Monday Morning Music Ministry

2-27-23

Ashes marked on the forehead in Ash Wednesday services, marking the beginning of Lent’s 40 days before Easter, is not mentioned in the Bible. It was not practiced during the first Holy Week, nor for the first thousand years of Christianity. It is an ordinance observed by Catholics and some other denominations, a tradition meant to focus on sacrifice.

For many centuries – indeed, back into earliest Old Testament times – the wearing of sackcloth (a coarse, uncomfortable fabric made of hemp or flax) and imposition of ashes (the modest reminder of dust, as in “dust to dust”) were symbols of humility, repentance, and willingness to do penance for sins.

When an association was drawn with the Message of the Cross, the mark on the forehead as a visible statement of sorrow and repenting of sins (in the manner that believers’ water baptism is regarded as an outward sign of spiritual cleansing) became a custom at the beginning of the Lenten season.

Soon the further practice of “giving something up” as Easter approached also became a custom, a sacrifice, reflecting the sacrifice of Jesus giving Himself up unto death. In time, the taking of sackcloth and ashes became the liturgical tradition of receiving ashes on the forehead as a symbol of absolution and forgiveness.

As many elements of liturgy and rituals can morph from rite to rote, so can the man-made tradition of “giving something up” for Lent morph, sometimes, into hollow customs. And too often a habit that is honored “in the breach.”

Not always, of course, but all too often such Holy Intentions dwindle into simple jokes. Contests of sorts – “who held out the longest?” or silly, insincere pledges to start with – like chocolates (when the person has been trying to diet, anyway) or smoking (what?… again?) having little to do with the suffering and crucifixion of Christ on the cross.

Too often, Lenten “sacrifices” are mere churchy versions of New Year’s resolutions – and just as meaningful.

A proposal: Why don’t we TAKE UP something up for Lent?

Perform, instead, some extra deed for 40 days.

Determine to help someone in a new way.

Reach out to a stranger… or a friend. Intentionally, daily.

Such actions, likely involving thought and effort, are as “sacrificial” as denying bad habits, giving up chocolates, or quitting smokes. The actions would lead to contemplation of what the Cross is all about – caring, serving, true sacrifice.

Instead of stopping something… we can start something.

And it might indeed start something… in our lives, our families, our neighborhoods, our nation, our world.

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Click: Create In Me a New Spirit

3-28-22

In these busy days, crowded about as we are with wars and rumors of wars, turmoil seemingly on all sides – the economy; trans-national health crises (or not); political and social recriminations; crime; challenges to traditional values that threaten to turn our world upside-down – a news item this week barely peeped amid the din. What it represents is in inverse proportion to its significance.

The poll revealed that for the first time, a minority of the population of the Netherlands claims adherence to a religious faith; membership in a church; belief in God. The majority claims to be atheist or agnostic.

To my suspicious point of view, this perhaps is the “first time” in the history of polling, but not in the history of our contemporary Western Civilization (what used to be called Christendom). We long have been living in a post-Christian society. I do not need to begin rants, no matter how valid, about “God being taken from our schools” or the Establishment’s war on Christian values, or the growing categorization of the Bible as “hate speech.”

I think what has been polled in Holland – the site of such fervent theological studies and activities in generations past, where English Pilgrims lived before sailing to the New World – is true throughout America and Europe these days.

The “Christian West” no longer holds Biblical truths as a priori components of society, government, law, justice, and relationships. This devolution seems to have happened during our lifetimes, but secularism, virtually a religion in itself, is a symptom, not the cause, of liberal theology, of pluralism, of modernity. The Enlightenment was not the first crack in our spiritual foundation, but actually the last gasp of the Theocentric view of life. Despite what many schools teach, the great Enlightenment thinkers were Christians who sought to reconcile, not separate (or “liberate”), the role of God in the world.

God’s place in the world has never changed, and cannot change. The role He plays can change, because it is what humankind practices and grants Him. When Nietzsche said that God Is Dead, he meant in the sense that society failed to acknowledge Him any more.

I frequently remind myself that Martin Luther, back when the Renaissance was evolving into Modernism, maintained that “Reason is the enemy of Faith.”

That is hard to accept. But it is impossible to refute. The intellectual anarchy from which we suffer is the result of 500 years of futility: the culture’s vain attempt, whether benign or hostile, to reconcile Reason and Faith. “Yes, but…” many people will be quick to say. But we must recognize that “progress,” as we routinely identify it, is difficult to define,. And it is a false god in any case.

Some truths need not be improved upon, because that reveals that… they are not truth at all. “Truth” – Biblical truth, Absolute Truth – is not conditional, relational, nor of any other qualification. The deadly temptation of humankind, and a sin of organized societies, is to think that we can without peril discard Biblical standards. Frankly, this started in the Garden: our problem is the sin of pride – our belief that we know better than God.

