s going on in there, which triggers anxious feelings.” With this knowledge, scientists may better understand other disorders that have been thought to be solely psychological.

Everybody eats. Eating options inherently vary by culture, religion, region, and personal tastes. With such varied options, many people can be bombarded and end up making poor and costly decisions. 

Food-related diseases are rampant in America. Thirty million people suffer from diabetes, while 40% of the adult population struggles with obesity. Choosing the right food and diet can help combat these diseases.

 Perhaps that is what could not be disclosed by Moses in Leviticus 11? Even as they were leading the Israelites to the Land of Milk and Honey, Moses and Aaron often met with dissension. Much of it was over the quality and variety of the food they had left behind in Egypt when they elected to journey to the Promised Land. Trying to explain to this hard-headed bunch the specific reasons why certain foods promoted wellness and fervor while others might diminish their ability to fight off disease and their enemies, would have been a lost cause. 

They Will Neither Marry Nor Be Given In Marriage

 

NLT Matthew 22:30

For when the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage. In this respect they will be like the angels in heaven.

Photo by Ryan Brisco on Unsplash

Why is this ponderable?

In context, this is the response to a hypothetical situation presented to Jesus by the Sadducees. They did not believe in the Resurrection but were attempting to catch him contradicting what Moses, the great Lawgiver, had said.

The question itself was based upon the teachings of Moses: “If a man die, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother.” (Matt. 22:24; see also Deut. 25:5–10.) In the hypothetical case suggested by the Sadducees, in which seven brothers each had been married to a woman in turn, the question was, “In the resurrection whose wife shall she be of the seven?”

The answer Jesus gives is straightforward, yet it is also ponderable because it hints at what life after death might be like for believers.

Luke tells us, "they who shall be accounted worthy to obtain  the world to come, a future state of happiness, and the resurrection of the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage. So they shall not enter into any such natural and carnal relation. This agrees with the notion of the Jews, who did believe in the Resurrection. 

``In the world to come, there is neither eating nor drinking , nor intercourse or increase of children, no commerce, nor envy, nor hatred, nor contention.''

But Jesus did not stop there. He compares saints in a state of immortality, to angels ^F6.By making mention of angels, Jesus dispels another notion of the Sadducees, that there were no angels, ( Acts 23:8 ) 

In pondering this brief exchange between Jesus and those who did not accept resurrection of the dead nor  angels, we are given a glimpse of the "new heaven and new earth" that John speaks of in Revelation 21. In a non-material sense that new earth will be no different from the old earth. People will retain their identity and personality but, will not require sustainence to maintain their resurrected body. They will dwell with the angels and kindred spirits in the abode that Jesus has prepared for them.

Walls of Jerico

 

NKJ Joshua 6:2-5

Then the Lord said to Joshua, “See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men.    You shall march around the city, all you men of war; you shall go all around the city once. This you shall do six days.  And seven priests shall bear seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark. But the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets.  It shall come to pass, when they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, and when you hear the sound of the trumpet, that all the people shall shout with a great shout; then the wall of the city will fall down flat. And the people shall go up every man straight before him.”

Why is this ponderable?

After spending forty years wandering in the desert of Sinai, the people of Israel were now on the eastern banks of the Jordan. Their challenge: take the land of Canaan, the Promised Land. However, an insurmountable obstacle, the city of Jericho, stood in their way. It must have seemed to these weary travelers that God was playing a cruel joke on them: placing an unconquerable, walled city right at the entrance of the promised land. 

Excavations of this ancient city reveal that its fortifications featured a stone wall 11 feet high and 14 feet wide. At its top was a smooth stone slope, angling upward at 35 degrees for 35 feet, where it joined massive stone walls that towered even higher. It was virtually impregnable.

In ancient warfare such cities were either taken by assault or surrounded and the people starved into submission. Its invaders might try to weaken the stone walls with fire or by tunneling, or they might simply heap up a mountain of earth to serve as a ramp. Each of these methods of assault took weeks or months, and the attacking force usually suffered heavy losses. However, the strategy to conquer the city of Jericho was unique in two ways. First, the strategy was laid out by God Himself, and, second, the strategy was a seemingly foolish plan. God simply told Joshua to have the people to march silently around Jericho for six days, and then, after seven circuits on the seventh day, to shout.

