For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)
Frederick Buechner says of this verse “That is to say that God so loved the world that he gave his only son to this obscene horror; so loved the world that in some ultimately indescribable way and at some ultimately immeasurable cost he gave the world himself. Out of this terrible death, John says, came eternal life not just in the sense of resurrection to life after death but in the sense of life so precious even this side of death that to live is to stand with one foot already in eternity”. (Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life, Harper One, copyright 1992, p. 98). This verse of Scripture has captured the imagination of Christians for over 2,000 years. I want to explore the meaning of these words from the Gospel of John, for in these words and in the message that they carry there is hope, there is meaning, and there is life. For God so loved the world… God glances across His unspeakably glorious universe that had exploded into the magnificent burst of colors and sounds and shapes and rhythms and throbs of matter and energy by the mere utterance of a Word from His mouth, and He focuses His attention on one little blue speck, this planet, this world, this broken and violent and strife-filled and war-torn world where people fight and argue and criticize and condemn and fear the ones they hate and hate the ones they fear, where injustice rules the planet, where people try to solve their problems by picking up guns and killing each other, or by dropping bombs one each other’s countries, or by exterminating people by the millions, where deceit is common and truth is scarce, where people would rather hide themselves behind behind the fig leaf of convenient lies than deal in naked honesty with uncomfortable and self-incriminating truth, where the common good is sacrificed on the altar of personal and partisan agenda, where love of God and love of humanity are shoved aside without a moment’s hesitation by the scheming and manipulative mechanisms of both those who want to stay in control and those who want to seize control. For God so loved the world-- that world— that He gave His only Son. For God so loved the world that He gave… Why would He give to a world that knows nothing of giving and only of taking? Why would he come to a world whose inhabitants would only reject him? The Pharisees didn’t like Him because He didn’t follow their rules. He wasn’t religious enough for them. The Sadducees didn’t like Him because He believed in too much. He threatened their intellectual snobbery. The Romans didn’t like Him because He believed in love and mercy and forgiveness and compassion and spoke against revenge and proclaimed a Gospel of peace and non-retaliation. He was too soft for them. The average Joe on the street didn’t like Him because He exposed Joe’s sin and selfishness for what it was. He took away Joe’s fig leaf. He had a brief moment of popularity on what we now call Palm Sunday, when he was acclaimed by the crowds in the streets of Jerusalem as the coming Anointed One, but his popularity didn’t last long. He hadn’t come to bring them the kind of kingdom they were expecting— the kind where “we” are the good guys and “they” are the bad guys and “we” get to rule over “them”. Jesus came to oppose that kind of kingdom-building, not to build that kind of kingdom, and so the admiration of the crowds quickly morphed into a toxic cocktail of collaboration of Church and State in an underhanded plot to kill the Son of God, with his small band of followers cowed into silence. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son… Without trying to explain the intricacies of Trinitarian theology, let’s just cut to the chase and let the theologians attempt to explain that which is ultimately inexplicable. When God sent his Son to visit the planet, God visited the planet. A might army of soldiers wouldn’t have been able to fix the problem. A brilliant band of theologians and scientists and ethicists and politicians and artists and poets wouldn’t have been able to fix the problem, even if they could all agree on a common solution. The problem ran so deeply into the systems of human society and into the fabric of human hearts that any solution they could have possibly proposed would have served only to place an awkward band-aid over a gaping wound. The band-aid would soon fall off, leaving the gaping wound even worse than it was before. Only God could solve the problem, and there was only one way that that He could do it— by coming to planet Earth as a man. That man was both God and man. He was the Son of God and God the Son. That man was Jesus. By coming to the Earth, He showed us how to relate to God as our Father. By dying on the cross, He reconciled us to God by taking upon Himself the penalty and punishment for our sins. By rising from the dead, He abolished sin and death forever, conquering them decisively and victoriously. He came to bring healing and peace to a wounded and war-torn world. He came to bring healing and peace to our wounded spirits. He came to give us a way out of isolation and self-absorption and into relationship, with God and with each other. He came to forgive us of our sins and reconcile us to God, enabling us to live the kind of life He had intended for us to have all along— eternal life, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Eternal life is knowing Him. For God so loved…. It was all motivated by love. What else would we expect from a God of love? He didn’t come to fix the world and then move onto another project on some other galaxy in some other corner of the universe. It was love that prompted Him to come, and it’s love that will prompt Him to come again, so that He can be with us forever— which is exactly what He has wanted all along. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)
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If we human beings are all sinful, then it stands to reason that everything we build will be corrupted by sin. Sinful men and women build sinful structures. Would we expect sinful human beings to build sinless structures? If we as a fallen human race have an inclination toward prejudice and racism in our hearts, if our sin nature inclines us to suspect, even in very subtle ways, that those who are not like us are probably in some sense inferior to us, then it stands to reason that we will build structures that will reflect and are corrupted by this sinful inclination, whether we do so intentionally or not. So why are some Christians trying to say that institutional racism doesn’t exist? When people speak of institutional racism, rather than disputing them, we should high-five them and congratulate them for finally catching up with what the Bible has been teaching for millennia. What an odd situation we have here. Secular thinking is recognizing what we Christians call “sin”, and many Christians are denying its existence. Instead of denying its existence we should be saying “Yes, racism is real, both in our hearts and in our institutional structures. It’s sinful, there is no excuse for it, Christ died for that sin, and it’s a sin of which we must all repent continually, asking God to search our hearts and reveal to us our wicked ways, both as individuals and as a society”.
