All my life I have lived with a basic distrust of the crowd mentality. I am biased against large groups of people who are all thinking the same way. I tend to assume that if it’s a large group and they are all saying the same thing, there’s a pretty high likelihood that they are wrong. I probably got that from my dad. During my growing-up years my dad always used to tell his children “Don’t follow the crowd”. He wanted us to learn how to do the right thing, even when it was unpopular, even if it might bring scorn and ridicule upon us. It’s better to do the right thing and be ridiculed than to do the wrong thing and be popular and accepted. The crowds of popularity are not to be trusted. Go with your conscience, not with the crowd. My father was a wise man, and he knew what his children needed to hear. He lived what he taught, and I hope that my siblings and I have consistently followed in his footsteps.
When I read the Palm Sunday narrative in Scripture, it tends to reinforce my distrust of the crowd mentality. It was the crowd that celebrated the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem, and it was the crowd that demanded his crucifixion five short days later. How could the crowd be so fickle? Did they love Jesus, or did they hate him? What caused them to change their mind? I think it had to do with the quest for power. The citizens of Jerusalem wanted power because they had been pushed around for too long. They and their ancestors had suffered under oppressive regimes for centuries—the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Medes and the Persians, the Greeks, the Ottomans, and now the Romans—and their frustration had reached the boiling point; there was no turning back. An oppressed people can be kicked around for only so long before they start to fight back. Into that turbulent atmosphere rides a man on a donkey, and there are rumors spreading throughout the city that this young man might be the promised Messiah. They wanted power. They wanted control. They wanted a good fight, a battle, a war, an insurrection. They wanted to get rid of the bad guys and bring in the good guys. They wanted to regain control of their country, and they were hoping that this young peripatetic rabbi from Nazareth might be just the man for the job. And many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches which they had cut from the fields. And those who went in front and those who followed were shouting: “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord; Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David; Hosanna in the highest!” (Mark 11:8-10) While they are cheering and waving their palm branches, they might be asking themselves some questions that they dare not verbalize. “Why the donkey? Shouldn’t a warrior-king be striding into the city on a white horse? Could this have something to do with Zechariah 9:9? Where are the armies? That embarrassingly ordinary-looking bunch of unarmed “disciples” who insist on following him everywhere he goes doesn’t exactly look like the kind of militia that could march in and take over a city, let alone push back an empire. Something is not quite right about this turn of events. Something is not going as planned. This young rabbi seems to be departing from the conventional script. Why this talk about ‘love your enemies’? What kind of king is this? What kind of man is this? He talks of God as though he really knows Him. Could anyone know God that intimately? He speaks of God as being his Father in a way that seems almost scandalous. His way of dealing with people is not that of a warrior-king. He relates to people as though he really loves them. Can a warrior-king love his people? How can a conqueror allow his heart to be touched by the needs and concerns of his people, and even of his enemies, and treat them as his friends? He seems too gentle to be a warrior and too loving to be a king. His authority is won not by his harshness, but it’s somehow tied to his gentleness. He acts more like a servant than a king. He gathers his followers neither by threat nor by coercion but simply by being who he is. His people are his willing followers because at a place deep within themselves they know that there is something about him that’s worth following—or so they say. He teaches, but not as the other rabbis. He’s different. He’s a son of David, perhaps, but a different kind of son. Who is the man?”. The people are perplexed but they dare not give up their hope, so they continue to cheer, waving their palm branches as the entourage enters the city. Perhaps something good will come of this; perhaps not. If he is the long-awaited Deliverer, the strong man who will set right all that is wrong with the world, then they are in the right place at the right time, following the right man. Rome is about to fall, and they are getting a front-row seat. Some day they will tell their children and their grandchildren that they were there on that historic day when the king came into Jerusalem, turned the tables on Rome and restored the Kingdom of David. If he is not the Deliverer then they have nothing left to lose, and so they continue to cheer. It took five days for the crowd to realize that this man had no intention of starting an insurrection and getting rid of Roman rule. The “What’s in it for me?” mentality kicked in. This man was not what they were expecting, and as far as they were concerned, there was nothing in it for them. They must have decided that they had made a huge mistake. They no longer wanted this man to be their ruler. With this man in charge, the Romans would have even more power than they already had. That’s not what they had signed on for by cheering him into Jerusalem. He was now a threat to them, and they had to get rid of him, so the crowd did the unthinkable. Changing sides, they crossed over to the side of their enemies. They colluded with the despised Romans to get rid of the offender, and the offender was not a pompous uniform- and weapon- bearing Roman official but the robed and sandaled rabbi from Nazareth whom they had cheered and celebrated five days earlier. We need to understand this narrative from two perspectives: the eschatological perspective and the motivational perspective. From the eschatological perspective, what the crowd failed to understand is that Messiah comes twice. He comes the first time to die as a substitutionary atonement to pay for the sins of the world as the Lamb of God, as prophesied in Isaiah 53. He will come a second time to establish God’s reign upon the earth. The crowd didn’t get it. He wasn’t what they thought they needed. In their defining moment, the crowd got it wrong. From the motivational perspective, the crowd wanted power, but Jesus was all about abdication of power. Jesus surrendered his power. He gave all that he had and all that he was by dying for those who killed him. The way of Jesus is the way of self-sacrificial love. Jesus conquers evil not with guns and bombs and wars and violence in a quest for political and military power, but by loving his enemies enough to die for them. The crowd didn’t understand the concept of a suffering Messiah. The crowd got it wrong. They were motivated by a religious nationalism that confuses the pursuit of national strength with devotion to God, as though God could be used as the means to an end. They had no use for a Messiah who would continue to let Rome rule them seemingly unopposed while he advocated a quieter and slower method of conquering his enemies by loving them. There was nothing in it for them, or so they thought, so the citizens of Jerusalem threw away their only hope for an enduring peace and instead continued to dig into their misguided pursuit of religious nationalism. Today here in the US, we have