2nd Gospel for March 24, 2024 (Liturgy of the Passion)

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Mark 14:1-15:47
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

The climax of Mark’s Gospel approaches.  The growing and intense conflict between Jesus and the religious authorities in Jerusalem reaches its culmination in the violent Passion of Jesus. Because the lectionary text for the Gospel of Mark is so lengthy, I must paint this scene with broad strokes.  But in so many ways, the Passion Narrative from Mark’s Gospel speaks for itself.

It has been noted by many Biblical interpreters that when Mark’s Gospel reaches the account of the Passion, there is a distinct change of tone and pace.  The first thirteen chapters of Mark move swiftly, almost breathlessly from one miracle to the next, one parable to the next.  For example, Mark uses the word immediately forty-one times — far more than any other book in the Bible — denoting action.  But thirty-eight of the occasions this word is used occur prior to chapter 14.

The pace slows down in Mark’s Gospel. The tone becomes darker. Mark lingers over these last few days of Jesus.

There are also contrasts here. There is an ominous sense of foreboding cast over these two chapters, as this passage begins with an introduction of the imminent feast of the Passover and the unleavened bread. The chief priests and scribes are explicit about their plot to arrest and kill him — but they are also cynical:

For they said, “Not during the feast, because there might be a riot of the people.”

But then there is the contrasting scene.  Jesus is a guest at the table of Simon the leper (presumably someone that he has healed?) Perhaps this was a feast of celebration and gratitude given by Simon.  And then:

a woman came having an alabaster jar of ointment of pure nard—very costly. She broke the jar, and poured it over his head.

When there is grumbling that this ointment was worth about a year’s wages for a farm worker and could have been put to use for the poor, Jesus defends her.  There will be other opportunities to help the poor, but his time is short.  Her deed is prophetic:

She has done what she could. She has anointed my body beforehand for the burying. Most certainly I tell you, wherever this Good News may be preached throughout the whole world, that which this woman has done will also be spoken of for a memorial of her.

Note that it is a woman who honors Jesus appropriately. In that patriarchal culture, a woman is more akin to a slave than an equal. And as we follow the narrative, note who is near when he is dying — and also who will become the first witnesses of the risen Jesus.

Now, the darkness grows deeper.  There is betrayal by one of his disciples, and collusion with the religious authorities who, as we already know, seek the death of Jesus.  Here there is irony.  As Jesus prepares solemnly for his death, the chief priests are described as glad and offer Judas Iscariot a price for Jesus.

Then there is the occasion of the Passover, which was normally an occasion of great joy as Israel remembered their deliverance from bondage in Egypt.  But this feast would be overshadowed by apprehension among the disciples, and the prescience of Jesus.  He knows what is to come, which they cannot know.

There is a kind of “secret signal” — two disciples are told to follow a man carrying a pitcher of water. (Normally, carrying water was a task assigned to women.)  He will lead them to an upstairs guestroom for their Passover meal.  All of this seems prearranged.

And at the supper itself, Jesus casts a shadow over the occasion by predicting his betrayal — by one of his own disciples!  What was normally a festive meal had certainly become depressing! Interestingly, Jesus doesn’t identify Judas Iscariot in Mark’s Gospel, leaving each of the twelve to search their own hearts, each asking:

“Surely not I?”

Jesus then transforms this historic and traditional Passover Seder into a sacrament that will be celebrated in the church until he returns:

As they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had blessed, he broke it, and gave to them, and said, “Take, eat. This is my body.”  He took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave to them. They all drank of it. He said to them, “This is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many.  Most certainly I tell you, I will no more drink of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it anew in God’s Kingdom.”

Here Jesus offers two predictions concerning his own fate — one concerning his tragic death, but the second concerning his ultimate triumph.  There is bitter death signified by the bread and wine — but there is also the promise and hope of ultimate and eschatological victory.  Jesus is able even now to look beyond his impending violent death toward his resurrection and eventual return.

However, the sorrow of the disciples is only begun.  Jesus predicts that they will all stumble because of him that night — more specifically he quotes Scripture, from Zechariah 13:7:

 ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’

This is precisely what is about to happen. And yet once again he also foresees his own resurrection:

 However, after I am raised up, I will go before you into Galilee.

Once again there is the contrast of his death and his resurrection — darkness and light.

Peter’s famous contention that he won’t leave Jesus’ side, no matter what, is met with brutal predictive honesty:

Jesus said to him, “Most certainly I tell you, that you today, even this night, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.”

We note that all of the disciples made the same protest that Peter did — that they would die with Jesus before they denied him. But of course Jesus would be proven correct by subsequent events.

The picture we have is that Jesus is wrestling with nearly everyone, including the priests and even his own disciples.  Only the woman who anoints his head with oil at the beginning of the scene seems to intuitively understand him.  The disciples, who have spent so much time with him over the previous short years, still don’t get it.

And on the Mount of Olives, in the place called Gethsemane, this struggle comes to a head.  (Gethsemane means olive press, because that’s where the olives were crushed into oil. How appropriate for the one whose body was to be broken and poured out!).

The three closest disciples (Peter, James, and John) can’t even stay awake while Jesus prays, even though he has told them how troubled he is.  All of the disciples have been charged to pray for him. Yet he is alone with the Father.

It might be said that this moment in the Garden is the climax of his struggle, and that he is perhaps even wrestling with God the Father.  But we note that he addresses his Father as Abba.  Many scholars suggest that this is the familiar and intimate term of endearment that a child might call his father, like “daddy.”

But we see also that despite his preference that he not endure the cross, Jesus surrenders his will to the purpose for which he has come:

He went forward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass away from him.  He said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible to you. Please remove this cup from me. However, not what I desire, but what you desire.”

There is a pattern of threes in this passage.  Jesus tells Peter he will deny him three times. Jesus finds his disciples sleeping three times. He is on his own. He says of them:

The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

The third time it is too late for them to pray. Jesus senses that Judas and the mob are coming.  We marvel at the hypocrisy of Judas Iscariot, who says to the chief priests, scribes and elders that he will identify Jesus with a kiss, and then calls out to Jesus with the honorific title “Rabbi! Rabbi!”

Jesus knows that this stealthy, shameful arrest by night is an act of cowardice on the part of the religious leaders:

Have you come out, as against a robber, with swords and clubs to seize me? I was daily with you in the temple teaching, and you didn’t arrest me. But this is so that the Scriptures might be fulfilled.

There is some violent resistance by one of the disciples, but it is brief.  After one cuts off a servant’s ear, the disciples all flee into the night. Their escape is so panicked that one of the young men’s loose robe is torn from him by those seeking to arrest him, and he flees into the darkness.  Some early commentators speculated that because this detail is unique to Mark’s Gospel that the young man was John Mark, the writer of the Gospel of Mark himself.  We just don’t know for sure.

Somehow, despite the terror of the arrest, Peter follows the procession of this mob to the court of the high priest — from a safe distance.

Again, there is a fascinating contrast — two trials, if you will.  Jesus is on trial for his life before the council — the Sanhedrin.  Meanwhile, Peter’s integrity and loyalty are on trial in the courtyard while he warms himself by the fire.

The accusations made against Jesus are false and contradictory.  No legitimate court could convict based on spurious testimony.  However, it is the words of Jesus himself that seal his fate:

Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?”

Jesus said, “I am. You will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of the sky.”

From the perspective of the high priest and the members of the council, this is blasphemy and heresy.  The description that Jesus offers of himself is apocalyptic and Messianic.  When he calls himself the Son of Man he is alluding to the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah. But surely it cannot have been lost on some of these Hebrew scholars that when Jesus says I am, that phrase evokes the holy name of Yahweh from Exodus 3!  Not only is he claiming to be Son of Man, but he is also claiming to be Son of God!

The consequences are dire. The high priest tears his clothes, which is a sign of deep mourning — but the high priest was never to tear his robe, according to the law (see Leviticus 21:10).  This suggests the intensity of the priest’s reaction to the words of Jesus.

Then there is the beginning of the brutal violence and contemptuous humiliation that rains down upon Jesus.  This will not stop with these council members and officers of the temple guard. He will be abused also by the Roman legionnaires.  As prophesied in Scripture, Jesus would be beaten, spat upon, lashed, mocked — all prior to his actual execution.

Meanwhile, Peter’s “trial” was also reaching a climax.  A maid accuses him of being with the Nazarene and then begins to harangue him to others nearby — presumably so that some of the officers might arrest him.  Peter fails the test but fulfills the prophecy of Jesus. Before the rooster crows twice, Peter has denied Jesus three times, finally becoming quite vehement:

he began to curse, and to swear, “I don’t know this man of whom you speak!” The rooster crowed the second time. Peter remembered the word, how that Jesus said to him, “Before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.” When he thought about that, he wept.

Because Israel (known as Judea in Palestine at that time) was under Roman authority, there was a clear division of powers. The Jewish religious authorities could manage their religious affairs, but only under the close supervision of Rome. Therefore it was necessary to seek a civil judgment against Jesus.

When the night is over, Jesus is hailed before Procurator Pilate.  Pilate’s question does not relate to any religious significance of the claims of Jesus. He is concerned with only one thing:

Pilate asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?”

The implications are clear. Pilate must find a political pretext to execute this prisoner.  Religion is irrelevant, since the Jews had a special dispensation from Rome to preserve their own religious traditions. But a king who might raise a rebellion against Rome? That’s another matter.

Jesus won’t satisfy Pilate with an answer, except an enigmatic one:

He answered, “So you say.”

Pilate’s attempt to find an escape clause to this dilemma backfires. When he offers the people a choice between Jesus and Barabbas, they choose Barabbas. This is a disaster for Pilate. As far as he is concerned, Jesus is merely a religious fanatic who gathered a crowd in the countryside. But Barabbas was the modern-day equivalent of a political terrorist:

There was one called Barabbas, bound with his fellow insurgents, men who in the insurrection had committed murder.

He, and the two men who were to be crucified with Jesus, may well have been Zealots who advocated a violent uprising and overthrow of their Roman occupiers.

It is important to remember that the cross was a form of execution normally reserved for sedition or treason — like the violent insurgents who had committed murder — or a man who claimed to be a king.  This is why, when the Roman soldiers mock Jesus with a purple robe of royalty, and press a crown of thorns onto his head, they hailed him as King of the Jews.  That mockery, and the cross itself, was a sign to the population of Jerusalem — “this is what Rome does to royal pretenders. The only true power here is Rome.”

Flogged, beaten, sleepless, Jesus carries his cross to Golgotha.  Mark doesn’t tell us that Jesus falls, or is too weak to carry the cross because of a loss of blood.  Floggings were often a death sentence in themselves.

The soldiers command a foreigner in the crowd to carry his cross.  His name is given — Simon of Cyrene. Again, this is a fascinating detail. Cyrene was a Greek and Roman city in modern day Libya — North Africa! This doesn’t suggest that Simon was a Gentile — there were Jewish settlers in Egypt as well as all over the ancient world in the Mediterranean area and the Near East.  And it would not have been unusual for a Jew to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover — especially bringing his sons.

And the mention of his sons, Alexander and Rufus, is also fascinating. Mark seems to assume that they are known to his readers.  Some scholars speculate that they became a part of the Christian community after witnessing the horrors of the cross. The names Alexander and Rufus do appear in some of the Epistles.

It was at 9:00 a.m. that they arrived at the very public hill of execution called Golgotha (that is, the place of the skull). Again, we are reminded that this execution is a public example, and a deterrent to would-be insurrectionists.  The charge against Jesus, inscribed above his head, made this clear:

 THE KING OF THE JEWS.

Our translation says that the other two crucified with him were robbers, but other translators suggest that they were actually Jewish rebels or insurgents, arrested with Barabbas after the recent riots in Jerusalem.  Again, Mark spots the fulfillment of Scripture, this time from Isaiah 53:12:

 “He was numbered with transgressors.”

This reference to Isaiah 53 points to the famous passage describing the Suffering Servant, which the church has come to see as a vivid picture of Jesus as the Messiah who suffers vicariously for all sinners.

Now Jesus is completely abandoned — almost.  In Mark’s Gospel, people passing by on the road taunt him.  The chief priests and scribes demean their own dignity and mock him. And in Mark’s Gospel, both of those crucified with him also insult him.  And after darkness falls on the face of the earth (from about noon to three o’clock), it seems that Jesus feels abandoned even by his God, quoting Psalm 22:

At the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which is, being interpreted, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

The taunts of the spectators, and the only words uttered by Jesus on the cross in Mark’s Gospel, are a little problematical.  The mockers are actually on the right track. Jesus did promise to rebuild the temple, but in their wooden literalism they fail to understand he spoke of his own resurrection — which would occur in three days. And in a paradoxical sense, when the religious authorities said “He saved others. He can’t save himself,” they were correct.  If he saved himself by coming down from the cross, he would be unable to save others. By losing his life, he saves billions upon billions.

And when Jesus cried out to God, was it truly a cry of desolation or a prayer of hope? (For a more complete treatment of this dilemma, please see: https://soarlectionarybiblestudy.wordpress.com/2017/04/06/gospel-for-april-9-2017-liturgy-of-the-passion/).  We are reminded that Jesus is dying slowly of asphyxiation on the cross. He hasn’t the breath to recite all of Psalm 22, which seems clearly to describe the effects of a suffering victim, with eerie similarity to a crucifixion. He certainly can’t hold out until the verses near the end of the Psalm, that ring with hope:

You who fear Yahweh, praise him!
All you descendants of Jacob, glorify him!
Stand in awe of him, all you descendants of Israel! 

For he has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted,
Neither has he hidden his face from him;
but when he cried to him, he heard (Psalm 22:23-24).

Typically, Jesus is misunderstood by those standing nearby. They think he is calling Elijah to rescue him.

The only other utterance from Jesus seems to be a cry of either agony — or triumph:

 Jesus cried out with a loud voice, and gave up the spirit.

We are told that the veil of the temple was torn in half, from top to bottom.  The veil in the temple was not a mere sheer curtain. According to the ancient historian Josephus, the veil in Herod’s temple was as thick as a man’s hand (about four inches thick) and 60 feet high and 20 feet wide.

This is the veil that separated the Holy Place in the temple from the innermost room known as the Holy of Holies.  The Holy Place was the location of solemn worship where only the priests were permitted to go.  The following items were in the Holy Place — the table for the showbread, the altar of incense which represented the prayers of Israel, and the seven-branched lampstand that offered light for the room.  These were all articles carefully prescribed by Yahweh to Moses in the book of Exodus.

