1. "The Kingdom of heaven is like a man who went out and sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping,an enemy went out and sowed weeds among the wheat and then went away." Matthew 13:24.
What Jesus meant: The problem of evil is a problem precisely because we cannot understand why a benevolent God would permit evil to happen. We assign blame. We say that evil is a sign of God's judgment on an individual, a community, a nation. We say that God is responsible for the good and the bad. We say things like "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away." Jesus' story about the kingdom of heaven says otherwise. There is an opposition force at work and a rebellion taking place in God's kingdom(the heavens and the earth). God is loathe to stop it because of the negative implications that would have on what God has "sown". The enemy is stealthy and does his work "while everyone was sleeping." According to Jesus' story, the ending involves the fiery destruction of the weeds and a gathering of the wheat. God's purifying love allows for a fruitful harvest despite the weeds that grow up in the "garden". God is good. Bad things happen. They do not have the last word, the final say. There is a good future in store. This is not saying bad people go to hell and good people go to heaven. Jesus is saying that all wickedness will be destroyed, burned away.What will remain in the end is goodness in the garden.
2."Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life"... "For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through him." John 3:15, 17. Everyone knows John 3:16. Not everyone knows John 3:15 or 17. The context of these verses is a conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, a Jewish biblical scholar and religious leader who was perplexed by Jesus' teachings. John, the gospel writer, is saying that Jesus' death on the cross was analogous with the story of the serpents from the book of Numbers. A rebellion against God inthe wilderness leads to suffering and death, until God gives the people an antidote. The rub is this: People rebel against God's ways. The result is death. God's intent is life. God's agency alone saves us from ourselves. God comes to us, participates in our suffering and death, and therefore infuses death itself with God's own life. God attaches himself to death so that no barrier exists between us and God; neither our rebellion, nor the consequences result in separation from God. When we see that God is present to us in suffering and death, we are saved. Because faith is believing in things that have been hidden.
3. "Go and do likewise." Luke 10. Mercy means to sacrifice one's own self to come to the aid of another. Mercy is most Godlike when it is offered to a stranger, an enemy, an outcast. Mercy is expressed in one-to-one relationships between people divided by race, culture, ethnicity, or language. The Good Samaritan is a story about how a Palestinian Arab from the west bank illegally crosses a border into Israel to help a victim of a crime (a crime I imagine is perpetrated by other Israelites). The Arab provides medical attention, lodging, and additional care for the man before fleeing back to the safety of the west bank. When he arrives at the border, the guards stop him and ask him what he is doing in Israel. When he tells them the story, the guards do not believe him. So they arrest him for illegally crossing the border and he is thrown in jail. This is the Jesus' intent. His command to go and do likewise shows that mercy is more important than personal safety.
4. "Any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined and a house divided against itself cannot stand." Mark 3, Matthew 12, Luke 11. Quoted by Lincoln in an address on slavery in 1858 at the republican convention. In its original context, Jesus was addressing people who sought to damage his reputation by claiming that the source of his power was malevolent, satanic, evil. If you are combating evil with goodness, hatred with love, discord with peace, sickness and injury with healing and restoration, hunger with food, and death with life then you are not responsible for the cause of suffering. God does not cause suffering in order to resolve it. Bad things don't happen for a reason. They do not serve God's purposes. Jesus and God are united in a common mission to restore order, beauty, and peace to God's creation.
5. "If anyone of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." John 8:7. The law demands retributive justice, condemnation, and punishment. Jesus demands forgiveness and freedom. A law that condemns a woman for sexual sin and does not condemn the man for the same crime is misogynistic and ungodly. Grace releases us from punishment under the law. No one is without sin. We cannot uphold God's justice, God's demands, God's intentions. We fail. Because of Jesus our failures are not counted against us. Jesus' kind of justice sets us free from condemnation and punishment. As such, we ought to set others free from punishment and condemnation. In so doing, we give people a chance to be human again, more than the sum total of their mistakes.
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