I write these words during the Lenten season. And part of my Lenten devotion brings these thoughts to my heart, more than usual.

Lent has become, to many Christians who even think about it, a vaguely religious version of New Year resolutions. At best, to some people, a way to remind us of Christ’s sacrifice. In fact that is not why Lent entered the Church calendar. I confess that this will seem glib, but it suggests that Jesus Himself, our model, might have avoided the cross by giving up chocolate for 40 days.

No, if Lent has real meaning and efficacy, it was commended to followers of Christ as a discipline in order to repent of sin. “Successful” denials of habits or entertainment can be, rather, celebrations of self. Even fasting can be self-centered, when we should seek to know God more than please God. Lent was meant to be a time to find Him anew, not hope that He will notice our obedience.

I am not disparaging motivations, but I do want us to focus properly. My own experiences includes a week once spent at a monastery. All comforts (like phones) were banished; silence was mandated; and I lived among monks. On the grounds were Stations of the Cross, and – as I hoped would be the case – I could do nothing day and night but pray, read, and meditate.

At the end of a week that was planned to draw me closer to God, I felt like I knew less about Him. However, I felt closer to Him than I ever had. A mystery, really — but with God many mysteries are to be cherished. The difference, perhaps – an important distinction – was that He seemed to draw closer to me, rather than vice versa. That is how I felt; the solitude and study allowed that.

Lent ought to be (and, God help us, not only confined to the Lenten season!) something like that experience. I am trying this year to meditate, contemplate, read the Word, and pray… and I realize more than ever how contemporary life robs us of quiet time and the ability to consecrate moments. “Yes, but…”

The Lord will manage, as He always has, with wars and rumors of wars, and all the challenges in the headlines. As if we can change, in major ways, the course of human events.

Christ came to earth – and Easter, which lies before us – not so we can save the planet, but so God can save us.

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These essays offer to “put songs in our hearts” to start the weeks. But not all songs are pretty tunes, much as such anointed music can bless us. During Lent, in the spirit not of duty but of humility, repentance, contemplation, spiritual sorrow, intimacy with God, re-dedication, and obedience, there are other forms of Christian music.

If there be a “song for our hearts” during Lent, we might adopt “Lachrimae,” a lute song pavane written by John Dowland around 1600. Its melancholy tune was set to words of a forlorn theme titled Flow, My Tears.

Click: Lachrimae: Flow, My Tears

3-2-20

Despite being shrouded in religious symbolism and tradition, Lent also is a part of Christianity that largely has no Biblical sanction nor institution. That is to say, the holidays and succession of observances were not established by Jesus, the Disciples, St Paul, nor the churches of the early evangelists.

In fact, there are myriad definitions of Lent, numbers of days of Lent, whether Sundays are counted or not, what constitutes holy fasts, what meats can be eaten, what colors of church vestments and displays should be assigned, what parts of the liturgy should be sung or suppressed, even when Lent ends. As many definitions as there are Catholic and Protestant and Orthodox traditions… and of course different views within Protestantism and Orthodox churches. Denominations like the Mennonite church, for instance, traditionally did not observe Lent at all.

Is the observance of Lent a corruption of Christian teaching? No! It is not even obliquely related to anything pagan, as can be deduced from Christmas, Easter, and other holidays. And Lenten practices are informed by the suffering and death of Jesus; the Passion; the meanings behind the largest aspects of Easter (the atonement) to the smallest (reminders of the significance of every “station” of the cross that Jesus carried to Golgotha).

If Lent is not a corruption of the holy aspects of the period preceding Jesus’ entry to Jerusalem and the horrible events of Holy Week, certain observances of Lent can be corrupt. When people “give up” broccoli, or even chocolate – perhaps things they already hate, or things they might indeed love; you have heard them all – it trivializes the acts of the Savior.

“How can self-sacrifice, or discipline, be bad?” we are asked. “And if we lose weight, or spend time in better ways than going to the movies…” is a sentence that does not need to be finished. Dieting, better use of your free time, less video-gaming, can all be done any time (or all times) during the year.

Jesus Christ did not suffer and die for your chocolates or your video games.

I am going to suggest something in place of sacrificing something for Lent. Since the precise details of Lenten observances are not in the Bible, I might feel secure to propose a different way to recall, even “imitate” (in the view of Thomas à Kempis) Christ’s Passion.

Instead of giving something up for Lent, can we take something up for Lent?

Jesus sacrificed His life, but He also gave us something very real: salvation. He renounced earthly pleasures, but He also gave us a supreme picture of service. He endured rejection, betrayal, and torture – which can remind us of how much He loved us, even while we were yet sinners – yet are we only to dwell on these things… or be inspired to lives of fellowship, reconciliation, and love?

He died… that we may live.

Should we think of taking up things – not only the cross, which after all we are commanded to do – and not merely sacrificing this or that for 40 days?

In the spirit of the Lenten season, and Christ’s Passion of which we are mindful, forget the chocolates and video games, and take up something.

