Two Overwhelming Things

There are two overwhelming things. Death overwhelms, crushing both our minds and hearts. Resurrection overwhelms, blowing our hearts and minds wide open.

In the weeks and days leading up to Easter I preached and wrote on the suffering and death of Jesus. Jesus himself found his suffering and death overwhelming. “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” he told his closest friends.

In the months after my son’s death I sometimes wondered if the questions in my mind were causing my heart to be more troubled, or if my troubled heart was causing the questions that plagued my mind. Mind and heart were alike overwhelmed. Jesus was “sorrowful and troubled.” Sorrowful indicates the heart, the emotions. Troubled indicates the mind, the intellect. Jesus was afflicted in heart and mind. And what overwhelming feelings and thoughts came to Mary as she watched the spectacle of horror; her son was crucified. Death is overwhelming.

Enough about death! At Easter we turn a sudden corner and discover the second overwhelming thing: resurrection! And it was overwhelming. The women who went to the tomb were told by an angel, “Do not be afraid.” They hurried from the tomb “afraid yet filled with joy.” When they saw Jesus himself, he said, “Do not be afraid.” When all the disciples saw Jesus, “they worshiped him; but some doubted.” These are all recounted in the Gospel of Matthew. The other Gospels record that they were startled, frightened, doubting, and that they did not believe the resurrection “because of joy and amazement.”

zeke | Exploration & Contemplation

A small group meets with me each week (online) to study the Scripture for the upcoming sermon with me. We were wondering about the fear these women had. One of the members of the group asked me gently, “How would you feel if you saw Peter again?” I didn’t mind the question at all. If Peter walked into the house with a smile one afternoon, I would be overjoyed. I would laugh and cry. But I would also be dumbstruck. Am I going crazy? Is there something wrong with me? Is he really here? What does this mean? Seeing someone alive after death – resurrection – would be absolutely overwhelming. But it works in the opposite way of death. Death overwhelms by crushing us. Resurrection overwhelms by blowing our heart and mind wide open.

There are three things I will consider, mostly from Matthew’s account of the resurrection:

  1. What is the resurrection?
  2. What does it mean?
  3. What is our response?

I preached and wrote about the suffering of Jesus and the death of Jesus. I couldn’t let it end there. So now I’m coming back to post these thoughts on the resurrection, although it’s a couple weeks late.

First, what is the resurrection? It is easiest to start by identifying what the resurrection is not.

  • The resurrection is not a resuscitated corpse
  • It is not a continued existence as a spirit without a body
  • It is not a symbol of hope
  • It is not a hallucination
  • It is not a ghost

The book of Luke recounts Jesus taking trouble to show the disciples that he was not a spirit or a ghost. “A ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have…while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, ‘Do you have anything here to eat?’” (Luke 24:39, 41). He could eat! But he could also walk through walls. They could recognize him, but not automatically, as his appearance to the men on the road to Emmaus shows.

I pick up a sense of joy radiating from the risen Jesus. “Come on guys!” Jesus says. “Why can’t you believe this? It’s really me. I’m not a ghost.” It’s just too overwhelming. Too much goodness.

In Matthew, Jesus says to the women, “Greetings. Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee. There they will see me.” Don’t be afraid. Of course they are afraid! The man they saw die on the cross is standing there with a different type of body.

That is what resurrection means: a new kind of body. A body with a new composition – does it have cells? We don’t know. We do know that its source of life is not today’s human breath but the Spirit of God. I hear from a number of people that this all sounds pretty nice. Eternal life sounds good. They just can’t understand it. And so they can’t believe it. Our current human bodies are made up of trillions of cells, and each cell is made up of trillions of atoms. Somehow that collection of carbon and other elements has the capacity for speech, and song, and sadness, and joy. This collection of chemicals is conscious. I don’t understand that. Is it that hard to believe that God, the source of all things, gave Jesus a new body with a new composition and a new source of life? That is what the resurrection is.

What does the resurrection mean?

Jews like the disciples of Jesus expected resurrection. But they expected it to happen to all people together, at the end, when they would be judged by God. Resurrection was tied together with all the overlapping images of the great and glorious end: judgment and reward, the kingdom of God, eternal life, a new creation, seeing the face of God. Something like what the prophet Isaiah foresaw: “The LORD of Heaven’s Armies will spread a wonderful feast for all the people of the world…He will swallow up death forever! The Sovereign LORD will wipe away all tears (Isaiah 25:6, 8). Death will be destroyed. How? Resurrection. And notice that there will be a feast. Will we actually eat in the new creation with our resurrected bodies? Jesus with his resurrected body ate, and apparently he really liked fish.

Again, some people find all this hard to believe. It is, however, exactly what they are longing for – life that will last, love that fulfills, justice and peace that will never be spoiled.

The resurrection of Jesus means that he is the king of this coming kingdom. For us the resurrection means hope. Hope in the English language is a little weak for the meaning of the word in the world of the Bible. It is confident expectation. What God did for Jesus Christ, he will do for those who are in Christ.

We wait for that new world, but we don’t have to wait to become new people. The new creation begins now, because Jesus was resurrected not at the end, but right in the middle. God’s new creation has begun!

When we are invited to follow Jesus, we are invited to die with him. The crushing weight of death overwhelms us, killing our ego, pride, selfishness, all our sin. All evil is crushed at the cross.

When we are invited to be untied with Jesus, we are invited to join in his resurrection. All who are in Christ are a new creation. One man who joined my church in California said that he had always been dark, cynical, and angry. His first thought on meeting someone was How am I going to kill you? The man we knew made clown balloons for kids every Sunday. His goal was to make them smile. This man changed so dramatically that his daughter started suspecting that he had dementia. He said, “No, I was demented before. Now I’m healthy.” Being united to Jesus in his death and resurrection begins God’s new creation in us.

In the words of a fairly new song about the resurrection (He Is Risen, by Paul Baloche):

Sing with all creation sing of a world made new

Endless life we too may live, bursting from the tomb

And looking up we see our King enthroned on high

His wounds of love now glorified

Rejoice for soon He’ll burst the skies

What is our response?

What do we do with something so overwhelming? The first option is denial. The Gospel of Matthew says that some of the religious leaders set a guard at the tomb to prevent the disciples stealing the body of Jesus and claiming that he was alive. After the resurrection they paid off the guards, telling them to say that that was exactly what had happened.

There have been all kinds of explanations of the empty tomb and the disciples firm belief that Jesus was alive. It was a hallucination, it was something they wished to be true and came to believe, it was made up decades later by others. Or simply, we know it is scientifically impossible, therefore there must be another explanation, even if we don’t know what it is.

The second option is doubt. It is a compelling story. I know people who say they would like it to be true. They see the hope and peace in Christians and want it for themselves. It would be so good if the resurrection was true. But it’s just so hard to believe. If that describes you, you’re actually in good company. When Jesus’ own disciples saw him “they worshiped him; but some doubted.” I think the reason for their doubt was the same as the reason for their fear. It’s simply so overwhelming. As people say about the death of a loved one, “I just can’t believe that he’s gone,” so people say about the resurrection, “I just can’t believe that’s he’s alive.”

What should a person stuck in doubt do? The angel said to the women at the tomb, “Come and see the place where he lay.” This invitation to come and investigate still stands. We don’t have access to the physical tomb, but we do have access to history. There is historical evidence of the resurrection. Not proof, but reasons to believe.

Besides the evidence of history, there is evidence within. The fact that people thirst is evidence there is such a thing as water. The fact that people thirst for meaning, love, and life that lasts forever is evidence that there is a God who satisfies those desires. Otherwise why would we wish for those things?

So I recommend to the doubters a small prayer: “If you are there, I would like to know you.”

The reason some might not be willing to pray even this cautious prayer is the next possible response: fear. The guards were so afraid of the angel that “they shook and became like dead men.” The women were told by the angel and Jesus not to be afraid. Because obviously they were.

What holds many people back from belief is not doubt, but fear. What will this do to me? What will people think of me? What will God think of me? What will God do to me? How would this affect my life?

Even those who do believe sometimes hold back from coming closer to Jesus. He might challenge me, change me, lead me into suffering. Do not be afraid. He loves you. He has overcome death.

A fourth possible response is joy. This one can easily overlap with the others, as it did for the women rushing away from the tomb. They were “afraid yet filled with joy.”

I have know people who have suffered deeply. The loss of a son, the loss of a business due to a betrayal, the loss of a home. And yet the person I have in mind was one of the most joyful, compassionate people I have known. In the Bible study on this passage I asked how people responded on an emotional level. One, who has suffered much over the past year, said “It is such a joyful thing to serve a God who is alive!”

Yet another response to the resurrection is worship. The women “Came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him.” The disciples also, despite their doubts, worshiped the risen Jesus. All responses must eventually lead to this. In humility, in doubt, in fear, in joy we recognize that God is God and Jesus is Lord. The key to enter the new creation is faith.

