Too Sophisticated for Idolatry? Think Again

Posted on April 18, 2020 by salooper57

Existence is like a river. History is a current. Whenever humans simply go with the flow, the current always carries them to the side of the river where the idols stand. Humanity is inherently idolatrous and idolatry is its besetting sin.

Moderns think of idolatry as something that died a natural death in the early centuries of the common era. Zeus fell on hard times. His children, no longer fed by the worship of the humans, grew emaciated and wasted away to nothing.

Hardly. They merely changed their names. Athena became Education. Ares became Technology. Hermes became Media. Plutus became Economy. Nike – okay, Nike stayed Nike. Humans merely shifted their hopes for success and security from the old gods to the new or, more precisely, to the same gods in different guise.

Idolatry was the great sin on the pages of the Jewish Scriptures, which Christians refer to as the Old Testament. Leading the Ten Commandments (or “Ten Sayings”) is, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Yet, Israel didn’t even wait for the ink to dry on the commandments (or the commandments to be engraved on the tablet) before breaking that first command.

We think that idolatry was not a problem for Christians. It’s a comforting thought but it is an illusion. St. Paul warns the Corinthian church to “flee from idolatry.” St. John ends his famous first letter with the admonition, “Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.” These apostles saw idolatry as a very present danger.

But post-moderns would never fall for (or before) an idol. We are too sophisticated for that. We understand how things work in a way our ancestors did not. They attributed change and progress (and regress) to gods because they did not know physics, biology, economics, or medical science. We, however – or at least our physicists, biologists, and economists – do.

But we’ve done nothing more than update the dress and liturgy of the priests and prophets. We pay attention to them because of their relationship to the gods, as surely as the citizen of Delphi paid attention to Apollo’s oracle.

Take, for example, one of today’s most powerful, most feared, and most worshiped gods: the great Economy. This god’s name is known all over the earth. He has temples in New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, London, and Frankfurt. He has priests serving in the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and around the world.

Economy’s prophets are some of the most influential voices on Capitol Hill (which is not altogether unlike Mount Olympus). Some of these prophets are respected (consider Warren Buffet) and others are dime-a-dozen fortunetellers. They are constantly making forecasts, with a “Thus saith the Lord” intensity that causes their hearers to tremble.

Idolatry has always been detrimental and never more so than now. When economy is deified, that is, when it becomes the idol Economy, two things happen: God is dethroned (in the eyes of the public), and people are dehumanized.

Wherever Economy is worshiped, people become ciphers. What one hears from Economy’s prophets are “the jobless numbers,” the number of new unemployment insurance claims, and “April’s numbers.” Human beings become statistics and their pain becomes irrelevant.

When Economy becomes a god, government is pressed into its service and citizens become its slaves. When this happens, Lincoln’s “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” does indeed “perish from the earth.” Rather than securing the unalienable rights of people, government feeds the insatiable appetite of Economy.

Both those on the political left and the right accept this state of affairs without protest. It was a Democrat who slapped us in the face with the line, “It’s the economy, stupid,” and both parties have operated as if this is holy writ ever since. Idolatry always begins in the hope that the idol will make the worshiper’s life better, but always ends with the worshiper becoming the idol’s slave.

These great powers – Economy, Education, Technology, Media – can be made to serve the true God but cannot replace him. In this time of crisis, Christians must stubbornly refuse to put our hope and trust in the economy or any other idol. Our hope and trust belong with God alone.

Posted in Spiritual life, Theology, Worldview and Culture | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

First Stone in an Avalanche

Posted on April 14, 2020 by salooper57

Is it possible that we have drawn the wrong conclusion – or fail to draw the right conclusion – from the resurrection of Jesus? Has the church substituted a Pagan/Platonic application to the truth of the resurrection for the apostolic one?

If we treat the resurrection primarily as proof that we will live in heaven after we die, we are certainly on the Platonic spectrum. First Stone in an Avalanche examines St. Paul’s response to the Corinthians’ misunderstanding of the meaning of Jesus’s rising. You can: watch (YouTube, skip ahead to 18:46 for the beginning of the sermon) or listen (Lockwood Church website – scroll down to “Listen to Sermons”) or read below – whichever works best for you.

But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. (1 Corinthians 15:20-26)

In the four Gospel accounts of the life and death of Jesus – this surprised me when I first realized it and it surprises me still – no one ever uses the word “resurrection” to describe Jesus’s return from death, neither the Gospel writers nor the people whose conversations they reported. They talk about how Jesus rose from the dead, but they never use the one word you would expect them to use: “resurrection.” It’s almost as if they were avoiding it.

That ought to raise a question in our minds: Why didn’t they use the word “resurrection?” The answer, I think, comes in two parts, the first of which is very straightforward: The Gospel writers did not use the word “resurrection” because the men and women whose story they were telling didn’t use the word. The fact that the writers refrained from using what is arguably the most important word in the vocabulary of the early church speaks volumes about their intention to faithfully recount what had happened.

Some modern scholars think that everything theological in the Gospels – especially everything that points to the deity of Jesus and his status as the Messiah – was invented by the Church and written into the Gospels in an act of historical revisionism. Those scholars believe that the healing miracles, the transfiguration and especially the resurrection never happened. They think the Church fabricated them as a way of elevating Jesus’s status and validating their faith.

Yet here we have the most important thing ever, the climax of all four Gospels and the core tenet of the Christian faith, and none of the writers even once give in to the temptation to describe it as resurrection. This is an overlooked and remarkably important evidence for biblical authenticity.

But that brings us to the second part of the question. Why didn’t the people in the story – Peter, John, the apostles, the women disciples – refer to Jesus’s return from the dead as “resurrection”? The doctrine of the resurrection was profoundly important to most first century Jews. It was a belief for which they were willing to fight. So, why didn’t Jesus’s apostles, the women disciples or even, after the fact, the fidgety chief priests, ever mention it?

I think the answer is once again straightforward, though it might surprise us. In the immediate aftermath of Jesus’s return from death, the disciples didn’t realize he had been resurrected. Now, they did believe Jesus had risen from the dead. The evidence overwhelmingly supports that conclusion. They did not, as some have suggested, think that Jesus lived on in spirit or as a “life force” or as a powerful memory, as people do when they point to their hearts and say of a deceased spouse, “He’s still with me and always will be – right here!”

No, the disciples believed that Jesus died; that he was stone-cold dead, dead as a doornail; dead and buried. And they believed that after three days he came back to life; that he was alive again, walking-talking-eating-drinking-alive! But during those first days, it did not occur to them that Jesus had been resurrected.

That may sound like a contradiction to you; it is not. The disciples had seen three people (that we know of) raised back to life after they had died: the daughter of Jairus, the young man living (and dying) in Nain and, most spectacularly, their friend Lazarus. These people had been dead – stone-cold, dead as a doornail dead – and Jesus had somehow brought them back to life. But the disciples did not think that any of those people had been resurrected. The idea never occurred to them – and it wouldn’t occur to them.

When they heard that Jesus was alive and then saw him for themselves – after having seen him horribly killed – they believed their Master had risen from the dead and were overjoyed. But that did not signify to them that he had been resurrected. In their minds, and in the minds of their contemporaries, resurrection was a different thing altogether. It didn’t happen here or there, to this or that individual. When it happened, it would happen to everyone in the world, and that would be on the last day. Resurrection was the inaugurating event of the age to come.

So even though Jesus rose from the dead and his friends knew it, they didn’t make the connection between his rising and the resurrection. In their minds, when the resurrection happened, everyone who had ever died would be raised from the dead – the righteous to eternal life and the unrighteous to eternal death. It took time and instruction – most importantly from Jesus himself – for the enormity of what had happened in that garden tomb to sink in. Jesus had not only come to life again after being dead, as remarkable as that was; death had been overcome and the resurrection – the coming to life of everyone who had ever died – had begun.

