Reading Ideas for Lent

Ash Wednesday is tomorrow! We are just about 12 hours away from beginning our 40-day journey through Lent. I have been spending the day getting ready for Ash Wednesday. We are hosting services at Word of Life Church at 7AM, Noon, & 7PM in our Upper Room Prayer & Worship Center. We are using the Book of Common Prayer as our guide, a prayer book dating back to the time of the English Reformation. In reading through the instructions for Ash Wednesday in this prayer book, I was reminded that we observe Lent “by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.“

Lent is not just a season of prayer and fasting, but it is also a season of reading, spiritual reading, holy reading. As you join us on this Lenten journey, I encourage you to read in addition to fasting and prayer. Here are some reading ideas for Lent:

1) Scripture
Our pastor has complied 40 Meditations on the Holy Week. This guide gives you Scripture reading from the last week of the life of Jesus in the gospels, a short passage for each day during Lent.

2) Books by N.T. Wright
It has been my tradition to a read book about Jesus during the season of Lent and two out of the last three years I have read a book by N.T. Wright who is perhaps the most important living theologian writing and lecturing and preaching on the person of Jesus Christ. This year I am reading Simply Jesus.

3) The Church Fathers
During my first Lenten journey, I read selections from the writings of the Church Fathers, who were early church leaders in the first 300 years or so of the Church. The wonderful people at ChurchYear.net have created an easy to follow guide through the writings of the church fathers. I suggest you follow the “New and Shorter Alternative,” the “LITE plan” as they call it. You can download the complete text here.

4) Other Good Christian Books
There are numerous other books you can read in addition to what I have mentioned above, but adding another book may make your reading list a bit long. In addition to Scripture, and N.T. Wright’s book, I will be reading The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind by Mark Noll. This book was published in 1994 and has been on my reading list for a long time. I picked it up yesterday, so it has been added to my Lenten reading.

May God bless you on your Lenten journey this year.

This is the prayer I am offering tomorrow at the end of our Ash Wednesday Service. It is from the Catholic Church’s International Committee on English in the Liturgy:

Father in Heaven,
Protect us in our struggle against evil.
As we begin the discipline of Lent,
make this season holy by our self-denial.
Grant this through our Lord Jesus Christ
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit
one God, for ever and ever.

 

Why I Practice Lent

I have been a follower of Jesus for 26 years, spending all of my time worshiping in churches not known for observing the church calendar, not known for following many of the ancient traditions of the Church. The truth is that all local churches have traditions they keep. Traditions, in and of themselves, are not bad. We are after all habit-keeping creatures. We all form patterns. To some degree, we all find comfort in routine. “Lent” was not a part of my vocabulary until about five years ago. If you would have mentioned “Lent” to me ten years ago, I would have quickly thought of that foreign substance in my belly button or that soft material collecting in my dryer vent. In recent years, I have been making an effort to practice Lent and I want to invite you to join me in this Lenten journey.

Lent is forty-day season of prayer and fasting leading up to Easter, Resurrection Sunday.

Followers of Jesus gather every Sunday for worship to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. This is true. We particularly worship on Sunday because this is the day Jesus rose from the dead. The earliest follower of Jesus were nearly all Jewish and they purposely moved their time of worship from Saturday (the Jewish Sabbath) to Sunday because Jesus rose from the dead on a Sunday. However, the ultimate day of Christian celebration is Easter. Every Sunday is a mini-celebration of the resurrection leading up to this ultimate day of celebration. So the days of Lent are counted Monday through Saturday. During Lent we do not fast on Sunday. Every Sunday is a feasting day.

So why do I practice Lent?

I did not grow up with this practice. Lent was not a part of my early Christian development. Lent is not a requirement by either Scripture or my church. So why do I invest forty days of my life in this spiritual journey of fasting, prayer, self-denial, and extra attention towards Scripture and devotional reading? Here are my thoughts:

Lent is about Jesus.
The traditional Lenten fast is not merely about the tradition itself. My participation in Lent is not about the novelty of doing something different. It is not a matter of “sticking it” to my evangelical upbringing that devalued the ancient traditions of the faith. Lent, and my participation in it, is about Jesus, plain and simple. (Which is why I am reading Simply Jesus by N.T. Wright during Lent in addition to other Scripture reading.) Lent is a way to identify with Jesus who fasted forty days in the wilderness. (I will not be going without solid food for forty straight days. I will be fasting for complete 24-hour periods and certain meals during the forty days of Lent.) This tradition allows me to share in the sufferings of Jesus, in a small degree, so I can celebrate the joy that comes with resurrection.