However, the Holy of Holies was the most holy place, where the high priest entered only once a year on the Day of Atonement to offer sacrifices for the sins of Israel.  The significance of the tearing of the veil is clear — Jesus the true high priest has opened the way into the presence of God.

Perhaps a massive earthquake, such as was described in Matthew 27:54, might have caused such a rupture. No wonder the Roman centurion said:

 “Truly this man was the Son of God!”

Perhaps there were a combination of factors that contributed to this startling confession of faith by a Gentile. The natural phenomenon must have moved him — the deep darkness over the land for three hours, the earthquake. Or perhaps there was something he saw and felt as he watched the Son of God die.

Earlier, I wrote that everyone seemed to have rejected or abandoned Jesus — the spectators, the religious authorities, and some would say even God (although I disagree. See Respond section below).  But there were some who did not:

There were also women watching from afar, among whom were both Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses, and Salome; who, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and served him; and many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

These are the same three women mentioned by name who will bring spices to anoint his dead body after Jesus is placed in the tomb — and the same women who are the first witnesses to the resurrection.

And ironically, it is not one of his closest disciples who has the courage to ask Pilate for the body of Jesus on Preparation Day, the day before Sabbath. We may presume they are still in hiding. No, it is Joseph of Arimathaea, a member of the same Sanhedrin that condemned Jesus:

who also himself was looking for God’s Kingdom.

Obviously, like the centurion, Joseph of Arimathaea saw something in Jesus that had deeply reached him.

Pilate seems surprised that Jesus is already dead:

Pilate marveled if he were already dead; and summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he had been dead long.

Jesus is wound in a linen cloth and laid in a tomb cave. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses note where he has been buried. They plan to return when the Sabbath is over and anoint his corpse.

APPLY:  

Just who is this Jesus, and what is our response to him, and to his violent death?

To the chief priests and scribes, and the religious elite of the day, Jesus was a heretic who needed to be eliminated before he corrupted their precious temple worship, and perhaps incurred the wrath of Rome for stirring up trouble.

To the disciples, he was their beloved Rabbi, their Teacher, who had taught them of the Kingdom of God, and then had demonstrated its presence with his powerful signs. But when he spoke of his own death and resurrection, they couldn’t understand him. Not yet.

To Pilate, and the Roman overlords, he was a political problem to be solved. What happened to Jesus was a matter of indifference. If he could be released without consequences, that would be fine. If not, he could be crucified as a matter of convenience to appease the priests and avoid trouble with Rome.

To the women who had been treated as equals and human beings of sacred worth for the first time in their lives, he was Lord — and they demonstrated their reverence by anointing his head with oil, and watching in grief as he died.

To Joseph of Arimathaea — well, we’re not sure what he thought of Jesus.  We simply know what he did.  As in the deuterocanonical (or Apocryphal) book of Tobit, he perhaps saw the burial of a fellow Jew as a sacred duty. But we suspect that it meant much more than that. He was looking for the kingdom, and perhaps he’d caught a glimpse of the kingdom in the eyes of the King.

But most importantly, what is he to us?  Many today dismiss Jesus as a non-historical character invented by men to support a corrupt institution. Some think of him as a fine moral character whose teachings were part of the ethical development and evolution of our civilization.

That is too easy. Many of us find ourselves reading the Passion account and determine, as many Christians have over the centuries, that these details are too vivid and too realistic to be fiction. They have the feel of truth.

And perhaps we find ourselves in the same position as the centurion. We doubt that he had much contact with Jesus prior to this execution.  But there is something here that grips him, that speaks to his spirit, and that causes him to declare:

“Truly this man was the Son of God!”

It is interesting that in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus never calls himself the Son of God.  This is the title given Jesus by Mark in the beginning of the book:

The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God (Mark 1:1).

And the unclean spirits recognize him for who he is as the Son of God.  But Jesus invariably refers to himself as the Son of Man.  Perhaps this is because he is stressing his human nature, and his role as the Messianic figure of prophecy. He knows that he is the Son of God.

However, it is when we recognize that he is the Son of God that we truly come to faith. And it is then that we know that God has become one of us, with all the weakness and vulnerability that is revealed on the cross, so that he might demonstrate his power as the crucified and risen God.

RESPOND: 

I sometimes read history and wonder, “What would I have done?” Would I have stood my ground when the Redcoats charged up Breed’s Hill in Boston? Would I have spoken up against Hitler in Nazi Germany? But more importantly, would I have stayed close to Jesus that night when he was arrested?

I’d like to think that I would have remained near him, like the women did.  Of course, the Roman legionnaires and the religious authorities likely took no notice of the mourning women.  In that culture long ago, women were of little consequence.

But the sorry record of the male disciples makes me doubt myself. If Peter, James and John ran, or kept their distance, or even denied him, do I really think I would do any better?

They did forsake him. But here’s another pressing question — Did the Father forsake his Son? This is a theological conundrum.

I have heard sermons over the years that insisted that when Jesus was on the cross, the Father “turned his face away from his Son.” I understand where they’re coming from. When Jesus quotes Psalm 22 it does seem to be a cry of abandonment. And Paul tells us that:

For him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).

I am not troubled by the fact that Jesus assumes my sin in order to transfer his righteousness to me. This is the purpose of the sacrifice — an exchange of sin for righteousness.  Jesus does not commit sin (we know from Scripture that he is without sin — see 2 Corinthians 5:21; Hebrews 4:15), but he assumes our sin.  Only one who is fully divine is without sin. And only one who is fully human can fully enter into our human experience and take our sin upon himself.

And that’s what troubles me.

Jesus is so clearly established in the New Testament as the only begotten Son of the Father, the Word made flesh. He is God.  Not merely God-like, but God. His own claim is that he is uniquely united to the Father:

I and the Father are one (John 10:30).

And he decisively answers Philip’s request that the disciples may see the Father:

He who has seen me has seen the Father. How do you say, ‘Show us the Father?’ Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? (John 14:9-10).

This is the basis of the classic doctrine of the nature of Jesus as fully God and yet fully man, as understood by the church. And it is the basis of the Trinity, that Jesus is the Second Person of the Trinity.

How then could God the Father abandon himself?  It seems to be ontologically impossible. Though there is a distinction of Persons in the Trinity, there is still complete unity between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This explains my difficulty with the theory that “the Father turned his face away from his Son.”

I heard about a little girl who said “I love Jesus, but I hate his Father.”  In her innocence, I believe she missed the point. It is not the Father who crucifies the Son — it is evil itself, manifested in human sin.

Therefore I can come to only one conclusion — the Father didn’t turn his face away from his Son. There may be a hint of this in Luke’s account of the last moments of Jesus:

Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” Having said this, he breathed his last (Luke 24:46).

On the cross God the Father embraces his Son, as the one who has been perfectly obedient even unto death.  The Father doesn’t watch this horror from a distance — he is as near to the suffering Son as he has ever been, watching with deep love.  Grieving, mourning perhaps because of what human evil had done — but absent? Never.

In the words of Charles Wesley’s powerful hymn, Arise, My Soul, Arise:

The Father hears Him pray,
His dear anointed One;
He cannot turn away
The presence of His Son.
His Spirit answers to the blood,
And tells me I am born of God.

It is the God-Man who dies on our behalf, who tastes the worst that evil can deliver (even, according to ancient church doctrine and Scripture, descending into Hell itself), and then is raised to life by God.  This descent and ascent is no mere myth. Jesus has descended to rescue us from sin, death and the Devil, and has re-ascended with us in his arms.  As Ephesians 4 tells us:

“When he ascended on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men.” Now this, “He ascended”, what is it but that he also first descended into the lower parts of the earth?  He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things (Ephesians 4:8-10).

So, forsaken by all but God, because Jesus is God incarnate, Jesus sets free the prisoners from their dungeon.  Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!

Lord, I confess I have said and written too much about a mystery that I cannot begin to understand — your Passion, death and Resurrection, your ineffable nature, the Trinity.  Please forgive what I have said amiss; but lead me again to the same confession made by the centurion at the foot of the cross: “Truly this man was the Son of God!” Amen.

PHOTO:
“It is Finished!” by Delirious? is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license.

Epistle for October 8, 2023

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Philippians 3:4b-14
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

Paul focuses on his own autobiography as a witness to the Gospel of grace that he proclaims.  In this passage we see through Paul’s eyes his own transition from a self-righteous overachiever to a man completely dependent upon Christ.

He begins by demonstrating to the Philippians that he has a great personal resume, in purely human terms.  He has every reason to be:

confident in the flesh,

if the goal is to be reached through human achievement.

The list he offers highlights his accomplishments as a highly committed, deeply religious person:

circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

His place in the Judaism of his day, regarded as the true faith of the Chosen People, was absolutely secure.  Not only had he received all the normal marks of an observant Jew (circumcision, a place in the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews), he was a member of the most exclusive religious “fraternity” of his day — the Pharisees.

To be a Pharisee was to be a part of a highly scrupulous group.  The word Pharisee means those who are set apart. They were renowned for their strict observance not only of the Law of Moses, but also of the Oral Law — that body of interpretations and applications that had been passed down by generations of rabbis.

Moreover, Paul’s zeal for his faith was so intense that he sought to root out those whom he regarded as heretics, this new Jewish sect that were called Christians.  His quest to rid the world of this threat led him to Damascus — and conversion!

Yet, Paul could honestly say that his devotion to the law of Moses was so impeccable that he was blameless.

However, compared to the glory and grace that Paul had come to know in Christ, his own accomplishments are meaningless to him:

Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ…

Note the three-fold reference to loss, which illustrates that Paul has given up all of the achievements and credentials of his former life.  In comparison to knowing Christ, his long list of merits are mere trash.

Paul reiterates the core of his message of grace when he outlines his new aim — to be found in Christ:

not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.

Throughout his epistles, Paul has made it clear that it is impossible to establish one’s own righteousness by obedience to the law.  While the law is holy and just and good, the human capacity to fulfill the law invariably falls short.  Only by complete surrender through faith in Christ does the believer receive the:

righteousness from God based on faith.

Paul states clearly his own personal mission statement:

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

This highlights an important aspect of Paul’s spirituality — that faith in Christ means identification with Christ’s cross and his resurrection.  We can see that very clearly in Galatians 2:19-20.

I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Nevertheless, Paul confesses his own deep humility, acknowledging that he is still in the process of growing when it comes to following Christ:

Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

There are two key points that seem striking here.

First, there is the paradox that Christ has already made Paul his own, yet there is a response still required in order for Paul to continue to make Christ his own.  Christ’s grace has already accepted Paul as he is.  But Paul is aware that identifying with Christ’s crucified and resurrected life requires that he press on to make it his own.

There are several analogies that spring to mind — we are embraced by someone who loves us, but we also must embrace them in return if we are to experience the completion of affection.

But Paul’s own analogy brings us to the second point — Paul uses an athletic analogy to describe himself:

forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

One can almost see the stadium and the runners as they are being cheered on by the crowds.  Paul runs his race so that he may cross the finish line and receive the ultimate prize.

So, the analogy prevails.  He has been selected for the “team” by the grace of Christ. It is time to forget those previous efforts of achievement that fell short of victory, without looking back.  And now he strives to perform in the spiritual contest with his utmost effort so that he may fulfill the high calling of Christ.

APPLY:  

Ours is an achievement-oriented society.  From our first report cards that our moms put on the refrigerator to the lists of awards and honors and degrees that follow our names in our resumes, we are hungry for recognition.

While this may be admirable and desirable from a human point of view for our resume building, this is not how we experience the glory of Christ.

Christ’s grace is available to all, from the president of the United States to the homeless woman pushing a shopping cart filled with her only possessions.

As Paul tells us, Christ has taken hold of us by grace.  He has already offered himself to us completely and without reserve.  He emptied himself of all but love, and offered his life on the cross so that he might raise us up with him.

What response should this elicit from us?  If we fully grasp what Christ has done for us, it inspires us to give all that we have and all that we are to follow him.  This is the path to sanctification.

We remember, however, that even this striving:

toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus

is still not our accomplishment.  It is not something that we achieve, but rather something that we receive by grace.

As Paul reminds us in his paradoxical statement earlier in this letter to the Philippians:

work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure (Philippians 2:12-13).

No matter how intense our effort, how earnestly we press toward the goal, we are enabled to do so only by God who is at work in us.  That is why we are truly humble before God, who is the author and finisher of our salvation.

RESPOND: 

Years ago, I was seeing a Christian counselor about my depression.  He recommended a book that helped me to apply all of my theological training to my personal problems.

The book was The Search for Significance by Robert McGee.  I can sum up the message very simply — we are taught in our culture to base our self-worth on our performance and the opinions of others.  Our accomplishments and the opinion of others become the mirror in which we measure ourselves.

Unfortunately, even the most accomplished and most popular persons in the world, in their most honest moments, must accept that they fall short of perfection. The Gospel of Jesus Christ has nothing to say to those who do not accept that they are sinners.

The Gospel of grace tells us that we are already accepted for Christ’s sake.  We are loved.  There is nothing more that we need do in order to be more acceptable to God. Our acceptance by God is not based on our performance or the opinion of others. Christ has performed all that needs to be done for us to be reconciled to God. And Christ’s opinion of each of us is that we are worth dying for!

When I read McGee’s book, and began to apply its message in my own life, it liberated me from the effort to establish my own righteousness or to “prove” myself.

And, when I could accept that I was already accepted by Christ, I was free to give my very best effort to press on toward the life that he envisioned for me.

I had “made the team” already.  But now I didn’t want to simply sit on the bench.  I wanted to excel and perform at the highest level possible — not for my own sake but for Christ’s sake.  My motivation for obedience and excellence was no longer to bolster my ego or my resume, but gratitude for what Christ has done for me.

Our Lord, whatever I have accomplished is rubbish in comparison to the glory of knowing you through your death and resurrection.  I receive your grace with humble gratitude, and press on toward the goal of your high calling.  Amen. 

PHOTO:
“Philippians 3:13-14” by Brett Jordan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. This image is designed to be wallpaper for an iphone.

Epistle for August 6, 2023

“St. Paul” painting by El Greco (1541-1614).
“For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brothers’ sake, my relatives according to the flesh, who are Israelites.”
[Romans 9:3-4 WEB]

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Romans 9:1-5
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

Paul’s focus shifts away from the powerful climax of Romans 8, and he begins to address a subject that is painful for him — he grieves for the majority of his fellow Jews, who have rejected Jesus as the Messiah.