Let’s talk about the situation in which the Hebrew slaves found themselves on the day when they were released from Egyptian bondage. They were free, joyful, able to worship and serve and obey God without Egyptian interference, but they were also unemployed, unskilled except in doing tasks that no one else was willing to do, living among a people who were used to thinking of them as their own personal property. Suddenly, the whole society had changed. The Egyptians had to learn how to function without their Hebrew slaves. The Hebrews had to learn how to function without their Egyptian masters. Thankfully God got them out of there quickly, split open a sea for them, gave them Moses as a leader, gave them the Ten Commandments and the entire Law of Moses, a whole sacrificial system, a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, manna, quail, water from the rock, not to mention His Presence in the Tabernacle. God had a solution that saved the Hebrew people from a lot of chaos that they would have otherwise experienced had they stayed in Egypt. Much chaos was averted because God quickly removed them from the situation. The Hebrews were freed, the angel of death passed over, and that was cause for great celebration! The Egyptians were judged, the angel of death did not pass over, and the consequences were great. Now let’s try to imagine what would have happened if the freed Hebrews had stayed in Egypt— no longer as slaves but as free man and women, still living within the society that had previously enslaved them. That makes the situation far more complicated! While the Egyptians are learning how to survive without their slaves, the Hebrews are learning how to survive without their masters— and both groups are trying to learn different lessons in the same place and at the same time! It would have taken many generations for everything to get sorted out. Even after several generations, it’s easy to see how the Egyptians might think that everything was now OK while the Hebrews would feel that there were unresolved problems that still needed to be addressed. Now let’s transpose this situation into our American context. The Civil War had been fought. Slavery had been abolished, but freed slaves were living in the same society as those who had previously been their masters, and racism and prejudice did not suddenly disappear overnight. Jim Crow laws kept the old patterns of racism and oppression going. Eventually the Jim Crow laws were abolished, but the old patterns still persisted, perhaps in more subtle ways. The Civil Rights Era made some more progress, but some of the old patterns still persisted. When we talk about institutional racism, we are saying that the problems have not yet been resolved; the old patterns still persist, not only in the hearts of people but also in the structures of our society. Becoming defensive and dismissive of the whole concept of institutional racism is very much the wrong approach. The right approach is to listen, listen, listen to those who are still being ground under the wheels of institutional racism, listen to their stories, listen to their pain and frustration, and then listen for the voice of God. If we listen, we may just hear and understand. It is possible for a society to repent corporately. Didn’t Ninevah repent at the preaching of Jonah? They even put sackcloth on the animals (see Jonah 3:8). God holds societies accountable, not only individuals. If a society can repent corporately, then a society can sin corporately. We can’t begin to dismantle systems of racism until we are willing to recognize that racism exists, both on an individual level and on a systemic level. When we acknowledge, then we can confess, repent, and take action. If those in society who don’t know God can’t or won’t repent, then at least the Christians living among them can and should repent— even if they are not personally guilty of the sin of the surrounding society. Didn’t Nehemiah confess the sins of his people, even though he personally was not guilty of the sins they had committed? (See Nehemiah 1). We can’t take steps to remedy the situation until we admit that the situation exists, and that we are probably in some way complicit with the sins of our nation. If we have seen the problem and have done nothing about it, or if we have refused to admit that the problem even exists, or if we have refused to ask God to shine his searchlight into our own hearts to reveal to us any traces of prejudice or racism for which we must repent personally, then we have been complicit. I fail to see how the concept of institutional racism contradicts biblical teaching. We never sin in a vacuum. The consequences of sin affect not only the sinner and the one sinned against but also many other people in the surrounding society. Sin has ripple effects that go farther and wider than we ever realize. The term “institutional racism” is a secular attempt to label what the Bible describes as the effects or consequences of sin. If we refuse to admit that institutional racism even exists, then how can we ever appropriate the biblical solution of the cross and the resurrection and confession of sin and repentance and faith, coupled with the injunction of Micah 6:8 to “do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God”? The secular world admits that there is a problem but doesn’t have the solution. Christians have the solution, but some Christians don’t recognize that the problem exists. Sounds like some deception is at work here. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9) “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting”. (Psalm 139:23-24) “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness”. (1 John 1:8-9) “Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God”. (Psalm 90:1-2) The Hebrew and Christian Scriptures tell about a God who knows what He is doing. He creates a magnificently beautiful universe according to a master plan, with great precision. Everything connects with everything else in a massive complex of myriads of causes and effects. Somehow, everything works. According to the Scriptures, we live in a predictable universe where the galaxies don’t go crashing into each other, time doesn’t suddenly start going backwards, matter doesn’t suddenly morph into some new and foreign substance, time and space continue to be time and space, and the laws of mathematics and chemistry and physics are constant. This is the case because an intelligent God brought the universe into existence and sustains it according to His plan, supervising the execution of the plan right down to the minutest detail. If that is our starting point, then how do we account for war, violence, injustice, cruelty and oppression? And how do we account for natural catastrophes, diseases such as cancer, viruses such as COVID-19, and death itself? According to the