by Elizabeth | Mar 31, 2010 | Learning Story
Rad Isaiah 50:4-9; John 13:21-30
Wright begins by reminding us that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and that some of the worst of the types of sins we commit are mentioned in the story of Holy Week and actually lead Jesus to his death:
“If you drew up a catalogue of the deepest and darkest sins the human race can commit, you might find that a good many of them feature in the story of Jesus’ final days, and that they tend to have something to do with getting Jesus put on the cross.”
He names lying, injustice, oppression of the weak and the poor, idolatry, love of power and says in today’s reading we come to the worst of all, betrayal.
Wright points out that Judas was one of Jesus’ closest, most trusted friends — after all, he kept the money. He’s had a front row seat while Jesus healed lepers and raised the dead. When Jesus said “one of you will betray me,” no one at the table automatically thought it would be Judas. Listen to what Wright says,
“We don’t know why Judas did it. We do know that being betrayed by a very, very close friend is extremely nasty. Trust is one of the most precious things in human life; breaking trust is one of the most horrible. And the point I am making is this: when we speak of Jesus ‘dying for the sins of the world’ we don’t just mean that there was some kind of abstract theological transaction going on. We mean that the sins of the world, specific instances of some of the nastiest things that human beings can do to one another, happened to him directly. He wasn’t immune to the normal human emotions. He didn’t just ride it out without caring. He was the very embodiment of vulnerable love. He took the worst that can be done, took it from every angle, and gave back only more love. When we are betrayed, or treated unjustly or violently, we react angrily and often seek immediate vengeance. It is part of the inner core of meaning of Jesus’ death that he didn’t do that. He took the worst that evil could do. He allowed it to do its worst to him, emotionally as well as physically. And he kept on loving.”
What does this mean for us? Here’s Wright’s suggestion:
“What this means for us — and this is quite close to the heart of the meaning of the cross — is that the bad things that have happened in our lives, to us personally, or in our community, to our way of life, can be brought to the foot of the cross and left there. He has taken them: lies, injustices, betrayals, insults, physical violence, the lot. He meant to take them, because in his great love for us, he did not intend that our lives should be crippled by them. Even when we have been partly responsible for them; in fact, particularly when we have been responsible for them. That’s what forgiveness is all about: not saying “It didn’t really happen’ or ‘It didn’t really matter’ but rather ‘It did happen, and it did matter, but Jesus has dealt with it all and we can be free of it.’ Jesus didn’t want us to be bowed down under that weight, turning us into grumblers and blamers and moaners. He wanted to take all that evil and set us free from its weight.”
For us, Holy Week is the time to remember stories of betrayal, our own of others, others’ betrayal of us, to name the reality that they did hurt and they did matter, and to toss these heavy burdens at the foot of the Cross, and thank Jesus for dying to set us free from that crippling load. THIS is why we celebrate so wildly on Resurrection Sunday!
by Elizabeth | Mar 30, 2010 | Learning Story
Isaiah 49:1-7; John 12:20-36
I am haunted, as I imagine everyone in our community must be, by the mug shot that has appeared on the front page of the local paper in recent weeks. True, it bears all the marks of dark sorrow one might expect from a photo taken under the circumstances: a young teenager has just shot his father multiple times, and he is pressed against a wall to have his tragic face recorded. But if you look past that tainted light, you see the large eyes and a heart-shaped face of a boy. He’s 14, and he has been charged as an adult for the murder of his father. And that’s where I can write no more about the story, because there are few details available and because it’s not my story to tell. It is simply and yet not simply, an incomprehensible horror, one that has left his fellow youth group members staggering at a new level to understand violence, suffering, and God.
And it is in such a place that God meets us with the events of Holy Week. Two days ago, some waved palms in a re-enactment of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. But even as he entered, Jewish leaders were moved to disgust, fear, and plots of murder. Jesus knew what he was doing, and when some Greek believers came to him, he spoke the words of John 12:24. It is in these words and in this story that God meets the suffering and confusion of the broken world.
“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies,’ said Jesus, ‘it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.’ (John 12:24).
