Jesus was going to die. Jesus wasn’t going to come down off the cross as his taunters demanded. “If you really are the Son of God, jump down; then we’ll believe,” they bellowed. That wasn’t going to happen.
There was one thing Jesus had to take care of before he died. His mother, Mary, was there. Mary’s sister was there. Though she is not named, in the other gospels, we find out her name is Salome. Mary, the wife of Cleopas, was there. We know nothing about her. Mary Magdalene was there. Lots of speculation about her place in Jesus’ life. And John, the disciple was there. Three Mary’s, Salome, and a disciple. None of them taunted Jesus to come down from the cross. That doesn’t mean they weren’t wishing and praying for it to happen. That Jesus would some how be taken off the cross. That he would live. That this horrible scene would go away. But it wasn’t.
Jesus has to take care of his mother and the disciple. He’s thinking of them, as he is dying. By telling them they have each other, Jesus was trying to reinforce in their minds the fact that they won’t have him anymore. That this wasn’t going to end as they may be hoping. Jesus’ fate and short future were already sealed on the cross. Nothing was going to change that.
In a way, Jesus, as we all must some day be, was on his own now, in facing death. Comfort and solace was like an echo that was receding in the distance. There comes a point, when you are dying, where you can take your loved ones no further. You must go the rest of the way without them.
As in the song, “Lonesome Valley,”
Jesus walked
that lonesome valley
He had to walk
it by himself;
Oh, nobody else
could walk it for him
He had to walk
it by himself.
Jesus saw that lonesome valley ahead of him, and it was time to give his mother and John over to each other. He had to know they would be taken care of. He had to know that they would do that for each other. Once that was done, Jesus was ready to walk into that lonesome valley.
Jesus knew that the images and scene the Mary’s, Salome, and John were having to look at from the foot of the cross would stay with them the rest of their lives. There are some images, like a gruesome death, that sear themselves in your mind’s eye forever. For John, that ended up being a long number of years. He didn’t write his gospel until maybe 50 years after he witnessed the Crucifixion. So he had a long time to think about and contemplate those images--what they meant, and how they affected his life, and the future of the humanity.
So, what is happening in this scene of Jesus hanging on the Cross, and using his last statements to his mother and John: “This is your son...This is your mother?” What is Jesus signaling by saying this to them?
It seems Jesus is marking a change--a different way we view and organize our relationships. You’ve heard the saying, “Blood is thicker than water.” Maybe some of you watch the KU basketball games. The Morris twins have attracted most of the attention this season. They are so identical that even their tattoos are the same. One of their tattoos are the letters “FOE.” They stand for “Family Over Everything.” It’s one of the values they uphold to the point of imprinting it on their bodies.
But it’s not just their blood family. The Morris twins have pulled the players on their team into their family. The KU team has had a lot of ups and downs and deep grief this season, and they have done that as a family. It’s part of the leadership the Twins have brought to the team.
Blood may be thicker than water, but family may become inclusive of others; and that seems to be what Jesus is saying from the Cross to John and Mary. Remember the instance when Jesus was preaching in a house. Someone came and told him his mother and brothers were outside to see him. Remember what Jesus replied? “Who are my mother and brothers? And looking around on those who sat about him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother” (Mark 3:32-35).
Jesus is transforming the meaning of “family” to be much broader than what is normally thought. Which was revolutionary in Middle Eastern culture. Jesus is saying, from the Cross, that love, family love, is not just reserved for blood relatives but is now multiplied through Jesus to include others.
For the disciple John, and Jesus’ mother, Mary, standing beneath the Cross, that new relationship he calls them into is not only defined by faith, but by shared grief. In order to continue on, as mother, as disciple they now need each other. In a short while, Jesus would be dead and entombed. But they would still be alive. Mary and John would have to go on. The best way to do that, according to Jesus, is to lean on each other as if they were family--as if they were mother and son. In their mutual loss, emptiness and endings, there is a new beginning, a new relationship that is forged.
For those who live on after a loved one dies, that grief may never be entirely gotten over. That is especially true if those who grieve isolate themselves. One research study discovered that widows spend at least 14 out of the first 18 months after their husband dies, at home, isolating themselves from family and friends. Jesus is saying to his mother and John, that’s not going to happen for you.
In my first church, I visited a lady who lived out in the country. She had invited me out for tea and to chat. When I asked about a picture of her husband, she immediately broke out into tears. He had died 15 years before my visit. Right after the funeral, her adult kids sent her on a two week trip to Hawaii to “get her mind off it all.” When she came back, no one wanted to talk about her loss. They wanted to hear all about her trip and what she did. But she was aching from loneliness and loss. All her friends assumed she was ready to put her loss behind her when she got back from Hawaii. Subsequently, no one ever really helped her with her grief. That is, until I came along and innocently asked a question about her late husband’s picture, 15 years later.
People don’t get over their grief by themselves. It’s not something you can just tough it through by yourself. It doesn’t work to deny your pain and loss. We need others to tie on with us, to be compassionate companions along the way of our grief.
When I was in Bakersfield, I started a ministry called “Compassionate Friends.” I wish I would have called it the “Mary and John Ministry.” I did a survey of the congregation (and it was a huge congregation) asking them to check off items on a list of life experiences that they had faced. I had every bad thing I could think of that can happen to a person on that list. I was utterly amazed at what came back to me--what people in that congregation had experienced, what awful things.