These might be word games, of course: To take up something might be seen as a sacrifice; fine. And, as with New Years resolutions, or Lenten sacrifices, we can also “take up” something all the year ‘round. Also fine! In a sense, the life of faith is to see things, and act, in upside-down manners sometime. We need new perspectives. Do we really belong in a life of the world’s old ways of seeing and doing? We should yearn for a place where dead men live, and rich men give.

Take up charity work. And do it as privately as possible. Share something about Jesus to someone. Especially if you are uncomfortable doing so. Think of someone you have resented, and write a note saying you forgive them. And then… forgive them.

Take up something, not because it’s traditional when the calendar says so. Take up something out of passion – your passion – and not automatically.

TAKE UP something for Lent. For Christ’s sake.

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Click: I Don’t Belong (The Sojourner’s Song)

3-24-14

At Christmastime many people listen to Handel’s “Messiah.” Some of us listen to excerpts; some listen to the entire work. Some people attend performances at local churches or watch television broadcasts. For some people it is their only exposure to Baroque music during the year… and for too many, sadly, their only exposure to church music. Yet, in the words of the Sursum Corda portion of the liturgy, it is meet and right so to do. In all times and in all places – or, as often as possible – we should commune with our God. And that should apply to Easter as much as Christmas; with other supernal music as much as the traditional “Messiah.”

If we would wade into the waters of debate about the relative importance of dates in the Christian calendar, we would be reminded that over the centuries, Christmas was a relatively minor celebration, at least compared to Easter. (And that the Feast of the Ascension – marking Jesus’s physical rise to Heaven, completing the affirmation of His divinity, closing the theological circle of the Incarnation, begun with the Virgin Birth – was once more observed than it is in today’s churches.)

A propos these observations, I offer a suggestion that we all reverently replicate the consideration we give to Easter, and the attention we pay to the “Messiah,” by something new this Lenten season. Lent should be more than giving up chocolate, anyway!

Additionally, Lent gives us 40 days (that is, more than the week or so that Christmas affords) to enjoy music, and contemplate this season, concerning the most profound event in the history of humankind.

Let us avoid the temptation, for a time, to watch and wait upon events that explode in our midst, as compelling as are Russian osmotic invasions, or the perplexing disappearance of passenger planes. Let us look inward and commemorate an event 2000 years old but as immediate as the seconds and minutes of our fleeting lives.

I suggest we listen to one of the greatest creative works of the human race, Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Passion According to St Matthew.” The word Passion refers specifically to the rejection, betrayal, suffering, humiliation, torture, pain, and death of Jesus. That we should focus on these details indicates no prurience: that any person, much less the Son of God who could have waved it all away, endured such things, for us, ought to inspire our devotion.

So the “St Matthew Passion” enables us to understand, to internalize, to enrich our faith. There is a link below to an astonishing performance. I commend it, to watch in portions or in one dedicated private time. If you cannot, I will still explain why it is beneficial, and how art can serve our appreciation of the gospel.

Johann Sebastian Bach’s setting of the Passion story is based on Matthew chapters 27 and 28. Christian composers, as early as the eighth century, but mainly in the 16th-18th centuries, wrote Passions to be distinct from other church music. Passions used large ensembles, sometimes two choirs, orchestras, and organs. They were dramatic presentations, with “narrators” and soloists. Sometimes they were performed outside churches, occasionally in costumes and with dramatic action, a halfway-house to oratorios or opera.

In Bach’s version, he declined costumes but achieved great drama. In our video link you will see a stark and spare performance stage, singers in simple suits or dresses. There are no props; it is not in a cathedral. However you will notice profound symbolism in the changing placement of the singers; the colors that light the performance stage; and the illuminated Cross that floats above the performers – changing shades, morphing from dark to light to dark.

This video – made in 1971, and conducted by the legendary Bach interpreter Karl Richter – is an immense work of art in itself.

You will be grateful that the text, translated to English, is on the screen. When subtitles do not appear, it is because singers are repeating phrases. This impactful video allows you to appreciate the myriad of subtleties Bach used to emphasize the STORY of the Passion, behind the lyrics and melodies. Words are biblical passages, or the librettist’s paraphrases.

Take note of the highlighting of meaningful words, by orchestral emphasis. Notice that solo voices have keyboard accompaniment; Jesus has keyboard and strings… except for His dramatic cry “Why hast Thou forsaken me?”

Notice the music (instrumentation and style of play) reflecting singers’ hope, sorrow, or desperation.

Notice the musical (and the camera’s) emphasis on words like “Barabbas!” and “kill Him!” and “crucify!” Notice Bach’s use of musical devices – pulsating rhythms for tension; short bursts by the flutes to suggest tears; upward modulation when hope is displayed.

Note the repetition of musical themes (popular church tunes) by the choruses to unify the narrative themes.