The final response is mission. The mission of the Messiah is seen in his birth, baptism, ministry, suffering, and death. The crown of all is the resurrection. Because Jesus’ miracles of healing were not permanent. Those who were made well eventually got sick, or injured, or old. And they died. The permanent miracle is resurrection. When the resurrection of Jesus took place the women were told, “Go quickly and tell his disciples.” The disciples were told by the risen Jesus himself that all authority in heaven and earth belonged to him. “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations.” There is in many a joyful heart of worship. Along with that worship is a burning desire that the would should know the risen Lord Jesus. Two overwhelming things. Death which crushes. Resurrection which blows us wide open. You can bounce between the two. You can experience both at once. Because of the resurrection we have courage to look at death, because we can look beyond death. And while we wait for the new creation, we share in God’s joyful, worshipful mission

Forsaken And Feasting

My study and preparation for my sermon on the death of Jesus felt like a feast. I read Matthew 27 in Greek and consulted commentaries. Psalm 22 is quoted, so I read that and read a couple commentaries on it. I even checked on the Hebrew, with some help from my co-pastor. As a seminary student his Hebrew is much fresher than mine. Preaching the sermon, and now writing it, feels like a chef trying to cram a whole feast onto one small plate.

It’s a strange feast. The death of Jesus is not the kind of food you would go looking for. Or is it? German theologian Jurgen Moltmann returned to the classroom after the horrors of World War II. Millions of people had been murdered for being Jews, or being handicapped. Many churches were swept right along with Nazism, leaving survivors like Moltmann feeling empty. When Moltmann stepped back in the classroom with theology students, it was their study of the Crucifixion that began to heal their souls. Meditating on the death of Jesus is food for a suffering world.

The coronavirus has brought suffering close, though it’s nothing like the horrible evils of WWII. I know people personally who are infected. I know of people who have died of the disease. Something like half the world is under lockdown. New York is working overtime to dig mass graves. The poorest of the world, as usual, will suffer the worst; if there’s no work there’s no food, and social distancing is impossible in a slum. A deep look at the death of Jesus may be just the food we need.

The Gospels race through the life of Jesus. They crawl through his death. After a brief introduction, the Gospels explode into Jesus’ ministry as an adult. We see Jesus heal, drive out demons, teach, and call disciples to follow him. A few pages covers about three years of his life. Then in the last days of Jesus’ life, time slows down. Matthew 26 and 27 covers about 24 hours. Instead of healings, deliverances, and teachings, we are forced to reflect on some uncomfortable things. Just like we are forced to reflect on uncomfortable things on a lockdown during a pandemic.

Slow down and eat this. Digest it. Jesus went before us into darkness. Jesus went before us into death.

I wrote and posted yesterday some reflections on Jesus drinking the cup in the Garden of Gethsemane. He accepted his mission of drinking the cup of judgment, suffering, and death. Jesus handed over his will and his life to God the Father.

Then he was handed over to the mob, betrayed by a one of his own.

Then he was handed over to the Sanhedrin, the Jewish high court. There he was spit upon, punched, slapped, and mocked. Peter, meanwhile, denied that he knew Jesus.

He was handed over to the Roman governor, who allowed a grievous injustice to take place because of the crowds shouting “Crucify!”

He was handed over to the soldiers, who whipped him. They also spit on him, beat him, and mocked him. They stripped him and dressed him in a fake robe and crown of thorns. Then they put his own clothes back on him and marched him out to the place of execution. Then they removed his clothes again and gambled to see who would get to keep them.

He was handed over to the cross, attached by hands and feet, and raised up for the whole world to mock him once again. The people passing by, the religious leaders, even the criminals crucified alongside him all taunted him. “He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, ‘I am the Son of God’” (Matthew 27:43).

We are forced to reflect on betrayal, injustice, abuse of power, the corruption of religion, the corruption of the human heart, senseless evil, the thirst for violence, cruelty, pain, death. The cross is a spectacle of cruelty, injustice, terror, and pain. “Darkness came over all the land,” Matthew says (27:45).

But before being handed over to the mob, the Sanhedrin, the governor, the soldiers, and the cross, Jesus has handed his life over to the Father. So now from the cross he looked to the Father. And found only more darkness. The external and the internal mirrored each other.

From the cross Jesus cried out in Aramaic, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The Aramaic sounds like the name Elijah, so people thought maybe he was calling the ancient prophet to come rescue him. But Elihah didn’t save him. And neither did God.

Did God really abandon Jesus? My understanding is that Jesus descended into absolute darkness, where God was absent to him. He had no conscious awareness of the Father. I think it is impossible for us to understand how this felt. Jesus has always been aware of the Father’s kind and loving presence. Now in his hour of death that presence was withdrawn.

People who have entered this darkness, the feeling that God is absent, often find great comfort in this. This is spiritual food for desperate souls. No matter how deep you go into anxiety, terror, depression, trauma, loneliness, betrayal, insults, pain…Jesus has already been there. He went before us into the darkness alone. We do not have to go alone.

In the book To End All Wars, Ernest Gordon tells of his experience as a prisoner of war. After an initial rush of religiosity, he says most people fell deep into selfishness and despair. Prisoners would fight like animals for a scrap of garbage to eat. The brutality of their guards is hard to imagine. Gordon was not a believer, but a group of soldiers asked him to teach them the Bible. They came from Christian backgrounds, but just weren’t sure about it in such dark circumstances. They thought that since Gordon had a college degree he was more qualified to teach than any of them were. Gordon told these few dozen young men that he didn’t know what he believed himself, but he was willing to explore with them.

Gordon writes about a “miracle on the River Kwai.” As Gordon met with the soldiers to read the Bible together each night, they discovered that the death of Jesus was their spiritual food. He writes, “The Crucifixion was…completely relevant to our situation. A God who remained indifferent to the suffering of His creatures was not a God whom we could accept. The Crucifixion, however, told us that God was in our midst, suffering with us. We did not know the full answer to the mystery of suffering…But we could see that God was not indifferent to such pain.”

They discovered that Jesus Christ the Son of God was with them in their suffering. The miracle that occurred on the River Kwai was the transformation of the entire camp. They began to love and serve one another, following the example of their Lord.

When Jesus himself descended into the darkness, he still prayed. Many people turn away from God in times of darkness, often deciding that God does not exist. Jesus cried out to the God who felt so far away, to the God who abandoned him. He found the words to pray in the Psalms. Psalm 22 to be exact, which begins not with a polite address to God, but the very words Jesus spoke from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

That same Psalm goes on to describe the writer’s situation in terms that should sound familiar after reading the account of Jesus’ crucifixion.

“I am a worm and not a man, scorned by everyone, despised by the people.

All who see me mock me; they hurl insults.”

“He trusts in the Lord,” they say, “let the Lord deliver him.”

He describes himself as surrounded by wild dogs, bulls, and lions with gaping mouths. Then without explanation everything changes. Suddenly, in verse 22, he opens his mouth – which had been dried up like a shard of fired pottery: “I will declare your name to my people; in the assembly I will praise you. You who fear the Lord, praise him!”

What happened between verse 21, when he felt forsaken by God – forsaken unto death – and verse 22, when he proclaims the praises of God? If we turn back to Matthew 27:50-52, we have a clue. The Father abandoned the Son to death. He let him die. Jesus cried out again and breathed his last breath. “At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people

who had died were raised to life.”

Finally, God acts! It is Good Friday, when we focus on the death of Jesus. But of course we know that on Easter Sunday Jesus rose from the dead. What happened between those two verses in Psalm 22? The earthquake, the tearing of the temple curtain, and the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. But hold on for that last part. It’s coming on Sunday.

The curtain of the temple was torn. That’s enough for now. The temple was the place to meet with God, the place of God’s presence. But only the high priest could enter the most holy place, and only once a year, bringing a sacrifice for sin. Now at the death of Jesus the curtain is torn open.

Jesus Christ is THE high priest, who has entered the presence of God. And Jesus is also the sacrifice for sins. All your own self-generated darkness, your evil thoughts, your selfish deeds. Everything is paid for. Atonement has been made. As a pastor I have heard so many sins. So much guilt. So much darkness. People who appear happy, healthy, and successful spill out stories of dark deeds.

Jesus pays for our sins. He also became the wounded, the abused, the victim of mockery and injustice. He meets them now in their need.

Jesus went before us into darkness and death. He also goes before us in the presence of God, taking us with him. Our sins are forgiven, our wounds are cared for and healed, our very hearts are transformed.

Psalm 22, after its sudden turn to praise, says that God “He has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.” It looked like and felt like God had forsaken Jesus. He was forsaken to die, but he was not forsaken to death itself. Psalm 16 uses the same word “forsake.” (Thanks to my co-pastor for his help with the Hebrew). There it says “You will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will you let your holy one see decay.” Jesus was not left in the realm of the dead.