I then asked those people if they would be willing to let me train them in some basic counseling skills. I wanted to build up a human resource pool. I wanted to draw from these people so I could send them out. If I heard of someone who was experiencing what they had already gone through, I had someone I could send out to be a Mary or John for them. Not someone to just be a listener. But someone who actually had experienced what they were currently going through. It ended up being an amazing ministry of caring.
I didn’t want people going through those times alone. They needed “family.” Not blood relatives. But “grief sharers.” People who became family because they leaned on each other, needed each other to just get through each day.
“Here is your son...Here is your mother.” Instead of looking out for his own grief and pain on the cross, Jesus was making sure a relationship of support was created for those he loved that would last after he was gone. Jesus knew he wouldn’t be around to take care of Mary or John. But Jesus knew they could take care of each other’s grief. That they could become family--a family much deeper and richer than blood relations could ever be.
So, as I ponder Jesus’ statement from the Cross to his mother and his disciple, I wonder if this is also a vision of Jesus for the church? This is your mother--maybe not a woman who is your real mother, but who none-the-less is in need of you to treat her as if she is. This is your son. Maybe not the boy you gave birth to, but someone who needs you, at some point in his life, to tie on with him and let him know he’s not alone.
There’s a lot of grief out there. A lot of grievers. A lot of loss and heart hurt. A lot of hits on a person’s spirit. How are we to handle it all? Job, when he is losing everything in life, laments, “Suffering is all part of life, like sparks shooting skyward” (Job 5:7). If suffering is such a large part of human experience, then we need to make sure we have others to help us live. Help us go on. Help us get through. Be with us as the “sparks shoot skyward.”
There was a woman whose child died unexpectedly. She went to a monk who was supposed to have the gift of healing. She wanted him to restore her daughter’s life. Instead, the monk sent the grieving mother on a mission. He told her to go out into the town and collect an onion from each family who had not experienced grief like hers. He told her to return to him when the basket was full of onions.
Mystified, the woman began her quest. When she finally returned to the monk, her basket was still empty. She had no onions. But she had so many new friends. New “family” to who helped restore her heart in her pain. Though her basked was empty, her heart was full. She had gained so much strength from being with people who had experienced loss as she had. And she gained so much from being able to share her new found strength with others whose loss was great.
“Here is your son...Here is your mother. In the face of their emerging grief over his death, Jesus directs them to each other. In the face of the fact that grief is part of the human condition, Jesus directs us to other mourners, suffering from all of life’s reasons for grief. Jesus says, “This is your son, your daughter, your mother, your father, your brother, your sister.” Jesus, in his dying words, makes us into a family, related not by blood, but by grief. We are a family related in faith through the Christ on the Cross, and are directed by that Crucified One toward each other.
In the book, Living With Grief, Patrick Del Zoppo wrote,
It is essential that the religious community offer homecoming to the bereaved. Homecoming is the communal soul responding to the individual’s soul. It is the essence of being alive and fully connected to a larger and healing group of believers. (page 172)
What Jesus is doing from the Cross is starting that community of the bereaved. Jesus is showing Mary and John the importance of offering a place of homecoming for each other. And by so doing, Jesus is starting a way of being the church that embraces each other in a place of homecoming.
Prayer:
Lord,
you have given us yourself.
That we know.
Sometimes, what we don’t realize,
is that you have given us yourself
through others.
In their smiles,
is your smile;
In their hands,
are your hands;
In their words,
are your words;
In their touch
is your touch.
Forgive us,
and help us,
when we push you away,
by pushing away those whom you have given us
to be our loving and caring Christian family. Amen.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
"Last Words From the Cross" (part 2)
"Last Words From The Cross" (part 2)
Luke 23:39-43
I think I’ve mentioned before that I come up with some odd questions when I’m looking at a story from the Bible. Like this scene. The men, including Jesus, have been nailed to their crosses when still laying on the ground. Then the crosses are hoisted up and lowered with a thud into pre-dug holes. It’s an added part of the torture of crucifixion, to lower the cross sharply and brusquely into the hole, thereby forcing all your hanging body weight against the spikes in your wrists and ankles.
At that point, you know for sure you are going to die. Some time in the next 24 to 48 hours you will be dead. No way out. Not many of us know when or how we’re going to die. These three did, Jesus and the two criminals on each side. We have this nagging thought, a thought that we push as far back into some cave in our minds, that we are all going to die. But, on the cross, that thought comes screaming out of that cave, and stares the crucified one in the face with an unswerving gaze.
So the question that came to mind as I was pondering this crucifixion scene was, If you and another person were going into a situation in which you knew that both of you would probably die, who would you want that other person to be? Who would you want to face death with, if such a thing were to happen? I thought of the few people in the nuclear reactors in Japan, who this week, stayed behind in some effort to keep a major meltdown from happening. All of them would be subjected to high levels of radiation. I heard one report that they probably won’t live past a month, because of how much radiation their bodies would absorb. As they looked around at each other, are these the ones they would normally choose to face death with?
I know it’s an odd question. But I hope you’re giving it some thought right now. It’s an odd question, because like I said a moment ago, no one knows what the circumstances of their deaths are going to be.
When I was at a church in Nebraska, a high school girl was struck by a truck while she was driving to school one morning. She was near death. I was part of the Crisis Team that went into the school that morning to be available to talk with students about what they were feeling. In one group that I talked to, the conversation turned towards ways the kids would NOT want to die. Most of the kids I talked to said the worst would be to die alone. They didn’t want to die alone.
Crucifixion is just one of the many dreadful ways to die. But I think for many of us, the thought of having to face death without someone at our side is a depressing image.
