John Bytheway: 00:00 Welcome to part two with Dr. Daniel Becerra. Matthew 13 and Luke 8 and 13.

Hank Smith: 00:08 Are we going to switch to Luke now and do some miracles?

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 00:11 We’re switching to miracles now. Yeah.

John Bytheway: 00:13 This story, it starts with soil and if you’re going to plant something, that first question that you should ask is: What kind of soil do I have? Is my soil prepared? for anything you’re going to plant. And I love that Jesus starts with the soil. And when you look at the footnotes, and it kind of ties this to other scriptural stories and parables, and Jesus starts with the soil, and getting your ground prepared. And Alma speaks to the Zoramites about a seed. You’ll remember that the people he speaks to are those who have been humbled and they’re kind of like, good soil walks up, hey, what about us? We’re poor. We built these synagogues. They won’t let us worship. And Alma sees that they’re good soil and then talks to them about planting this seed, which is basically Christ. It’s Christ and His mission, which they said they didn’t believe in up on the Rameumptom.

  01:05 But then he spends the rest of his time talking about time to grow roots. And the season, he calls it faith, diligence and patience. And then if you grow roots, and at one point he even says, now, if this doesn’t grow, it’s not because the seed wasn’t good. This is a good seed. It’s because your ground is barren. And the footnotes point you back to Matthew 13, preparing the soil. Soil, seed and then a season, time to grow roots. And he says, if you don’t apply faith, diligence and patience and take care of this, you’ll never partake of the fruit of the tree of life. And then you go, whoa, we’re growing the tree of life here. And maybe I’m seeing more than is there, but it sounds to me like there’s soil, then there’s the seed, and then there’s a time for growing season.

  01:52 And then lastly, and the only word I can think of that starts with S is supper, is that you can partake of the fruit. And it even says if you don’t do this, you’ll never partake of the fruit of the tree of life. I feel like parable of the sower is part one of a four-part story. Soil, seed, season, supper, which is kind of fun to put them all together. And the footnotes do it. It’s all there. And I love it because it’s an agricultural metaphor that we’ve all had a little bit of experience with.

Hank Smith: 02:21 Must be a lot of gardens in heaven, because they talk about it a lot.

John Bytheway: 02:24 Yeah. Bruce R. McConkie talks about the gardens of God, the Garden of Eden, the garden of Gethsemane and the garden tomb.

Hank Smith: 02:32 And Hugh B. Brown said, I am the gardener here.

John Bytheway: 02:35 God is the gardener. Yeah.

Hank Smith: 02:37 Daniel, anything before we move on?

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 02:40 No, I’m ready to transition. Maybe we could talk a little bit about Jesus’ miracles.

Hank Smith: 02:44 Okay, let’s do it.

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 02:45 Luke eight, where we got some of the parables. It concludes with a few stories of miracles. Miracles in scripture are important, because they point beyond themselves just like parables. So Jesus’s miracles are sometimes referred to as semeia, or semeion in the singular. And this is the Greek word used to describe what he’s doing. And another way to translate this word is sign or token, because it’s a sign, it’s something that reveals or signifies or demonstrates something about Jesus, in addition to helping those who receive them. Jesus’s miracles are signs, they’re tokens, they’re demonstrations of something. In the Old Testament, miracles stories function in several ways. They demonstrate, for example, God’s power over his opponents. So think Elijah and the priests of Baal, think Moses and Pharaoh’s magicians, they demonstrate God’s care for Israel. So, think Moses parting the Red Sea to protect Israel from Pharaoh’s armies.

  03:36 And they also show or demonstrate God’s care for individuals. So think of the healing of Naaman, for example. In the New Testament, they serve similar functions, but they also attest specifically to Jesus’ divinity and authority over creation. Jesus is different from miracle workers in the Old Testament, because rather than praying for miracles to occur, He himself is empowered to heal people, cast out demons, and command the elements. And this is because he’s the Son of God. He sends miracles signal, this part of his nature. Jesus performs four kinds of miracles in the gospels, exorcisms, which is just in casting out evil spirits. He performs healings. So somebody with a physical, a mental impairment is made better. He raises the dead, and he also does, for lack of a better term, nature miracles. So in which he exercises power of the elements. So storms, big trees, feeding the 5,000, water to wine, this kind of stuff.

  04:26 And I would suggest that in each case, in each miracle that Jesus performs, these miracles signal something again beyond themselves. They can teach us something about Christ and His gospel. So we might keep that in the back of our mind as we go through some of these stories. And I’ll periodically ask, what does this story teach or signal about Christ in addition to just being kind of a cool power that he has. So one of the miracles mentioned in Luke 8, is Jesus calming the storm. As you know, the story goes, Jesus is on a boat with his disciples. He falls asleep, a storm comes, the boat is filling up with water. Master, we perish, Luke records.

