Monday Morning Music Ministry

3-27-23

The “issue” of crime is in the news these days. In some polls it is the major concern of citizens, at least as troubling as the virtual invasion of millions of illegal migrants and the rotten economy. Unchecked immigration is a literal crime (“il-legal”); and high prices are cursed as virtual “crimes” by every shopper making every tough choice every day…

But across international stages, to our nation, cities, and towns, on sidewalks and in schoolrooms, crimes are on the rise as an epidemic; crimes being ignored and therefore spreading. Ignored… except by the victims. Spreading… because lack of punishment encourages their proliferation.

Crimes and sins are related – maybe in the chicken-and-egg context – but essentially, crimes are legal questions and sins are moral questions. That’s how “legalism” would define the differences. But there are deeper distinctions.

A crime is an act; sin is a tendency. The moment you commit a crime, you are guilty. A guilty act, and formal verdicts of guilt, can be pardoned. Sins, however, often have worse consequences, whether they lead to actual crimes or not. And where crimes can be pardoned, sins cannot.

Sins can only be forgiven.

Weeks before Easter, this still is an Easter message. In fact it is the message of all Scripture, the whole Bible, all of life.

Jesus was condemned by “legalists” who accused Him of crimes, and He was charged, tried, sentenced, tortured, and killed for “crimes.” We know that He was, of course, sinless. His “crimes” were twisted accusations by haters – healing people on the wrong day of the week; showing compassion to the wrong ethnic groups; citing prophecies – and, much like today, the authorities ignored what they should have respected and were upset by things they ought to have ignored. Does this sound like today?

The eighth chapter of John’s Gospel, despite its events chronologically well before Holy Week, addresses the centrality of Easter’s message: Forgiveness. The stark contrast represented by Jesus’s death on the cross was on one hand the crimes imputed by both the state and religion, and the sins of humankind on the other. More so, between the connivance of the malignant forces of state and religion… versus the liberating peace, freedom, and salvation offered by God: Forgiveness.

John chapter 8 begins with the religious hierarchy of Pharisees – Legalists – hauling an adulteress before Jesus, demanding that He approve her imminent stoning as punishment for her sins. Their first priority was to trap Jesus in a legalistic argument. Their second purpose was to scorn, hate, condemn, and kill the woman. Their last thought was to counsel her and lead her to repent. Least of all, Forgiveness.

Scripture tells how Jesus was diffident during their rant, casually writing in the dust; it does not explain what He doodled. My idea was the numbers 1-10, because He then challenged, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone,” reminding them, perhaps, of the Ten Commandments. In any event, as they dropped their murderous rocks and silently walked away, Jesus said, “Go and sin no more.” The usual interpretation is that He spoke only to the woman, but the message was also to the “Holy” mob… and to us.

Today, too many in the Establishment of media, education, and the state – and, sadly, the Church – want us to confront sin, but find a “welcoming” way to meet it halfway. Jesus spent much time, we read, with sinners. But in the Gospels it was they who went away changed, not Him.

Then John 8 records how the Pharisees engaged in debates with Jesus over His claims about prophecy, and Father Abraham, and fulfilling the Law of Moses, instead of what He taught and how He lived. Legalism was deadly, being a convenient excuse for those who would not see.

And Legalism is no less deadly today, as a crutch for those who wallow in their own sins and errors, rebellion and destruction.

Legalism, so much a component of organized religion, has sent more people on paths of misery straight to hell, than have accumulations of sinning… because it enables sin.

What Jesus taught that day, and spoke through the Message of the Cross, and pleads with us today, is that sin is the problem; not the sinner.

Willingly deaf to His words, the Jews in this chapter did not relent; they peppered Jesus with challenges (“You are not yet 50 years old, and yet you say you have seen Abraham?”) and their logic about the Law of Moses (to which He replied, “I am the Law of Moses”). They found the stones again, to throw at Him… but He disappeared out of the midst of them. His time was not yet come. Holy Week, as we call it, Good Friday, the Cross, and the Resurrection, were yet ahead.

But in the meantime, as we read, when He beheld Jerusalem, Jesus wept.

