This morning as grandparents were downstairs regaling our children with a Tom and Jerry video (which makes my son in particular laugh with such an innocent abandon that it makes me well up with joy every time I hear him) I was reading over the gospel accounts of Jesus' resurrection. Seemed like the right thing to do on Easter Sunday.
The Emmaus Road account from Luke is what struck me the most this morning. It's Easter Sunday, the women discover the empty tomb. The angels greet them ("why do you look for the living among the dead?" one of the greatest quotes in all of history) and tell them to go and tell the disciples.
The first time Jesus himself appears in Luke's account is to two followers on the seven-mile hike from Jerusalem to Emmaus. He appears as they're discussing the events of Good Friday and the strange report from the women about the empty tomb.
They don't recognize Jesus, but he spends the journey explaining to them (indeed, upbraiding them for their slowness to understand) the point of the Scriptures in connection with his death and now resurrection. They implore him to stay with them as they reach Emmaus, he breaks bread, they recognize him, he disappears.
As I read this account, tears came to my eyes. I've been wondering all day why. I think it's the amount of time Jesus spends with them.
Every other story post- resurrection is told rapid-fire. The appearances are brief and the conversations sparse--at least the parts that are recorded.
But here we have Jesus lingering for miles with two people (perhaps a married couple) who weren't even among the twelve. And he comes in the midst of sorrow and confusion and glimmers of hope and he speaks level-headed joyful news that cannot be taken away.
Jesus lingers here with two confused, earnest, sad, slow-to-understand people. He is like the loving parent bringing no-nonsense sense and infinite joy and love out of a world of bewildering pain.
When I was a kid it always made me sad when the hero of a movie couldn't stay. Superman had to leave the person he rescued, or Indiana Jones had to move onto his next adventure. I wanted him to stay, to get to know the people he rescued, to love on them a little bit. Especially if they were kids like me.
Jesus is the hero who lingers with the two on the road to Emmaus. He stays, he comforts, he corrects, he teaches, he loves and loves and loves on them.
In several of the gospel accounts, the fact that Jesus will not abandon or leave them is a major theme. "I will not leave you as orphans," Jesus says in John, "I will come to you." Jesus stays with the two at Emmaus.
We live our lives as if we were orphans, scratching out a living among the Ruins. But Jesus stays with you and I, in our slowness, in our bewildering pain, in our apathy. He stays and he pursues us to the end.
We were once orphans. Now we have the Father. We will never be alone, abandoned, forgotten, neglected or overlooked. Jesus has made sure of it. And He shall reign forever and ever. King of Kings. And Lord of Lords. He with us and us with him. Hallelujah!
PIEBALD: any animal or flower that has two or more prominent colors. PIEBALD MAN: the nick-name of C.S. Lewis’ protagonist in Perelandra to symbolize his internal battle between doing things his own way or trusting in God--which essentially describes most of my issues in my PIEBALD LIFE.
What I Write About
I write about the infinite number of intersections between every day life and the good news of the God who has come to get us.
Showing posts with label Easter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Easter. Show all posts
Sunday, April 04, 2010
Saturday, April 03, 2010
Parenting, Handling Poop, and the Disproportionate Mysteries of Easter
So when you're a baby, you're just a ton of trouble. No way around it, nothing you can do about it, you're just high-maintenance.
As you get a little older, you begin to see this, maybe take some responsibility for yourself. And then as you grow into adulthood you realize "wow, this whole having babies thing seems like it'd be a ton of work!"
But you never really know either the cost or the joy of it until you experience it yourself. Being a dad has been way harder and more intense than I thought it would be. I have exceeded my emotional capacities and experienced sleep-deprivation and handled more poop than I ever really wanted to.
And it's also brought me moments of pure joy that I don't know I'd ever experienced before--or at least, not that particular flavor of joy.
There are some things that you cannot know the depths or heights of until or unless you experience them yourself.
And so I don't think that even when heaven descends and God himself is here with us again and all mysteries are revealed--even then I don't know that we'll ever know the depths and pains of these last two days for Jesus.
What Jesus does in this Saturday of waiting has been a matter of speculation and debate for centuries. But what we do know is that Friday wasn't pretty and it's a good bet that Saturday didn't get any easier.
Paul, reflecting on Easter, writes, "You are not your own. You have been bought with a price." We'll never fully know that price, not even when all things are revealed. Perhaps some events in Jesus' life and death will remain mystery. Perhaps we'll know cognitively what Jesus went through but like life before kids it will remain emotionally un-knowable.
The good news is that our own experience of the pain and joy of Easter is and will one day be vastly disproportionate: the pain will remain shrouded in mystery into eternity and there will be a place where our knowledge and experience of it will stop.
Neither will we know the fullness of the joy of the Lord. But our experience of that joy will unfold into an infinite future, the depths and wonders and power of that joy will be ours in ever-increasing measure: boundless, glorious, free, wondrous bliss.
The pain will end. The joy will unfurl into a glorious, endless horizon--beauty upon beauty, grace upon grace, laughter and peace and contentment and rest and sheer delight forever and ever.
Happy Easter.
As you get a little older, you begin to see this, maybe take some responsibility for yourself. And then as you grow into adulthood you realize "wow, this whole having babies thing seems like it'd be a ton of work!"
But you never really know either the cost or the joy of it until you experience it yourself. Being a dad has been way harder and more intense than I thought it would be. I have exceeded my emotional capacities and experienced sleep-deprivation and handled more poop than I ever really wanted to.
And it's also brought me moments of pure joy that I don't know I'd ever experienced before--or at least, not that particular flavor of joy.
There are some things that you cannot know the depths or heights of until or unless you experience them yourself.
And so I don't think that even when heaven descends and God himself is here with us again and all mysteries are revealed--even then I don't know that we'll ever know the depths and pains of these last two days for Jesus.