Though it seemed foolish, Joshua followed God’s instructions to the letter. When the people did finally shout, the massive walls collapsed instantly, and Israel won an easy victory.

Fast-forward a few thousand years and we find American Christians courting God's favor in their struggle to enter the promised land. However, this promised land was not proffered by God, but by godly Politicians at the Jericho rally.

A toxic ideological cocktail of grievance, paranoia, and self-exculpatory rage was on display at the “Jericho March,” a protest staged...in Washington, D.C., by the president’s most devoted Evangelical Christian supporters. Their aim was to “stop the steal” of the presidential election, to prepare patriots for battle against a “One-World Government,”      [source: Christianity as Ideology: The Cautionary Tale of the Jericho March]

 

Non-Christians might ponder how Christianity can be twisted and drafted into the service of a political ideology that is not readably compatible with Christianity. However, ideology goes hand in hand with politics and nationhood because its purpose is to abstract from the particular lives of individuals certain general rules or truths about human behavior that can then be used to organize society.  For this reason, ideology excludes the unique and unrepeatable personality of each human, what we usually call our “self.”

This flattening-out of people into manipulable abstractions is necessary to have a political order at all. American Politicians govern over 300 million people. They can’t hope to have a personal relationship with each and every citizen or to legislate according to the unique predilections of personal lives. They have to search for concerns their constituents share then treat them as avatars of those concerns. So in the eyes of the state, they are "members of a tax bracket", "pro-lifers", "pro-choicers", "white", "black", residents in a particular zip code. In all cases, their unique and individual personalities, as distinct from the things shared with other members of a political group, are excluded. Because of this, politics is, in a very real sense, inhuman.

We can ponder whether this scenario in Joshua is factual or just an Old Testament tale meant to bolster trust in a Higher Power in the face of insurmountable obstacles. However, don't be too quick to dismiss it as fiction. We are just beginning to understand the power sound waves have over matter. Here is one example:

Sonic Weapons' Long, Noisy History

by Eric Niiler

Bullets, missiles and swords may be what most people think of when it comes to weapons, but sound has also been deployed over the millennia to disrupt, confuse or even injure opponents on the global battlefield.

From the Israelite army of trumpet-blaring priests who shook the walls of Jericho 3,500 years ago to the U.S. Navy’s current use of long-range acoustic devices, nations and their armies have deployed both sonic weapons and various sounds as a form of attack.

 

This Is My Body

NLT Matthew 26:26

As they were eating, Jesus took some bread and blessed it. Then he broke it in pieces and gave it to the disciples, saying, “Take this and eat it, for this is my body.”

Why is this ponderable?

While biblical scholars disagree about whether Jesus was speaking in literal terms or using bread symbolically when he said these words, all agree on the translation.

 Here is what Paul writes to the Corinthians around A.D. 54: For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is [broken] for you. He did not say "think of this bread as though it were my body. And other stories in Matthew support the notion that Jesus had the power to transform water, bread, fish, and wine. So it is unlikely he wanted his disciples to think of the broken bread as a symbol rather than the real thing.

Breaking bread is associated with miracles of the multiplication, as when Jesus fed the multitudes with loaves and fishes. The very first transformation that Jesus performed was at the wedding feast when he changed water into wine. So, in ways we do not understand, Jesus was capable of transforming the bread at the Last Supper into the elements of his physical body.

Perhaps, at some future date, scientists will figure out  how matter and energy interact with each other and  the words of Jesus will make complete sense. Albert Einstein determined that the laws of physics are the same for all non-accelerating observers, and that the speed of light in a vacuum was independent of the motion of all observers. This was the theory of special relativity. Few people in 1905 understood what that really meant. One hundred and fifteen years later, we not only understand it, but we can use it to develop things previous generations never have imagined possible. 

The Kingdom of Heaven is Like...

NIV Matthew 13:24 

Here is another story Jesus told: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a farmer who planted good seed in his field."

NIV Matthew 13:33 

Jesus also used this illustration: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like the yeast a woman used in making bread. Even though she put only a little yeast in three measures of flour, it permeated every part of the dough.”