By the time we come to the early chapters of Acts, Jesus’s followers are using the word “resurrection” right and left. What changed? Over the forty-day period following the Passion, Jesus repeatedly met with his disciples and explained to them from the Scriptures what had happened and what it meant. In Luke’s words, “[B]eginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). By the time the events in Acts take place – beginning less than a month-and-a-half later – we find the disciples “proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead” (Acts 4:2).

They now understood that the resurrection – the coming back to life of everyone who had ever died – had commenced. That brought them to the remarkable conclusion that the “last days” had begun and “the renewal of all things” (to use Jesus’s own words) was underway.

Easter celebrations frequently focus on the fact that we will continue to live after we die. As true as that is, it’s important to realize that most people believed that before Jesus rose from the dead. They believed that humans continue to live in some form (as ghosts or spirits or as some amalgamation of life forces) after they die. The resurrection of Jesus signaled something more radical and far-reaching than that.

No one has explained the implications of Jesus’s rising more thoroughly than the apostle Paul. When he first heard people say Jesus was alive, he didn’t believe a word of it. (We assume that people in the first century were gullible and would believe anything. That’s rubbish. They were no more likely to believe that a man three days dead would return to life than we are.) Paul never doubted it was a hoax—until he saw the resurrected Jesus for himself, and that changed everything.

From that time on, Paul could not stop talking and writing about the resurrection. In his biblical letters, Paul used the noun “resurrection” approximately four times as often as he used the noun “forgiveness”.  The verbs related to resurrection and forgiveness are even more out of balance. It is impossible to overstate the importance of the resurrection to Paul. As far as he was concerned, there is no “faith in Jesus” apart from belief in the resurrection.

Paul’s most comprehensive explanation of resurrection comes in 1st Corinthians 15. That entire letter was written around the idea that God is restoring all things, and the resurrection is central to his plan. And when I say “resurrection” I am referring to the resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection of all the rest of us. In Paul’s mind – and in the mind of the early Christians – the two cannot be separated. His resurrection is the guarantee of ours, and ours is the outcome and achievement of his. The bond between them is unbreakable.

Yet some people in Corinth were trying to break that bond. They couldn’t see how sophisticated intellectuals could believe in resurrection. Yes, they believed that God had raised Jesus from the dead, but they denied that the rest of us would be so raised. Death, they believed, unchains people from their weak and corrupt bodies and releases their spirits into the eternal world. To them, the idea that the spirit would be reunited to the body was repulsive.

Now look at 1 Corinthians 15. The central question in this passage comes in verse 12: “But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” These educated Corinthians were affirming that Jesus had been raised but denying the resurrection of the rest of us.

In this chapter, Paul begins with the question of whether the dead are raised, then moves to the question of when the dead are raised, and finally to the question of how the dead are raised. It is a brilliantly organized passage. We don’t have time to look at all of it, so we’ll focus on the relationship between the miracle of Christ’s rising and our own resurrection.

Now remember than some of the Corinthians denied there is a relationship between the two. Paul insists that there is. He carefully avoids speaking about Christ’s resurrection and our resurrection, as if they were two different things. Jesus’s resurrection is a part of the resurrection. Or it might be more accurate to say that the resurrectionflows out of Jesus’s resurrection. The two cannot be disconnected. There is one resurrection, but it happens in two phases. Christ’s resurrection is the first stone in an avalanche.

Why make such a fuss about this? Because Paul understood that the resurrection is about more than a spirit being united to a body following death. That is far too individualistic a way of looking at it. Resurrection is the pivotal event in God’s plan to “make all things new.” Resurrection inaugurates the last days, initiates the Great Renewal, and promises the glories of the kingdom of God. Resurrection is the threshold into the age to come. Most Jews believed that. What they didn’t know was that resurrection had already begun in Jesus. That was the astonishing good news the Christians had to tell. It was not just that people go on living after they die – everyone already knew that! It was that the new age had arrived when Jesus rose from the dead.

That is why, in verse 20, Paul calls Jesus “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (or died). In the first century, people understood the image of the firstfruits. Each year, at the very beginning of the wheat harvest, the Israelites sent their first ripe wheat as an offering to the Lord’s temple. Seven weeks later they went to Jerusalem to celebrate the completed harvest. Just as the firstfruits announced the harvest had begun and promised more to follow, Jesus’s rising announced the resurrection had begun and promised more to follow. We live in the period between firstfruits and harvest.

Behind this passage, remember, stands the idea that God is restoring creation. There are allusions to the first creation – recounted in Genesis one and two – everywhere in this chapter. That is intentional. There are seeds and plants, like Genesis 1; men and animals; birds and fish; there is the sun, the moon, and the stars. And in case we still haven’t made the connection, Adam himself shows up. Paul is thinking about creation … and recreation. The first creation floundered upon Adam’s rebellion and is dying. The new creation was established on Jesus’s obedience and is ready to rise. Look at verses 21-22: “For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.”

“But,” verse 23, “each in his own turn.” Here is where the Jesus-follower’s understanding of resurrection goes beyond the ancient Jewish understanding. It didn’t change it (Paul’s view is still thoroughly Jewish), but it added to it; it clarified it. The additional insight was this: There is an order to the resurrection. It happens in phases. That’s the thing Paul and his colleagues had not previously understood. When he did, it changed everything. (And it should change everything for us, too.)

Christ’s resurrection was not simply proof that people continue to live in some form after they die. It was not just proof that death has been defeated, though it was certainly that. It was proof that the new age had dawned, that the ancient promises made by God – promises of a kingdom, a restoration, and a renewal – were being fulfilled. It was proof to the disciples, as Chesterton once put it, that the world had died in the night and that “what they were looking at was the first day of a new creation…”[1]

Judaism divided time into two ages: The present age and the age to come. The present age is a time of injustice and conflict. Paul referred to it elsewhere as “the present evil age” (Galatians 1:4), a time of growing corruption, from which people need to be rescued.

The age to come, on the other hand, will be the time of God’s undisputed rule, characterized by peace and justice – a time of prosperity, reconciliation, and joy. And, as everyone knew, the line between this present age and the age to come was the resurrection.

And here is Paul, telling us that the resurrection has already begun. The claim is staggering. The resurrection began on a spring morning somewhere around 30 A.D. in a Jerusalem garden when Jesus came out of the tomb and it will conclude when Jesus comes back from heaven. But if that is true, what has happened to the age to come?

That is a profoundly important question, and no one contemplated it more deeply than Paul himself. He believed that the new age had already dawned and that everyone who confesses Jesus as Lord is already part of the new creation (“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” – 2 Corinthians 5:17). The new age had dawned but the old age would not conclude until the completion of the second phase of the resurrection when the Messiah returns. The moon is still out but the sun has already risen. We live in the overlap between the arrival of the new age and the termination of the old one.

We frequently think of the resurrection as proof that we will go to heaven when we die but Paul thought of the resurrection as proof that God’s kingdom has come to earth while we live. The new age had dawned or, to be more precise, the new age is dawning. In the overlap time, we still have the sorrows, sins, and corruption of the present age. But we can already tap into the joy and peace and freedom of the age to come. The winds of that age are blowing across the borders of our time, and we can lean into them. We can know “the power of the resurrection” – the remarkable power to live the future in the present. It is in this overlap period that we learn to live “in newness of life” (Romans 6:4).