Again, we listen to words from Wright’s book, Christians at the Cross:
In Holy Week of all times, what we can also do is to bring our sorrows, large and small, corporate and personal (because of course there are all kinds of personal sorrows woven into the larger texture of the community sorrow at this point, sorrow about loss of jobs and prosperity, sorrow about loss of loved ones who died younger than they might have through illnesses contracted down the pit, and so on) – what we can do is to bring all these sorrows on the journey with Jesus, the journey that takes him to Jerusalem and ultimately to Calvary outside the city wall. We can bring them here and leave them at the foot of the cross.
And part of our vocation this Holy Week is to get our grief out in the open: to say to our God, as you do with any bereavement, ‘Why did it have to happen like this? Why him, why now, why didn’t you do something?’ Those are the right questions, the natural questions, the questions we always ask when we face the sudden shock of bereavement.”
“The reading from John offers a standing invitation to bring our stories and sorrows and see them folded into the story and sorrow of Jesus. ‘Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.’ Now that’s all very well when you’re planting a seed and you know what sort of a plant it’s going to grow into. But Jesus was talking about something much more scary. He was talking about going to his own death.”
“What are we to do? We are called, in Holy Week, to claim in prayer that victory over the powers which Jesus won on the cross: to hold the grief and pain of the community, and of our own hearts, within the love which went to Calvary for us; to pray that as the grain of wheat fall into the earth and die they bear much fruit; and to work for that fruit, that new hope, that regeneration at every level, which God will give in his own time and his own way.”
[Please pick up this precious little book – these quotes are wonderful but they do NOT tell the whole story!]
by Elizabeth | Mar 29, 2010 | Learning Story
Does Holy Week have any meaning for you and me, other than as a series of days sandwiched between Palm Sunday and the day a lot of people give Easter baskets? This week I return to the excellent collection of sermons N.T. Wright preached in Easington Colliery during Holy Week 2007. He takes it day by day and begins today’s meditation with the reading of Isaiah 42:1-9 and John 12:1-11. Go ahead, take the time to read these Scriptures, which place us in the story.
Now read a few of Wright’s comments, excerpted from this great little book Christians at the Cross:
“…the Servant Songs are like a job description in an advertisement: ‘Wanted! A Servant for the Lord!’ But the prophet wrote a job description for which there could, eventually, be only one appropriate applicant. And here is: Jesus, not raising his voice, not joining Judas in telling Mary off, but with his eyes fixed on his strange work of setting the world right, and doing so, as we see, through his own death.”
“The response of the church, to cut a long story short, is that if Jesus is the True Servant of the Lord, we, his people, are called here, in this community and every community, to carry on his work of setting things right — not in big, loud, campaigns, or pretending that we know the answers to complicated questions, but in the quiet, steady work of coming alongside people in need or sorrow or pain, of praying for and with people in trouble or difficulty, of quietly bringing light into dark places and hope into sad lives. There is more to being the church than that, but not less. As the song puts it, ‘This is our God, the Servant King; he calls us now to follow him.”
“…who do you identifiy with in the story of Jesus, Mary, Martha, Lazarus, and Judas?
Many of us, I suspect, identify with Martha. Here we are, getting on with the work; and here’s someone else, my sister, making a fuss, putting on a display, attention-seeking as usual. Well, try living within the story — pause and watch as Jesus says what he says — and see what he might have to say to you. Or maybe you are more like Mary herself, ready to go and show how much you love Jesus. Fine, but don’t be surprised if some people grumble. Maybe some of us are like Judas, always so worried about counting pennies — that we’ll get cross when anyone takes Jesus deeply seriously and personally. Maybe there’s a bit of these, and more, in most of us.”
“For now, let’s be clear…that Jesus is calling us to go forward with him into the rest of this week. He is calling us to see him as the Servant who has put things right by his death…this is our God, our Servant King; he calls us now to follow him.”
by Elizabeth | Mar 26, 2010 | Learning Story
I can’t conclude a week pondering the new heavens new earth life and what it means for our present day living without quoting from Scotty Smith and Steven Curtis Chapman’s book on the subject: Restoring Broken Things. This is from the first chapter, in which Scotty explains how he began exploring the topic with the verse, “Behold I am making all things new.” (Revelation 21:5):
“I didn’t begin my study as a pastor looking for good sermon material, but as a broken man longing to understand and experience a greater measure of the restoration Jesus has secured by his death and resurrection. I began by making a list of questions generated by this one verse. I started with these.
