Road to the Cross: Arriving

Why is this night different than any other night?

This question, asked by children at the Passover Seder all over the world, sets the tone for the evening’s reflection and feast.  The leader then recites the story of salvation from slavery in Egypt.  We hear again of the plagues God puts on Egypt, the slaughter of the Passover lamb and the parting of the Red Sea. We remember the bitter tears of the people as they made bricks without straw and we are given the sweet charoset to remember that life is not only bitter.  But the overriding message is one of salvation and deliverance.

But today and tonight, we ask the same question, “why is this night different than any other night?” The answer is similar, but not the same. For the Christian, the reason for the night’s different lies not in the Passover, but in the Cross.

Today we arrive at the end of the road to the cross.  We have arrived at the foot of the cross to behold the innocent victim slain.

The cross. 

What can we say about the cross that has not already been said?  Perhaps there is no need to say anything new, but to remind ourselves about the meaning of the cross.  For Luther, the Christian must come to a complete stop at the cross to think about the crucified God.  Either we will accept the cross and cling to it, or we will reject it and scorn it.  As Paul said, the cross is “a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles” (1 Corinthians 1:23).

If we reject the cross, we must reject Jesus and leave him behind.  Jesus’ crucifixion was not an accident and it was a failure.  Jesus came into this world and set his face towards’ Jerusalem.  He knew even before He started that his road would lead to the cross.  He accepted this as His purpose and even when he acknowledged the agony of the cross, he still submitted to it. 

But why? What was the point?  What did he do on the cross and why did he have to die on the cross?

Paul hints at the answer to this question in Colossians 1: For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

21 And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, 22 he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him,

In the cross of Christ, lays the reconciliation of the world with God.  The world was once alienated from God through the power of sin and death, but now we have been brought close to God through Christ’s sufferings.  Our acceptance and reconciliation lies in Christ’s death.

Our journey to the Cross is our journey to God, because only through the cross can we come near to God.  Our sins must be punished and our debt must be paid.  This Jesus does when He goes to the cross.

This simple act changes our world and creates a new reality for us.  Just like the Jews who were able to escape Egypt into a new world, so now we have been able to escape from a dark world and enter into God’s family, his household.

Many religions offer a way to God, if only you will do x,y,and z.  Christianity is the only religion that says you cannot get to God, that God has to come to you.  Most religions say that you must sacrifice in order to get to God, in Christianity, Jesus is the sacrifice Himself who paves the way for us to stand before God.

This dramatically (or should dramatically change) the world.  The cross and suffering, not military power and wealth, is the way to victory and the way to salvation.  In 323, when Constantine heard the message, “by this sign will you conquer” he almost had it right.  Unfortunately, he saw this as a political answer to create a political empire.  Christianity has never been about a political empire and the cross is the positive sign of this.

Instead of seeking an authority based, power hungry organization to rule the world with an iron fist, the cross tells us that if we want victory, we must sacrifice ourselves, our very lives on behalf of others who not only do not believe the way we do, but mock and scorn us.  The cross tells us that the reconciliation of man with God is not to be sought in power, but in weakness.

Only when we see Jesus nailed to the cross, do we understand not only how deep God’s love is for us, but how deep our love for our neighbor should be.  We see Jesus willing to submit to cruel and vicious people for the good of those who shouted to crucify him.  So too, should the church be willing to sacrifice herself and submit to those who would crucify her.  In this, we see the perfect picture of love and a model for us to minister to a world that needs to be reconciled to God.

When we understand the cross in its entirety, we understand what Jurgen Moltmann meant when he said that "God became man so that dehumanized men might become true men."  The cross is the basis for a new society....one in which fair treatment does not need to be dictated by law but springs up from God's love for us and the new creation.  People are not divided by race, but differences are celebrated as diversity within God's family.  Hatred is replaced by love and war is overcome by peace.  Indeed the entire fractured world is held together by God's love expressed on the cross.

Road to the Cross:Killing Plants

The "Road to the Cross" is a series of Lenten Devotion to encourage and to give hope to people as they follow Jesus and prepare to remember and celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus on Easter.

^ESV Mark 11:12 On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. ¹³ And seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. ¹⁴ And he said to it, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again." And his disciples heard it.