Lent creates contrast.
It does not seem to me that we can experience joy without the contrast of some suffering. If all of our Christian experience is “happy-happy, joy-joy” all the time, then Easter rolls around and becomes more of a time for Easter eggs and chocolate bunnies. Please do not misunderstand me. I am pro Bunny. The Bunny, the Bunny, o I love the Bunny! As much as I am pro Bunny, the over-indulgence of chocolate and marshmallow Peeps is a momentary, superficial kind of joy. It is not the same joy experienced after forty days of self-denial. We cannot experience the joy of the resurrection without enduring the sorrow of the cross. We cannot experience the joy of Easter without the sorrow of Lent. Human beings simply require this kind of contrast.

Lent gives me a structured way to focus on less popular spiritual disciplines.
I hate fasting. I can confess this without a hint of guilt. I detest fasting. In all honesty, I enjoy it as much as I enjoy a trip to the dentist. So Lent helps in this regard. It gives me a structured and focused way to fast during a specific block of time. By fasting, I mean abstaining from solid food. On the days (or during the meals) I fast, I continue to drink water. I have also allowed myself to drink coffee during my fast days. Some people choose to give something up for Lent as a form of self-denial. “Giving something up” is a great practice, just remember Sundays are not fasting days. On Sundays you are free to eat and participate in whatever you have given during Lent.

Lent allows me to connect with the ancient roots of my faith.
I find a richness and a sense of depth to my faith by walking down this well-trodden Lenten path. Followers of Jesus for hundreds and hundreds of years have walked this path on the road to the resurrection. For far too long, I was arrogant and self-absorbed with my narrow evangelical world. I would willingly receive the Scriptures from the ancient church and some doctrine, but I had zero desire to receive any of her practices. I was wrong. The traditions of the ancient Church are gifts to the contemporary Church. According to John Wesley, our faith is rooted in a quadrilateral of Scripture, tradition, reason, & experience. I need the traditions, the traditional practices of the Church, to live a faith that is less superficial and sentimental.

Lent allows me to repent.
Followers of Jesus are a stranger mixture of sinner and saint. I am no different. If I only claim to be a sinner, I undervalue the work of the Spirit in me, transforming me to look more like Jesus. I certain have grown in Christ, but I have not arrived. If I only claim to be a saint, I tend to ignore my sin, especially those sins that so easily knock me off course. Lent is a forty-day time to repent, that is, to turn from our sins and turn in faith to Jesus. The need for repentance is why we begin Lent on “Ash Wednesday,” which is February 22 this year. (There is a Jewish practice of covering yourself with ashes as a sign of repentance, which is where we get the title Ash Wednesday.) With or without literal ashes, Ash Wednesday, and the forty days of Lent, expose my sin and lead me to repentance.

So join me, join us, in this Lenten journey. I will be leading three, identical, 30-minute Ash Wednesday services at Word of Life Church in St. Joe next week. Services will be at 7AM, noon, & 7PM. I hope you can join us if you are in the St. Joseph area or find a church where you live and participate in their Ash Wednesday service.  

 

Merton on Meditation

I am no mystic, but I believe the human heart can encounter the heart of God.

I am no master in the classic, spiritual disciplines of the Christian faith, but I am learning to pray.

Meditation is one of those disciplines, one of those practices, of Christians both historic and contemporary. It seems to be more common to talk about meditation in the practice of other religions, but there is a Christian art of meditation. Simply put: meditation is thinking in the presence of God. This definition makes meditation more attractive to me, because I seem to be more of a thinker than a mystic. However, meditation is more than thinking; it involves an awakening of our hearts to God. Here are some thoughts on meditation from Thomas Merton:

 “Meditation is almost all contained in this one idea: the idea of awakening our interior self and attuning ourselves inwardly to the Holy Spirit, so that we will be able to respond to his grace. In mental prayer, over the years, we must allow our interior perceptivity to be refined and purified. We must attune ourselves to unexpected movements of grace, which do not fit our own preconceived ideas of the spiritual life at all, and which in no way flatter our own ambitious aspirations.

We must be ready to cooperate not only with graces that console, but with graces that humiliate us. Not only with lights that exalt us, but with lights that blast our self-complacency. Much of our coldness and dryness in prayer may well be a kind of unconscious defense against grace.” (Merton, Seeds, 79-80)

Meditation goes hand and hand with prayer.

Meditation is thinking in the presence of God.