our own brand of religious nationalism, Christian Nationalism, that closely mirrors the religious nationalism that surfaced on that first Palm Sunday in Jerusalem over 2,000 years ago. If Jesus were a Christian Nationalist, the story would have ended very differently. Jesus would have said “So you want a king who will make your nation great again? Fine, I’m here, let’s do it”. They would have put together an army, or at least a very strong coalition of religious and political leaders who were willing to work with each other toward the accomplishment of some mutual goals, with an army to back them up. They would have gotten rid of the Romans and set up their own government. They might have accomplished the task of making Israel great again, but by side-stepping Isaiah 53 they would have accomplished nothing of eternal value. Israel would have become a superpower, and the tables would have been turned against the Romans. Through a powerful alliance between what we would now call Church and State, with the religious leaders legitimizing the power plays of the political establishment and the political establishment providing special status and protection to the religious realm, Israel would be a force to be reckoned with. That’s not the way the story ended, because Jesus was opposed to what we today would call Christian Nationalism, and he refused to become a king under the terms set up by a coalition between the security-seeking religious establishment and the power-mongering political leadership. Jesus would have nothing to do with that kind of an agreement. He wouldn’t dance the dance of “I support you, you support me, and together we’ll make Israel great again”. His goal was not to build a powerful world-dominating empire. His goal was to die on a cross, and to invite his followers to be willing to do the same. He allowed himself to be killed by the very sort of political and religious coalition that the religious nationalists of his day would have wanted him to spearhead. Jesus didn’t say “pick up your flags and guns and follow me”; he said “pick up your cross and follow me”. The way of Jesus is not the way of flags and guns and political might. The way of Jesus is the way of compassion, self-surrender, and self-sacrificial love. Christian Nationalism leads to the building of an empire that is characterized by flags and guns and the pursuit of political and military power. The way of Jesus leads to a cross. On that original Palm Sunday there were two groups of people in Jerusalem. First, there were the cheering palm-waving crowds who were surrounding Jesus. These were the religious nationalists, who wanted to use Jesus as a tool to make Israel great again. Second, there were the disciples who were following Jesus, though it would lead him (and eventually many of them) to a cross. Today we need to declare ourselves. Either we are standing with the crowd, waving our palm branches in hope of building a Christian America, or we are surrendering our quest for power, and we are following Jesus all the way to the cross. We can’t have one foot in each camp. After showing us the way to the Father and teaching us how to live, Jesus died on the cross to provide atonement for our sins, he arose victorious over sin and death, he ascended into heaven, and one day soon he will return to set up his kingdom on the earth. It will be a peaceable kingdom that will be characterized by love, compassion, justice, and freedom from oppression. Let’s not make the same mistake that was made on that first Palm Sunday on the streets of Jerusalem. When Jesus returns, let’s not be found cheering for and working toward the wrong kind of kingdom. My dad was right. The crowd is often misguided. Don’t follow the crowd. Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. (Matthew 16:24-25)
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The descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had become slaves in Egypt. They were suffering under the oppression of their cruel Egyptian taskmasters, and they cried out to God for deliverance. God heard their cry, and he raised up Moses to deliver them from the hand of their oppressors. The book of Exodus allows us to eavesdrop on God’s conversation with Moses:
And the Lord said, “I have certainly seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their outcry because of their taskmasters, for I am aware of their sufferings. So I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite. And now, behold, the cry of the sons of Israel has come to Me; furthermore, I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians are oppressing them”. (Exodus 3:7-9) God heard their cries for justice, His heart was moved, and he sent a deliverer to free his people from oppression. This shows us that God is not a callous, power-mongering, utilitarian God who uses his people as pawns to satisfy his every whim, without any concern for their well-being. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is a compassionate God who cares for his people and who intervenes on their behalf. Unlike the other gods of antiquity, God’s heart breaks when his people suffer. If, as Tozer taught, a people can rise no higher than the level of their gods, then those who belong to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob should be the most compassionate of all peoples of the earth. We have a God who is not untouched by the suffering of humanity. God suffers when he sees oppression and injustice, he weeps with those who weep, and his compassion moves him to intervene on their behalf. As is the character of God, such must be the character of the people of God. Our hearts should break for the things that break the heart of God, and our compassion should motivate our action. Those of us who own the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as our God (Jews and Christians) should be examples of compassion and pursuers of justice, for such is the character our God, and such should be the character of who we are becoming. Jesus picked up on this theme in his Sermon on the Mount. Surrounded by a mixed crowd, some of whom were his disciples but most of whom were probably curious onlookers who were living in a world of oppression and injustice, Jesus said “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:6). Some who read that verse will assume that Jesus was speaking about personal holiness. Others who read that same verse will assume that Jesus was speaking about justice in society. In my understanding, Jesus was probably referring to both. The Greek word “dikaiosune” may be translated as either “righteousness” or as “justice” (the same is true for Italian word “giustizia” and for the Spanish word “justicia”). If you have an Italian Bible or a Spanish Bible, look up Matthew 5:6 and Matthew 6:33 and you’ll see what I mean. Personal righteousness and justice in society are inseparable. We can’t have justice in society until we have hearts that are righteous, and if we have hearts that are righteous, then we will “hunger and thirst” for justice in society. They are the same word because they are the same concept. We can’t separate righteousness on a personal level from justice on a societal level because they are both expressions of the same heart posture. Unrighteous people can’t build a just society. Righteous people can’t ignore injustice in society. God must change our hearts before we can work toward building a more just society, and if we are not hungering and thirsting for a more just society, then perhaps our hearts have not yet been made righteous. While it is true that we will not have a completely just society until Jesus sets up his reign upon the earth, we dare not use that as an excuse not to do what we can to alleviate the suffering of