It is extremely important to note that the first believers in Christ were Jews — the twelve disciples, the folks in the Upper Room on Pentecost, the three thousand converted on that day, and Paul himself.  In fact, until Paul began his aggressive missionary work to the Gentiles, the new “Christian” movement centered in Jerusalem was actually somewhat reluctant to branch out beyond the Jews.

Paul has the vision to see that the Gospel is God’s gift to all people.  He wasn’t the first or the only to see that.  Peter’s vision that led to his visit with the Roman centurion, Cornelius, was a breakthrough for the early church (Acts 10).  But it is Paul who has the spiritual and intellectual gifts, and the drive, to carry the message into the Gentile world in his missionary journeys.

Nevertheless, Paul is grieved that so many of his own people have rejected the Gospel.  Throughout Romans 9 to 11, he will explore the paradox that Israel has been chosen by God, and yet has rejected God’s Messiah.

But here, he is expressing his own deep feelings:

I tell the truth in Christ. I am not lying, my conscience testifying with me in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and unceasing pain in my heart.

Paul even makes this extraordinary statement:

For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brothers’ sake, my relatives according to the flesh, who are Israelites…

Paul loves his own people so deeply that he is willing to be damned for their sake!

We are reminded that Paul was no marginal, cultural Jew.  He was deeply committed to Judaism prior to his Damascus Road experience and conversion (Acts 9:1-21).  Paul speaks of his own life prior to his conversion:

For you have heard of my way of living in time past in the Jews’ religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the assembly of God, and ravaged it.  I advanced in the Jews’ religion beyond many of my own age among my countrymen, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers (Galatians 1:13-14).

When his “credentials” are questioned by some in the Corinthian church, Paul says of himself in comparison to some of his detractors:

Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they the offspring of Abraham? So am I (2 Corinthians 11:22).

And when he seeks to point out that his own accomplishments are rubbish as compared to knowing Christ, he points out that his accomplishments are not meager by human standards:

If any other man thinks that he has confidence in the flesh, I yet more:  circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; concerning the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the assembly; concerning the righteousness which is in the law, found blameless (Philippians 3:4-6).

And Paul does not minimize or denigrate the important relationship that God bestowed upon Israel as his chosen people:

whose is the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service, and the promises; of whom are the fathers, and from whom is Christ as concerning the flesh, who is over all, God, blessed forever. Amen.

Although Paul is very clear that salvation is not a work of the law but a work of grace received by faith (Romans 3:27), he doesn’t demean the law of Moses. The Israelites were chosen (adopted) by God, to them were entrusted the covenants of Abraham, the law of Moses, the Patriarchs. 

And, above all, Israel is the vessel through which the Messiah was to come.  The Hebrew Scriptures prophesied his coming.  Jesus is the descendant of David, according to the Scriptures, and is therefore the rightful heir of David.  Jesus is clearly the Jewish Messiah, as well as the Savior of the world.

APPLY:  

There is a tension in relations between Christianity and Judaism.  Christians were persecuted harshly by the Jewish priestly authorities early in the history of the church, and later as the Christian movement moved into the Gentile world.  Paul made it a point to go first to the synagogues in the Greek and Roman cities he visited so that he could interpret the prophecies from the Hebrew Scriptures concerning the Christ.  When he was rejected, he was free to go out among the Gentiles and evangelize.

Unfortunately, when Christianity became the dominant religion after Constantine’s ascent to Imperial status, and recognition of the church in 313 A.D., the Christian treatment of Jews has been frankly deplorable.  The Jews were expelled from Jerusalem in 325 A.D.; in 1096, one third of the Jews in Northern France and Germany were massacred.  In 1215, the Lateran Council in Rome decreed that all Jews were to wear the “badge of shame” in all Christian countries. Jews were denied all public sector employment, and were burdened with extra taxes. These, and many more persecutions, pogroms and massacres have plagued the Jews — all the way down to the Holocaust by Nazi Germany.

Paul would be appalled.  When his people did not embrace Jesus as Messiah, or his evangel, Paul’s response was not anger, but grief:

I have great sorrow and unceasing pain in my heart.

We as Christians owe a profound debt to our Jewish heritage.  From them come:

the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service, and the promises.

And because of the salvation history of Israel, we are led inexorably to the coming of the Christ, who fulfills the Jewish expectations of a Messiah.

RESPOND: 

I wonder what I am willing to sacrifice for the sake of the salvation of someone I love?  Paul says:

I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brothers’ sake, my relatives according to the flesh, who are Israelites.

I am reminded of a funny tale a seminary professor once told me years ago.  It seems that a young ministerial candidate in Scotland was being interviewed by the Presbytery concerning his hope for ordination.

The questioning was rigorous and critical. The young candidate was sweating.  Finally, someone asked him this question:

Are you willing to be damned for the glory of God?

The harried young man answered:

Yes, and I’d be even more willing to see the entire Presbytery damned for God’s glory.

A funny anecdote.  But there is a rather serious application.  Paul was willing to be damned for the sake of his nation.  For whom would we be willing to be damned?

I have stated often that I would be willing to take a bullet for members of my family.  Would I be willing to be damned for them?  I think so.

I know a man who was a rebel and a mocker of the Christian faith.  His father was a saintly, devout seminary professor, who from time to time would ask his son, “How is it with your soul?”  But only after his father died unexpectedly did this rebel turn to God and say: “O.K.  You have my attention.”  He returned to faith, and has lived faithfully ever since.

This seems a radical method of evangelism.  But perhaps until we are willing to die — or even be accursed for the lost — those whom we seek to save won’t really see how serious we are.  What are we really willing to pay to see the lost saved?

Jesus was willing to give his very life and, in my theology, descend into hell on our behalf.

Lord, I deeply regret the persecutions of Judaism by Christians over the centuries.  I pray that we may be a vessel of reconciliation rather than repudiation.  I also pray for those whom I love who do not have faith in you — if it is necessary that I die, or even be accursed, that they may be saved, help me to say yes to that.  Amen. 

PHOTOS:

"San Pablo Apóstol" by El Greco is in the Public Domain.

Gospel for April 2, 2023 (Liturgy of the Passion)

Note from Celeste:

Before we look at today’s lectionary reading, I’d like to draw your attention to my Holy Week Bible Study book.

Go and Find a Donkey is the latest installment of the Choose This Day Multiple Choice Bible Studies series.

The daily devotionals take 10-15 minutes and include:

• Scripture passage (World English Bible)
• Fun, entertaining multiple choice questions focused directly on the Scripture passage
• Short meditation that can be used as a discussion starter.

Use them on the suggested dates, or skip around.  Designed to be used during Holy Week, this nine-day Bible study takes you from Palm Sunday through Easter Monday.

Use this book personally during a coffee break or with the family in the car or at the breakfast table.

Order Go and Find a Donkey  today to prepare your family for this year’s Easter season!
CLICK HERE for Amazon’s Kindle book of Go and Find a Donkey.
CLICK HERE for Amazon’s Paperback of Go and Find a Donkey.

AND NOW, BACK TO TODAY’S LECTIONARY READING:

“The First Station- Jesus is Condemned to Death”
The photographer, Fr. Lawrence Lew, offers these thoughts:
This Station in marble bas relief is by Fr Aelred Whitacre OP, from Blackfriars in Oxford, the Dominican priory in that great university town.
It is striking that Fr Aelred, reflecting Thomistic teaching, depicts the dehumanizing effect of sin, hence this striking depiction of Pilate. The serpent shows that Pilate, in choosing to condemn an innocent man, has colluded with the Evil One. Incidentally, it is thought that Tolkien’s visual conception of orcs might have been inspired by seeing this depiction of Pilate.

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Matthew 26:14-27:66
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

The shock of the events recorded here in Matthew’s Gospel is lost on most modern Christians simply because they have become so familiar.  Ask a child who has been raised in Sunday School what Jesus has done for us and the child will likely rattle off the words “he died for our sins.”  These words would likely be delivered somewhat mechanically, as if by rote.

Looking at this account as if reading the Gospel for the first time would be truly shocking.  The first-time reader, starting at the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel, would have first encountered the account of Jesus’ miraculous birth, with its declaration that this child would be called Immanuel, God with us.  The God-head of this child would have been confirmed as he grew into a man and was baptized, with the descent of the Holy Spirit and the voice of God the Father that attested that he was the Son of God.  His miraculous works of healing and feeding the multitudes and commanding the forces of nature would have further illustrated the divine nature of Jesus.  His Transfiguration would certainly have confirmed it.  And his teaching, as though providing a New Law, was with the authority of God.  His triumphant entry into the city of Jerusalem, welcomed by the throngs, would have authenticated his credentials as the Son of David and the Messiah.

So, the events of Matthew 26:14-27:66 would certainly be shocking to someone coming to this account for the first time.  Certainly the reader might have picked up hints from the murmuring of the Pharisees and the Saduccees and the Priests.  And Jesus himself offered foreshadowings of the fate that awaited him in Jerusalem.

But still, the events in this passage reveal the violence of those who plotted against Jesus. They also reveal his own human vulnerability.  The Son of God is also the Son of Man, who can be beaten and tormented and nailed to a cross.

With such a long passage, it is necessary to summarize some of the events — that Jesus is betrayed by one of his own disciples, predicts his own death, is denied by one of his closest disciples, stands trial in a hastily convened court, and is condemned to die by a foreign ruler.   

We will view these shocking events through the characters that appear, and the dramatic action that follows.  First, there is the shock of betrayal by Judas Iscariot, who approaches the chief priests to offer them Jesus — for a price.

In Matthew’s Gospel, we receive only one hint that Judas will betray Jesus (Matthew 10:4).  But this foreshadowing comes with no explanation of Judas’s motives.  Still, when the disciples are gathered to celebrate the Passover feast, Jesus knows what Judas will do.  Jesus announces that one of them will betray him.  The disciples search their own hearts and ask with deep sorrow:

“It isn’t me, is it, Lord?”

Jesus’ answer is cryptic — that whoever dips his unleavened bread into the charoset dish typical of Passover, would betray him.  Eating in a communal manner like this was an intimate experience.  Jesus was suggesting that the one who betrayed him was a close friend.

Judas is disingenuous, as though to deflect suspicion from himself.  He parrots the other disciples, and says:

It isn’t me, is it, Rabbi?

Unlike the other disciples, though, he calls Jesus Rabbi instead of Lord.  Though subtle, this may suggest he is disavowing any faith in Jesus as the Messiah.

Jesus has warned him, along with the others:

The Son of Man goes, even as it is written of him, but woe to that man through whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would be better for that man if he had not been born.

Following the trajectory of Judas’s fateful decision (sometime between the adjournment of the Passover meal and Jesus’ climb to the Mount of Olives), Judas has gathered a multitude with swords and clubs under the authority of the chief priests and elders of the people.  He knows Jesus’ plans for the evening, and leads this armed rabble to the Mount of Olives.  Again, there is the sign of hypocritical intimacy:

Now he who betrayed him gave them a sign, saying, “Whoever I kiss, he is the one. Seize him.”  Immediately he came to Jesus, and said, “Hail, Rabbi!” and kissed him.

Despite this betrayal, Jesus seems almost tender toward Judas.  Jesus says to him, Friend, why are you here? — although Jesus knows precisely why Judas has come.

We follow the next phase in Judas’s part of this drama.  It is only after Jesus is hailed before the council of the high priest and the elders late that night, and then turned over to Pontius Pilate for Roman justice the next morning, that Judas seems to experience remorse.  He attempts to return the thirty pieces of silver, and confesses his sin in betraying innocent blood.  His reparations of the money are refused, and he throws it at the feet of the priests and leaves — and hangs himself.

Was this a sign of repentance?  Was he forever condemned?  Literally, God alone knows.

Let us return to the other characters who reclined with Jesus at the Passover feast.  All of the disciples were searching their own hearts about Jesus’ prediction that one of them would betray him.  But when Jesus again warns them that they would all stumble because of the events that night, Peter can’t stand it.  He protests that he alone would remain faithful, even if all of them fell away.  Jesus singles out Peter specifically with the painful prediction that Peter himself would deny him three times before morning, when the rooster crowed.

To his credit, Peter was one of the three closest friends whom Jesus asked to stay near when Jesus went to Gethsemane to pray.  But Peter’s first stumble came even before he denied Jesus — three times Peter, along with James and John, fell asleep, even after Jesus asked them directly to stay awake and watch with him in prayer.

Matthew doesn’t tell us that Peter is the one who strikes off the ear of the high priest’s servant with a sword.  John’s Gospel supplies that detail (John 18:10).  But the Gospel of Matthew does show that Peter had just enough courage to follow Jesus and the armed band to the courtyard of the house of Caiphas — where Peter withers in fear.  When asked if he is one of Jesus’ disciples, Peter denies it, with a curse.

So, let us turn to Jesus and his words and actions in these events.  Jesus is very clearly aware of his role in this drama.  Jesus knows the script.  He predicts that he will be delivered up to death as it is written in the Scriptures.  The Passover meal becomes, in his hands, a new sign of remembrance for his followers.  The meal that celebrated the deliverance of his people from slavery some 1200 years earlier would now be transformed in order to celebrate his sacrificial death, which liberates from slavery to sin.

Jesus also very consciously refers to Scripture as he begins the death march to the cross — quoting Zechariah 13:7 to predict the scattering of his followers when he is arrested.  When the armed rabble come, and one of his followers offers resistance, Jesus reproves him — Jesus knows his own power to call down heavenly reinforcements, but he cites the Scriptures that prophesy that his death must happen. And of course he quotes Psalm 22:1 in the so-called Cry of Dereliction from the cross:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Jesus does know what awaits him.  And yet we see the tension between his divine nature and his human nature, even if only briefly.  When he prays in the Garden of Gethsemane, he asks:

My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass away from me.

Facing death, and the full brunt of evil on the cross, Jesus is honest.  If possible, he would prefer not to suffer the physical and spiritual suffering that is to come.  However, the tension is resolved when he prays:

nevertheless, not what I desire, but what you desire.

If we subscribe to the classical Christology of the church, as I do, we see the two natures of Jesus here in this moment — he is fully human and fully divine.  Both natures are in harmony, and he is completely surrendered to the saving work for which he was destined.

Jesus is fully aware of his latent power as Son of God, and his authority over all things.  His response to Peter’s feeble attempt to defend his Lord is telling:

do you think that I couldn’t ask my Father, and he would even now send me more than twelve legions of angels?