Prayer is both speaking and listening in the presence of God.

The thinking part of meditation is what Merton calls “attuning ourselves inwardly.” When we practice Christian meditation we are using the power of mind and will to lead our own hearts to the God, to remind our stubborn, distracted selves that there is a God and he is near. This practice puts us in a place where we can respond to the grace of God. Merton reminds us to be prepared to respond (and cooperate) with BOTH graces that console AND graces that humiliate.

I hate the grace that humiliates.

I need the grace that humiliates.

When my heart is misaligned, when my heart overflows with pride, when my wondering mind is distracted, I need a grace that humbles. The beauty of the work of the Holy Spirit is he both humbles and comforts; he both convicts and encourages. The same grace that humiliates is the grace that consoles.

Thanks Merton, for the reminder.

 

Resurrecting my Blog

The time has come to resurrect my blog.

I have to make a confession. It has been (a shocking) 271 days since my last blog post. Shame. Shame. Shame. Truthfully I have not blogged much in the last two years. I want to blame my lack of blogging on my increased activity on Facebook and Twitter, but the fact remains that I have not been blogging because I have grown lazy in the discipline of writing.

I do have some excuses. My family did move. I started a new job. My wife and I renovated a house. Blah. Blah. Blah. It is like my Spanish teacher in college would tell me when I told him that I did not have my homework: ninguna excusa (absolutely no excuse). So I am looking to resurrect my blog or rather resuscitate it. I do feel that my blogging will come to an end at some time, so this is more of a resuscitation. I have a couple of reasons for resuming the blog.

First, I am in-between writing projects and I need the “writing exercise.”  My primary calling is that of a teacher, both verbally through preaching and teaching in the context of the local church and through writing. I have self-published two books and I am still hold out hope to get them re-worked and re-released by a mainstream publisher. Currently, I am not working on a manuscript (although if you are a publisher interested in seeing a manuscript or book proposal let me know!). While I am not working on a book manuscript, blogging serves as a great way to keep me in the habit of writing.

Second, I have posted some good thoughts on Facebook and Twitter that could be developed into blog posts. Whenever I have sent out rapid-fire tweets with 3, 4, or 5 tweets in a row, I should have saved them and expanded them into a blog post. I may look over past tweets and Facebook posts and see if I can work them into a blog post.

Third, I have been reading a number of blogs recently and I enjoy the medium. There are a number of Christians blogs I read regularly including Todd Rhodes, Scot McKnight, Ed Stetzer, Trevin Wax, and (my pastor) Brian Zahnd. But recently I have been reading the blogs of AT Thru-hikers. I am currently fixated on these insane folks who give up 5-6 months of their lives to hike the 2,181 miles of the Appalachian Trial from Georgia to Maine. I have enjoyed blogs here and here and here.

Fourth, I have written a blog post for another blog that will be published next month. I submitted a post to asburyseedbed.com, the theological resourcing blog of Asbury Seminary. In writing an 800-word blog post for them, I thought “This isn’t so hard. I should do this more often.” I figure that since I am going to be a “guest blogger,” I ought to go to work on my own blog.

So here I go. I pray for some consistency in blogging these days. I have been blogging since 2006. I started my blog to chronicle a trip to India, but the blog has really been a way to chronicle my spiritual journey. It has given me way to work out what has been going on in my heart and mind and life, as I have grown as a pastor, father, husband, and follower of Christ. So, with God’s help and encouragement to friends, here goes another attempt at the blog.

 

Love the Church

Primal Credo
Chapter 9

If we love Jesus, then we will love what he loves. Or at least we will commit ourselves to grow in love towards what Jesus loves.

What does he love? Jesus loves the church.

Biblical writers are fond of playing with the groom/bride metaphor in describing Jesus and the church. Jesus loves the church, like a groom loves his bride. I struggle with this metaphor as a man, because it is difficult to think of myself as a bride. (Not to mention the sexual overtones when talking about brides & grooms!) Nevertheless, I see the point of the metaphor. Jesus loves the church and Jesus desires the church. He has committed himself to the church in a never-ending covenant. He pledges, as it were, to love us in sickness and in health for richer or for poorer. He chooses us (or did his Father arrange this marriage as the Calvinists say). We are the object of his desire.

If Jesus loves the church, then shouldn’t we?

