Hi! Welcome to Redeem the Commute. I’m Ryan, you host for the daily challenges. These daily challenges are meant to help people explore what it means to follow Jesus even during our busy commuting lifestyle. If you’ve never looked into what that means in the first place, I’d really encourage you, check out our Christianity 101 course first. You can take it live in-person or through our mobile app; great introduction to the basic concepts of what it means to follow Jesus that we try to build on in the Daily Challenges.
Every day and week, we follow a rhythm to help us, as one community, learn what it means to follow Jesus even when we’re not physically together. Every Monday,we introduce the idea for the week. Every Tuesday, we see what the Bible has to say. Every Wednesday, we allow ourselves to be challenged in our thoughts. Every Thursday, we try to apply it and live it out in our lives. Every Friday, we take time to pray and reflect on the topic. Saturday is a day for rest and then Sunday is a day for community. We’re going to start gathering together as one community soon. We just recently had a great baptism service and celebration where a number of our members came together in one place to worship God. We’re going to do that more and more often over this year. So, stay tuned for some of our upcoming gatherings.
We’re in a series right now called, “Reset.” We’re looking at how deciding to follow Jesus resets everything in our lives. We’ve looked at a number of areas that it impacts. This week we’re going to look at how following Jesus impacts our views of food and the body. That’s why I’m here in a Chinese buffet, a place where people indulge, enjoy a huge selection of food and can have as much as they like.
This kind of a topic about food and the body might surprise you. You might expect Redeem the Commute to be focused more on spiritual things, not having much to do with what we eat and what we do with our bodies, but the two are very closely connected. Tomorrow we’re going to see how the Bible says that these two are connected, but it’s probably something that you know from experience as well. Think of those times in life when somebody’s struck with a serious illness. You almost immediately turn to prayer. We have this sense that spirituality and our physical bodies are both connected.
Just look at people’s interest in yoga today. It’s amazing to see how people are longing for a way to connect spirituality and physicality in a way that Christianity has maybe neglected. Christianity does connect body and faith in a lot of different ways through things like the Lord’s Supper, breaking bread and wine, connecting Jesus’ death on the cross with actual bread and wine. There’s a physical sign of something amazing that happened a long time ago. Or, baptism where somebody’s washed cleaned spiritually, symbolized with water washing them clean on the outside. There’s a huge connection between the two. Maybe you can think of some others. That’s what I want you to think about today.
Question: I hope you’ll join with some other friends from the train or bus, or from the neighborhood, somebody else you can discuss our Daily Challenges with. Discuss with them today’s question, “How else do you think the spiritual and physical are connected for Christians?” What examples have you seen?”
Well, have a great discussion. Don’t forget, we’re reading the Bible in sync as a community. So, check our website or app to see what today’s Bible reading is. Have a great one. I’ll see you tomorrow.
Read the Bible in Sync Today
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Here's one of Jesus' most famous one-liners:
“So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
Then he went on:
“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. (Matthew 7:12-14 ESV)
We'll look first at the first part – what's known as the Golden Rule.
You may think this was nothing new. Haven't other teachers said similar things?
Rabbi Hillel was once approached by a young man who asked him to summarize the whole law while the inquirer stood on one foot. He simply said, "What is hateful to yourself do to no other.”
Socrates told a story of a Greek King: "Do not do to others the thing that makes you angry"
Confucius was once asked, if there is one word to sum up the law of life and he answered, "Reciprocity: What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others."
People will often repeat a similar idea today: you can do whatever you want as long as you aren’t hurting someone else.
If Jesus is just saying what others have always known, it seems strange for him to pair this saying with a story about a narrow gate, and how difficult it is to live this out, and how few people will manage to do it.
But in fact, Jesus isn't saying the same old thing, he says something very new!
When this concept appears in other traditions, it's always in negative – do not do to others what you would not have them do to you.
But Jesus says the positive: Go above and beyond. DO. He wants the motivations to be love, not fear. The object to be the other person, not self. The question to be, not how much I can get away with, but how much can I do for others.
That's what Jesus was all about.
We'll explore this more later this week.
Question: Many have said ‘Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want done to yourself” – but only Jesus gives the positive – “do to others what you would want done to yourself”. If you were to apply each of these statements to a practical situation you’re facing, would they each lead you to different responses?