What Jesus does in this Saturday of waiting has been a matter of speculation and debate for centuries. But what we do know is that Friday wasn't pretty and it's a good bet that Saturday didn't get any easier.
Paul, reflecting on Easter, writes, "You are not your own. You have been bought with a price." We'll never fully know that price, not even when all things are revealed. Perhaps some events in Jesus' life and death will remain mystery. Perhaps we'll know cognitively what Jesus went through but like life before kids it will remain emotionally un-knowable.
The good news is that our own experience of the pain and joy of Easter is and will one day be vastly disproportionate: the pain will remain shrouded in mystery into eternity and there will be a place where our knowledge and experience of it will stop.
Neither will we know the fullness of the joy of the Lord. But our experience of that joy will unfold into an infinite future, the depths and wonders and power of that joy will be ours in ever-increasing measure: boundless, glorious, free, wondrous bliss.
The pain will end. The joy will unfurl into a glorious, endless horizon--beauty upon beauty, grace upon grace, laughter and peace and contentment and rest and sheer delight forever and ever.
Happy Easter.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Easter, Prostitutes, Michael W. Smith, and A New Kind of Slave
Reading through first Corinthians, it's striking that in two very different contexts, Paul asserts that the Corinthians lives are forever changed because they "were bought with a price."
In the first instance (6:20), Paul is talking about sexual immorality: don't have sex with a prostitute, your body is God's temple--you were bought with a price! So glorify God with your body!
In the second (7:23), Paul is talking to slaves, encouraging them to consider what it means to live as free people in light of the fact that "you have been bought with a price." They're no longer slaves to human masters. Slaves are now free people belonging to Christ, just as free Chrstians are now slaves to Christ.
A couple of things strike me about these two uses of the idea of having been bought with a price.
First, Paul knows nothing of the American ideal of personal and civil liberties when it comes to our relationship to morality and to God.
He slams home a very different reality: we're all slaves. We're slaves to sin and death, slaves to the law, or slaves to Christ. There is no fourth "neutral" option from which we can make our own rational, cool-headed,un-encumbered decisions. We are all slaves to one of those four things.
The illusions that we often call our own "free choices" is really just slavery cloaked under the language of 21st century political/therapeutic culture.
The language of having been bought with a price fits right in with Paul's understanding of (to quote the great Michael W. Smith) our place in this world. We were slaves--to sin, death, or the law. We gave ourselves over the Prince of Darkness. To get us back, we had to be bought back from that un-rightful owner.
And so we come to Easter weekend. And the good news is that we are under new ownership. We are God's two-times over: he created each of us and he bought each one of us back at the cross. We have, indeed, been bought with a price.
This grants us a new kind of freedom, one that it takes practice to inhabit well. It's called the freedom of obedience. It's not exactly how this world defines 'freedom,' but then again, there are many things that this world defines improperly.
So I'm driving into Maundy Thursday Eve tonight with a keen sense of having been bought with a price.
My life is not my own. "My" days, "my" gifts, "my" relationships, "my" dreams and hopes, "my" will, "my" imagination, "my" choices, "my" wife and kids--none of these are mine any more. They are His. He has bought them back, along with all my life, at great cost to Himself.
This is good news. Because our original Landlord, he was wicked. And our new Lord, the one who bought us back, he is full of love, grace, and mercy.
In the first instance (6:20), Paul is talking about sexual immorality: don't have sex with a prostitute, your body is God's temple--you were bought with a price! So glorify God with your body!
In the second (7:23), Paul is talking to slaves, encouraging them to consider what it means to live as free people in light of the fact that "you have been bought with a price." They're no longer slaves to human masters. Slaves are now free people belonging to Christ, just as free Chrstians are now slaves to Christ.
A couple of things strike me about these two uses of the idea of having been bought with a price.
First, Paul knows nothing of the American ideal of personal and civil liberties when it comes to our relationship to morality and to God.
He slams home a very different reality: we're all slaves. We're slaves to sin and death, slaves to the law, or slaves to Christ. There is no fourth "neutral" option from which we can make our own rational, cool-headed,un-encumbered decisions. We are all slaves to one of those four things.
The illusions that we often call our own "free choices" is really just slavery cloaked under the language of 21st century political/therapeutic culture.
The language of having been bought with a price fits right in with Paul's understanding of (to quote the great Michael W. Smith) our place in this world. We were slaves--to sin, death, or the law. We gave ourselves over the Prince of Darkness. To get us back, we had to be bought back from that un-rightful owner.
And so we come to Easter weekend. And the good news is that we are under new ownership. We are God's two-times over: he created each of us and he bought each one of us back at the cross. We have, indeed, been bought with a price.
This grants us a new kind of freedom, one that it takes practice to inhabit well. It's called the freedom of obedience. It's not exactly how this world defines 'freedom,' but then again, there are many things that this world defines improperly.
So I'm driving into Maundy Thursday Eve tonight with a keen sense of having been bought with a price.
My life is not my own. "My" days, "my" gifts, "my" relationships, "my" dreams and hopes, "my" will, "my" imagination, "my" choices, "my" wife and kids--none of these are mine any more. They are His. He has bought them back, along with all my life, at great cost to Himself.
This is good news. Because our original Landlord, he was wicked. And our new Lord, the one who bought us back, he is full of love, grace, and mercy.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Grab Bag: Death to the Postal Service, Achin' Bullfrog, Bracket Picks, and Familiarly Duplicitous Crowds
Plenty of random things going on in my head, here they are in no particular order...enjoy!
*Okay, so today I had to mail something. I found a postage stamp that smacked of Christmas (the gingerbread man was a dead give-away) but I had no idea if the 44-cent stamp was anywhere near what it actually costs to mail something these days.
