Waiting

"On Holy Saturday there is nothing we can do except wait." - N. T. Wright

Scripture is remarkably silent on what the close followers of Jesus did the day after the death of Jesus. In fact, John 20:9 tells us, "for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead." I believe that they were confused on that Saturday. I believe that they spent the day fighting their doubt and trying make sense of what just happened.

Jesus had been the hope and purpose for these followers for three years. They had given their lives to following him and learning from his ways and his teachings. They had left family and jobs to follow him. They had seen him heal, walk on water, cast out demons, teach with great authority. Now he was dead. Darkness and evil had won or at least was winning.

I think as much as they were mourning his death, they were confused and in great doubt. Perhaps they were even angry and for a time felt as if they had wasted the last three years. If you look at the initial encounters that Mary, Peter, John, Thomas and others had with him, the first reaction is doubt or just simply not recognizing him.

Our lives are like this cycle. We see Jesus and we connect deeply with him. He is our hope and he is our purpose. But darkness comes in and prevails for a season and we believe that darkness has won and with it we live in confusion, anger and doubt. Our hope and purpose take a hit. When we do see Jesus again, we doubt or don't recognize him.

But as these Saturdays or seasons of doubt come in our lives...the tomb is always empty. Even in our doubt, Jesus says come to me.

 

Psalm 22:1-2

Psalm 22:1-2

B.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?  O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.”

Religion is a necessity in the heart of man.  It is the function of how he reconciles his heart, which desires goodness, with a world, that though it advertises goodness, does not follow through with any version of it that satisfies.  We are born with a desire for life, and yet, from the moment of our birth, we begin the slow advance toward the moment of our death.  Despite all of our efforts to fulfill the desires we have, to defend the life we live, to protect the life of the ones we love, the knowledge of our inevitable end pronounces the ultimate failure in whatever end we seek to achieve with our lives before we even begin.  There is nothing gained that will not be lost, nothing built that will not eventually be torn down.  It is as if life is an elaborate hoax that whets our appetites for some grand treasure to be found, and we spend our entire lives digging deep below the surface.  But at the end, we find we have created nothing more than a big whole in the ground, to which we finally surrender our own bodies—spent, demoralized, and defeated—welcoming death as the only comfort to a life unfulfilled. 

In this way, we see that death, for us, is the great evaluator of life.  It is God’s intervention into our selfishness to re-teach us about the value inherent in life.  It is only because of death that we even bother about what is good.  Because of death, our life becomes a limited commodity, and by consequence, of precious value. We are forced to decide what is worth most in life so that we may spend the little time we have living for what has the greatest value.  But, the degree that man is able to perceive value in life is the degree that he is able to perceive the profundity of the inevitable loss that awaits him in death.  The height of his ability to cherish life becomes the depth of his despair in his efforts to protect what he wishes to keep.  And so, man, in his despair, turns to God, crying out, “Why have you forsaken me?  What is this life that exists to arouse my desires only to extinguish them?  I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.”  Man needs religion, because man needs hope.  In order to sustain his life by pursuing his desires, man must have a reason to believe that his desires are worth pursuing.  In a life that is ruled by death, he has no reason to believe that value exists unless he believes that life is somehow greater than death—that goodness prevails over evil in spite of our ability to experience it.  Therefore, mankind has filled the world with his own varied interpretations of this existential necessity of religion.

Jesus Christ is one among many who have proclaimed to have the truth that every man seeks.  Jesus Christ, however, is different in one regard: He faced our enemies—sin and death—clothed in the humility of human form, and rose victorious, making a public spectacle of them in His triumph.  Jesus Christ did not merely tell us what was true when He told us He is the Son of God.  He demonstrated the word He spoke, and through the Spirit of holiness, was declared with power to be the Son of God.   Jesus Christ not only taught us what was good, but he bore the evil we bear.  He suffered the hopelessness and futility we suffer, and in His greatest moment of desperation, when it seemed like the Father had abandoned Him, He cried out as we cry out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?” 

The story of Easter is not only a story of our redemption in Christ’s conquering death.  It is the story of how He saved us by becoming like us.  He proved to us that no matter how hopeless it seems—there is always hope.  He has shown us that the unbearable can be born, and even though the world seems like darkness, the Son of Righteousness has risen with healing in His wings.  For, in Christ, we see suffering conquered through suffering, death overcome through death, weakness by weakness, and strength in surrender.  For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through suffering, so that we, too, may learn to battle weakness with weakness, suffering through suffering, and death by death.  If Jesus gave Himself willingly to death, with trembling, trusting absolutely in the power of God, then we must live earnestly for our captain, with much trembling, trusting in the same—for both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all one, and because one died for all in the same manner in which we live, our weakness becomes our strength.  All who live in Christ no longer fear death or live for this world which passes, but now find their value in this same death, which is to live for Him who died and was raised again—for to live is Christ, and to die is now our greatest gain.