Scriptures, God granted to humankind the gift of free will. Humankind chose to rebel against God. We call this rebellion “sin”. If God were to eradicate all of the war, injustice, cruelty and oppression in the universe, He would have to eradicate humankind, for all of humankind is sinful. The rebellion of humanity somehow knocked the earth out of sync, resulting in natural catastrophes, diseases such as cancer, viruses such as COVID-19, and death itself. God is still in control, but He has ordained that these be the tragic consequences of humanity’s rebellion against Himself. Actions have consequences. Sin against God brought a curse upon humankind. It’s the way God has set up His universe. The Scriptures also speak of what Judaism calls the tikkun olam, the “healing of the world”, which is associated with the coming of the promised Hebrew Messiah. For example, 2,700 years ago, the prophet Isaiah foretold: “And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots: And the spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD; And shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the LORD: and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears: But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea. And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious”. (Isaiah 11:1-10) This is the point where Judaism and Christianity start to move in different directions. According to the teachings of Judaism, the tikkum olam has not yet arrived because the Hebrew Messiah has not yet arrived. According to the teachings of Christianity, the Hebrew Messiah comes twice. He came the first time as the Lamb of God, to provide an atonement for the sins of humankind by dying on the cross as a substitutionary atonement for our sins, to rise from the dead, and to ascend into heaven. He will return to the earth in the future to establish the tikkum olam, the Kingdom of God upon the earth. (Not all Christians agree that there will be a literal Kingdom of God upon the earth, but that is a topic for another blog post). The Christian narrative is not properly understood in a vacuum. It makes sense only if we embed it into the larger Hebrew narrative. There is a reason that Jesus had to die. There is a reason that he had to rise from the dead and ascend into heaven. There is a reason that he is coming back. It’s all part of the plan; it’s written into the script that God wrote before the universe ever came into existence. It’s all about restoring what God had originally intended. Humankind has become so corrupted in our rebellion against God and His ways that it is impossible to remedy the dilemma in which we find ourselves and which we have brought upon ourselves. All we can come up with is a long series of attempts at trying to fix the problems of our world that may yield some limited success at managing our dilemma at certain times and in certain places, but that cannot ever eradicate it. Our best efforts to eradicate war tend to lead to more war. Our best efforts to fix our societal problems tend to lead to more societal problems. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to do what we can to make the world a better place, but it does mean that the best of human efforts can only take us so far. Humankind can try to manage the effects of sin as best we can, but there are limits as to what we can accomplish. Only God can eradicate sin and its effects. God had to take the initiative to heal the earth, and he did it by coming to earth Himself to live as a man and to die, taking upon himself the judgment and curse of humankind, and then by rising from the dead in a victorious celebration of over the destruction of sin and death, paving the way for the long-awaited tikkun olam, which will be established upon the earth when He returns. The Thursday-Friday-Saturday-Sunday narrative that Christians celebrated this past week is not just a series of pretty stories about the death and resurrection of a charming but controversial young rabbi. It’s God’s explanation of the cosmic order of things. It’s God’s analysis of the situation, and it’s God’s remedy. You may not believe it, but if you are an open-minded person you will at least need to consider that fact that it may just be the truth that explains everything, because it is the truth the flows from the mind of the Author of the universe, who is the Creator of reality and the Definer of truth. So what difference does all of this make on Monday morning? The difference is that the tomb is still empty. God has intervened. God has come to the planet to put into motion the plan that will eventually effect the tikkun olam. There is a solution to war, violence, injustice, cruelty and oppression. There is a solution to natural catastrophes, cancer, COVID-19, and death itself. God has intervened, and God will intervene. That is the meaning of the empty tomb. That is what gives us hope on Monday. It’s not a quick fix solution, but it’s a narrative that gives meaning to the whole. It’s not for the faint of heart. it’s not for those who would insist on finding an illusory sense of momentary happiness right here and now rather than find meaning in suffering over the long haul as we wait for and collaborate with God in the working out of His perfect plan, in His perfect way, in His perfect timing, steadily and consistently and persistently moving toward God’s magnificently glorious appointed destiny for the universe, for humankind, for His Church and for ourselves as individual believers. We do not bring about God’s Kingdom through the political and social mechanisms of our society, but we point to it as a future reality, living as citizens of a Kingdom that has not yet been established. While we participate in the affairs of this world, we do so in a way that models and points to Jesus, and we give our allegiance to another King. God doesn’t repair the world but ignore the individuals, but He also doesn’t repair (we prefer to say “redeem”) the individuals without redeeming the earth. The hope for the world and the hope for individual believers are tied together; they are both part of God’s great plan of redemption. What God began in the world he will complete, and the result will be glorious! What God began in me he will complete, and the result will be glorious! The empty tomb proves that God is still at work, and that nothing can stop God from accomplishing His magnificent work of redemption and restoration, both in the world in general and in the lives of individual believers who give Him our allegiance as our Savior, Lord and King. Those who want a quick fix will not find the Christian Gospel attractive, but some will understand and believe. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gave a description of those who would inherit the Kingdom of God: “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you”. (Matthew 5:3-11) Rather than dismissing the events of the death and resurrection of Jesus as quaint though maybe-inspiring fables, it would be wiser to seem them as parts of the larger narrative. As the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle don’t make sense until we can see the whole puzzle, the death and resurrection of Jesus don’t make sense until we can see the larger narrative of which they are a part. For those who are struggling with believing that the events that Christians celebrated this past week really happened, consider the larger narrative, and you just might be more open to accepting the parts that are harder to accept. The tikkun olam has not yet arrived. How do we live in the meantime? We live as people of the Monday Perspective. We learn to love God more deeply and to walk in His ways more fully. We continue to learn how to love one another. We continue to ask God to help us to become more like Jesus. We become people who care. By living as compassionate people who love God and who love each other, we point forward to the coming kingdom and we model it, as citizens of a kingdom that has not yet been established on the earth. We do not try to force the kingdom of God on those around us as though we could bring it about through human effort. We become a people who are known for our love, not for our politics. We offer the water of life to those who are thirsty. Those who are thirsty will come. For those of us who have come to know Him, the world doesn’t need for us to be angry, militant culture warriors who are trying to remake society in our own image. The world needs for us to be a joyful company of humble, gentle and courageous men and women who are forever marked and defined by the cross and the resurrection, people of hope in a hopeless world, people who point people to Jesus by being like Jesus, people who dare to believe that the joyful declaration of Resurrection Sunday didn’t end on Monday morning. After all, the tomb is still empty! We came to the tomb, and it was empty. Where was the body? Did someone come and steal it? Is this someone’s cruel idea of a practical joke? This isn’t funny. First they kill him, then they steal his body. Did we come to the wrong tomb? Can someone please tell us what is going on here? We demand an explanation!
We came. We found the empty tomb. We went home. Mary stayed behind. Is there more to this story than meets the eye? Why is this Sunday so perplexing? “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) This is getting really strange. Mary saw two angels? And the way that they were sitting sort of reminds us of something from the law of Moses. What was it? “And thou shalt make a mercy seat of pure gold: two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof. And thou shalt make two cherubim of gold, of beaten work shalt thou make them, in the two ends of the mercy seat. And make one cherub on the one end, and the other cherub on the other end: even of the mercy seat shall ye make the cherubim on the two ends thereof”. (Exodus 25:17-19) So let’s try to connect the dots. Where the body of Christ used to be is now something like the mercy seat that existed in the ancient tabernacle? Things are starting to get really complicated… “And they said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’ When she turned away, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to Him ‘Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have laid Him, and I will take Him away.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to Him in Hebrew, ‘Rabboni!’ (which means, Teacher). Jesus said to her, ‘Stop clinging to Me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to My brethren and say to them, ‘I ascend to My Father and to your Father, and My God and your God.’ Mary Magdalene came, announcing to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord,’ and that He had said these things to her”. (John 20:13-18). Everything changed for Mary the moment she heard him call her name. “Mary!” It was all she needed to hear! She knew it was him! Bit by bit, it all started to make sense. Jesus had told us that he would die and rise from the dead, but it didn’t make sense to us, so I guess we sort of pushed it out of our thinking. But then, it really happened! He arose from the dead! He defeated sin and death! He is risen! He is risen indeed! The resurrection of Jesus from the dead 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, 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! “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) “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ”. (1 Corinthians 15:55-57) 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 you, too, if you will receive them— if you will receive him! May God open our eyes and show us the truth that will set us free! 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 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. These are the things that can start to happen once we dare to look into the empty tomb. 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. Sunday! Victorious Sunday! Death conquered, sin defeated, hope restored, curse broken! The power of sin and death has been broken, and hopelessness can never again be an option. The hands that were pierced are now raised, though still pierced, in the joyful “Yes!” of the Victor. He’s alive! God is real, God is alive, God is victorious, and God can never be defeated! The universe is singing its song of celebration, though not every heart is tuned to hear the song. God hears the joyful sound, and His heart is made glad. I want to join in the song; I want to share in His gladness! Humanity, open your eyes, your redemption is here! Look, see, believe, rejoice! We had such high hopes. We thought that the Long Awaited One had finally come. We could sense it when we were with him. Something about being with him made our hearts beat faster. We knew he had a special relationship with Ha Shem that no one else had. He understood the heart and mind and will of God, he understood the ways of God, and he was so eager to teach us and to show us! He wanted us to know God the way he knew him, as his Father! When he spoke, there was not only rock-solid confidence and uncompromising authority in his voice, but also profound love and deep compassion in his eyes, unlike anyone we had ever met before. He taught us how to walk through life without fearing the future, for he knew that God’s plan was unfolding— and somehow, he was at the center of it! By being with him, somehow we were at the center it! We were sure he was God’s Anointed One. We could feel it in our bones, and we could see it in his eyes. How his eyes sparkled when he spoke about God as his Father! He was the One who would usher in the coming age, the tikkun olam that was spoken of by the prophets — we were sure of it!
