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.

Lenten Meditation #3

Written in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin.
(John 19:20)

Still musing over Irvin Yalom’s When Nietzsche Wept. It’s the kind of novel that lingers. Nietzsche makes much of the ancient Greek poets and philosophers. As opposed to our Christian God of the Cross; Nietzsche opts for Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and dance, emotions and instincts, desire and passion. Nietzsche is not interested in our “Man of Sorrows” (Isa 53:3). He desires Dionysus, a more heroic god.

It caused me to wonder about those Greeks who came to Philip, one of Jesus’ disciples with a good Greek name; and asked him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus” (Jn 12:20-22). Chances are they saw Jesus a few days later hanging on a Roman Cross with a sign written in Hebrew, Greek and Latin: “JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS” (Jn 19:20). Hebrew, the language of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—of the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms. Greek, the language of culture and of the New Testament; and, Latin, the language of Roman rule and power. The sign caused a fuss. It was Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor’s idea. Despite the fuss, Pilate sticks with his Hebrew, Greek and Roman sign. A good decision, since there were Greeks and Romans present at the Cross. What happened on Golgotha was for all people: “every nation, tribe, people and language” (Rv 7:9).

Later on, after Easter and Pentecost, the Apostle Paul will come to certain Greeks gathered on their hill of philosophical discourse located in Athens, the center of such culture and thought. From Golgotha in Jerusalem, to Mar’s Hill in Athens—who would of thought. Quoting from their own poets and philosophers, the Apostle urges them to come to Jesus: “Giving assurance to all by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:31). Something of a fuss followed the message. But the Gospel had its way, and “some became believers including Dionysus…” (vs 34). Dionysus takes his name from Nietzsche’s god. But on this day, Dionysus turns from Nietzsche’s god to the God of Calvary. Tradition has it that Dionysus became pastor of the Athenian church.

Caused me to think, had I Yalom’s intellect and literary gifts; I might write a novel called “When Dionysus Wept.” Not the god of wine and dance, but that Athenian who bore his name. It would be a story about how a Greek philosopher by the name of Dionysus came to see Jesus that day on Mar’s Hill—of all places.

Lenten Meditation #2:

If Possible…

(Philippians 3:10)

For Lent, I’ve been reading When Nietzsche Wept, a novel by Irvin Yalom. It doesn’t stir much morning fire. The story is set in 1882 Vienna when a medical doctor of renown seeks to cure Nietzsche of his sickness of despair. Friedrich Nietzsche, on the verge of becoming a philosopher of renown himself, insist that “despair is the price one pays for self-awareness.” “Look deeply into life,” Professor Nietzsche professes, “and you will always find despair.” For Nietzsche, to claim faith in God, is to chicken out. One must muster the will to face the abyss without God.

There’s something admirable about Nietzsche’s honest and heroic atheism. It causes me to seek such honesty with my own faith in our God of the Gospel—the God of Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Good Friday, Easter Morning, and Pentecost. That brought me back to my Lenten Meditation (Phil 3:10):

That I may know Christ

                  and the power of his resurrection,

      and the fellowship of his sufferings;

becoming like him in his death,

      that if possible I may attain

      the resurrection from the dead.

There’s nothing escapist about such faith. It’s honest and courageous. There’s hope in it—the kind of hope that cures our despair. But this hope is not an idea; nor, is it simply wishful thinking. It does not spring from sentential poems. It’s honest and real. It’s a hope tied to the reality of Immanuel—God with us. God with us in our sufferings, and God with us in our death. And God with us, if possible, in our resurrection from the dead.

“If possible…” Shouldn’t the Apostle come up with something better than “if possible”? Maybe the Apostle’s “if possible” reminds us that it’s not our doing. In death, our doing is over. The next move is wholly God’s doing. We, of ourselves—by the power of our own will, cannot bring about “the resurrection from the dead.” It lays in God’s hands alone. We have faith that it will be so; because, the tomb is empty and the stone has been rolled away, and Christ is on the loose.

Lenten Meditation #1:

The Last Enemy to be Destroyed is Death.