I don’t know much about figs.  Figs are kind of icky looking fruit and apart from a Fig Newton, I don’t know if I’ve eaten one.  Which makes we wonder about this passage of Scripture: What exactly does Jesus have against figs? (This video is the sum total of my fig knowledge)

In following Jesus, we have learned that some things just don’t make sense.  This is perhaps one of the weirdest things that Jesus does in his whole ministry.  Walking on water we understand, feeding the 5000 seems like a no-brainer, and even the harshness of the cleansing of the temple is alright by us.  But the fig tree?  It wasn’t even the seasons for figs!!!

To understand this, I think we have to get to the heart of the matter of what Jesus is doing.

Have you ever had a crush on someone?  Remember that feeling of looking at them as they passed by and you caught a whiff of their perfume?  You used to think that person was perfect.  They never did any wrong and you knew that once you got to know them, everything was going to be perfect…..and then you actually got to know them.  And you realized that they were…human…and imperfect.  They had bad breath and pimples and odd bodily smells.  Their personality was nowhere near as perfect as you knew it was…and you realize that the dream you had was so much better than the person standing in front of you.

Or have you ever had a vision of getting the perfect job?  You knew that once you got that job, life was going to be soooooooooooo easy.  You would be living the dream…for real! Only to realize that once you had the job, things weren’t perfect and nothing seemed to be going plan.

That’s the sort of thing that is going on here…but it’s much bigger than that.

In this last week of Jesus’ life, Jesus acts more symbolically and that is true of the fig tree.  In the Hebrew Bible, the fig often times represents Israel in its relationship to God.  For instance, in Jeremiah, we read, 

“When I would gather them, declares the Lord, there are no grapes on the vine nor figs on the fig tree; even the leaves are withered, and what I gave them has passed away from them.” Jeremiah 8:13 ESV

It seems that Jesus is building on this OT passage and enacting it out.  Instead of finding figs on the tree, Jesus finds none.  Just as God expected to find good things in Israel, he found none. And that is the point of this passage and the point of the miracle.

Israel was created to be God’s light to the nations.  They were supposed to exemplify the way of the Lord and the teachings of God.  They were supposed to be a model of what a perfect society could and should be.  They were supposed to take care of the poor and the widows and the orphans.  They were to lead the world into the way of peace and prosperity and most importantly, they were to be the place that reconciled the nations to God.

And none of it happened.  Instead of setting the example, they followed the ways and traditions of the world around them.  They exchanged their God for a king and followed him off to war.  They embraced an uber-capitalist ethic that oppressed the poor and the widows and the orphans.  Instead of reaching out in grace and peace to the nations, they scorned them and went to war with them.  The world increased in violence and hatred and racism and poverty.   Jeremiah continues, “we looked for peace, no good came, for a time of healing, but behold terror.” (8:15)

So when God finds no figs in them, it is not surprising, for they had departed from the way of the Lord.

Jesus finds the same thing when he enters into Jerusalem. Jerusalem was to be the city of peace and reconciliation.  Jesus found a city of violent and opportunistic people.  Cursing the fig tree reveals the truth about the people of Jerusalem—that they are fruitless, barren, and void.

We have to remember that even as much as Jesus loves us, the road to the cross bears judgment. It bears judgment against some lifestyles, attitudes, and actions.  The things that come into conflict with God’s kingdom are demonstrated to be what they are: empty vessels and fruitless trees.  Jesus curses that lifestyle no differently than he cursed the fig tree.

We in the church and on the road to the cross should not take this lightly.  The things that were important to God in the past are still important to Him today.  As James puts it, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this, to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” (James 1:27).

The lesson we learn from Israel is to care more for our neighbor and their welfare than our own. Violence and greed are not the way of the Church, peace is, and yet we do not hear this from the voice of the church.  Instead, we hear the message of greed, to get all we can in the time we have.  We shy away from taking care of the poor, because that is the path of the liberals, and we concentrate more on how to get money than to give it away. 

There is a reason that this weird miracle happens, and there is a reason that the road to the cross stops right at the cursed fig tree.  It is so we might stop and pause and consider how we resemble this fig tree.  But the road to the cross continues on….

Road to the Cross: Going Up

The Road to the Cross*” is a series of thoughts for the Lent season. These convey some of my hopes, prayers, and even fears as we traverse this season and prepare for the celebration of Easter.

“He went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem”–Luke 19:28

Confrontation takes courage, and courage is in strong demand these days.

We have traveled with Jesus and now we come to the beginning of the end.  Tomorrow in the churches, we will celebrate Palm Sunday and the coming of the new king.  But today, we focus on the fact that Jesus went up to Jerusalem and everything that goes along with it.