those who are experiencing the effects of an unjust society (or, at the very least, to hunger and thirst for it and to model it in the Church). Indifference toward either personal holiness or toward the injustices of our society is a red flag indicating that something is drastically wrong with the condition of our hearts. It means that we need to ask God to do a greater work of forming the character of Christ in us. If we are not hungering and thirsting for a more just society, then why would we ever want to live for a thousand years in a kingdom that is characterized by righteousness and justice? If we are not cultivating an appetite for both personal holiness and societal justice, then the thought of spending a thousand years living in that kind of world will be nauseating to us, which means that we don’t really want Jesus to be our King, which means that when Jesus sets up his kingdom upon the earth, tragically, some of us who expect to be a part of that kingdom may find ourselves on the outside looking in. I shudder at the thought, but Jesus did warn us, and we need to take his warning seriously. The Church must be a billboard pointing to the coming Kingdom. We need to be a people who hunger and thirst for righteousness (for personal holiness as well as for a society that is free from injustice and oppression). The Church is called to be a community of the redeemed whose hearts are broken by the things that break the heart of God. If the presence of injustice and oppression in the world in which we live, as well as the presence of sin in our own personal lives, do not break our hearts, if we do not grieve with and for those who are suffering as a result of injustice and oppression (as well as grieving over our own personal lack of holiness) then we are failing at our mission to be the Church that reflects the heart of God and the character of Christ and that points to the coming Kingdom. A Christian is not one who pursues only personal holiness while ignoring the injustices in the world around us, and a Christian is not one who pursues only justice in society while ignoring the pursuit of personal holiness. A Christian is both. To try to separate them is linguistically, psychologically, and theologically impossible. The Sermon on the Mount certainly does not allow for that kind of thinking. This either/or approach that is so popular in the Church in the US is a betrayal of the heart of God, of the character of Christ, and of the mission of the Church. We need to ask God for a heart that aches for both personal holiness and societal justice. We need to ask God to give us a heart that breaks for the things that break his heart. In this way we become bearers of God’s glory and reflectors of the character of Christ. In this way God’s Church fulfills our mission of being salt and light, calling all the peoples of the earth to taste and see the goodness of our God and to experience the redemption that is in Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, to the glory of God the Father. It is the cross of Christ that distinguishes the Christian pursuit of righteousness and justice from the secular pursuit of righteousness and justice. That is a topic for another blog post. When I was a child, I used to enjoy watching a children’s TV program called Captain Kangaroo. Every Thanksgiving morning, the program would end with all the characters taking their places around a beautifully set Thanksgiving table that was laden with turkey, dressing, and all the side dishes, they would greet each other warmly, and then together they would bow their heads as the hymn “We Gather Together” would be playing in the background. It was a beautiful and solemn way to end the program and to begin Thanksgiving Day.
Watching Captain Kangaroo every Thanksgiving morning became a ritual for many of us who were children back in the day. There was wisdom in the timing of the program. As soon as the program ended, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade would begin, and for many years the Grand Marshal of the parade was none other than Captain Kangaroo himself, sitting on a big chair on the first float at the beginning of the parade as the parade was starting to wind its way down Fifth Avenue. Every kid east of the Rockies would be watching that parade. What else was there to do on Thanksgiving morning? They had a captive audience. As I reflect on those days, a couple of things come to mind:
Since those days I’ve learned a few things. First, TV usually isn’t live, so the good captain didn’t need to run a sprint to get from his recording studio to his seat on the float in the parade on Fifth Ave. Second, “We Gather Together” is a very old hymn of the church, written many centuries before the days of Captain Kangaroo. Third, for what it’s worth, the version of the song that they used on Captain Kangaroo was recorded by then-popular singer Perry Como. The hymn “We Gather Together” is a Dutch hymn that was written in 1597. The Dutch Christians had not been permitted to gather for worship as they saw fit, as there was a war going on, and the Dutch were under the rulership of a Spanish king who had different ideas about worship than they did. When the Spanish king was defeated, the Dutch Christians were once again permitted to gather as congregations to worship in the ways that they felt were appropriate. They sang this hymn to thank God for making it possible to gather again to worship Him corporately, and to proclaim that God “forgets not His own”. Over the years, the historical context of the hymn was forgotten, and Americans began using an English translation of the hymn as a Thanksgiving Day anthem. The Dutch were not singing in English, and they were gathering to worship, not to eat turkey and watch football. They were devout Dutch Christians who had hung onto their faith during a time of persecution and who had survived, with their faith intact, because they had recognized that God was always with them during their times of trial; they drew comfort by reminding themselves that God “forgets not His own”. I wonder what the enduring effect has been on the generation of children who heard that old and beautiful hymn being sung year after year on Thanksgiving morning on Captain Kangaroo, just before the Thanksgiving Day Parade. Was something being instilled into our impressionable young minds that we were able to carry into adulthood? Maybe we learned that everything does not have to be casual, trivial, and random, but that there are times and places to ponder things of greater meaning. Maybe we learned that everything in the world does not need to be oriented around fun and entertainment, but that there is value in serious, somber, and holy moments. Maybe we learned that there is beauty in solemnity, and that there is something that happens during gatherings that doesn’t happen when we’re alone. Maybe we learned something about family, about community, about friendship. Maybe seeing the bowed heads and hearing the words of “We Gather Together” helped us to focus, if only for a moment, on something that was of greater value than parades and food and football. As we grew into our teen years and started to think less like children and more like adults, and then eventually as we matured into adulthood, hopefully we came to understand that in life there would be times when we would need to take a stand for what we believed, even if it meant that we would be persecuted. Maybe we came to understand that there would be times when we would need to ask God for the strength to endure difficult trials. Maybe we learned that there would be times when we would need to remind ourselves that God forgets not His own, and that our very survival might necessitate this quality of faith. Maybe we