Monday Morning Music Ministry

7-1-24

Easter has passed; and Pentecost – the “birth-day of the Church,” the day on which the Holy Spirit descended upon believers in the Upper Room – which is observed so many days after the Resurrection of Jesus, has likewise been celebrated.

I pray in your lives that Pentecost has been observed and celebrated. Let us distinguish between the Church and denominations; and let us always cherish the gift, and Gifts, of the Holy Spirit from our Father. (After all, what children would neglect or reject gifts from their loving parents???)

I am going to imagine an encounter between two of the Disciples during those momentous days in Jerusalem. Its details are fictional: I am compressing and conflating events between Jesus’s Crucifixion and the Day of Pentecost; these two men could not have had this face-to-face encounter. But aspects are nonetheless true: their actions, motivations, and reactions are true.

In imagining this dialog, I am confident of its verisimilitude, because we each have a little of these two Disciples, Judas and Peter, within us. I do.

Peter: The Lord was taken from us, betrayed to be accused by the Jews and turned over to the Romans, and…

Judas: I know! I was the one who betrayed Him… Surely you know.

Peter: Yes, of course. We knew that you slipped away during the Last Supper and accepted a bribe of 30 pieces of silver to betray Him. At the moment we had wondered what Jesus meant when He said, “What you are going to do, do quickly.”

Judas: It was my decision, but we all heard Jesus say, “One of you will betray me.” You all asked, “Is it I, Lord?” and I even asked, “Is it I?” and Jesus looked at me and answered, “You have said so.”

Peter: So how could you do it? Was that not a warning? You had the chance to resist that temptation, to change your plan! You lived and walked and talked with the Lord, as we all did. You knew He was the Messiah!

Judas: Yes! We all lived and worked together as brothers for three years! So how do you explain that you betrayed Him too? You failed Him likewise!

Peter: Yes… I did betray Him too. But my sins did not lead to His Jesus’ death…

Judas: So your life was more precious than Jesus’s? More than mine, I suppose? You thought you would save your neck by denying you even knew Him?

Peter: Yes… I always was impulsive. It is no excuse. And, as with you, the Lord also looked into my face and prophesied what I would do. In my pride, I protested that “Even if they all fall away, I will never fall away…”

Judas: And the Lord was even more specific about you, that before the rooster would crow, you would deny knowing Him not once but three times…!

Peter: I know, I know. But Judas, after your betrayal, after Jesus was taken and falsely accused, and beaten and tortured and sentenced to death… did you repent?

Judas: I was bitterly sorry. I grieved. I gave the Master over to be killed. I went to the Jews and returned the pieces of silver… But they laughed at me, and threw the coins to the ground. They mocked me.

Peter: You could have…

Judas: I did the only thing I could think of doing. I had betrayed the Savior. He in Whom no sin was found. Whose only crime was Love…

Peter: You hanged yourself.

Judas: No one to mourn. I was alone, despising myself. I did what I deserved. But… you…? After you denied knowing Jesus when He was being persecuted? Not standing up for Him? What did you do?

Peter: I was remorseful too! Especially when I was present in Jerusalem when they tortured Him and spat on Him and whipped Him and nailed His wrists and feet to a cross and…

Judas: Did you go to Golgotha? Were you there when He died?

Peter. … No. I hid. I was afraid for my life. We all huddled together. Those days, after Jesus died and was buried… were the darkest days you could imagine. He left us. We were alone. And none of us had spoken up for Him…

Judas: Did you think to hang yourself? You betrayed Him too!

Peter: Maybe it was my impulsive nature… but… I prayed to God. I needed to be forgiven. I begged for mercy. I was lost, confused… and had sinned against the Savior of humankind. I prayed for God to help me, to forgive me, to renew my faith. What else could I do?

Two sinners. Judas and Peter. “What else could they do?”

You know “the rest of the story.” The three women who had gone to the tomb to anoint Jesus’s body became the first evangelists! He had risen from the dead, and they ran to find the cowering Disciples and share the news.

Peter – the unhanged traitor – remained impulsive some more days. The Disciples beheld Jesus, some even incredulous. Thomas had to feel the wounds in Jesus’s side to know He was indeed the Savior in their midst. Some went with Jesus to the Mount of Transfiguration to see Him bodily rise to Heaven… the final confirmation of His divinity.