There are battles to be fought and won during the overlap. There is a way of life to be learned. There is work to be done. So Paul says in the last verse of this chapter: “Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”

Easter – the resurrection – means so much more than life after death. It means that we can live a different kind of life before we die, as we draw on the resources of the age to come. Most people live out of the past. For good or ill, they are molded (and often shackled) by their former experiences. But those with faith in Jesus Christ can break the mold by learning to live out of their future. They can learn to tap into the age to come, and so live in hope. They are formed by the future in ways that people who are shaped only by the past cannot imagine. They live, as Paul put it, “in the power of the resurrection,” and that sets them free to become all that God intends them to be.

If you want that kind of life – a future-oriented, God-empowered, old-habit-breaking, hope-producing life – there is one place to find it: in a faith-connection to the Resurrected One, Jesus. If you’ve already established a faith connection to the Living One, that kind of life is waiting for you – and us. Let’s learn to live it!

[1] The Everlasting Man. The entire quotes runs: “On the third day the friends of Christ coming at day-break to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; but even they hardly realized that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn.”

Posted in Christianity, Faith, Holy Week, Sermons, Theology | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Who Are You Looking For? (An Easter Message)

Posted on April 13, 2020 by salooper57

(I preached this Easter message on John 20 two years ago, as a conclusion to the Mary Magdalene story we had already begun. Because I tell this in a narrative style, it includes some imaginative elements – conversations, gestures – but I’ve tried to be careful not to contradict the biblical evidence. In some cases, the use of the imaginative elements is meant to bring out implications that are in the text.)

One of the difficulties in telling the Easter story is that there is almost too much material. Each of the biblical Evangelists gives us glimpses into the story from the perspectives of different people who lived it. One tells what Mary Magdalene sees. Another describes what the other women disciples see. Some tell us what Peter sees, one what John sees, another what Thomas does not see, and yet another what the Roman soldiers see. There are gaps in some stories and overlapping chronologies in others. Trying to put all that together into a cohesive narrative can be a challenge.

I’m not going to try to put it all together this morning – there is not enough time for that. Instead, I’m going to tell the story, at least for the most part, from the disciple Mary’s perspective. There are so many Marys in the Easter story that we need to differentiate between them. This one is routinely distinguished by the town she comes from: Mary of Magdala, or Mary Magdalene or, for short, the Magdalene.

When Mary first met Jesus, her life was an absolute disaster. Sometimes you’ll hear people say, “We all have our demons,” but Mary had hers and enough for several other people besides. She was alone, afraid, and confused. Her life was like a bad dream from which she could not wake up. No one was able to wake her up. For the most part, no one even tried; that is, until Jesus.

He woke her up. He gave Mary back her life. He drove away the demons and, in their place, gave her something she had never known: acceptance. And when he accepted her, so did his friends. For the first time in memory, she felt included, wanted. She was part of something, and that felt good. She didn’t always act right, and she knew it, but these people didn’t push her away because she was weird or because she didn’t have it all together.

She owed her life to Jesus. He had given her peace, and hope, and friends. And he had given her God; taught her to know him as her Father, who loved and cherished her; taught her to trust him. Jesus had done more than just save her life, which was hardly worth saving; he had given her a new life. She owed everything to Jesus.

So imagine how she felt when on that dark Friday her savior, friend, teacher – her everything – was killed. It was like they were killing her too. What would happen to her new life, new friends, and new hopes, without Jesus? Without Jesus to hold them together, would her friends turn away from her, the way everyone else had done? With Jesus, she had the prospect of living in God’s kingdom. Without Jesus, she had no prospects—she had no life. And, she thought, she soon might have no friends either.

But for now, her new friends were letting her hang around. She was staying with them. She cried with them, worried with them, got angry and cursed the Romans. She went with them to find the tomb on Friday, the day Jesus was killed, and went with them on Sunday to perform the burial ritual.

Mary was from Magdala in Galilee, and didn’t really know anyone in Jerusalem, but during Passover she was staying in a house with some of her Jesus-friends. As soon as it was light, they were supposed to meet up with some of their other friends at Jesus’s tomb. It was the women’s job to prepare a body for burial, and they were not at all sure that the men had done it properly.

Before dawn, Mary and a few of the women she was staying with, started for the tomb. They were almost on top of it, in the dull light of early morning, before they realized that the stone had been rolled away from the tomb. Well, not just rolled away. The fantastically heavy stone looked like it had been pried loose and tossed aside. The women just stared for a moment, wondering what could have happened. Why force the stone right out of its track? No one who had a right to enter the tomb would have done that. And then Mary’s quick mind came up with an answer: Grave robbers. Someone has stolen his body.

Her mind was quick, but her feet were quicker. Before the others could stop her, she was running and yelling, “I’m going to get Peter!” If anyone would know what to do, it would be Peter.

She ran all the way back to the city, through its narrow, still quiet streets. By the time she reached the steps that led to the upper room apartment where the apostles were hiding, she was breathing hard and had a terrible pain in her side. She pounded on the door and, when no one answered, she pounded louder. Still no answer, so she began calling: “It’s me. It’s Mary. Something terrible has happened. Open up.” The door slowly opened, and she went in. All the apostles were on their feet. They looked haggard, like they hadn’t slept in days. They also looked scared.

Mary went straight to Peter and said: “They’ve taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they put him” (John 20:2). Peter just stood looking at her, as if trying to make up his mind. Then he pushed by her, went down the stairs, and started running. Young John bar Zebedee ran after him. The others just stood looking at each other.

A few minutes later, Mary was on her way back to the tomb, but this time she walked. She felt weak and was still breathing hard. As she walked, she thought about what had happened; tried to put the pieces together. The people who killed Jesus – disgust welled up within her at the thought of them – must have taken his body from the tomb. It was a final act degradation, their last attack on his dignity: to deny him a proper burial. In Jewish culture that was tremendously important. So, of course, they didn’t want him to have it.

When she finally got back to the garden tomb, Peter and John had already been there and gone. Her friends were also gone – for good? she wondered. She stood outside the tomb crying, utterly desolate. For a few minutes, her grief didn’t permit her even to think. She was not merely grieving; she was the embodiment of grief.

After a while, her sobbing quieted. She walked over to the tomb, bent low, and looked in. She saw what she took to be two men sitting on either end of the stone slab where Jesus’s body had rested. They asked her why she was crying, and in a kind of fog she answered, “They’ve taken my Lord away, and I don’t know where they have put him.” Then she turned around.

When she did, she saw through her tears someone standing a little ways off, and she thought he must be the groundskeeper. He, too, asked her why she was crying. She didn’t answer, but she could have said, “Because everything I had was taken from me. I’ve nothing and no one left. I am the most pitiful person on earth.”

When she didn’t answer, he asked: “What are you looking for?” (The “what” could refer to a person or an object.) How was she supposed to answer that? What was she looking for? In all the cosmos, there was only one thing worth looking for. She was looking for the one who gave her hope, gave her love; the one who gave her herself. Even though he had died, she was still looking for him. She knew that if she didn’t find him, she would lose herself.

All this was going on in her. But what she said was, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.” Mary’s mind was stuck, like a needle on a record, and all she could think about was finding her master and saving him from some final degradation. It was all that mattered. The world around her was fading and she herself was fading. The darkness was descending on her. She was falling back into the darkness before Jesus, when she had her demons and her demons had her.

It was the voice that saved her. Some people say they never forget a face. I’m not one of them. My brain is not hardwired for video but for audio; I remember voices. When my dad died, a man I had not seen or spoken to in 20 years called the house, and I knew him immediately. I suspect Mary was like that. Voices registered with her in a way that faces didn’t, and in the gathering darkness of her soul a voice reached her. The Voice reached her. It was the same voice that had called her out of darkness once before, when she was a lost sheep and had heard the shepherd’s voice. “He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out” (John 10:3).

