Holy Week 3

3:15 PM

The timeline of Holy Week is fuzzy towards the middle.  Exactly when Jesus and his disciples ate the Last Supper is unknown.  Wednesday, not Thursday, is the most probable day. 

Anyway, this week Joy and I are celebrating the Lord's supper both days.  Tonight we will attend a Seder  with the Lutherans and tomorrow we will be celebrating a joint service with the local ARP churches   Should be interesting.

I'm very excited about tomorrow night, especially, since I'm preaching. I've felt led to do something I haven't done in years--to read John 13-16,  the last speech Jesus gave to his disciples before He was arrested.

If you're preparing to celebrate tonight or tomorrow, I highly recommend reading it.  It's very moving, especially when you put it in the proper historical context.  After supper,  Jesus only had a couple of hours to get his last message into the heads of the disciples, who had no clue what was about to happen. 

Jesus really puts the Gospels in perspective for us.  He starts off (surprisingly enough) by washing his disciples' feet. This was a dirty job that not even the lowest household slaves wanted to do, but He volunteered.  He was making the point that no act of kindness and service should be beneath a leader who loves his people.  "Dignity of office" was never in Jesus' vocabulary.  If they wanted to serve, they had to be servants.  Then, after Judas left,  Jesus really got down to business.

He informed them that He was going away, and they couldn't follow.  He'd come again, but in the meantime, they should love each other like He loved each of them.

Peter, stout-hearted and thick-headed as always, suddenly woke up and said,  "Where are you going?"

Jesus  told him he could not come now, but would later.  Peter insisted,  blurting out,  "I'd lay down my life for you. "

That was when Jesus told the stunned fisherman that he would deny Him three times that very night, before the rooster crowed.

I cannot imagine the emotions that must have gone through Jesus at that time--the dread of pain,  the excitement of being back with His Father,  the disappointment at the betrayal of friends,  the joy of their company.  He must have felt all this,  along with that overwhelming desire to get the job done,  defeat the Devil and free the hearts of people all over  the world forever. No one was ever executed more horribly or more willingly as Jesus, and no one ever will be. 

As he prepared inwardly for His great sacrifice,  He still thought first about his disciples.  "Don't be troubled," he said.  "Believe in me. My Father's house has many rooms.  One of them will be for you."  Then he says again that He is going.

Thomas,  ever the practical one,  says "How can we go?  We don't know  the way."

"I am the way," said Jesus.  Just trust Him,  and you will get there.

Then Jesus went deeper--way deeper.  He explained to them that He and the Father God are one and the same.  God is in him, and with them.  When He went away,  He would send his Spirit to them so that God would be in them, too. Then He and they and the Spirit will all be united together in God.

When we think  about Holy Week,  we often see the events  of Christ's death and resurrection as being about the forgiveness of sin.  So it is, but they are about more than that.  Forgiveness is just the door that opens up to reveal a whole new life with God.  On the other side of that door is unity with Him. We are forgiven in order that we can share God's life with Him 

That's why I've never liked crucifixes.  Seeing Jesus still on the cross seems to me is like looking at the door, not the house.  We have to see the goal behind it--oneness with Him.

What a weird, expurgated version of Christianity we espouse when we see it merely as getting our sins forgiven and getting a ticket to heaven, where we will sit on clouds with harps and chat with our ancestors,  while God, like the mayor downtown, oversees all this bliss, but doesn't come by to see us much.  No, the picture Jesus paints is a place where you and I will be caught up in the glory of God, united in joy and wonder,  a "glory" extending beyond tine and space into this life, catching us up in joy,  in a communion with Him forever. 

I've never seen heaven. But I've seen some amazing things.  I've seen a basketball player sink a basket from a mid-court shot just before the buzzer.  I've felt the space shuttle shake my house as it roared into space. I've seen old people die and new people born. These are sights that catch me up in the moment, filling me with wonder and amazement.  I've lost myself willingly in such moments.  Imagine an eternity of that kind of wonder, as God almighty enters into us, and we into Him. 

Christ on the Cross, Christ in communion doesn't move me until I really enter into the event, savoring the love involved, and realizing the unmitigated wonder of it.  That is what I want for the rest of this week,  to be in Christ, and to have Christ in me.

Holy Week 2

Monday morning after Palm Sunday, Jesus returned to the temple. This time, he entered the temple from the south, through the main gate, right under Herod's seat. 

When he entered, the courtyard looked like a cross between a cattle auction and  oriental bazaar. Animals and salesmen were everywhere.  That was when Jesus made a flog from some rope and drove the whole lot out. 