The church is not an institution; the church is made up of fellow followers of Jesus. Buildings and organizations are important, but they are not the true church. From Primal Credo, Chapter 9:

The North American landscape is peppered with chapels, cathedrals, and storefronts—a variety of places of worship where Jesus is worshiped as God and Savior. We call these places “churches” and rightly so. Gathering with other followers of Jesus in a special place, a sacred place set aside for nothing else but the worship of God, plays an extremely important role in our spiritual growth. We need not reject the central role of a church as a physical structure in the lives of both the worshiping community and the civic community. Places of worship, regardless of their size or shape, stand as a visible reminder that life is not only for business, consumption, shopping, entertaining, eating, and drinking. Our creator designed life to be built around worship. As important as the building is, it can become a distraction, pulling our focus away from the true church, which is not made of wood, steel, brick, and mortar but of breathing, flesh-and-blood human beings with all of our messiness and idiosyncrasies.

I am thankful for the five churches I have been a part of over these twenty plus years including: Frederick Blvd. Baptist Church (St. Joseph), Word of Life Church (St. Joseph), Church on the Move (Tulsa), Believers Church (Tulsa), and Cornerstone Church (Americus). I love these churches and I am thankful for how I have grown through my participation in each of these local expressions of the body of Christ, especially Cornerstone. I have been a part of Cornerstone for nearly 12 years, longer than any other church. I have served as the Youth Minster and now Pastor. Sadly our time is coming to a close. I have only two Sundays left, before my family and I are sent out from the church back to St. Joe, where I will join the staff at Word of Life. I cannot say thank you enough to the members of Cornerstone Church for the years of love, encouragement, prayers, support, and doing life together…let me say it loud:

THANK YOU CORNERSTONE CHURCH. I LOVE YOU.

Cornerstone Church is an example of a church that has become “a colony of heaven in the country of death.” Again from Chapter 9:

The Holy Spirit empowers the church by establishing the rhythms of the kingdom of God within her midst, rhythms of humility, kindness, meekness, mercy, purity, and peace. With the absence of the Spirit’s presence, the local church is quiet, still, lifeless. “So why church?” asks Eugene Peterson. “The short answer is because the Holy Spirit formed it to be a colony of heaven in the country of death.” In light of the prevalence of death, the Spirit establishes these rhythms in the most unique and unpredictable ways. His work in one generation of the church may look vastly different than his work in another generation. The rhythms of grace, peace, mercy, and forgiveness remain the same, but the shape of our individual local churches may take on different forms. Moreover, local churches must change or die. As the culture around us shifts and changes, we must change in order to stay the same. We must change in order to stay faithful to Jesus, to his message, and his story. This includes changing our style, our vocabulary, and our emphasis, so that our old, worn-out ways do not become a hindrance to the gospel.

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I left the Charismatic Farm

After spending over ten years of my spiritual journey being shaped by the charismatic renewal something began to happen to me in 2004 and 2005. I became aware that the “charismatic” label seemed not to fit me anymore. For a long time, I proudly wore the label “charismatic,” but something happened. I was no longer reading books by Pentecostal/charismatic authors. I was no longer investing in relationships with those who call themselves “charismatic” Christians. I slowly began to see the unhealthy values of the charismatic movement (which I called charismania). I went to a gathering of Pentecostal/charismatic pastors and church leaders and I realized I no longer fit in.

Something had changed.

Something had changed in me.

I left Maggie’s Farm.

I had a “head full of ideas that were driving me insane.” While my friends in the charismatic renewal lived with a “bedroom window made out of bricks,” I began to look outside of Pentecostalism and saw a wealth of knowledge about God and his church outside of the charismatic establishment. I wasn’t mad at anyone; I just needed to move on:

Well, I try my best
To be just like I am
But everybody wants you
To be just like them
They sing while you slave and I just get bored
I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more
- Bob Dylan, “Maggie’s Farm” (1965)

I felt like everyone wanted me to continue to endorse a spirituality that was a mile wide, but only an inch deep. I was bored. I was trying to be who I know God wanted me to be, but I could not become that person if I only drank from the charismatic stream. I could not continue to grow on the Charismatic Farm, so I left. But…I never stopped believing in the power, presence, and person of the Holy Spirit. From Primal Credo, Chapter 8:

I believe the Holy Spirit is God. The Spirit shares all of the attributes used to describe God’s nature. The Father is God. The Son is God. The Spirit is God, but the Spirit is not the Father or the Son. Christians have faced the temptation since the beginning of the church to speak of the Spirit as something less than personal and relational. Augustine described the Trinity in terms of lover, the one being loved, and the love shared between the two. Love is indeed a part of God’s nature, and Augustine’s description of the Trinity attempts to describe God in relational terms with the Holy Spirit as the personification of love. However, a personified virtue like love is still less than a person. If the Holy Spirit is God, he must be as personal and relatable as God the Father and the Son. The biblical descriptions of the Spirit are nothing less than personal. He is not a power or energy. He is nothing like Luke Skywalker’s force from the Star Wars universe. We refer to the Holy Spirit as “he” and not “it,” because the Spirit contains all the personal attributes of God. He becomes our experience of God, making God very real to us in our lives of worship.