When I was in eighth grade, our homeroom studies teacher loved the author Charles Dickens. So we got a huge dose of Charles Dickens that year. One of the books we read was Tale of Two Cities. It’s a novel about the craziness that overtook France during the French Revolution.
At the end of Dickens’ book, one of the main characters, Sydney Carton, secretly traded places with a friend of his who was locked in the Bastille. They exchanged clothes, and his friend walked out of the prison wearing Carton’s clothes. Carton remained behind in his friends prison garb to await execution. It’s one of the great self-sacrificial scenes in all of fictional literature.
As Sydney Carton was being wheeled out to the guillotine in a cart with other prisoners, he caught the eye of a little girl. She was going to suffer the same fate as he that day. She had seen him earlier and was drawn to the gentleness and courage in his face.
She moved over next to him in the cart. “If I may ride next to you, will you let me hold on to your hand?” she asked Carton as they made their last, dread journey. She didn’t want to face the last ride by herself. So when they rode together to the executioner, her hand was in his. When they reached the place where the guillotine towered to the clouds, the blade’s edge reflecting off the sun, there was no fear at all in her eyes. She gazed into Carton’s quiet, composed face and said, “I think you were sent to me by Heaven.”
What a scary vision it is to know that in a short while, by the end of the day, your earthly life would be no more. But what a gift it would be to have someone, as if they were “sent by Heaven” to share those last moments with. To be with someone who, by their quiet encouragement, makes those last moments livable.
On Golgotha that day, what a privilege those two criminals had, as they climbed the hill with their crosses, to see another, who would share their same fate. What a comfort to look into his quiet, composed face and see there the very presence of Heaven. Jesus is able to redeem even the moment of death. At least one of the criminals recognized that.
The cross represents not only the final moment of life, but also all the bad moments of life that we experience. The cross represents all the times we go through, but when we get to those times we find out we’re not alone; Christ is there, voluntarily going through what we are going through. Christ is there to let us know we are not alone, to bring encouragement in a most scary experience.
Jesus is the one lying the hospital bed next to you, having undergone the same scary procedure or operation you are now facing. Jesus is the one sitting in the recliner near you with an IV of chemo in his arm, at the oncologists clinic, smiling encouragement to you. Jesus is the one sitting across from you at the Divorce Recovery Support Group. Jesus is the other patient in the Emergency Room with similar bruises or molestations or marks of abuse as your own. Jesus is the one standing next to you as you both look out the window and see the tsunami coming, higher than your house, speeding like a derailed freight train of debris.
So many ask, “Does Jesus know what I’m going through?” The cross, and the conversation with two thieves, is the answer to that question. The cross represents all the underserved atrocities, all the life-and-death situations, all the terrifying events we face in life. Those events may have been inflicted upon us. Or they may be a result of our own actions. It doesn’t seem to matter which it is to Christ. The cross represents how Jesus takes all those kinds of events we have to go through, and makes them his own, shares them with us.
At the place of crucifixion, two criminals being lifted up on crosses find there is a third person also being crucified. He is being lifted up between them. He is an unexpected friend on their day of humiliation--the day they would all three die--the day when no one was cheering for them.
In their common misery, the two criminals demonstrate they have some sensitivity as to who Jesus is. One of the criminals mocks Jesus, missing the power of being with Jesus in the moment. He is verbally abusive of Jesus, unrepentant, still scheming a way to get out of his predicament, in denial about the gravity of his situation as he thinks he can cheat death one more time. Jesus could have been such a source of power and encouragement for him in that dark hour, but all the criminal could think to do was to turn and attack Jesus in their common pain.
The other criminal also had some spiritual sensitivity about Jesus. It appears he maybe had some religious leanings his whole life, but never did anything about them. He knew at some time he was going to have to deal with God, but he just kept putting God off. Now, at the end, he could run no longer or no further. He is in no denial about why he and the other criminal are hanging there on each side of Christ. He knows he is getting what he deserves for a life spent badly. He knows now is the time to turn and face God.
Not to God, but to the other criminal, he makes a confession of sin and a profession of faith: “Have you no fear of God? You’re getting the same as him. We deserve this, but not him--he did nothing to deserve this.” That was the criminal’s confession of sin. That was his reflection that he had misspent his life and that he now realizes it could have been otherwise. And had it been otherwise, he wouldn’t be hanging there on that cross.
Then came the profession of faith, when he finally turned to Jesus. He stopped arguing with the other criminal and said to Jesus, “Jesus, remember me when you enter your kingdom.”
What could Jesus have replied? “Sorry, buddy, you don’t quite measure up?” Or, “You are in last place of the great race of life; I’m sorry, but you’re eliminated!” Or, “Why do you think you deserve to enter my kingdom along with all the other God-fearing people who lived religiously their whole life long? Do you think you, at the last moment of your life, can worm your way in?” Does Jesus say anything like that? We might have. But, no. Jesus replied to the man, “I tell you, today you will join me in Paradise.”
Paradise is another term for the Garden of Eden. It is the new Garden, unstained by sin. It is the place where the Tree of Life grows. It is the place where God will gather all believers. Jesus, with powerful encouragement tells the criminal his faith has given him a place in Paradise.
What an act of grace, not only to be sharing the moment of death with Jesus Christ, but also to hear him say that Paradise awaits you. Today! Today; not some time in the future, but today. You will be in Paradise, and you will enter with Jesus at your side. Wow! That’s who I want by my side when I die.
Jackie Robinson was the first African American to play major league baseball. As the first to break baseball’s “color barrier,” Robinson faced jeering crowds in every stadium. While playing one day in his home stadium in Brooklyn, he let a ground ball slip by him. His own fans began to ridicule him with racial slurs. He stood at second base, humiliated, as the fans continued their taunting.