It was a symbolic act.  The moneychangers did not stay gone for long.  Still, the point was made.  God will not tolerate the commercialization of His temple,  nor will he allow His house to become a circus.   Yet that is precisely what God's house became, and what it keeps becoming  again and again down through the millennia. There always seems to be someone ready turn God's house into Walmart.

I am not talking about rummage sales or bake sales.  It don't think God is too concerned about those.  Nor am I talking about what someone else thinks is a commercial service.  Contemporary people think the traditional church sold out, and traditional people think the contemporary church sold out,  just because they think each other's services are "worldly." That's not what bothers God, either.  What really displeases God in my opinion is our attitude, not our choices.  We ministers are often guilty of looking at the church as a commerical enterprise, with ourselves as CEO.

Full time clergy live off our sheep. I wish we didn't--but we have to, if we want to be full time.  Most of them do not fleece their sheep--they take what they are given and serve with grace and humility. 

Our profit from the church does not have to be material. Even then they don'r pay us,  we enjoy the attention the church gives us.  We like sitting at head tables, having special parking places,  borrowing someone's summer home from time to time,  having dinner at the country club with a wealthy donor,  and schmoozing with the prominent people in the town. 

If we are going to mix with the elite (we tell ourselves)  we need to look the part.   We need to keep ourselves in nice clothes, ride good cars,  living in a good home.  We have to meet the social status of our wealthy parishioners, and that takes money.

That is what those moneychangers were about. The moneychangers were not hard working small businessmen trying to make a living by changing souveniers. They were working in cahoots with the temple managers,  paying a cut to them,  so the priests could live in the nice houses on the nicest street in town. 

What bothers me (and I think bothered Jesus) was not just that they were selling animals in the temple  but that the people who were supposed to be leading worship as a service to God were getting fat off it.  It was those priests and Levites who saw themselves as professional clergy, who were more concerned about their money than their piety,  who made Jesus angry.

The priests felt that they needed the money.    They told themselves that their office required a certain dignity.  It was a lie, of course, but that's what they told themselves.  Bending to the poor and stooping to help someone in the ditch was just not their job description.

Jesus wasn't just punishing these men, though. He was cleansing the temple.  The house of God should be for talking to God--period.

The modern church isn't just for prayer, either It is  part lodge hall, part architectural showcase, part family chapel, part  concert arena, and part social watering hole.  It is much easier to spend our time on the upkeep of the house and it's furnishings, than on the business that is supposed o do.

If we want Jesus to show Himself in our midst, then we had better clean first--not our buildings but our hearts.

God, cleanse my heart, and make it a place of prayer.

Holy Week 1

Holy Week is upon us, and it is my intention this year to do something I have never really done--to celebrate it.  I know that in the past I have preached Holy Week services, and done Maundy Thursday and Good Friday Services, Palm Sunday and Easter.  But as far as the week is concerned, I have never really entered into the drama of it.  This week I want to follow that drama like I've never done it before--drink it to the dregs and feast upon it to the marrow.   Then perhaps I will finally come to understand better what my Savior did for me.

Yesterday was Palm Sunday. I wrote about the service I attended for it, but the real Palm Sunday was nothing like the worship service.

I picture a town of sixty thousand people lining a less than a mile stretch of road from Bethsaida to Jerusalem.  These people were a powder keg of rebellion. They were farmers, shepherds, merchants, beggars, all kinds of people.  They hated the Roman oppression--their high taxes, their arbitrary and severe laws, their daily rapes and nightly debaucheries.  They could not stand their contempt of everything Jewish.  When Pilate called Jesus "king of the Jews,” we think it was a compliment.  In his mind, he may as well been saying "king of the rats" because that was the way he thought of Jews.  His earlier behavior, recorded in Josephus, indicated that Hitler had nothing on him when it came to hating Jews. 

The history of Jesus' period, the whole period of the Second Temple, was a mishmash of rebellions and reprisals. Fanatical Jews would launch a rebellion; the Romans would suppress it, and kill hundreds of innocents.  This would make the fanatics mad, they would launch a rebellion, killing hundreds more innocents. The Romans would launch another reprisal, etc.  This went on for more than seventy years, until in 70 AD, the Romans burned Jerusalem.  This didn't stop the violence, and in 120 AD the Jews were banned from Israel.   It was a mess.

Anyway, this group of ordinary people had had enough. If only they had leader who was tough enough to bring peace to Israel--which they took to mean a final, once and for all defeat of the Romans.

Enter Jesus.  He was the Messiah.  He had the power of heaven on His side--the power to heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out demons, and feed a multitude.  In their minds, he was the perfect leader.

When Jesus attended the feast that year, everyone wondered if it meant He was going to assert himself as leader. Then he did something very Messianic. He rode a donkey into the Eastern Gate--the Messiah's gate--in Jerusalem.  To them, it was a clear sign that the revolution was about to begin.  They followed and shouted and sang, "Save us, son of David!"