Surely He weeps today over America and this world of sin and error. He weeps for an apostate Church and a culture that prattles about what is “fair”… but not as much about what is pure, and just, and holy.

Let us weep too. Not to respond and act would be more than a crime. It would be a sin.

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Click: When He Was On the Cross, I Was On His Mind

1-8-18

Sometimes, when our minds wander, we think of inconsequential things that seem important for a moment, no more. This evening, for instance, I started wondering about souls in hell – When some other soul makes them angry, where do they tell them to go?

Frankly, beyond the fraction of a chuckle, that does suggest a serious matter. There is a hell, it is a place of everlasting damnation and torment. We are told there are eternal fires burning there – but I have had visions of a worse reality. A couple times when I have felt apart from God – when I have forsaken Him, not vice-versa – I have a sense that there is no worse feeling, or fate, than being separated from God. The prospect of that loneliness, apart-ness, solitude in Eternity, represents a coldness to me that seems worse then any flames.

Which is all a reminder that part of our jobs as Christians is to work to save people from hell. Is this the same as steering people toward Heaven? Actually, yes: there is no third way, no alternative destination.

Sharing Jesus and the Gospel – the good news, literally – is to have people confess with their mouths that Lord Jesus is the Son of God, and believe in their hearts that God raised Him from the dead. They will be saved, according the Romans 10: 9, 10. Thus forgiven and redeemed, souls are spared judgment unto hell.

The job, as I call it, of believers is relatively simple. Not unimportant – quite the opposite. Too many Christians make the Great Commission from Jesus to go and make disciples to be a complicated or onerous job by thinking everything is on their shoulders. They risk offending the Holy Spirit… whose job it is to “close the deal.”

We are only charged with planting the seeds. The Holy Spirit cultivates… and harvests.

In that way my wandering mind today recalled how the Bible is replete, in virtually every chapter, with symbols, “types,” meaningful numbers, minerals and woods and gems that have specific and consistent import. So has been religious art, illuminated manuscripts, stained glass windows, poetic verse, Christian literature, and the lyrics of songs and hymns.

One reliable symbol of Christ in song and story is the lighthouse. A couple of favorite hymns or songs build on that symbolism – Ronny Hinson’s I Thank God for the Lighthouse; the Rend Collective’s My Lighthouse.

I want to share here that we miss a sweet truth if we seize that symbolism and take from it a lesson that we should be lighthouses that attract sinners, unsaved loved ones, the “lost.” In fact the imagery that reflects the Bible’s truth is that Jesus is the lighthouse – His beams are seen by those in peril; the piercing light attract those “at sea” in their troubled lives.

Our jobs, however, are different but vitally important. In the words of an old Dwight L Moody sermon that inspired hymn-verses by Philip P Bliss in 1871, “Let the lower lights be burning.” What are the lower lights? Once ships in dark and stormy seas know where the shore is, where safe harbors might be found… lighthouses have had lower lights that shine, not ‘way out over the dark waters and to distant horizons, but that illumine the rocks and shoals and harbors and docks.

God shines, Jesus calls, the Spirit guides… and then we, as the “lower lights,” welcome the lost. Provide safety. Care for the struggling seamen. Am I nit-picking about God’s commands and our role in discipleship? No. Understanding where God wants us, and what He would have us do in the Kingdom, is essential to understand.

It is interesting that despite the passage of time and the development of technology, lighthouses still are used! I spent every boyhood summer near the famous lighthouse at Barnegat Beach NJ; and my parents lived in the shadows of the Twin Lighthouses at Atlantic Highlands NJ. Now I live in Michigan, whose periphery is dotted with dozens of picturesque lighthouses.

Lighthouses, even those that double as maritime museums, often still operate. Lights – once flames, then incandescent, might now be halogen – but still send their beams across the waves. Seamen and shore men might use sonar and computers… but somehow, also, still rely on the time-tested beams of light. And the “lower lights” to guide ships to safety.

Let your lower lights keep burning. Hurting friend, weary pilgrim, struggling seaman… welcome home!