Then the shortstop, PeeWee Reese came over, stood next to Robinson and put his arm around him in an act of encouragement. The fans immediately went quiet. Robinson later said that that arm around his shoulder that day saved his career.
Jesus, as best he could from the cross, put his arm of encouragement around the criminal on the terrible day of their deaths. With his arm around the shoulder of his fellow crucified, Jesus quieted the crowds and the other criminal, and saved the man’s eternal life: Today, you will be with me in Paradise.
These words of Jesus from the cross are words to us all when we are facing the worst that life has to throw at us, when we are facing the reality of our own sin and mortality. Jesus’ words come to us not as a kick when we are down, or a slap in the face when we are already in tears. His words come instead as deep encouragement, an arm around the shoulders, and as an affirmation that the best that God can give is yet to come.
Prayer
Forgive us, Lord,
when we think we’re in control
when we think our lives are only in our hands
when we use you -- or try to use you --
to get out of a mess
just so we can get ourselves into another
when we turn to our self made forms of power
thinking we are invincible,
that we are somehow protected from harm and death.
Turn our heads, Lord Jesus,
Catch our eye, as we try to catch yours,
Hoping that you will be with us,
that you will walk with us
through the valley of the shadow of death
and we won’t go that way alone.
Amen.
Luke 23:39-43
I think I’ve mentioned before that I come up with some odd questions when I’m looking at a story from the Bible. Like this scene. The men, including Jesus, have been nailed to their crosses when still laying on the ground. Then the crosses are hoisted up and lowered with a thud into pre-dug holes. It’s an added part of the torture of crucifixion, to lower the cross sharply and brusquely into the hole, thereby forcing all your hanging body weight against the spikes in your wrists and ankles.
At that point, you know for sure you are going to die. Some time in the next 24 to 48 hours you will be dead. No way out. Not many of us know when or how we’re going to die. These three did, Jesus and the two criminals on each side. We have this nagging thought, a thought that we push as far back into some cave in our minds, that we are all going to die. But, on the cross, that thought comes screaming out of that cave, and stares the crucified one in the face with an unswerving gaze.
So the question that came to mind as I was pondering this crucifixion scene was, If you and another person were going into a situation in which you knew that both of you would probably die, who would you want that other person to be? Who would you want to face death with, if such a thing were to happen? I thought of the few people in the nuclear reactors in Japan, who this week, stayed behind in some effort to keep a major meltdown from happening. All of them would be subjected to high levels of radiation. I heard one report that they probably won’t live past a month, because of how much radiation their bodies would absorb. As they looked around at each other, are these the ones they would normally choose to face death with?
I know it’s an odd question. But I hope you’re giving it some thought right now. It’s an odd question, because like I said a moment ago, no one knows what the circumstances of their deaths are going to be.
When I was at a church in Nebraska, a high school girl was struck by a truck while she was driving to school one morning. She was near death. I was part of the Crisis Team that went into the school that morning to be available to talk with students about what they were feeling. In one group that I talked to, the conversation turned towards ways the kids would NOT want to die. Most of the kids I talked to said the worst would be to die alone. They didn’t want to die alone.
Crucifixion is just one of the many dreadful ways to die. But I think for many of us, the thought of having to face death without someone at our side is a depressing image.
When I was in eighth grade, our homeroom studies teacher loved the author Charles Dickens. So we got a huge dose of Charles Dickens that year. One of the books we read was Tale of Two Cities. It’s a novel about the craziness that overtook France during the French Revolution.
At the end of Dickens’ book, one of the main characters, Sydney Carton, secretly traded places with a friend of his who was locked in the Bastille. They exchanged clothes, and his friend walked out of the prison wearing Carton’s clothes. Carton remained behind in his friends prison garb to await execution. It’s one of the great self-sacrificial scenes in all of fictional literature.
As Sydney Carton was being wheeled out to the guillotine in a cart with other prisoners, he caught the eye of a little girl. She was going to suffer the same fate as he that day. She had seen him earlier and was drawn to the gentleness and courage in his face.
She moved over next to him in the cart. “If I may ride next to you, will you let me hold on to your hand?” she asked Carton as they made their last, dread journey. She didn’t want to face the last ride by herself. So when they rode together to the executioner, her hand was in his. When they reached the place where the guillotine towered to the clouds, the blade’s edge reflecting off the sun, there was no fear at all in her eyes. She gazed into Carton’s quiet, composed face and said, “I think you were sent to me by Heaven.”
What a scary vision it is to know that in a short while, by the end of the day, your earthly life would be no more. But what a gift it would be to have someone, as if they were “sent by Heaven” to share those last moments with. To be with someone who, by their quiet encouragement, makes those last moments livable.
On Golgotha that day, what a privilege those two criminals had, as they climbed the hill with their crosses, to see another, who would share their same fate. What a comfort to look into his quiet, composed face and see there the very presence of Heaven. Jesus is able to redeem even the moment of death. At least one of the criminals recognized that.
The cross represents not only the final moment of life, but also all the bad moments of life that we experience. The cross represents all the times we go through, but when we get to those times we find out we’re not alone; Christ is there, voluntarily going through what we are going through. Christ is there to let us know we are not alone, to bring encouragement in a most scary experience.