As a result of the death (and resurrection) of Jesus, Psalm 22 tells us “The poor will eat and be satisfied” (verse 26) and “All the rich of the earth will feast and worship; all who go down to the dust will kneel before him— those who cannot keep themselves alive” (verse 29) The event of Psalm 22 will lead to a feast. The poor, the rich, even those who have died and those who have not yet been born will take part.

I started by saying that I was trying to cram a feast onto one small plate. There really will be a feast! And we will not just eat the spiritual food of Jesus’ death, because his death led to resurrection, to victory.

There is a testimony from a man in Ireland being passed around. A man named Lee McClelland was in the hospital with COVID 19. He had some nights of terrible darkness, including one “night of hell.” During that darkness, he cried out to God. But no family could visit, no pastor, no friend. No one. But a cleaner in the hospital came to clean his room. The cleaner spoke with him, encouraged him, and prayed for him. He prayed for Lee, who started to recover. A couple days later, Lee was feeling better. He told God, “I would really like some prawn cocktail crisps and a Coke.” Prawn cocktail potato chips sounds like a joke, but apparently it’s quite the thing in the UK.

The next morning the cleaner returned. He couldn’t enter the room, but he passed in a bag. “This is a gift from the Lord,” he said. In the bag Lee McClelland found two oranges, a Coke, and a bag of prawn cocktail crisps. Lee had never been alone, even in his nights of hell on the verge of death. God provided a little feast. I do hope that the feast in heaven has better food than prawn cocktail potato chips.

In my times of darkness, and I have had some deep ones, I have sometimes suddenly felt, Oh, there you are Jesus. He has gone ahead of into darkness and death, so that we never suffer alone. He has gone ahead of us into the presence of God, where he will take us when we die.

Ernest Gordon, summed up his experiences after the war. “The experiences we had passed through had deepened our understanding of life and of each other. We had looked into the heart of the Eternal and found Him to be wonderfully kind.” What words to say after such horrific experiences!

Let us look into the heart of the eternal one and find his wonderful kindness.

zeke | Exploration & Contemplation

Drink This Cup

zeke | Exploration & Contemplation

In the time of coronavirus some people are looking to distract themselves, or “stay positive.” Andra tutto bene, they have been saying in Italy – Everything is going to be okay. But for a lot of people, everything is not okay, and no amount of positive thinking is going to make things okay. You can focus on the positive when you haven’t yet been touched by death.

The message of Jesus Christ offers something different. It forces us to stop avoiding death and face it head on. And be horrified. Christianity presents us with a crucified man. Insulted, mocked, beaten, and nailed to a couple pieces of wood. Just thinking of the physical pain is unbearable. How could people ever invent such a thing?

We must be taken low in order to reach a new high. Then we can be truly positive. It should be no surprise that the beauty and power of God are only revealed in the ugliness and weakness of death; Christianity is summed up in the Crucifixion and the Resurrection of Jesus the Messiah. So of course we are confronted with the brutal reality of death. And of course we are given hope that is beyond hope. But still we find it surprising because we spend our whole lives trying not to think about death. But someday it will become unavoidable. Better to think about the death of Jesus now, before we think about the death of ourselves and those we love.

Jesus was always comfortably in command, even when he headed towards Jerusalem where he knew he would be executed.  But then suddenly in the Garden of Gethsemane “he began to be sorrowful and troubled.” The words used here indicate both emotional and mental anguish. Heart and mind. Jesus told his inner circle (Peter, James, and John) just how bad it was, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.” Have you ever felt so bad you thought you could die?

Jesus healed. He drove out demons. He called sell-out tax collectors to follow him. The crowds were amazed at the authority of his teaching. Jesus knew his death was coming and chose to go to Jerusalem to face it head on. He told his disciples on the way that he would suffer there and die.

So why was Jesus suddenly overwhelmed with emotion so intense he thought it could kill him? Was he afraid to die? Was he afraid of something even worse than death?

It was the cup he was told to drink. Jesus prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” There are a few possibilities for what the cup contained. The beloved 23rd Psalm says, “My cup overflows.” Psalm 116 seems to imagine a toast at a great feast: “I will lift up the cup of salvation.”

That is clearly not the idea Jesus had in mind. Today is Maundy Thursday, the night of Jesus’ last supper with his disciples. During this Passover meal, Jesus went off script. Instead of referring back to the deliverance of the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt, Jesus referred to himself. Taking a cup in hand, he said, “This is my blood of the covenant.” Jesus knew his blood was about to be poured out; it was the plan of God.

It gets even darker. God told the prophet Jeremiah, “Take from my hand this cup filled with the wine of my wrath.” He was to serve this cup to the nations. But not only the nations, also Jerusalem and all the towns of Judah. God’s wrath is not simply the emotion of anger. God’s wrath is his absolute opposition to all that is evil. God’s covenant people were not exempt from his wrath, his opposition to evil. Neither was God’s Son. Jesus went straight from the meal to the Garden of Gethsemane, where his soul was overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. He asked the Father multiple times if there was a way to remove the cup. Jesus was about to drink the cup of damnation, not the cup of salvation.

Earlier, Jesus told his followers that “he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things…and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life” (Matthew 16:21). Outspoken Peter took him aside and said, basically, “Stay positive, Jesus.” His actual words were “This shall never happen to you.” Peter had just recognized that Jesus was “the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). He thought, understandably, that the Son of the living God should not be thinking about dying. Jesus rebuked Peter. Actually, discerning something more twisted behind Peter’s words, he rebuked Satan. “You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns” (Matthew 16:23). Human beings think about avoiding death. Jesus did not come to avoid death; he came to suffer it. Stay positive? According to one article I read about a week ago, Italians are no longer singing from the balconies. The disease continues to take lives. Those who are not sick are facing poverty. Fears are rising. Andra tutto bene? Maybe it’s not all going to be alright, at least not for everyone.

Our response to death is not simple or predictable. Sarah C. Williams writes about death and the fear of death in her book Perfectly Human. Complications during pregnancy led to a critical situation. As a swarm of people rushed her down a hospital hallway, she felt herself floating above them all. Am I dying? She wondered. It didn’t feel so bad. Next thing, she found herself lying on her side in a bed. Alive. That night instead of relief, she felt fear. “I had come face to face with death the day before, but in the night I had faced the fear of death. The latter was far more dreadful than the first.”

Who knows what Jesus felt as he prayed in Gethsemane? The Protestant Reformer Martin Luther faced periods of intense anguish. He called it Anfechtung, which is of course not completely translatable from German to English. Luther describes these attacks graphically: One is “filled with the worst bitterness, with horror, fright, and sadness, and all this is experienced as eternal.” How heavy could this Anfechtung become? He didn’t know. He only knew that any more would be unbearable. If these attacks “were to reach their climax or last for half an hour or even for one tenth of an hour, man would perish totally and all his bones would be reduced to ashes.”

What depth and weight of anguish did Jesus experience in the Garden, and for how long?  Did Jesus experience the fear of death? The fear of God’s judgment? We don’t know for sure if Jesus felt fear of judgment, but we do know is that Jesus experienced God’s judgment. “He became a curse for us,” the Apostle Paul wrote (Galatians 3:13). Jesus experienced damnation. No wonder he asked God if the cup could be taken away.

Jesus confided in his closest friends, and asked them to stay awake and pray while he went off a little farther. Again and again, while he poured out his tormented soul in prayer, they slept. So he was not quite alone, but really he was alone. But when our hour of suffering comes, we will not be alone. After Joni Eareckson Tada’s diving accident at the age of 17 left her paralyzed (over fifty years ago) she was in despair. One friend climbed up on the bed next to her and began to sing: Man of Sorrows what a name, for the Son of God who came, ruined sinners to reclaim, Hallelujah, what a Savior!” That was the beginning of the healing of her heart, the realization that Jesus had suffered. She did not suffer alone.

Over the hours of agony that night, we see Jesus’ prayers change. First, he prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” The second time he said, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.” After the third time, he said “Rise! Let us go!” Clearly Jesus’ resolve was strengthened through his wrestling in prayer. A close look shows that his attitude changed as well. He went from asking for the cup to be removed, to saying “Your will be done.” And so the will of the human Jesus was brought into alignment with the will of God the Father.

Here we get into the Trinity and the identity of Jesus Christ. Wasn’t Jesus God? How then did he have a separate will from the Father? Jesus had taken the same inner circle – Peter, James, and John – along on another occasion. He went up a mountain. “There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light.” There they saw his divine glory. Those same three now saw his suffering. In his glory he did not stop being human and in his suffering he did not stop being God. As God and human, he was completely human, including having a human will. His aligning his will to the will of the Father in the Garden is a model for us. Jesus was asked to drink the cup of damnation. We will drink a cup of suffering, but not that one.