Jesus was one of those remarkable people who did not shy away from either confrontation or danger.  Neither did he seek it out, but he was strong enough to deal with it head on and not run away from it. 

Jesus had been warned that the people in Jerusalem had wanted him dead.  He knew that his friends would betray him, that he would be misunderstood and that ultimately he would be arrested and killed…and yet still he went.  

As I look at myself, I think I resemble the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz than William Wallace from Braveheart. What am I afraid of?  It seems like a great deal: I am scared of death, I am scared of other’s opinions of myself…I am scared of failing.  And I don’t think I’m alone in this.  I think we live in a generation of cowardly lions.  We live among a people who want take the easy way out and to make sure we are all liked, rather than standing up for what is right and true. 

Maya Angelou once said, “Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.” It is courage that gives us the ability to stick to our guns and to do what is right.  It was courage that allowed Jesus to set his face towards Jerusalem and to engage with the Pharisees and the Jewish leaders.  

Nelson Mandela also observes, “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”

Courage is a moral fortitude that keeps us in the game when everything around us is screaming that we should get out. Courage controls us and helps us to do what we know is necessary. 

We may think of courage on the battlefield, in the hospital rooms, and on the decks of ships.  But courage is so much more real and necessary than that.

-It takes courage to confront our brother when we know they are doing wrong.

-It takes courage to talk to our parents about their changing needs as they get older.

-It takes courage to be a parent to our children.

-It takes courage to put our families before our jobs.

-It takes courage to talk about our faith openly in a world that no longer wants to hear it. 

-It takes courage to stand in the minority when the popular mood of the country tilts towards immorality. 

Jerusalem was located on a hill and when you reached the city you had to climb up the hill. That is why in the Bible, it is always said that you “go up” to Jerusalem.  We can imagine that when Jesus reached that hill, it took every ounce of courage to get up it.  

The road to the cross goes up to Jerusalem.  Up there, there is confrontation, hatred, and even death.  In order to get to the cross, we have to go there.  Do we…do I…have the courage to go up?

The Road to the Cross: Getting Lost

The Road to the Cross*” is a series of thoughts for the Lent season. These convey some of my hopes, prayers, and even fears as we traverse this season and prepare for the celebration of Easter.

I am a ministry failure.  That is not an overstatement or a means to evoke pity, but a realistic assessment of my life in ministry.  Every church I have been a part of shrank while I was there…in fact I don’t think I have ever been part of a group that has grown numerically in my life.  Nobody clamors to hear me preach, and nobody is itching to read any books I may write and in fact nobody really reads this blog, so I am mainly writing to myself.  I have never been on anyone’s ‘fast track’ or ‘hot list’ and have not even been asked to be on any committees in my denomination. 

Failure is not a word that many people like to comprehend or even think about themselves. As I approach middle age, I am tempted to think that perhaps I would have been a better data entry personnel than a pastor and perhaps wonder if I had ever really been called into ministry at all.  

I look at the people who succeed in ministry and often wonder, “why?” and “how?”  Take a minister like Joel Osteen, whose theology is bankrupt and who peddles in trite religiousity and yet has millions of followers.  I have watched God bless the ministry of those who were self-interested, self-serving and self-promoting while those who were more faithful struggled to eat and put food in the mouths of their children. So either I am more incompetent than these or I am just simply a failure.

And I have failed and learned to fail at so many things in my life.  Again, this is a relatively self accurate portrayal.  My life is not all that exciting.  I haven’t traveled to exotic locales or learned to be cool or hip or have not developed a taste for a unique cuisine.  I am not a spy nor is my job filled with adventure (although the Navy does know how to ‘accelerate your life’).  And I am not complaining about this either…it is just to say that from the exciting life point of view, I am an EPIC fail. 

But this then brings us to Lent…a time to find and reflect on redirection in our lives.  

When I (we) begin to think of ourselves as failing in life, we tend to get lost and misdirected. 

We have to remember that Jesus came for the failures.  He came and lived among those who had failed at life.  He came for the prostitutes and the tax collectors, the poor anonymous fishers and the people in the field.  He shunned the people in power, the successful ones who had it made. He came for the losers and those who have gotten lost along the way. 

Jesus talks about this in the parable of the lost sheep.  He says, “If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray?” (Matthew 18:13 ESV) It’s not that the 99 are not important, but that the one is just as special and important and God cares about it just as much as the other ones.