I put two stamps on, and inwardly cursed the U.S. postal system. These guys have to have their days numbered if a college-educated adult cannot remember what it costs to send a letter.
*Tonight was week two of practice for my six-year-old and my four-year-old's soccer teams, the Green Ghosts (formerly "the Green Fire") and the Bullfrogs, respectively. I coach the under-four Bullfrogs, which should be re-named "the cats" since running a practice feels a whole lot like herding them.
But I'm the one with real problems. You know that I'm either getting old or way out of shape or some terrible combination of both when I'm sore the morning after a four-year-old soccer practice. Pitiful.
*Tonight, in an odd corner of the universe known to some as the National Invitational (basketball) Tournament, two light-blue-shod teams collide with Rams as mascot.
UNC plays Rhode Island for the chance to advance to the NIT final. I think Carolina has finally figured out that they actually want to win, so I'll pick them tonight to advance to the championship game. But redemption only truly happens if they win the NIT and Dook loses to West Virginia.
*Speaking of the real tournament, I thought Kentucky was going to sail along. But it's anyone's tournament to win now--which, alas, includes a very not-great Dook team.
I'll pick WVU to win it all, and encourage the Morgantown police to buckle down for a moonshine-laden frenzy in the aftermath...WVU students are somewhat famous for being rather ill-mannered in the wake of important victories.
*Sunday we were visiting the Chapel Hill Bible Church and Nat Stine, the music director, encouraged us to consider the important role of the crowds during Holy Week. Palm Sunday, they worship. Good Friday, they shout for Jesus' death.
In one instance, the people rightfully worship the king of Glory. In another, they shout for the Innocent One to be condemned--they betray everything. I find myself uncomfortably familiar with both those voices.
*Okay, so today I had to mail something. I found a postage stamp that smacked of Christmas (the gingerbread man was a dead give-away) but I had no idea if the 44-cent stamp was anywhere near what it actually costs to mail something these days.
I put two stamps on, and inwardly cursed the U.S. postal system. These guys have to have their days numbered if a college-educated adult cannot remember what it costs to send a letter.
*Tonight was week two of practice for my six-year-old and my four-year-old's soccer teams, the Green Ghosts (formerly "the Green Fire") and the Bullfrogs, respectively. I coach the under-four Bullfrogs, which should be re-named "the cats" since running a practice feels a whole lot like herding them.
But I'm the one with real problems. You know that I'm either getting old or way out of shape or some terrible combination of both when I'm sore the morning after a four-year-old soccer practice. Pitiful.
*Tonight, in an odd corner of the universe known to some as the National Invitational (basketball) Tournament, two light-blue-shod teams collide with Rams as mascot.
UNC plays Rhode Island for the chance to advance to the NIT final. I think Carolina has finally figured out that they actually want to win, so I'll pick them tonight to advance to the championship game. But redemption only truly happens if they win the NIT and Dook loses to West Virginia.
*Speaking of the real tournament, I thought Kentucky was going to sail along. But it's anyone's tournament to win now--which, alas, includes a very not-great Dook team.
I'll pick WVU to win it all, and encourage the Morgantown police to buckle down for a moonshine-laden frenzy in the aftermath...WVU students are somewhat famous for being rather ill-mannered in the wake of important victories.
*Sunday we were visiting the Chapel Hill Bible Church and Nat Stine, the music director, encouraged us to consider the important role of the crowds during Holy Week. Palm Sunday, they worship. Good Friday, they shout for Jesus' death.
In one instance, the people rightfully worship the king of Glory. In another, they shout for the Innocent One to be condemned--they betray everything. I find myself uncomfortably familiar with both those voices.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Why Your Marriage is So Stinkin Hard...and What Easter Has to Do With It
Over the past week or so I've had at least a half-dozen conversations regarding marriage--why it's so hard and what might be done about it.
We all get married because we think that the person we're marrying is compatible with us, because we love them (or at least we think that we love them) and because the person generally makes us happy--it seems like it's a good match.
But then something remarkable happens a year or two or three into the marriage: the person who seemed like such a perfect match back then is suddenly plucking your last nerve. They have issues. And maybe you do, but theirs are (of course) much, much worse.
And before you know it, the person you were dying to spend the rest of your life with just a couple of years earlier is now a distant stranger who makes you crazy.
One thing that my wife and I have noted in ourselves and in many of our friends and "counseling" situations that we've faced is the principle of "baggage fit." That is, God seems to put together couples who's "baggage" (be that family history, personal insecurities, poor relational habits, or other stuff) hits at exactly the wrong (or right) place.
For example, the person who runs from conflict finds herself somehow married to a man who's willing and eager (perhaps over-eager) to engage in conflict. The man who comes from a work-aholic family finds himself married to a woman who is unafraid to make her emotional needs known and refuses to roll over to his over-commitments at work.
Gary Thomas writes in his book "Sacred Marriage" that no one gets married thinking that they're doing it for the purposes of sanctification--that is, no one thinks that primary purpose of marriage is to make us more holy, to transform us.
But that's exactly what God is up to with all of this. The intimacy of marriage un-earths all our junk. We want to blame it on the other person, and they're certainly a sinner just like us. But that's not the primary issue. The primary issue is us.
We have three options: 1. we can run away (ultimately leading to divorce), 2. we can pretend there's nothing wrong and/or shut down emotionally because it's too hard but stay in the marriage itself (the emotionally vacant marriage) or 3. we can lean into the hard stuff, turn towards the other person and not away, and dig into our fears and sin and brokenness and fight and seek and ask the Lord to heal us.
That last option is, of course the hardest one. But for most of us that's the path that God's called us to. In fact, that's the reason why he had us get married to the person in the first place.