  05:00 And the disciples came to him and awoke him saying, “Master, Master, we perish.” Then he arose and rebuked the wind and the raging water and they ceased and there was a calm and He said unto them, where is your faith? And they being afraid, wondered, saying to one another, what manner of man is this? For he commandeth even the winds and the water to obey him. First question that comes to my mind, what does this story teach or signal about Christ in your mind? What do we see revealed about Christ here?

John Bytheway: 05:28 As with all the miracles, it’s just one more thing that he has power over. Not just men, not just women, not just children, not just plants, but boy, the elements, the weather. And also tying that back to faith.

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 05:42 Yeah, the most powerful forces that these probably men would’ve witnessed. The forces of nature.

Hank Smith: 05:48 I wonder, I don’t know if Luke meant this or the other gospel authors, but it seems that there may be making a reference to the storms of life, that when a Christian of their day is reading these works or hearing them, that they could make that personal leap to, Master help us, we perish. And he calmed the sea and said, where is your faith? The modern day reader and even the late reader, 2023 reader, can still get that same lesson.

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 06:15 Yeah, absolutely. And I like the juxtaposition. You have a very human Jesus, his body’s like ours. He got tired, he’s sleeping. He’s so tired, he’s sleeping in a boat during a storm.

Hank Smith: 06:26 How tired is this guy?

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 06:28 I know. Exactly. His body needed rest. So he’s very human, and then all of a sudden he commands the strongest forces of nature. He’s incredibly powerful. So just this balance here. One of the questions that comes to my mind too, with regard to faith, you mentioned this, John, is why exactly does Jesus rebuke them for not having faith? In what should they have had faith do you think, exactly?

John Bytheway: 06:49 Yeah. Good question. Should they have done that, or should they have thought, it’s okay, Jesus is on our ship, nothing’s going to happen. What is he wanting of them? That’s a good question.

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 07:00 Should they have had faith that Christ could or would save them, that God would save Christ? And by extension, them? Did they lack the faith necessary to still the storm themselves? And what do we make of the fact that they were surprised when Jesus actually does it? Why were they saying, save us, and then they’re surprised when He saves them.

John Bytheway: 07:19 So it’s like-

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 07:19 Yeah, I’m not quite sure what’s going on.

Hank Smith: 07:22 There’s a lot of fun details in there.

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 07:24 The reason I ask this is because, when I read this, it’s like, okay, they should have had faith that Jesus would save them. I think that’s the most plain reading maybe or something like that. But at the same time, I ask myself, is that something that we can have faith in as well? Can I have faith that God is always going to deliver me from temporal danger? And I don’t think the answer is, yes. So what can we have faith in? If we can’t have faith that God’s going to save us from all the things that threaten our lives, what exactly can we have faith in?

Hank Smith: 07:49 Yeah. Because I don’t think that’s the meaning of it. Is, oh, don’t worry, you’ll never experience a failure or sinking. But in this moment he seems to suggest you should have faith that I was going to save you. Is that a faith that all of us can have?

John Bytheway: 08:03 The first principle of the gospel is not faith. It’s faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And sometimes what happens to us, as our lives unfold is not the way we wanted it to happen. We wanted God to do this for us and he doesn’t. But sometimes we see, oh, he had something better in mind or he had something else in mind. Doesn’t seem better. But if I have faith in Christ, there’s got to be… “He doeth not anything, save it be for the benefit of the world.’ And there must be something better he has in mind, and that’s harder kind of faith to have. But we all have stories like that.

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 08:42 And that’s a beautiful idea. The idea that we can have faith, not in what’s going to happen, but in him and in the fact that whatever he does, it’s going to be for our benefit. If he lets us sink to the bottom of the ocean, we got to have faith that that’s what had to happen, or something like that. We can have faith in God being with us in our suffering, and the fact that he wants the best for us, the fact that he knows what’s best for us, and in his love and justice and mercy, even if we can’t have faith, that he’s going to deliver us from every trial that we have.

John Bytheway: 09:07 And that’s a leap to make. I think that it’s easy to think faith is not in the way I want things to work out, but it’s faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And some of the wonderful prophets, modern and ancient that we talk about have gone through amazing trials and things. And God is really good at turning hard things into good things sometimes. And some of us are probably listening still out there asking, why me? Why this? Why now? And really backs us up against that wall of faith in Christ.

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 09:37 And I think all of us have had experiences where, we’re asking for deliverance of some sort and we pray, and there isn’t a kind of transfer of information, or anything like that. We just feel and participate in the love of Christ. And that’s what helps us to know that whatever happens, he’s going to be there. Whatever happens, there’s going to be this love.