Then the Disciples returned to the Upper Room and – impulsively – argued a bit about how to organize things, or not, going forward. But… the Holy Spirit that Jesus promised came upon them, and on others gathered with them. They spoke in “other tongues.” Thereafter they received spiritual gifts, supernatural powers promised forever after to all Believers.

And – miracle of miracles? – Peter was no longer impulsive, immature, foolish. He became a “rock,” the leader of the Church, strong in faith.

This story is not about sins we are capable of committing. It is a lesson in how we should respond when we sin. We know how God will respond if we approach in true faith. He is the God of mercies who heals and forgives. We can pray, always; and we can pray for each other.

We all are, in one way or another at times, a Judas or a Peter. With whom do you identify? And let me ask a serious question, not fictional: What if Judas and Peter had sought each other out, to pray together, instead of facing their dilemmas alone…?

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Click: Can I Pray For You

3-21-22

We can think about Easter all year, and we should. But the Lenten season invites us, makes us ready. The Truth of Jesus’s incarnation… His teachings… His miracles and healings… His willingness – or determination – to be sacrificed for the sin-penalties we deserve… His arrest, imprisonment, and torture… His betrayal… His suffering and crucifixion… His death… His Resurrection… His Ascension: there are things that should be true to us on any and every day of the year.

I mean, Easter is not just for Easter; Christmas is not just for Christmas. The importance and relevance of every moment of Jesus’s life, and the Gospel, should burn to us and through us, every moment of our own lives.

So if we contemplate the details of Holy Week and Easter during Lent, it is a good thing. We can do the same thing around, say, May Day or Hallowe’en too; but here we are. I often find myself imagining what it would have been like to be one of the Disciples. The streaming series The Chosen – the fellowship of Jesus and His followers – is doing a good job of that.

It has always amused me when skeptics and agnostics say that they would find it easier to believe in Christ if only they could see Him; have some tangible proof that He lived and was the Son of God. Why am I amused? Because the Disciples themselves – never mind the multitudes who were taught, fed, and healed – lived every day with Christ. They saw Him walk on water, feed multitudes, heal the sick, raise people from the dead; more things than books could hold. For three and a half years! Day after day, week after week!

… and yet when Jesus was in jeopardy – as He even foretold, just days before – these Disciples fled. They scattered like dry leaves on a windy street. And we think that we would act differently?

I have further guessed that compared to the beatings, torture, whipping, thorns pressed down on His head and nails hammered through his wrists and feet… that the worst suffering felt by our Savior was the betrayal of His friends, their abandonment of Him.

We fool ourselves – and dare to fool God – if we believe that we would have been any different than the Disciples in those days before the Crucifixion.

“Different” is the operative word. Let us understand that Jesus chose the Disciples because they were not different. They had different talents and backgrounds, yes; but they were ordinary people – no celebrities, no dignitaries – and they were no different than you and me. So we can identify. We can learn from their experiences, admirable and cowardly and… human.

A great lesson, drawn from the actions of the Disciples that week, is presented by the different choices of two of them, Judas and Peter.

Judas, from the little we know, was sort of the treasurer of the little group, at least handling affairs as Matthew also did. As is well known, Judas betrayed Jesus by accepting a bribe from Roman authorities to reveal Christ’s whereabouts, and further to identify Him by embracing Him, on cue, before centurions. Jesus was then arrested and thus began His “trial” and execution.

He betrayed Jesus.

Soon remorseful, he scattered those 30 gold pieces and hanged himself.

Peter, during those same hours of turbulence, was asked by authorities if he were associated with the Man who called Himself the Christ. Three times Peter denied even knowing this Jesus. When he heard a rooster, he was thunderstruck and remembered that Jesus recently had predicted, “Before the cock crows three times, you will deny Me.”

He denied Jesus. He knew Him… but denied knowing Him. Was it much different than betrayal? I don’t think so.

Peter, to me the most impulsive, sometimes random, and always most human of the Disciples, was remorseful too. But he did not hang himself. It is not recorded that he was at the cross – Jesus’s mother, Mary, remained faithful – but we know that he huddled in fear after Jesus died, with the remaining Disciples. He endured, avoiding the self-abnegation of Judas and the skepticism of Thomas… and he met the Resurrected Christ.