Jesus is the one lying the hospital bed next to you, having undergone the same scary procedure or operation you are now facing. Jesus is the one sitting in the recliner near you with an IV of chemo in his arm, at the oncologists clinic, smiling encouragement to you. Jesus is the one sitting across from you at the Divorce Recovery Support Group. Jesus is the other patient in the Emergency Room with similar bruises or molestations or marks of abuse as your own. Jesus is the one standing next to you as you both look out the window and see the tsunami coming, higher than your house, speeding like a derailed freight train of debris.
So many ask, “Does Jesus know what I’m going through?” The cross, and the conversation with two thieves, is the answer to that question. The cross represents all the underserved atrocities, all the life-and-death situations, all the terrifying events we face in life. Those events may have been inflicted upon us. Or they may be a result of our own actions. It doesn’t seem to matter which it is to Christ. The cross represents how Jesus takes all those kinds of events we have to go through, and makes them his own, shares them with us.
At the place of crucifixion, two criminals being lifted up on crosses find there is a third person also being crucified. He is being lifted up between them. He is an unexpected friend on their day of humiliation--the day they would all three die--the day when no one was cheering for them.
In their common misery, the two criminals demonstrate they have some sensitivity as to who Jesus is. One of the criminals mocks Jesus, missing the power of being with Jesus in the moment. He is verbally abusive of Jesus, unrepentant, still scheming a way to get out of his predicament, in denial about the gravity of his situation as he thinks he can cheat death one more time. Jesus could have been such a source of power and encouragement for him in that dark hour, but all the criminal could think to do was to turn and attack Jesus in their common pain.
The other criminal also had some spiritual sensitivity about Jesus. It appears he maybe had some religious leanings his whole life, but never did anything about them. He knew at some time he was going to have to deal with God, but he just kept putting God off. Now, at the end, he could run no longer or no further. He is in no denial about why he and the other criminal are hanging there on each side of Christ. He knows he is getting what he deserves for a life spent badly. He knows now is the time to turn and face God.
Not to God, but to the other criminal, he makes a confession of sin and a profession of faith: “Have you no fear of God? You’re getting the same as him. We deserve this, but not him--he did nothing to deserve this.” That was the criminal’s confession of sin. That was his reflection that he had misspent his life and that he now realizes it could have been otherwise. And had it been otherwise, he wouldn’t be hanging there on that cross.
Then came the profession of faith, when he finally turned to Jesus. He stopped arguing with the other criminal and said to Jesus, “Jesus, remember me when you enter your kingdom.”
What could Jesus have replied? “Sorry, buddy, you don’t quite measure up?” Or, “You are in last place of the great race of life; I’m sorry, but you’re eliminated!” Or, “Why do you think you deserve to enter my kingdom along with all the other God-fearing people who lived religiously their whole life long? Do you think you, at the last moment of your life, can worm your way in?” Does Jesus say anything like that? We might have. But, no. Jesus replied to the man, “I tell you, today you will join me in Paradise.”
Paradise is another term for the Garden of Eden. It is the new Garden, unstained by sin. It is the place where the Tree of Life grows. It is the place where God will gather all believers. Jesus, with powerful encouragement tells the criminal his faith has given him a place in Paradise.
What an act of grace, not only to be sharing the moment of death with Jesus Christ, but also to hear him say that Paradise awaits you. Today! Today; not some time in the future, but today. You will be in Paradise, and you will enter with Jesus at your side. Wow! That’s who I want by my side when I die.
Jackie Robinson was the first African American to play major league baseball. As the first to break baseball’s “color barrier,” Robinson faced jeering crowds in every stadium. While playing one day in his home stadium in Brooklyn, he let a ground ball slip by him. His own fans began to ridicule him with racial slurs. He stood at second base, humiliated, as the fans continued their taunting.
Then the shortstop, PeeWee Reese came over, stood next to Robinson and put his arm around him in an act of encouragement. The fans immediately went quiet. Robinson later said that that arm around his shoulder that day saved his career.
Jesus, as best he could from the cross, put his arm of encouragement around the criminal on the terrible day of their deaths. With his arm around the shoulder of his fellow crucified, Jesus quieted the crowds and the other criminal, and saved the man’s eternal life: Today, you will be with me in Paradise.
These words of Jesus from the cross are words to us all when we are facing the worst that life has to throw at us, when we are facing the reality of our own sin and mortality. Jesus’ words come to us not as a kick when we are down, or a slap in the face when we are already in tears. His words come instead as deep encouragement, an arm around the shoulders, and as an affirmation that the best that God can give is yet to come.
Prayer
Forgive us, Lord,
when we think we’re in control
when we think our lives are only in our hands
when we use you -- or try to use you --
to get out of a mess
just so we can get ourselves into another
when we turn to our self made forms of power
thinking we are invincible,
that we are somehow protected from harm and death.
Turn our heads, Lord Jesus,
Catch our eye, as we try to catch yours,
Hoping that you will be with us,
that you will walk with us
through the valley of the shadow of death
and we won’t go that way alone.
Amen.
Monday, March 14, 2011
"Last Words From the Cross" (part 1)
"Last Words From the Cross" (part 1)
Luke 23:33-34
When someone is on the threshold of death, and they breathe their last, an often asked question by those who weren’t with the person at the time of death is, “Did he/she say anything just before they died?” It’s as if the very last words, spoken at the end of life, are somehow much more weighty than any of the words they spoke earlier in their lives. People remember last words.
Maybe some of you have read books by C.S. Lewis. He’s been an influential author in my life. Lewis died on the same day John F. Kennedy was assassinated, so his death went pretty much unnoticed. According to one of C.S. Lewis’ close friends, who was with him when he died, said that Lewis’ last words were, “It’s all kind of exciting, isn’t it?”