Hank Smith: 09:58 Yeah. One Christian pastor wrote this, “Jesus does not take people out into the middle of the sea to drown them. He takes people across the sea so they can participate in His work of redemption. He does not stand afar off to do this. He enters the darkness, the evil, the suffering of this world, and he transforms it from within. If we are following Him, then we too will enter darkness. We need to keep Jesus in sight. We need to understand who this is asleep in the boat. The storm is not where you face the enemy. The storm is where you meet God.” I like that kind of turn on it a little bit, that you meet God in these storms. This is where, like you said, something comes over you. Maybe the storm isn’t calm, but something happens inside of you that changes you.

John Bytheway: 10:41 The storm is where you meet God. We all know that story of the man that was in one of those handcart companies that heard some people critical of the timing of when they left. And he said, what was it? We met God in our extremities. Do you remember that story? He said, I ask you to stop this criticism, you know nothing what you talk about, I was there. And he said, sometimes I felt, I can go to that next hill and that’s no further. And then he said, the angels would start to push me. And the price we paid, was worth it to pay because we became acquainted with God in our extremity, which is… Must have quieted. I wish I could have seen the Sunday school class after that, and said that.

Hank Smith: 11:20 Yeah. Okay.

John Bytheway: 11:22 Okay. Class dismissed. We can’t improve on that.

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 11:27 I think that raises a kind of important theological question, which is, I think all of us agree that suffering can function to help us to find intimacy with God, right? Suffering opposition that give us opportunities to be close to God. Does that mean, do you think that we should assume that all of us, all of the suffering we face is sent to us by God for that reason? So for example, did God give my son diabetes to teach him something, or to teach me something? What do you guys think? And it’s not as if people for 2000 years have been asking this question. So you guys go ahead and-

Hank Smith: 12:00 Yeah. If I want to answer it with, why suffering? Well, I got the answer right here. I remember Elder Maxwell said that, trials come in three types and one is, our own decisions, we just make our own lives hard. He said two is, some come because we are living on an earth and we signed up for a fallen world, fallen planet. And then there’s loss and-

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 12:25 Earthquakes happen, cancer happens. Yeah.

Hank Smith: 12:28 And third he said, is when we have a God who deliberately tries to teach us. But then he said something to the effect of, don’t get so caught up in trying to distinguish between two and three, because it’s really hard to do. Like, did God send this or is this just part of me coming to earth? Instead, just try to learn what you can from those experiences. So it’s always helped me a little bit instead of trying to figure out that question using all this time and energy to figure out this question of, is this a two or is this a three? Just kind of say, well, it’s a two and a half. I don’t really know, but I’m going to move forward anyway.

John Bytheway: 13:04 And whatever it is though, he can always turn that to good. That’s the nice part. I think even sometimes when we cause our own problems, he can still help us out of them. Even when we know, I did this to myself, that was dumb. And that’s what we can count on, rather than focusing on, is this category one or two trial I’m having here?

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 13:24 And being careful also in our albeit well-intentioned efforts to comfort other people. If we were to say something to the effect of, well, God does everything for a reason, that could mess up somebody’s relationship with God if they think God gave their mother cancer, or something like that. So we want to be careful about when we attribute agency to God, and the intentionality to some of the unfortunate things that happen to us.

John Bytheway: 13:45 This reminds me of years ago, I was trying to do some research on Job and I called Robert Millet, our friend and said, what have we got on Job? He said, go get this book by Philip Yancey, a fine Christian author, called the Bible Jesus Read. And he used to write for the Reader’s Digest in those stories called, Drama in Real Life. I was jogging and a bear attacked me, or I was skiing and an avalanche came and… So he used to visit people in hospitals a lot to get these stories. And he said that, he interviewed them because he was a Christian. He said that most of the people said, when the Christians came to visit them, they felt worse, not better.

  14:20 And the reason they felt worse is they tried to explain what God was doing. Well God did this for this reason, or God’s doing this, or God needed them, or something like that. And what I loved about the story of Job is, at least at first, the friends just sit with him, and they don’t try to explain it. As soon as they try to explain it, that’s when everything went south.

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 14:40 And that mirrors, I think how God ministers to us.

John Bytheway: 14:42 In the Book of Job, he never really does explain why he did it. He just says, “Were you there when I set everything up, when I created everything?” And it’s a fascinating way to look at it that way, that we can get in trouble when we try to explain it, and instead just anchor our faith in Christ. Maybe one day we’ll have a reason, but maybe we won’t.