Behold …
What do you want me to see, Jesus? What do I not see that I must see? Where do you want me to fix my gaze? What have I never seen about heaven that you now insist I behold?
I am making all things new …
What are you making new, Jesus? What is included in the “all things”? What does brokenness mean? What do you mean by “new”?
Jesus, what on earth are you doing today? How are you presently renewing the old and broken things? What are the evidences of this restoration, and how do you restore broken things? How much restoration can we expect in this life?
Seeing What John Saw to Live as John Lived
These questions propelled me to study and meditate upon the most complete picture God has given us of the “finished product”—the renewed world Jesus has committed to create out of this broken one. God entrusted the Apostle John with a vision of this new-creation world to benefit the church of every generation. It’s recorded for us in the last two chapters of Revelation.
It is in this context we hear the triumphant cry shouted from the throne in heaven, “Behold, I am making all things new!” (21:5). We must immerse ourselves in this part of God’s Word if we are to understand Jesus’ great promise of restoration.
But Revelation 21 and 22 are not just the last two chapters of the last book in the New Testament. They also own the distinction of being the last two chapters in the Bible taken as a whole—the fitting conclusion to God’s one big Story, which begins in Genesis and continues to unfold through each of the sixty-six books of the Bible. All of the Scriptures anticipate and point toward the day when the magnificent universe and perfect society described in these two chapters will be finally and fully manifest.
To understand God’s purposes, we need to return to the biblical story. One of the most important aspects of this story relates to God’s work relative to the presence of sin in the world. The biblical story has four unique chapters: Genesis 1–2 and Revelation 21–22. These chapters are unique in that no sin is present in the places and events described. Genesis 1–2 gives us a picture of God’s creation design, what the world was like before sin entered the scene.
Revelation 21–22 gives us a picture of God’s future intent, what the world will be like once redemption has been fully completed with the consummation of the judgment of sin and the evil one. These four chapters serve as bookends to the rest of the biblical story. The rest of the story is about the redemptive work of God in a sinful and fallen world. The story of re-creation relates the redemptive work of God to creation design by showing how he is restoring to right relationship that which was broken.” (CraigVan Gelder, The Essence of the Church, 2000, 89–90)
by Elizabeth | Mar 25, 2010 | Learning Story
The question for this week is “what difference does it make that our story ends with the coming of the new heavens and new earth?” Years ago, I borrowed a friend’s copy of Bierma’s Bringing Heaven Down to Earth while we were on vacation. Within no time, I was copying down huge portions of it because I found every word astute and challenging. Here are some more bits and pieces from that book. I finally ordered my own copy — though I don’t get any royalties, I think you should too:)!
“What we need instead is a holy awareness—what psychologists call cognitive dissonance – of t he fact that we are living in a world that is in many ways wrong, a world that is different from what was intended, what was established. The results of the sin that started when humans invited disorder into t he world – the pain and injustice that we see around us – are not just too bad, they are wrong. They shouldn’t be.” (54)
“The marvel of the new earth, promised in Isaiah and 2 Peter and Revelation, is this: God is not giving up. The heavens and earth, soiled as they have been by sin, are not a failure, not a wreck, not irretrievable. The shalom – the heavenly wholeness, the right alignment of everything – is not beyond recovery. God, it turns out, has a holy stubbornness, a refusal to accept ruin.
Christianity is the only religion in which God reaches down to human beings and stoops to our level. Other religions worship a god whom humans must continually try to please, try to impress, try to elevate themselves to earn his favor and approach his level. God is the only god in all of human religion who lowers himself, as a way of exalting himself.” (56)
“Shalom’s repair is achieved by reversing the process, with the improbable demotion when God becomes human.” (56)
“Nature itself will be free from sin. Not just souls, but also soil. Not just people, but the theater in which God performs for them and reveals himself to them.”
58: The purpose of heaven is not to make us happy but to make things right, to win back shalom and usher in the return of rightness and wholeness.”
59: “The human creature is called to work with God…both with and on behalf of the rest of creation,’ writes William Dyrness before introducing this intriguing idea: ‘For it is only in relation to God’s presence and work in creation that the creature finds its meaning.”