This is a monumental work of art.

The “St Matthew Passion” was considered by Bach to be his most significant work. It was first performed in Leipzig at the St-Thomas Church in 1727, and many Holy Weeks thereafter; he frequently revised it. His autograph score shows loving attention, written in red or brown inks according to the biblical and dramatic libretto sources, and employing calligraphy in careful Gothic or Latin letters. He preserved it as an heirloom.

Baroque music and Bach’s genius temporarily were out of fashion after his death in 1750, and the “St Matthew Passion” was never performed again until 102 years after its debut. Felix Mendelssohn had discovered it, conducted a condensed version in Berlin… and the Bach Revival, which has never stopped, began. Mendelssohn, a Jew converted to Christianity, found his Lutheran faith much strengthened by Bach’s work.

Other famous Passions of our time include the play in Oberammergau, a small Bavarian town of two thousand inhabitants, half of whom stage and act in the seven-hour re-creation of Holy Week events. The play has been produced every ten years since 1634 when the town, threatened by the bubonic plague, collectively prayed for mercy and vowed to share with the world this portion of the gospel story if they were spared. In Drumheller, Alberta, Canada, every July the Canadian Badlands Passion Play is presented in a thirty-acre canyon bowl that forms a natural amphitheater. And of course many people watched the movie “The Passion of the Christ” a decade ago.

None can be more powerful than Bach’s version. If you are unfamiliar with, or dislike, “classical music,” this video will not kill you. If the hairstyles or once-cool eyeglasses of 1971’s performers look squirrely, just imagine how we would look to them; or how a magical capture of the actual 1727 debut in Leipzig would look to us. Or how the original suffering and death of Jesus, nearly 2000 years ago, would have seemed if we were there…

… ah! THAT is the art of J S Bach. This performance of the “Passion of Jesus Christ as Recorded by St Matthew,” DOES bring us back to the amazing, profound, and significant events of our Savior’s willing sacrifice for us. It is REAL. All the elements of Art – not just music and words, but the nuances of staging – drive the meaningful messages home. To our hearts.

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Click: Bach’s “St Matthew Passion”

The conductor and musical director of Munich Bach ensembles, as noted, is the great Karl Richter. The members of the instrumental and vocal ensembles are more numerous than in Bach’s more intimate times. This performance is longer than three hours (and was originally performed in segments during the weeks of Lent in Bach’s churches) but I beg you not to make it “background music.” The staging – the arrangement of the singers, the lighting, especially the position and illumination of the cross that floats above all – is profoundly significant.

3-11-13

This is the Christian story: The Lord of the universe was pleased to create the earth and populate it with human beings. An aspect of His love was to imbue His children with free will, which no mortal has ever failed to use toward rebellion and sin. God delivered laws and commands to His Chosen People, called so because in His plan, when the Law would be recognized as insufficient for a rebellious humanity to be reconciled to Him; that from them, a Messiah would arise who would provide the means of that salvation.

These basics are widely known, even if non-Christians shrug their mental shoulders; even if Christians cease to be in awe of God’s plan, even taking for granted their astonishing inheritance. It has been calculated that the odds of all the Old Testament prophecies fulfilled in the birth, life, locations, miracles, and other circumstances surrounding Jesus (most not disputed, even by enemies of His and His disciples at the time) exceed a hundred million to one.

I sometimes wonder, given all this, why the Christian population of the world is approximately 3-billion; more than one-third of humanity. History, threads of religious traditions, logic, the personal testimonies of those who lives have been supernaturally touched – I wonder why 95 per cent of people do not claim Christ.

An answer has come to me. A very 21st-century outlook might be a matter of packaging, or “branding.” Just as, to me, the upcoming end of Lent will feature too much Bunny and not enough Easter, it might be that the church insufficiently communicates the reality of Holy Week as we look ahead.

Most of us know the stories, and the pictures, of Jesus humbly entering Jerusalem on a donkey, amidst adoring crowds. We know He was falsely accused; He was betrayed by one follower, and denied by another; He was chased down and arrested; He was tortured and abused; He was humiliated perhaps as no man ever has been; He died on a rough cross between two criminals; He was carried to a borrowed tomb; on the third day He rose, conquering sin and death.

As scripture prophesied, He was led like a lamb to slaughter.

But can it be that we place too much of our attention on His submission? Jesus could have called down ten thousand angels to lift Him from the cross, to strike His accusers dumb, to spare Himself the pain, humiliation, and (worst, in my book) the abandonment of His friends and disciples.

We must understand that Jesus was born to die. And to overcome death. He knew the Father’s plan to become the sacrificial lamb, to take the sins of the world – our sins, through history to you and me – upon Himself. From the wrath of God, everything we deserve for our rejection and rebellion, He spares us.