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 15:01 Yeah. Excellent. So another miracle mentioned in Luke 8, is Jesus’s healing of the man possessed by several evil spirits. So we’re told this guy, he lived out naked among the tombs, he’s not in his right mind. And sometimes people would bind him with chains as a result of his affliction. Maybe to keep him from hurting himself or others. I don’t know. And I want to point out something I found interesting here, and I’m sure there’s other things that you guys can point out as well. But when the evil spirits see Jesus coming, one of them says, what have I to do with thee Jesus thou son of God most high? So right away, they see Jesus from afar off. They recognize who he is and the power that he has from his Father. And this isn’t an isolated incident in the New Testament, you see the same thing occurring throughout his ministry.

  15:44 So Mark records, Mark 3:11, “The evil spirits saw him. They cried out thou art the son of God.” Luke elsewhere, Luke 4, the spirits call out, the holy one of God when they see Jesus. And I highlight this, because I actually went through the New Testament once and wrote down everything said by an evil spirit. And when I had the list in front of me, I was surprised at how much it looked like my testimony. Because it was essentially an articulation of knowledge of who Jesus is and what he can do. And it hit me in this moment, as important as testimony and necessary as testimony is, it shouldn’t be my end goal, and it shouldn’t be the ultimate measure of my discipleship. Because if the demons know the same things about Jesus that I do, and it’s not doing them any good, then it can’t be knowledge in and of itself that is going to transform us, right?

  16:27 We have to interact with this knowledge in a way that’s transformative. Elder Oaks said it better than I can. He says, “This process of conversion to becoming who we need to be, requires far more than acquiring knowledge. So the Gospel, it’s more than a system of belief, it’s more than a code of conduct. It’s a system of becoming intended to transform us into more Christ-like persons. So testimony and obedience, these are means by which we accomplish this change that God wants to affect in us. They’re not the end goal.” Elder Oaks continues, “Many Bible and modern scriptures speak of the final judgment at which all persons will be rewarded according to their deeds or works or the desires of their hearts. But other scriptures enlarge upon this by referring to our being judged by the condition we have achieved.” So that all has very little to do with demonic possession, I realized. But this is what kind of jumped out to me as meaningful in this passage. Is this idea that, knowledge of Christ is not as sufficient in and of itself.

  17:20 And it’s important to say, how is my testimony? How’s his testimony and stuff like that. But it’s also important to recognize, testimony is not the end goal. It’s a means to an end. It’s intended to get us to a point beyond itself.

John Bytheway: 17:31 Is it in the book of James, where James says that, the devils also believe and tremble and it’s not just about believing, but it’s about doing? Yeah. James 2:19, “Thou believest that there is one God, thou doest well, the devils also believe and tremble, but wilt thou know, O vain man that faith without works is dead.” And so knowing is great, the devils know too, but what have you done with it? And that’s kind of what you just said, Daniel, what are you becoming?

Hank Smith: 18:02 Right.

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 18:02 And what do you think are the dangers in assuming testimony and obedience at the end goal of the discipleship? Because unfortunately, as I talk to my students about this kind of stuff, those are kind of the metrics that they use to determine how they’re doing. It’s like, okay, how’s my testimony? Am I obeying the commandments? And again, those are good things, but what dangers do you see in assuming that those are the only things?

Hank Smith: 18:22 Yeah, that doesn’t seem to be where the scriptures end anything. Seems to be, when He comes again, we’ll know him because we will be like Him.

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 18:30 And I think we could also fall into the danger of maybe just going through the motions and just assuming that if we’re doing these things then we’re good. Moroni and Paul talk about this idea that if a man prays but not with full intent of heart, it doesn’t profit him anything. If a man gives a gift and does so grudgingly, then he might as well have retained it. And this idea that, we have to have the disposition that informs obedience for it to be transformative. And that’s a much taller order, I think.

John Bytheway: 18:56 My dad used to talk about the difference between being convinced and converted. Conversion’s, a lifelong ongoing process and-

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 19:07 Excellent.

Hank Smith: 19:08 I think it was Elder Bednar who said, “Testimony alone is not and will not be enough to protect us in the latter-day storm of darkness and evil in which we are living. Testimony is important and necessary, but not sufficient to provide the spiritual strength and protection we need.” And he says, just what you said, Daniel, “Some members of the church with testimonies have wavered and fallen away. Their spiritual knowledge and commitment did not measure up to the challenges they faced.” And then he talks about being converted unto the Lord, not just a knowledge of the truth, but being converted to the Lord, which Elder Bednar says, I understand to be conversion to the Savior and his Gospel. Testimony and conversion unto the Lord, produce firmness, steadfastness and provides spiritual protection.