NIV Matthew 13:44  

"The Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure that a man discovered hidden in a field. In his excitement, he hid it again and sold everything he owned to get enough money to buy the field." 

NIV Matthew 13:45  

"Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant on the lookout for choice pearls". 

NIV Matthew 13:52  

"Then he added, “Every teacher of religious law who becomes a disciple in the Kingdom of Heaven is like a homeowner who brings from his storeroom new gems of truth as well as old. 

 Why is this ponderable?

 The seven parables of Mat 13., called by our Lord, "mysteries of the kingdom of heaven" (Mt 13:11), taken together, describe the result of the presence of the Gospel in the world during the present age, that is, the time of seed sowing which began with our Lord's personal ministry, and ends with the "harvest" Mt 13:40-43. Briefly, the result is mingled tares and wheat, good fish and bad, in the sphere of Christian experience. It is Christendom.

Possessed by Demons

NLT  Matthew 8:28

When Jesus arrived on the other side of the lake, in the region of the Gadarenes, two men who were possessed by demons met him. They came out of the tombs and were so violent that no one could go through that area.

 

Why is this Ponderable?

The term “demon”  derives from the Greek term daimōn, which refers to all sorts of beings, not just ones that are evil. The biblical notion of “demon,” however, refers to malignant supernatural entities who seek to harm humans. This is ponderable because evil demons under the control of Satan, seem more threatening to Christians than to the Israelites. 

Satan confronts Jesus during his 40-day fast in the desert. Demon-possessed men confront Jesus as he enters the region of the Gadarenes. Jesus cures a demoniac by sending a legion of unclean spirits into a herd of swine. When Jesus tells his disciples that he would  be killed, then raised from the dead,  Peter openly rejects this scenario. Jesus retorts, "Get thou behind me Satan." 

The notion of demons, as it existed in the time of Jesus, resembled that of the non-Isrealite Jews of surrounding territories. Demons live in deserts or ruins (Lev. 16:10; Isa. 13:21; 34:14). They inflict sickness on men (Ps. 91:5–6). They trouble men's minds (Saul; I Sam. 16:15, 23) and deceive them (I Kings 22:22–23) – but nevertheless these evil spirits are sent by the Lord.

The mysterious being who attacks Jacob in Genesis 32:25ff. exhibits a trait common to the secular notion associated with demons. They are spirits of the night and must perish at dawn. Even in Israelite popular religion, however, there seems to have been relatively little fear of the spirits of the dead. The Bible often mentions the shades of the dead, but "the congregation of the shades" (Prov. 21:16) carries on a shadowy existence below, and does not seem to trouble the living.

Some features of the Israelite cult bear a formal resemblance to apotropaic measures employed in other religions. Thus, the bells on the robe of the high priest (Ex. 28:33–35) recall the use of bells in other cultures in the belief that their tinkling keeps off demons. So, also, horns (Ex. 19:16; Lev. 25:9; et al.), incense (Lev. 16:12–13), smearing of doorposts (Ex. 12:7), the color blue (Num. 15:38), written scripture-texts (phylacteries; Deut. 6:8; 11:18) – all have parallels elsewhere as devices to ward off evil spirits. In a given case, however, it is often extremely difficult to say to what extent any of these devices were consciously used for protection against demons at a particular period.

Demons in the Dead Sea Scrolls

By the last centuries BC, A great change had taken place in angelology and demonology within Judaism, . In this period, Judiasm safeguarded its monotheistic character, but took on many traits of a dualistic system.  God and the forces of good and truth were opposed in heaven and on earth by powerful forces of evil and deceit.  Ancient mythological themes, and figures from the Bible only potentially demonic, like Satan, were selected to explain the role of evil spirits in the cosmos. These evil spirits are led by a prince, often called Belial, or Satan.

These spirits of good and evil struggle within the human soul, for in this period the role of demons is often conceived of as that of tempting men to evil rather than of inflicting physical harm. As a result, in many passages it is difficult to say whether "spirit" refers to a demon external to man or to a trait within the human soul. Belial is the most common name for the leader of the demons in the Dead Sea Scrolls.  It appears in other intertestamental literature and in II Corinthians 6:15.