The Voice called her by name. All it said was “Mary.” And the voice that had in creation turned darkness to light did the same thing once again. The darkness melted away and through the tears in her eyes, she saw him. The one who once walked in a Garden in the cool of the evening now walked again in a Garden, on the morning of the new creation.

She said to him, “Teacher!”  It didn’t even dawn on her to ask him what had happened or how it was possible. She just knew he was there and because he was alive, she too would live. She grabbed hold of him, but after a moment he said, “Don’t hold on to me. Go tell my brothers!”

She didn’t argue. She went, her third trip that day along that route and it wasn’t even 8:00 AM. She didn’t understand what had happened, but she knew everything would be alright. She wasn’t afraid anymore. As long Jesus was here, she would be fine. Everything would be fine. She went back to the upper room – Peter wasn’t there; hadn’t come back – but she said to the rest of them: “I’ve seen the Lord,” and told them what happened.

They didn’t believe her. She’d never been a very stable person. She was distraught; hysterical. She needed to calm herself. But then Mary and Salome and Joanna and the others came and told them the same thing: “He’s alive. We’ve seen him. He told us to come and tell you.” But they didn’t believe them either.

They said, “You’re delusional. You’re seeing things.” One of them said something like, “They’re women. They’re emotional. They saw something they didn’t understand, and they’re blowing it all out of proportion.”

Someone asked John what he and Peter had seen. John told them that Mary was right: the stone cover to the tomb had been forced and Jesus’s body was missing. But they didn’t see any angels, and they certainly didn’t see Jesus himself.

One of the men said, “There, you have it. You saw someone about Jesus’s height and size, but it couldn’t have been him. Look, you haven’t slept for days, and you’ve hardly eaten anything. Combine that with shock and grief, and, uh, feminine emotionalism, and you have the explanation for what you saw.”  

Someone asked John where Peter was, and John said, “I don’t know. I asked him if we should go back, and he just said, ‘You go.’ He didn’t tell me where he was going.”

That afternoon, Cleopas and his wife, one of the women who swore she’d seen Jesus, left. They were going home to Emmaus, and that was a seven-mile walk, and it was already getting late. It was clear she didn’t want to go, but he had made up his mind. The festival was over, and if he wasn’t back at work, there’d be in big trouble.

The day was winding down when Peter finally returned. He knocked twice, and everyone inside froze, thinking the temple guard had found them. When he said, “It’s Simon,” they all breathed again. The door was unbolted and, almost before he got inside, everyone was talking. “Peter: John said the body is gone.” “Mary said she saw him.” “So did the other women. They said they saw angels, and then they saw him.”

“They’re delusional,” someone snapped. But Peter held up his hand and waited for them to get quiet. Then he said, “It’s true. I’ve seen him.” And then they believed. Or wanted to. Except for Thomas, who had barged out of the room earlier and had not returned.

Some of the women had brought food during the afternoon: bread and fish, lentils and wine, and now people were picking at the food as they talked and argued and wondered what it all meant. And then suddenly everything changed. It’s hard to describe. Some felt the room had grown brighter. Others felt like a fresh wind had blown in. Others, like a snatch of a song had wafted in through a window. They were aware that something had changed before they were aware of what it was.

And then they saw him, Jesus, standing right in the middle of them, though the door was still bolted. At first, the disciples we were so startled they recoiled. They couldn’t move or speak or even think; it was like they were under a spell. But Jesus just laughed and said, “Shalom.” Then he said, “What – you think I’m a ghost?” and he laughed again and showed them his hands and his side. It was really him. The marks were still there. He asked them, with a sparkle in his eyes, if they had something to eat. They gave him a piece of fish and he made a show of eating it: “Mmm, that’s good.” Then he laughed again, and the spell was broken.

They all they gathered around him. Some of them touched him, wanting to make sure he was real—that they weren’t dreaming. He wasn’t a vision or a ghost. He was as real as ever – almost more real, they felt, though they could not have said what they meant by that. They heard his voice, they felt his breath, they received his commission.

Then he was gone. That was disconcerting. They wanted him to stay, to be with them like before. But they realized that he did not belong to them; they belonged to him. He was not at their beck and call; they were at his.

When Thomas returned, everyone was talking at once. They told him that Jesus really was alive. He had come here. He stood right there. He talked to them. He ate a piece of fish. Thomas waved them all off with a sweep of his hand, looked at Peter, and said: “Well?” And Peter just nodded: “It’s true.”

Thomas’s reaction was not one anyone would have expected. He got angry. He said something like, “You’re all crazy. You’re as crazy as those women.” They tried to explain it to him again, tried to argue with him, but he got even angrier: “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.” Thomas was a stubborn ox, and he always had been. He was one of those guys who had to learn things for himself. He got the opportunity a week later.

Their patron was allowing them to continue to use the upper room. They weren’t so afraid anymore, except for Thomas, who insisted on keeping the door bolted, in case the temple guard came looking for them. It was Sunday evening, and it had been a week since any of them had seen Jesus. They were uncertain about what they should be doing, but they were certain about Jesus – except Thomas. When anyone would say something about Jesus, he would just put his right index finger to his left palm, as if to say, “When I see the marks and me put my finger where the nails were…”

And then it happened again. It was as if the candles flared or a breeze blew through the room. And there he was, standing right in front of Thomas. “Shalom,” he said, his whole being radiating joy and laughter. Then he said offered his palm to Thomas, pointing with his index finger, and said, “Put your finger here…Reach your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”

Thomas said, “My Lord and my God.”

We preachers often end the story there, but that was not the end of the story. They would see Jesus again and again over the next forty days, always at the time and place of his choosing. They would sit with him and learn from him and begin to understand that what had happened was part of a bigger picture: God was undoing the ancient curse, bringing to an end the rule of death, and forming a people for himself around Jesus. Jesus told them the story was not over; in fact, they had a key role to play in it: to announce the Good News of God and make disciples to Jesus. He promised he would be with them in the effort and that God would support them in response to their prayers.

Those disciples played their role well and with courage. They turned the world upside down with the good news of what God had done – and was doing – through Jesus. They died long ago, but the story didn’t. Sometimes we get the idea that when the first disciples died, the story paused for a commercial break. We feel like nothing important is going on now. After the break, we’ll have the wrap-up, the return of Christ and the resurrection. But this is no commercial break. The same story is going on right now, we are a part of it, and it is still being chronicled. Ours may not be The Acts of the Apostles, but The Acts of the Branch County Christians is good too, and it will declare the glory of God.  

Let me close with this. I took the title of this sermon, Who Are You Looking For? from Jesus’s question to Mary. But there’s another question, at least as important, that we should ask: “Who is Looking for You?” Remember how, in the garden, after the first man and woman rebelled, they hid from God, but he went looking for them? Remember how Jesus went and looked for the Apostle Philip, and called him? How he went looking for the man who had been born blind, and found him? Remember how, in Jesus poignant stories, the shepherd went looking for his lost sheep, the woman went looking for her lost coin, and the father for his lost son? The truth is, as Augustine put it, we couldn’t look for God had he not already found us.

Who is looking for you? When God looks for people, he calls them. He called to Adam in the Garden, and later to Mary in another Garden. He still calls. Jesus said: “My sheep hear my voice” (John 10:27), and he calls them by name (John 10:3). The Scripture gives examples: In Genesis 22, God called. “Abraham, Abraham.” In Exodus: “Moses, Moses”; Later it was, “Samuel, Samuel”; “Martha, Martha”; “Simon, Simon”: “Saul, Saul.”

When he called those people – some of the greatest people in the Bible – he for some reason repeated their names. But Mary heard the first time. That’s the way I want to be.