I’ve been thinking of something I can say, if I am conscious at all, at the point of my death, that will totally mystify people. It would be something like, “There’s a light in the attic.” Then I would die. Everyone would wonder what that meant. They would think that it’s got to be something profound, something imbued with deep spiritual meaning. They would puzzle over it for years. Pass the story down from generation to generation.
Probably what will happen is, after I threw out my last dying breath quip, and my soul is leaving my body, I’ll hear my daughter’s usual reply, “Quit being such an idiot, dad.” Even in death I hope to be an embarrassment to my children, fulfilling my role as a father.
After Jesus was nailed to the cross, he made seven statements. He’d lost a lot of blood after being whipped. He was weak, and hurting, and his time was short. These last seven statements from our Lord have captivated people’s attention ever since they were uttered. Mainly because they were the last things he said.
I’m going to take a look at Jesus’ so-called, “Seven Last Words” spoken from the cross. We’ll spend some time thinking about them during Lent, and leading up to Holy Week and Easter. Today, we hear the first statement made as the nails were being pounded through his wrists and ankles. The cross has not been hoisted up and planted in the hole yet. Laying on the cross, suffering excruciating pain upon pain, with each blow of the mallet on the spikes, Jesus says, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”
At first hearing, we want to loudly disagree with Jesus. Of course those people knew what they were doing. They were putting to death another human being. Actually, three human beings. They were fulfilling their orders to carry out an execution. They were nailing three men to crosses. They knew what they were doing. They were putting an end to Jesus’ life in a most painful way.
But there’s another level of reality going on here, isn’t there. On another level, these executioners are oblivious to the fact, that one of the men they were putting to death that day was actually God’s Son. The Savior of the world.
Reading this story is like those well written plays, where the audience knows the truth about one of the characters, that the characters who are on stage don’t know or realize. That’s the ironic, and sad tragedy of this Crucifixion scene: not just the execution, but the ignorance of the executioners about who it is that’s being put to death.
So why is Jesus asking God to forgive them? What, exactly, is forgivable in Jesus’ mind? Their actions? Their sadistic pleasure in executing people? Their being caught in the middle of having to follow orders, even though those orders are causing them to execute an innocent man.
Or, is it their ignorance that Jesus is saying is forgivable? They get to be forgiven simply because they’re ignorant of what is really going on? They are being given a free pass, because they can’t see the truth behind the obvious? Wouldn’t that open up a can of worms for criminal prosecutors and defense attorneys? “You didn’t know what you were doing when you killed that guy, so I guess you’re off the hook.”
Also, why would Jesus need to plead for forgiveness for his executioners to God? Couldn’t Jesus just forgive them right then and there? Wouldn’t that take care of it? Is the temptation, if you want to call it that, for God to be unforgiving towards these killers? Does Jesus need to remind God of God’s forgiving nature? Does Jesus need to jog God’s attention back to “the plan” they are working on, because the Father God is getting too caught up in the atrocity of this scene? It would be a tough thing for any father to have to stand by and watch what is happening to his only son, even if you are God.
So what is Jesus up to, in asking for such forgiveness? Another question, that I usually ponder when I’m looking at statements Jesus makes is, “Who is Jesus’ real audience?” Who is Jesus actually speaking to? Sometimes he said things to the Pharisees, but they were actually aimed at the disciples. Sometimes he would say something to the disciples, but they were actually meant for the Pharisees, or the surrounding crowd. So who is Jesus’ intended audience in this first, of his seven last statements?
Could it be the executioners? (Remember, Jesus is speaking to God.) Did Jesus make this statement, hoping that they would overhear and remember what he said after-the-fact? What if one of these soldiers became a believer later on, and then, realizing he had a part in Jesus’ death, would be overwhelmed by that? Is Jesus giving them something to remember so they don’t become obliterated by guilt when they realize who Jesus really is?
Or, like I already mentioned, is this statement for the disciples? If they were there, at the Crucifixion, and not hiding out, did Jesus make this God-ward statement for their sake? Was it important for them to hear Jesus’ forgiveness of his killers? Most of the 12 disciples would be martyred, and die horrible deaths: Peter crucified upside down; James sawn in half; others tarred and set on fire. Is Jesus showing them the way, and giving them the prayer they will have to draw from when it’s their turn?
Or, could this statement of Jesus be for the crowd? Is Jesus making an affirmation that tragic, senseless death can’t be stopped from happening in the world? That the only thing we can do, in the face of such atrocious killing is deal with it with forgiveness. Is Jesus teaching the bystanders that even though forgiving doesn’t condone such senseless and cold-hearted death, forgiveness does show the survivors the way through their grief? Is Jesus teaching the people that authentic forgiveness has to do with God, can only come from God, since that’s who Jesus is addressing?
If I was in the crowd that day, hearing what Jesus said, I would have wondered how I can really forgive someone who has, in a determined sort of way, sought to do me harm? How could Jesus find it within himself to forgive those who were pounding nails through his muscle and bone? How can you forgive someone for that?
And who is the “them” that Jesus prays for? Is it just the soldiers who have to do the deed? Or is it also Herod, and Caiaphus, the Jewish Sanhedrin, and even Judas? None of them knew what they were actually doing. Is Jesus asking God to forgive them all?
Is this kind of forgiveness possible only because Jesus was the Savior, the Son of God? That forgiving others is what he’s supposed to do? But for us it’s impossible? Does God really expect us mere mortals to be just as forgiving as Jesus towards those who hurt us deeply and physically and emotionally and psychologically? “Impossible!” you might say.
