Eastertide #4

Peace be with you

(John 20:26)

That’s what our resurrected Lord said when he appeared: “Peace be with you” to the ten assembled in the upper room. Or again, eight days later, when doubting Thomas finally gathered with the gathered: “Peace be with you” (Jn 20:19&26).

That’s how the Gospel Story begins: “Peace on earth…” (Lk 2:14). At the Last Supper, Jesus spoke of this peace: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives” (Jn 14:27).

This peace that Jesus gives has to do with Calvary: “Jesus is our peace; breaking down hostility between us through the cross” (Eph 2:14-18). Strange juxtaposition… The Roman Cross, the instrument of PAX ROMANA, “Roman Peace”; and, Calvary’s Cross where violence spent itself leaving a different, not of this world, kind of peace. Calvary’s peace is “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding” (Phil 4:7). That’s why the gospel we preach is called “the gospel of peace” (Eph 6:15).

Much Eastertide lingering could go on here. Is there ever a time a Christian should take to violence? The Apostle says there remains a place, in this fallen world, for Caesar’s Sword (Ro 13). If we do take up the sword, it’s always Caesar’s sword, not Christ’s. No one enters the kingdom of God by the sword. We enter through “the gospel of peace.”

Eastertide #3

It is I myself

(Luke 24:39)

“Peace be with you!” said our resurrected Lord to the ten disciples huddled in the upper room. But they figured it must be a ghost. Jesus assures them, he’s no ghost: “Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself.” And then for a little show and tell, Jesus asks if they have anything to eat. The disciples come up with “a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence” (Luke 24:36-43). Ghosts can’t do that. They’re not real enough to eat.

Something similar happened to a couple making their way back home from Jerusalem where they had witnessed the events of Calvary. Jesus doesn’t let on who he is—he has some fun with them. When they sit down and break bread together, they recognize that it’s Jesus.

Sometime later, back up on the Sea of Galilee, the fisherman disciples go back to work. Things aren’t going well. Jesus appears on shore. He notices they are discouraged and yells out to them, “Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find fish.” Sure enough, all sorts of fish—153 large fish gathered in the net. As the disciples pull the heavy load of fish to shore where Jesus was, “the net did not tear (schizō)” (Jn 21:11). Jesus barbequed some fish and said, “Come and have breakfast with me.” John concludes the story by telling us “this was now the third time Jesus appeared to his disciple after he was raised form the dead” (Jn 21:14).

The church has seen in this a picture of how the gospel will bring a net full of all different kinds of people “from every tribe and language and people and nation” to Jesus. And, the net will hold them all—it does not break into various schisms.”

When Peter retells the stories of Easter, he wants us to know that they “ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead” (Ac 10:41). That’s the first thing on the agenda when we all get to heaven: “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb" (Rv 19:9). Ghosts can’t do that. They are not real enough to hold down a meal. When we arrive at that heavenly table, it will be “I myself”—you yourself—us as us—as real as Jesus.

Eastertide #2

God raised Jesus up and allowed him to appear

(Acts 10:40)

Let’s stick with the Christian Calendar through Pentecost. After Easter Morning. Our resurrected Lord lingers among us for a spell. How our resurrected Lord departs and what he leaves behind are the next big events on the Christian Calendar—events that, without the Calendar, we might miss; or, in other ways, overlook. So let’s see it through till Pentecost.

On Easter Morning, Jesus’ tomb is found empty. No one questions that. It’s a historical fact that no one disputes. What is disputed, is how Jesus’ tomb became empty. Soldiers guarding the tomb say, “Jesus’ disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.” Then Matthew adds: “And this story is still told to this day.” We live “to this day,” with two stories about how the tomb was found empty: 1) someone must have taken away his body; or, 2) he rose from the dead—or, as is most often said, “God raised him from the dead” (Ac 3:15); or more fully, “God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear” (Ac 10:40).

One can provided good arguments for why ours is the true story—like why would the disciples give their lives for a hoax? There can be no doubt they really believed it; and, that this belief came from the appearance of the risen Christ among them. “We are witnesses,” as Peter testifies, of how “God raised Jesus on the third day and allowed him to appear …to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead” (Ac 10:40-41).

Easter can’t be contained in a one day celebration. It overflows. There’s a tide to it that floods ashore—that floods over us. Eastertide is a season of fifty days, between Easter Sunday and Pentecost Sunday, when we contemplate what happened when the tomb was found empty and our risen Lord appeared to God’s chosen witnesses. During Eastertide we linger, as our resurrected Lord lingered among us, and contemplate how it can be that Jesus “was put to death for our trespasses and raised to grant us… peace” (Ro 4:25-5:1). As the hymn goes, “Can it be?”