John Bytheway: 19:51 I did a study in the Book of Mormon once about the word converted just for fun because, I’ve used the phrase about, “oh yeah, my dad was a convert to the church.” And then I discovered the Book of Mormon never uses that phrase. We’re converted unto the Lord. It’s a very consistent, the object of our conversion is to Christ, not to the church. And Elder D. Todd Christofferson gave a wonderful talk called, Why the Church? Where he emphasized that idea we’re converted unto the Lord and we’re united with the church. It’s like, 3 Nephi 28, I think. And that was an, aha moment for me. The object of our conversion is to Christ, and that continuously… We’re not going to arrive at that, at the end of this life. And that’s why it’s such a continuous thing as you’re saying Daniel, it’s not just about believing but trying to become like him as a process.

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 20:43 And it’s really informed the way I view other people too. Sometimes we think, oh, somebody isn’t a member of the church or they’re struggling in their testimony, or something like that, but they’re just genuinely good people. If we have a family member who leaves the church and we’re concerned, oh, you’re not doing this. They don’t believe this anymore. But at the same time, they’re Christian individuals, I think it can help us see what’s important. And what’s important is Christ’s likeness. Again, the other stuff’s important too, but at the end of the day, I think what’s most important is Christ’s likeness.

Hank Smith: 21:12 Who was it that said, it’s not about who has your membership, it’s about who has your heart.

John Bytheway: 21:17 Stephen Robinson. This part about what is thy name? And he said, Legion. And the devils entered into the swine and they ran violently down a steep place in verse 33 of Luke 8, and were choked. So the other day I heard something that Elder Maxwell said, he called it, The Gathering Swine Law. And the Gathering Swine Law is, just because a group is moving in formation, does not mean they’re going the right way.

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 21:47 You could all be singing the wrong note in harmony. Right?

Hank Smith: 21:52 That’s great.

John Bytheway: 21:53 The wrong note in harmony.

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 21:54 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 21:55 I think we’re ready to move on to the next one.

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 21:56 All right, so another miracle, in Luke is the woman with the issue of blood 43-48. In this story, we’re told that there’s a woman having an issue of blood for 12 years, which she had spent all her living upon physicians and neither could be healed of any. Some scholars suggested the woman suffered from an abnormal menstrual flow, which would’ve meant that this issue wasn’t just physiological for her. Because according to the law of Moses, a contact with certain bodily emissions, including blood, would’ve made one richly unpure and able to communicate that impurity to other people. So by her touching another individual, she would’ve been able to communicate that impurity. Now, ritual impurity isn’t a moral thing, but it is something that would’ve prevented somebody from going to the temple and offering sacrifices and things like that. So there would’ve had to have been a washing process and waiting for a few days.

  22:44 But if you’re continually ritually impure, then you can’t go. And anybody who comes into contact with you can’t do certain things. And as a result of this, her prospects for marriage and maybe intimate relationships would’ve been limited or non-existent, as would her opportunities for worship at the temple. So again, it isn’t just a physiological thing, this is a social issue. This has social implications for her life. We’re also told that she spent a lot of money trying to get better, so maybe she’s impoverished. So Jesus is in the crowd. And then, “She came behind him and touched the border of his garment and immediately her issue of blood stanched or dried up. And Jesus said, ‘Who touched me?’ When everybody denied Peter and they that were with him said, ‘Master the multitude, throng thee and press thee, and sayest thou who touched me?'”

Hank Smith: 23:28 Everybody touched you.

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 23:30 Yeah. I know. “Somebody has touched me, for I perceive that virtue has gone out of me.” So virtue, dunamis, power or force or energy, has gone out of me. “And when the woman saw that she was not hid, she came trembling and falling down before him. She declared unto him before all the people for what cause she has touched him.” You have to remember, she knew she was ritually contaminating Jesus by doing this. So you can understand why she would’ve been afraid. “And she was healed immediately. And he said unto her, “Daughter, be of good comfort: thy faith hath made thee whole, go in peace. So I mentioned earlier some of these miracles or signs can indicate something to us about Jesus and his character. They can represent, they can demonstrate, they can symbolize. Anything that jumps out to you here about Christ based on this story?

John Bytheway: 24:16 There’s so much in verse 12, “She had spent all her living upon physicians. Neither could be healed of any.” This is a lifetime of probably isolation for her. And I love that she had the courage to touch him. Do you guys really think he didn’t know who touched him or was this for everybody else?

Hank Smith: 24:38 I’m not sure. Maybe it was for her to see what she was going to do, or to get the attention of everyone else.

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 24:45 Or maybe a different question is, would it be problematic if he didn’t? Like what’s at stake if he didn’t? If this was somehow intentional, does it complicate our theology? Would we be against the idea of him doing this somewhat unconsciously, so to speak?

Hank Smith: 25:03 I don’t think so. He’s real. He’s a human being. He could be like, something just happened.