Thomas writes that for those of us who are Christ-followers, the least helpful question is the question "have I made a mistake in marrying this person?" In all but the most extreme (i.e. abusive) situations, that question leads into infinite pointless speculation rather than helping us to deal with the real issues.
Marriage is hard. I'm never shocked when I hear divorce statistics. In fact, I'm regularly surprised by how many stick with it--particularly without some sort of prior God-commitment to the sanctity of the thing.
But if we let it, marriage can be the most significant crucible for our spiritual formation--and there's no doubt that it's painful at times. And in this, of course, we are following Christ. He invites us not to hop in his Hummer and go for a smooth ride over the rocky terrain of our lives. Rather, he calls us to take up our cross and follow him.
Death is the only way to life--this is the Easter story, it is to be our story as well.
And it seems to be the most important mark of any healthy marriage...at least the ones that I know of, anyway.
We all get married because we think that the person we're marrying is compatible with us, because we love them (or at least we think that we love them) and because the person generally makes us happy--it seems like it's a good match.
But then something remarkable happens a year or two or three into the marriage: the person who seemed like such a perfect match back then is suddenly plucking your last nerve. They have issues. And maybe you do, but theirs are (of course) much, much worse.
And before you know it, the person you were dying to spend the rest of your life with just a couple of years earlier is now a distant stranger who makes you crazy.
One thing that my wife and I have noted in ourselves and in many of our friends and "counseling" situations that we've faced is the principle of "baggage fit." That is, God seems to put together couples who's "baggage" (be that family history, personal insecurities, poor relational habits, or other stuff) hits at exactly the wrong (or right) place.
For example, the person who runs from conflict finds herself somehow married to a man who's willing and eager (perhaps over-eager) to engage in conflict. The man who comes from a work-aholic family finds himself married to a woman who is unafraid to make her emotional needs known and refuses to roll over to his over-commitments at work.
Gary Thomas writes in his book "Sacred Marriage" that no one gets married thinking that they're doing it for the purposes of sanctification--that is, no one thinks that primary purpose of marriage is to make us more holy, to transform us.
But that's exactly what God is up to with all of this. The intimacy of marriage un-earths all our junk. We want to blame it on the other person, and they're certainly a sinner just like us. But that's not the primary issue. The primary issue is us.
We have three options: 1. we can run away (ultimately leading to divorce), 2. we can pretend there's nothing wrong and/or shut down emotionally because it's too hard but stay in the marriage itself (the emotionally vacant marriage) or 3. we can lean into the hard stuff, turn towards the other person and not away, and dig into our fears and sin and brokenness and fight and seek and ask the Lord to heal us.
That last option is, of course the hardest one. But for most of us that's the path that God's called us to. In fact, that's the reason why he had us get married to the person in the first place.
Thomas writes that for those of us who are Christ-followers, the least helpful question is the question "have I made a mistake in marrying this person?" In all but the most extreme (i.e. abusive) situations, that question leads into infinite pointless speculation rather than helping us to deal with the real issues.
Marriage is hard. I'm never shocked when I hear divorce statistics. In fact, I'm regularly surprised by how many stick with it--particularly without some sort of prior God-commitment to the sanctity of the thing.
But if we let it, marriage can be the most significant crucible for our spiritual formation--and there's no doubt that it's painful at times. And in this, of course, we are following Christ. He invites us not to hop in his Hummer and go for a smooth ride over the rocky terrain of our lives. Rather, he calls us to take up our cross and follow him.
Death is the only way to life--this is the Easter story, it is to be our story as well.
And it seems to be the most important mark of any healthy marriage...at least the ones that I know of, anyway.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Easter Bodies Meet Wireless Internet
So if you look at the various post-resurrection stories in the gospels, they're kind of all over the place. They tell different interactions with Jesus, scattered across different circumstances and contexts over the span of a couple of weeks.
But they all insist on a couple of things: first, that the disciples actually saw Jesus and secondly, that it actually was Jesus. Not a ghost. Really him.
Only he passes through walls and appears in rooms. What's up with that? How can the gospel stories insist upon a physical resurrection while at the same time granting these funky, ghost-like qualities?
The issue here is one of reality and solid-ness. I sit here on my couch. My couch and I are similarly real and similarly solid.
But I walk through the newly installed wireless internet signal that's being beamed around my house courtesy of my brother-in-law because the wireless signal, while real, is less real than me or my couch. It is permeable, easily disrupted.
So it is with the risen Christ. He is able to pass through walls not because he is less real and more ghost-like, but because he is so very real that everything that we experience as "solid," even the most solid things that we can imagine, are barely real.
Jesus moving through walls is like an airplane flying through a cloud. It is no big deal. His resurrection body is so incredibly real that everything here on this earth is vapor-thin in comparison.
In C.S. Lewis' "The Great Divorce," the grass is so real that it hurts the feet of the visitors to heaven.
As it was with Jesus, so it will be with us. What we know and experience as reality here is only a shadow of what reality is, reality as we'll finally experience it when all things are made new. What seems real now will be shown for what it really is--passing, fragile, momentary. We will be as He is. Solid. Real. Eternal. I can't wait.
But for now, I'm pretty pumped about my wireless internet. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition with my wife while blogging? Not sure it gets any better than that: "Hey Ty! Move that bus!"
But they all insist on a couple of things: first, that the disciples actually saw Jesus and secondly, that it actually was Jesus. Not a ghost. Really him.
Only he passes through walls and appears in rooms. What's up with that? How can the gospel stories insist upon a physical resurrection while at the same time granting these funky, ghost-like qualities?
The issue here is one of reality and solid-ness. I sit here on my couch. My couch and I are similarly real and similarly solid.
But I walk through the newly installed wireless internet signal that's being beamed around my house courtesy of my brother-in-law because the wireless signal, while real, is less real than me or my couch. It is permeable, easily disrupted.