¹⁵ What harmony can there be between Christ and the devil^[a]? How can a believer be a partner with an unbeliever? ¹⁶ And what union can there be between God’s temple and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. 

In the intertestamental literature, Belial is "the spirit of perversion, the angel of darkness, the angel of destruction" and other spirits are subject to him. Mastemah, which as a common noun means approximately "enmity, opposition" in Hosea 9:7, 8 and in some passages in the Five Scrolls, is also a demon.  "Prince Mastemah" in Jubilees (11:5, 11; 17:16; et al.), and in the Damascus Document (16:5).  Watchers (Aram. ʿirin) are mentioned in Daniel 4:10, 14, 20.  According to Genesis 6:2, they cohabited with women before the flood and fathered the race of giants. Asmodeus (Tobit 3:8, 17) is a demon who had slain the first seven husbands of Sarah, who becomes the wife of Tobias son of Tobit.

Demons in the New Testament

New Testament demonology reflects the dualism attested in the sectarian literature from Qumran. Demons are called "unclean spirits" or "evil spirits," as in rabbinic literature. They are believed to inhabit wastelands. Possession by demons causes various sicknesses, especially those in which there is a perversion of the human personality. The demon, not the man himself, directs his acts and speech (Mark 1:23, 26; 9:17–29).

The story of how Jesus cured a demoniac by sending a legion of unclean spirits into a herd of swine (Matt. 8:28–34; Mark 5:1–20; Luke 8:26–39) illustrates the persistence of very ancient popular belief, as does the parable of Matthew 12:43–45, in which the unclean spirit, after wandering through the wilderness, takes seven devils with him. On the other hand, in the New Testament lesser demons have little independent personality or power, but are subject to Satan.

The demonic is often presented, not as something occasional and relatively harmless, but as a cosmic reality of great importance; the enemy of God and man (Eph. 6:12). Beelzebul (Beelzebub) is a name applied to the chief demon by both Jesus and his opponents (Matt. 10:25; 12:24, 27; Mark 3:22; Luke 11:15–19). The spelling Beelzebub reflects identification of Beelzebul with Baal-Zebub, god of Ekron (II Kings 1:2). Possibly there were two different original forms, Beelzebul meaning "Baal is prince" or "Lord of the shrine," and Beelzebub "Lord of flies" (cf. Ugaritic il dbb [in Gordon, Textbook, ʿnt 3:43]).

In the Talmud

Among the accomplishments of both Hillel (Sof. 16:9) and his disciple R. Johanan b. Zakkai was their knowledge of "the speech of the shedim" ("devils," Suk. 28a). The latter also gave the analogy of a ru'ah tezazit ("the demon of madness") entering a man and being exorcised, in order to explain to  heathen the anomaly of the laws of the red heifer. However, he agreed with his wondering disciples that it was but "putting him off with a straw" and that he himself did not accept it (PR 40a; Num. R. 19:4).

Although these statements refer to Erez Israel, the Jerusalem Talmud is markedly free from demonology, and in fact mentions only three general names for them – mazzikim, shedim, and ruhot. A passage in the Babylonian Talmud specifically states that various beliefs connected with demons which were current in Babylon were ignored in Erez Israel. Whereas in Erez Israel they translated shiddah and shiddot (Eccles. 2:8) as "carriages," in Babylon they rendered them "male and female demons" (Git. 68a). The Palestinian R. Johanan stated that the mazzikim which used to hold sway in the world disappeared with the erection of the sanctuary in the wilderness (Num. R. 12:30).

Demonology, however, is more prominent in the Palestinian Midrashim than in the Jerusalem Talmud. Yet the Babylonian Talmud is replete with demonology, reflecting the belief in demons which was widespread in Babylonia. The Babylonian Jews lived in a world which was filled with demons and spirits, malevolent and sometimes benevolent, who inhabited the air, the trees, water, roofs of houses, and privies. They are invisible; "If the eye could see them no one could endure them. They surround one on all sides. They are more numerous than humans, each person has a thousand on his left and ten thousand on his right" and they are responsible for many daily inconveniences.