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 25:10 I like that. I like that he stopped. One of the points that I think the manual makes and everything else is that, he wanted her to know that it was her faith, not his garment. It wasn’t that his garment has some special power or some relic from the past have some special power, which some kind of believe, but thy faith hath made thee whole, and I think that was an important point for everybody to hear, and for us too. And I think we’d all agree that, if she wasn’t worthy to be healed, she could have touched him all the day long and probably not been healed, right?

  25:43 What stands out to me is kind of the initiative of her. Again, this is the only time in scripture of which I’m aware in which Jesus performs a miracle, seemingly unintentionally. I assume he would’ve wanted this to happen because it happened, right? But at the same time, she had the faith to be healed and she was healed. She knew what it took to do it, and she took the initiative and it happened and Jesus ratified it. And daughter, because of your faith, you’ve been made whole. You did the right thing. He looks past the whole ritual impurity thing too. That wasn’t even an issue for him. He’s like, no, don’t worry about that. You made the right choice. Which is kind of comforting, because sometimes there’s a little bit of wiggle over him when we don’t want to be too legalistic to where it stunts our expressions of discipleship and faith.

John Bytheway: 26:22 And that makes me want to ask, is that a law of Moses thing or is that a tradition of the elder’s thing?

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 26:27 That’s in Leviticus. So it is a Law of Moses thing, but he doesn’t seem to care about it.

Hank Smith: 26:32 Interesting.

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 26:33 Yeah. Ritual impurity isn’t necessarily an immoral thing, so it wouldn’t have compromised his sinlessness or anything like that. Men become ritually impure too, if they come into contact with certain skin diseases or corpse or bodily emissions. So it’s something that Jesus would’ve experienced before. So it wasn’t the end of the world, but at the same time, it’s like me shaking your hand when I’m sick. I wouldn’t want to do it, but if I was falling off a cliff and I need somebody to help me, and I grabbed your hand, you probably wouldn’t be mad at me for transferring germs. So maybe it’s like the same kind of thing going on.

John Bytheway: 27:04 What are you doing?

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 27:05 Your priorities are in the right place here.

Hank Smith: 27:08 Yeah. I’ve always thought this emphasized his one by one ministry as well, because we often hear he healed crowds. He fed 5,000, and then at this moment he’s like, Nope, there was one person here I need to talk to. Reminds me a lot of President Monson all the time, one by one, he’ll go visit those widows. Our relationship with the Lord can be us and him. An individual relationship. It doesn’t have to be the crowd and him.

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 27:35 And not just that, she was trying to deliberately kind of hide herself from him, it seems like. Touch him without her knowing, and he still perceived that she was there even when she felt like maybe she wasn’t worthy, or wasn’t able to approach him face-to-face. And he said, no, I recognized you there and you did the right thing. In contrast to the calming the sea storm, or wherein Jesus is concerned with their physical survival, here it’s much more concerned with her social survival. It’s not just, he wants her to be healthy, it’s the social thing again. Her thriving, living with other humans and happy and fulfilling relationships, the healing affected that as well. He cares for that stuff too, which is comforting for me.

John Bytheway: 28:12 And when I see that verse, “Spent all her living upon physicians,” that still happens today. We love what our medical knowledge, where it’s at and what doctors can do, but sometimes we can’t figure this out and you’re suffering. And I just love the compassion that he had there.

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 28:31 So the final thing I wanted to address is Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem in Luke 13. You get it in 3 Nephi also. So Jesus, He finished telling the parables. Some Pharisees inform him that Herod wants to kill him, and Jesus responds with some choice words and then he says… This is verse 33, Luke 13, “I must walk today and tomorrow and the following day for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem which killest the prophets and stoneth them that are sent unto thee. How often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen dost gather her brood or chicks under her wings, and you would not!” Couple of things. First, I just want to point out kind of the beauty of the imagery here. And it’s worth saying that Matthew isn’t unique in his portrayal of deity, or a Christ as a maternal figure.

  29:20 Numerous biblical authors, they compare God or Christ to a mother who comforts her child, a mother bear, a mother eagle, a nursing mother, a woman in labor. So it’s actually not that uncommon. And there’s a kind of softness and tenderness to the image of a mother hen, I’m no chicken scientist, or whatever the actual term, a term zoologist or whatever. But I don’t know much about hens. But to me, it seems like hen is an animal without much offensive or defensive capabilities. It’s not like a fox or a porcupine or something like that. And her chicks are even more vulnerable and she uses her own body as a place of gathering and protection for these vulnerable chicks, despite the fact that it would make her more vulnerable. She could probably move around less, less protection. So in a sense, she’s recognizing that, okay, I might be sacrificing myself in this.