So in this view, I have another image. I know it is VIRTUAL, not the way the Bible describes it. Nevertheless it is true. I ask you to see Jesus, not ambling on a donkey into Jerusalem, but galloping full speed. I remind you that Jesus, at the Passover seder, did not stop Judas from ratting Him out, but hurried him on his way. I suggest to you that Jesus, silent before accusers in the temple and before Pontius Pilate, was virtually shouting, “Come on! Do your worst!” That, until He collapsed, a Man of sorrows and a man painfully bleeding, on the via Dolorosa, He carried His cross as if to say, “Let’s do this! For this I came to earth!”

… and that, instead of being stretched and nailed to a cross, it is spiritually the case that Jesus virtually scrambled up that cross. For us. “Forgive them; they know not what they do.” But Jesus knew what He was doing, and despite the portion of humanity with which we can identify (“if it be possible, let this cup pass…”) He was there for us. He was there. For us.

And then, looking forward to what we call Easter Sunday, we read the accounts of the risen Jesus appearing quietly to Mary, to pedestrians on the road, to His old disciples, to many hundreds of others – accounts recorded by the Jewish historian of the era, Josephus, and by the historians Origen and Eusebius. He quietly appeared and witnessed to people. But let us realize that Jesus metaphorically burst forth from that tomb. In that sense he ran out, shouting to everybody, “I’m Alive!!!” In words of Anthony Burger’s little son, ad libbing in a Sunday School pageant, “Here I come, ready or not!”

Then, and now, Jesus runs up to every person and says, “I live so that you may live also! Believe on me, and you shall have life for eternity!”

Let us return from the virtual and metaphorical. These truths, no matter what the details of their playing out, cannot leave us unchanged. We can make the life-changing decision to ignore Him, or the life-changing decision to accept Him. There simply is no middle ground.

If we see Jesus in this different way – that He was Savior not just willing to die for our sins, but EAGER, such is God’s love for us, and that He excitedly confronts us daily – then we might see Lent in another light. And the rest of the year. And the Lord Himself. And the condition of our souls.

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Humanity’s response to God’s plan, and the sacrifice of His Son so that we might be reconciled by the acceptance of Jesus’ substitutionary death, has taken myriad forms through the centuries. Indifference, sadly; to revelation about the availability of a personal relationship with our Savior; to expressions in art and music. The awesome mystery of this salvation plan often is met by the question, “Why Me, Lord?” We know the answer is “Because I love you,” yet our souls scarcely can comprehend the enormity of God’s love. A contemporary song is Kris Kristofferson’s classic plaint, “Why Me, Lord?” Here he explains to some friends how he came to write it, after he had a life-changing experience.

Click: Why Me, Lord?

2-27-12

Coming — The Most Awful Day in Mankind’s History
This is a Lenten message, but about the end of the Lenten Season, not the beginning. So many holy days / holidays are associated with the period before Easter, that some can lose their meaning, if not their significance. We can think of how Mardi Gras and various Carnivals around the world steal from the unique spirituality of the Lenten Season that begins on Ash Wednesday. And during Holy Week itself, yes, commercialism and carnality intrude, but mostly the immense implications of Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday, tend to eclipse the other days.

We sometimes can benefit from looking at days on the church calendar that are less celebrated than others; and it is good to think about Christian days “out of order.” In fact it interrupts our appreciation of the fullness of God when we compartmentalize Christmas in the winter, Easter in the Spring … whoops, Palm Sunday comes first, let’s keep things in order. Commemoration is beneficial, and I’ll be the first to admit that I need reminders about some things; but we can let the calendar rule us, sometimes.

Shouldn’t we celebrate Christ’s coming to earth, God condescending to become flesh and identify with humankind – and us better with Him – every day of the year? Not just Christmas day! And woe to us if we contemplate the fact of the Resurrection – an astonishing miracle, with its implications for all of Creation, and for each of us individually – more on Easter Sunday than every day, every minute, of our lives.

In that context I have a thought about “Holy Week,” down at the other end of the Lenten Season. Palm Sunday we know about well, from the festive welcome Jesus received, and many re-creations we see. Some traditions observe Maundy Thursday and solemnly meditate on the sorrows of Jesus’s last hours as a man. Christian churches open, and even the New York Stock Exchange closes, to observe Good Friday. Easter, of course: it is central to believers’ faith; it is when families get together; it is when “Chreasters” (people who attend church on Christmas and Easter) come out to see their shadows, thank God.

But except for ancient traditions and very liturgical and Orthodox churches, and even then never to the degrees accorded other holy days, the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday receives scant focus. “Holy Saturday” is the only name it has, and some ancient rites would hold services in stark settings, and exercise fasting, on the day.

It deserves a major portion of our attention.

Many theologians divide history in half: all of Creation and humankind before Jesus; then the Incarnation and redemption of the world after the Resurrection. Mankind was under the curse of the Law until His death on the cross; and, the Bible tells us – Jesus Himself told us – after the Resurrection, life is in Him. It is the message written on every page of scripture… numerous prophecies and prefiguring and foreshadows in the Old Testament, pointing to Christ. The Scarlet Thread of Redemption. And now we are heirs to numerous promises about Eternity.