I believe the Holy Spirit interacts with God’s creation. The Old Testament bears witness to the unity and oneness of God. The New Testament testifies to the plurality of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. When we begin to read the Old Testament through the lens of the New Testament, fingerprints of the Trinity begin to appear. In the very opening lines of Genesis, we see “the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2). The Spirit hovered over creation and served as God’s instrument in the act of creation. As God spoke creation into existence by his very breath, vestiges of the Spirit can be seen. He works also in God’s special creation—the human family. The Holy Spirit convicts us of sin and gives us a new birth into God’s kingdom. He empowers us, speaks to us, and gives gifts to build us up and enable us to serve others. The Holy Spirit makes the difference between empty religion and a real relationship with the Triune God by making our encounter with God experiential. We know God not by memorizing a collection of God-facts; we know him by personal encounter. We experience his grace, his forgiveness and kindness, his promptings, his healing, his glory and beauty not by categorizing information about God in a mental checklist; we know God personally and experientially by the Holy Spirit who gives us access into the very life of God.

I believe in the Holy Spirit and refuse to allow him to be co-opted by religious fanaticism. Not everything promoted as the “moving” of the Holy Spirit is actually the work of the Spirit himself. Our belief in God the Holy Spirit, as the Spirit of holiness and truth, requires a discerning ear to what some well-meaning Christians claim to be the activity of the Spirit. Too often the Holy Spirit has been maligned by emotion-infused propaganda, which may generate excitement for God but fails to produce lasting fruit, the evidence of the Spirit’s presence. Gandalf, the wizard of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, warns Frodo through a poem not to dismiss a potential friendship. The poem opens with words remarkably reminiscent of the Holy Spirit:

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

The Holy Spirit may not always sparkle the eyes of religious fanatics. He very often may not feed their need for sensational novelty, but his roots are deep in the heart of the church. As we seek to be filled with the Holy Spirit, we can have great confidence in his ability to keep us free from the frost of spiritual apathy.

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Jesus is coming, just not May 21

Primal Credo
Chapter 7

I wonder what Harold Camping will do on May 22 this year. Camping is a part of the group declaring the world will end on May 21 and this cataclysmic end of the world includes the return of Jesus.

He gets one thing right: Jesus is coming.

He just isn’t coming on May 21, 2011.

Sorry Harold.

This isn’t new. People have been talking about the end of the world for more than 2,000 years. And nearly every generation has some group claiming to know the exact day the world will end. They have all been wrong. Still people get stirred up whenever anyone talks about “the end.” From Primal Credo, Chapter 7:

End of the world slogans have embedded themselves in popular culture, slogans like: “The end is near” and “Jesus is coming soon.” Nearly every hundred years or so some fanatical group seems to stir up enthusiasm for the end of the world marked by the return of Jesus to the earth. Among Christians in the United States, apocalyptic fever has surged since the publication of Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth in the 1970s and Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkin’s very popular Left Behind series in the 1990s. For the last few decades people inside and outside the church have debated, discussed, feared, and dismayed the day of the Lord, the day Jesus comes to judge the living and the dead.

No one knows the day or the hour. God has not given any secret knowledge to anyone or put hidden messages in the Bible tipping people off to the exact day Jesus will return, but one thing we do know—Jesus is coming. Again from Chapter 7:

Our hope rests in Jesus, who is coming to judge the living and the dead. We continue to put our hope in God not just for that looming final day, but for every day. Hope is both a kind of expectation for the future and patience in the present. We put our hope in God for today, because he is the grand architect of our story. God is writing our story, day by day, and we can trust him through the challenging chapters of life, knowing the next chapter will be good. We also patiently wait in hope for the future when Jesus comes. We call this the “blessed hope” (Titus 2:13). Our hope in Jesus’ appearing is a good hope, not because we are going, but because he is coming. Much of the excitement generated recently related to the coming of Jesus surrounds the idea that he will come secretly to take all the Christians to heaven and then he will return visibly to destroy the earth and all the wicked people on it. As exhilarating as this sounds, the Bible does not paint such a picture. The blessed hope of the church is not we are leaving the earth, but Jesus is appearing on the earth. He comes to make all things new. He comes to “make his blessing known far as the curse is found,” as we sing at Christmas-time. He comes to establish the kingdom of God, of which he is King, fully and permanently. He comes as the King to judge.