The Lord is risen!

Happy Easter!

Psalm 32:1-7

Psalm 32:1-7

B.

“Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.  Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.  For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.  For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.  I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.  Therefore, let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found; surely in the rush of great waters, they shall not reach him.  You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with shouts of deliverance.”

I cannot think of a better analogy for sin in the heart than that of drowning.  Living with sin is like treading water in the middle of an ocean.  At first it seems easy, almost as if it required no effort at all.  But then, you begin to feel a slight burn in your leg muscles coupled with an irritating thought telling you, quietly, that though you are far from the end of your effort and still able to keep yourself afloat, you cannot keep this up forever.  But, since there is still a good amount of strength left in your legs, you can ignore those thoughts for the time being.  (One’s own strength tends to obscure reality and makes it far less real to the perception.)  After a while, however, your body begins to get heavy, and it takes more energy to keep up the same effort.  You sink a little bit every now a then.  You try to take quick breaks, and your head goes under, but never long enough to the point that you cannot pop right back up again.  The quick breaks give you a false sense of regaining energy, but you soon discover that the burst of energy runs dry quickly, and now you are more tired than before.  The reality that the end of your strength is coming sooner than you expected becomes very real—like a trap—and you begin to feel trapped.  At this point, you begin to loose your sense of basic reason and think stupidly, looking around to see if there is some place you could swim to as if you were not floating alone in the middle of the ocean.  You begin to cry out for help as if someone could possibly hear you from the middle of the ocean.  When you find that you are just as alone as you were afraid of, you begin to back the resolve that you have what it takes.  You are going to do this no matter what it takes, whether hell or…high water.  You become completely focused on consciously treading water as if, if you applied your whole mind to the task, you could will the continued motion of your legs and arms.  That is when the sharks come…circling, circling, checking you out, waiting for you to go under.  There is very little time left now, and though it seems like the most absurd thought—for how could anything save you now—especially stranded alone in alone in the midst of a great sea?  But, what if—even though it is the last resort, and quite obviously a product of desperate delirium—what if God would save you if you asked?  Drowning out in the middle of the ocean with no one around but the birds, when all logic says that even if God wanted to save you, nothing could get to you in time, do you ask Him?  Or, do you give in to what appears to be the inevitable and let yourself drown?  It is an interesting question with an even more interesting answer.  For, when we ask Him, we find that salvation does not come from a speeding ship or a helicopter.  No.  He simply tells us to stop treading water and to put our feet down, and when we do, we feel the ground beneath us.  We are never too sure whether it was there to begin with or not, but we are positive, no matter what we might speculate, that to be saved from so terrible a fate is nothing short of miraculous.

            All sin creates this feeling in us, whether it is the quality of our rebellion before we bow to Christ, or when we take our eyes off of Him, and like Peter, once again, begin to sink in our sin and our troubles.  There is nothing worse than the feeling of floundering in a world that is too deep and too wide for our fragile frames.  When we try to keep ourselves afloat, our strength dries up as by the heat of summer, and we become overcome by great waters.  There is only one Rock and only one way to stand on solid ground.  We call Him the Rock, because the atonement He has won is forever underneath us and runs far deeper than we could ever fall.  For, when the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheered my soul, and when I thought, ‘My foot slips,’ your steadfast love, O Lord, held me up.  To wrestle with sin is common to man, and the fall to sin sometimes seems too much to bear.   But, when vertigo rushes panic into our hearts and desperation to our limbs, if we struggle we will only sink faster.  We must remember not to despair.  For, if we will only cry to Him who has accounted for all sin, then He will set our feet upon the rock again.  And, though the waves crash angrily beneath us, though the wind blows furiously against us, and the gates of hell rattle with hatred, the noise that once proved terrible in our hearts cannot be heard above the shouts of deliverance from the One through whom the wind and waves were created—the unshakeable rock of our salvation—the Faithful and True, King Jesus Christ.

Psalm 144:1-2

Psalm 144:1-2

B.

“Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle; he is my steadfast love and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield and he in whom I take refuge, who subdues peoples under me.”

Life is war, and by identifying with Christ, we have been enlisted into battle on His account and for His purpose.  The bible lay this distinction of war upon life as a description of the type of ferocity by which we should lay of hold of the kingdom of God—the kingdom of God suffers violence and the violence take it by force.  This ‘force’ is a word that speaks of a man acting as though his life depended upon it, and the kingdom is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.  Though we act with deference toward others with regard to insult, injury, and all the things in this world that are perishing, our calling is to stand firm for righteousness, and by implication, stand against what is evil, with violence—forcefulness—as if our life depended upon it.  We should not mistake deference for peace.  Peace is not a passive fruit.  It is not the removal conflict, but the strength of our defenses for what we value.  A command to turn the other cheek is not a command to be passive.  It is a principle that keeps us from returning evil with the same evil that is given, and thus, perpetuate a cycle of destruction.  But, to tolerate evil is to perpetuate evil.  Peace may not violently attack the enemy, but it certainly will violently protect what is good.  To not rebuke the oppressor, or to indulge the sinful influence of wicked men, is to be overcome with evil when we are called to overcome evil with what is good. 