Eastertide #1:

Man of Sorrows

(Isaiah 53:3)

We began our Easter Service singing “Man of Sorrows What a Name.” I cried. Others thought it an odd, even depressing hymn to kickoff Easter Sunday. Why didn’t we sing “Up From the Grave He Arose”? Something more triumphant. Maybe so, but “Man of Sorrows,” a 19^th century hymn, worked for me.

During these first few days of Eastertide, I’ve spent my morning fire time with Isaiah’s Servant Songs. I figured that’s where “Man of Sorrows” must be found. Sure enough, there it was in the fourth Servant Songs: “A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. …Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.”

I’ll have to tell our new worship minister that I like his Easter hymn choice. I have a feeling he may need some encouragement. Easter Morning is not Easter Morning without Good Friday, and Good Friday is not good without Easter Morning. As the third Servant Songs puts it, “He who vindicates me is near.” The Resurrection is God’s vindication of his Good Friday Suffering Servant.

Holy Week: Sunday

After the Sabbath, as the First Day of the Week was Dawning

Matthew 28:1

Early, on the first day of the week, “the women who had come with Jesus from Galilee” make their way back to the tomb with spices they prepared to freshen up the gravesite—like bringing flowers to honor a deceased loved one. To their surprise, they find the stone rolled away and the tomb empty. They were perplexed by it all when a couple of angelic messengers appear and say: “He is not here, He has risen!”

When the women find the disciples gathered together, they tell them what happened early that morning, when they came to freshen up the tomb. “These words seemed to the disciples an idle tale, and they did not believe their story.” But Peter, checks it out and finds that it’s really true. The stone has been rolled away, the tomb is empty, and Jesus is on the loose. He is risen indeed! That changes everything.

It changes Tragic Friday into Good Friday. If Jesus has been raised from the dead, then something unimaginably good took place on Calvary’s Mountain. It means that the cup of suffering Jesus drank to its leaves, had to do with us and creation itself. On Calvary, “God was reconciling the world (kosmos) to himself” (2Cor 5:19). It changes how we see ourselves, how we see others, and how we see the cosmos.

It changes Monday morning from just another day into “The Lord’s Day.” The first day of the week will never be the same. From this day forward, every Sunday is a little Easter. That’s why Christians gather together “after Sabbath, early on the first day of the week when we break bread together” (Ac 20:7 = Mt 28:1). On Saturday, we rest from our labor. Sunday morning we gather to celebrate “the Lord’s Day” (Rv 1:10). When we gather to sing our hymns of wonder and praise, to pray our prayers, to listen to the sacred text and to break bread together; we receive a little resurrection of our own—renewed to go back “to work, knowing that in the Lord our labor is not in vain” (1Cor 15:58). It changes our days.

The cross, that most brutalizing and demeaning apparatuses of execution, changes into a sign and symbol of our “hope of salvation …through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us” (1Thess 5:8-10). On Easter Morning, God says “Yes” to the Cross. What needed to be done on Calvary’s Cross was done. The Resurrection means God says “Yes” to us. That changes everything.

Holy Week: Saturday

He descended into the lower parts of the Earth.

(Ephesians 4:9)

Saturday, Jesus is laid to rest “wrapped in spices and linen cloths.” His work is done. On this Sabbath Day we await the Father’s “Yes” to the Work of his Son. That’s why it’s called “The Great Sabbath.” It’s the Sabbath of all Sabbaths. Like the first Sabbath, when God rested after finishing his creative work; so now, God the Son rest after finishing his Work of a New Creation: “It is finished.”

Like Jesus, we too seek rest from our labor. And, like Jesus, there is always suffering in good honest work. It’s not easy caring for the family, providing a home, putting food on the table. It comes “by the sweet of our brow.” We do our work. Then, on Saturday—the Sabbath, we rest and wait to see what God will make of it.

There’s something else—an announcement only Jesus can make concerning what just happened on Mount Calvary: “He descended into the lower parts of the Earth… to proclaim to the spirits in prison, who formerly did not obey…” (Eph 4:9 & 1Pt 3:19-20). “In this way, the gospel was preached even to the dead that though judged in the flesh, they might live in the spirit” (1Pt 4:6). On this day, Christ’s descent from the highest heaven reaches to the lowest earth—from the highest heights to the deepest depths.