Sarah C. Williams, in Perfectly Human, writes about her pregnancy. She and her husband discovered early on that this baby had a severe deformity and would not survive long after birth, if at all. The doctors expected and assumed that she would abort the baby. “It’s the kindest thing to do, isn’t it?” she said to her husband as they discussed it. But then God spoke in a way she had never experienced before. “We felt God speak a message to our hearts as clearly as if he had been talking with us in person. Here is a sick and dying child. Will you love this child for me?” The book she wrote is beautiful and heartbreaking and full of love.

What a cup they were given to drink. It was a cup of suffering, but it was a cup of love. The same as Jesus. And like Jesus, they were able to align their wills with the will of God the Father through prayer. Still, their cup was not the same as the cup Jesus drank.

Some people face death with greater peace than Jesus did. Why is that? They are not drinking the same cup. We must all drink the cup of suffering and death. But not that death. We don’t experience the agonizing cup of judgment. There was pride, disobedience, and rebellion in the Garden of Eden. There was humility, obedience, and surrender to God in the Garden of Gethsemane. He became our curse. He became sin. The wooden cross was a tree of death for Jesus. It is the tree of life for us. The cup of damnation that Jesus drank becomes the cup of salvation for us.

At the end of the book of Revelation, death is thrown into the lake of fire. Death is damned. If that is what people mean by stay positive, then by all means stay positive. Andra tutto bene! Everything truly will be alright.

Speaking for myself, I have found that the presence of Christ in suffering has enabled me to acknowledge the horror of death. I know that he will see me through. He suffered more deeply than I ever will.

My cup overflows. I will lift up the cup of salvation.

For a few songs that fit the theme of Christ in the Garden, try this playlist.

Spiritual Social Distance

The day after the first death from Covid-19 in the US, Matt Colvin and his brother started buying hand sanitizer. Thousands of bottles, which they resold on Amazon for up to $70 per bottle. He was providing for his family, he said. He was performing a service to the community by making hand sanitizer available to people who needed it. It was also “crazy money.”

But then Amazon blocked him from selling because he was price gouging, profiting off the pandemic. The world knows all about it because he agreed to an interview with the New York Times, which even included photos of Matt with his wife and son – and his 17,700 bottles of hand sanitizer which he had no way to sell.

People responded to the story with intense anger. He is a disgusting, despicable human being, the epitome of greed and selfishness. Some threatened him with death. What is wrong with you? people fumed. Are you sick?

That is exactly how people felt about tax collectors in the time of Jesus, and for the same reason. People today are profiting off the coronavirus pandemic. Tax collectors profited off the Roman occupation of Israel. They were sellouts, collecting customs fees from their countrymen to give to the conquering power. And like corrupt officials around the world, they were known to pocket as much as they could themselves.

The result was the original social distancing. Tax collectors were barred from the synagogue; they were not permitted to give testimony in court; they were lumped in the category of “sinners.” Respectable Jews would not eat with such a person. They separated themselves from such a dirty person, the same as a person with a contagious disease.

So what was the motivation of a tax collector? Why would anybody endure such shaming? Obviously, they cared about something else more than personal honor and reputation. More valuable than loyalty, friendship, religion – more valuable than God himself – was money. Money was the tax collector’s true god.

So one day Jesus was walking along and he saw a disgusting, despicable, sellout tax collector named Matthew sitting at his tax collector’s booth. Jesus said, “Follow me.” And Matthew got up and followed him. This is found in the gospel of Matthew 9:9-13. The story is that simple. Jesus said, “Follow me.” Matthew got up and followed. Why did he suddenly abandon his very profitable profession to follow this wandering teacher around?

One of my friends in high school watched the movie Dazed and Confused with some friends and his own dad, who actually lived through the time depicted in the movie. In the film a group of high school graduates drive around in fast cars getting drunk, getting high, having sex, and driving around to do it all again. The dad had lived just that kind of life when he was younger. After watching the movie, he said, “That’s exactly what it was like. And we all hated it.” They were miserable, yet they went and did it again and again.

Matthew the tax collector was also miserable. His high income came at the cost of everything else. He had no real friends, no place of honor or respect in society. He was worshiping the wrong god, and you become like what you worship. Matthew was becoming more like the god to which he was enslaved. Greedy people see others as either a way to make more money, or an obstacle to making money. They are an asset or a liability. Treating people like positive or negative numbers corrupts the soul. Specifically, by not loving others, you lose the capacity for love altogether. Matthew could not give or receive love. Matthew was sick. He was dying.

Jesus walked by and said, “Follow me.” Italian artist Caravaggio created a brilliant painting of this scene. Matthew sits in a dark room, entwined with his tax collecting buddies. One hand counts the money lying on the table. Jesus stands at the other end of the room with Peter, light shining into the dark tax collectors’ den from above the head of Jesus. Jesus makes a vague pointing gesture with his right hand. Matthew’s other hand, the one that is not counting money, points to himself: “Who, me?”

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We tend to think that a rich man like Matthew made a great sacrifice to follow Jesus. He gave up his money, after all. Matthew must not have seen it as a sacrifice, though. Matthew was sick. It’s no sacrifice to be offered a life-saving medicine.

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Matthew was dying, enslaved to the god of money. Jesus calls him out of death and into life. Matthew gets up and follows. The call of Jesus unlocks him from his slavery to the powers of death. Matthew saw the opportunity that was presented to him. Money is a terrible god. Jesus is a good God. Matthew was invited into something he had never known – a life of love. He was called into the circle of Jesus. Spiritual and social distance were replaced with love.

Matthew then did what none of us can do in this season of coronavirus – he threw a party. What a dinner! Matthew was there with other tax collectors and “sinners.” Jesus and his disciples were there. The Pharisees, who were very serious about their religion, were there too. They asked Jesus’ disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with people like this?” Does he approve of them? What about purity?

Jesus himself answers with a three-part explanation, which turns out to be a description of the mission of the Messiah. (The Mission of the Messiah happens to be the sermon series I had planned long ago for this time. It turns out the Scriptures and themes fit the times with a surprising relevance.) Jesus describes his actions with Matthew and his mission overall with the following three points:

  1. The healthy don’t need a doctor; the sick do.
  2. Go learn what this Bible verse means: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”
  3. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.

We have become far more aware of our urgent need for doctors in recent days. We have also become more aware of how the critically ill truly need medical care. Jesus calls himself a spiritual doctor. So everything that people thought about Matthew was true. Jesus agrees, Matthew was sick. And that is exactly why Jesus was sitting and eating with him and his sinful friends. There was no need to be concerned that Jesus would be contaminated by the sinners he ate with. The contagiousness went the other way. People who hang around with Jesus are made healthy.

I have talked with so many people who feel so buried under their own unworthiness that they say, “I could never go to church.”  I always point those people to this truth: the healthy don’t need a doctor; the sick do. Those who are aware of their sickness of sin should cheer for joy! Come to Jesus. He will make you well.

There are, of course, plenty of people who don’t feel unwell at all. They are the Pharisees, confident in their goodness. But Jesus gives these Bible scholars a lesson: “Go study some more,” Jesus says. “You missed this text.” Jesus points them to Hosea. Along with many other prophets, Hosea placed the emphasis not on external religious observance, but on the heart, character, and actions. What does God want? Mercy, compassion, love. Which is precisely what the Pharisees were missing. Religious people can be just as sick as the obvious sinners. Matthew’s heart was wrapped around his money. The heart of the Pharisees was wrapped around themselves and their righteousness. They needed a doctor too, but they refused his treatment.

In this way, Matthew had a spiritual advantage over these others. His sickness was obvious. The whole world was telling him about it, especially the Pharisees. Matt Colvin, the hand-sanitizer salesman, did finally realize his sickness. Thousands of people piled abuse on him for his selfish greed. So eventually, he and his brother decided to donate their 17,700 bottles of hand sanitizer.

The last thing Jesus says is that he came to call sinners, not the righteous. Righteousness is not a word we use very often in English, but it was an everyday word for Jews. When Jesus was baptized by John, he said that he did it not because he needed to repent for sins, but to “fulfill all righteousness.” In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus declared that the righteousness of his followers must be greater than the righteousness of the Pharisees. The Sermon on the Mount then goes on to illustrate what this greater righteousness is like. To sum it up: love. Which brings us back to the verse in Hosea that Jesus quoted.

What is interesting is that when Jesus called Matthew, he explained that he did not come to call the righteous, but sinners. Jesus calls sinners, but he intends to make them righteous. And the righteousness of Jesus is expressed primarily in love. This is making the sick well. Matthew gave up using people for his own financial gain to walk with Jesus. Jesus loved him and taught him to love. He ended up with a righteousness greater than that of his critics.

In a time of crisis like this coronavirus, the best and the worst are on display. There are price-gougers and scammers at work, people looking to profit off the desperation and death of others. Many others feel a compulsion to do something good, from cheering nightly for medical workers, to delivering food to an elderly neighbor, to praying.