But there are two reasons that such supernatural militance isn’t called for at this time — first, violent reprisal will only escalate violence (all those who take the sword will die by the sword), and that is not his purpose in coming.  And second, all that is happening is in order to fulfill the Scriptures.

Jesus does chide the crowd for an excessive show of force — coming at night, armed to the teeth, as if they are seeking a dangerous criminal.  After all, he’s been teaching publicly in the temple all week.

Jesus continues to exert his quiet, peaceful authority when he is hailed before a hastily summoned council of the priests and elders.  This court isn’t even held in a public venue, but in the home of Caiaphas the high priest.  None of the false testimony against him holds water — until he is asked the one question that really matters:

The high priest answered him, “I adjure you by the living God, that you tell us whether you are the Christ, the Son of God.”

The response of Jesus suggests that by bringing this very charge, the high priest has acknowledged that Jesus is either the Son of God, or he is a fraud.  And the life and ministry of Jesus leaves no room for the charge that he is a phony.  Moreover, Jesus confirms his identity with a prophecy:

Jesus said to him, “You have said it. Nevertheless, I tell you, after this you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds of the sky.”

This is apocalyptic language that is unmistakably Biblical.  Jesus may well be referring to Daniel:

I saw in the night visions, and behold, there came with the clouds of the sky one like a son of man, and he came even to the ancient of days, and they brought him near before him.  There was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and languages should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed (Daniel 7:13-14).

Now the high priest has his “smoking gun” — all the evidence he thinks he needs to convict Jesus.  The high priest tears his robe, which is a sign of grief and lamentation.  But the Levitical law forbade the high priest from these customary signs of mourning (Leviticus 21:10).  The high priest is conveying a serious source of grief by doing this — he is accusing Jesus of blasphemy.

The penalty for blasphemy in Jewish law is death.  Jesus is physically abused and abased by these council members.  But they are an occupied nation, with Rome as their overlord.  They have no authority to execute a prisoner.

So the next morning Jesus must stand before Governor Pontius Pilate.  The Roman official’s concern is not with religious charges against Jesus, but with political sedition and revolution.  Messiah, or anointed one, is also the title of a king.  This is the only charge that concerns Pilate.  But Jesus leaves Pilate to make up his own mind:

 Now Jesus stood before the governor: and the governor asked him, saying, “Are you the King of the Jews?”  Jesus said to him, “So you say.”

This is essentially the same answer Jesus gives to the high priest, which suggests that Jesus is tacitly confirming the charge.

Pilate’s role in this trial and execution are critical.  Pilate had already incurred the displeasure of the priests and elders with some of his previous public policies.  According to the Jewish historians of that time (e.g., Philo and Josephus), Pilate had offended the priests by introducing Roman standards and shields on temple grounds — this had been a violation of the second commandment forbidding graven images.  And he had appropriated money designated for the temple and used it to build aqueducts.  When the Jews protested these acts, Pilate ordered his troops to respond with violence.  It might be said he had two strikes against him already.  More complaints to the Emperor might be devastating to Pilate’s career.

Not even the intercession of Pilate’s wife could avert the inevitable.

Pilate’s contrivance, to force the crowd into a decision, backfires.  He offers a choice of Barabbas or Jesus.  They cry for Barabbas to be released, and Jesus to be crucified.  Pilate now finds himself in a corner that he himself created.   He is convinced of Jesus’ innocence.  When the crowd demands that Jesus be crucified, Pilate pleads for him:

But the governor said, “Why? What evil has he done?”

His efforts to avert violence are about to backfire.  Normally the Roman Procurator didn’t come to Jerusalem except in times of unrest, as a show of force to prevent uprisings.  Now, this trial was threatening to become the source of a riot.

Pilate’s highly symbolic act, washing his hands of Jesus’ blood, is a sham.  A crucifixion was a penalty exacted by Rome for political crimes (sedition, treason, revolution), not civil crimes.  By permitting it, Pilate was responsible for it.  And it was Roman soldiers who carried out the execution.

The Roman soldiers continue the abuse of Jesus.  Normally a flogging was considered a possible death sentence.  They mock him and humiliate him with the threadbare trappings of royalty — a scarlet robe, a crown of thorns, and a reed for a scepter — because by dehumanizing him they make an example of Jesus.  And it is easier to kill someone whose humanity has been devalued and objectified.

It should be noted that Golgotha, the hill where Jesus was crucified, was not far from one of the city gates, along a well-traveled road.  This was quite intentional.  The cross was a political statement that Rome wished to make very public — this is what happens to enemies of Rome!

Thus begin the hours of supreme agony, coupled with paradox.  The Roman soldiers mock him by slapping and spitting on Jesus, and call him The King of the Jews.  The sign placed over his head on the cross proclaims the same charge.  The irony is that this helpless, humiliated and dying Jew is in fact the rightful heir of King David — and he is also the King of the Universe.

The paradox of this dying God is manifested further by the mockery of the passersby and the priests.  They taunt him:

If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross!

He saved others, but he can’t save himself. If he is the King of Israel, let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him.  He trusts in God. Let God deliver him now, if he wants him; for he said, ‘I am the Son of God’.

This is the supreme paradox.  Because Jesus is the Son of God, he chooses not to come down from the cross.  He saves others because he refuses to save himself.  And it is his trust in God that was revealed in the Garden of Gethsemane when he said:

not what I desire, but what you desire.

Matthew’s descriptions of the scene on Golgotha (appropriately named: the place of the skull) grow surreal.  Darkness strangely falls over the land at noon.  There is silence, watching, and suffering until 3:00 p.m., when Jesus makes his famous cry:

“Eli, Eli, lima  sabachthani?” That is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

The phrase that Jesus quotes is one of the rare transliterations of Hebrew and Aramaic in the otherwise Greek text of Matthew’s Gospels. This is a clue to us that Matthew is using Jesus’ exact words from the cross, and that Jesus is quoting Psalm 22:1.  Psalm 22, written hundreds of years earlier, appears to be an eerily accurate description of the physical and psychological effects of this crucifixion:

All those who see me mock me.
They insult me with their lips. They shake their heads, saying,
“He trusts in Yahweh;
let him deliver him.
Let him rescue him, since he delights in him” (Psalm 22:7-8)

I am poured out like water.
All my bones are out of joint.
My heart is like wax;
it is melted within me.
My strength is dried up like a potsherd.
My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.
You have brought me into the dust of death.
 For dogs have surrounded me.
A company of evildoers have enclosed me.
They have pierced my hands and feet.
 I can count all of my bones.
They look and stare at me.
They divide my garments among them.
They cast lots for my clothing (Psalm 22:14-18).

At the same time it shouldn’t escape notice that despair is transformed into powerful hope in Psalm 22:

I will declare your name to my brothers.
Among the assembly, I will praise you.
You who fear Yahweh, praise him!
All you descendants of Jacob, glorify him!
Stand in awe of him, all you descendants of Israel!
 For he has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted,
Neither has he hidden his face from him;
but when he cried to him, he heard (Psalm 22:22-24).

A crucified man who is slowly dying of asphyxiation hasn’t the breath to recite an entire Psalm, but it may be that Jesus’ cry was not that of dereliction at all.  Perhaps he was remembering the Psalms learned in his childhood, and particularly this vivid poem, and in its despair he paradoxically finds hope.

This cry has been interpreted in many ways throughout the centuries by Christian expositors. In any event, this cry  is misinterpreted by some who stand at the cross.  They think he is calling on Elijah, when he is actually calling on God (Eli = My God). 

Even the kind effort of a soldier to offer Jesus sour wine soaked into a sponge is turned into a taunt by the others:

The rest said, “Let him be. Let’s see whether Elijah comes to save him.”

As mentioned above, the breath of a man dying of crucifixion becomes shallow — speaking becomes nearly impossible.  But Jesus dies with what seems a cry of victory:

Jesus cried again with a loud voice, and yielded up his spirit.

The effects of this climactic moment are multiple.  The thick curtain in the temple was torn from top to bottom.  This is the veil that separated the Holy Place in the temple from the innermost room known as the Holy of Holies.

The Holy Place was the location of solemn worship where only the priests were permitted to go. This is where the table for the shewbread, the altar of incense which represented the prayers of Israel, and the seven-branched lampstand that offered light for the room were located.  These were all articles carefully prescribed by Yahweh to Moses in Exodus.

However, the Holy of Holies was the most holy place, where the high priest entered only once a year on the Day of Atonement to offer sacrifices for the sins of Israel.

The significance of the tearing of the veil is clear — Jesus, the true high priest, has opened the way into the presence of God.

Not only are the religious symbols of Israel affected, nature itself is affected — there is a violent earthquake, and tombs are disturbed.  There is even a foretaste of the resurrection of Jesus, and the general resurrection expected at the end of the age:

The tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, they entered into the holy city and appeared to many.

And of course, there are the reactions of the living.  A battle-hardened centurion sees all of these phenomena and declares what amounts to a confession of faith:

Truly this was the Son of God.

This is the first sign of the harvest among the Gentiles that is to come because of the death of Jesus — but not the last.

And there are the women who have been keeping vigil at the cross.  They will not stray far from the corpse of Jesus, even after he is entombed:

Many women were there watching from afar, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, serving him.  Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.

Mary Magdalene we recognize from other Gospels as the woman from whom Jesus had cast seven demons (Mark 16:9; Luke 8:2).  The other Mary mentioned here is the mother of James the younger, one of the twelve disciples listed — but Joses is somewhat mysterious.  Although the name Joses appears in the Gospels, he does not appear as one of the twelve.  Curiously, James and Joses are mentioned as brothers — of Jesus himself!  (Matthew 13:55).

And finally the mother of James and John, the sons of Zebedee, is mentioned.  These two sons were among the first of the fishermen to follow Jesus from the beginning, and two of Jesus’ closest friends (Matthew 4:21).  This is the same woman who asked Jesus to find a position of honor for her sons when Jesus came into his Kingdom (Matthew 20:20-21). This wife of Zebedee must have also left her home on the shores of the Sea of Galilee to follow Jesus!

Then there is Joseph, a rich man from Arimathaea. We also know from the other Gospels that Joseph was a prominent member of the Jewish council of elders — the same council that had condemned Jesus for blasphemy (Mark 15:43).  We know that Joseph was hoping for the consummation of the Kingdom of God (Luke 23:51).  And most significantly, we know that Joseph was a secret disciple, who hid his faith out of fear of his colleagues on the council of elders (John 19:38).

And here we see the courage of Joseph in risking the disapproval and censure of his colleagues:

This man went to Pilate, and asked for Jesus’ body. Then Pilate commanded the body to be given up.  Joseph took the body, and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had cut out in the rock, and he rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb, and departed.

Nevertheless, even after all of this, on the Sabbath day following the day of Preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees violate their own prescriptions for the Sabbath observance in order to petition Pilate.  This suggests their anxiety and urgency even now about the influence of Jesus:

Sir, we remember what that deceiver said while he was still alive: ‘After three days I will rise again.’ Command therefore that the tomb be made secure until the third day, lest perhaps his disciples come at night and steal him away, and tell the people, ‘He is risen from the dead;’ and the last deception will be worse than the first.

Clearly, they are aware that Jesus has predicted his own resurrection.  They may doubt that Jesus is the Messiah, but they don’t trust his disciples.

Guarding a tomb is hardly routine Roman military practice, but Pilate continues to placate the chief priests and the Pharisees:

You have a guard. Go, make it as secure as you can.

Not only is there a guard set at the tomb where Jesus has been laid, they seal the stone.  The stone itself would have been large enough to block the entry way, and therefore quite large and heavy.  The caves in which these tombs were dug were likely limestone.  The seal was probably a soft, moldable clay that would harden — or it may well have indicated an Imperial Roman seal.  This would have been a deterrent to grave robbers who sought to break in.  Few would wish to risk the wrath of Roman justice.

APPLY:  

If we wish to read a theological or doctrinal interpretation of the passion and crucifixion of Jesus, we might turn to the epistles of Paul, Peter, John and the book of Hebrews.  There we learn that Jesus is the perfect sacrifice for sins, and that as the true high priest he is the one who both offers himself and is offered for our atonement.  By our faith in him, we are healed and forgiven.  In the account from Matthew there is some interpretation, but mostly we are presented with the narrative of these horrific events.

When we read this account as if for the first time, it is difficult not to experience shock, and even horror, as the drama unfolds.  Jesus is betrayed by a trusted follower.  He is arrested while at prayer.  He is tried by a court looking for a pretext to condemn him.  He is violently abused, and becomes the pawn in a political game of chess between powerful men.  He dies a horrible death on the cross, casually taunted by most who pass by.

But what is also shocking — in a positive and hopeful sense — is that despite the horror, there are those in this narrative who respond even to this crucifixion with faith and hope.  The centurion (a foreigner) is moved to a declaration of faith that Jesus is the Son of God.  The women who have followed Jesus and served him from the beginning in Galilee to this present moment remain with him to the bitter end, even holding vigil at his tomb.  Joseph of Arimathaea overcomes his fear of his colleagues and openly cares for the body of Jesus after his death.

However, if we take the time to review the Gospel of Matthew and note what Jesus said during his life and ministry about what awaited him in Jerusalem, the shock would be mitigated.  Jesus told his disciples at least three times that he would be killed in Jerusalem (Matthew 16:21-28; Matthew 17:22-23; Matthew 20:17-19).  And there is the suggestion in Matthew 16 that he went on advising them that he would be killed.

It must be noted that each time Jesus spoke of his death he also spoke of his resurrection.  Perhaps that is partly what motivates Joseph of Arimathaea.  After all, Joseph’s tomb was only borrowed for a few days by Jesus!  And perhaps this is why the women linger at the tomb.  As it turns out, this was not merely emotional denial or unassuaged grief — they were among the first to encounter the risen Jesus!

As shocking as this long and painful passage from Matthew’s Gospel may be, the ultimate shock is still to come — on the third day!

RESPOND: 

I once had a colleague in the ministry who insisted on reading the entire account of the Passion (the suffering) and death of Jesus on Palm/Passion Sunday.  His reasoning was interesting.  People in his church loved to hear the entire Nativity accounts of Jesus’ birth from Matthew and Luke at Christmas.  They needed to know why he was born, and where his life would take him.

I have spent much more time on this account from the Gospel of Matthew this week for much the same reason.  The birth of Jesus anticipates his death.  And his death makes sense of his birth as the Son of God and the Son of Man for our sake.

