Josephus does not tell us that Christianity is true, and Christians do not need Josephus to tell them that Christ is risen. But Christianity makes claims about things that happened in public history under identifiable rulers, priests, and governors. For that reason, testimony from outside the church matters.
Today, the longing for cultural Christianity on both the left and the right hearkens back to an older version of Christendom that was a mixed blessing for the church in the western world. The cultural mediation of Christian views on created order has certainly benefitted the civilization we’ve inherited. But the gospel itself isn’t something that can be reduced to cultural mediation either. Instead, the gospel as a message stands apart from all human accomplishments and achievements, no matter how beneficial they might be.
The student of Scripture should always have a map open next to their Bible as they read. If possible, they should also travel to Israel, not to make a pilgrimage, but to see the context of the land in which these stories took place. These are not fairy tales made up about fictional fantasy lands; these are stories about real people in real places interacting with a real God.

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We are loved by our heavenly Father. When the Creator and Giver of all good things is caring for you, suddenly, you are free to care for others.
What Jesus promises is better than justice. Jesus promises grace.
We set our minds on things above, but our feet are firmly planted in the stuff of earth, our hands open to the treasure which is our neighbor.
Vilification of the other is married to the justification of the self.
This is not just a pericope about hereditary sin and actual sins, nor is it providing a pattern for prayer. It is fundamentally about God our gracious Father and His promise to hear us, answer us, and provide for us.
What pressures or dangers are these particular people, in this particular place, facing right now which keep them from being “rooted and built up” in Christ? What is keeping them from “abounding in thanksgiving”?
In Jesus, the most totalizing summary of the law becomes the gospel of the one made perfect through obedience.
But it is not always helpful to create tidy categories of good and bad and to say, “Stop being ‘a Martha’ and do a better job of being ‘a Mary.’” That is a dangerous sermon to preach. In doing so, we can fall into the very thing we see Martha doing.
What might be a unique challenge of this text is how our preaching of it might itself resonate with its mystery. It goes to a broader question: How can we retain a sense of the “mysterious” in our preaching of mysterious texts?
Moses is no Jesus but he, like us, is saved by Him. The law cannot enter the promised land, and yet the true and greater promised land is occupied by nothing but lawbreakers.
With every bone in our bodies, we declare war on grace. We declare war on the gift.
Paul is giving thanks for the reality that the gospel grows just as much in the little places as it does in the centers of power.