Holy Week: Friday

They took down the Body of Jesus

(John 19:40)

That’s how the day ends. An interesting “they” that took the dead body of Jesus down from the Cross. By surprise, the “they” were a couple of “secret disciples” named Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus who, on this day, both came out of secrecy to openly cared for Jesus’ dead body. Together with those faithful “women who had come with Jesus out of Galilee,” they lug the dead body of Jesus down from the Cross “wrap him in spices with linen cloths, and place him in a tomb.” Meanwhile, the Twelve, are nowhere to be found.

The Bible speaks of this day as “his passion” (Ac 1:3). The passion begins, when religious powers, tipped off by Judas’ kiss, arrest Jesus and put him on trial concerning his treatment of the temple and rather or not he claimed to be their long expected One. During these religious trials, a few folks spot Peter lingering in the courtyard and carry on a littler interrogation of their own: “Surely you are one of his disciples. The way you talk gives you away.” Peter begins to curse and swear, “I do not know the man!” When the cock crowed, Peter “wept bitterly.” While Peter weeps, Judas “repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders” (Mt 27:3).

The religious powers can’t do what only Rome can do, so they hand Jesus over to Pilate, the Roman governor, who alone can do what the religious authorities want done. Before Rome, the charges against Jesus shift to a political nature: “This man forbids paying taxes to Caesar, and claims to be king” (Lk 23:2).  Pilate’s wife, another one of those women who seem to get something real about Jesus, tells her husband that she had a dream that Jesus was an innocent man. Pilate tries to evade his responsibility; but, in the end does what Rome does—sentences him to death by crucifixion.

After mocking and scourging by Pilate’s cohort; Jesus is sent out to carry his cross towards Golgotha. Along the way, Simon of Cyrene, who would later be known by the church in Rome as “the father of Alexander and Rufus” (Mk 15:21), takes upon himself Jesus’ cross and carries it the rest of the way towards Golgotha. (“Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord; and greet his mother—she was a mother to me also” ((Rm 16:13)). It’s a greeting that comes some 25 years later, at the end of Paul’s letter to the Roman church. One gets the feeling Rufus, being the son of Simon, was of renown among believers. Somewhere during Paul’s journeys, Rufus’ mom, Simon’s wife, or maybe widow by this time, ended up taking in the Apostle. That’s too good not to parenthesize; isn’t it?)

We need not go into the brutality of Roman execution—Mel Gibson did that for us in his film The Passion. Enough to say that Jesus participated fully in the horrors of crucifixion—even to the point of forsakenness: “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” How this day turned into “Good Friday” awaits Easter morning. For now, there is nothing “good” about it.

However, there was something different about it. Uncanny things happened: “Behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom” (Mt 27:51). A strange darkness came over Golgotha while “the earth shook, and the rocks split” causing the military captain of the guard to say, “Truly this was the Son of God!” Was this Roman military officer the first to believe?

It will take Easter morning and more to sort it all out—that this execution had to do with us: “He was handed over to death for our trespasses” (Ro 4:25). I don’t suppose we ever, even in eternity, figure out the whole of it—how it is that God died on that Cross. As the hymn goes: “That Thou, my God, should die for me?”

           

Holy Week: Thursday

After Singing a Hymn

(Matthew 26:30)

That’s a good way to end a meal—singing a hymn. I wonder what it would be like to hear Jesus’ voice singing melody along with the voices of the disciples. To this day, followers of Jesus gather at Table and sing hymns of praise, wonder and adoration. What would life be without hymns?

This day is all about the Meal. It starts with preparations for the Passover Meal. When the Supper is ready, Jesus welcomes the disciples by washing their feet. Then, at Table, Jesus breaks some bread, gives thanks (eucharisteō), and gives it to the disciples, saying, “This is my body given for you…” To this day, whenever we break bread, we can’t help but think of that day—of that Table.

It was at this Table that Jesus gave “a new commandment” that we are to love one another just as Jesus has loved us. The Latin word for “commandment” is mandatum from which we get our word “mandate.” That’s how this day gets its Christian Calendar name “Maundy Thursday”—the day when the church celebrates that first Supper when Jesus broke bread and gave a new mandate for all who follow him: “By this commandment (mandatum) everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love (agapē) for one another” (Jn 13). The first generation to gather around the Table to eat and drink and remember, referred to the Meal simply as “the agape” (Jude 1:12).