  30:15 And I just kind of love the juxtaposition between the powerful God of the universe we encounter in scripture as well as this kind of more mother hen trying to care for our chicks. Scripture does a really good way of showing us the spectrum of the multifaceted nature of Christ, and I think it does it in a way that allows us to relate to him in different ways according to our different needs. Sometimes we need the powerful God that calms the storm, and sometimes we need the mother hen. Sometimes we need to see Christ as vulnerable and like us, and in solidarity with us, in our own vulnerability. And then we kind of had this heartbreaking part, and you would not. There was no exclamation points in ancient Greek, but the author here is trying to convey this idea of frustration, I tried so hard, and you wouldn’t do it. Some of his children have chosen to make it on their own despite his consistent desire to gather them. And that’s kind of the image we see here. I don’t know what speaks to you, if anything in this passage?

John Bytheway: 31:14 I underlined gather twice, because we see such a theme of scatter, gather, scatter, gather throughout the scriptures. And that’s what the Savior wants to do. He wants to gather us. But I underlined, he would not, too. Always, when I see that, I like to say, what’s the difference between would not and could not. And there’s so many times when particularly in the Book of Mormon, you would not, and you chose. And so you do have a choice, but he’s lamenting that. Why would you choose that? This is a no-brainer. Let me gather you. I know.

Hank Smith: 31:49 I want to help you. Why won’t you be helped? Yeah. I love the imagery. I think Christ taking on the feminine there is very touching. Kind of like when Isaiah does it, when he says, I will not forget you, like a woman doesn’t forget her newborn child.

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 32:06 Isaiah actually, he says, “Even if a woman were to forget her newborn child, which she wouldn’t-

Hank Smith: 32:11 I would not.

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 32:11 Implicitly, I will not for you. He’s like, this impossibility, if hypothetically speaking that were to happen, I still wouldn’t. So it just goes beyond the nursing mother.

John Bytheway: 32:22 This gathering, a metaphor, Hank, that you mentioned is in 3 Nephi too, before he comes. And he does a past, present future with, how often would I have gathered you in the past? How often will I gather you in the future?

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 32:36 So John’s going to read the 3 Nephi reference for us. You see that the lament is extended in 3 Nephi and I’m wondering if it adds anything that we don’t see necessarily in Luke and Matthew. So pay attention to that. It’s three times as long. I think.

John Bytheway: 32:48 Before Jesus actually appeared in person, they heard a voice in 3 Nephi 9 and 10. I think in 3 Nephi 10:4, “O ye people of these great cities which have fallen, who are descendants of Jacob. Ye who are of the house of Israel, how often have I gathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings and have nourished you. And again, how often would I have gathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings? Yea, O ye people of the house of Israel who have fallen. Yea, O ye people of the house of Israel ye that dwell at Jerusalem as ye that have fallen. Ye, how often would I have gathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens and you would not. O ye house of Israel whom I have spared, how often will I gather you, as a hen gatherer her chickens under her wings if he will repent and return onto me with full purpose of heart?

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 33:40 So you feel anything different like rhetorically what’s go… The fact that you have these different tenses, I gathered you, I will gather you or would’ve gathered you.

John Bytheway: 33:50 Yeah. Kind of a constancy of purpose there, huh? This is what I do. I want to gather you, I want to protect you.

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 33:57 It seems like he’s saying, I’ve done everything I can. I’ve done this, I’ll continue to do it. I’ll do it as… My hand is always outreached. Just take it, right?

Hank Smith: 34:07 Yeah. This is from Jane Allis-Pike, she wrote an article called, How Often Would I Have Gathered you as a hen gathereth Her Chickens, the power of the hen metaphor in 3 Nephi.

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 34:17 That’s Dana’s wife. Yeah.

Hank Smith: 34:20 Christ’s hen metaphor is explained further in Alma’s open invitation, that whosoever will, may come and partake of the waters of life freely. And whosoever will not come the same is not compelled to come. Like a mother hen Jesus Christ is ever concerned for the physical and spiritual needs of his children. And because his infinite atonement stretches wide as eternity, he will always remain capable of providing shelter and protection to all who willingly come unto him. He promises and affirms how often will I gather you. Future tense. It should be also recognized that, even though this metaphor pertains to God’s dealing with House of Israel, his efforts here and now at gathering, including his children within his covenant are boundless. All who are willing to be baptized in the name of the Lord as witnessed before him, that they have entered into a covenant with him will be immediately enfolded and included in his loving arms.

  35:17 Then we can go into scripture and look at how often Nephi says, will circle me about in the robes of righteousness. It feels very similar to this idea of shelter me, keep me safe. I’ve often asked people, I’m teaching, to think about the endowment ceremony, “Wilt thou encircle me about in the robes of thy righteousness.”