From the accounts, he was the “same” Peter while Jesus showed Himself and ministered and preached and healed for those 40 days after the Resurrection, and before Ascending to Heaven. And he seems to have been the same Peter, huddling in confusion in the Upper Room where Jesus had told them to wait.

Wait for what?

The Holy Spirit is recorded to have come upon them, and others, “as a mighty rushing wind.” After that, people were transformed. They spoke in “strange tongues,” the languages of angels and of foreigners. They were imbued with knowledge and power… and wisdom.

After that experience Peter became a mature leader. He might have remained impulsive, but now it was to establish the Church and plant communities of believers. On that day, the Feast of Pentecost, the Church was born, and lives yet today.

Judas had betrayed more than Jesus; he betrayed the hope of Salvation and Forgiveness that easily could have been his. Peter denied knowing Jesus, but he exercised that glimmer of hope that redemption was drawing nigh.

Are you a Judas, or a Peter? I don’t mean betraying or denying Jesus… because when we sin, as we all do, we betray Him and deny Him.

It is our choice, however, how to react; to be remorseful and turn inward like Judas, or to wait upon Jesus and His promises, His Resurrected power, to come to us. To embrace the hope of Christ’s forgiveness.

Easter is about that hope.

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Click: Whispering Hope

2-13-17

I heard about one of those Management Consultants who conduct weekend seminars, telling a story about his advice to a trainee.

“There are two… essential… things… never to forget…” and he paused some more – “when you set out… to navigate your… career.”

Annoyed by the strangely lugubrious rollout, the trainee insisted, “Yes? YES? Well???”

The instructor replied, “Patience.”

Point taken. But the trainee pressed on. “What’s the other thing???”

Before he could finish the question, the instructor interrupted: “Timing.”

Good advice, if we think about it. (By the way, you just saved two whole days, and a $300 registration fee, for the seminar!) (You’re welcome.) Like most good advice, the best source is not a Management guru, or even Life’s Experiences, but the Bible.

The famous verse – so famous that even irreligious people often quote it during their marriage ceremony – from I Corinthians 13, offers “patience” as the first of the words that define Love: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.” Wow. “Patience” leads the list.

A verse we all should remember when things are wrong, or insecure, or bleak, or threatening, or dangerous… and we fret – “Be still and know that I am God.” How much simpler can an assurance of God be? My daughter Heather meditates on Psalm 46:10 by parsing its words individually: each phrase brimming with meaning.

“Be.” “Be still.” “Be still and know.” “Be still and know that I am.” “Be still and know that I am God.” Thus comes spiritual patience.

Then there is the closely related virtue, a sense of timing. Many of the Israelites’ woes, and their leaders’ mistakes, came from disobeying God’s directions, being impulsive, jumping the gun, so to speak.

Many Christians do this from mistaken confidence that they have God’s Will; are full of the Spirit; when often it is old-fashioned Pride.

Peter walked on water as his Savior did and instructed him to do… until he looked down. Impulsive.

Of all the Apostles, I identify the most with Peter, I must admit. Impulsive, sometimes too eager to please God, when all He asks is obedience. The “other side of that coin” concerns Peter, again, and those who were told to “wait” for the Disciple to replace Judas. They were impatient… they substituted THEIR timing for God’s… and drew straws. A guy named Matthias was chosen.

I describe him that way because we never hear of him again in the Bible. He was chosen by 11 men holding an election. But the Holy Spirit, in God’s timing, would APPOINT the successor: Paul.

Peter was an impulsive, bumbling, flawed follower of Jesus. After swearing he would never do so, he denied Jesus three times, leading to the crucifixion. But in God’s timing, Peter soon became a wise, inspirational, strong leader. A great Manager, in fact, of the early church, it could be said. On his confession of Jesus as Lord, the church had its foundation.

What changed? Obedience to God’s timing. In that timing, baptism played a role in the step-by-step timing we are to obey, ourselves. When Peter and the Disciples had been baptized in the Spirit – and as other converts were to experience in a tidal wave of belief after Pentecost – the promise of Zechariah 4:6 was confirmed: “Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, said the Lord of hosts…”

Jesus Himself had no earthly ministry we are told about, for the first 30 years of His life. Then he was baptized in the River Jordan, according to God’s timing. The Holy Spirit came upon Him, and His heavenly ministry commenced.