God still calls people by name. If you’ve heard the Voice speaking to you, answer! Whatever you do, don’t harden your hearts – that’s the great danger. (You know how people do that, right? They don’t, “No!” They say, “Okay … but later.”) The one sure symptom of a hard heart is poor hearing. Hardening your heart plugs your ears. That is why the psalmist says, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart” (Ps. 95:7-8a). If God is calling your name, please answer.

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RESURRECTION: Mary Magdalene (Part 2)

Posted on April 12, 2020 by salooper57

(If you missed yesterday’s Holy Saturday post, you might want to read it before reading today’s post. Happy and Blessed Easter to you!)

As the three of us approached the garden, I got worried. During the Sabbath, some of the men were saying that the stone had already been rolled over the entrance to the tomb. If what they said was true (and they were sure that it was), there was no way we could move it. I said that, and Salome said, “Well, who can we get to roll the stone away?” We were still talking about it when we came the garden. Because it was still pretty dark, we were almost at the tomb before we saw what had happened.

We just stood there. Nobody said anything. Nobody had to. I knew immediately what had happened. Those dogs who had murdered the best man who ever lived had taken his body out of the tomb so that we couldn’t give it a proper burial. They had taken it somewhere and were probably doing horrible things to it in order to disgrace him even more. They hated him so much that they weren’t satisfied with killing him, they had to shame him too.

The other girls just stood there, but I ran. They said, “Mary, stop! Where are you going?” But I didn’t stop. I just shouted, “I’m going to tell Peter.” If anybody would know what to do it would be Peter. Somebody had to tell him (and the others) that they had taken his body.

I ran all the way. My side burned like fire and I looked like a fool, running into the city like that, but I didn’t care. The men were still in that same upper room, and when I got there I had to stop and catch my breath. At the top of the stairs I pushed the door, but it was locked, so I knocked and called. I heard the bolt slide and John bar Zebedee stood there, blinking into the morning light.

John’s Story, Part I

This is how John might have told his story.

After what happened, we thought they’d come after us too. We talked about it all night long. We were staying – hiding, really – in the upper room of the house that belonged to John Mark’s father. I didn’t really believe they were coming after us, but that’s what everybody kept saying. Well, everybody but Peter. He wasn’t saying anything. I don’t think he said a single word.

And we kept talking about Judas. I could hardly believe he did it. I mean, I looked up to him, at least at first. How could he do it? Thomas kept saying that Judas knows where we are, and when the Sabbath’s over, they’ll come for the rest of us. We ought to get back to Galilee as soon as possible. We needed to disappear.

But like I said, I didn’t really believe it … until somebody started banging on the door like they were trying to knock it down! I almost jumped out of my skin. Everybody got real still. I can still remember how big their eyes were – except Peter’s. He never looked up from the floor.

Then we heard Mary’s voice. “Let me in!” I drew back the bolt and opened the door. She looked wild – her hair was blown back and her head covering was missing. She pushed right past me and asked, “Where’s Peter?”

As soon as she saw him she said, “The stone isn’t there. Mary and Salome – they stayed. I came back to tell you. I ran the whole way. They’ve taken his body, and we don’t know where they’ve put it.”

That got Peter’s attention. He seemed to think for a moment, and then it was like something boiled over in him. He got up and went outside without saying a word. I followed him. When he got to the bottom of the stairs, he began to run. So I ran too. I knew where he was going and, since I knew Jerusalem a lot better than he did, I knew how to get there faster. (Not to mention I’m fifteen years younger than him!)

I got to the tomb and it was just like Mary said. The stone was laying off on one side like it had been tossed there by some kind of giant. Everything was perfectly still. There was no one around. I bent down and looked into the tomb.

Then Peter got there, huffing and puffing. He sort of pushed me aside and went right in. Then I went in too. And it was just like Mary said. His body was gone. But it was the weirdest thing. The burial shroud and the sudarium – the head cover – were lying on the slab. The sudarium was folded up perfectly. Why would anyone take his body and leave the burial cloth? And who would take the time to fold up the sudarium? It didn’t make any sense, but what else could have happened? That was the real question – what else could have happened – but we didn’t know enough to ask it.

We walked back by the way I’d come. I had all kinds of questions, but Peter still wasn’t talking. When we got to the house, Peter just kept walking. I asked him where he was going. He didn’t answer. I asked him what I should tell the others. He said, “That’s up to you.”

Mary, Part III

I followed Peter and John out of the door, but they ran and it was all I could do to walk. As I walked down the street, I could feel the darkness descending on me, like it had in the old days. I was so afraid that I was going back into that.

By the time I got to the garden, Peter and John were already gone. None of my friends (Mary, Salome, Joanna – none of them) were there. It was just me, alone again, just like it used to be. I started to cry. After a few minutes I bent down and looked into the tomb and I saw two men in there. Before I could say anything, one of them asked me why I was crying. Or maybe both of them asked, I can’t remember. A kind of fog had descended on me. I said something, something stupid, like, “They have taken my Lord away and I don’t know where they have put him.”

I turned around and the rising sun all but blinded me. There was a man standing there, just a few feet away. He said the same thing the other men said: “Woman, why are you crying?” I thought – it doesn’t make any sense now, but I thought – that maybe he was the one who took the body, so I said to him, “Sir, if you’ve carried him away, tell me where you put him and I’ll go and get him.” I know it was a stupid, but it was all I could think of.

Then he said, “Mary.” Just that. Just “Mary.” And I knew it was him. I looked again and it was like the darkness lifted. I said to him, “Rabboni!” It didn’t even dawn on me to ask him what had happened. I just knew he was there. He was alive. I grabbed hold of him, but after a moment he said, “Don’t hold on to me. Go tell my brothers!”

I didn’t argue. I went – my third trip along that route and it wasn’t even 8:00. I didn’t really understand what was going on, but I knew everything would be alright. I wasn’t afraid anymore. My master was here! As long as he was here, I would be fine. Everything would be fine. I went back to the upper room – Peter wasn’t there yet – but I told the rest of them: “I’ve seen the Lord,” and told them what happened. They didn’t believe me. Then Mary and Salome and Joanna and the others came and told them the same thing. They still didn’t believe them either. Then Peter came back. He didn’t say much. He just said, “It’s true. I’ve seen him too.”

John’s Story, Part II

Everyone got really excited. We were all talking at once (except for Peter, who was still really quiet). But Thomas said, “This is crazy. You’re crazy. I’ve got to get out of here before I’m as crazy as all the rest of you.” He went out and slammed the door, and I pushed the bolt again and locked it.

For the next few hours, everybody was talking to everybody else, all at the same time. We tried to get Peter to tell us what had happened, but he only said, “It’s true. He’s alive.” Sometime later, while we were all talking, there was a … a sudden change. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s as if the candles flared brighter. It was as if music had just played. I think we all felt it; I know I did. And then there he was, standing right in the middle of us. It was him. At first we were so startled we couldn’t move. But he laughed; laughed and said, “Shalom.” Then he said, “What – you think I’m a ghost?” and he laughed again. He showed us his hands and his side. It was really him. The marks were there. He took some fish and ate it, and laughed again.

We gathered around him. I touched him. I guess I wanted to make sure he was real—that I wasn’t just dreaming it. But he was as real as ever – almost more real, if you know what I mean.        

Epilogue to John’s Story

(1 John 1:1-3) That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 

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Holy Saturday: Mary Magdalene’s Story (Part 1)

Posted on April 11, 2020 by salooper57

(I wrote this a couple of years ago and offer it for you Holy Saturday observance.)

Here’s how Mary Magdalene might have told her story.