When we get lost in our mind…we begin to think of things as more important as they really are.  We begin to think that our lives are not worth anything unless we have met certain mile posts or we act like a certain person.  It is not that we are physically lost, but that we are spiritually lost.  And if we stay lost long enough, our entire world seems out of balanced and life loses all hope, meaning, and purpose.  

In the ancient world, sheep were herded by listening to their shepherds voice.  It may seem hard to believe, but sheep are able to tell the voice of their shepherd.  When they began to follow another shepherd’s voice, that’s when they would get lost.  The same is true for us.  We begin listening to other people’s voices…we listen to other shepherds and as we listen to these other shepherds, the voice of OUR shepherd, the GOOD shepherd grows more and more distant until we are on unfamiliar ground.

During Lent, we have to open ourselves up to listen for the voice of our Shepherd.  We need to pause from the activities of our lives and get our bearings.  We tune our hearts to Scriptures more and try to avoid the things that bog us down in our lives and we give ourselves over to prayer more. 

By doing this, we hear the voice of our shepherd and this is what we hear: 

–we hear that the world’s estimation of our worth is not nearly as important as our Father’s delight in us

–we hear that the things of this world are momentary and transitory while things of our Father are eternal 

–we learn that we each have a purpose to fulfill and that purpose is unique to us and our lives

–we learn that we are loved apart from what we accomplish in our lives

–we learn that our God loves us so much that He sent His Son to bear the penalty for our sins and to give us eternal life

So if we are lost on the way, it’s time to pause, to take some time to listen and get back on the road to the cross

The Road to the Cross: Healing Hurts

*The Road to the Cross*" is a series of thoughts for the Lent season. These convey some of my hopes, prayers, and even fears as we traverse this season and prepare for the celebration of Easter.

Nobody likes pain.  That's the point. Nobody is supposed to. It's a mechanism to tell us that something is wrong.  

Sometimes, the worst injuries don't hurt right away.  I remember when I was about 10 years old, I fell off my bike and broke my arm.  Of course, I didn't know I had broken my arm right away....until I looked at it.  It was one of those surreal moments, especially when I realized I could seen my bone through my skin.  Then the pain began...and boy did it hurt.  

My parents took me to the hospital and they had to set the bone in place before they could place a cast on it.  Although they tried to put me to sleep, I have an unusual tolerance for anesthetics and they were unable to put me to sleep while they set the bone. I don't remember the pain today, but my brother remembers the sound of my screams echoing through the hallways of the hospital.

Sometimes it's an important reminder to us that healing hurts.  We don't recover from the scrapes and bruises and bumps of life effortlessly.  Mending takes time and often hurts more than the injury itself. 

A relationship may be broken in a heartbeat.  Repair efforts may take years and often hearbreaking in the process.  An abuse victim may be spared from her abuser, but the scars may take decades to heal.  A death can rip a tear in the fabric of life, one which may never fully heal and the pain continues on as the survivors live through life.

And this brings us to Lent and this journey we are on in following after Christ and walking with Him to the cross. Healing us...and the healing the world can hurt a great deal more than we wish.

The more travel on the road with Christ, the more aware we are of hurt.  Not just our wounds, but the wounds of the people all around us.  They begin to become more and more evident and we begin to wonder why we never saw them before.  

We begin to see the loneliness in the widow missing her husband, the pain in the couple trying to make their marriage work, the hollow look of the teenager trying to figure out where he fits in and the frustration of the child who wonders why her parents won't pay any attention to her.  More and more we experience the alienation that haunts all around us we begin to see the deep fractures that exist in our world. 

Lent reminds us of the great reason Christ came into the world.  Paul tells us in Colossians that "For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross." (Col 1:19-20). Jesus came into this world to deal with our hurts, our wounds, our pains, our divisions and the things that alienate us from God and from each other. 

We live in a world that is broken and we suffer the pain of that.  Jesus has come to heal us and that we must deal with the pain of that healing. 

During Lent, this becomes more evident to us during any other time of the year.  We abstain from the temporal delights of our temptations, so that we may learn to delight in the eternal. By restraining our desires, we learn to control our tempers, and our souls and to bring them into obedience towards God. We may view it simply as "giving up chocolate" or "not eating meat," but it becomes a way to heal ourselves...one that can hurt very much.

But not only this, during this time, we commit ourselves to the larger mission of God and the Church: taking care of the world He has entrusted us with, feeding the poor and hungry, and working towards social justice, because this is the work of the Cross, just as much as it was to save our souls.