So it is with the risen Christ. He is able to pass through walls not because he is less real and more ghost-like, but because he is so very real that everything that we experience as "solid," even the most solid things that we can imagine, are barely real.
Jesus moving through walls is like an airplane flying through a cloud. It is no big deal. His resurrection body is so incredibly real that everything here on this earth is vapor-thin in comparison.
In C.S. Lewis' "The Great Divorce," the grass is so real that it hurts the feet of the visitors to heaven.
As it was with Jesus, so it will be with us. What we know and experience as reality here is only a shadow of what reality is, reality as we'll finally experience it when all things are made new. What seems real now will be shown for what it really is--passing, fragile, momentary. We will be as He is. Solid. Real. Eternal. I can't wait.
But for now, I'm pretty pumped about my wireless internet. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition with my wife while blogging? Not sure it gets any better than that: "Hey Ty! Move that bus!"
Friday, April 10, 2009
McWorld Expediency v. Good Friday
Just got home from a spectacularly thoughtful Good Friday service at church. Reflecting on the brutality and pain of the cross often makes me think about Jesus' other, much more expedient option to do what he came to do.
If Jesus' mission in one sense could be described as taking back what was his by virtue of creation but had been handed over to evil by virtue of our rebellion, then the cross wasn't the only way he could have accomplished his mission.
In Luke 4, Jesus is wrestling with Satan. He has been fasting for forty days. He is hungry and tired and weak. And Satan comes at him with a very interesting proposition:
But in another sense, the offer was true. The kingdoms were his to give. And here we have the expedient way, the quick way to take back what was rightfully Jesus'. No cross. No pain. No torture. No abandonment. Just a pain-free worship experience.
But Jesus would have none of it: Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.'"
And there the road forks. He had the opportunity for a short-cut, a quicker, neater, painless way to accomplish his appointed ends. He chose instead the way of submission to his Father's will. That submission led him to the pain and agony of "Good" Friday.
Obedience sometimes takes us past what seems to us to be the obvious way to accomplish what needs to be done. Sometimes what seems to be the obvious and quick answer isn't the way that of our Father. Submission to God might lead us to dying a really hard death of a dream or a goal or a hope or a plan...or maybe hundreds of small deaths.
American culture has produced the vast empire that is the fast-food industry. It is built on the cultural values of expediency and convenience and painless-ness. Jesus, instead, invites us into a long obedience in the same direction that leads us to places we would rather not go. He goes there before us and he invites us to follow him into it.
We do not enter into and embrace this pain and these deaths for the sheer "value" of pain. Pain in and of itself springs from the fall and it has no value, one day (praise God) it will be no more.
Instead, we enter into the pain and the deaths as God directs us in step with Jesus, who has not only walked this way before us but has also already redeemed this way. There is joy set before him as he endures the cross. It is the true again-making of all things, the power and authority to take back all that is rightfully his so that one day it will all be made new, right, whole again.
And so there is also joy set before us. But there is no short-cut to true joy. True joy requires that we go the way of the cross. There is no other path--not for Jesus, not for us.
If Jesus' mission in one sense could be described as taking back what was his by virtue of creation but had been handed over to evil by virtue of our rebellion, then the cross wasn't the only way he could have accomplished his mission.
In Luke 4, Jesus is wrestling with Satan. He has been fasting for forty days. He is hungry and tired and weak. And Satan comes at him with a very interesting proposition:
The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, "I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. If you worship me, it will all be yours."Now in one sense, of course, it was a lie, like all of Satan's words are lies. If Jesus had indeed worshiped there, the resulting anarchy and chaos would have been so incredibly destructive that the earth as we know it just might have ceased to exist.
But in another sense, the offer was true. The kingdoms were his to give. And here we have the expedient way, the quick way to take back what was rightfully Jesus'. No cross. No pain. No torture. No abandonment. Just a pain-free worship experience.
But Jesus would have none of it: Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.'"
And there the road forks. He had the opportunity for a short-cut, a quicker, neater, painless way to accomplish his appointed ends. He chose instead the way of submission to his Father's will. That submission led him to the pain and agony of "Good" Friday.
Obedience sometimes takes us past what seems to us to be the obvious way to accomplish what needs to be done. Sometimes what seems to be the obvious and quick answer isn't the way that of our Father. Submission to God might lead us to dying a really hard death of a dream or a goal or a hope or a plan...or maybe hundreds of small deaths.
American culture has produced the vast empire that is the fast-food industry. It is built on the cultural values of expediency and convenience and painless-ness. Jesus, instead, invites us into a long obedience in the same direction that leads us to places we would rather not go. He goes there before us and he invites us to follow him into it.
We do not enter into and embrace this pain and these deaths for the sheer "value" of pain. Pain in and of itself springs from the fall and it has no value, one day (praise God) it will be no more.
Instead, we enter into the pain and the deaths as God directs us in step with Jesus, who has not only walked this way before us but has also already redeemed this way. There is joy set before him as he endures the cross. It is the true again-making of all things, the power and authority to take back all that is rightfully his so that one day it will all be made new, right, whole again.
And so there is also joy set before us. But there is no short-cut to true joy. True joy requires that we go the way of the cross. There is no other path--not for Jesus, not for us.
Thursday, April 09, 2009
Pesky Fathers, Duplicitous Crowds, & A Plea for Naming Saturday
So I've never done anything for Lent. Part of this is I didn't grow up in a church tradition that talked much about it. After just a couple of years in a crazy Anglican church where they actually follow the church calendar, I'm still trying to figure out what to do with it, how to enter into it.
Lent always sneaks up on me and I find myself frantically trying to figure out what I should give up. It feels like I'm just grasping at straws. So eventually what I give up is Lent itself. Giving up Lent for Lent--not exactly what those pesky church fathers had in mind, I don't think.