When they killed him, it was like they killed me too – the me I was becoming; the hopeful, happy me. The me that people liked, that had friends. Before Jesus, life was a kind of blur. I just moved from thing to thing, from person to person, but nobody really cared about me and, to be honest, I don’t think I really cared about anybody – including myself. My life was a nightmare.

Then I met Jesus and everything changed. It’s like I woke up. For the first time since I was a little girl, somebody really cared about me. And it wasn’t just Jesus; his friends cared about me too. They became my friends. They took me in, made me one of them. They talked to me, listened to me, laughed with me, sometimes laughed at me—but I didn’t mind because they really liked me. I don’t know how to say it… For the first time I could remember, it wasn’t just me. It was us. I was saying things like, “We should go to the market. We should bake some bread. It felt so good to say “We.”

But we were us only because of him. We all knew it. He was the only thing that held us together. He was our heart. One day I said to Mary and Salome, “We would never have become friends if it wasn’t for him.” And they agreed. Salome said, “We’d never become anything, if it wasn’t for him.” But we were something with him! How exciting it was when we entered Jerusalem together with all the rest of the Galileans going to the festival. They shouted to him – to our Jesus – “Hosanna! Blessed is the King of Israel! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

And then he was gone. They took him. They killed him. And they might as well have killed me too. Without him to hold us together, I was sure we would all fall apart. None of those people I called my friends would have said “Hello” to me on the street, if it wasn’t for Jesus. Now that we’d lost him, I was so afraid I would lose them too.

On the day it happened, we (Salome and Mary and me, and a few of our friends) followed the Council Member and his people to the tomb, and only left in time to get back before Sabbath started. But we made plans to meet when Sabbath was over to see to it that his body was properly prepared for burial. Our people have very strict customs, and we were all afraid they wouldn’t be observed.

Since we were almost all from Galilee and were staying in different places around the City, we made arrangements to meet at the tomb just at first light. Salome and Mary and I would come together, since we were all staying in Bethsaida. His mother, Joanna, Mariam (Clopas’s wife), and a few others were coming from the City.

(Postscript: Tomorrow, on Easter Sunday, we will add the next part of Mary’s – and John bar Zebedee’s – shared story.)

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Oddest Things Jesus Ever Said: The Top Four

Posted on April 11, 2020 by salooper57

I’ve been thinking about the oddest things Jesus ever said, the ones his first hearers thought crazy. One could make a case for quite a few of them: “If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away” or “Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.” There are many others but let me give you my top four.

Number four on the list: “My flesh is real food, my blood is real drink.” That not only sounds crazy, it seems perverse. Jesus’s first hearers found it repulsive. It shocked his own disciples and many of them left because he said it.

Number three on my list is this: “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). Jesus lived approximately two millennia after Abraham yet claimed that Abraham had seen his day – whatever that means – and rejoiced. When his hearers objected to this, he said: “Before Abraham was, I am.” Those disputing with him had already accused him of being out of his mind. Now, they were sure of it.

Number two on my list of (seemingly) crazy sayings comes from the night Jesus was betrayed. His disciples were confused by something he had just said and Philip, who always appears confused when he shows up in the Gospels, said to Jesus: “Show us the Father, and we’ll be satisfied,” (That tops the list of craziest things the disciples ever said.) Jesus replied, “Philip, don’t you know that anyone who has seen me has seen the Father?” That was like saying, “You want to see God, Philip? You’re looking at him.”

From my perspective, the most off the wall thing Jesus ever said was spoken to his friend Martha after her brother’s untimely death. He had offered her what seemed like a trite religious platitude: “Your brother will rise again.” Martha, not in the mood for platitudes, answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” To which Jesus responded – my number one saying for strangeness – “I am the resurrection.”

First century Judaism was divided into two major camps: those who believed in resurrection and those who did not. The two camps are represented in the New Testament by the Pharisees (who believed) and the Sadducees (who did not). But whether you fit into the Pharisees’ camp (as most people did) or into the Sadducees’ camp, you would at least agree on what you disagreed on.

Resurrection was, in first century Jewish thought, a worldwide event in which everyone who ever lived and died would be returned to life and given a body suited to the new age. The idea is from the Old Testament, including this passage from the prophet Daniel: “Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.”

So when Jesus said to Martha: “I am the resurrection,” it sounded to her as if he were saying, “The coming alive from the dead of all the people who ever lived – that’s me. That’s what I am.”

To say, “I am the resurrection” is like saying, “I am the creation” or “I am the end of the world.” Were anyone else to say that, we would conclude he was deranged. But when Jesus says it, it’s different because he’s different. If anyone could be the resurrection – the coming to life of everyone who ever died – it would be him.

It turns out that the resurrection – this coming to life of everyone who ever died – is not waiting for the end of the world. It’s already begun, as Jesus knew it would, with himself. But there is an order to it, as St. Paul teaches: Jesus, the representative human, first; followed, at his return, by those who belong to him; and then by everyone else.

As with all Jesus’s “crazy” sayings, this one only seems crazy because we do not understand ourselves or the world in which we live. This claim is full of meaning and hope. It sums up God’s ancient promises in Jesus who, far from being crazy, is history’s smartest person.

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Good Friday: Mary’s Story

Posted on April 10, 2020 by salooper57

(I wrote this monologue from Mary’s perspective and include it here in the hope that it might encourage your Good Friday prayers and worship. Blessings – Shayne.)

I thought nothing could ever surprise me again. After what I’ve seen and heard – I’ve talked with an angel; outwitted kings; seen water turned to wine – I thought I was shock-proof.

I was wrong.

Two days ago, I received the shock of my life. I had come to Jerusalem for the Feast of Unleavened Bread, as I’ve done every year of my life – except the years we were in Egypt. I came with family and friends in one of the early caravans from Galilee. Passover has always been the highlight of my year, though it’s been bittersweet since Joseph has been gone.

I was already in Jerusalem when my son and his disciples came on the first day of Passover week. They came with an enormous caravan of Galileans. Jesus paused briefly in Bethphage, borrowed a donkey and her colt, then rode into the city like a king. The Galileans who knew him started singing messianic praises and paving the roads with their own cloaks and with palm branches—just like when Jehu became king of Israel. The Galileans shouted, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” It was so exciting. This … this is what I’d been expecting for years. It was finally happening.

The Jerusalemites were all asking, “Who is this?” And the Galileans answered proudly, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee!” I thought the uprising would begin right then and there, but Jesus had other plans. He soon left the city, but the next morning, he came back to the temple. It was packed with people, there for Passover, and he drove out all the men who were selling sacrificial lambs and doves and exchanging foreign currency.Again, I thought the uprising would start right then: he had only to call people to him, and it would have begun. But instead, he started teaching.

I did not see much of him over the next two days. He was staying in Bethany and, when he came into the city, he was surrounded by people – and controversy. The chief priests, the teachers of the law and the Herodians were all after him. They spoke gently, but as David said, “their tongues were as sharp as a serpent’s, and the poison of vipers was on their lips.” I despised them. I can’t believe I used to look up to those people.

I did not hear anything after that until yesterday morning. The first person to tell me was Mary of Magdala. (She’s a precious girl, but unstable – and a little rough around the edges.) She burst into my cousin’s home, talking so fast I couldn’t make out what she was saying. But I knew something was wrong. Before she could explain, there was a knock at the door. It was young John Mark. Peter had sent him.

Jesus had been arrested. There had been a trial (if that’s what you call it), and the Romans had him. It was bad.

I thought I was shock-proof. I was wrong. A half-an-hour later, I was standing with Zebedee’s boy John, outside the city in the place they call The Skull, and the Romans were already hoisting his cross. When they dropped it into the hole they had dug, it looked like someone had thrust a giant sword into the earth. That was the moment I had dreaded for years, without knowing I was dreading it: at that moment a sword pierced my own soul too.