If the Christian, or the Church, does not learn to take up his cross and take up the work of healing, has not learned anything during this journey towards the cross. The Gospel was never just between a 'sinner' and God....it has always been about creation and God.  God's plan was not to save a few people and bring them to heaven, God was always concerned to heal creation. That is why God called the prophet and said, "I create new heavens and new earth and the former things shall not be remembered." (Isaiah 65:17)

But this process hurts....it costs something.  It cost God His only Son. It costs us our lives.  We need to get involved, to give up our comforts, our desires, and our prejudices.  We must commit ourselves to the ending of racial injustice, to the end of poverty and hunger, to abuse against the week and the exclusion of the unwanted.  We must be willing to sacrifice our status, our importance, our money, our time, at times our freedoms and for some, our very lives.  

Healing hurts...this is what we learn....on the way to the cross.

The Road to the Cross: Falling Down

*The Road to the Cross*" is a series of thoughts for the Lent season. These convey some of my hopes, prayers, and even fears as we traverse this season and prepare for the celebration of Easter.

"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Robert Oppenheimer

Dr. Oppenheimer uttered these words in response to the Atomic Bomb, which he helped create.  He understood, perhaps better than anyone, the magnitude of the destruction that could now be wrought on the planet and on his fellow man.  The gravity of that understanding must have weighed heavily on Dr. Oppenheimer, especially in the moments after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  

"Now I am become death...." 

AS I look up on my life and the course it is has taken over these past many years, I realize I am but a shadow of this statement.  

I, of course, have not caused the destruction of cities, nor burned a building to the ground, nor killed a single human life....but I am still a force of destruction that has wrought its ugly head upon the world....my family and friends, churches I have served and people I have known.  The truth is, no matter how much I want to deny it...that I am Vishnu, destroyer of worlds.

Oppenheimer did not start out to create a weapon to destroy cities and people.  Rather, he wanted to harness the power of the Atom to help create energy in order to sustain life.  Circumstances got rather out of his control and he saw his theories and his work used to destroy men and women and children. 

The power of destruction is a deadly force that is unleashed in many different ways.  I have seen it done in the emotional abuse of a spouse, the manipulation of systems to gain a personal goal and a thousand other ways.  I have done these and similar things to those closest to me.  We do this enough and our lives...our relationships bear a great resemblance to the remains of Hiroshima. Our worlds crumble away from our hatred, lies, pride and lust to reveal a broken and shattered world beneath us that bears the scars of our actions and reminds us of what used to be.

The older I get, the more sensitive I become to the hurt I've caused.  While I may not always show it on my face, the pain is real and it hides in my heart.  I look down history's corridors and the people I've hurt and the destruction I've brought and I can only agree with the statement, "I am become Death, destroyer of worlds...."

This brings us to Lent...to the very heart of the season.  Lent is the time of year when we reflect greatly on the destruction we have wrought in our own lives and in the lives of others.  We acknowledge the pain, hurt, confusion, and brokenness of our lives and we turn to God in sackcloth and ashes. 

In the midst of the ruin of our lives, we are surprised to see the Savior standing there.  Jesus has that knack of showing up in the least expected places and some of our hearts are the least likely of all. 

Think of the people Jesus decided to hang around in his life.  Matthew...a tax collector....how much ruin did he bring to people's lives? Zaccheaus...another tax collector? The woman at the well...how many families did she ruin? 

But the truth about Jesus is that he is life.  John begins his Gospel by retelling the story of creation and we read, "in him was life, and the life was the light of men" (John 1:4).  It is no accident that John begins his account with creation, because in a world full of death and destruction, God is about creation, recreation and life. 

Jesus gives life to those who have none.  He demonstrated this physically by waking people like Lazarus from the dead. "I am the resurrection and the life" Jesus tells in John 11:25.  Jesus offers a second chance to sinners who do not deserve a second chance.  In John's gospel again we read of a woman who was convicted of adultery.  Instead of judging her, he saves her and offers her a new chance at life, a wonderful new start to a ruined life.

Jesus' ministry continues today as well.  People who have ruined their lives, caused destruction in havoc through drugs, sex, lies, money and power are given a new lease in life--a new start.  

The understanding at Lent is that we live in the darkness of the valley of the shadow of death.  It's power is real and we feel it all around us.  We cause it, we are complicit in it and we at times even desire and delight in it.

Today I acknowledge the pain and suffering I have caused in my life and in the lives of others.  I say, fully, that "I AM VISHNU, DESTROYER OF ALL WORLDS"

But Jesus responds with loving kindness and says, "I am the creator of all things, and I give my light and my life to you.