Some people have pointed out that the things people tend to worship – athletes, actors, health, money – have all been taken away. Sports, entertainment, well-being, and the economy are all good things; they’re just bad gods.The coronavirus has the potential to send many people towards spiritual health. Come to Jesus and be made well.

Just a small warning, here: Jesus’ cure is deeper, more painful, and more glorious than any of us at first imagine. In Caravaggio’s painting, the panes of a window create a cross, a sign of what Matthew was being called into when he gave up tax collecting to become an apostle of Christ.

At the beginning of Matthew 9, just before the calling of Matthew, Jesus heals a paralyzed man. First, he forgave his sins, which was shocking, because who can forgive sins except God. But Jesus showed his authority to forgive sins by healing the man. “Get up,” Jesus said. And the man got up. Just after the calling of Matthew, Jesus raised a girl from the dead. It says that “he took the girl by the hand, and she got up.” Matthew also “Got up.”

In Greek there are two words used here, both meaning get up, or rise. Both of these words are also used to describe the resurrection of Jesus. Like a man sleeping, Jesus shook off death and got up. Here during his life we see him raising the dead. He takes a dead girl by the hand and she gets up. He speaks a work to a paralyzed man and he gets up, his sins forgiven. He speaks a word to a tax collector whose soul is dying by the day, and he gets up.

Caravaggio pointed to this in his painting. You know that scene from the Sistine Chapel where God reaches his hand out to give life to Adam? (The hand on the left).

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Caravaggio knew that one too. In his painting of the calling of Matthew, the hand of Jesus looks strange because it is a copy of the hand of Adam from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. The hand of Adam, not God. Because Jesus is the new Adam, the true human being. Jesus is human and God. When he calls, he gives life. He makes a new creation.

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Jesus calls us out of death and into life.

We hope that the coronavirus will not bring death to too many. But someday, death will come for us all. Those who have come to the spiritual doctor look at death differently than others. When we close our eyes in death, we will hear him say, “Get up!” And we will rise with him to rejoice in his kingdom of glorious love. Then there will be no distance at all between us and God.

If you have read this far, apparently you like to read sermons. So do I. Since we’re in the time of the coronavirus, videos of our church services are available here.

The One Thing We Know

We don’t know how many people will be infected with this new coronavirus. We don’t know how many people will die from it. We don’t know how many people will lose their jobs, or how many businesses will go under. We don’t know when the stock market will recover. We don’t know when sports teams will play again. We don’t know when we will be able to travel again. We don’t know if people will ever feel comfortable shaking hands again. We don’t know if the elderly will ever feel confident joining large groups again. We don’t know if and when scientists will develop a vaccine against the virus.

When will we be able to have a barbecue with friends again?

When can we worship together again?

Will life return to the normal we knew before, or will it be forever changed?

Psalm 46 imagines a time of even greater upheaval – what if the mountains fell into the sea? The writer seems to be imagining the “uncreation” of the world, when everything that seems so stable is shaken to the core and comes undone? What if gravity were switched off and everything fell apart? The Psalmist says that even if this happens, “We will not fear.”

Mountains Sea

This fearlessness is not universal. “Nations are in uproar,” the writer states. True. A lot of my news comes from the BBC app on my phone. Three days ago I counted 38 out of 46 articles had to do with the coronavirus. It’s all people talk about.

The uncertainty is unavoidable. And uncertainty can breed anxiety. There is so much that we do not know.

There is one thing that we do know. In the Psalm, we hear the voice of God, saying, “Be still, and know that I am God.”

In a time of contagion we practice selflessness by staying to ourselves. Strange, but this is how it is. There is an opportunity here to press pause. What is life about? What matters? The deep question of the Psalm is this: what is ultimate reality? The answer is simple, profound, mind-bending, and life-changing. If the reality that seems so stable falls apart, the deeper reality endures forever.

“Be still, and know that I am God.”

 

In the waiting, I really miss the company of friends. This feels like the longing we have for heaven itself. There are too few worship songs about the sufferings of life and the confidence of heaven. We Will Feast in the House of Zion is a good one.  “For the promised morning, O how long?”

Intensity of Love

I remember a youth pastor from Nicaragua weeping through times of prayer and worship, tears streaming down his cheeks. This was over twenty years ago, when I was on a short trip to Costa Rica during college. A couple of us asked this man what he was so emotional about. “Mis jóvenes,” he said. “My youth.” He was separated from them for a while because someone needed medical treatment in Costa Rica. What intense love he had for those young people!

The Apostle Paul wrote openly about his love for a group of new Christians in the city of Thessalonike. He described his separation from them in the strongest language possible: “We were orphaned by being separated from you.” He felt like a child losing his parents, the most vulnerable state imaginable. But he also felt like the worried parent. Twice he writes that he “could stand it no longer.” They were facing opposition, harassment, persecution. So Paul was filled with “intense longing” to see them (1 Thessalonians 2:17), but was prevented from visiting, he says, because “Satan blocked our way.” Finally, he sent his coworker Timothy to check up on them in the midst of their intense suffering.

Paul’s well-being was bound up with the faith, hope, and love of these new Christians. When he got word that they continued strong despite the hostility they faced, he was filled with joy. Intense love leads to all sorts of emotions: worry, fear, longing, grief, but above all, joy.

Like Paul’s fears about the new Christians in Thessalonike, the youth pastor from Nicaragua had reasons to worry about his youth. I visited Central America on short mission trips every year of college, then lived in Honduras for a year after graduating. I observed up close the minimal education and bleak poverty that confronted everyone, but especially young people. Violence was a fact of life. We lived in a town of 8000 people. In one year, four people were kidnapped from our town and held for ransom. Two of them were killed. Everyone said it used to be worse, when one family dedicated to organized crime controlled the whole town. Stolen cars rolled down every street. Drugs and guns were everywhere.

It’s even worse in Honduras’ neighbor, El Salvador, where two rival gangs fight for dominance. Young men like those the Nicaraguan youth pastor loved so much are targeted as recruits by Mara Salvatrucha or Calle 18. These gangs have their nerve center in El Salvador, but they are international. We heard about them when we lived in Honduras, and they are active in the US as well. In some neighborhoods the control of the gangs in complete. Refusing recruitment is not really an option. To say no means poverty for certain, and probably death.

The violence committed by the gangs is appalling. People are frequently hacked to death with machetes. Sometimes the organs of murder victims are left in the shape of a pentagon, as literal offerings to the devil. Yes, Mara Salvatrucha has ties to Satanism. An article in the Washington Post quotes a gang member running from the scene of a murder in the Washington, D.C. area, “I told you, homeboy, that what I wanted was to feed the beast.” His fellow gang member explained in a court case that the beast was the devil. “When you [are involved in MS-13], you feel that the devil is helping you, and sometimes the devil asked you to do things for him.” Things like murder. Secular people find belief in the devil ridiculous. For these young men, of evil is very real and very powerful.

The youth pastor in Nicaragua had reason to be terrified that his youth would get sucked into a gang. It offers power, protection, money, and a sense of belonging. His intense love was expressed through tearful prayers.

There is a fascinating article from 2018 about the one way gang members are allowed to leave. Normally dropouts are targets for their own gang. The article says, “For the young men caught up in the vicious cycle of violence perpetrated by gangs like MS-13, the church is the only thing that can save them. Embracing Jesus Christ and becoming a born-again Christian is the one way that gang members will allow one of their own to leave and strike out for a better life.” And they are embracing Jesus indeed! The prison for gang members is now like one large church behind bars. They renounce demonic violence and dedicate their lives to loving God and people.

The author of the article asked the prison director to speak to “the most fearsome reformed gang member she could think of.” This former gangmember who had witnessed “infinite” murders described himself as a “recycled human.” Before becoming a Christian he was, in his words, “human garbage.” The pressure for him and other reformed gang members to maintain a pristine recycled state is large. One man said, “I’m a Christian. And the gang respects that. But if I fail as a Christian, they will kill me.” Life serving the devil was intense. It is no less intense serving God.

At this point we realize that these people live in a different world than we do. Life equals danger. Murder is like having a cup of coffee. Life is intense. Their devotion to God is intense. It must be. The cost of failure is death. The Apostle Paul wrote to people facing the temptations brought by persecution. The former gang members in El Salvador who are now following Christ face the temptations and pressures that come with living in territory ruled by their former gangs. Their spiritual fathers and mothers must agonize over them with tearful prayers.

And here in Belgium? A few years ago the murder rate in El Salvador was 105 per 100,000 population. In Belgium it’s under 2. Persecution of Christians? Unheard of, except the (significant) pressure felt by those who convert from Muslim backgrounds. Even those converts get accustomed to the busy, but affluent life of Western Europe. Churches in El Salvador worry about someone getting shot outside the building. We worry about whether song lyrics will be properly projected on our big screen. One of our family’s greater frustrations over the last couple weeks has been the speed of our wifi connection. Families in many parts of the world worry about feeding themselves.