Remember when he sent us out, two-by-two, to proclaim the Kingdom of God in all of the surrounding villages? Remember when we came back and gave him our report? Remember how excited he was— he even saw the evil one as lightning falling from heaven! Those were amazing days, to say the least! The things that he taught us made our hearts beat faster. When we were with him, the things that we saw with our own eyes and heard with our own ears made it impossible for us not to see the fingerprints of God all over his life and all over his teaching. When we were following this man, it felt great to be alive! Life was an adventure! The present was exciting, the future was secure, our joy was full, our hearts were overflowing. How great it was to be alive, walking the streets of Galilee with Yeshua! How we loved being with that man! And then they killed him. No, they didn’t stone him, the Jewish way. That would have been too kind. They crucified him, the Roman way. They had to make it as drawn out and as shameful and as excruciatingly painful as possible. And now he’s gone. How can we go on without our friend? How could we have been mistaken about his identity? Is there no coming tikkun olam? Were we believing in myths all these years? Has Ha Shem forgotten us? How can we have hope when there is no hope? As far as we are concerned, yesterday, on that cross, when Yeshua died, hope died. How can we go on? Truth be told, we don’t want to go on. We have no reason to go on. Hope is gone. Hope died on Friday. Today is Saturday, and we suddenly have nothing to live for, nothing to hope for, nothing to die for. It all happened just that fast. He’s here one minute, gone the next, and with him, everything we had ever hoped for— all gone in an instant. And now he’s in the tomb, and the tomb is silent— and the silence is a very loud silence. The silence is deafening! I guess we could go and visit the tomb, but what good would that do? Remember, it’s the Sabbath, so we can’t walk very far, and it’s the Passover, so we don’t want to defile ourselves. Besides, we’re supposed to be at home with our families celebrating the Passover— but the angel of death did not pass over Yeshua, and Elijah’s seat is still empty. We could reminisce, but that would just make us feel more sad and more hopeless. Where do we go from here? What happens after the Passover? What is the “new normal”? We could go back to our old jobs and our old routines and pretend that it was all just a dream, but we really can’t do that, and we really don’t want to. We can’t go back to what no longer exists. The world has changed, and we have changed— or so we had thought, but now we don’t know what to think. We sit here in silence. There’s nothing else 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 lament. We can learn to pour out our souls to God in utter honesty, as King David did in the Psalms and as Yeshua 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. What can we do on Saturday? We can learn to be less like Martha and more like Mary, as Yeshua taught us. We can’t surround ourselves with a flurry of activity and noise in a frenzied effort to keep ourselves occupied, distracted, too busy to think and feel. That doesn’t work when there is nothing left to do or think or feel. All we can do is sit and wait— sit at the feet of God and try our best to listen— but isn’t that exactly what Yeshua told Martha and Mary? Didn’t the “comforters” of Job sit with him in grief and silence for seven days and seven nights? Didn’t the psalmist say “He makes me to rest in green pastures”? Perhaps God is making us rest. After creating the heavens and the earth, didn’t Ha Shem Himself rest on the seventh day, the Sabbath? 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. Nothing very solid, no “aha” moments, no amazing revelations from the heavens, no lightning or thunderbolts or visions in the skies, but 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? We remember what Yeshua taught us on that last night when we were all together— could it be that it was only two nights ago? He taught us “In this life you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world”. 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, then we must learn to trust the heart of God— and the heart of God toward us is good. Yeshua taught us well, and he was right. The heart of God toward us is 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 to 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 criticize or to rationalize or to analyze or to strategize or to give an opinion or to even have an opinion. That’s when we learn that today 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. As I kid, I struggled to understand why such a tragic day could be called “Good Friday”. It seemed to me that “Bad Friday” would have been a much more fitting name. Now, as an adult, sometimes I still struggle with it. If you’re like me, we struggle to understand what happened on that day because, on the one hand, the concept of “substitutionary atonement” is difficult to wrap our minds around, and, on the other hand, if it’s a doctrine that we understand only in our minds without it being a living reality that grips our hearts, we still aren’t getting it. It’s about a man’s suffering, but it’s not only about the magnitude of his suffering. It’s about who he was and why he suffered and why it matters to us. Dwelling on the magnitude of his suffering without understanding it in its context and experiencing it in our souls will not yield the desired effect. We will be analysts rather than being experiencers. We will be audience rather than being actors. We will be spectators rather than being participants. There is a world of difference between saying “I believe that Jesus died for the sins of the world” and saying “Jesus died for me, and that is the one thing that I most cherish about being alive”. Getting the cross right means getting our life right and getting our eternity right. We must properly understand, and we must properly experience. We can’t approach this trivially. There is too much at stake.