I want to tell you three stories. These are true stories about real people. As I tell you these stories, I want you to ask yourself a couple of questions. First, could you have responded as the people in these stories did? You may respond in a quick, knee-jerk way, “No way.” If you do answer that way, my second question is, Why not? What is the power that Jesus tapped into that is available to all believers when evil is loosed upon us, and great harm is done? Is there a power in this forgiveness of Christ on the cross that is way beyond our ability to comprehend? And will we discover that power only when we, similarly to Christ, forgive?
Here’s the first story. In 1960 Adolph Coors (one of Nick’s heroes) founder of Coors Brewery, was kidnapped and held for ransom. He was beaten brutally and shoved in the trunk of a car. During the the kidnap negotiations he was shot and killed. His body was found on a remote area of the Rockies. The kidnapper was found, convicted, and imprisoned.
At the time of the kidnapping and murder, Coors’ son, Adolph, Jr. was 15 years old. His father was his best friend. He created an enormous hatred in his heart for his father’s murderer. The one thought that nagged him was, “If only I could have caught the man before the police did.”
In 1975, Adolph, Jr. became a Christian. He became active with the group, Prison Fellowship, started by Chuck Colson. The leader of Adolph’s group asked him one day, “Have you forgiven the man who killed your father?”
Coors replied, “Yes, in my heart I have forgiven him.”
The leader pressed further. “Have you been to see the man personally and have you forgiven him; and not only that, have you asked him to forgive you?”
With that, Coors became angry and retorted, “Why should he forgive me?”
“Because,” said the group leader, “you have hated him for so long.”
Coors went to the penitentiary to visit the man who brutally killed his father. He took the man a Bible. When he gave it to him, he said, “I’m down here today because, as a Christian, I have been commanded by my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to ask for your forgiveness. I forgive you for the sins you have committed against our family. And I ask you to forgive me for the hatred I have stored in my heart for you.”
In the weeks that followed, Coors told his group leader that an amazing thing had happened. Ever since he had become a Christian, he had trouble praying. But in the days and weeks that followed his meeting with his father’s killer, giving and asking forgiveness, prayer now flowed easily and wonderfully.
So, my question is, Could you have done that?
Here’s another story. A missionary to Korea during the Korean War tells of an incident he witnessed. A South Korean Christian, a civilian, was arrested by the communists and ordered shot. When a young communist officer learned that the prisoner was in charge of an orphanage, caring for small children, he decided to spare the man and execute his son instead. So they shot his 19 year old son in the back of the head and made the father watch his son die.
Later, after the war turned, the young communist officer was captured by United Nations forces. He was tried and condemned to death for his war crimes. Before the death sentence was carried out, the Christian man, whose son had been executed, pled for the life of the communist officer. He testified that the leader had been young, and that he really didn’t know what he was doing. (Sound familiar?) “Give him to me,” begged the father, “and I will train him.”
The United Nations court granted the father’s request. The father took the murderer of his son into his home and began to care for him and teach him about Christ. That once Communist officer became the pastor of one of the largest Christian churches in Korea and the world.
So my question again is, Could you have done that?
The final story is about Goldie Bristol, who wrote a book titled, When It’s Hard to Forgive. The book describes the horror and pain she and her husband, Bob, felt when they were told their 22 year old daughter had been raped and murdered.
After some time, Bob and Goldie decided they wanted to meet the man who had murdered their daughter. Because of their faith in Christ, they decided they would embrace their enemy in love. After a number of attempts to arrange a meeting with their daughter’s murderer, the man finally agreed to meet them. Goldie wrote:
The door opened; the man entered the room. He was about 6 feet tall, a dark-haired, muscular, cleanly dressed person. God’s love welled up within me and overflowed. The man paused, his eyes filling with tears. My husband and I stood and each in turn embraced the man. The three of us wept together.
Bob and Goldie didn’t understand why this man had murdered their daughter. Yet they felt deep within them that they must forgive him. After meeting him that day, they felt free, at peace, purged of anger and resentment. Even though the man refused to accept their forgiveness of him, Goldie and Bob’s pain disappeared.
Could you have done that?
Goldie is often invited to speak at church gatherings. People are intrigued by her experience, and what it means to really forgive someone. She is surprised to find, though, that so many in the audiences where she speaks are hostile to her. She is frequently attacked with questions and accused of being unloving. People say she is naive and disrespectful concerning her daughter’s death. But I wonder what Christ thinks of Goldie and Bob for their act of forgiveness.
I have found story after story, similar to these of people’s forgiveness in the face of evil and atrocity and deep hurt. I hope you are thinking about any unforgiveness you may be storing in your hearts. What do you have to learn from our Savior’s words from the cross, and the stories I have told, about the power of forgiveness?
Because I think that’s what forgiveness is: it’s a power. It’s a power the forgiver has over the one who is inflicting the pain. Forgiveness is the power to cancel out even the gravest of hurts and harm. Forgiveness is the power to not let that destructive pain become a part of who you are as a person, and define you. Forgiveness is saying to those who are inflicting the pain, “I have power over you that you don’t understand. And this is it: I forgive you.”
Could you do that?
Luke 23:33-34
When someone is on the threshold of death, and they breathe their last, an often asked question by those who weren’t with the person at the time of death is, “Did he/she say anything just before they died?” It’s as if the very last words, spoken at the end of life, are somehow much more weighty than any of the words they spoke earlier in their lives. People remember last words.
Maybe some of you have read books by C.S. Lewis. He’s been an influential author in my life. Lewis died on the same day John F. Kennedy was assassinated, so his death went pretty much unnoticed. According to one of C.S. Lewis’ close friends, who was with him when he died, said that Lewis’ last words were, “It’s all kind of exciting, isn’t it?”