came to understand that there is something or Someone who is greater than our holiday festivities, and that this Someone deserves our attention. Maybe we came to realize that thankfulness is not an expression of dutiful politeness, like saying “thank you” when receiving a gift that we really didn’t want, but a heart posture, a heart of continual gratefulness, and that giving thanks is an empty exercise unless we are thankful to Someone who gave us all that we have and are—namely, to God Himself. Today we still celebrate Thanksgiving, but all too often, all we have left of the holiday are the turkey, the football games and the Macy’s parade. We may “give thanks” as a polite and dutiful exercise. We may even sing “We Gather Together” (though it’s probably being sung much less now than it was when we were younger). Do we forget the God who is behind it all? God helps His people to persevere through times of trial, but we must have the faith to call upon Him and to trust Him. God is worth living for, and He is worth dying for. We are His cherished children. He forgets not His own. Blessed are those who learned these things as children. Blessed are those who continue in these things as adults, and who teach them, by word and by example, to their children and their grandchildren. I hope that some of us may have started to learn these lessons as young children, while watching Captain Kangaroo on TV on those Thanksgiving mornings, while we were waiting for the parade to begin, the turkey to cook and the guests to arrive. I hope we are still learning these lessons, and that we are passing them on to the next generations. May we continue to gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing. May we continue to remember that God “forgets not His own”. In a world that is becoming ever more shallow and ever more fragmented, these things must be preserved, for the glory of God and for the good of us all. Something is troubling me these days. As I peruse social media I am seeing that, at least in my circles, many people seem to be praying for the safety of the Israelis, but very few seem to be praying for the safety of the Palestinians. This surely must grieve the heart of God.
I know that God meant business when He said “I will bless those who bless you, and curse them that curse you” (Genesis 12:3) and “he who touches you touches the apple of His eye” (Zechariah 2:8) and “let not the apple of your eye cease” (Lamentations 2:18). I know that Israel is at the center of God’s plan, and that God’s purposes for Israel must be accomplished, and that Gentile Christians have been grafted into the vine of Israel, and that our Savior is the Jewish Messiah, and that the God we serve is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and that Jesus will return as a Jewish king over a Jewish kingdom that will be centered in Jerusalem. I am not questioning any of this good theology, but I am questioning our response. Do we dare shed tears only for the innocent civilians of Israel, and not also for the innocent civilians of Palestine? Do we dare allow the horrors of war as experienced by the Israelis to touch our hearts, but not also the horrors of war as experienced by the Palestinians? Do we dare grieve only when an Israeli family has a family member who was lost in the war and is never coming home, but not grieve also when the same thing happens to a Palestinian family? War is war, heartbreak is heartbreak, suffering is suffering, pain is pain, sorrow is sorrow, whether it happens in Israel or in Palestine. God’s heart is grieved whenever there is suffering in the world, and our hearts must grieve as well. God is sovereign, and His purposes will be accomplished. God’s plans and purposes cannot be thwarted. Our response must be one of compassion for all, not compassion for some. Surely we can learn how to support the purposes of God for Israel in a way that does not turn a blind eye to the suffering of the Palestinians. Surely we can learn how to support the purposes of God for Israel in a way that does not assume that everything that Israel does is good, and that everything that Palestine does is bad. Surely we can learn how to support the purposes of God for Israel in a way that does not turn everyone into “good guys” or “bad guys” depending on their ethnicity. We must seek the heart of God on these matters. We must learn to grieve with all who grieve, whether they be Israelis or Palestinians, for God takes no delight in the suffering of anyone, whether they be Israelis or Palestinians. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted…. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God”. “So the disciples went away again to their homes. But Mary was standing outside the tomb weeping; and so, as she wept, she stooped and looked inside the tomb; and she saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had been lying”. (John 20:10-12)
The resurrection of Jesus from the grave on Sunday after his sorrowful death on Friday is God’s checkmate to all the plotting and scheming and evil and sin that the world could ever dish up against God and against all that is good and beautiful and right and holy and good. It’s God’s victory over sin and the grave; It’s God’s victory over death itself. The day that began with such great perplexity soon turned into a day of victory and of joyful celebration. Sunday is a microcosm of the human dilemma. We are born into what seems to be a mysterious and confusing universe, and we wonder if there is any purpose to it all. We cry out to the heavens for an answer, and the heavens remain silent. All that we see is a dark and mysterious and silent universe with a myriad of unanswered questions, and we wonder if there is anyone out there to answer them, or if we are condemned to live in the futility of a universe where there are many questions but very few answers. But there are some people at some times and in some places who look out across the universe and we see something very different; the light is turned on, something pierces our souls, and we realize that there is an answer, that God and heaven and truth and beauty are real, that the universe makes sense, that “the heavens resound with the glory of God”, that everything has a purpose, that we have a reason not only to be alive, but to celebrate with joyfulness! Coming to grips with the reality of the death and resurrection of Jesus is the key. While it may seem foolish to many to believe that a man could actually resurrect from the dead, many of us have discovered that the resurrection of Jesus is the key that opens our understanding to the things of God and to the meaning and purpose that we seek. “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ is coming again”. It’s an old refrain that has been repeated by the Church for two millennia, and it is true— more true than many will ever realize. Sometimes the things that seem the least credible are the things that are the most true, but we have to be willing to look foolish in order to discover them. We have to be willing to question the things that seem most obvious. When we make the so-called “discovery”, then we realize that we have not really discovered anything at all, but that God has revealed these things to us, because He wanted us to know the truth that would set us free. We didn’t find the light; God turned it on and focused it in our direction so we couldn’t miss it. Blessed are those who have eyes to see and ears to hear! If we could get beyond our pretty traditions and see things from a higher perspective, we would understand that Resurrection Sunday is a declarative celebration that is the kind of celebration we would have if war and violence and injustice and poverty and racism and discrimination and cancer and