Glorious! Yet… there was one day in history when humanity must have felt utterly alone. Multitudes had heard Jesus’s teachings. Many did not understand. Some did. But everyone in Jerusalem – haters and scholars, followers and family – all knew one thing that Saturday.

Jesus was gone. He died. There were many witnesses. It was official. He was prepared for burial in the usual way, wrapped and buried. The earth was dark, Jerusalem was silent. Those who followed His ministry faced His absence. Those who knew Him best, even His mother, confronted the void. The Bible’s accounts tell us that nobody remembered, or believed any more, the scripture’s prophecies, or His promises.

You and I know what happened the next day. But we would not have known on that Saturday: no one did.

Was that Saturday not just the most awful day in His followers’ hearts, but in mankind’s history? Literally and figuratively, Jesus was removed from our midst on that day. People whose faith had sustained them… were shaken. People who had witnessed miracles, who had experienced miracles… prayed vainly for another. He had comforted the little children, and the widows, and the orphans, and the sick, and the needy, and the outcasts, and the sinners… would they be comforted no more? “I have come that you might have life”… was His life over? “I will be with you always,” the promise that would be spoken later but surely was a message of His entire ministry… was it a lie?

The nearest I can imagine to the feelings in people’s hearts that Saturday is what I have read about “terminal” feelings of being alone, truly alone. People who have survived suicide attempts, for instance, often confess to an extreme, aching sense of “aloneness,” not normal loneliness or isolation, of being aware that there are no helpers, no friends to call upon. Sometimes people are not aware of God’s presence; they call out but cannot hear an answer in their distress. “Cold” is the word most often used with “alone.”

Surely this feeling, deeper than deep in the soul, is the most awful emotion anyone can feel. Disappointment, failure, defeat, betrayal, standard tragedies, cannot come close. They are not AS close to our core.

And this is the feeling that Jesus’s family and followers must have felt that Saturday we look forward to in a few weeks; before He revealed Himself, and all Truth, to them. Indeed, all Creation felt that feeling on that day. Thank God that humankind has never had another such day, before or since.

Is there a benefit in this morose contemplation? I don’t believe it is morose; it is all in God’s plan. How much greater does the glory of Easter seem? How much more can we appreciate the presence of a Living Savior in our lives? How sweeter is the Christian walk if we remind ourselves of the horror of being alone… but instead, having a Friend who not only overcame death, but takes our hand to lead us to places where we will never be alone!

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“There’s not a thing in this world that’s worse than being alone… Take my hand, let me stand…”

Click: Where No One Stands Alone

4-18-11

The Lenten Season draws to a close. Through 40 days and 40 nights, I have been trying to think of this traditional observance in non-traditional ways. We can do that – for instance by identifying with what Jesus “took up” in His sacrifice, as well as what He “gave up” by His sacrifice – and be faithful to scripture.

But on Palm Sunday, when I think of Jesus entering the gates of Jerusalem, I come, myself, to a dead end of this exercise. There are not too many fresh ways to see those events. We know that He entered in humble and even seemingly absurd ways, like riding a donkey, in fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies, verse after verse after verse.

We know that one reason Jesus was hailed by crowds was because some people hoped he would be a revolutionary leader to overthrow the Romans. Frankly, He had been preaching for three and a half years, so most people would have known that Jesus was an unlikely guerilla fighter, few of whom storm a city on a donkey. No, the exuberant reception probably was due more to buzz about this man who walked on water; created wine and lunches from nothing; healed the blind, the deaf, and the crippled; and raised people from the dead. The grumblers in the crowd knew – and resented – that He also was wiser than they about the law, and that He claimed in fact to be the fulfillment of the Law.

We know all that. And there are not many ways to bring new interpretations to the events of Palm Sunday.

…except if we try to imagine ourselves to be the people on the Jerusalem streets, waving palms and laying them before Jesus in honor. And if we can try to go BACK in time 2000 years, let us also imagine ourselves a few days later also, as this same Man we cheer is now in shackles, under sentence of death.

Palms, and an old robe or two, whatever the local traditions of honor, were the cheapest things possible to lay down before Jesus. So were shouts, even hewing to the literal meaning of “Hosanna” and references to the Messiah. “Talk is cheap.” If we really wanted to honor Jesus, if we really believed He was the promised Messiah, the proof was not showing up at a party-like parade, but acting like we believed it, later in the week. And we scattered. A few of us denied even knowing Him. Some of us even demanded that He be put to death. And enough of us joined in, laughing at Him, spitting on Him.

Palm Sunday, in those lights, seem like a cruel joke. Must it not have seemed so to Jesus? It’s not like the fans who were at the gates showed up at Pilate’s, defending their Savior, losing the Barabbas-vote by a slim margin. Those former fans were not there; or if they were there, their real beliefs finally were on display.