T.S. Eliot, in one of my favorite poems, describes the coming of the Magi to Bethlehem.  He describes the arduous journey as they leave the luxury and comforts of their summer palaces and silken girls bringing sherbet. 

And after the ordeal of this journey, with all of its hardships and frustrations, they arrive in the temperate valley and find the place they were looking for.   And Eliot closes with these lines, from the perspective of the Magi:

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
(The Journey of the Magi)

May we all find in Jesus’ death our own birth.

Lord, the events of your Passion and Crucifixion are hard to look at.  If not for the Resurrection, and promise of pardon and new birth that accompany these events, it would be unbearable.  Thank you for suffering on our behalf — on my behalf — as unworthy as I am.  Amen. 

PHOTO:
“The First Station- Jesus is Condemned to Death” by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.

Gospel for April 2, 2023 (Liturgy of the Palms)

Note from Celeste:

Before we look at today’s lectionary reading, I’d like to draw your attention to my Holy Week Bible Study book.

Go and Find a Donkey is the latest installment of the Choose This Day Multiple Choice Bible Studies series.

The daily devotionals take 10-15 minutes and include:

• Scripture passage (World English Bible)
• Fun, entertaining multiple choice questions focused directly on the Scripture passage
• Short meditation that can be used as a discussion starter.

Use them on the suggested dates, or skip around.  Designed to be used during Holy Week, this nine-day Bible study takes you from Palm Sunday through Easter Monday.

Use this book personally during a coffee break or with the family in the car or at the breakfast table.

Order Go and Find a Donkey  today to prepare your family for this year’s Easter season!
CLICK HERE for Amazon’s Kindle book of Go and Find a Donkey.
CLICK HERE for Amazon’s Paperback of Go and Find a Donkey.

AND NOW, BACK TO TODAY’S LECTIONARY READING:

Fresco in the Parish Church of Zirl, Austria.

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Matthew 21:1-11
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

Jesus approaches the climax of his earthly ministry.  He has been moving inexorably and deliberately toward Jerusalem.  His pilgrimage there coincides with the annual feast of the Passover, but this week’s events will be the setting for a new “Act” in the Drama of Salvation.

Jesus and his disciples are coming into Jerusalem from the east.  Bethsphage is a village on the east slope of the Mount of Olives not far from Bethany where Jesus’ friends Lazarus, Mary and Martha live.  Bethsphage is roughly two miles from Jerusalem.

It is in Bethsphage that Jesus sends two disciples to find a donkey and her colt tied.  Has he made prior arrangements for these animals, or does he have supernatural insight?  In any event, the “password” to be used by his disciples if anyone objects is direct:

If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord needs them,’ and immediately he will send them.

One thing is clear — this is a prophetic act.  Jesus knows that when he rides into Jerusalem, it is a conscious fulfillment of Zechariah 9:9:

Tell the daughter of Zion,
behold, your King comes to you,
humble, and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

In one sense this is a religious act — but it is also a political statement.  When he rides into Jerusalem on the back of the donkey, he is claiming to be King — Messiah.  This is a challenge to the religious establishment in Jerusalem.  The priests and Pharisees will also present his claim to be King to Governor Pilate as a threat to the Roman military jurisdiction.

The multitude — no doubt aware of the rumors of Jesus’ miracles in Galilee and near Jerusalem — are immediately caught up in a fever of expectation.

A very great multitude spread their clothes on the road. Others cut branches from the trees, and spread them on the road.

Waving branches was a familiar practice during the Feast of Booths, which occurs in the autumn (cf. Leviticus 23:39-43). During this time, Israel was to dwell in tents (booths) made of branches in order to remember that they had been wanderers in the wilderness after their deliverance from slavery in Egypt.  But this is Passover, celebrated in the spring.  Why does the crowd wave them now?

One speculation leads us back to the prophet Zechariah, particularly his apocalyptic oracles.  In Zechariah 14, the prophet envisions a time when Yahweh will triumph over the nations that oppress Israel.  The prophecy describes Yahweh standing on the Mount of Olives to the east of Jerusalem, and the Mount of Olives itself is split by an earthquake. But ultimately every nation that remains will pay homage and tribute to Jerusalem:

 It will happen that everyone who is left of all the nations that came against Jerusalem will go up from year to year to worship the King, Yahweh of Armies, and to keep the feast of tents (Zechariah 14:16).

It may well be that when the more Biblically literate members of the crowds that day in Jerusalem saw Jesus riding on a donkey, they began to put two and two together.  If Jesus was the Messiah, then the time may have come for the Messianic celebration of the Feast of Booths!  And once a few people broke off the branches to wave, it became contagious with the rest of the crowd.

This seems confirmed when the crowd begins to shout:

Hosanna to the son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!

Hosanna may be interpreted save us now! This is a prayer for help that might be reserved for the Messiah of God, who comes in the name of the Lord.  But the real confirmation is in calling Jesus son of David.  David’s royal dynasty was the house of Judah, of which Jesus was a descendant.  And of course David’s royal line was expected to return to power, as Yahweh had promised David nearly 1000 years earlier:

Your house and your kingdom will be made sure forever before you. Your throne will be established forever (2 Samuel 7:16).

This is not merely a religious promise — this is unmistakably a political statement.  The Messiah was to come as a King and re-establish David’s kingdom.

And yet again, someone knowledgeable in the Scriptures quotes a verse from Psalm 118:26 that becomes a catchphrase for the crowd:

Blessed is he who comes in Yahweh’s name!

They may have missed the poignancy of their quote from Psalm 118, which describes the suffering and near-death of the narrator of the Psalm at the hand of the nations. And this Psalm also speaks of the corner stone, which becomes a central symbol of Jesus and his ministry:

The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner (Psalm 118:22).

All of the excitement of Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem stirs up the city.  The news of him spreads to those who haven’t heard yet, and when they ask who he is, the crowd identifies him:

This is the prophet, Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee.

APPLY:  

The Triumphant Entry into Jerusalem seems to be a very deliberately planned event.  Jesus leaves nothing to chance.  The donkey and her colt are requisitioned.  He rides through the gates into the city in conscious fulfillment of prophecy. And the people in the crowd who are “in the know” get it.  They are hoping for the Messiah, the Son of David, and they greet Jesus as their King who will deliver them.

Perhaps what they miss is the breadth of Jesus’ mission of salvation.  He has come not merely to relieve the oppression of the Jews by Rome.  He has come to release all nations from the oppression of sin and death.

If only they had paid attention to the rest of Zechariah’s oracle.  In Zechariah 9:9, the prophet sees the righteous King offering salvation:

lowly, and riding on a donkey,
even on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

But in the very next verse, the scope of salvation becomes global:

I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim,
and the horse from Jerusalem;
and the battle bow will be cut off;
and he will speak peace to the nations:
and his dominion will be from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth (Zechariah 9:10).

To be sure, Zechariah’s prophecy has its share of blood and violence against Judah’s oppressors, but the most hopeful vision is peace and even salvation for all nations.

In order to interpret this symbolic, dramatic act of Jesus properly, we must follow him through the rest of the week — to the cross and the empty tomb.  And then, as if fulfilling the prophesy of Zechariah, we must hear his Great Commission to the disciples at the end of Matthew’s Gospel:

“All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I commanded you. Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen (Matthew 28:18-20).

RESPOND: 

I remember well when I was a kid looking forward to Palm Sunday, when the ushers would hand out palm branches and we got to wave them and shout out loud during church.  I thought that was really great fun.

And I also remember preachers telling us that Jesus wasn’t a “political” figure, but a “spiritual” one.  And I bought it because of course if Jesus was a King, he would probably have come into Jerusalem on a tank, or at least in a chariot drawn by white stallions.

But now I think I understand that Jesus is both a political and a spiritual Messiah.

Spiritually, of course, he delivers us from the power of sin and its lethal consequences through his own death; and through his resurrection he gives us new birth and abundant life.

Nevertheless, I have come to understand that Jesus is also a political Messiah in the best sense possible.  He came to announce that the Kingdom of God was near, and that it was being inaugurated.  It was beginning to grow even then, like the mustard seed that begins as a tiny thing and then grows into a great tree (Matthew 13:31-32).  And the final fulfillment of that Kingdom is drawing ever nearer, when God’s will on earth is truly realized, just as we have learned to pray every Sunday:

Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10).

Aren’t the promises of God’s Kingdom the same promises that earthly kings and politicians would like to guarantee us?  Freedom from oppression, from hunger, from suffering?  These “freedoms” and much, much more!  Except that the promises of our King will be fulfilled forever.  As the angels proclaim from heaven in Revelation:

The kingdom of the world has become the Kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ. He will reign forever and ever! (Revelation 11:15).

That is a King and a Kingdom I would vote for!

Lord, you are triumphant over sin, death, the devil, oppression, hunger and suffering.  But I do not lose sight of what your triumph cost you — your own suffering and death. I do look forward to the day when we shall no longer shout “Hosanna!” but we shall wave heavenly palm branches and shout “Salvation be to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (from Revelation 7:10).  Amen. 

PHOTO:
“Zirl Parrish Church-Jesus entering Jerusalem 1” by Flying Pharmacist is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

Gospel for March 26, 2023

Note from Celeste:

Before we look at today’s lectionary reading, I’d like to draw your attention to my Holy Week Bible Study book.

Go and Find a Donkey is the latest installment of the Choose This Day Multiple Choice Bible Studies series.

The daily devotionals take 10-15 minutes and include:

• Scripture passage (World English Bible)
• Fun, entertaining multiple choice questions focused directly on the Scripture passage
• Short meditation that can be used as a discussion starter.

Use them on the suggested dates, or skip around.  Designed to be used during Holy Week, this nine-day Bible study takes you from Palm Sunday through Easter Monday.

Use this book personally during a coffee break or with the family in the car or at the breakfast table.

Order Go and Find a Donkey  today to prepare your family for this year’s Easter season!
CLICK HERE for Amazon’s Kindle book of Go and Find a Donkey.
CLICK HERE for Amazon’s Paperback of Go and Find a Donkey.

AND NOW, BACK TO TODAY’S LECTIONARY READING:

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
John 11:1-45
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

This is a pivotal, dramatic moment in the Gospel of John.  Here we see both the compassionate humanity of Jesus and his divine power.

First, a little background.  Lazarus and his two sisters, Mary and Martha, were close personal friends of Jesus.  They had offered hospitality to Jesus and his disciples at their home in Bethany (as reported in the Gospel of Luke 10:38-42), and of course here in the Gospel of John.  Jesus had likely been a guest in their home on many occasions.  In fact, we receive a little preview of what is to happen in the next chapter, after Jesus performs one of his mightiest miracles:

It was that Mary who had anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother, Lazarus, was sick.

When Lazarus became ill, it was perfectly natural for these sisters to send a message to Jesus when he was across the Jordan River, telling him:

Lord, behold, he for whom you have great affection is sick.

So it may seem understandable that Martha and Mary are perplexed, and perhaps even hurt, when Jesus delays his journey to Bethany by two days! What they don’t know is what he has said to his disciples:

This sickness is not to death, but for the glory of God, that God’s Son may be glorified by it.

Jesus finds it necessary to explain this whole thing to the disciples because they put up a fuss about Jesus returning to Judea.  They have been beyond the Jordan river in order to avoid being arrested for blasphemy.  And now Jesus wants to go back?  They fear he will be stoned to death.

Jesus explains that this is his mission:

Aren’t there twelve hours of daylight? If a man walks in the day, he doesn’t stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if a man walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light isn’t in him.

This is very similar to his words concerning the healing of the blind man in John 9:

I must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day. The night is coming, when no one can work.  While I am in the world, I am the light of the world (John 9:4-5).

The disciples, typically, are obtuse.  When Jesus says Lazarus has fallen asleep they think he is speaking literally.  Surely he’ll recover, they insist.  Jesus must confirm that Lazarus will die:

Lazarus is dead.  I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, so that you may believe. Nevertheless, let’s go to him.

Interestingly, Thomas, the man who has been given the rap down through the centuries as the “Doubter” is the one who musters up the courage to say to his colleagues:

 Let’s go also, that we may die with him.

Perhaps it would only be fair to also call him “Courageous Thomas” as well as “Doubting Thomas.”

And when Jesus does arrive in Bethany, Lazarus has been dead for four days.  Given the travel time, this would explain why Jesus waited two days.  If it took two days for the messengers to reach him on foot somewhere near the Jordan, possibly more than 25 miles away, Jesus may have known through divine means that Lazarus was already dead by the time they arrived. The two-day delay would have made no difference.

Incidentally, the disciples were right to be concerned about their return to Bethany.  Bethany was just a little less than two miles away from Jerusalem, where Jesus had only recently been threatened.  That was a little less than an hour away on foot!

We get the distinct impression that the two sisters are not only grieving for their brother, they also seem angry with Jesus.  Martha, the sister with the reputation for being both practical and outspoken, hears that Jesus is coming.  She proactively leaves the house, where the grieving Mary remains, and comes out to meet him.  She seems rather confrontational, even a little accusatory:

Lord, if you would have been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.

She tempers this harsh tone with a statement that seems as much a matter of hope as faith:

Even now I know that, whatever you ask of God, God will give you.

What ensues is one of the most powerful dialogues in all of Scripture:

 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”

Martha is a good Jew, of the school of Judaism which believed fervently in the resurrection.  But she sees this resurrection as something far off in the future:

Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”

This becomes the context for one of Jesus’ greatest I Am statements from the Gospel of John:

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will still live, even if he dies.”

We have learned from the Gospel of John that Jesus is the Word, eternally present from the beginning, and that Jesus is God in the flesh.  And we have heard Jesus claim this identity repeatedly through his I Am statements in the Gospel of John, identifying himself with Yahweh who calls himself:

 I Am (Exodus 3:14).

But Jesus is also the I Am through whom resurrection is to occur.  He himself is life! And Jesus declares that faith in him is the means by which this life is to be grasped.

And Jesus asks Martha the most important question she will ever answer:

Whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?

Martha professes her faith in Jesus, recognizing not only that he is Messiah but also God:

She said to him, “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Christ, God’s Son, he who comes into the world.”

Martha next does the same thing that others have done — and will do — when they have come to faith in Jesus.  She goes and tells another about Christ.  Andrew goes and tells Simon Peter (John 1:41). Philip finds Nathanael (John 1:45). The Samaritan woman leaves her pitcher at the well and goes and tells her neighbors in Sychar (John 4:28-29). Mary Magdalene tells the disciples that she has seen Jesus after his resurrection (John 20:18).  And here, Martha tells her sister Mary that their Rabbi wants to talk to her.