COVID-19 and all of the other issues and diseases that inflict and affect humankind were eliminated on the same day, times infinity, because it marks the defeat of all the enemies of God and of humankind, forever. It marks the defeat of humankind’s two greatest enemies, sin and death, out of which all the other of humanity’s problems flow. It marks the breaking of the curse of sin and death. The head of the serpent has been crushed by the wounded heel of the woman’s seed. God had created an unspeakably beautiful and glorious universe, humankind had rebelled, sin and death had reigned for a season, but in the resurrection of Jesus, God has the last word. Checkmate. God will accomplish his purposes. Sin and death and their consequences have been abolished. God is at work restoring his children, his earth and his universe to their original wholeness and beauty, He is carrying out his purposes toward His intended ends, and all obstacles have forever been demolished by the One who died and arose from the dead. God can never be defeated, and his purposes are good. In the proclamation of Resurrection Sunday lies our hope and our joy: He is risen! He is risen indeed! The message of Sunday is that our deepest moments of futility and perplexity and despair can be turned into our greatest moments of joy and victory and meaning once we start to get a glimpse of the God-perspective. We find meaning in the universe by getting to know God and to understand His ways. We get to know God by getting to know Jesus, which involves repentance and faith. We get to know Jesus as we wrestle with the implications of his death for us and his resurrection for us, but we have to move from the global to the personal. His death was for the world, to reconcile a sinful world to God, but in another sense it was specifically for me, to take away my sins. His resurrection was for me, that I also might be raised, as he was. He came to give me forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and a life that has meaning. These things are all wrapped up in his death and resurrection, which took place for me. They are for the world, they are for me, and they are for anyone who will receive them. May God open our eyes and show us the truth that will set us free! As Mary did on that Sunday morning over 2,000 years ago, we came to the tomb. We looked inside. We saw. We understood. We believed. We still believe, and that belief has rocked us to the core or our being, and has transformed our very existence into something very different from what it was before we met him— and that has made all the difference. Those of us who are Christians are people of the cross, and people of the empty tomb, and people of the soon return. These are the things that define us. These are the events that tell us who we are, because they tell us who God is, and how we can be in right relationship with Him, and how we can know Him, and how we can find our place in His universe as His beloved children, with His design, and with His appointed calling, purpose, meaning, and destiny. Look into the empty tomb at your own risk. Look away at your own risk. There is no way to avoid the risk. Whether we choose to look inside or to look away, the consequences are immense. There is no way to play it safe. Choose wisely. Choose carefully. “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive”. (1 Corinthians 15:20-22) On Friday we lament the death of Jesus, and on Sunday we celebrate his resurrection. What do we do on Saturday? What to we do when our goals have been thwarted, our expectations have left us disappointed, our hopes have been dashed, and we wake up and realize that there’s nothing left to do? Saturday is the day of silence; the day of pause; the day of waiting for we know not what. It’s the day of suspended animation. It’s the day when the world waits. It’s the day when the world holds its breath. It’s the day of the drumroll that we think we may hear rumbling faintly, many miles off in the distance— but no, that must be our imagination. Nothing good is going to happen here any time soon. What can we do on Saturday? We can learn to be silent. We can learn to pour out our souls to God in utter honesty, as King David did in the Psalms and as Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemane. We can learn to listen to what is really going on in our own hearts and minds and souls. We can be honest. We can face our deepest fears and doubts. After all, God already knows how we feel, and there’s no reason to hide ourselves from ourselves when there’s nothing left to lose. You can’t get much lower than rock bottom. What can we do on Saturday? We can listen for the still, soft voice of God, as did the Prophet Elijah. We can strain our ears to hear what God might be telling us. It’s easier to hear when the world around us is silent and there is nothing left to distract us. Dreams die on Friday, but if we are listening for the voice of God, new dreams and new hopes can begin to be stirred on Saturday. While there may be nothing very solid going on in our lives or in our souls, no “aha” moments, no amazing revelations from the heavens, no lightning or thunderbolts or visions in the skies, it’s the day to be looking for the smallest stirrings of the faintest hope of new beginnings. That may be all we get on Saturday, but that is enough. A little flicker of hope is all that we need. Even if we can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, at least we can begin to suspect that the light is out there somewhere. Maybe we’ll see it tomorrow. Didn’t the psalmist of old remind us “You have allowed me to suffer much hardship, but you will restore me to life again” and “Sorrow may last for a season, but joy comes in the morning”? Is it possible that we can have joy again— maybe not today, but eventually? If we listen with our souls, Saturday is the day when we may begin to hear faintly that something is stirring. A still, small voice is speaking. The smallest flicker of hope is being born. Dare we believe it? Dare we trust it? It’s not over. When we cannot see the hand of God, that’s when we learn to trust the heart of God— and the heart of God toward us is good. God is good, and his heart toward us is good. Yes, it is very good. Sometimes the voice of God speaks the loudest when everything else is silent. Sometimes we hear the voice of God most clearly when we are lamenting in silence, too sad and too stunned and too weak and too numb to be able speak or to fix or to repair or to distract or to blame or to argue or to defend or to protest or to criticize or to rationalize or to analyze or to strategize or to give an opinion or to even have an opinion. It’s the day when we stop trying to define ourselves by our positions and by our opinions. It’s the day when we stop trying to prove that “we” are right and “they” are wrong, and we realize that we don’t always need to take a side. It’s a day of learning that we have nothing to defend and nothing to hide and nothing to protect and nothing to lose, as long as we are in God’s hand— and we are in God’s hand. It’s day of realizing that there may never be a “new normal”, but that’s OK, because God is in the abnormal as much as he is in the normal. It’s the day of being still, and knowing that God is God— and that is enough. It’s the day of learning that the day that feels most hopeless is not the end of hope. It’s the day of waiting. It’s the day before the day of new beginnings. It’s Saturday. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? (Mark 15:34)