Are the people who were waving palms, and shouting for their Messiah – their “personal savior” – different than we are? What makes them different? What makes us different? It can’t be that WE know how the story ended: prophetic details were clear enough to those people. And Jesus claimed, and repeatedly proved, who He was, right to their faces.

No, Palm Sunday is one of the most difficult times of the year for believers. Not only for what was about to happen to Jesus, physically; but perhaps for what has NOT yet happened to our hearts, spiritually.

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Click: Hosanna

4-11-11

Very much a Lenten story.

The sister and brother-in-law of a friend of mine are missionaries in Mexico Their agency is called Last Frontiers, and this is story about their family’s life this week.

Ed and Denise Aulie work primarily with indigenous peoples of Mexico -– specifically the Nahuatl of Veracruz, and the Ch’ol of Chiapas. They also speak in congregations throughout Mexico, giving studies of God’s Word. They are church planters, and they also minister through literacy training, medical service for the sick, agricultural work, and construction of homes for woman who are alone.

They have worked in the mission field with indigent Mayan and Aztec tribes in Mexico for more than 30 years as a married couple; all their children were born in Mexico. Through the years they have mentored many young people who now serve across the world, including in the US, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, China, India, Yemen and Iraq.

Their story, this week, is about one of their own children, however. Ed will tell the story:

Over the years we have seen many a mangled bicycle lying on the ground, with a sheet covering the rider. We have seen crowds gather around a toppled donkey cart with a child or grandfather lying nearby, having been hit by a vehicle. Yet we never thought that one day it would be our son lying in the oncoming traffic lane after being hit by a car at full speed.

Finally, would YOU ask God to give you the grace to give “The Pardon” to anyone in your life, whether they are waiting for it or not? Don’t let a sword hang over that person’s head a minute longer.

“Be merciful as your Heavenly Father is merciful.” [Luke 6:36]

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I believe that the meaning, and to major extent the essence, of the Easter story is in Ed’s letter. The purpose of the Incarnation… the offer of pardon for our sins… the role of forgiveness… sharing the Good News. The meaning, and to a major extent the essence, of the Easter story is neutralized in our lives if we keep it as a historical episode from 2000 years ago. It is not only relevant for today. It must HAPPEN every day, in each of our lives.

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Click: I Can Only Imagine (Puedo Imaginarme)

If you are interested in the ministry of Last Frontiers, click its name on the MMMM Recommended Sites list on the right. You can learn about their missions, their news updates, their support opportunities.

4-4-11

Another Lenten contemplation.

A recently released book is raising dust in Christian circles. Frankly, the controversy probably is bigger than the book itself, but so it goes. Love Wins by Rob Bell presents the argument that most people, or all people, will eventually be redeemed from hell, if there is a hell, because Jesus’s death was an atonement for all of creation. Eventually, in this life or sometime in Eternity, souls will be persuaded to accept Him.

I believe I have summarized the book properly. One of the author’s tenets is that God is so loving, it seems impossible that He would let people go to hell.

If I have not properly summarized the book, then I have properly summarized dozens of very similar heresies and distortions of scripture from the past 2000 years. In brief, there is a theological proposition called Universalism, generally meaning that everyone since Calvary has been or will be “saved” from punishment – from the penalty of sin and rebellion against God. And maybe even retroactively, before Calvary. Some call it Universalism. I call it Wishful Thinking.

The Lenten season is useful to believers as we contemplate the implications of our sins, our need for salvation, the concept of Jesus’ substitutionary death, the triumph of His overcoming the grave, and the meaning of His ascension to Heaven. The truth of it all.

Another new book attracts attention: Megashift. Author James Rutz presents data to claim that the fastest-growing religion on earth is… Christianity. Counterintuitive to some of us. We sense that Christianity is declining in America and Europe. It is. We are aware that Christians are being persecuted with increasing ferocity in other parts of the world. They are. (This is partly a reaction to Christianity’s growth; and it partly inspires Christianity’s spread) We observe that “mainstream” denominations are shrinking. They are. (The rising tide of believers is mostly independent, Bible-believing, First-Century types; “New Apostolics” is Rutz’s label.)

I believe I have accurately summarized that book’s documentation. These two books illustrate the irony, or at least the evolution, of Christianity today. Many people from predominantly Muslim and Buddhist and Hindu and animist lands, and even from demonic traditions… are now on-fire Christians. These new believers send more missionaries, year after year, to the “Christian West” because of perceived spiritual needs! And traditional white-bread, culturally elite, and intellectually pretentious “Christ-followers” and “communitarians” and “emergents” (they can’t seem to say “Christian” for some reason)… no longer “get it.”