People were laughing, swearing, making fun of him. They made noises like wild animals. Five days earlier, people were calling him king. Now they were calling him names. It was unreal.

Then he saw me. When I looked in his eyes everything else simply vanished: John bar Zebedee, the animal-like priests, the soldiers, the noise – everything. I didn’t even see the cross. I just saw him, and he saw me. Everything was perfectly still, as if we were alone in the cosmos. The look in his eyes told me something I had never understood before; something a book could not have made any clearer. He was expecting this. I knew in that moment that he had known for years. He knew this was coming, and he hadn’t tried to escape it. He was a sacrifice, like the Passover Lamb. He was the Passover Lamb.

That was two days ago – though it seems like a year. It’s as if time has stopped moving for me, or I have stopped moving in time. I feel nothing. I know nothing. I am alone in an unfathomable abyss. I seem to have come to the end – the end of me; the end of everything.

Of one thing I am now certain: After this, I am shock-proof. Nothing can surprise me ever again.

(Postscript: Of course, Mary was surprised again – and very soon. On Sunday morning her beloved Son (and glorious Lord) rose from the dead. But on that dark Friday and mournful Saturday, Mary was lost in grief, and confused by God’s apparent lack of concern. I have not experienced grief and confusion to anything like the same degree but I, like you, are not unfamiliar with it.)

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Holy Week Meditation: Maundy Thursday

Posted on April 9, 2020 by salooper57

If you and I had been with the apostles on Thursday evening of that first Holy Week, this is the kind of conversation we might have heard.

“Sunday was the day. I could just feel it. People were ready. If he’d have called us to take Jerusalem back, thousands of men would have responded. Just the Galileans outnumbered Roman forces five to one, maybe ten to one. And the Judeans would have joined us. Oh, man, he had them in the palm of his hand. If he had said: “Today is the day we back the holy city from the infidels,” it would have happened right then. Instead, he started crying! Sunday was the day. I just don’t get it.”

“Yeah, Sunday was great, but Monday was the day. I mean, he single-handedly took control of the temple. He was a lion! No one could stand against him. And, look: It’s not enough to fight Rome. We can kill every Roman in Israel, but they’ll be right back unless we get rid of the aristocracy, the priests.

“Yeah, if he’d called people to arms on Monday, there wouldn’t have been a Roman left alive in the city by nightfall. By the time they heard about it in Caesarea, the entire countryside could have been mobilized. The aristocracy would be in prison. But instead of calling people to arms, he started teaching from Leviticus and the Psalms. I just don’t get it. What he is waiting for? The blacksmith doesn’t wait for the fire to die down before he forges the sword.”

The days leading up to the Feast were non-stop, edge-of-your-seat exciting. Each night was spent decompressing in Bethany, but each day was filled with conflict, tension and the prospect of revolution. On Sunday they marched into the city accompanied by cheering throngs. On Monday, Jesus took over the temple for an entire day. On Tuesday and Wednesday, he met one challenge after another, all day long. The priests, the teachers of the Law, the Pharisees, they grilled him, searching for a weakness, for anything they could use against him. It was almost like the High Priest inspecting the Passover lamb for a blemish. No, it wasn’t almost like that – it was just like that.

On Wednesday, Jesus stunned his disciples by telling them that the temple would be torn down, block from block and the city destroyed. Dumbfounded, they asked when this would happen, and what the sign of his coming would be? When we hear that, we think of Jesus’s coming at the end of the age – what we call the Second Coming, or the Return of Christ. And we assume that the disciples were thinking the same thing.

But they didn’t know about a second coming. They weren’t expecting a return of Christ; he was already with them. The word they used, Parousia, was used as a technical term in Greek culture to refer to the official visit of a king or ruler. When the Roman Emperor made an appearance in your city, it was called a Parousia. Jews used the term to refer to the ascendency of the Messiah and his conquest of the nations – especially the Romans. So when the disciples asked what will be the sign of your parousia, they weren’t thinking: how will people living 2,000 years from now know you are about to return? They were thinking: Tomorrow or the next day, when you make your move and declare yourself king, what sign will we have that it is time to act?

As Wednesday – and what a day that was – wound down and they all returned to Bethany, something happened that pushed Judas over the edge; at least that is what he told himself. He was already impatient and upset with the way Jesus was handling things. That evening, when Lazarus’s sister Mary broke a bottle of crazy expensive ointment and poured it on Jesus, he got mad and got everyone stirred up. “This is outrageous. It is offensive. And it is a terrible waste. We talk about helping the poor – well, this could have been sold for three-hundred denarii; that’s more than most people make in a year. Think of the good we could have done with that much money!”

Judas got the other disciples all riled up, and some of them were complaining too. Until Jesus told them: “Leave her alone –what she did was beautiful and will never be forgotten.” That was too much for Judas. He went out – the disciples probably assumed he was going to visit old friends; after all, Judea was his home – but instead he went to see the chief priests. He was furious. He felt mistreated. Nobody ever listened to him. They treated him like he was a second-class disciple.

But his motives were so knotted up that even he could not have told you what was going on in his head. He may well have told himself that Jesus was never going to take a stand until he had to; well, now he would have to. He’d be forced to fight, and the revolution would finally begin. And so, Judas was really doing him a favor. He worked it around, as people always do, to justify himself.

On the Day of preparation, Jesus told Peter (probably the oldest, and certainly the boldest of the disciples) and John, (the youngest and possibly the most introspective) to go into the City to prepare the Passover. But here is the weird thing: he didn’t tell them where they were going. It was like something out of a spy movie. He told them to go through the gate into the city and they would be met by a man carrying a jar of water. That was odd, because in that society, men didn’t carry water – that was woman’s work. They were to follow him right into the house he entered and ask the household manager for the guestroom where they could prepare the master’s Passover.

Why not just give them the address? Why all the secrecy? Because Jesus knew what Judas had done. If he had simply given them the address, the special guard would have had the place surrounded before he even got there. That would ruin everything.

When they arrived early that evening, Judas was jumpy as a cat. Did Jesus already know? Why else would he keep this place secret? When they entered the upper room, everything was ready. The low tables and the reclining couches were in place, and each disciple had been – as was Jewish custom – assigned a seat. To Judas’s surprise, he was seated right next to Jesus – one of the two places of highest honor. What was going through his mind when he saw that? Maybe he should call the whole thing off? But he’d already made a deal with the devil. If he backed out now, they would throw him in prison – or worse. What had he done! Was there any way out? His mind must have been going a hundred miles an hour, but he was trying to act like everything was fine. And here he was, sitting right next to Jesus! He would know something was wrong!

The table placement must have bothered some of the others too. Why was Peter, the leader of the disciples, not sitting next to Jesus? Instead, Judas and young John bar Zebedee had the places of honor. There must have been some trouble about this because, as the evening progressed, the disciples got into an argument about which of them was the most important – which would hold the most authority after the revolution.

Can you imagine how Jesus felt? After three years of teaching and modeling love and servanthood, these guys were arguing about who was most important! It was enough to make you throw up your hands in despair. But that is not what Jesus did. He didn’t throw up his hands; he took off his clothes, stripped down to his waist, wrapped a long towel around himself – looked just like a minor household slave – and began washing each of the disciples’ feet, including Judas’s. The disciples were mortified. Embarrassed. Jesus knew what they had been arguing about, and this was a rebuke.

But it was more than a rebuke. It was an object lesson. “So after He had washed their feet and had put his clothes back on and sat down at that table, he said to them: “Do you understand what I have done to you? You call Me the Teacher, and Lord, and you’re right – I AM. If then I, the Lord and the Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you.”