Why would one person give his or her life for another? A policeman or a fireman or a lifeguard puts his or her life at risk in order to save another life. A doctor or nurse or other hospital or nursing home worker may risk getting sick and possibly dying in order to preserve the lives of those under his or her care. Organ donors put their lives at risk in order to preserve the lives of their friends. A traffic cop rushes into the middle of a busy intersection, putting his or her own life at risk to save the life of child who is about to be hit by oncoming traffic. Parents will put themselves into harm’s way in order to protect the lives of their children. We can picture a parent saying “take me, but save the life of my child”. These kinds of examples start to move us in the right direction, but they fall far short of what Jesus accomplished on the cross on that tragic but beautiful Friday afternoon. Let’s start by looking at the theology of the cross. Here’s how the apostle Paul explains it in his Epistle to the Romans: “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus”. (Romans 3:23-26) So we are all sinners; we have all offended a holy God. How can God be both just and justifier? If God forgives our sins by overlooking them, that would make God less than just. A just God can’t overlook sin without compromising his own sense of justice. So here’s the “dilemma” (not really a dilemma but in human terms, by human logic, it looks as though God is in a dilemma). God is loving, so he wants to forgive us our sins. God is just so he can’t forgive our sins without compromising his own sense of justice. So God does the unthinkable. God becomes a man. God comes to earth. God takes the punishment for our sins. As prophesied in Isaiah 53 “The chastisement for our iniquities fell upon Him. And by His stripes, we are healed”. By presenting Himself as our substitute, God pays the penalty. God exacts the penalty, and then God comes to earth to pay his own penalty. Now God can forgive our sins in a way that does not compromise his own justice. Because of what Jesus did on the cross, can can forgive our sins without overlooking them. He didn’t overlook them; he paid for them. The penalty has been paid. The punishment has been taken— by God Himself. That is what allows God to be both just and justifier. Jesus died so God could forgive us of our sins in a way that makes Him both just and justifier. Two planks of wood and some nails are arranged in a pile. That’s all the equipment He’ll need. Painful, bloody steps to the place of execution, the place of the offering, the place of reconciliation. The hands now pierced with nails: Cold, sharp, painful nails mercilessly hammered through the hands of the One who loved because He is Love. Friends and enemies stand to witness the self-sacrifice of the Lamb, for love of God, for love of man. Friends and enemies brought together to this place, at this time to watch, to weep, to wonder. God and man brought together in this place, at this time to witness and experience the ultimate act of reconciliation, and the price is death—slow, painful, excruciating death. The dark death of Friday’s cross was not for the man who died. This death was for the world—no, for me! “Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a sponge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost”. (John 19:29-30). Jesus is on the cross, and he is thirsty, so they give him some vinegar on a sponge. That’s like telling a prisoner “We have to feed you but you don’t have to like what we give you. It’s this or nothing. Take it or leave it”. They stick it on a piece of hyssop so it could reach up to his mouth. It’s not much but it will have to do. The Son of God comes to earth and all that we humans can come up with to give him is some vinegar in a sponge on a piece of hyssop. He gave his life for us. We give him vinegar on a sponge. Our little token efforts don’t amount to much. All of our best efforts come to sour wine— “filthy rags”. And then Jesus utters the words “It is finished”— “tetelestai”— you can almost hear that word echoing through the mountains, as it was portrayed so beautifully in the movie, “The Passion of the Christ” — “tetelestai, telelestai, tetelestai”. What was finished? Not only his life, but also the entire assignment that God the Father had given him, and the whole work of redemption. Sins atoned. God and humanity have been reconciled, for those who would receive it. The work is finished. Our debt, which we could never pay back, has been paid in full. The God who had created the world came to die for it. He took the punishment that we deserve. He died in or place, as