“It” is the way of the cross, the plan of salvation. We all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Our self-inflicted unrighteousness, which denies us entry to the presence of a holy God, has a provision. We cannot earn it, but Christ offered it: believe in Him and accept His loving assumption of our sins and guilt; and we will be reconciled to God.

Is that hard? It depends upon our response. Are there details about it that we don’t understand? Of course; we are not God. Do we deserve this crazy, illogical, outrageous, unspeakable “pass” against a lifetime of spiritual shortcomings and rebellion?

Of course not. That’s called Love.

That is the love that wins. By God’s grace, He provided a way. If there is no need for repentance, the Bible lies; no element of forgiveness, then Jesus suffered foolishly; no salvation decision, the cross is ridiculed. If mankind will go to Heaven en masse just because we all have pulses, the Easter story is a joke. There would be no reason ever again to sing Amazing Grace.

I will advance a theory of my own, and I hope I properly am consistent with scripture: Jesus was a man who suffered like no other; but as God incarnate, He had the ability to focus His thoughts as He was on the cross. And with all the torments and betrayals, all the billions of people who did live and will live in history, when He was on the cross, I was on His mind. And so were you.

When He looked down, He looked – through eyes encrusted with blood, but also through the years and through many generations in many places – into the individual faces of you and me.

Why in world (literally) would the Son of God endure all this, and offer all this? So that we might accept – believe, confess, and be transformed. Salvation is free, but not cheap, as many have said. Neither should it intentionally be cheapened, not in this Lenten season, or ever.

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Click: You Were On His Mind

3-28-11

Let us think more about Lent. The 40 days are here to to prepare people — to prepare ourselves — for the meaning wrapped up in the “Easter Story.” In fact we should think on those things all year, and we do, but Lenten observances provide spiritual power-boosts.

The ancient contemplation of the Stations of the Cross, even reenacting Jesus’ walk, is something I have done, and enriches one’s faith. Deeply.

But before Christ’s betrayal and arrest… He was still Jesus, the Son of Man who walked amongst us. What I mean is this: if it is efficacious to contemplate the Cross and Resurrection outside of Lent’s parameters, so is it helpful to our belief if we remember the everyday ministry of Jesus, even during Lent.

For instance, Jesus walked on water, on the Sea of Galilee. This is recorded in Scripture, and we should know therefore that God intends a message for us. At the very least, this is one of the miracles that Jesus performed to confirm His divinity — for the sake of His disciples, and of unbelievers in the area, and for the sake of us today.

Alert: I do not pretend to any learned theology here. This is just spiritual speculation. But, to me, miracles like healing and raising from the dead and feeding multitudes were for the immediate benefit of those who were touched, as well providing as larger lessons. Miracles like walking on water and calming troubled seas might be more in the category of “Who say you that I am? Here’s a hint…”

If so, take that a step further. How often is Peter the disciple called out to trust Jesus, to act on the dare of faith? And how often does Peter — impetuous, presumptuous, boastful Peter — fail in the moment? He sinks into the water; he denies knowing Jesus at crunch time. (And how many of us identify more with Peter than with other disciples…? I do.)

Jesus did tell the disciples that many more, even “greater,” miracles would they do, that the Holy Ghost would come to be Christ-in-us. Now, I have seen miracles, I have witnessed healings, I know that Jesus’ words are true. Yet we cannot fail to confront the fact that when Peter looked down and sank into the water, Jesus did not turn to any of the other disciples and say, “Now, ye of greater faith…” after which they all strolled on the surface of the Sea. And we don’t see it today; I haven’t.

Insecure Christians are afraid that people will conclude that Jesus’ promises might not be true. But I believe the real lesson of such miracle-stories, up through the Lenten season to the greatest miracle of all, is not that Jesus was only teasing and therefore not God, but that… people are human. And all that this fact implies.

Peter sank because he looked down, when he should have kept his eyes upon Jesus. And I just have the feeling that if we could perform many of the miracles that Jesus did, we all would start trusting in ourselves, and stop looking at the Christ. I hate to admit it, but I know that I would.

When Christ lives in us, we are empowered to look to Him more than to ourselves… and that is the essence of the spiritual battle. We are better equipped, ironically, in order to be less self-reliant.

Less of us, more of Him. Walking on water… we can view it as one of the unique spiritual paths Jesus took, in effect, on the way to Jerusalem to give His life for us. Was Jesus holding out a spiritual means of taking a shortcut in the Galilean neighborhood? Hardly; of course not. Was He providing an astounding illustration that He is God, so we might more easily trust Him without any reservation in our hearts?

If that reaches our souls, during Lent or any time — if we poor sinners can understand and act on that — truly, that would be a miracle right there.

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Click: On the Sea of Galilee

This Gospel song was written by the Carter Family and is performed simply and compellingly by Emmylou Harris and the amazing harmonies of the young Peasall Sisters. The images — Jesus walking on water; Jesus reaching out to you and me; the Sea of Galilee — are from the excellent Beanscot Channel on YouTube.