Therefore when Mary came to where Jesus was, and saw him, she fell down at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you would have been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.”

There is a hint of blame, implying that Jesus was not more responsive to their request that he come. Nevertheless, Mary also expresses her confidence that Jesus could have done something if he had been there.

When Jesus sees the expression of grief by Mary and those who are mourning with her, he is deeply affected:

When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews weeping who came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled, and said, “Where have you laid him?”
They told him, “Lord, come and see.”
Jesus wept.

The emotional reaction of Jesus provokes a debate among the onlookers:

The Jews therefore said, “See how much affection he had for him!”  Some of them said, “Couldn’t this man, who opened the eyes of him who was blind, have also kept this man from dying?”

There is tension between those who recognize Jesus’ humanity, and those who blame him for doing too little too late.

John tells us that Jesus is still deeply moved:

 again groaning in himself.

We ask ourselves, is he now disturbed because of the grief of the family, or is he disturbed by those who are critical or skeptical?

Jesus comes to the tomb, which is described as a cave sealed with a stone.  Without further ado he commands:

Take away the stone.

We hear again from the other sister, Martha.  As we see in Luke 10:38-42, Martha’s personality is practical and realistic.

She points out the obvious facts here:

Lord, by this time there is a stench, for he has been dead four days.

Jesus reminds her of their previous conversation, and her own confession of faith:

Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?

What happens next is one of the climactic moments in the Gospel of John.  The stone is removed, and Jesus prays:

Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, “Father, I thank you that you listened to me. I know that you always listen to me, but because of the multitude that stands around I said this, that they may believe that you sent me.”

Jesus has absolute confidence in his relationship with the Father.  And it seems clear that he is praying aloud not for his own sake, but for the crowd.  He knows that the Father will act; but the purpose of the prayer and subsequent answer is to promote faith that he is indeed God’s Messiah, the Son of God.

Jesus then summons Lazarus from the darkness of the tomb:

…he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”
He who was dead came out, bound hand and foot with wrappings, and his face was wrapped around with a cloth.

Jesus has authority even over death!

Jesus instructs them to unwind the wrappings that now imprison Lazarus.  He is free from death.  And the response to this powerful event is faith:

 Therefore many of the Jews, who came to Mary and saw what Jesus did, believed in him.

APPLY:  

This passage seems oddly placed in the season of Lent.  It is still two weeks until Easter, when we will celebrate the resurrection that will change EVERYTHING — the resurrection of Jesus after the Passion and Crucifixion.

Why is this passage read on this particular Sunday?  Perhaps because this is part of the inevitable journey of Jesus toward Jerusalem and the events that will soon begin on the day we call Palm Sunday.  And this event, with so many witnesses watching Lazarus shuffle out of the tomb after four days of death, certainly would have built momentum for the crowds that were soon to shout “Hosanna!” when Jesus entered the city riding on a donkey.

But this passage is also a foretaste.  Lazarus, we presume, would die again.  In fact, when news began to spread that he had been raised from the dead, many began to believe in Jesus.  And John writes:

…the chief priests conspired to put Lazarus to death also, because on account of him many of the Jews went away and believed in Jesus (John 12:10-11).

For some, the resurrection of Lazarus was a source of faith.  For others, it was a pretext for conspiring against Jesus.

This should be a reminder to us that no matter how clear faith may be to us, there will be those who simply cannot see what we see.

Though Lazarus had been raised, Jesus still had to endure betrayal, arrest, torture, trial and death prior to his own resurrection.  But he had given a word of promise to Martha that certainly must have comforted her through those dark events that were to come:

I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will still live, even if he dies.  Whoever lives and believes in me will never die.

This is also a word of comfort for all who believe — despite suffering, persecution, loss and grief that we may experience in the future.  Because of our faith in Jesus as the resurrection and the life, we will never really die.

At the same time, we need not be ashamed when we grieve for those who die.  Jesus was unashamed to weep for Lazarus, even though he knew that he had the power to raise Lazarus to life. Grief is a normal and natural response to death, even for those who are strong believers.

There is a resurrection that is coming for all of us. Paul describes it this way:

For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with God’s trumpet. The dead in Christ will rise first, then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air. So we will be with the Lord forever (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).

The same Jesus who raised Lazarus with a loud voice will raise us with a shout.   

RESPOND: 

Modern Christians often have a kind of “cognitive dissonance” when we read what the Gospels say about eternal life, and what we hear in most funerals.

Almost without exception, the New Testament teaches that at the end of the age the resurrection of the body will occur, rather than a disembodied immortality.  We are told that the former view is Biblical, but the latter view is a Greek notion.

The Greek notion would have us believe that the body is somehow disgusting, and that true immortality separates the soul from the body.  That isn’t a Biblical view at all.  We remember that when God made the material world and our bodies, he said It is good.

While no one living really knows what happens when we die, we do have confidence that those who have died in Christ are somehow alive in Christ.  We take comfort in Jesus’ words to the thief on the cross:

“Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 24:43).

But we also know that there is a resurrection that will come at the end of the age, when we will be raised, and we will have all the qualities promised in the resurrection of Jesus:  

So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable.  It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. . . Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven (1 Corinthians 15:42-44, 49).

While we will have a body, it will certainly not be a body like our present bodies, but a transformed, spiritual, glorified body — perhaps not unlike the body of the resurrected Jesus, who could be touched and could eat, and yet seemed to be unlimited by the physical dimensions of space and time as we understand them.

We are venturing into metaphysical speculation here, for which we won’t have answers until Christ comes again.  But I think we can clearly repeat the promise of Jesus to those who have lost loved ones:

“I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die” (John 11:25-26).

Our Lord, as you came to Bethany and brought the comfort of resurrection and life to the family of Lazarus, so you come to us when we stand by the graveside of someone we love. You remind us that you are victorious over death, and that you are the resurrection and the life.  Thank you for that comfort and that promise.  Amen. 

PHOTO:
“Raising of Lazarus (Ravenna)” by Jim Forest is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.

Gospel for March 19, 2023

Note from Celeste:

Before we look at today’s lectionary reading, I’d like to draw your attention to my Holy Week Bible Study book.

Go and Find a Donkey is the latest installment of the Choose This Day Multiple Choice Bible Studies series.

The daily devotionals take 10-15 minutes and include:

• Scripture passage (World English Bible)
• Fun, entertaining multiple choice questions focused directly on the Scripture passage
• Short meditation that can be used as a discussion starter.

Use them on the suggested dates, or skip around.  Designed to be used during Holy Week, this nine-day Bible study takes you from Palm Sunday through Easter Monday.

Use this book personally during a coffee break or with the family in the car or at the breakfast table.

Order Go and Find a Donkey  today to prepare your family for this year’s Easter season!
CLICK HERE for Amazon’s Kindle book of Go and Find a Donkey.
CLICK HERE for Amazon’s Paperback of Go and Find a Donkey.

AND NOW, BACK TO TODAY’S LECTIONARY READING:

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
John 9:1-41 
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

Jesus is presented with a serious question about suffering and the problem of evil when his disciples ask him why a man was born blind.

This passage takes the dialectical method of Jesus — the “point/counterpoint” dialogue — to a new level.

• There is the dialogue between Jesus and the disciples.
• There is the dialogue between Jesus and the blind man.
• The blind man interacts with the crowd and the Pharisees.
• The Pharisees interrogate the blind man’s parents.
• The Pharisees confront Jesus.

The effect that this dialogue creates is almost like theater — except that it is real.

The first and most important question is posed by the disciples about the blind man:

Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?

Jesus, as always, surprises.  He assesses no blame — the blindness is not because of guilt. This repudiates the familiar notion at the time that suffering was always the consequence of sin.  However, Jesus does proclaim that even suffering may be a means of glorifying God:

that the works of God might be revealed in him.

Jesus reminds the disciples of his purpose for coming into the world — to overcome the effects of darkness:

I must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day. The night is coming, when no one can work.  While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

This is a reminder of the pressures of time that Jesus is experiencing.  He brings light, but the darkness of betrayal and the cross is coming.  So there is a sense of urgency to his ministry. He has no time to waste.  For now, he offers his light while he can.

Jesus makes a paste of mud with saliva and anoints the man’s eyes.  A seemingly very mundane recipe — but one offered by the Lord of Life himself. He then instructs the blind man to wash his eyes in the pool of Siloam in Jerusalem, along the southern wall in the older section where King David’s citadel had been located.

John the evangelist adds the interpretation of the meaning of Siloam, which is one of several pools of water in the city used as reservoirs.  Siloam means Sent.  This is appropriate for one sent by Jesus to receive healing.

The description of the healing itself almost seems mundane — the blind man washes away the mud — but the reaction of the people around him is more dramatic.

First, his neighbors, who knew he was blind from birth, were astonished and looked for alternate explanations:

He looks like him.

The blind man confirms his own identity, and explains the procedure Jesus used to give him sight.  Immediately the neighbors ask for Jesus; and when the formerly blind man can’t produce Jesus, they drag the man before the Pharisees.

Now, to quote the cliche, the plot thickens.  The Pharisees have already proven their hostility to Jesus, and even attempted to have him arrested in John 7:32.  So this new development adds to the tension.

The legal problem presented here is that this was a Sabbath day when Jesus did this healing “work.”  The Pharisees’ strict interpretation of the law forbade any semblance of work on the Sabbath.  Jesus is elsewhere critical of their legalism. Although he observed the Sabbath by attending synagogue services, the practical needs of preparing food and works of mercy superseded the legalistic demands of the law.  He says in the Gospel of Mark:

The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.  Therefore the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath. (Mark 2:27-28).

The ex-blind man must again repeat the entire account of his healing for the Pharisees, some of whom immediately declare:

This man is not from God, because he doesn’t keep the Sabbath.

Now we begin to see that that the Pharisees are not always unified in lockstep with one another.

Others said, “How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?” There was division among them.

We will see this division develop later when Nicodemus, also a Pharisee, argues that Jesus should have the right to defend himself in the face of charges (John 7:50-51).

What ensues is an intense interrogation that turns into a debate between the Pharisees and the ex-blind man.  The Pharisees ask the blind man what he thinks of Jesus.  The blind man has no doubt about this much:

He is a prophet.

The Pharisees attempt another tactic.  They try to undermine the credibility of the miracle by casting doubt on the man’s blindness.  They summon his parents — almost a kind of subpoena! — and question whether the man was really born blind.

The parents are terrified — they state what they know, that he was born blind, but they deflect the questions back to their son:

He is of age. Ask him. He will speak for himself.

The parents aren’t afraid of physical harm, but spiritual harm.  The Jewish leadership had decreed that anyone who confessed Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah, would be excommunicated.  The life of a Jew was centered in the religious community and the life of the temple and the synagogue.  To be put out of the synagogue would be to become a social and religious pariah.

So the Pharisees continue their interrogation of the ex-blind man again.  They demand that if he acknowledges God, he must testify that Jesus is a sinner.

What follows is dialogue worthy of the theater.  To appreciate the verbal repartee, I recommend that it be read aloud from verses 25-34.

The ex-blind man is honest, and very blunt.  When told to confess that Jesus is a sinner, he knows what he doesn’t know, but also what he does know:    

 I don’t know if he is a sinner. One thing I do know: that though I was blind, now I see.

The Pharisees won’t let up.  When they ask again how it happened, the ex-blind man almost seems a little impertinent:

He answered them, “I told you already, and you didn’t listen. Why do you want to hear it again? You don’t also want to become his disciples, do you?”

The ex-blind man almost seems to be taunting them.  Certainly he is astute enough to realize that most of the Pharisees are implacable enemies of Jesus.  Naturally, they are offended, and they begin to lose their composure:

 They insulted him and said, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses.  We know that God has spoken to Moses. But as for this man, we don’t know where he comes from.”

They accuse the ex-blind man of already being Jesus’s disciple, and proudly proclaim their own allegiance to Moses.  This is a false dichotomy — Jesus isn’t opposed to the law of Moses, but to the accretions and traditions that the Pharisees have added to the law of Moses.

The ex-blind man increases his taunts:

 The man answered them, “How amazing! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes.”

Now, he turns the tables.  He begins to testify to what God has done in his own life through Jesus:

 We know that God doesn’t listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God, and does his will, he listens to him.

The ex-blind man quotes Scripture to confirm the fact that Jesus must not be a sinner, therefore this healing is from God.  He cites Psalms 66:18:

If I cherished sin in my heart, the Lord wouldn’t have listened.

And also:

Yahweh is far from the wicked, but he hears the prayer of the righteous (Proverbs 15:29).

After invoking the authority of Scripture, the ex-blind man then cites human history — suggesting that this is an unprecedented event:

Since the world began it has never been heard of that anyone opened the eyes of someone born blind.

He adds these two factors together — the claims of Scripture that God doesn’t hear the wicked, and the fact that he has been healed by Jesus — and he comes up with what seems undeniable as the sum — Jesus must be from God:

 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.

The Pharisees are outraged:

“You were altogether born in sins, and do you teach us?” They threw him out.

When they threw him out, what that suggests is that he is excommunicated from the synagogue.  He has gained his eyesight, and lost his community.

But not for long.  Jesus learns that the man he has healed has been thrown out of the synagogue, and seeks him out.  Again, there is another dialogue.  Jesus asks him:

Do you believe in the Son of God?

This is a leading question. In a sense the ex-blind man has already affirmed that Jesus must be from God, otherwise he couldn’t do the works that he has done.  The ex-blind man’s answer seems innocent:

Who is he, Lord, that I may believe in him?

This suggests that the ex-blind man is definitely leaning toward faith.  All that is required is for Jesus to provide substance.  And so he does:

You have both seen him, and it is he who speaks with you.

Once again, Jesus has revealed himself to an unlikely person — not the famous or the powerful or the pious or the wise.  Instead, he reveals himself to a poor blind man.

The response of the ex-blind man is appropriate:

 “Lord, I believe!” and he worshiped him.

He trusts in Jesus; but even more he worships him.  This provides the substance. It is only appropriate to worship God. The Son of God is the only begotten Son of God, the Word made flesh, God incarnate.

There is yet one more short dialogue in this passage.  Jesus makes a declarative statement about his purpose and mission:

I came into this world for judgment, that those who don’t see may see; and that those who see may become blind.

This reminds us of the definition of judgment from John 3:

He who believes in him is not judged. He who doesn’t believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God.  This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil.  (John 3:18-19).