our substitute, wearing our name tag. He suffered and died that we might live— the just for the unjust. The death of Jesus was for us, so that we could be forgiven, but it was also for God, so that He could have the world reconciled back to Himself, as He deserves. Jesus could have stopped the process at any time. He could have pressed the “abort mission” button, but, had he done that, you and I would still be in our sins, with no hope of salvation, no hope of forgiveness, no hope of an intimate relationship with God, no hope of a life-transforming spiritual awakening, no hope of meaning for our earthly existence, no hope beyond the grave, no hope of eternal life in intimate relationship with God forever. We would be condemned to live forever in existential isolation and darkness under the shadow of Dante’s sign “Abandon all hope here”. Jesus could have saved himself, but by saving himself he would have left us alone to wander in our own self-imposed darkness. He suffered our darkness so that we might live in the light. He died our death so that we might experience his life. He suffered the penalty for our sins so that we might experience God’s unconditional love and forgiveness. In this strange sacrifice where priest and offering are one, God reconciled the world to Himself. God reconciled me to Himself. Immense gratitude is the only response that is fitting. How little we understand the great price that God Himself paid for our redemption, and how little we understand how undeserving we are. Humanly speaking, it was a very bad Friday— the worst day in history, for it was the day that the world put God on a cross and killed him. From God’s perspective, though it was ugly and horrible and painful and tragic, it was also beautiful. It demonstrated the greatness of God’s love for us. It made a way for God to be both just and justifier. God accomplished His goal of overcoming sin and death and reconciling a sinful and rebellious world to Himself. It was not humanity killing God. It was God sacrificing Himself for humanity. It was God giving Himself up for us, because of His great love for us, so that we might know Him and live with Him and glorify Him and enjoy Him forever. If God’s plan of redemption is more about God than it is about us, then what is our role? It’s to receive His gift of grace and mercy with joyful gratitude, and to live in such a way that our lives bring as much glory and honor to our God as possible, not to pay Him back, but out of a sense of immense gratitude, because our greatest delight is to love the one who loved us so deeply. What is an adequate response? I am reminded of the phrase that was used by the Moravians as they prayed for 100 years straight and as they went to the ends of the earth as radically obedient missionaries, even at one point being wiling to sell themselves into slavery if that was what it would take in order to reach people for Christ: “May the Lamb that was slain receive the reward of his sufferings”. Let’s not place ourselves at the center of God’s plan of redemption. Let’s place God at the center of God’s plan of redemption. We benefit, but it’s not about us; it’s about God. God got back His world. God deserves to have the world reconciled to Himself, and now, because of what was accomplished by Jesus on the cross on that Friday, it has happened. Now God can be rightly glorified, as He deserves. Our brokenness and alienation sin and death have been overcome, so that we can give to God the glory that He so rightly deserves out of hearts of joyful gratitude. God gets back the world that he created, humanity becomes a beautiful reflection of God’s greatness and beauty and mercy, and God receives the glory that He so fully deserves. We get to be reconciled to our Creator, and to glorify Him by enjoying Him forever. Though I deserve condemnation, I get to spend eternity as the beloved son of my loving heavenly Father, to whom I have been reconciled— and so do you, if you will receive it. From that perspective, it was a good Friday— a very good Friday indeed. I remember a scene from “Les Miserables” that took place the night before the great battle. The men who would be fighting the next day knew that they were far outnumbered. They knew that most, if not all of them, would lose their lives in the next day’s battle, but they weren’t about to back down now. They knew they were doing the right thing, and they had every intention of finishing what they had started, even if it meant that they would all die together. At least they would be giving their lives for a worthy case, and so they gathered together one last time, and said their last good-byes to each other.