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Click: Let the Lower Lights Be Burning

9-30-13

Jesus on the cross surely is one of the most depicted moments of humankind’s history. Think of icons, crucifixes, paintings, stained glass windows, mosaics, tapestries, statues, murals, tableaux, movies, and even Sunday-School lesson illustrations. I cannot think of any that do not depict this tender and powerful scene either straight-on or, occasionally, from some upward angle, the perspective of those at the foot of the cross.

Actually, I can think of one exception – the famous “Christ of St-John of the Cross,” the realistic/mystical painting by the master Salvador Dali. In this famous canvas, Dali painted Jesus from above, but front-on, hanging near the cross, without nails, or crown of thorns or scourges or blood. Beneath Him are not the gathered Mother and guards and random curiosity-seekers, but open water. At the extreme bottom, from a different perspective, the surrealist painted a shoreline of fishing boats. It is arresting, and thought-provoking.

Dali based his painting on a sketch by St John of Avila, a 16th-century monk, that came to both artists in dreams.

Yet I don’t think I have ever seen a depiction of the Crucifixion from the actual viewpoint of Jesus… as if through His eyes. Such a painting would not only suggest Christ’s perspective to us – literally and metaphorically – but Father God’s perspective too.

Jesus looked down, through encrusted, swollen, eyes, at His dripping blood and bruised body. He saw the splintery wood of the rough-hewn cross. On the ground He saw people looking upward – a collection of grief-filled, angry, regretful, indifferent, and hateful people. Looking toward the horizon, He saw the environs of Jerusalem, God’s Holy City, the scene of biblical history of the past, and of the future.

God’s perspective, as if to look down over the shoulders of Jesus? To think upon it is to come closer to understanding the mysterious separation yet unity of Father and Son, especially to meditate on the Incarnation: why God poured Himself out to become human flesh at this fulcrum-point in mankind’s history. Such an image would be to reassure a lost humankind, as if we need one more narrative – but we always do – that God sees us through the eyes, and the pain, of Jesus, who gave Himself so as to fulfill God’s provision, in turn, and so on! The Godhead identifies with our failings, our confusion, our need of salvation, our pain, our hopes.

It would be wonderful to see such a painting, or to paint such a perspective in our minds.

I have one more thought about that setting, seen through the eyes of Jesus lifted up on the cross. It is another example of what I call “virtual theology” – not in scripture, but not at all anti-biblical. In fact I think it might distill the sweeping message of the Bible’s entire narrative.

Jesus died for all. God’s plan, once mankind understood, or could be shown, that the Law was insufficient to lead people to right standing with a Holy God, was to cancel the blood-sacrifice of sheep and rams, and offer Himself as a sacrifice. This was according to prophecy. His children no longer would invent works or propose offerings to try to please an angry God. He would ask them only to BELIEVE in Him through the substitutionary sacrifice of the Messiah, thereby please a loving God.

Humankind. Here is my virtual theology: When Jesus looked down at the assembled few at the foot of the cross, I believe that He looked also into history past and history to come, and see the entirety of humankind. As God-in-flesh, He had managed more extravagant miracles.

Further, I believe that He was able, and did, look down, past the faces of Mary and the centurions, past the shades of millions of souls, into your face and mine, eye to eye, individually. After all, He came for us, and loves us, individually.

Still further, my theological understanding proposes this: that if every other person in history were perfect and sinless; that is, everybody except you or me out of billions of people, He still would have gone to the cross.

Willingly He would have gone. Eagerly. In fact, since He could have avoided the cross or miraculously changed those circumstances at Golgotha’s hill, the truth is that He virtually scrambled up the cross… answered the question “How much do you love?” by spreading His arms wide… and invited the nails.

He would have done that for you or me. In fact, that is NOT virtual truth: He DID do that for you and me.

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A great gospel song that parallels and illustrates the theme of this message was written around 1985 and has become a standard in hymnbooks and on concert stages and Christian radio. It was written by Ronny Hinson and Mike Payne. Here performed at the Family Worship Center, Baton Rouge.

Click: When He Was On the Cross, I Was On His Mind

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