            Do not be dismissive or dismayed at the metaphor of scripture to communicate life to be war.  Satan—and we should not slight the reference of our enemy—wants to deceive you into thinking that this life is not as important as we should consider it to be; that we should relax and not struggle so hard or so much; that the blessings of God are in the comforts of our lives and it is for these things that we should labor.  Through such thoughts, men are pacified to the true nature of the struggle that lay before them, and so, are diminished in their ability to perceive the existence of an invaluable goodness in truth, which if they were able to see, would give their lives for without a second thought; and it is in giving our lives for each other that we fight the oppressive evil that only seeks to steal, kill, and destroy.  Though the battle is the Lord’s, the horse is still prepared for the day of battle, and our lives should be organized by preparing our own resources to give in a time of need. We are enlisted to fight this war, because it is on our account that this war is waged, and therefore, it is not only appropriate for honor that we wage it for each other, but demanded of us that we lay our own stake in the purpose to achieve it’s outcome, which is fought for by fighting for each other.  Should we fall to apathy, as I fear many will and find that it is a much more profound sin than we suppose, we will be overtaken by the enemy and marginalized in an existence that does not suffer passivity.  For, passivity leaves the gates unguarded and the weak unprotected.

Finally, and perhaps due of greater punishment then the neglect of what is good, if we attend to fighting this battle by our own strength and counsel—not submitting before God as our wisdom, strength, and holiness—then we find that we are not only overtaken by the enemy, but we fight on his behalf, undermining the good that we proclaim through the use of God’s weapons drawn contrary to God’s purpose.  Jesus says, ‘Whoever is not with me is against me’.   If we are not found to be fighting according to God’s design then we become unwitting agents of evil and we fight to our own destruction since, if it is God’s victory, we fall by God’s sword.  We must remember we are only acting out what God has ordained.  Since it is only God’s work that has established our lives for His preordained service, our own work can only be established if it is found to rest in the power of the One who established it.  And so, we stand in the Lord and in the power of His might.

It is right to be fearful of so great a calling as the war that God’s word describes, but if the sword of the Spirit declares war upon the world, it is only because the Spirit begins a revolution in our hearts.  If the Spirit is to cause our hearts to endure in what is good, then to fight for us, He must fight against the world, and we, by the Spirit, take up arms with the Spirit—for each other and for God.  The bible was meant to inspire fear in our hearts, and we were meant to tremble at God’s word.  But, it is not a fear that leads to terror.  For terror has to do with punishment.  It is a fear that should compel us to God’s throne.  It is in receiving God’s instructions, we are made aware of our need for God’s power, and He has determined Himself to provide one along with the other.  Hope in God.  Follow Him without question, for His commands are not burdensome.  Goodness was never meant to serve our lives, but our lives for what is good.  If these commands are vague, it is only so that we, instead of being inventors of what is evil, may be creators of what is good in our designs to serve each other and to fight for each other by the power of God.

A Tale of Two Boys

There were two 10 year old boys each with the same heart problem, neither of them were aware of the problem. Jacob and Nick had no idea that they had a problem. One day, Jacob was playing football he had a pretty serious injury and had significant internal and external bleeding.

He was rushed to the hospital and they were able to stabilize his bleeding, but it was certain that we was going to spend the next month in the hospital and be in a great deal of pain. He would not be able to play again for at least a full year.

During his time in the hospital doctors did a series of tests and found that he had a heart problem. Doctors told him that the injury probably saved his life because the doctors knew about the problem they were able to do a procedure on his heart and give him medication that would protect his heart.

Nick, meanwhile remained ignorant of his heart problem. It was a problem that could have been fixed had he known about it. It was a problem that would cause heart failure and Nick's death at the age of 17.

Psalm 51:8 says, "Let the bones that you have broken rejoice." North Church wrote a song years ago that uses that verse in a line. The next line is, "My brokenness has caused me to look up and my eyes have seen your perfect love."

Last night I watched my son wrestle through a difficult night. His anger, his selfishness, his lack of self control were in full display. As I laid with him in his bed, I observed his anger, selfishness and self control issues break him. He was in great pain and tears filled his face. The Holy Spirit was at work in this little boy and new follower of Christ.

I told him the allegory about Nick and Jacob and told him that while this pain is hard and it sucks to have it come out of you in such ugly ways, there is great benefit to knowing that a deadly disease lies within you.