An NPR story cites research showing that converted gang members pray and sing their hearts out at an average of 15 worship services per month. Practicing Christians throughout Europe and the United States keep their little flame burning by worshipping at a maximum of four services per month. Many make it far less often. When I preached on this theme last Sunday, I showed a picture of a prisoner in El Salvador kneeling in fervent prayer. Maybe the first thing you’d notice is that he’s on the concrete floor with bare knees. “That looks uncomfortable,” you think. Exactly. And when is the last time you were willing to be uncomfortable for the sake of seeking God?

In Belgium we live a life of comfort. America specializes in voracious greed and ambition. Comfort is sacrificed to growth. Work harder, work longer, grow the business, dominate the world. In Belgium people stop when their business is modestly successful. If it grew bigger it would cut into their annual holiday in the south of France. It’s normal for smaller businesses to close entirely for a month in the summer and on random days during the year. It seems healthier than America, but then someone with “only” 25 paid vacation days might complain about burnout. (To be fair, work + commute can be soul crushing, so maybe people really do need that holiday; I happen to love my work and I have zero commute). My assessment could be wrong, but it appears to me that ambitious greed is not the major temptation here. Comfort is everything.

Are the spiritual dangers of comfort any less than the dangers of persecution or violence? Poverty brings its temptations. Wealth brings temptations of another sort. An athlete pushing for a top performance faces the constant danger of injury. An athlete who doesn’t perform at all faces the danger of getting out of shape. Which danger is worse? Getting out of shape is more difficult to guard against because it happens so gradually you barely notice. And so in a context of comfort you barely notice that your hunger for God is slowly squeezed out. Improving the house, planning a trip to Lofoten, pursuing your hobby, perfecting your coffee preparation method, stocking up on wines. Life becomes filled, not with bad things, but with so many good things. Don’t I enjoy these things myself? Precisely. That’s just the danger. If I condemn enjoying the comforts of life in Belgium I condemn myself. I also feel the pull of the comfortable life and it takes effort to see the danger. In Central America, as in ancient Thessalonica, there are no lazy Christians. The context doesn’t allow it.

Jesus warned against both kinds of temptations in his parable about the farmer who threw seed generously into every corner of his property. Some fell on the path, some on the rocky ground, and some among the thorns. The seed on the rocky ground represents people who hear the word of God and receive it with joy, but “when trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away.” This is what the Apostle Paul was afraid of with the new Christians in Thessalonica. This is similar to the danger faced by gangmembers who begin to follow Christ in Central America.

Jesus’ parable continues with the seed that fell among the thorns, which represents the word of God that begins to grow, but “the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful” (See Mark 4:1-20 for the full parable). Sound familiar?

As a pastor I don’t worry much about my people being murdered, or denying Christ because of persecution. But I do worry about “the desires for other things” that “come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful.” Those other things are not bad things. Food, vacations, recreation – comfort – these are good things. But they can suffocate THE good thing of knowing God and living a fruitful life. People in many places are beaten with iron rods of persecution (literally and figuratively). We just keep sinking deeper into a bed of pillows. We never encounter anything solid at all, and so we suffocate, choking on God’s good gifts but missing God himself.

Both of these sets of temptations are relevant. The Apostle Paul wrote, “I was afraid that in some way the tempter had tempted you and that our labors might have been in vain” (1 Thessalonians 3:5). Many people don’t believe there is a tempter, yet they are drowning in pornography, failing in marriage, growing more miserable even as they gain physical comforts. Loneliness and depression are frequently in the news as epidemics affecting Europe. Children are often medicated for anxiety disorders. If we lived in Central America none of us would deny the reality of evil. Here evil and its effects lie hidden just below the comfortable surface of life. Sometimes a tragedy forces real pain through the comfort, but usually people just attempt to throw more padding on those painful edges.

What should we do? Comfort is nice, but it is not a worthy life goal. God’s goal for us is expressed by Paul just after pouring out his expressions of love for the Thessalonians: “May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones” (1 Thessalonians 3:13). Jesus’ parable concludes with the seed that falls on good soil and produces a crop up to “a hundred times what was sown.” To be blameless, holy, and fruitful may mean great discomfort. It certainly means growing in the intensity of love we see expressed by Paul, and what I saw in the youth pastor from Nicaragua. Intense love leads to suffering.

In the late 1950s David Wilkerson was called to work with gang members in New York City. (His story is told in the well-known book The Cross and the Switchblade). One gang member, Nicky Cruz, stared down Wilkerson on the street and said, “You come near me and I’ll kill you.” Rather than retreating to the comfortable rural home where he had been spending hours each day watching TV, Wilkerson responded, “You could cut me up into a thousand pieces and lay them in the street, and every piece will still love you.” Nicky Cruz didn’t cut him up; pierced by such powerful love, he gave his life to Christ.

Where did Wilkerson find such intensity of love? It’s a small piece of the intense love that God has for us. “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son” (John 3:16). The willingness of Jesus to experience the ultimate discomfort – the agony of carrying the sins of the world on the cross – is the proof of the intensity of God’s love for humankind.

Quantum Suffering

Our son Peter would be thirteen years old today. Peter was curious,creative, and full of conversation. He was fascinated with the world. He had long talks with his grandfather about the fourth dimension and long talks with me about the concept of “nothing.” He had talks with anyone interested about the many weird-but-true facts he had learned. Did you know that lightning is five times hotter than the surface of the sun?

zeke | Exploration & Contemplation Peter being his weird and wonderful self

A weird-but-true fact that he had not yet learned is “quantum entanglement.” As I understand it (which is not at all), quantum entanglement is about how two “quantum entities” (whatever those are) continue to interact with one another even after being separated in space. It seems unbelievable – Einstein dismissed it as “spooky action at a distance” – but it’s based on the experiments and observations of physicists.

John Polkinghorne, a physicist and Anglican priest, writes about this in Quantum Physics andTheology: An Unexpected Kinship. As he does with other aspects of science and theology, Polkinghorne draws an analogy here between quantum entanglement and the incarnation, which we marvel at during Christmas. Through becoming human, God participated in human suffering. Though separated by space (and time) Christ is still “entangled” with us through the cross. He affects and interacts with us and we affect and interact with him. His wounds were visible even in his resurrected body. John’s vision in Revelation describes a lamb “looking as if it had been slain.” Our Lord is the crucified Lord. Christ and his people are entangled in suffering together. He shares our suffering and we share his.

Peter’s presence became wonderfully entangled with my existence. I spent hours trying to get him to sleep as a baby. I spent many hours of delightful conversation with him as a boy. We spent hours – days actually – exploring the mountains together. If Peter had never been born, of course, I would not miss him now. But his absence is now painfully entangled with my existence. I would rather have his absence than have nothing of him at all.

Peter would have enjoyed learning about quantum theory (and he probably would have understood it better than I do). I recall watching a short video about the theory of relativity with him. Why not quantum theory too? Peter’s curiosity had no limits, nor did his delight in the world and its Creator. Did you know that Uranus and Neptune may have oceans of liquid diamond with diamond icebergs floating in them? Our Creator has made a world full of surprises, quantum entanglement among them. Another weird-but-true fact: Did you know that our Creator was willing to suffer death on a cross?

In preparing for next Sunday’s sermon, I read over the story of David and Bathsheba again. Being now more entangled with the suffering of the world, it made me cry this time. Even the greatest of us are sinners. David the anointed king, the man after God’s own heart, committed adultery and murder. His sons were no better. He grieved the death of an infant son, the murder of one, and the death in battle of another. In his grief for the dying baby he fasted and laid on the ground in sackcloth for seven days. Great king David was familiar with sin and suffering. Can’t we find just one good and pure person? Yes, but only one. The one who became entangled with humanity forever in the incarnation and the cross. In fact, the sinfulness of all humanity is the reason he came. They were to give him the name Jesus “because he will save his people from their sins.” Somehow grief has made me more aware of my sinfulness. It is also making me more aware of God’s love. I recently discovered this song that sums it up: Our sins they are many, his mercy is more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijsjA5Yf8XA&list=RDijsjA5Yf8XA&start_radio=1

The incarnation and death of Jesus is good news. Even better news: he also rose from the dead. By faith we are already entangled with him in resurrection life. We begin to taste it through the gift of the Spirit. We long for it. We groan and are burdened, as the apostle Paul says, longing for our heavenly home. I long for it more now than ever before. Another song, which I learned of from a family whose young son is dying from brain cancer. There are not many songs that express suffering and hope like this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIahc83Kvp4

In all of this I find hope. Our daughter has reached eleven, the age at which Peter died. We get to see her personality continue to develop. I don’t get to see the further developments in the personality of my curious, creative, conversationalist thirteen-year-old. But I know that he is in Christ. And I am in Christ.

Though separated by space, by time, by death, we are entangled together in suffering, and resurrection, and glory.