“Our duty is to help the natural creation, in anticipation of its final, glorious rebirth. We are to keep our charge as responsible managers, as stewards, and strive to live in a way that refrains from extending humanity’s abuse of nature and instead looks for ways to reverse it.”
by Elizabeth | Mar 24, 2010 | Learning Story
This time spent thinking about the new heavens and the new earth and what it means for our life now continues to be a theme for me this week. Today, a story from the archives of how God has given me a fuller view of the wildness of the reconciled life we will live and are called to begin now!
“The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and theleopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord.” Isaiah 11:6-9
I was out for my endorphin high, walking in the next neighborhood, thinking of this most difficult passage I had just read. No, it’s not difficult to understand – these words about the peace that will preside in these last days is pretty plain – it’s difficult because I know we are commanded by Christ to live into this passage about reconciliation even now. That’s the hard part!
So I was praying – asking God – what does it mean for me to love my neighbors and my enemies, how can I possibly do this? I remembered I should pray for my enemies, particularly the sin that hardens my own heart. I tried to imagine the possibility of sitting in the same room with certain ones without a single murderous thought crossing my mind…
Maybe it was because I was having difficulty imagining this that God placed an object lesson in my path – a neighbor who was an enemy of sort. He was moving slowly down the driveway to fetch his paper, looking slovenly (yes, that is the first murderous thought that crossed my mind – do you see how difficult this is for me?) unshaved, wearing his boxers and a big Notre Dame t-shirt…and I looked away – I figured he didn’t want anyone to see him like this and it was only 6:20 in the morning.
“Come on, God, I said – you know what he did! Don’t I have a right to bear a grudge?” I complained. I’ll tell you what he did and you can decide, though whatever you judge, the Judge of the Universe had his own opinion which He made clear to me…
It all began about 4 years ago when some poor volunteer from the City Rec department called me, begging me to coach our youngest son’s U-8 soccer team. I knew very little about soccer, having played only one bad inaugural season as a senior in high school. But my son really wanted me too, and by this point I had attended 8 years worth of my three older kids’ soccer practices and games so I thought I could manage a U-8 team. We were a ragtag bunch, with only nine players, 4 of them being funny little girls (and I mean LITTLE), and we excelled in the goals I had for them – to get exercise, have fun, be good sports, and learn a few soccer skills. If our goal had been to win, one could not say we exactly succeeded.
One cold and wintry day near the end of the season, I had only seven players show up. It was going to be a rough day, with only one sub. Then I saw our opponents, 12 sturdy and obviously athletic boys, completing passes in warmup, something our team attempted but never quite accomplished. Everyone knew them – they had played together since they were four, and they always won. The hulking, deep-voiced man, my enemy neighbor, was the coach, barking orders at his team. I sighed and readied myself for a rough game. Our kids fumbled the kickoff and the big guys captured the ball, made one pass, and scored from midfield. By the second half, their strategy was apparent, and it was working – one guy would kick the ball way downfield to where a forward was waiting (there was no offsides rule at this age in this league), and he would kick it into the goal, undefended, except by our goalie, who performed valiantly, then begged to be replaced. I was furious at the way they were bullying and humiliating our kids. I fumed and fussed, and finally after their eighth goal was scored (we still had none), I looked over at the coach, threw up my hands and said, “How many do you want?” He smiled at me and said, “Oh, I just want every boy on my team to score.”
So, I indignantly asked God, , “You want me to dwell in peace with this wolf who hurt those little lambs??” The Spirit spoke, very plainly, it seemed, “Who said you are the lamb?” It then occurred to me, I am the wolf in this scenario who would like to hurt and destroy. I know it is right to be angry against injustices, and there are many far worse than humiliating young soccer players, but I also know that God is the one who has defeated unrighteousness by humbling Himself to send His own Son to endure the Cross, despising the shame, for sinners like me.
Because I have been reconciled to God, I am called to long for reconciliation with my enemies. It would not be wrong to kindly speak to my neighbor and encourage him to be considerate of the feelings of the other players, but it is wrong to think slanderous thoughts of him. So I long for the day when I will no longer be a wolf, when I will no longer ‘hurt’ and ‘destroy,’ and I look for it to begin happening now.
