daily java

Daily Java:

Then the voice from heaven spoke to me again: “Go and take the open scroll from the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land.” So I went to the angel and told him to give me the small scroll. “Yes, take it and eat it,” he said. “It will be sweet as honey in your mouth, but it will turn sour in your stomach!” So I took the small scroll from the hand of the angel, and I ate it! It was sweet in my mouth, but when I swallowed it, it turned sour in my stomach. (Revelation 10:8-10)

Reading the Bible is good. And a lot of people take a lot of comfort in reading it. If you go to visit an elderly person, and you just sit and read to them, it is comforting.

But obeying the Bible, that is another animal. That is where it gets tough.

I really think that is why so many like to read the King James Version. It just sounds good. But it also sounds removed from real life. The language, the vocabulary, the phrasing is four hundred years old. And reading it is kind of like reading an old familiar history book. It sounds good but since it doesn’t make a lot of sense doesn’t feel relevant.

Now you read a new translation. That feels and sound relevant. And sometimes people get angry at the newer translation. They will talk about translation practices and texts and stuff like that.

But what it will boil down to many times – in fact more than not – is the fact that the new translation baldly states things where the language of the old translation obscures it.

It is easy to hide the need to do things in the language of the old. God’s word is hidden in nostalgia.

When John ate that scroll, it tasted great. But when it became part of him, it was sour.

The same thing happens when we really begin to apply Jesus to our lives. He said that himself. He said that unless we eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, we have no part in him (John 6).

What he meant was that it was easy to look at Jesus and see the good guy, the gentle Jesus, the one that kids liked. But it was hard to look at Jesus and see the man that made the authorities so angry they killed him.

It was hard to see the Jesus that demanded of us that we leave our entire lives behind, even to the point of cutting off an appendage if necessary, so that we could follow him.

It is hard to see the Jesus that said that following him would necessitate leaving all you knew behind, even your parents and loved ones if necessary.

It is hard to see the Jesus that said that in order to live, you had to die.

That is sour stuff. The sweet little Jesus, walking a little off the ground, looking like he would be blown over by a strong wind – that was not the Jesus John was talking about. And the word of God that spoke of Jesus that John encountered in Revelation 10 was not that Jesus. He was the living, breathing, Word of God made manifest in the flesh.

He was God.

Sometimes kind of hard to take when all you want to do is use Jesus to sell alternative energy, or vegetarianism, or class equality.

Jesus never gave a flip about any of these thing. He just went his way doing the will of the Father who sent him. And making people stomachs hurt in the process.