Patience is a virtue. And timing? Always remember to set your clocks and watches to God-Standard Time.

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Click: Waiting On the Lord

3-31-13

Many of the new games that absorb young people worldwide – virtually obsessing them – are role-playing games. Video games, “gaming,” computer games, hand-held games, are largely dependent upon tech innovations and New Media. (That’s me, back there, in the dust.) The designs enable players to choose identities and play roles, and engage in “what if” scenarios.

When I worked for Marvel and for Disney, and otherwise wrote fiction, the goal generally was to focus on one character, develop a personality for him/her, and define a clear narrative path, with beginning, middle, and end. Today the computer gamers deal in bifurcation of heroes’ personalities and narrative options (or quadfurcation – yes, that’s a word – or further dispersal of story elements… what if’s… alternate realities).

My son-in-law is a computer-game programmer. As I said, part of my background is in comics and superheroes. When we get together, we usually talk about… the grandkids and the weather. Ha! Superficially similar, the new, popular adventure media are worlds apart from the… “old.”

However, I got to thinking recently about the Easter story in a new way. Through the prism of “role-playing.” Can we imagine ourselves as some of the principal players? What we would have done? How we would have reacted?

For instance: Judas and Peter. Two Disciples. Close friends for more than three years, the glue of their association was the mysterious and wondrous person named Jesus. They both gave up everything to follow Him. They listened to His wisdom, even when they did not always fully comprehend. They saw incredible acts of kindness, and devotion. They witnessed astonishing miracles.

When crunch time came, however, they were traitors. All the Disciples scattered like autumn leaves on a windy street when persecution began, but Judas and Peter were different. Judas betrayed Jesus to the Sanhedrin, the sure first-step to arrest by the Romans. He did it for money, like spies who betray their country. Peter betrayed Jesus by denying he even knew him – three times, not once.

Let’s role-play. Would you have done the same things? We can say “no” quickly… but remember, even Peter said he could never do such a thing when Jesus predicted it only hours previous! Which is worse in this exercise – “fingering” Jesus, or claiming to have nothing to do with Him? Remember also that Jesus, knowing all, told Judas to go and do his dirty work, in effect. Jesus knew everybody’s roles in advance, even if they did not.

The real role-playing challenge – and the lesson that waits for us – is the next level of their games. Both men were mortified, overwhelmed with guilt. Judas threw away his bribe money, and hanged himself. Peter cried for forgiveness, and soon renewed his devotion to the Messiah. In fact, I identify with the “early” Peter because he was always the impulsive and sometimes reckless Disciple, even to the Upper Room, after Resurrection and Ascension, till the Day of Pentecost. But when he waited upon the Holy Spirit, wisdom came upon him, and Peter became one of the great and effective Apostles.

We sin every day; that is, the rules of the game don’t vary: we all fall short of the glory of God. But the next level is amazing – we can choose incredibly different paths. We can remain in sin, or be so remorseful that we cripple ourselves. And, frankly, disappoint God all over again. A constantly repeating game, unhappy ending. OR we can confess our sins, ask forgiveness, proclaim devotion to the Savior, and dedicate ourselves to Him. Not just needing, but wanting, to serve others in His name.

Judas or Peter? Whose game will you play?

And let us not forget the “2.0” version of this game – which, of course, is not a game, in that our response must be deadly earnest and has tremendous consequences.

But Jesus played a role, too. He fulfilled all the elements of myriad prophecies – chapter 53 of Isaiah, alone, reads like a news account of the crucifixion in every detail… except it was written 600 years before the events! – and played them perfectly.

He role-played on the cross, too. He took the role of you. And me. We chose separation from God by our transgressions. We deserve punishments for our sins. We do not deserve to live with God in Glory; we fall short. But Jesus played a Holy game. He said to the Father, “In this story of eternal justice, I will play the role of…” and insert your name. Or my name, or anyone you can imagine. In fact, you can name people of His day, of our day, of people yet unborn; people who are sinners, even people who despise the name of Jesus.

He came to take your place in that great game of life. When He died, the rules were adjusted. When we accept Jesus as God’s own, and that His sacrifice, the shed blood, served just the purpose He stated, God no longer sees us – that is, our imperfect hearts – when He looks at us. He sees Jesus.

Rate that Holy Game “E” for Everyone.

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Click: He’s Alive!