Sexy Fries

There is a place in Antwerp where you can sample the combined national dish of Belgium and the Netherlands.

Mayonnaise! There are five varieties, including Andalusian and truffle. Make sure you hold the spigot open long enough for the compressed air to gently produce a subtly flavored emulsion of whipped egg yolk, oil, and vinegar in your paper cup.

Just kidding. There are five varieties of mayonnaise and those are the sauce of choice in Benelux, but the real highlight of this place is the fries.

They are, in fact, the perfect fry: crisp, salty, and flavorful. “Creamy-soft on the inside and beautifully crispy on the outside,” as the napkins explain.

Fries really are a national dish. As do most Americans, we pass on the mayonnaise, but feast on the fries. The fries in the photo above are topped with kimchi, one of the seasonally alternating variations of toppings. We’ve sampled the Flemish beef stew, Thai chicken, and basil-parmesan.

The proprietor takes his fries seriously. The white tiles reflect candlelight. The same gently thumping music plays every time we visit (only about three times, actually). The employees must be going crazy from the music. The male employees all wear cravats. “Don’t take a drink from the trays of ice!” they will tell you. Those are perfectly placed for the sense of atmosphere. “We’ll get one out of the cooler for you.”

The place strikes me as a little pretentious, but they pull it off. Because fries this good really do deserve candlelight and cravats. We call the place Sexy Fries. We raved and joked about Sexy Fries so much that a visiting friend was disappointed to find out this place is actually called the Frites Atelier. If I ever start a restaurant highlighting the fry, I’ll call it Sexy Fries.

Since this post is purely for fun, I’ll include another photo from an advertisement I spotted in the east part of the country.

Any guesses what it’s for?

Yep, Segway polo! Looks like fun! The intensity!

Finally, of the multiplication of disgusting potato chip flavors, there is no end. What is Giant Flavour, you wonder, and how is it different from Classic Burger? So do I. So do I.

 

Grizzly God

Nineteen years ago I was a summer youth intern at a church in Anchorage, Alaska. Near the end of that wonderful summer they took all the youth leaders to Denali. The only way to tour the park is by bus or by foot. We took a bus.

We saw caribou (known on the other hemisphere as reindeer), dall sheep, and mountains. Including THE mountain, which was lucky, because only a third of visitors actually get to see Mt. Denali, which usually hides behind dense clouds. The tour bus driver explained how large Denali National Park is and how long it would take to fully explore it. The park is nearly the size of the country we live in! And if you did manage to explore every acre, you still wouldn’t have experienced the park in its various changes of clothing and mood – the snowmelt of spring, the eternal light of summer, the deepening colors of fall, and the northern lights of winter, among other glories.

The bus driver at Denali repeatedly informed us that we could get off the bus and walk at any time. It’s a great way to see the park, he said. Any other bus would pick us up. A few minutes later the bus driver said, “Over on your right you see a grizzly bear making its way down the hill.”

And a little farther, “And there is a grizzly foraging for berries on our left.”

And a little farther, “There is a grizzly bear just off the road. What a treat.” Still he repeated, “You can get off the bus anytime you like.” Nobody got off the bus.

Around the time of this tour of Denali National Park, I read A.W. Tozer’s classic book on spirituality The Pursuit of God. Tozer writes, “Now begins the glorious pursuit, the heart’s happy exploration of the infinite riches of the Godhead. That is where we begin, I say, but where we stop no man has yet discovered, for there is in the awful and mysterious depths of the Triune God neither limit nor end.” Those words set my heart on fire; I hungered to explore those “infinite riches of the Godhead.” Like exploring Denali, there would be no end to exploring and enjoying God. If you did contemplate every square inch of Denali in every season of the year, you would then realize that’s the smallest taste of the beauties to explore across the earth. With God the delights are even more boundless. But many people seem uninterested in getting off the bus. Perhaps for similar reasons.

A character in David James Duncan’s novel The Brothers K has a dream about a bus giving tours of the kingdom of heaven. The passengers are allowed to look, and they can get off the bus to look about, but they cannot actually enjoy the kingdom. It’s just a tour. This is the author’s criticism of church, of “organized religion.” Certainly some churches, including the Seventh Day Adventist church that the author grew up with, can curb people’s enjoyment of the kingdom of God by the rules they lay on people. On the other hand, I wonder if people even want to get off the bus. You might, after all, get mauled by a grizzly bear. I mean, God is not just verdant hillsides. The Bible describes God as a “consuming fire.” Sometimes the prophets, who we would think of as God’s favorites, were terrified of God. Isaiah saw God and swiftly concluded that his existence was about to be obliterated: “Woe is me!”

God is holy. We are not. Because of this vast difference between God and humans, pastor and theologian Jonathan Edwards said that humans are naturally hostile to God. God’s holiness makes him a threat to us. Add to that the fact that God is powerful, eternal, all-knowing, and unchanging, and we naturally “entertain very low and contemptible thoughts of God” (You can find Edwards’s complete sermon here).

As one example of this enmity towards God, consider Martin Luther. Before he was a reformer, he was an aggressively pious Catholic monk who gave himself fully to ascetic practices. But even after agonizing sessions with his confessor, his conscience felt no relief. Writing later, Luther confessed the biggest thing of all: “I hated the righteous God.” All that work of devotion only led him to feelings of hostility and hatred towards God. The righteous and holy God was a constant threat to the conscience of this extremely religious man.

Hating God even while trying to serve him was about the only option Luther had. He lived in a religious society, where belief in God was universal. Today, in a very secular society, instead of saying “I hate God,” people say instead, “I don’t believe in God.” Darwin, Freud, the Big Bang and secular society in general have made atheism as an intellectual option.

The statements of some of the “New Atheists” reveal their contempt for the God they do not believe in. Richard Dawkins wrote that “The God of the Old Testament is arguably one of the most unpleasant character in all of fiction.” To Dawkins, the God of the Bible would be worse than meeting a grizzly bear. Therefore, he doesn’t exist. I read and enjoyed the book Why Does the World Exist, by Jim Holt, a man raised Catholic who later turned to atheism. The book is his search for an explanation of the existence of the universe apart from God. It becomes clear that, despite the inability of either science or philosophy to explain how everything came from nothing, he still prefers the possibility of a more plausible theory in the future over the idea of God. (To be clear, God is far more than a mechanism for the beginning of the Big Bang; God is the source of being itself).

Others who are not so aggressive in their atheism acknowledge some promise, beauty, or hope in the idea of God, but they would still rather not get off the bus and explore the “infinite riches of the Godhead.” Because in some ways God is like a grizzly bear, who threatens to tear us apart. God wouldn’t tear us apart physically; his threat is deeper. The one thing you cannot take to an encounter with God is pride. God threatens our opinion of ourselves.

I used a lot of this in one of my most recent sermons. I also used the testimony of Dr. Paul Lim, whose father was imprisoned in Korea because of his political activity when Paul was nine years old. He prayed at that time, “God, if you are real, bring my dad home.” His dad stayed in prison for two years. Paul angrily concluded, “God, you don’t exist.” Later, in high school in the United States, his mother started attending a Christian church. At youth group meetings, Paul sat alone for the Bible studies. He sat alone at Burger King. When they went bowling, he bowled in his own lane. Not even the youth pastor came over to bowl with him. That was his experience of church. So when a professor at Yale University stated authoritatively that though it is an interesting book, the Bible does not contain anything historically true, Paul accepted it. And then went on pursuing life as a conquest, punctuated by drunken parties on the weekends. Why did Paul Lim reject God? It wasn’t just pride, though that was part of it. And it wasn’t just the threat to his lifestyle, which he was enjoying. Paul was hurting.

How can an unholy, proud, hurting human being (isn’t this all of us?) even consider approaching the eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing, holy God? Approaching God is like stepping off the bus in grizzly territory. Or, to change the metaphor, it’s like a six-year-old stepping on the field with a professional American football player. The child would be pummeled, crushed, killed. Unless. Unless the professional was the six-year-old’s dad. Then he would mask his strength, soften the tackles until they were nothing more than play, and instead of trash talk, he would laugh with his son. In other words, his strength would be softened by love.

This terrifyingly strong father who makes himself kind and gentle is what Martin Luther discovered when he reflected on the book of Romans. “Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered Paradise itself.” This is what Paul Lim discovered on the last night of a “terrible” retreat for college students that his mom guilted him into attending. The lyrics of a Keith Green song (“To obey is better than sacrifice. I don’t need your money. I want your life”) suddenly broke through his anger, pride, and hurt as the voice of the God who loved him. He sobbed for the first time since he was nine years old. He went on to become a professor of theology.

This is conversion, the discovery of the fierce yet tender love of the holy God. Then the soul moves from hatred, fear, and hurt to gratitude, love and joy. The only requirement is that we ditch our pride and begin to trust. And, well, sometimes it requires a long period of searching. I can’t say I know why. Maybe God wants to test our sincerity, to purify us even before we find him. Or maybe the reward is all the sweeter for the long search. And, as Tozer says, “Now begins the glorious pursuit, the heart’s happy exploration of the infinite riches of the Godhead.”