As much as people get excited by the thought off physically leaving the planet and rocketing through the atmosphere, this is simply not what the Bible tells us about the coming of Jesus. There will be those who are alive when Jesus comes and they will be suddenly “caught up” with Jesus in a moment when their physical bodies will change. The experience of being “caught up” will be the dramatic change of those who are alive while those who have died in faith experience bodily resurrection. The story of Scripture in talking about the coming of Jesus draws our attention to Jesus not to us. This is our hope, not that we are going, but that he is coming. And the creed reminds us that he comes to judge. Again from Chapter 7:

We can easily turn Jesus the judge into a caricature of the nature of God himself. The cartoonish image of God as a cranky old man with a long white beard sitting on a throne of judgment waiting to lash out in lightning bolts of rage distorts the biblical picture of Jesus the coming judge. God does not judge in fits of rage. His judgments are securely fixed within his sense of justice and he tempers his judgment with mercy. Furthermore, God connects his judgment with love. When Jesus comes to judge he will do so both to reward and to punish. Not all judges in our world hand out sentences to the guilty; some judges hand out rewards. For example, the judge in a competition does not punish those with low scores. Rather the judge hands out accolades, crowns, medals, titles of honor, and awards to those who score high in the competition. When Jesus appears, he comes in his wrath to judge those who are guilty and to reward in love those who are righteous, who have a right standing with God.

The wrath of God, the anger of God directed towards sin, evil, and wickedness remains a debatable issue in the church. We may debate how God expresses his wrath, but there is no doubting the existence of it. He does not express his wrath in fits of rage. Rather his judgments are true. He is not capricious in handing out judgment; his judgment for sin is calculated, honest, and he tempers his judgment with mercy. He will come to judge, but not only in terms of punishment for sin. He also comes to judge in order to reward the righteous.

The question on everyone’s mind is “when.” When is Jesus coming? Harold Camping gets it wrong, but I have the answer clearly expressed at the end of the book of Revelation. There is a biblical answer to the question. I explain at the end of Chapter 7:

The most pressing question by those fixated on the end times is: When is Jesus coming back? The answer to this popular question can be found hidden in the Bible. At the end of our story in the book of Revelation, Jesus himself gives us a clear answer to this most puzzling question. The answer is, “Surely I am coming soon” (Revelation 22:10). He will come back as part of the story of redemption, to permanently bridge the gap between God and man, between heaven and earth. He is coming soon, to which we respond, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!”

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The Second Alive

Primal Credo
Chapter 6

Death is the silent specter hovering over every human being who has ever lived. We try to shield ourselves from thoughts of death, but we have all been touched with the sting of death as we have watched the death of friends or loved ones. And our own death is looming the distance.

But for those of us who are followers of Jesus, we have no fear of death, because of the resurrection. Everything changes with the resurrection of Jesus, because the cold winter of death began to thaw and new life began to spring up from the ground. Jesus who died and was buried is the Jesus who rose up from the grave. From Primal Credo, Chapter 6:

Jesus sounds the final defeat of death through his resurrection, which Christians around the world celebrate every year on Resurrection Sunday, otherwise known as Easter. It has been the tradition of Christians since the beginning to worship on Sunday morning in an every-week celebration of the resurrection, and once a year we set aside one Sunday for the ultimate celebration of the resurrection. Sadly for some Christians, Easter passes by with chocolate bunnies and Easter egg hunts and they miss out on the celebration. We cannot fully experience the joy of the Resurrection Sunday without reflecting on the sorrow of the cross of Christ. We commemorate the death of Jesus on Good Friday, day one. We reflect on the experience of his burial on Holy Saturday, day two. And we celebrate the joy of his resurrection on Resurrection Sunday, day three.