It's not that I don't find value in fasting and introspection and all that. It's not Lent's fault that I can't figure out how to find my groove with it. I'm just still growing up into it.
Palm Sunday, the Sunday before Easter when Jesus enters into Jerusalem to shouts of "Hosanna!" from the thronging crowd, also befuddles me. I cannot suspend my knowledge of the duplicity of this same crowd that will yell "Crucify!" in just a few days in order to celebrate this entry as all that triumphal.
Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and Easter Sunday all have rich and powerful histories of celebration, mourning, remembrance, meditation, contemplation...and ultimately the joy and relief and wonder of Easter morning itself.
Of course, like Christmas and many other annual celebrations, there are some years when I deeply resonate with the season and fully enter in: heart, mind, body, soul, and spirit. And there are years when I wake up the Monday after Easter and feel like I missed the whole thing. Maybe if I figured out this Lent thing I'd have fewer of those Mondays-after.
But there's one day that's sort of a hole in this entire celebration that year in and year out I almost never fail to resonate with: Easter Saturday. It is the day in between loss and redemption. It is a day of waiting. It is a day of dreams deferred and confusion and hiding and wandering aimlessly. It is a day for seeking solace in friends. It is a day to be alone with your thoughts.
But mostly it's waiting--what's next? What now? Is everything over?
Easter Saturday, this waiting, wondering, longing, hurting day...this day almost never fails to resonate with me. Easter Saturday never fails to capture me.
I think Easter Saturday is the day that is most universal. Easter Saturday is where we live most of our lives. It's the day in between the pain inflicted and the promised healing, fully realized. It's the space in between the already and the not yet that so marks our experience as Christians.
I think most of us spend most of our lives in Easter Saturday's waiting, hoping, wondering if God will show up, trying to figure out what God's doing in the messes and mixed bags that we call our lives.
And so I'm pleading for a real name for Easter Saturday: Silent Saturday, Waiting Saturday...something, I'm happy to take nominations from the floor. It's too significant a day to miss out on. There's opportunity to enter into Easter from a fresh angle here. Or at least, it feels that way to me.
In the mean time, I'd also take nominations from the floor on what to give for Lent '10. Maybe if I start thinking about it now, I'll finally be in a place to get my Lenten groove on next time around.
You may or may not want to cover your eyes.
Lent always sneaks up on me and I find myself frantically trying to figure out what I should give up. It feels like I'm just grasping at straws. So eventually what I give up is Lent itself. Giving up Lent for Lent--not exactly what those pesky church fathers had in mind, I don't think.
It's not that I don't find value in fasting and introspection and all that. It's not Lent's fault that I can't figure out how to find my groove with it. I'm just still growing up into it.
Palm Sunday, the Sunday before Easter when Jesus enters into Jerusalem to shouts of "Hosanna!" from the thronging crowd, also befuddles me. I cannot suspend my knowledge of the duplicity of this same crowd that will yell "Crucify!" in just a few days in order to celebrate this entry as all that triumphal.
Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and Easter Sunday all have rich and powerful histories of celebration, mourning, remembrance, meditation, contemplation...and ultimately the joy and relief and wonder of Easter morning itself.
Of course, like Christmas and many other annual celebrations, there are some years when I deeply resonate with the season and fully enter in: heart, mind, body, soul, and spirit. And there are years when I wake up the Monday after Easter and feel like I missed the whole thing. Maybe if I figured out this Lent thing I'd have fewer of those Mondays-after.
But there's one day that's sort of a hole in this entire celebration that year in and year out I almost never fail to resonate with: Easter Saturday. It is the day in between loss and redemption. It is a day of waiting. It is a day of dreams deferred and confusion and hiding and wandering aimlessly. It is a day for seeking solace in friends. It is a day to be alone with your thoughts.
But mostly it's waiting--what's next? What now? Is everything over?
Easter Saturday, this waiting, wondering, longing, hurting day...this day almost never fails to resonate with me. Easter Saturday never fails to capture me.
I think Easter Saturday is the day that is most universal. Easter Saturday is where we live most of our lives. It's the day in between the pain inflicted and the promised healing, fully realized. It's the space in between the already and the not yet that so marks our experience as Christians.
I think most of us spend most of our lives in Easter Saturday's waiting, hoping, wondering if God will show up, trying to figure out what God's doing in the messes and mixed bags that we call our lives.
And so I'm pleading for a real name for Easter Saturday: Silent Saturday, Waiting Saturday...something, I'm happy to take nominations from the floor. It's too significant a day to miss out on. There's opportunity to enter into Easter from a fresh angle here. Or at least, it feels that way to me.
In the mean time, I'd also take nominations from the floor on what to give for Lent '10. Maybe if I start thinking about it now, I'll finally be in a place to get my Lenten groove on next time around.
You may or may not want to cover your eyes.
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Achan Over Justice
Joshua 7 is one of those passages that I wish wasn't in the Bible. In brief: the Israelites conquer Jericho and are instructed to give to God all of the spoils. They were to keep none of the articles of gold or silver or anything of value for themselves.
Achan doesn't listen. He keeps some gold and silver for himself. So the next battle that the Israelites take on they get routed and about 35 of their men are killed. God tells Joshua that there's sin in the camp. Eventually they find out that it's Achan, and they stone him and all his family--women and children.
Yuck.
Monday I told God that this was a hard passage for me. I told him I didn't really like it, and asked him to help me with the image of my wife and kids getting stoned (a nasty way to die) by God's orders on account of my sin.
Tuesday, I went back to the same story and realized that my problem with the passage was due at least in some part because of my own problem: I don't take sin very seriously.
See, my assumption with sin is that it is there to be excused, forgiven, winked at, shrugged off, disposed of quickly and easily and painlessly. My assumption is that sin is not a big a deal.