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 35:38 And not just that, going back to your comment about the inclusivity he’s addressing, Oh, Jerusalem thou that killest the prophets. He’s not saying, oh, all you special righteous ones, he’s saying, no, even you guys that are trying to kill the prophets. How often would I have gathered you? He’s reaching out to the-

Hank Smith: 35:54 People, we would say, wow, that’s an evil thing to do.

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 35:57 A repentance message in there.

Hank Smith: 35:59 I noticed in verse 35, of Luke 13, he does not like to see the consequences that come. Your house is left unto you desolate. Like, oh no-

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 36:09 You end up with nothing.

Hank Smith: 36:10 You don’t see what’s coming down this road. And you feel that way as a parent often. I’ve seen this road. I know how this story ends. Don’t go down this road. Please don’t go down this road. The invitation is always there. Come back.

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 36:26 Right.

Hank Smith: 36:27 Before we let you go, I think our listeners would love to hear your journey as both a scholar and a faithful Latter-day Saint. What has that journey been like for you?

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 36:37 It’s a hard question to answer. I didn’t grow up wanting to do this. I didn’t really have a good understanding of how college worked and things like that, when I was in high school. My plan was just either be in a band or join the military. And I started out going to community college, and I was studying fine art photography. And I did that for a couple of years, and then I went on my mission. I just kind of fell in love with the scriptures, and I had some experiences on my mission in which I kind of realized the disparity or the gap between who I was, and who I wanted to be. I would see the goodness in the people I ministered to, and in my fellow missionaries, and the saints we served. And I would just want that, and I’d be able to perceive keenly and painfully the difference between who I was, and the kind of ideals I aspire to.

  37:17 I also happened to have a companion I didn’t get that well along with, and we didn’t talk that much in the morning. So I just read the standard works and all the institute manuals and seminary manuals associated with them, and just kind of again, fell in love with the scriptures, and I decided that I wanted to be a scientist of virtue, which is to say if I wanted to be educated in anything, I wanted to be educated in how to bridge that gap between who I am and who I want to be. So I got back and I changed my major to biblical studies, and as I went through graduate school, I started focusing my research on moral formation. I studied how Christians understand perfection, and the means by which they conform themselves to those ideals. And one of the things I learned throughout the course of my studies is just that, there is so much goodness in other religions.

  37:59 There is so much goodness in studying. So I specialize in the writings of ancient Christian authors who lived after Jesus during the time that we typically refer to as the great apostasy. And there’s just such gems of goodness and truth in that kind. And I see my scholarly endeavors as a kind of natural outgrowth of my commitment to be a disciple of Jesus, which is to say, we’re all different and God has given us all different gifts and inclinations and desires, and He’s given me the gift to be able to appreciate beauty in whatever form. I see it in ancient Christian literature, and the morality of monks living in Egypt and 400 A.D. And it’s beautiful to me and it speaks to me. It speaks to my soul in the same way that I assume many of you have, or you guys have ancestors that are pioneers and things like that.

  38:44 I don’t have that kind of background, but I do see in my ancient Christian the people I study, I do see a kind of spiritual kinship there. Graduate school didn’t do anything to challenge my testimony. If anything, it strengthened me. It gave me additional tools to be able to bring to scripture and to understand it better, to ask new questions and just the more I learned, or even when I learned things I didn’t agree with, or that didn’t sit well with me sometimes, those were opportunities to be intimate with Christ, opportunities to reach out to him and say, look, this is something that I might struggle with a little bit, and help me out. And He stepped in, and I didn’t always have all the answers obviously, but I felt him there and that was enough.

  39:25 I think the more you learn too, especially about the scriptures, the more you realize that you don’t know. And it’s that kind of hunger and motivation and curiosity, these gifts that I’ve seen God to give me, they kind of keep me going and keep me reaching. And whenever I screw up, which I do fairly regularly, they keep me turning back to God. So…

Hank Smith: 39:43 That’s perfect. That was beautiful. We loved it. What a great day, John Bytheway. We’ve been in the parables, and the miracles. Nothing better than spending time in that, and a Bible scholar like Daniel. Just a lot of fun.

John Bytheway: 39:56 And great questions that you were asking us, Daniel, that was fun to kind of talk about it together. What do you see in there? And we all discovered something, so thank you for the way you did that.

Dr. Daniel Becerra: 40:07 Yeah, and thanks for opening my eyes to some things I didn’t see before, and I think the way we excavate the text is through questions and just being comfortable to talk about it and acknowledge what we don’t know and testify for what we do, and come together and learn together.

Hank Smith: 40:21 Yeah. Beautiful. We want to thank Dr. Daniel Becerra for being with us today. We want to thank our executive producer Shannon Sorensen, our sponsors David and Verla Sorensen, and of course we want to remember our founder, the late Steve Sorensen. We hope you’ll join us next week. We have more coming up in the New Testament on followHIM.

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