Not long after that, Jesus said to them: “One of you is going to betray me.” All of them – except one – were surprised. Each wondered – except one – if he would be the one. At this point, it hadn’t occurred to them that the betrayal would be anything other than a slip-up. The idea that one of them would intentionally betray Jesus hadn’t cross their minds – except, of course, Judas’s. As the meal was wrapping up, Jesus looked right at him and said, “What you do – do it quickly.” The others thought Jesus was talking about giving Passover alms before the day was through. Judas used the opportunity to run off and tell the rulers where Jesus was.

Can you imagine what Judas was thinking when he left? “He must know! But maybe he doesn’t! Maybe he wants me to give alms. But, if so, this is the first he mentioned it. He knows. He knows. He must know … but maybe he doesn’t.”

Jesus knew how long it would take Judas to reach the chief priests. He knew how long it would take for them to put together a strike force. He knew how long it would take for them to return. He was determined to use every moment he had, preparing his disciples for what was about to happen. He told them to love each other – it was the most important thing. He told them God would take care of them in his absence. He told them how the Holy Spirit would come into their lives. He talked to them about prayer. Warned them of trials. Assured them he would come back.

And while this was going on, Judas was walking as fast as he could to the government offices. He was afraid, confused, and angry. He kept telling himself that this wasn’t his fault; that he had no choice.

When he got there, he intended to give the rulers the location, get his money and leave. But they insisted he was coming with them. The first time he talked to the rulers, they treated him like he was someone important; showed him respect. Now they treated him like dirt – like a low-life traitor.

They told Judas to wait, and the waiting seemed to last forever. Every minute felt like an hour. When they finally got – for lack of a better word – a posse together, Judas had to lead them to the upper room. He was so worried that he couldn’t think straight. What would Jesus say? What would the apostles say – he’d spent three years, day and night, with them? There would be a fight. Some of them might be killed. Whatever else happened, Jesus would know Judas had betrayed him. He had burned his bridges.

As they approached the house, the commander sent people around back. When the place was surrounded, he and his men went quietly up the steps, burst through the door … and found no one. Jesus had timed it perfectly. He and the apostles were already gone, on their way out of the city to an olive grove on the side of the Mount of Olives.

The commander stared daggers at Judas. Suddenly, all this became very real and very dangerous. The commander snarled at him: “Where is he?” and Judas tried to think of where Jesus might go: Bethany, to Lazarus’s’ place? The temple? Where? Perhaps Judas suggested two or three locations. One of them was Gethsemane – the Olive Press.

Between the time Judas left them in the upper room and the time he found them in Gethsemane, Jesus was preparing his people. He told them that things were going to get tough and he was going to leave them, but he also told them they would have God’s Spirit and each other. They must stick together; must love each other – that was crucial. He painted them a dark picture of the present, but a bright picture of the future. He warned them that he was going away but promised he would come back. In the meantime, it was vital they remember and keep his teaching. They must obey his orders; they were their directions for living in God’s kingdom. He told them how to request help from God and promised them the Holy Spirit would remind them of all of this. Then he prayed for them to have unity.

It wasn’t long after that prayer, the Judas-led posse arrived, the disciples scattered, and Jesus was arrested. He was led off to a kangaroo court and, only a few hours later, the trial was over. Before the apostles even knew what was happening, Jesus was on his way to a state-mandated execution.

Everything he’d taught them that night and for the three years leading up to it, seemed to fly right out of their heads. They were terrified – for good reason: the chief priests had been trying to learn what they could about them – and horrified and profoundly, painfully, unimaginably confused. This just couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t be real.

But the things Jesus taught had not really flown away. They remembered now, in a way they could not have before, how Jesus took the unleavened bread and while he broke it he said, “This is my body.” They remembered how he held up the cup and said, “This is my blood of the New Covenant, poured out for you,” and had them drink it.

Just as the Passover gave Jews their identity as a people, this bread and cup identified the disciples as the new people of God, the people of Jesus. They did not understand – they would not understand until Sunday – but they had his promise that the meal they ate now in token they would someday eat in its fullness.

We have that same promise – we, the new people of God, the people of Jesus. When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we identify with him. We say – and choose yet again – to be the people of Jesus, in good times, in bad times, and for all times.

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Join Us…

Posted on April 5, 2020 by salooper57

Join our (abbreviated) worship service at Youtube or on Facebook. Our sermon text is Philippians 3: Heavenly-minded and Earthly Useful.

God be with you all.

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The Stubbornly Silent Future: Learning to Trust

Posted on April 4, 2020 by salooper57

Our governor’s “Shelter in Place” order has changed the way we live. Rather than meeting people at church or in the coffee shop, I’ve been meeting people on Zoom. Pastoral visitation has not happened in people’s homes but on our phones. I and others have been calling our church family, checking on their health, and seeing if they need groceries or meds. Many of these members are older and, to a person, they are doing remarkably well. They are a resilient bunch.

Photo by LOGAN WEAVER on Unsplash

It turns out that many of our older members were spending most of their time at home, even before the governor’s order. The pandemic has not affected them in the same way it affects the soccer mom, who puts 25,000 miles a year on her van, or the retired couple who eat out five nights a week.

While our church family is doing well, the question on their minds, and on their friends’ and neighbors’ minds is: How long will this last? They want to know what’s coming next and when things are going to return to normal.

All of us have a sort of inner gravity that constantly pulls us back toward normal, even when normal is not healthy. When will things be normal again? Our routines, which always have suffered interruptions, have now been turned on their heads. Everything has changed.

The pandemic has highlighted the limits of our ability to control the future. When we are in our usual routines, we assume we know what is coming next. Now, we are painfully aware that we don’t. When normalcy finally returns, that awareness is likely to dissolve like a mist.

However, when the awareness of our limits dissolves, the limits themselves remain. As long as our routines are in full swing and our rhythms uninterrupted, we can overlook those limits. We may even congratulate ourselves that our crystal ball readings have been spot-on. Nevertheless, human beings are not, and never have been, good at controlling the future.

When I was a schoolboy, life suddenly changed in my household. My dad, who had been drinking and hanging out with a rowdy crowd, gave up alcohol. Previously, he was gone most evenings playing softball, bowling, or playing cards and, always, drinking. Now he was playing catch with my brother and me. We were going fishing together. We even went camping.

The future must have seemed brighter to my mother. It certainly seemed more orderly. We got into a routine of sorts. The uncertainty of the past was gradually replaced by confidence in the future.

It was short lived. Even at that time, unperceived by my parents, a white blood cell in my brother Kevin’s body was damaged and began growing and dividing uncontrollably. He had leukemia.

I don’t know how long this went on before my parents noticed something was amiss. For a while, life continued normally. Kevin seemed to have everything going for him. He was a gifted athlete, popular at school, and was loved by kids and adults alike. Then the sky came crashing in.

There was no warning that life was about to change. But that’s the way it is. The future only occasionally issues warnings. Usually, it is stubbornly silent. Our confidence concerning the future is built on shaky ground. Even now, some reader’s (or the writer’s) cells may be dividing uncontrollably, and there is no indication of what is coming.

If Covid-19 helps us come to terms with this fundamental uncertainty, we will have wrestled some good out of a bad situation. If we are able to replace a wispy confidence in the future by a secure confidence in God, we will stand on firmer ground. Oswald Chambers confessed, “Faith doesn’t always know where it is being led,” then added, “…but it does love and know the one that’s leading.”

It is ironic. When our routines are in place and we think we have everything in hand, our confidence in the future is set to betray us. But when our routines have been upended and we’re not sure what’s coming next, our confidence in God can enable us to face the future with courage and peace.

First published by Gatehouse Media.

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