My presumption upon God, therefore, is that he is there to dismiss sin, ignore it, clean up the mess and not allow us to deal with the consequences or reality of it.
But the reality is that sin is death. It is corrosive, destructive, vile. Sin is not something to take lightly, dismiss, laugh off or pretend that it never happened.
Sin is a cancer on the beauty of humanity, a plague, a parasite, a tyrant, a despot that destroys people and relationships and families and governments and churches and communities and cultures and ultimately, if left un-checked, would collapse in on itself and consume all the world.
I want Achan to be let off the hook easily because I want to be let off the hook easily. But Easter will not let me do that. Good Friday will not let me skim over the depths and the horror and the seriousness of my sin.
And so I need Achan today. I need Achan to teach me new and holy appetites. My sin is not to be ignored or excused or shrugged off--I must learn to hate the thing that would hijack my life and destroy me, body and soul.
And I'm tentatively praying a new prayer this week: to see sin for what it truly is. I'm afraid of what that might mean, what I might see in my own heart as well as what I might have to see in the world around me. But I think my response to Achan is showing me that I need a bit of a reality check as to the true nature of sin.
I must learn to embrace the hard-earned forgiveness offered to me in Christ without arrogant presumption that "of course" God would die a bloody tortured death for me. My sin puts my Maker on a wooden beam with nails in his hands. Good Friday is when Jesus becomes Achan for me.
This doesn't quiet all my internal objections to Achan and his family and the judgment passed on them. I love mercy. I fear justice. I don't always understand how God is both just and merciful.
But for today, I can embrace the lesson of my tendency to downplay my sin and my need to repent of it. And I pray that God might use this repentance to lead me more fully and deeply into the wonder and mystery and power and awe of Easter.
Achan doesn't listen. He keeps some gold and silver for himself. So the next battle that the Israelites take on they get routed and about 35 of their men are killed. God tells Joshua that there's sin in the camp. Eventually they find out that it's Achan, and they stone him and all his family--women and children.
Yuck.
Monday I told God that this was a hard passage for me. I told him I didn't really like it, and asked him to help me with the image of my wife and kids getting stoned (a nasty way to die) by God's orders on account of my sin.
Tuesday, I went back to the same story and realized that my problem with the passage was due at least in some part because of my own problem: I don't take sin very seriously.
See, my assumption with sin is that it is there to be excused, forgiven, winked at, shrugged off, disposed of quickly and easily and painlessly. My assumption is that sin is not a big a deal.
My presumption upon God, therefore, is that he is there to dismiss sin, ignore it, clean up the mess and not allow us to deal with the consequences or reality of it.
But the reality is that sin is death. It is corrosive, destructive, vile. Sin is not something to take lightly, dismiss, laugh off or pretend that it never happened.
Sin is a cancer on the beauty of humanity, a plague, a parasite, a tyrant, a despot that destroys people and relationships and families and governments and churches and communities and cultures and ultimately, if left un-checked, would collapse in on itself and consume all the world.
I want Achan to be let off the hook easily because I want to be let off the hook easily. But Easter will not let me do that. Good Friday will not let me skim over the depths and the horror and the seriousness of my sin.
And so I need Achan today. I need Achan to teach me new and holy appetites. My sin is not to be ignored or excused or shrugged off--I must learn to hate the thing that would hijack my life and destroy me, body and soul.
And I'm tentatively praying a new prayer this week: to see sin for what it truly is. I'm afraid of what that might mean, what I might see in my own heart as well as what I might have to see in the world around me. But I think my response to Achan is showing me that I need a bit of a reality check as to the true nature of sin.
I must learn to embrace the hard-earned forgiveness offered to me in Christ without arrogant presumption that "of course" God would die a bloody tortured death for me. My sin puts my Maker on a wooden beam with nails in his hands. Good Friday is when Jesus becomes Achan for me.
This doesn't quiet all my internal objections to Achan and his family and the judgment passed on them. I love mercy. I fear justice. I don't always understand how God is both just and merciful.
But for today, I can embrace the lesson of my tendency to downplay my sin and my need to repent of it. And I pray that God might use this repentance to lead me more fully and deeply into the wonder and mystery and power and awe of Easter.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Easter P.S.
Something from my pastor Steve Breedlove's sermon yesterday that was really cool:
"The early church fathers called Jesus' struggle in the Garden of Gethesemane 'the garden of obedience.' And they did this as a deliberate contrast to the first garden, and the first Adam, who faced a similarly significant decision but who chose disobedience."
Two gardens. Two Adams. One the cause of all the misery in the world. The second the hope of all peoples everywhere.
"The early church fathers called Jesus' struggle in the Garden of Gethesemane 'the garden of obedience.' And they did this as a deliberate contrast to the first garden, and the first Adam, who faced a similarly significant decision but who chose disobedience."
Two gardens. Two Adams. One the cause of all the misery in the world. The second the hope of all peoples everywhere.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Believing
As we head into Easter week, there's one thing that the gospel writer John wants to make abundantly clear: seeing is not believing.
In John 11, the gospel writer John records a tremendous story: Jesus raises a friend who's been dead for many days back to life. Astounding! I would like to think that if I had been there with my peeps, even if we were skeptical to that point about Jesus, we would have come to our senses and realized that this guy was the real deal--or at least worth taking somewhat seriously.
But here's what John says about the aftermath of the raising up of Lazarus:
Hillary haters, perhaps you could chime in here and give some insight. Ya'll can get pretty intense.
So here's the deal as we head into Easter week: seeing is not believing. In fact, it is possible for us to become so deeply entrenched in cynicism and skepticism that we dig a hole and harden our hearts and miss the wonder of simple miracles in front of us...even to the point of missing the point of a dead guy being raised from the dead. To decide ahead of time to not believe is to not believe, no matter what the evidence.