The death of Jesus Christ for our sins is something that needs to be experienced; not merely analyzed. What could be more horrifying than spending one’s entire life in complete submission to God, experiencing the deepest possible trust because of the deepest possible intimacy, only to feel forsaken at the end. Before we rush to our theological explanations, we need to take a moment to feel the horror of it all. We shouldn’t rush off to explain. We need to avoid the tendency to rush off to celebrate the resurrection before the time. We need to feel the sorrow. Closing the theological loop now would be premature. The Son feels abandoned by the Father. God feels abandoned by God. Whatever the theological explanation, the feeling was real. The horror was real. The darkness of that moment in the soul of Jesus is unimaginable. It was the worse possible nightmare in the universe, but it was real. The emotional pain was real. The agony was real. It wasn’t only physical pain that Jesus felt on the cross. The physical pain was emblematic of the emotional and spiritual pain of feeling abandoned by God Himself. The wretched agony that Jesus was experiencing at that moment can never be described or replicated. Jesus experienced all the physical, emotional and spiritual pain and brokenness and isolation that the universe could dish up against him. It happened once for all. The universe can contain that degree of pain only once. It had to happen this way. The shedding of the blood of lambs and bulls could never accomplish our redemption; it could only point to it. Only a human can pay for the sins of another human. Only God Himself can pay for the sins of a billion humans. The sacrifice for sins must be accomplished by someone who is, in the words of the ancient creed, “very God and very man”. It must be accomplished via a strange kind of sacrifice, where the priest and the offering are one. The priest offers himself as an offering for sin, and the priest is God. This baffles the intellect and stretches the imagination beyond the breaking point. God gives up His life to save the life of His people. God exacts the penalty, because He is just. God pays the penalty Himself, because He is loving. Rational explanations will always fall short. We must experience the truth, feel the truth, believe the truth. In some way that passes all human comprehension, when Jesus died on the cross as the sacrificial Lamb of God, God died for me, so that I could be forgiven. Jesus was forsaken that I might be accepted. Jesus was condemned that I might be forgiven. There is something very deep going on here in the cosmic order of things. Something at the heart of the universe exploded. Something deep in the heart of God exploded, and out of that explosion flowed the love and mercy that forgives a billion people of their sins and reconciles the inhabitants of a rebellious planet to their good Creator. He was forsaken that I might be reconciled. His death is my life. We need to feel the horror of Friday before we can dare to celebrate what will happen on Sunday. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5) And many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches which they had cut from the fields. And those who went in front and those who followed were shouting: “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord; Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David; Hosanna in the highest!” (Mark 11:8-10)
The Middle Eastern sun is high and hot as an enthusiastic crowd starts to fill the streets of Jerusalem, cheering, celebrating, giving each other “high fives” as the young rabbi rides into the city on a donkey. Their people had suffered under oppressive regimes for centuries—the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Medes and the Persians, the Greeks, the Ottomans, and now the Romans—and their frustration had reached the boiling point; there was no turning back. An oppressed people can be kicked around for only so long before they start to fight back. At some point someone has to draw a line in the sand—and this young rabbi could be just the man for the job. The people are looking for a champion —someone who would fight for them; some rugged son of David who would stand and turn and face the Goliath of Rome and raise his clenched fist and shout the challenge to the arrogant enemies of God and of His people: “Who are you to defy the Living God?” And so they follow him, cheering as they go. “Hosanna!” “Save now!” “Deliver us from Roman oppression!” “Give us back our kingdom!” “Make Israel great again!” These are the cries that come from their mouths that echo the hopes that they treasure in their hearts as they follow this strong but gentle rabbi who claims that he has come from God and is returning to God. Goliath is about to fall. God and His people are about to be vindicated. The enemies of God and the enemies of God’s people are about to be defeated. No one defies Almighty God and gets away with it—at least not for long—and now the day of reckoning has come. While they are cheering and waving their palm branches, they might be asking themselves some questions that they dare not verbalize. “Why the donkey? Shouldn’t a warrior-king be striding into the city on a white horse? Could this have something to do with Zechariah 9:9? Where are the armies? That embarrassingly ordinary-looking bunch of unarmed “disciples” who insist on following him everywhere he goes doesn’t exactly look like the kind of militia that could march in and take over a city, let alone push back an empire. Something is not quite right about this turn of events. Something is not going as planned. This young rabbi seems to be departing from the conventional script. Why this talk about ‘love your enemies’? What kind of king is this? What kind of man is this? He talks of God as though he really knows Him. Could anyone know God that intimately? He speaks of God as being his Father in a way that seems almost scandalous. His way of dealing with people is not that of a warrior-king. He relates to people as though he really loves them. Can a warrior-king love his people? How can a conqueror allow his heart be touched by the needs and cares of his people, and even of his enemies, and treat them as his friends? He seems too gentle to be a warrior and too loving to be a king. His authority is won not by his harshness, but it’s somehow tied to his gentleness. He acts more like a servant than a king. He gathers his followers neither by threat nor by coercion but simply by being who he is. His people are his willing followers because at a place deep within themselves they know that there is something about him that’s worth following—or so they say. He teaches, but not as the other rabbis. He’s different. He’s a son of David, perhaps, but a different kind of son. Who is the man?” The people are perplexed but they dare not give up their hope, so they continue to cheer, waving their palm branches as the entourage enters the city. Perhaps something good will come of this; perhaps not. If he is the long-awaited Deliverer, the strong man who will set right all that is wrong with the world, then they are in the right place at the right time, following the right man. Rome is about to fall, and they are getting a front-row seat. Some day they will tell their children and their grandchildren that they were there on that historic day when the king came into Jerusalem, turned the tables on Rome and restored the Kingdom of David. If he is not the Deliverer then they have nothing left to lose, and so they continue to cheer. Today here in the US, we have our own brand of religious nationalism, Christian Nationalism, that closely mirrors the religious nationalism that surfaced on that first Palm Sunday in Jerusalem over 2,000 years ago. If Jesus were a Christian Nationalist, the story would have ended very differently. Jesus would have said “So you want a king who will make your nation great again? Fine, I’m here, let’s do it”. They would