Everything we believe as followers of Jesus rest upon the truth of the resurrection. We do not proclaim a gospel of death and burial, but of death, burial, and resurrection. If Jesus did not experience resurrection then he was a fraud and our faith is worthless. And yet what if Jesus did NOT rise from the dead? Is there any possible explanation for why the early church would proclaim a risen Jesus if indeed he did not rise from the dead? Again from Chapter 6:

From time to time, skeptics offer reasonable theories in the attempt to disprove the resurrection of Jesus. Some theories are more probable than others, but each theory presents some kind of objection to the validity of the resurrection. Each theory can be formed into a question. What if Jesus wasn’t really dead? What if he just passed out on the cross and he was buried alive, but in a coma-like state? What if some of his disciples stole his body from the tomb and faked the resurrection? What if the real Jesus was never crucified, but rather it was a secret, unknown twin brother who was crucified? What if he was given some kind of ancient sedative that knocked him out for a while on the cross and then the sedative wore off while he was in the tomb? What if a group of people just made this whole story up? Skeptical objections to the resurrection help us wrestle with this all-important truth.

None of these theories are completely inconceivable, but they do not hold up against historical evidence. All of these theories implicate the followers of Jesus in some kind of cover-up conspiracy. Each theory assumes the original followers were lying at some level. The primary response to these skeptical objections is a set of alternative questions regarding the early followers of Jesus. Why would they lie? What would be their motivation for lying? How did they personally benefit by lying about the resurrection?

There is not reasonable explanation for why his followers would fake his resurrection. He did rise from the dead and he is alive. This makes Jesus the big boss of the planet. This makes Jesus Lord and Savior. We do not make Jesus Lord. God made him Lord when he raised Jesus from the dead giving us the hope of new life.

Jesus’ birth connects God with human birth. His suffering on the cross connects God with human sin and suffering. Jesus’ burial connects God with human death and ultimately Jesus’ resurrection connects God with renewed human life. God in Christ overcame the hellish darkness of death to offer humanity new life. N.T. Wright describes this as, “The love which has given itself in death is now renewed with the new life of the resurrection” (The Resurrection of the Son of God, pg. 674). Within this new creation world of renewed life, Jesus gives us a new orientation around the primary Christian virtues: faith, hope, and love. First, the resurrection of Jesus gives us a renewed faith. Jesus told us he would rise from the dead, and he called himself “the resurrection and the life” (Luke 9:22). His physical resurrection adds an exclamation point to those claims. We have no reason to doubt; we can trust him.

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The Death of God

Primal Credo
Chapter 5

The death of Jesus makes it impossible to ignore him.

His teachings continue amaze the masses, although the masses tend to misunderstand him. (His stories and sermons were neither common-sensical wisdom nor universal principles on how to do life. His teachings were bold proclamations that the kingdom of God had come.) His miracles caught the attention of the crowds, but it was his execution by Roman crucifixion that makes Jesus stand out from the crowd. His death means the death of God. As impossible as it seems God died on the cross. And now the cross is the symbol of the Christian faith. From Primal Credo, chapter 5:

The cross makes Jesus unavoidable. It began as the symbol of violence, humiliation, and death, but it has become the symbol of faith, hope, and love. The early church used many different symbols for the faith, including a dove, an anchor, loaves and fishes, the icthus fish (which is still around on car bumpers), and Greek letters such as chi/rho and alpha/omega. These all served their purpose, but the cross became the enduring symbol of the Christian faith. Clement of Alexandria in the third century called the cross “the Lord’s sign.” It seems like a foolish symbol for Christianity, particularly in light of the awful history of crucifixion. The cross served as a cruel instrument of execution. Imagine driving by a Christian church near your house and looking up to see an executioner’s electric chair in blazing, bright white atop the steeple. The cross was hideous in the days of the Roman Empire. Everyone recognized it as a violent symbol of failure and death, because it signified the failed plot of would-be revolutionaries—failed revolutionaries do not rescue anyone.

Crucifixion is not the most expedient way to execute criminals. It is bloody, gory, and cruel, yet at the cross of Christ we see the love of God. Again from Chapter 5:

Jesus suffering upon the cross is a hideous and abhorrent figure, yet it reveals God’s love for us in an unforgettable vivid image. The Romans used crucifixion to heap shame and humiliation on their enemies, to disguise their dignity in defeat. However in the crucifixion of Jesus, Rome accomplished just the opposite of what they intended to do. Instead of shame and rejection, the Roman cross became the place where the love of God and his embracing of the world are most clearly seen. Jesus had told his disciples that if he would be lifted up on a cross, he would draw the nations of the world to himself. What the Empire intended for evil, God meant for good. At the cross we see Jesus not as our life coach, love guru, therapist, motivational speaker, or mystical guide; we see Jesus as the Savior of the world. We see the God of self-giving love in real human flesh suffering such hellish torment for the sins of the world.

It is easy for us to overlook the cross, because we know about the resurrection. We know the resurrection is coming, but for a moment put yourself in the shoes of his original disciples and look at the death of Jesus through their eyes.