St. Augustine talked about a posture of "faith seeking understanding." I think that this is critical to enter into any true mystery of faith. If we lead with skepticism, doubt, or even reason, we will find a way to explain away just about anything we find. If we can move forward into Easter by faith, even just the slightest bit, I believe that God rewards that, blesses that.
This is not to say that we chuck our minds or stop thinking. It's just that we've been taught that skepticism and doubt is a better way to approach the world than faith and belief is. I agree with Tim Keller who invites us to "be skeptical of our skepticism." What if skepticism is simply a poor or the wrong set of glasses to view reality through? What if nothing truly wonderful can be apprehended that way?
P.S:For those of you not in the Triangle area who aren't inundated with news about the Eve Carson shooting from last week, there's good news: they've made two arrests. Pray for students as they return this week from spring break and continue to process this stuff, would you?
In John 11, the gospel writer John records a tremendous story: Jesus raises a friend who's been dead for many days back to life. Astounding! I would like to think that if I had been there with my peeps, even if we were skeptical to that point about Jesus, we would have come to our senses and realized that this guy was the real deal--or at least worth taking somewhat seriously.
But here's what John says about the aftermath of the raising up of Lazarus:
45 Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, put their faith in him. 46 But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.Just to clarify: these folks went to the religious leaders (the Pharisees) not to pass along good news. They went to tell them that Jesus was gaining more and more followers. That things were getting more and more rowdy. They were tattling, not testifying. In John's telling of the Jesus story, this is the last straw. The religious leaders set out to kill him from the point of Jesus raising a dead person back to life. Pause and consider that for a moment--how deeply would you have to be set against a person to want to put them to death after they've raised someone back to life from the dead?
Hillary haters, perhaps you could chime in here and give some insight. Ya'll can get pretty intense.
So here's the deal as we head into Easter week: seeing is not believing. In fact, it is possible for us to become so deeply entrenched in cynicism and skepticism that we dig a hole and harden our hearts and miss the wonder of simple miracles in front of us...even to the point of missing the point of a dead guy being raised from the dead. To decide ahead of time to not believe is to not believe, no matter what the evidence.
St. Augustine talked about a posture of "faith seeking understanding." I think that this is critical to enter into any true mystery of faith. If we lead with skepticism, doubt, or even reason, we will find a way to explain away just about anything we find. If we can move forward into Easter by faith, even just the slightest bit, I believe that God rewards that, blesses that.
This is not to say that we chuck our minds or stop thinking. It's just that we've been taught that skepticism and doubt is a better way to approach the world than faith and belief is. I agree with Tim Keller who invites us to "be skeptical of our skepticism." What if skepticism is simply a poor or the wrong set of glasses to view reality through? What if nothing truly wonderful can be apprehended that way?
P.S:For those of you not in the Triangle area who aren't inundated with news about the Eve Carson shooting from last week, there's good news: they've made two arrests. Pray for students as they return this week from spring break and continue to process this stuff, would you?
Sunday, April 08, 2007
Nobody Knows What to Do with Resurrection
So I heard about a recent survey where 75% of people who do not call themselves Christians believe in the resurrection. That is, they believe that Jesus bodily rose from the grave but they apparently give it little weight in terms of how they live their lives or where they place their worship.
As an aside, I think that this is the death-knell of much mainline, theologically liberal "Christianity" that capitulated throughout the 20th century to the demands of modernity which insisted that miracles (the immaculate conception and the resurrection chief among them) could not have happened.
I was talking with my brother on Friday. He was preparing for the Easter sermon for his church in Philly. He was talking about how he came to realize at one point in his life that he had a basic Christian framework where the resurrection was pretty much useless. Not that it was bad, it just didn't matter very much in his scheme of the Chrisitian life that Jesus had risen from the grave. Somehow, that didn't quite match up with the Biblical writers, so he began to re-evaluate his framework. His operating assumption was that this was true for most Christians, so he was going to try to help folks understand the significance of the power of the resurrection.
As an aside, as he described his previous theological framework that somehow had the resurrection MIA, I pondered that I, too, might have an under-developed appreciation for the significance of the resurrection.
So basically there are non-Christians who don't know what to do with the resurrection and there are Christians who don't know what to do with the resurrection--alas, even including yours truly. I'll emplore my brother to post in the "comments" section some of his thoughts from the sermon he gave this morning, but in the mean time I think it's worth asking: anyone out there know what to do with the resurrection--I mean, besides eat ham after hearing about it at church?
As an aside, I think that this is the death-knell of much mainline, theologically liberal "Christianity" that capitulated throughout the 20th century to the demands of modernity which insisted that miracles (the immaculate conception and the resurrection chief among them) could not have happened.
I was talking with my brother on Friday. He was preparing for the Easter sermon for his church in Philly. He was talking about how he came to realize at one point in his life that he had a basic Christian framework where the resurrection was pretty much useless. Not that it was bad, it just didn't matter very much in his scheme of the Chrisitian life that Jesus had risen from the grave. Somehow, that didn't quite match up with the Biblical writers, so he began to re-evaluate his framework. His operating assumption was that this was true for most Christians, so he was going to try to help folks understand the significance of the power of the resurrection.
As an aside, as he described his previous theological framework that somehow had the resurrection MIA, I pondered that I, too, might have an under-developed appreciation for the significance of the resurrection.
So basically there are non-Christians who don't know what to do with the resurrection and there are Christians who don't know what to do with the resurrection--alas, even including yours truly. I'll emplore my brother to post in the "comments" section some of his thoughts from the sermon he gave this morning, but in the mean time I think it's worth asking: anyone out there know what to do with the resurrection--I mean, besides eat ham after hearing about it at church?
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