have put together an army, or at least a very strong coalition of religious and political leaders who were willing to work with each other toward the accomplishment of some mutual goals, with an army to back them up. They would have gotten rid of the Romans and set up their own government. They might have accomplished the task of making Israel great again, but by side-stepping Isaiah 53 they would have accomplished nothing of eternal value. Israel would have become a superpower, and the tables would have been turned against the Romans. Through a powerful alliance between what we would now call Church and State, with the religious leaders legitimizing the power plays of the political establishment and the political establishment providing special status and protection to the religious realm, Israel would be a force to be reckoned with. That’s not the way the story ended, because Jesus was opposed to what we today would call Christian Nationalism, and he refused to become a king under the terms set up by a coalition between the security-seeking religious establishment and the power-mongering political leadership. Jesus would have nothing to do with that kind of an agreement. He wouldn’t dance the dance of “I support you, you support me, and together we’ll make Israel great again”. His goal was not to build a powerful world-dominating empire. His goal was to die on a cross, and to invite his followers to be willing to do the same. He allowed himself to be killed by the very sort of political and religious coalition that the religious nationalists of his day would have wanted him to spearhead. Jesus didn’t say “pick up your flags and guns and follow me”; he said “pick up your cross and follow me”. The way of Jesus is not the way of flags and guns and political might. The way of Jesus is the way of compassion, self-surrender, and self-sacrificial love. Christian Nationalism leads to the building of an empire that is characterized by flags and guns and the pursuit of political and military power. The way of Jesus leads to a cross. On that original Palm Sunday there were two groups of people in Jerusalem. First, there were the cheering palm-waving crowds who were surrounding Jesus. These were the religious nationalists, who wanted to use Jesus as a tool to make Israel great again. Second, there were the disciples who were following Jesus, though it would lead him (and eventually many of them) to a cross. Today we need to declare ourselves. Either we are standing with the crowds, waving our palm branches in hope of building a Christian America, or we are surrendering our quest for power, and we are following Jesus all the way to the cross. We can’t have one foot in each group. After showing us the way to the Father and teaching us how to live, Jesus died on the cross to provide atonement for our sins, and he arose victorious over sin and death, and he ascended into heaven, and one day soon he will return to set up his kingdom on the earth. It will be a peaceable kingdom that will be characterized by love, compassion, justice, and freedom from oppression. Let’s not make the same mistake that was made on that first Palm Sunday on the streets of Jerusalem. When Jesus returns, let’s not be found building the wrong kind of kingdom. Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. (Matthew 16:24-25) “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)
The task of following Christ is not for the faint of heart. It’s a lifestyle of intensive discipleship as our character is transformed into the character of Christ. How, then, does Jesus invite his followers to take upon themselves an easy yoke and a light burden? What’s so “easy” and “light” about embracing a lifestyle of intensive discipleship? I believe it has to do with the fact that when we learn to follow Christ, we learn to abandon the project of building, protecting and defending “The Kingdom of Me”. We no longer have an agenda that we need to maintain at all costs. We lay down our agenda when we pick up our cross. That’s why countless Christians around the globe can be persecuted and killed for their faith, and go down not cursing, but singing. They aren’t afraid to die because they have already died to their own agenda. They have already abandoned the building project of their own kingdom. They have already discovered “the pearl of great price” for which they are gladly willing to abandon all other pursuits. This is what yields the lifestyle that Jesus described as an easy yoke and a light burden. The Baby of Bethlehem was born in a stable and placed in a manger for a reason. Had he come as a wealthy and powerful king he would have reproduced followers who would dedicate their lives to the accumulation of wealth and the pursuit of power. Instead, he came as a helpless baby, born in poverty, that he might reproduce followers who renounce the manipulative power-mongering tactics of this world and instead pursue peacemaking, humility, and sacrificial love in the beauty of joyful obedience. He came to call those who would gladly renounce their own personal kingdom-building agenda, taking his yoke upon themselves and learning to become more like him. Jesus still invites us to take his yoke upon ourselves. When we are thus yoked to Jesus, he sets the agenda, he establishes the direction, he determines the pace. All we need to do is stay under the yoke and to keep on walking, lovingly, trustingly, joyfully. In doing so we become more like him, reflecting his character before a watching world that desperately needs to catch a glimpse of the real Jesus made visible in the lives of those who belong to him. Our assignment, should we choose to accept it, is to place ourselves under this easy yoke and this light burden and to allow them to accomplish their work in us, allowing Christ to be formed in us more fully. It’s the only way we’re ever going to have the kind of impact on this world that Jesus calls us to have. It’s how we shine brightly in a dark place. It’s how we point to a future that is not yet but soon will be. It’s how we become people who radiate joy and hope in a world that is characterized by futility and despair. It’s how and why we celebrate Christmas, inviting others to celebrate along with us. It’s how we show the world a better way. As we celebrate the birth of the Savior, let’s not neglect his invitation to take his yoke upon ourselves and to learn of him. Then we will learn by experience that, despite the demands of intensive discipleship, and despite the hardships, difficulties and disappointments of this life, his yoke is truly easy, and his burden is truly light. I used to be able to see the stars at night. For most of my life I have lived in or very close to urban areas, so my view of the universe has been limited by urban glare, but at least I was able to see a few of the stars. That is no longer the case. Urban glare has taken its toll on the city where I live. Now I can still see two or three planets, but I can no longer look up into the sky and see the stars. When did the stars disappear? Has anyone else noticed that the stars have gone missing, or am I the only one? I know that the stars are really still there and that I simply cannot see them because there is too much light in the sky, and that stars require a dark sky in order to be visible, and that the sky is not black where there is excessive urban glare. That explanation satisfies the scientist in me, but my soul still feels the loss. My view of the universe has been obscured by the growing glare of urban civilization. I can see the distant galaxies through the James Webb Space Telescope, but I can no longer see the closest stars from my own backyard, and there is something both sad and ironic about that. I want to see the stars again.
