Ho! Ho! Ho!

I love this:

Two men Come Down The Same Chimney

A young man in his mid-twenties knocks on the door of the noted scholar Rabbi Shwartz. “My name is Sean Goldstein,” he says. “I’ve come to you because I wish to study Talmud.”

“Do you know Aramaic?” the rabbi asks.

“No,” replies the young man.

“Hebrew?” asks the Rabbi.

“No,” replies the young man again.

“Have you studied Torah?” asks the Rabbi, growing a bit irritated.

“No, Rabbi. But don’t worry. I graduated Berkeley summa cum laude in philosophy, and just finished my doctoral dissertation at Harvard on Socratic logic. So now, I would just like to round out my education with a little study of the Talmud.”

“I seriously doubt,” the rabbi says, “that you are ready to study Talmud. It is the deepest book of our people. If you wish, however, I am willing to examine you in logic, and if you pass that test I will teach you Talmud.”

The young man agrees.

Rabbi Shwartz holds up two fingers. “Two men come down a chimney. One comes out with a clean face, the other comes out with a dirty face. Which one washes his face?”

The young man stares at the rabbi. “Is that the test in logic?”

The rabbi nods.

”The one with the dirty face washes his face,“ he answers wearily.

“Wrong. The one with the clean face washes his face. Examine the simple logic.The one with the dirty face looks at the one with the clean face and thinks his face is clean. The one with the clean face looks at the one with the dirty face and thinks his face is dirty. So the one with the clean face washes his face.”

“Very clever,” Goldstein says. “Give me another test.”

The rabbi again holds up two fingers. “Two men come down a chimney. One comes out with a clean face, the other comes out with a dirty face. Which one washes his face?”

“We have already established that. The one with the clean face washes his face.”

“Wrong. Each one washes his face. Examine the simple logic. The one with the dirty face looks at the one with the clean face and thinks his face is clean. The one with the clean face looks at the one with the dirty face and thinks his face is dirty. So the one with the clean face washes his face. When the one with the dirty face sees the one with the clean face wash his face, he also washes his face. So each one washes his face.”

“I didn’t think of that,” says Goldstein. It’s shocking to me that I could make an error in logic. Test me again.”

The rabbi holds up two fingers. “Two men come down a chimney. One comes out with a clean face, the other comes out with a dirty face. Which one washes his face?”

“Each one washes his face.”

“Wrong. Neither one washes his face. Examine the simple logic. The one with the dirty face looks at the one with the clean face and thinks his face is clean. The one with the clean face looks at the one with the dirty face and thinks his face is dirty. But when the one with the clean face sees the one with the dirty face doesn’t wash his face, he also doesn’t wash his face. So neither one washes his face.”

Goldstein is desperate. “I am qualified to study Talmud. Please give me one more test.”

He groans, though, when the rabbi lifts two fingers. “Two men come down a chimney. One comes out with a clean face, the other comes out with a dirty face. Which one washes his face?”

“Neither one washes his face.”

“Wrong. Do you now see, Sean, why Socratic logic is an insufficient basis for studying Talmud? Tell me, how is it possible for two men to come down the same chimney, and for one to come out with a clean face and the other with a dirty face? Don’t you see? The whole question is "narishkeit", foolishness, and if you spend your whole life trying to answer foolish questions, all your answers will be foolish, too.”

From:




And:



(Disclaimer: I saw it in the youtube video first, Then I went to look for the source.)

There is a sense in which the Scriptures are the word of God dehydrated, with all the originating context removed -- living voices, city sounds, camels carrying spices from Seba and gold from Ophir snorting down in the bazaar, fragrance from lentil stew simmering in the kitchen -- all now reduced to marks on thin onion-skin paper. We make an effort at re-hydrating them; we take these Scriptures and spend an hour or so in the Bible study with friends or alone in prayerful reading. But five minutes later, on our way to work, plunged into the tasks of the day for which they had seemed to promise sustenance, there's not much left of them -- only ink on india paper. We find that we are left with the words of the Bible but without the world of the Bible. Not there is anything wrong with the words as such, it is just that without the biblical world -- the intertwined stories, the echoing poetry and prayers, Isaiah's artful thunder and John's extravagant visions - the words, like those seed words in Jesus' parable that land on the pavement or in the gravel or among the weeds, haven't take root in our lives.

Eugene Peterson, Eat this Book, p88.

Let all things be done.

The New Testament simply does not speak in terms of two classes of Christians -- "minister" and "laymen" -- as we do today. According to the Bible, the people (laos, "laity") of God comprise all Christians, and all Christians through the exercise of spiritual gifts have some "work of ministry." So if we wish to be biblical, we will have to say that all Christians are laymen (God's people) and all are ministers. The clergy-laity dichotomy is unbiblical and therefore invalid. It grew up as an accident of church history and actually marked a drift away from biblical faithfulness.... It is one of the principal obstacles to the Church effectively being God's agent of the Kingdom today because it creates the false idea that only "holy men," namely, ordained ministers, are really qualified and responsible for leadership and significant ministry


(Howard Snyder -- The Community of the King [IVP, 1977], pp.94-95).

(Lifted from Building Up the Body -One Man or One Another?)


This brings us back to one of my favourite verses, the one I quoted yesterday:

What then shall we say, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up.

(1 Corinthians 14:26 NIV)

We shouldn't expect that our edification (building up) should come from our Leadership alone, but it comes from all us. The NIV puts it nicely here, "Everything must be done so that church may be built up."

Again, we all have the ability, the gift, the indwelling Christ, and the responsibility to build up those around us. Who? You. Me. Thou. Ye.

Ye are an Epistle.

To those who feel like they have no place in the body, to those who feel like they have nothing to offer, to those who feel "far from God", I would like to share something with you.

For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.


(Ephesians 2:18-22 ESV)

I believe what Paul says here stands on its own. As believers, saints even, we all have access to the Father through one spirit. We are all built together as a house for God. Sometimes, I know, it feels like it's not us, its all those shiny people, the pastors and teachers, but no, its us, all of us.

And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.


(2 Corinthians 3:3 ESV)

And given this knowledge that we are all a dwelling place of the Lord, his beautiful bride, joined into one flesh, Paul also shows us that we are a letter from Christ to others, that Christ has written his signature in your heart with his spirit. We all have some message of Christ to share with others, those among us. Who does? You do, I do, we all do.

What then, brothers? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up. .... Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said. If a revelation is made to another sitting there, let the first be silent. For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged, and the spirits of prophets are subject to prophets. For God is not a God of confusion but of peace.


(1 Corinthians 14:26-33 ESV)

In this same theme, Paul shows us that when are together, we all have something to contribute, not just your designated leader at the time. How do we know this? because of the above! You are a habitation of Christ, you are a letter from Christ, written on your hearts, from the very core of your being. And why? "Let all things be done for building up." Your message from Christ can build up those around you, yes, you.


Now forgive me if you feel I am stretching this a little too much, but where as I believe some are given the gift of prophesy, I believe that because of the above, because we have the Christ dwelling within us, that he has written his message upon our hearts, we all have the ability to prophecy of Christ, the living Christ that dwells within all of us, to share some aspect of his character, of his love, of his greatness to, those among us.


Interestingly, in ye olde king james english, the letters almost use “ye” to address us, and "ye" isn't "you", an individual, it's Y'ALL, all of us, not a chosen few. All of us.