Jesus

A Way Forward

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I don’t like him. I never have. I think his words and actions are deplorable (yes, I chose that word intentionally). Note, I didn’t say he himself is deplorable. Statements like that border on judgment in my mind. More importantly, he is a human being, created in God’s image. He, therefore, has inherent value. Like all of us, he is flawed. Some of those flaws include dehumanizing and vilifying others, which I find particularly deplorable. Thankfully, our flaws don’t make us less than human.

Since I learned of the attempted assassination Saturday night, my heart has been heavy, as if there are a bunch of two-ton butterflies flitting around in my chest. I believe this is for two main reasons. First, on the human level, I’m grieved that someone tried to kill him, killing someone else in the process. One life ended; one dramatically altered, right there on national television. I’m tired of and grieved by America’s tolerance (and even promotion) of violence. That, in and of itself, is dehumanizing.

I’ve also been troubled by the potential aftermath. My family and I recently watched “Civil War”, a movie presenting a potential future in which our dehumanization of each other reaches its logical conclusion: civil war. People kill people because of where they are from, how they look, or how they talk. People torture people who think differently than them. It was a chilling movie, and, since Saturday night, I’ve been concerned that we’re moving further down that path. I mean, we’re already on the path…

I’ve been concerned this would be a tipping point in which the flames ignited by politicians’ irresponsible propaganda would burst out of control, enflaming the U.S. in civil war. I’ve been concerned about potential violent retaliation. I believe these concerns are legitimate because of the downward descent of our dehumanization of one another.

My heart and mind have been overwhelmed with stimuli since Saturday night. So many feelings and thoughts running endlessly. What can be done to stem this violent tide? How can we step off the path to civil war?

My worldview has been formed within a “Jesus” framework. I don’t say “Christian” anymore, because I’m not sure what that word really means in American society. However, whether or not one is a “Christian” or “follower of Jesus,” I believe Jesus, as presented in the Gospels, offered a, maybe “the,” solution. That solution is centered on love.

The kind of love Jesus emphasized is an others-focused, self-sacrificial love. It is a love that serves, that looks out for the best for others, that sets the lover’s agenda aside on behalf of the beloved. This love is revolutionary.

Love your neighbor…

Love your enemy…

When we are focused on loving other people, we cannot dehumanize them. We are too busy listening to them, looking out for them, and serving them. We’re preoccupied with learning more about them, what makes them tick, and being challenged, in a positive way, by the way they think. That kind of love is transformative. It changes everything.

I know this is pie-in-the-sky… until it isn’t. We’re so accustomed to our sick brand of political discourse, our violence, our selfishness, that loving others like this feels undoable. It feels foreign. It feels impossible, perhaps. And, it is fairly nigh impossible, honestly.
Real love is not conventional. It doesn’t come naturally, especially in a culture in which we’ve been taught to look out for ourselves. It is risky. I believe it runs counter to our natural inclinations.

But, if we have the courage to do it… if we can get beyond ourselves and truly learn to love each other well, especially the other, this is no longer pie-in-the-sky. It changes everything.

A Day of Grief and Tension

General Thoughts, Music and Healing

Silent Saturday. Jesus is dead. His broken and mangled corpse has been removed from the cross, wrapped up in burial clothes, and sealed up in a cave. There will be no miraculous healing today. No poignant teaching. No confrontations with the religious elite. No, today marks the time in which the world experienced life without Jesus. And for the first time in three years, his closest friends and followers experienced life without Jesus.

Perhaps they had faint memories of him saying something about coming back from the dead. But it seems as if such memories faded in light of what they’d just seen at Golgotha. Jesus, the One to whom they had pinned their hopes, the One to whom they had committed their very lives, who they believed was the Son of God, was dead. Like any other human being subjected to the treatment of the cross, he died. He was gone. It would seem their hope had been extinguished.

The grief must have been overwhelming. Perhaps they felt lost. Destitute. Left wondering how things were allowed to happen the way they did. Again, they likely remembered Jesus’ multiple predictions regarding his suffering and death. But hearing him talk about it and then seeing it or knowing it actually happened is another thing entirely. Now that Jesus has actually been humiliated, tortured, and executed like a common criminal, their worlds have been turned upside down.

Some of them likely were feeling grieved not only by Jesus’ death, but by how they had abandoned him as he faced into the ordeal from the previous day. When the temple guards came to arrest Jesus in Gethsemane, his closest followers ran away. He was left alone and walked through the rest of the events of Thursday night and Friday by himself, isolated from everyone who cared about him. One of his inner circle, Peter, had even verbally denied he knew Jesus at all, not once but three times. And the whole ordeal was initiated by the betrayal of one of his friends. As the disciples sat there on that silent Saturday, maybe they were thinking about how incredibly unjust it was that he willingly endured the shame and pain of the cross for them, in the wake of their infidelity to him.

In hindsight, knowing how this story ends, those of us who know Jesus know that his death and burial is not the finale. We know the cliché: “Sunday’s coming.” We have the great benefit of knowing that Jesus would rise from the dead on Easter Sunday. But, his first disciples did not have that luxury. They were left in the tension of their grief, the knowledge of their own unfaithfulness to Jesus, and, if they were even thinking about the possibility of resurrection, wondering if it could actually happen. In their minds, there had to be great doubt. And so, on that silent Saturday, they were left to their grief and attempts to muster enough faith to believe that it wasn’t all over.

You and I know it wasn’t over. Jesus’ story was still being written. So, we don’t have to sit in that tension today. However, we still have the opportunity to consider the injustice of the event we remember on Good Friday. Jesus, blameless and perfect, took on the humiliation and punishment that was on the docket for me… and for you. He set his will toward suffering the shame, pain, and separation from God that I deserved… that you deserved. Despite our vast infidelity to him, his faithful love drove him to suffer and die to make a way for us to know God.

So, perhaps before we quickly jump into the celebration of Easter Sunday, let’s take a moment to reflect again on the injustice of the cross and what it really means for you and me. Let us consider the great love of Jesus that moved him to suffer and die for unfaithful you and unfaithful me. Let us reflect upon the unfathomable mercy of God on full display as Jesus died on that Roman cross and was laid to rest. Indeed, worthy is the Lamb.

The Injustice of the Cross

General Thoughts, Music and Healing

I can’t get the sound out of my mind. The forceful clang. The clash of hammer and nail. And as I hear the banging in my mind’s ear, I mumble curse words under my breath. This is wrong. This is just wrong.

He gave himself over to the authorities. He endured mockery, humiliation, and false accusation. He was flogged. And, he was nailed to a cross. This is wrong. This is just wrong.

He did all this, endured all this, suffered all this… for me. It was my sin that led him to the cross. I am responsible for what he went through on that hill outside Jerusalem 2000 years ago. I should have been the one on that cross. This is wrong. This is just wrong.

God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us… God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God…

Thank you, Jesus. WORTHY IS THE LAMB.

The playlist below is loosely based on the “Stations of the Cross.” If you would like to know more about this tradition, click here. I invite you to put on some headphones, shut out the rest of the world for a bit, and engage with the moods, flow, and emotion of this set of songs/pieces. As you listen, consider what Jesus willingly and courageously endured for you and me.