Once again, the Pharisees are offended when they hear this:

 Are we also blind?

The answer of Jesus is worthy of the dialectics of Socrates, or the enigma of a Zen koan:

If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you say, ‘We see.’ Therefore your sin remains.

This is the paradox — that the Pharisees claim to see, and yet they fail to recognize that the Son of God, the Christ, the Lord of Life, is in their midst.  How tragic.  To think that they are the enlightened ones, and yet they walk in darkness.

APPLY:  

The motif of spiritual darkness and light returns again in the Gospel of John, and finds a literal application in the blindness of the man healed by Jesus.  This is a powerful spiritual application for us.  The darkness of the soul is far greater than the darkness of physical blindness.   And the darkness of religious Pharisees, who presume superiority to others, may be the deepest darkness of all.

There is an old saying that is still relevant today:

There are none so blind as those who will not see. The most deluded people are those who choose to ignore what they already know.

Those who have the faith to see Jesus, as does the blind man, have true vision; whereas those whose religion has been reduced to mere rules and rituals, without relationship with God, are in darkness.

RESPOND: 

This is a fascinating encounter recorded in dialogue worthy of Shakespeare, or of the dialectical method of Plato’s dialogues.  We find ourselves swept along in the drama of this blind man who discovers the Light with his new vision; while those who “see” are blind to the Light that shines in their midst.

There is another aspect of this account that fascinates me, though.  It is almost a mere footnote to the story. The disciples see this blind man as the account begins, and they ask Jesus:

Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?

They begin with an assumption — that if there is a congenital physical defect, it must be the result of sin. This principle could be expanded to nearly any physical malaise.  This seems a classic example of “blaming the victim.”

This is also the principle behind the Eastern concept of karma — that people must continue to pay for their sins in successive lives through cycles of suffering until they have been purified.

Jesus repudiates this notion.  The problem of suffering cannot be reduced to the consequences of sin, and cannot be expiated by karma. 

The roots of suffering are complex — but we cannot simplistically blame the sufferer for their own suffering.  In the end, Jesus transforms suffering into good:

that the works of God might be revealed….

Lord, you have come to bring Light and Sight to those who have the eyes of faith to see you.  Open my eyes to see you.  And enable me to work the works that you send me to accomplish as well, while it is day.  Amen. 

PHOTO:
“The most deluded people” uses this photo:
“Blindfold chess exhibition game” by Poek is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.

Gospel for March 5, 2023

Note from Celeste:

Before we look at today’s lectionary reading, I’d like to draw your attention to my Holy Week Bible Study book.

Go and Find a Donkey is the latest installment of the Choose This Day Multiple Choice Bible Studies series.

The daily devotionals take 10-15 minutes and include:

• Scripture passage (World English Bible)
• Fun, entertaining multiple choice questions focused directly on the Scripture passage
• Short meditation that can be used as a discussion starter.

Use them on the suggested dates, or skip around.  Designed to be used during Holy Week, this nine-day Bible study takes you from Palm Sunday through Easter Monday.

Use this book personally during a coffee break or with the family in the car or at the breakfast table.

Order Go and Find a Donkey  today to prepare your family for this year’s Easter season!
CLICK HERE for Amazon’s Kindle book of Go and Find a Donkey.
CLICK HERE for Amazon’s Paperback of Go and Find a Donkey.

AND NOW, BACK TO TODAY’S LECTIONARY READING:

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
John 3:1-17
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

These seventeen verses are packed with profound truth for Christian disciples.  Writing anything less than a volume scarcely can do them justice.  Elsewhere, I have written about their implications for our doctrine of the Trinity (Click here to read my post for the Gospel Lectionary Reading for May 27, 2018).  Here, however, I will focus on Jesus’ radical doctrine of the New Birth in verses 1-10, and the key to the whole Gospel of Jesus Christ in verses 11-17.

This episode in the life of Jesus begins at night. Darkness and light are a persistent motif of contrasts in the Gospel of John.  Nicodemus, a Pharisee, has sought Jesus out in secret, it would seem.  We know from the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) that the Pharisees were hostile to Jesus nearly from the very beginning of his ministry.  We also have seen the beginning of their hostility in John 1:24, and when Jesus rousts out the temple moneychangers in John 2:14-19.

This is curious because Jesus agreed with the Pharisees about some things — the belief in a Messiah, angels, and the resurrection of the dead at the last judgment. But the Pharisees came to view Jesus’ claims as blasphemous, and his attitude toward the law to be less exacting than their own.

The fact that Nicodemus comes at night suggests that he doesn’t want his colleagues to know that he has sought a private audience with Jesus.  He has much to lose.  He is a ruler of the Jews.

Nicodemus begins with flattery, recognizing that Jesus must be a teacher sent by God, as verified by his signs.  But the response of Jesus seems abrupt, even a little rude.  Instead of warming to Nicodemus’ kind words, he gets right to the point:

 Most certainly, I tell you, unless one is born anew, he can’t see God’s Kingdom.

Jesus seems to have no time, nor patience, for sugary words and verbal games.  What ensues is a fascinating dialogue.  This exchange is a classic example of the dialectical method of teaching and debate Jesus uses in the Gospel of John.

Nicodemus seems to pretend to naivete — he intentionally misses the point that Jesus is using a metaphor, and says:

How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?

Of course that’s not what Jesus is advocating.  The second birth he is advocating is a spiritual rebirth:

Most certainly I tell you, unless one is born of water and spirit, he can’t enter into God’s Kingdom!   That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

Some interpreters take water to mean baptism, which is certainly consistent with his teaching elsewhere in the Gospels.  And some commentators suggest that he is referring to one’s original birth, from the waters of one’s mother.

What is clear is that without a spiritual renewal from the Spirit, no one can enter the Kingdom of God.  This is not accomplished by human effort, but by the Spirit of God.

He uses an analogy.

The wind blows where it wants to, and you hear its sound, but don’t know where it comes from and where it is going. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.

The Greek word for wind is pneuma, (which also means breath), and is the same word used for Spirit here.  Jesus uses the analogy of wind to describe the work of the Holy Spirit.  It is the Holy Spirit that takes the initiative in conceiving and bringing to birth this new life.  We are reminded of these earlier words in John’s Gospel:

But as many as received him (i.e., The Word, meaning Jesus), to them he gave the right to become God’s children, to those who believe in his name:  who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God (John 1:12-13).

This new birth from above means that one has become a true child of God.  This is not because of birthright or genetics or human desire and effort.  It is a gift of God that, as we will see, is received by faith.

Nicodemus is still incredulous about this experience:

Nicodemus answered him, “How can these things be?”

Now it is Jesus’ turn to marvel at Nicodemus’ lack of understanding.  Jesus points out that Nicodemus is a teacher of Israel, and yet he is slow to understand.  Jesus is revealing these things to Nicodemus, and yet the Pharisee won’t receive them.  Jesus seems frustrated:

If I told you earthly things and you don’t believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?

In other words, Jesus has used earthly analogies to describe the work of the Holy Spirit in the new birth.  If Nicodemus can’t follow that, how will he understand the heavenly truths of Jesus?

He asserts his divine nature as the source of these heavenly things: 

No one has ascended into heaven, but he who descended out of heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven.

Now, Jesus transitions to a new theme in his teaching.  He has been talking about the work of the Spirit; now he speaks of his own unique work, to be accomplished on the cross:

As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

Here Jesus uses a rabbinic technique called a midrash — a commentary on an Old Testament passage — to connect to something Nicodemus knows as a student of the Torah.  He cites the story of Moses and the people of Israel during their wanderings in the Sinai wilderness.  Although the Israelites had been delivered from slavery in Egypt and God had provided manna and quail and water from the rock, they were still whiny about what they imagined they didn’t have.  So, Yahweh sends fiery serpents among them — things could be worse! (cf Numbers 21:4-9).

When they cry out for deliverance, Yahweh instructs Moses:

“Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole. It shall happen, that everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.”  Moses made a serpent of brass, and set it on the pole. If a serpent had bitten any man, when he looked at the serpent of brass, he lived (Numbers 21:8-9).

Jesus adopts the method of typology — he sees the brass serpent on the pole as a type that anticipates the cross.  He is the antitype that looks back to the symbol used by Moses — he is to be lifted up on the cross so that all who look to him in faith might have eternal life.

Then comes the verse known to everyone who has ever attended Sunday School.  John 3:16 has been called the Gospel in Miniature, because it sums up the message of and about Christ:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

The first half of the message is positive and proactive.  It describes God’s intention toward the world, his gift, the appropriate human response, and the subsequent results, in one simple sentence:

• God’s intention toward the world is love. The root of the word for love used here is the famous agape, which has been described as unselfish love — we will see how unselfish as we continue.
• The object of God’s love is the world. The word used for world is the Greek kosmos, from which modern English derives the word cosmic.  This word suggests more than the mere human world — kosmos implies the entire world order, all of creation.  We see a similar theme when we read the Apostle Paul, who says that when the glory of God is revealed:

the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of decay into the liberty of the glory of the children of God (Romans 8:21).

• The gift, and the means of salvation, is God’s one and only Son. Some translations say only-begotten Son, implying the unique relationship of Jesus with the Father. We note that this passage uses two designations for Jesus — the Son of Man and the Son of God.  Jesus unites his human nature and his divine nature in himself in order to effect salvation. Jesus has already explained how this salvation will be revealed — he will be lifted up on the cross.   And God’s love for the world is extremely costly — it costs the death of Jesus.
• The proper human response to this love and this gift is faith — not merely the Latin credo, which means to assert that certain things are true. The word used in John’s Gospel for believe is from the Greek pistis, which has a deeper meaning implying trust.   To believe in Jesus is to have a trusting relationship with him.
• And the consequence of this relationship with Jesus is eternal life. As Jesus is the source of abundant life here and now (John 10:10), his abundant life transcends this life and continues into eternity.

We also learn the negative aspect of this saving work — not only what Jesus has done, but also what he hasn’t done:

For God didn’t send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through him.

This may describe the ministry of Jesus in those few years he was on earth.  He came not to judge but to save.  His was solely a redemptive message and ministry, for those who had ears to hear.  However, we are told later in John’s Gospel that:

the Father judges no one, but he has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father (John 5:22-23).

Jesus has come into the world as Savior and Redeemer, but that doesn’t mean that there is no judgment.  If we continue to read beyond John 3:17, we find this:

He who believes in him is not judged. He who doesn’t believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God. This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil (John 3:18-19).

In other words, judgment doesn’t originate when God rejects human beings, but when human beings reject the light.  We know from John 3:16 that God’s intention toward the world is love.  Therefore judgment is the logical consequence when love is rejected.  As someone has said: “We are not punished for our sins, we are punished by our sins.”  That is, we loved the darkness rather than the light.

To summarize — Jesus reveals to Nicodemus that in order to enter God’s Kingdom, he must be born again from above.  This new birth is possible not through human effort but through the work of the Spirit.  Jesus declares that he has also descended from heaven in order to be raised up on the cross.  And a succinct summary of the Gospel of Jesus Christ has been provided in John 3:16.

So, just out of curiosity, how does Nicodemus respond to this remarkable dialogue with Jesus?  The man who came to see Jesus at night has heard the warning that those who prefer darkness to light stand condemned already.

Nicodemus disappears without making a notable commitment of any kind to Jesus — until much later.  When the Pharisees begin to murmur against Jesus, John’s Gospel says:

Nicodemus (he who came to him by night, being one of them) said to them, “Does our law judge a man, unless it first hears from him personally and knows what he does?” (John 7:50-51).

Nicodemus now publicly speaks out for Jesus’ right to defend himself.

And then, after Jesus is executed, Nicodemus assisted Joseph of Arimathaea, tenderly anointing the corpse of Jesus with myrrh and aloes, and wrapping him for burial.  Nicodemus had come a long way.

APPLY:  

The new birth is not merely an important theme in the teaching of Jesus — it is vital to our understanding of the Christian experience of salvation.  What else but a new birth can explain the transition from sinner to saint in the lives of the Apostle Paul, St. Augustine, John Newton (the former slave trader), or the countless lives of Christians who can proclaim, “I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see”?

I haven’t the time or space to explore all of the implications of the new birth.  I will simply sum it up in this way — the new birth describes the change that the Holy Spirit can work in the souls of those who turn to Christ in faith.  The new birth describes that moment in which the Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirits that we are adopted as children of God (Galatians 4:6).  The new birth is the beginning of that process by which we begin to grow into the likeness of Christ (1 Peter 2:1-4; 1 John 3:2).  The new birth reveals to us that we are co-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:16-17).

And this process of new birth and spiritual growth occurs because the Holy Spirit communicates with our spirits the profound truth of John 3:16:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

The entire Godhead of the Trinity — Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God in three persons — has made it his singular purpose to express the Father’s love through the Son’s phenomenal gift, received by us through faith breathed into us by the Holy Spirit.

I would venture to say that if all of the Bibles in the world were destroyed, and all that was left was one page from the third chapter of the Gospel of John, it might be possible to reconstruct the entire Christian faith!

RESPOND: 

I have read many of the great books of the Western Tradition of literature and philosophy, and a few from the Eastern Tradition as well.  Nothing that I’ve read exceeds the dialectical brilliance of Jesus, especially as revealed in the Gospel of John.  Jesus engages Nicodemus, his disciples, the Samaritan woman at the well, the Pharisees, and even Pontius Pilate in dialogue, and reveals heavenly truths.

When it comes to the doctrine of the new birth, Jesus reveals one of the central truths of the Gospel.  The new birth is the entrance into the Christian life.

As a friend of mine once said,

“The phrase ‘born again Christian’ is a redundancy.  The only Christian possible is one who has been born again through the power of the Holy Spirit.” 

Jesus says it this way:

Most certainly, I tell you, unless one is born anew, he can’t see God’s Kingdom.

Lord, I thank you for your gift of the new birth.  Your Fatherly love, expressed through the gift of your only begotten Son, received through the witness of your Holy Spirit, has been given to me and to all who believe. Empower me to live as your child, and grow into your likeness.  Amen. 

PHOTO:
“Gospel acrostic in John 3:16” by Martin LaBar is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license.

Gospel for November 6, 2022

Will there be marriage in heaven?