I wonder if that is something similar to how the disciples felt when they were gathering with Jesus one last time on Thursday night, the night before the day of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus. They may have sensed what was on the horizon. They probably saw what was coming. Jesus had gathered them to be with them on one last occasion, to teach them about His and their loving Father one last time, to pray one last prayer for them, to have one last supper with them. They may have understood that when he shared the bread and the cup with them, it was the last time they would eat and drink together before his death. It was their last opportunity to be together, and they could sense the gravity of the moment. They could tell by what he was teaching them, by how he prayed for them, by the tone of his voice and by the look in his eyes, that this would be their last good-bye. As recorded in John 13-17, Jesus used the occasion to wash their feet, assuming the role of a humble servant, so that they would wash each other’s feet in humble service to each other. Notably, he even washed the feet of the man whom he knew would betray him. Then he began to prepare them for what was ahead by pointing them toward the future. He helped them to see the bigger picture of the unfolding of God’s plan. He told them that he was going to prepare a place for them, and that he was going to come back to them. He reminded them of his great love for them, and of the Father’s great love for him, and for them. He gave them the promise of the coming Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, the “One called alongside to help”. He wanted them to experience his joy and his peace, for he knew that nothing less would sustain them. He warned them that they would face the same hatred and persecution that he had experienced. He granted them the privilege of praying in His name. He prayed that His Father would keep them and preserve them from evil. He prayed that they would see the glory of the Father. On that night, the disciples had been given very much to process. So much information, so little time. Jesus wanted their last hours with Him to be as valuable as possible. As his last hours with them turned into his last minutes with them, the time was becoming more and more precious. Every last minute mattered. And then came the events of the Garden of Gethsemane, as recorded in John 18. Crossing a brook— no turning back. Betrayed by a friend— but he knew all along that he would be betrayed by those whom he loved. Promises of allegiance that he knew could not be counted on. He knew that on the next day there would be a trial, where he would be considered guilty before the trial even began. He knew that a robber would be released and that he would be condemned— but hadn’t he come to die in the place of sinners? This was his mission. This was the will of the Father. This was the only way that the Father’s plan of redemption could be accomplished. No turning back. What he had started he would finish, for the joy set before him, in obedience to the Father, in fulfillment of God’s perfect plan of redemption. Thursday— the night he ate the meal. The night he struggled in prayer in the garden. The night he needed the prayers of his friends who had fallen asleep. The night he was betrayed. Traditionally the Church refers to this special night as “Holy Thursday” or “Maundy Thursday”. Was it a holy night, or was it an unholy night? Perhaps it was both. It was an unholy day because, humanly speaking, it was a night of sadness and loss. It was a day of betrayal and injustice. Jesus was betrayed by Judas and turned over to Pontius Pilate. None of this was fair. There was no justice for the man who was condemned to die. There was no justice for his friends who needed to mourn the loss of their master and friend, and would have to go on without him. It was a night that was covered by the fingerprints of an unjust and God-rejecting world that knows neither justice nor grace. It was a night when the world showed its true colors by rejecting the way of peace and truth and by exchanging the truth for the lies of power and corruption and political expediency. When a sinless God comes to a sinful world, don’t expect the world to bring Him flowers. Humanly speaking, it was a very unholy night. But it was also a very holy night. It was a night when Jesus established a meal that would commemorate his love for us that would be celebrated by all believers, globally, throughout all generations. It was the night when he reminded us of the utter necessity of loving each other, of loving God, of being aware of God’s intense love for us, of walking in God’s joy and in God’s peace. It was a night of trust and obedience, when Jesus demonstrated that he was able to obey his Father completely, because he trusted Him completely, leaving this example of trust of and obedience to the Father for us to follow. It was a night of crossing a brook and never looking back. It was a night of intense and honest struggle, followed by the stunning and courageous and determined declaration: “Not my will, but yours be done”. It was a night that has marked and defined the followers of Jesus right down to the present day. It was indeed a holy night. From the human perspective, it was the worst possible scenario. A good man was betrayed by a friend and was turned over to be condemned unjustly by a kangaroo court, leaving his friends devastated, their hopes dashed and their hearts broken. From God’s perspective, everything was happening right according to script. God was setting things up for the redemption of humankind, and the Son of God was persistently obeying the Father’s plan, right down to the most minute detail. God’s plan was unfolding. It was his good and perfect plan. It was his holy plan. Whether Thursday night was a holy night or an unholy night is a matter of perspective. From man’s point of view, everything was falling apart. From God’s perspective, the perfect plan for the perfect solution to all that is wrong with the world was being set up. God was at work, and no one could stop him. The One who had created the world was now setting the stage to bring about its redemption. It was the fulness of time. It was God’s setting of the stage for the ultimate checkmate against all that is evil, and for the ultimate fulfillment of all that is good. “Holy” is the only word that can adequately describe the things that God was putting into motion on that holy night. Those of us who are followers of Jesus call it Holy Thursday, because a holy God was accomplishing His holy purposes in His holy way. Let’s celebrate this holy night by remembering that while on the surface things may appear to be falling apart, beneath the surface God is accomplishing what only God can accomplish by providing a God-sized solution to a God-sized problem— the problem of sin and death. Let’s partake of the bread with joy, for his body was broken for us. Let’s partake of the cup with gladness, for his blood was shed for us. Let’s wash each other’s feet, as humble servants of one another. Let’s love each other from the heart, for this is what Jesus taught us and showed us and wanted for us. Let’s follow Jesus’ model of radical obedience based on unqualified trust of a Heavenly Father who is loving enough to want only what is good, wise enough to know how to bring it about, and powerful enough to accomplish it, for God deserves nothing less than that quality of obedience based on that quality of trust. Let’s celebrate the fact that God was setting in place all that was necessary to reconcile a sinful world to Himself, for His own glory, yielding our great joy! |
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