I used to live in world where people pursued the common good. I grew up in a town where neighbors looked after the safety and well-being of each other’s children, where parents and grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins and schoolteachers and community religious leaders worked together to teach children what is good and right and beautiful, and what is wrong and harmful and destructive. We kept an eye out for each other. Whether we were buying groceries or clothes or shoes, we knew the people who owned the stores, we knew the people who worked behind the counter, and we “gave them business”, because we knew that they had bills to pay, just as we had. We knew that if we helped them, then we were really helping us— the community— and that the only way that we could thrive was for all of us to thrive together. Now I live in a world where people are afraid of each other. I live in a world where the Conservatives and the Liberals and the various special interest groups each pull in their own direction, intent only upon their own agenda, even if at the expense of the other groups. Everyone is afraid of everyone else, so we hide from each other, and we throw stones at each other, and we pretend that the problems of the world are everyone’s fault but our own. I want to believe in the common good again. I used to live in a world where people believed in Truth. We might disagree on what was true and what was false, but at least we knew that Truth existed. Truth was something to be discovered, not to be created or designed or fabricated. The quest for Truth was like mining for gold, not like writing a good book of fiction and then convincing ourselves that what we wrote was true, just because we wanted it to be true. History was what happened; not what we wished to have happened. Now I am living in a world where Truth has been replaced by “my truth” and “your truth”, and we start with the agenda that we are trying to sell, and then we work backward to generate a story that will get us to our desired agenda, and we call that story “truth”. I want to believe in Truth again. I used to live in world where people worshipped God because He is God. Now I live in a world where people use God as a manipulative tool to accomplish an agenda. God has become a means to an end, rather than an end in Himself. If we want to convince people that they really ought to hold the position that we think they should hold, we simply try to convince them that God stands where we stand, so that if they oppose our position they must be opposing God. We try to convince the world that God is in favor of our political party, our denomination, our position, our agenda. We try to use God to justify injustices and to make America great again. Instead of encouraging each other to worship and honor and obey and love God, we grab onto God and try to use Him against each other as though He were a hammer, just one more tool in our tool chest. “You need to jump onto our bandwagon; After all, you wouldn’t want to oppose God, would you?” becomes our modern-day creed, despite our lip-service to the Nicene. I want to live in a world where people worship God because He is God. OK, my memories of how the world used to be are naive and overly simplistic, but after all these are childhood memories, so they bear the mark of childlike innocence. The world was never as simple and as straightforward as the one I am depicting, and the problems of our postmodern world are really no different than the problems of the ancient world, but something has gone awry. There’s been a quantum leap in the wrong direction. The pace of the societal implications of our common human dysfunction has accelerated. We’ve been distracted by too much noise, but it’s the noise of our own making. We’ve been distracted by too much glare, but it’s the glare that we’ve all created. We’ve created so much noise that we can no longer hear each other. We’ve created so much glare that we can no longer see each other. We’ve fabricated so many lies that we no longer seek or recognize or understand the Truth. We’ve become so politicized that we have a whole generation of young people who are afraid that if they dare to profess faith in God, they may become weaponized by someone’s political agenda. We need to stop and take a deep breath and admit that the world has lost its way before we can see and hear clearly enough to know what specifically has gone wrong. We’ve go to stop pointing the finger toward the Other and start looking at our own sin and weakness and dysfunction, for a world of sin and weakness and dysfunction is the only kind of world that can be built by people who are sinful and weak and dysfunctional. The problems of our world mirror the brokenness of our soul. Jesus said “And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:32). If Jesus is the Son of God who came to earth to show us God the Father, then where else would we find the solution to our common human dilemma, if not in Jesus? Our quest for truth must began and end with Jesus— not the Conservative Jesus, or the Liberal Jesus, or the Patriotic American Jesus, or the Black Jesus, or the White Jesus, or the Hippie Jesus, but Jesus the Son of God, who died for our sins, wearing our name tag, and who rose victorious over sin and death, and who is coming again to Earth to set up the kind of world we have been dreaming of. No one else can show us Truth but the One who is The Truth— but our dysfunction blocks our own healing. We try to make progress but we get in our own way, because we aren’t willing to face the Truth— and so we create more glare, and more noise, until we are so blind and deaf that we can no longer see and hear, because we would rather not see or hear. We would rather live in our own delusions. I want to live in a world where people worship God because He is God. I want to live in a world where people believe in Truth. I want to live in a world where people pursue the common good. I want to see the stars again. |
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