 

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Luke 20:27-38
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

When Jesus arrives in Jerusalem, his adversaries have become more openly critical and hostile.  They spar with Jesus about his ministry and his doctrine.  When Jesus rides into the city on a donkey, the people erupt in celebration, and the Pharisees scold him (Luke 19:39).  When Jesus teaches in the temple, the priests, scribes and elders question his authority (Luke 20:2).  When Jesus tells a parable about the owner of a vineyard whose son is killed by his tenants, the chief priests and scribes see themselves implicated in his story, and the only thing that restrains them from arresting him is his popularity with the crowd (Luke 20:19). They try then to entrap him with a question about the legality of paying taxes to the Romans, and he outwits them yet again (Luke 20:20-25).

We see the tension building — so the question of the Sadducees is simply the latest in a series of “traps” intended to snare Jesus.  The Sadducees were one of the key rival factions active in these times.  They were aristocratic priests and elders who were highly devoted to the temple.  They had sharp theological differences with the Pharisees. Unlike the Pharisees, the Sadducees only accepted the authority of the five books of Moses (the Torah), and not the writings and the prophets, or the oral tradition of the law. They also didn’t believe in the resurrection of the dead (unlike the Pharisees).   Ironically, Jesus is closer to the Pharisees on this particular doctrine, as well as his acceptance of the law, the writings and the prophets of the Hebrew Bible.

So the Sadducees pose a question intended to mock the belief in the resurrection.  They cite the law of Moses concerning the required remarriage of a widow to her late husband’s brother, from Deuteronomy 25:5-6.  This is known as “levirate” marriage, from the Latin word meaning “husband’s brother.”

This law was intended to preserve the name and bloodline of a man who dies without children — his brother was obligated to take his widow as his wife, and to raise their first child as his brother’s descendant:

It shall be that the firstborn whom she bears shall succeed in the name of his brother who is dead, that his name not be blotted out of Israel (Deuteronomy 25:6).

So the Sadducees pose a nonsensical hypothetical problem — a woman who marries seven brothers, each of whom dies without giving her a child.  Then they ask, rather snarkily:

Therefore in the resurrection whose wife of them will she be? For the seven had her as a wife.

We can almost see them smirking and hear them snicker as the question is asked.

As Jesus so often does, he answers from outside the box of their experience.  He has insight into the afterlife to which they have no access.

First, Jesus points out that there is a profound contrast between this world and the next.  In the age to come, those who attain to the resurrection from the dead no longer marry — conventional human covenants and relationships will no longer exist.

Second, Jesus explains that in the resurrection, relationships will no longer be oriented toward social contracts but toward God:

 for they are like the angels, and are children of God, being children of the resurrection.

Note that he doesn’t say they will be angels, but will be like angels.  In other words, they will be immortal and supernatural beings.  And their relationship with God is to be part of God’s family, as God’s children.  The relationships of wives and husbands are eclipsed by a relationship with the heavenly Father.

And then Jesus quotes a text from the Torah in order to prove his point to the Sadducees, who accept only the authority of Moses.  He refers to the dramatic encounter between Moses and Yahweh at the burning bush, when Yahweh tells Moses:

I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob (Exodus 3:6).

Jesus goes on to explain that these patriarchs, who lived and died centuries prior to Moses, are nonetheless alive now:

Now he is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all are alive to him.

God is the great I Am ­— therefore the children of the resurrection are eternally alive in him.

APPLY:  

Jesus is undaunted by the opposition and the mockery of the Sadducees.  He takes their hypothetical situation and turns it inside out.  This tells us that he is not to be trifled with.  He can perform miracles, and he can win debates.

We also gain profound insight into the age to come. 

First, we learn that human relationships as we understand them will be obsolete.  Marriage is no longer needed because we are to become children of God.  Perhaps we will completely transcend gender.

Second, our horizontal relationships will no longer seem as important because we will be focused on our vertical relationship with God as his children.  We often hear people say after a loved one has died that he or she is now reunited with grandma, or with a loving spouse.  While that might be comforting sentimentality, that isn’t the ultimate goal for the Christian.  Our ultimate happiness is to be in the very presence of God our Father!

Third, resurrection and immortality is a present reality.  Those who have died are alive because Yahweh is not the God of the dead, but of the living.  This involves a little metaphysical speculation.  Please bear with me on this theological excursion.  I acknowledge that I may be completely wrong.

Jesus refers to Exodus 3, where Yahweh reveals his name and nature to Moses as I Am that I Am.  This is a very important theological revelation.  God is Lord over time and space and eternity.  In a very real sense we can say that all time is present now with God.  In a sense we can say that for Yahweh there is no past, present or future — all time is now.

Human beings are different.  We are born into the flowing stream of time.  We can no more relive a past moment than we can escape the present by hurrying into the future.  Humans see time as beginning, middle and end.  And our deceased loved ones are buried, and will remain so until the resurrection at the end of time.

But God sees all time as present. For God, time is irrelevant.  He sees the same continuum of beginning, middle and end as though it is a road that he looks down on from a lofty height.  So the end has already occurred in his eyes. The loved ones who have died in the Lord appear to us to be buried — but because God is the Lord of the Eternal Now, they are alive in God now.

In my mind, this is the only logical way to reconcile two seemingly incompatible views of eternal life —resurrection at the end of days, and immediate presence with the Lord.  Both are taught in Scripture.  Jesus tells the woman at the well:

the hour comes, in which all that are in the tombs will hear his voice, and will come out; those who have done good, to the resurrection of life; and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment (John 5:28-29).

And he also tells Martha, concerning the death of her brother Lazarus:

I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will still live, even if he dies.  Whoever lives and believes in me will never die (John 11:25-26).

The teaching that those who believe will experience immediate immortality and resurrection at the end of the age is the paradox of “both/and” in Scripture.

RESPOND: 

Many years ago when my grandmother passed away, my family gathered in Savannah, Georgia for her visitation.  Chairs were brought out in the old, antebellum funeral home, and the family sat in a circle. My Mom, who was the daughter-in-law, turned to my Grandpop who had just lost his wife.  Trying to be comforting, my Mom said, “Well, at least we know she’s in heaven.”

My Grandpop’s reaction wasn’t unkind, but it was abrupt: “No she’s not.  She’s dead.  She’s sleeping until the final judgment when Jesus will return and the dead will rise.”

There has been a trend among scholars to stress the bodily resurrection as taught by the Scriptures, that accords with my Grandpop’s view.  This is in contrast to the more “spiritual” view of immortality that has infiltrated the church over the centuries. This “spiritual” view, whose origins are more Platonic than Biblical, suggests that there is a dualism between body and soul.  An over simplified explanation is that when a person dies, the body is discarded and the soul goes on to heaven.  This is an interpretation that most Western Christians have heard at nearly every funeral they’ve ever attended.

The truth is more complex — as it usually is.  As I have speculated above in the Application, what if the answer is “both/and”?  We know that the Bible repeatedly speaks of the resurrection at the return of Christ.  But we also have evidence, as in our current lectionary reading, that the children of the resurrection are alive in God now.

Paul seems to teach both doctrines in 2 Corinthians 5:

For we know that if the earthly house of our tent is dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens.  For most certainly in this we groan, longing to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven; if so be that being clothed we will not be found naked…. Therefore we are always confident and know that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord…. We are courageous, I say, and are willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be at home with the Lord. Therefore also we make it our aim, whether at home or absent, to be well pleasing to him. For we must all be revealed before the judgment seat of Christ; that each one may receive the things in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad (2 Corinthians 5:1-3, 6, 8-10).

Obviously, the truth is that we can only speak humbly of eternal matters of which we’ve only caught a glimpse.  The assurance we have is that Jesus is the resurrection and the life, and we live by faith in him.

Lord, I cannot scoff, as the Sadducees did, about eternal matters that I cannot fully understand.  I trust that in your Word I have caught a glimpse of the light that dawns from heaven. Thank you for your promise of eternal life!  Amen. 

PHOTOS:
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Gospel for October 30, 2022

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Luke 19:1-10
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

Jesus is passing through Jericho on the way to Jerusalem for Passover — and on his way to the cross.  Jericho has a storied history in the Bible.  Jericho is situated just to the west of the Jordan River in the Jordan River Valley.  From Jericho, Jesus and his disciples would begin the climb along the mountain roads to the Judean highlands, and to Jerusalem.

Jesus’ fame has preceded him.  Crowds are lining the streets in Jericho to see the wonder-worker who has come their way.  Even the elites wish to see this itinerant preacher!

We learn of Zacchaeus that he is the:

chief tax collector, and he was rich.

We also learn a little later just how unpopular he is with the Jewish people of Jericho.  Zacchaeus was undoubtedly himself a Jew — his name in Hebrew means “pure” or “innocent.”

The fact that he is not only a tax collector, but is the chief tax collector quickly explains why he is despised.  He is not despised simply because he is rich.  In the popular theology of the day, the rich were normally honored as especially favored by God.

But tax collectors were collaborators with the Roman authorities.  Usually they were recruited from among the citizens of the occupied vassal nation.  They were charged with collecting the taxes required by the Roman Empire — relying on the threat of Roman military violence to extract their revenue.  However, tax collectors tended to add a surcharge to their set tax fees so that they could skim the surplus off the top for their own profit.  So tax collection was really a kind of extortion.

And yet this small man desires to see Jesus.  He races ahead and, in what seems to be a rather undignified move, climbs into a sycamore tree along the road.

Jesus, of course, sees Zaccheus.  We aren’t told how Jesus knows his name.  But Jesus, who has already offended the priests and the Pharisees because of his fellowship with “sinners,” invites himself home to Zaccheus’ house!

Now, however, it isn’t just the religious authorities who are scandalized by his willingness to spend time with “sinners”:

When they saw it, they all [my emphasis] murmured, saying, “He has gone in to lodge with a man who is a sinner.”

Zacchaeus is overwhelmed with joy at this generous outreach by Jesus. After he clambers down from his perch in the tree, he makes an emotional confession to Jesus:

“Behold, Lord, half of my goods I give to the poor. If I have wrongfully exacted anything of anyone, I restore four times as much.”

Note that Zacchaeus doesn’t merely call Jesus Rabbi.   He calls Jesus Lord.  This is the Greek kurios.  While Zacchaeus may not have fully understood what he meant by this title, it is clear that Lord denotes more than teacher.  This does seem to be a kind of confession of faith in Jesus.

This is reinforced by the willingness of Zacchaeus to be morally accountable to Jesus.  We are reminded of the message of John the Baptist early in the ministry of Jesus:

Therefore produce fruits worthy of repentance, and don’t begin to say among yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father;’ for I tell you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones! (Luke 3:8).

Zacchaeus makes an extraordinary commitment — half of his goods he pledges to give to the poor!  This certainly exceeds the tithe that was given to the temple!  And his fruits worthy of repentance include redistributive justice — he is willing to repay any unjust collections four times what he has received!

This certainly seems to indicate sincere repentance.

Jesus confirms this:

Jesus said to him, “Today, salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham.”

Like his cousin John, Jesus is declaring that Zacchaeus is a son of Abraham not merely because he is a Jew, but because he has repented of his sin and turned to God.

And then Jesus reminds everyone of his own purpose and mission:

For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost.

The title, Son of Man, that Jesus uses throughout the Gospels to describe himself, has obvious Messianic connotations.  And he makes it clear that his outreach to Zacchaeus and other sinners is his mission.

This is a reminder of his message at the very beginning of his ministry, when the scribes and Pharisees grumbled that Jesus was eating with tax collectors and sinners.  Jesus’ response was:

“Those who are healthy have no need for a physician, but those who are sick do.  I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:31-32).

APPLY:  

The story of Zacchaeus tells us everything we need to know about the nature of Jesus, and our hope as sinners for redemption.

Jesus is Lord, as Zacchaeus recognizes; and he is the Son of Man.  Upon titles like these and ample Biblical evidence, the church has concluded that Jesus is fully God and fully man.  This alone qualifies Jesus as our Savior.

And what is extraordinary is that Jesus comes looking for us, just as he seeks out Zacchaeus perched in the tree.  Jesus, Son of God and Son of Man, has come among us to seek and to save that which was lost.

And then there is Zacchaeus.  I avoid the temptation to see any symbolism in his small stature.  But we can identify with his response to the coming of Jesus into his neighborhood. Zacchaeus is so eager to see Jesus that he is willing to lose his dignity by climbing up into a sycamore tree, like a schoolboy!  And when Jesus reaches out to him, he responds with eager enthusiasm — and with repentance.

Repentance is not mere remorse.  Repentance = a changed life, and:

fruits worthy of repentance.

RESPOND: 

Like most kids who grow up in Sunday School, one of the first songs I ever learned was the tale of Zacchaeus:

Zacchaeus was a wee little man
And a wee little man was he
He climbed up in the sycamore tree
For the Lord he wanted to see.
And when the Savior walked that way
He looked up in the tree.
And he said: “Zacchaeus, you come down —
For I’m coming to your house today,
I’m coming to your house today.”

The thought that Jesus might want to come to my house was awesome!  And that is precisely what Jesus wishes to do with all of us.

I also can’t help but think of another tale that I remember from my childhood — the animated Dr. Seuss story that almost always played on TV around Christmas — The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.

The Grinch hated the village of the Whos who lived down in Whoville, and he especially hated everything about their celebration of Christmas.  It was noisy and annoying to him.  So, the Grinch undertakes to steal Christmas!  By that, he means to steal all the Christmas presents, and the stockings, and the Christmas trees, all the way down to the very last Christmas ornament.  He even:

took the Whos’ feast,
He took the Who pudding, he took the roast beast.
He cleaned out that ice box as quick as a flash.
Why, the Grinch even took their last can of Who hash.

And then, as he is pushing his grossly overloaded sleigh back up the mountain, Christmas morning dawns in Whoville.  And to his astonishment, the Whos all gather together in the town square, and sing a song welcoming the coming of Christmas Day — despite the loss of all their presents and trees and trimming.

And it also dawns on the Grinch that maybe, just maybe, Christmas is about more than just presents and trimming.  And Dr. Seuss says:

And what happened then? Well, in Whoville they say
That the Grinch’s small heart grew three sizes that day!
And then the true meaning of Christmas came through,
And the Grinch found the strength of ten Grinches, plus two!

The Grinch returns all of the Christmas accoutrement that he has stolen, and

He brought everything back, all the food for the feast!
And he, he himself, the Grinch carved the roast beast!

Repentance isn’t merely changing one’s mind, but it is acting on that changed mind, and restoring what has been stolen.

Lord, I find myself “up a tree” at times in my life.  In order to climb down and meet you, help me to repent and turn my life back over to you.  Amen.

 

PHOTOS:
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