It was during this Meal, when Peter boasted about how he will “lay down his life for Jesus,” that Jesus predicted that this very night Peter will deny Jesus three times. There can be no boasting of one’s piety at this Table. When Jesus speaks of denial or even betrayal, it is best we reply, like all true disciples, and say, “Lord, is it I?” (Mt 26:25)

Maundy Thursday became one of my favorite church celebrations—a somber gathering. There is something simple and real about it. We stripped the sanctuary of all decorations making it as sparse as possible. Candles took the place of electric lights. Music is unplugged like that night Jesus sang hymns with his disciples. The Table alone is placed on the dais. We take our time singing and reading again the new commandment of our Lord and eating the bread of life and drinking the cup of our salvation. It has a way of cleansing our hearts and freeing us to love one another. Just as Jesus commands.

Holy Week: Wednesday

Judas looked for an opportunity to betray Jesus

(Matthew 26:16)

The night before, while staying at Lazarus house in Bethany, just down the road from Jerusalem; Mary poured out a “very costly ointment on Jesus’ head.” The disciples made a fuss about it, insisting that the ointment could have been sold and the money given to the poor. But Jesus sides with Mary: “She has prepared me for burial. Wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her” (Mt 26:12-13). Isn’t that something?

In the morning, when Jesus returns to the city, the rulers of the temple “gathered and plotted together how to seize Jesus by stealth, and kill him.” They accused him of threatening to destroy the temple: "This fellow said, 'I am able to destroy the temple of God and to build it in three days'” (Mt 26:61). It’s true. Jesus did say that or something very close to that (Jn 2:19). They couldn’t seize Jesus straight up lest the people riot. In order to “seize Jesus by stealth,” they needed an informant, one of Jesus’ own. So, while people gathered to listen to Jesus as he taught from the temple mount, Judas slips out to betray Jesus to the temple rulers for thirty pieces of silver.

What contrast this day of betrayal brings to that night in Bethany when Mary anointed Jesus for burial. Man, in his power, denies and betrays; while the women somehow get it. Mary, along with Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Salome and “the other women who came with Jesus out of Galilee” will remain faithful to the Cross, and to the Tomb, and be the first to encounter our risen Lord—the first to announce the good news that “He is risen!”

Holy Week: Tuesday

Not One Stone Shall be Left upon Another

(Matthew 24:2)

Jesus spends Tuesday “teaching in the temple and preaching the gospel” (Lk 20:1). It’s a big, long, exhausting day. The chief priest and the elders question Jesus’ authority. Herod’s people question Jesus about taxes paid to Caesar. The Sadducees make fun by questioning who’s married to whom when we get to heaven. And the Pharisees test Jesus with the most memorable question of all: “Which is the greatest commandment?” To which, Jesus answers,

You shall love the Lord your God

                        with all your heart and soul, and

                        with all your mind, and strength; and

You shall love your neighbor

                        as yourself.

“On these two commandments,” Jesus concludes, “hangs all of the Law and the Prophets” (Mt 22:40). If you don’t get that right, you won’t get anything right.

By the end of the day, as they head back home exhausted and seeking some rest on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple; the disciples marvel at the massive stones and wonderful temple buildings. Jesus says to them, “Not one stone shall be left upon another.”

From the first day of Holy Week, the temple had been in Jesus’ sights. As the day comes to a close, Jesus tells his disciples that this magnificent temple will be torn down. Its days are over. There will be a new center where God has dealings with his people. Since the days of Solomon, who built the temple nearly a thousand years before Christ; there was always the danger that one could presume that the temple had captured God—that the temple and all its apparatus could manage God’s presence and distribute God’s grace. Jesus brings an end to it. Wherever Jesus is, God is present—Immanuel: “The living stone” (1Pt 2:4).

Holy Week: Monday

We Wish to See Jesus

(John 12:21)

On Monday, the day after Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem, “some Greeks came to Philip and said, ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’” Philip found his hometown buddy Andrew, and together they came and told Jesus about the Greeks who wished to see him. Jesus has other things on his mind: “The hour has come…” Jesus tells them. It’s not as if he ignores those Greeks who wished to see him. It’s just that his hour has come—Christ moment of eternal destiny that has to do with those Greeks who wish to see him.

This hour of destiny is not an easy path: “My soul is troubled. And what should I say—'Father, save me from this hour?’ No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.” When a voice from heaven affirms the hour there’s confusion. The crowd figured it was thunder and others thought maybe an angel. Jesus sorts thing out: 

When I am lifted up from the earth,

      I will draw all people to myself.