(First Corinthians 15:26)

Haven’t had much to say lately. Still moping around. Maybe Lent will help. Still thinking of the Apostle’s strange words of comfort—especially that last verse (1Cor 15:26):

For Christ must reign

        until he has put all his enemies under his feet.

        The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

That death is an enemy. Maybe that’s the first thing to be said—that the Gospel sees death as an enemy. An enemy that met its end on Good Friday and Easter Morning; but, an enemy that still has its sting (vs 55) until “the last trumpet sound” (vs 52).

During our forty days of Lent, we are invited to enter into “the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings” (Phil 3:10). Here’s the whole of it:

That I may know Christ

        and the power of his resurrection,

        and the fellowship of his sufferings;

becoming like him in his death,

        that if possible I may attain

        the resurrection from the dead.

Remarkable, isn’t it? To know Christ, is to know the whole of him. It’s Easter Morning that makes the whole of Christ worth knowing. Without Easter, we wouldn’t bother. But the whole of Christ, is not just his resurrection, but his sufferings and death as well. If we were to sneak out of his sufferings and death, we wouldn’t know Christ. Lenten Season, with the help of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany, helps us enter into the “fullness of Christ” (Eph 4:13):

      -Advent                 Our longing for God to show up

      -Christmas             Immanuel, God with us in a manager

      -Epiphany              The appearance of God in Christ—Jesus’ earthly life among us

      -Lent                     How he suffered for us

      -Holy Week           How Easter turns Calvary into Good Friday

      -Eastertide             How Christ’s resurrection changes everything

      -Pentecost             How the Holy Spirit makes Christ present among us

      -Ordinary Days     How we live our ordinary life within the sphere of knowing the whole of Christ. The whole of Christ frees us to engage in the whole of life—with all its sorrows and joys. Then, after Ordinary Days, we do it again: Advent and Christmastide, Epiphany and Lent, Good Friday and Easter Morning, Pentecost and Ordinary Days. There’s a rhythm to it.

What Brings Comfort?

Comfort One Another With These Words…

(First Thessalonians 4:18)

We did it all—burial, funeral, luncheons, dinners, remembrances. It was all good—very good. Yet, it still haunts. It hangs over us—Gary died. It’s not just Gary; it’s the pilling up of mortality signals: contemporaries dying as all must die, purchase of our own cemetery plot (close to parents and Kinsers), finishing up our estate trust (such as it is); thinning out, or trying to thin out, our earthly belongings—that sort of thing.

“The dead in Christ shall rise” (1Thess 4:16); those are the words the Apostle tells us will bring comfort. Maybe it’s that word “dead” that messes with our sense of comfort. What does it mean to be “dead in Christ”? Elsewhere, the Apostle speaks again of “those who have died in Christ” (1Cor 15:13-26):

If there is no resurrection of the dead,                            

        then Christ has not been raised;

If Christ has not been raised,

        then your faith has been in vain…

For if the dead are not raised,

        then Christ has not been raised.

If Christ has not been raised,

        your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.

Then those also who have died in Christ

        have perished.

If for this life only we have hoped in Christ,

        we are of all people most to be pitied.

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead,

        the first fruits of those who have died.

For since death came through a human being,

        the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being;

for as all die in Adam,

        so all will be made alive in Christ.

But each in his own order:

        Christ the first fruits,

        then at his coming those who belong to Christ.

Then comes the end,

        when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father,

        after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power.

For Christ must reign

        until he has put all his enemies under his feet.

        The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

Wow! Does that help? Or, is it still too dense and wild to bring comfort? The Gospel is always bigger and more rambunctious than we imagine. It has to do with creation itself, with Adam and with Christ. To be “dead in Christ” means we die within the sphere of Christ’s big Gospel Story:

            Our help is in the name of the Lord,

        who created the heavens and the earth;

and in our Savior, Christ Jesus,

        who abolished death,

and now brings life and immortality to light

        through the Gospel” (Ps 124:8 & 2Tm 1:10).       

That’s it. That’s our hope. That’s our only comfort.