I love my son and I love you. My prayer for my son, myself and for you is that we would not run from our sin and that we would not run from apprehension of our sin. It can be a valuable tool that causes us to see our neediness and the greatness of a God who rich is grace and in mercy.

Psalm 41:17  

As for me, I am poor and needy,

but the Lord takes thought for me.

You are my help and my deliverer;

do not delay, O my God!

Psalm 86:1

Incline your ear, O Lord, and answer me,

for I am poor and needy.

Psalm 109:22

For I am poor and needy,

and my heart is stricken within me.

Thanks for reading.

The Faithful

Psalm 31:23

B.

“Love the Lord, all you His saints!  The Lord preserves the faithful but abundantly repays the one who acts in pride.”

Many people have a tendency to believe the defining virtue of Christians to be their love.  And I suppose this may be true in some cases (but even in those only in certain situations) though I do not believe it to be true in all cases—even most cases—that the Christian faith or any particular individual within the faith is primarily defined by love.  It is true that love is the superior virtue inasmuch as it is the culmination of all virtue and good judgment.  However, to compare ourselves against the fulfillment of all virtue is about as helpful as trying to find a gray scale in the midst of the color black.  We are given instruction in virtue and it is certainly true that we must pursue what God commands us to value in the way He commands us to do so, but it is certainly not true that we are able to properly embody any virtue at any given time in our lives.  To believe that our faith is defined by the proper expression of virtue is to be misinformed about Christianity and about virtue itself.  In fact, I find that this misguided belief about the Christian faith and its virtue is what unbelievers believe about Christians, and it is why they believe they are justified in bringing accusations against the sincerity of Christian individuals.  For a Christian to hold this belief will, at best, lead to disillusionment with the faith, or at worst, cause them to become at odds with it through failure or self-righteousness.

            Like all things in creation, our identity in Christ is built into us—taught to us—in various ways, both physically recognizable and spiritually mysterious, through the investment of the one resource characteristic of all things worth having—time.  By virtue of this reality, we as Christians are in unique places and at individual levels of maturity at all times. This process is not facilitated by our ways but by God’s, and for this reason, none can be judged by the flawed perception of sinful man, since virtue, ultimately, is not an act of the body but motive of the heart.  Though expression of virtue uncharacteristic to the world is what we are seeking, we must be sure we are seeking God—the giver of virtue—and not virtue itself, lest we mistakenly find our own selves to be the object of our affection.  That being said, I believe the most fundamental and practical virtue of our faith, and also the one that sets us apart from the very beginning, is not love, but faithfulness.

            Notice that when Paul takes the time in his letters to describe the saints as a whole, he does not call them ‘the loving’, ‘the gentle’, or ‘the good’, but the faithful.  He says, ‘Let a man so consider us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.  Moreover, it is required in stewards that one be found faithful.’  Faithfulness is a peculiar virtue in that it is not defined so much by the quality of an action, but by the presence of action.  It is the resolve to act according to one’s commitments in spite of all circumstances.  Is not this where all virtue begins—perseverance leading to character?  I cannot, with honesty, proclaim that I have ever shown love with complete sincerity.  I am far too aware of the grumblings and of the resistance in my heart.  What I can do, however, is to act according to what I can perceive love to be—small as my perception may be.  All virtue is defined as virtue only if it is done in spite of vice.  We turn the other cheek though our bodies ache to revile.  We give our last dollar though we groan from selfishness.  We fall on our knees in prayer though our hearts persuade us that God is not listening or that He does not care.  Spiting vice makes spite, in this case, a virtue.  It is faithfulness to the commitment we have given Christ, and to the stewardship we have been given in return, in Christ, not to embody virtue, but to act according to virtue.

            Our comfort is this: before we are able to achieve sincerity in the faith and joy in love, we must first discipline our bodies to the virtue of faithfulness, and fortunately, faithfulness has far more to do with what we do than how we do it.  It is the one virtue that we may do with sincerity since it only requires showing up to the place we have been called and doing what we have been called to do.  We let God deal with our evil hearts.  John says, “For, whenever our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts and He knows everything.”  This means that it does not matter how we feel about our personalities or our sincerity in the practical outpouring of our faith.  Do not cringe when the world or our hearts condemn us as hypocrites.  For neither has the authority to judge, but only God, Himself, knows all things.  We are not called to impress man, but to seek God in all that we do, being faithful to Him and what He commands us to perform in spite of our ability to maintain the substance of what we seek.  So, be faithful in all that you do, seeking God and doing for Him first.  For it is faithfulness that will begin to define our love and shape it since it is faithfulness, first, that defines God’s love as that which never fails.  We must remember that He is faithful even when we are not.  But, because of His faithfulness, even in failure we have an ability to be faithful if we use our inadequacy to draw closer, by grace, to Him who offers us His infinite sufficiency