The hour had to do with the “kind of death he was to die.” Christ destiny had to do with those Greeks, and with “all people” great and small. Early on, the Samaritans saw Jesus as “the Savior of the world.” Now, the hour has come for Jesus to do what the Savior of all people must do.

As we come to this Hour, the Gospel story moves in slow motion. It takes its time. We are only in John chapter twelve and we won’t get to Easter Morning until chapters twenty and twenty-one. Half of John’s Gospel it taken up with this last week—this Holy Week when troubled Jesus makes his way to Calvary so that God can have dealings with us—with those Greeks, with all people, with the whole wide world, with creation itself.

It’s a strange “lifting up” that draws all people to Calvary. The Cross of shame is lifted up from the earth to become the Cross of God’s salvation.

Holy Week: Sunday

Children Singing Loud Hosannas…

(Matthew 21:15)

Holy Week gets off to a triumphal start. Jesus enters Jerusalem, not on a powerful warhorse as kings and generals do; but rather on a donkey, just as Zechariah prophesied (Zech 9:9=Mt 21:5):

Behold, your king is coming to you,

        humble, and riding on a donkey.

The procession, with folks waving their palm branches and singing their loud hosannas along the way, proceeds to the temple where Jesus goes to work casting out the moneychangers, cleaning house and claiming it for himself. The rulers of the temple thought it was their house—that they could manage God’s presence—that they were in charge of God’s grace. Jesus becomes the new temple—the place where God has dealings with his people. Wherever Christ is present, there is the Holy Place, Immanuel, God with us. As the hymn goes, “For dear to God is the earth Christ trod, no place but is holy ground” (4^th verse of This is My Father’s World).

In Christ, the new temple, God’s grace flows unmanaged to all—even the children. No wonder the temple authorities “sought to destroy him” (vs 18). Jesus is always a threat to those who seek to manage God’s grace. In Christ, God is present and free. Free to even cleanse the temple.

From the cleansed temple mount, the children sing their loud hosannas. Amidst all the chaos and confusion, somehow, the children get it. Jesus is the One who saves. That’s the meaning of the word Hosanna. It comes from Psalm 118 meaning “Save us, ‘O Lord!’” followed by, “We bless you from the house of the Lord.” So, the children sing their hosannas from the cleansed house of the Lord.

That’s my favorite part of Palm Sunday—when the children form a processional through the aisles of the sanctuary waving their palm branches and singing: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” We do well to join the children this morning and sing our loud hosannas.

Lenten Meditation #4

Prepare for You

(Matthew 26:17)

Okay Rachel, I’m back in play. Still recovering from all the activities of your visit. During one of our discussions, you and your delightful friends wondered why your church, like many evangelical churches, doesn’t honor Lenten Season, or the Christian Calendar in general.

We mumbled around about how our Puritan forbearers, throwing all things Roman Catholic to the wind, didn’t even celebrate Christmas or Easter—it’s not in the Bible. Besides, they come from pagan festal celebrations. That’s why Easter jumps around so—something about the first Sunday after the first full moon following the northern spring equinox. It even sounds pagan, doesn’t it?  But, spring… that works doesn’t it? Like Christmas following the winter solstice with each day getting brighter. It’s true, none of it, calendar wise and festal wise, is in the Bible. It’s all very human—very northern hemisphere, very Western Culture.

Which brings us to tradition. Can tradition be good? I think so. We need not give it revelatory status, as if it came from Saini. Like all things human, it can be misused. Our different forms of worshipping our same Triune God vary from people to people, church to church. That’s okay. There’s much diversity of expression in our one Gospel. Maybe our various forms of worship is something like the clothes we wear. There’s the naked us—the naked Gospel; but, in order to go public, it needs to be clothed. Just as we have different fashion, so too, our expressions of worship. We end up wearing the coverings that suit us. Maybe our different forms of worship are something like that.

The church I was raised in and ended up pastoring, was like your church. The fulness of the Christian Calendar came to me later. It had to do with the early days of growing our church. I was bothered by how important my personality was to the life and growth of the church. It was too heavy a burden to bear. While reading Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison, I noticed how he dated his letters from prison by the Christian Calendar—like 4^th week of Lent. In prison, he was living according to a different calendar. So, by and by, the Calendar began to have its way with me. By following it, I felt I was getting the focus off me and my ideas, and onto the big ideas of the Christian Calendar that has its own way of keeping us focused on the fullness of Christ. We gather on Sunday morning, not because Leron has a few ideas about this or that, but because it is the beginning of Holy Week when we celebrate how Jesus enter Jerusalem and made his way to the Temple.