Why does the dad play football with his little son? Because he loves him, of course. In Christ, God has lowered himself and taken on the form of a human being. His dreadful power was hidden as he lived our life and died our death.  Why else does the father hide his power to play football with his son? Perhaps also because he wants his son to learn how to play. Likewise with God and his Son Jesus Christ. God wants us to learn how to play. And to play at being human means to be like God. He wants us to become holy, like he is.

Once we ditch our pride and fear in this joyful, terrifying, healing surrender, we then can get off the bus to explore and enjoy the “infinite riches of the Godhead,” grizzlies becoming an attraction rather than a terror. In the process, we will find ourselves becoming more and more who we are meant to be, more and more like Christ.

In my grief over the loss of my son I have discovered a part of God that I never wanted to know. Well, I did, but I never wanted to learn it in this way. (There really is no other way to learn it, though). I have discovered God’s hiddenness; like Mt. Denali, God seems to hide behind a dense cloud, and when we are most eager to see him. Despite this, I began to perceive something in God’s baffling willingness to let us suffer. For God was willing himself to suffer. I began to perceive a faint ray of light, the intensity of God’s love. It was a brief glimpse, but it stayed with me for many days. It was as if the full sight of God’s love, like the full sight of God’s glory (perhaps they are the same thing?) would end the life of a mere mortal; a glimpse was enough for my good.

Recently I experienced yet another mood of doubt and despair. (I am certainly still hurting). And then I smiled, thinking this was, in a strange way, yet another experience of God. Wherever I can find you, God, I am happy to know you more.

Some of these thoughts have been developing over the last 19 years, since I went to Denali and read A.W. Tozer. I wrote on one of my first blog posts that I would write about God and grizzly bears. A couple Sundays ago I preached about it. And finally today, I share my thoughts on the blog.

Before I end, one last bit from the book The Brothers K. The kid wakes up from his dream about the tour of the kingdom of heaven. His brother, finding him distressed, says, “It’s a dream buddy. It’s just a dream.” The kid who had the dream says he was right: their junky house, their little room, their town – it was all just a dream. And the kingdom of heaven, it was perfectly real.

It’s time to get off the bus.

One Year of Observations in Belgium

I didn’t remember the exact date, but my wife tells me that today marks one year of living in Belgium. We had some friends from the church over for dinner tonight and they happened to bring a bottle of champagne. So we celebrated one year of living in Belgium with a small glass of bubbly. Below you will find one year of observations of life in Belgium, along with some photos from the last months.

Some Things We Are Enjoying

  • There is a wonderful and inexpensive variety of breads in the bakeries and grocery stores. You put it through the slicer yourself.
  • There is a wonderful and inexpensive variety of cheeses to go with that bread. The standard cheese is gouda, which actually represents a family of cheeses. You can get a buttery young gouda all the way up to an old gouda that’s beginning to crystallized. Our kids love the old stuff.
  • There is a wonderful and inexpensive variety of beers in Belgium. Wine too. Alcohol is a normal part of life in Belgium and rarely seems to be a problem. Beer is available at concerts, festivals, sports events, rummage sales, back-to-school nights… Yep, back to school night. But I have hardly ever heard of drunkenness. And when people go out for a couple drinks, they take the designated driver thing seriously. Or they ride a bike.
  • Biking to everywhere. Our kids have ridden with us to places up to five miles away.
  • There are numerous large parks, sometimes with a castle (more like a mansion), or an old fort with a star shaped moat around it. We have found some of the most fantastic playgrounds in Belgium, with slides so tall that in America people would file lawsuits as soon as they saw them.
  • It’s very green here. Because of this strange stuff that falls from the sky all year long.
  • Home-cooked Belgian food is delicious.
  • The Belgian health insurance system has been great. We pay 25 euros to visit the doctor then get reimbursed about 20. The cost of insurance that includes such great coverage? It costs our family less for a year of coverage here than it did for a month of coverage in the Unites States. How is that possible? Taxes. But for a moderate income family of five it’s not bad at all.
  • Serving such a diverse church has allowed us to enjoy many other ethnic foods. My new favorite is the spicy West African joloff rice.
  • We are enjoying the church. People have been welcoming, friendly, and hospitable. And we are seeing the church grow in more ways than one.

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Some Things We Are Missing

  • People. Of course.
  • Mexican food. Even when we make it at home it’s not the same. The tortillas are different, the beans are different, you can’t find dried chiles or tomatillos.
  • Bagels, which used to be a breakfast staple, are just about impossible to find here.
  • Mountains. Central California and northern Belgium are equally flat, but in California we could always see the mountains. And we could drive to the mountains in an hour and a half. Here an hour and a half gets us to hills, but mountains are a long ways off. (But I am about to go there).
  • Ultimate frisbee. We have found a group to play with, but for Isaac it doesn’t feel the same as his coach and team from Turlock.
  • During an unusual heat wave through the month of July we missed air conditioning. No homes have it. Most restaurants and stores don’t either. Not even the hospital has a/c. So 90 degrees here feels hotter than 105 in California because there is no way to escape it.
  • The road system of the United States, where streets are wide, well-marked, and easy to use. In Belgium, as in the other parts of Europe I have seen so far, roads are narrow and navigating is not so simple.

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Some Things We Notice

  • We happened to be here during the world cup, in which the Belgian team performed very well. It seemed that in a rare display of patriotism people hung Belgian flags and decorated in red, yellow, and black. Still, it was nothing like the fanaticism of my hometown Seattle for their Seahawks.
  • Was this just a World Cup thing, or is soccer baloney always available?
  • Our younger kids say school is different. During their 90 minute lunch break, kids full on wrestle in the play yard, throwing each other to the ground and getting thoroughly dirty.
  • What do kids take to school for lunch? Sandwiches. Always and only. And many times those sandwiches consist of butter with chocolate sprinkles, which has become a favorite of our younger ones.
  • Belgium is very stable. Many families have lived here for hundreds of years. People have tight circles of friends. People tend to stay close to where they grow up. Business owners seem content to keep things small, rather than questing for world domination like American companies.
  • Those small companies close on random days. A restaurant could be closed every Thursday, for instance. It is not unusual to go somewhere and find a handwritten note on the door that the place is closed a holiday, due to sickness, or something else.
  • People in Europe in general seem to take their vacations very seriously. Just a few days ago friends referred to a trip to an island as “only a week.”
  • People speak many languages. Dutch (or Flemish, to be precise), English, French, sometimes some German. I met a guy recently who spoke those languages and more and was learning Swedish as well, just for fun.
  • There are a huge number and variety of bicycles on the roads here (though it is nothing compared to the Netherlands). Our family for a time had a different type of bicycle for each family member (city bike, mountain bike, street bike, hybrid, and BMX). A large number of bikes people ride here squeak like crazy. A little chain lube would do wonders. There are a lot of electric bikes. I don’t mind an older person cruising past me on an e-bike (well, actually I do a little), but every time a 30 year old man flies past on his electric mountain bike I think, “Cheater.”
  • Butter is somehow different here. Chocolate chip cookies just melt into flatness. Rebecca has discovered some workaround involving cream cheese.
  • Milk either comes straight from the cows at the family farm up the road, or so pasteurized it doesn’t require refrigeration.
  • Bacon is not the same. It’s either a different cut or a different pig, because it hardly has any fat at all and doesn’t have the same taste as that salty, hickory-smoked American stuff.
  • Paper here is not 8 1/2 x 11. It’s A4, which is just different enough to be annoying (8.27 x 11.69 inches). But of course instead of inches we use the much more sensible metric system here. It’s more sensible, but my brain still translates everything to feet, Fahernheit, and pounds.
  • Belgium is more moderate than America. A partial list of things that are more moderate in size here: cars, roads, houses, refrigerators, ovens, salaries, soft drinks, people. Yes, even with all the bread, cheese, and beer, Europeans are thinner than Americans.
  • The weather so far has never been “normal.” It’s not normally this dark in December. It doesn’t normally snow this much. It’s not normally this hot in the summer.
  • Belgium, like much of Europe, is highly secular. Most people think of God as irrelevant. At the same time, it’s highly spiritual. I hear story after story (mostly from people in the church, which includes a fair number of Europeans) of healings, visions, dreams, and miraculous answers to prayers.

Panoramic shot in Aachen, Germany’s ancient square. Charlemagne was crowned in the cathedral here.

How are we doing after a year in Belgium? Our younger kids love it. Rebecca thanks God every time she rides her bike. Our older son has excelled in school. This past year has seen a lot of my energy go to grieving, but I am enjoying it here. There have been some dark times, but for the most part life is good.

 

Our backyard. A favorite tree. Beautiful sky and sun.