Then He did something no one was expecting.  He turned around and went home.  He didn't cast anyone out.  He just went home to pray.

Don’t we do the same thing today?  Don't we look for Jesus to fix our temporary strife, to take our side and our country's side, and act like one more charismatic rebel?  We seem to forget that one generation’s freedom fighter becomes the next generation’s dictator.  Look at Cuba.  Look at Russia.  Do we really believe the next crop of leaders will learn anything from the last crop of leaders?

We are lost, fallen people, morally weak and basically flawed.  That goes all of us.  When we take arms to force our way on others, we just become lost, fallen people with machine guns. 

The coming of Jesus was not just another go round at the same unprofitable cycle. It was an olive branch from God to break it.  "My kingdom," Jesus said "is not of this world."  He wasn't here to create another short-lived social utopia.  He was here to change our insides.  His supper with the disciples,  His prayer in Gethsemane,  His anger at the priests, who were supposedly the Good Guys against the Roman Bad Guys,  all pointed to a person who wouldn't dance their dance of death again.  He came to build in us a close, intimate relationship with God, which could sustain us, whoever was running the world at the moment.  He knew that as long as the cycle of violence, social, social and political power continued, nothing would change. But creating a people who could be free of anger - through forgiveness, free of greed - through Spiritual fulfillment, free of isolation - through a lasting relationship with God, and free of sin - through redemption, would make a difference in the world

Today we're trying to do the same old things, making the same old mistakes. We're still trying to create a social utopia by worldly power and beating the Bad Guys, and think that Jesus has the same agenda.  He doesn't. Holy Week teaches us that.

This year, I want to follow that journey to the Cross.  Maybe then I'll be on His side, rather than trying to make Him be on mine. 

Palm Sunday

Joy and I have just returned from Palm Sunday at the Lutheran church.  This is the first Palm Sunday in over thirty years I  was out of the pulpit,  and the first one in forty years that I did not spend in a Presbyterian church.  I wondered how it would be not to be preaching today.  I have to admit, it felt pretty good.  It's like a stagehand who finally gets to sit out in the audience and enjoy the play.

The worship service was different from any Palm Sunday service I had ever seen, and really different from a Presbyterian service, where we try to make people feel the sufferings of Christ by talking them to death.  What we do by words, they did by action, the ritual preaching louder and with more meaning that I am usually able to convey, even in my best sermons.

The service started outside the church. The whole congregation was given palm branches.  Then the minister read the Palm Sunday story on the steps of the church, and we sang "All Glory Laud and Honor" as we processed into the service and took our seats.  The choir sang several songs, interspersed with the reading of John 18 and 19,  the entire trial and crucifixion story.  Then came the offering and the prayers for the people,  then communion, where we walked forward and took it from the minister's hand,  as he reminded us by name that it was for us Jesus did this.  Finally at the end,  a woman read Psalm 22,  David's prophetic telling of the crucifixion, as the minister and his assistants stripped the altar and the front of the sanctuary bare.  The minister extinguished the lights and took off his robe and walked out, not as clergy, but merely as a man.  Finally, we all left in silence.

It was that part, the stripping of the altar, that got to me.  What is God doing in my life now, but stripping me of my status before Him, reminding me of what was said at Ash Wednesday, "Remember, you are dust, and to dust you shall return?"

Speaking of returning to dust, I received some sad news yesterday,  An old friend from seminary,  Gilbert Rowell died suddenly of a heart attack yesterday.  Gilbert was like me, a thirty year veteran of Christ's service.  He was a good man and a good pastor.  But now, his body goes to dust, and his soul goes to the Lord.   He will be missed, and we pray for Robin, his wife, and his children who will miss him terribly.

What is death, but the stripping of the altar?  We come into this world as simple souls,  grow up,  get educated, take our place in life as fathers, mothers, workers, leaders, ministers, or whatever, then, sometimes without warning, we God strips it all away, and we are left souls bare before God, facing Him alone.  We add layers of clothing and status around us,  and God can take it all away in a second. 

When they read the crucifixion passage from John this morning, I was reminded of a little detail I had forgotten. The spices that anointed Jesus' body were donated by Nicodemus, the same elderly leader who came to Jesus by night in John 3, to whom Jesus said those famous words "You must be born again."  I suppose that is what has happened to my friend Gilbert today--born again into glory.  When we lose all, and we are left with nothing, then life begins anew.  In the cross, we are stripped of everything so that we can start over,  with a new Life in the resurrected body of Christ. 

Underneath it all, we are just bare souls, naked as God made us.  It's good to remember that occasionally,  and that life can begin again.