Imagine the shock of the disciples when Jesus died. They saw the death of Jesus as the end. Their dream died. Their hope was dead. Their king was dead. Their entire understanding of God and God’s kingdom died. In their eyes, the death of Jesus meant Jesus failed. He had worked hard for three years to promote God’s kingdom, but he failed. A dead king is a failed king. Even more than failure, Jesus’ death in the eyes of those who loved him meant he was wrong. He said he was coming to bring the kingdom of God. But how can you lead the expanse of God’s kingdom when you are dead? He was wrong. He was dead wrong. He had said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” and now he was a lifeless corpse lying on a cold rock slab in a dark tomb.

As unbelievable as it sounds, God in Christ experienced death; the death of Jesus was, in one sense, the death of God.

Jesus was dead. He did not play dead. He did not pass out. He was not sedated. He was dead and lifeless. The one called “the Light of the World” now lay in a dark sealed tomb. God was active within Jesus reconciling the world to himself. God joined us in human birth at the manager and then God joined us in human death at the sealed tomb of Jesus. God did not die in the sense that he ceased to exist. God died in that he experienced human death. How can this be? The source of life experienced death.

God in Christ experienced death on the cross, but that is not the end of the Jesus story—Sunday is comin’.

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Mystery

Primal Credo
Chapter 4

Every mother can tell you the coming-into-the-world story of each of her children. They are often unique. I have witnessed the birth each of my three boys and they each came into the world in their own unique way. Wesley, my oldest, was born early. Taylor, son #2, came late. And Dylan came right on time.

There is one coming-into-the-world story that has been told and retold more than any other; it is the Christmas story. Christmas continues to capture the imagination of people, in part, because of the magical virgin birth. Revisiting the magic and mystery of the birth of Jesus is what puts Christ back into Christ-mas. From Primal Credo, Chapter 4:

Mary’s virgin birth remains the deep mystery of the Christmas story. For those who bemoan the shift in our culture from the Christ of Christmas to the Consumerism of Christmas, the creed offers a response, but not a response of angry protest. The creed does not lead us to boycott department stores that choose to use the phrase “Happy Holidays” over “Merry Christmas.” The creed offers a different response. It extends an invitation to explore the mystery of the virgin birth of Jesus. We reintroduce a Christ-centered meaning into our Christmas celebration by inviting people to explore the mystery of God becoming a man. Augustine explores this mystery in a Christmas sermon from the fifth century: “He lay in a manger, and yet the world rested in his hands. As an infant, He was wordless, and yet He was the Word Itself. Him whom the Heavens couldn’t huddle, the lap of a single woman could easily cuddle. She was toting about on her hip Him Who carries her about the universe.” How can the all-powerful God be a tiny, helpless baby? This question among others nudges us to explore not only the mystery of his birth, but also the mystery of Jesus as the God-man.

The human birth of the eternal Son of God is one of the most central truths in the Christian faith. Again from Chapter 4:

Mary, as a real flesh and blood human being, gave birth to Jesus, a real human being. He looked and acted and smelled like every other baby born on the earth. He did not have a super-human, spirit-like body. His newborn body resembled every other baby born in the Middle East at that time. What makes this birth such a wonderful mystery is he became a human being while remaining God. Jesus was neither a god who took on human qualities nor a man who transformed into a god. He was not some kind of mutant hybrid of half man, half god. He was (and is) the most unique being who has ever existed. He is simultaneously fully God and fully human. The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard called this mystery “the sign of offense and the object of faith.” To confess belief in Jesus the Son of God born of a woman offends all rational sensibilities. More than illogical, it demands more of us than we are ready to comprehend. If Jesus is God embodied in human form, if he is the God-man, then shouldn’t we pay attention and take the things he says seriously? Some find the offense too overwhelming. They find it easier to ignore Jesus, than to take his life and words seriously. Yet for those of us who believe, the God-man has become the object of our faith, the centering point for our very existence, the foundation from where everything becomes stable and begins to make sense.

Jesus as true God and true man remains the reason we, in the words of C.S. Lewis, “due away with any talk of him being just a good moral teacher.” If Jesus is not indeed God when he went around claiming to do the works of God with the power and authority of God, then he is certainly not good. Indeed he would be quite wicked, evil, or deranged.

Either oppose him, hunt him down and try to kill him like Herod.

Or bring the him the gifts fitting a king and bow down and worship him as God.

He leaves us with no other choice.

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