I’ve been thinking of something I can say, if I am conscious at all, at the point of my death, that will totally mystify people. It would be something like, “There’s a light in the attic.” Then I would die. Everyone would wonder what that meant. They would think that it’s got to be something profound, something imbued with deep spiritual meaning. They would puzzle over it for years. Pass the story down from generation to generation.
Probably what will happen is, after I threw out my last dying breath quip, and my soul is leaving my body, I’ll hear my daughter’s usual reply, “Quit being such an idiot, dad.” Even in death I hope to be an embarrassment to my children, fulfilling my role as a father.
After Jesus was nailed to the cross, he made seven statements. He’d lost a lot of blood after being whipped. He was weak, and hurting, and his time was short. These last seven statements from our Lord have captivated people’s attention ever since they were uttered. Mainly because they were the last things he said.
I’m going to take a look at Jesus’ so-called, “Seven Last Words” spoken from the cross. We’ll spend some time thinking about them during Lent, and leading up to Holy Week and Easter. Today, we hear the first statement made as the nails were being pounded through his wrists and ankles. The cross has not been hoisted up and planted in the hole yet. Laying on the cross, suffering excruciating pain upon pain, with each blow of the mallet on the spikes, Jesus says, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”
At first hearing, we want to loudly disagree with Jesus. Of course those people knew what they were doing. They were putting to death another human being. Actually, three human beings. They were fulfilling their orders to carry out an execution. They were nailing three men to crosses. They knew what they were doing. They were putting an end to Jesus’ life in a most painful way.
But there’s another level of reality going on here, isn’t there. On another level, these executioners are oblivious to the fact, that one of the men they were putting to death that day was actually God’s Son. The Savior of the world.
Reading this story is like those well written plays, where the audience knows the truth about one of the characters, that the characters who are on stage don’t know or realize. That’s the ironic, and sad tragedy of this Crucifixion scene: not just the execution, but the ignorance of the executioners about who it is that’s being put to death.
So why is Jesus asking God to forgive them? What, exactly, is forgivable in Jesus’ mind? Their actions? Their sadistic pleasure in executing people? Their being caught in the middle of having to follow orders, even though those orders are causing them to execute an innocent man.
Or, is it their ignorance that Jesus is saying is forgivable? They get to be forgiven simply because they’re ignorant of what is really going on? They are being given a free pass, because they can’t see the truth behind the obvious? Wouldn’t that open up a can of worms for criminal prosecutors and defense attorneys? “You didn’t know what you were doing when you killed that guy, so I guess you’re off the hook.”
Also, why would Jesus need to plead for forgiveness for his executioners to God? Couldn’t Jesus just forgive them right then and there? Wouldn’t that take care of it? Is the temptation, if you want to call it that, for God to be unforgiving towards these killers? Does Jesus need to remind God of God’s forgiving nature? Does Jesus need to jog God’s attention back to “the plan” they are working on, because the Father God is getting too caught up in the atrocity of this scene? It would be a tough thing for any father to have to stand by and watch what is happening to his only son, even if you are God.
So what is Jesus up to, in asking for such forgiveness? Another question, that I usually ponder when I’m looking at statements Jesus makes is, “Who is Jesus’ real audience?” Who is Jesus actually speaking to? Sometimes he said things to the Pharisees, but they were actually aimed at the disciples. Sometimes he would say something to the disciples, but they were actually meant for the Pharisees, or the surrounding crowd. So who is Jesus’ intended audience in this first, of his seven last statements?
Could it be the executioners? (Remember, Jesus is speaking to God.) Did Jesus make this statement, hoping that they would overhear and remember what he said after-the-fact? What if one of these soldiers became a believer later on, and then, realizing he had a part in Jesus’ death, would be overwhelmed by that? Is Jesus giving them something to remember so they don’t become obliterated by guilt when they realize who Jesus really is?
Or, like I already mentioned, is this statement for the disciples? If they were there, at the Crucifixion, and not hiding out, did Jesus make this God-ward statement for their sake? Was it important for them to hear Jesus’ forgiveness of his killers? Most of the 12 disciples would be martyred, and die horrible deaths: Peter crucified upside down; James sawn in half; others tarred and set on fire. Is Jesus showing them the way, and giving them the prayer they will have to draw from when it’s their turn?
Or, could this statement of Jesus be for the crowd? Is Jesus making an affirmation that tragic, senseless death can’t be stopped from happening in the world? That the only thing we can do, in the face of such atrocious killing is deal with it with forgiveness. Is Jesus teaching the bystanders that even though forgiving doesn’t condone such senseless and cold-hearted death, forgiveness does show the survivors the way through their grief? Is Jesus teaching the people that authentic forgiveness has to do with God, can only come from God, since that’s who Jesus is addressing?
If I was in the crowd that day, hearing what Jesus said, I would have wondered how I can really forgive someone who has, in a determined sort of way, sought to do me harm? How could Jesus find it within himself to forgive those who were pounding nails through his muscle and bone? How can you forgive someone for that?
And who is the “them” that Jesus prays for? Is it just the soldiers who have to do the deed? Or is it also Herod, and Caiaphus, the Jewish Sanhedrin, and even Judas? None of them knew what they were actually doing. Is Jesus asking God to forgive them all?
Is this kind of forgiveness possible only because Jesus was the Savior, the Son of God? That forgiving others is what he’s supposed to do? But for us it’s impossible? Does God really expect us mere mortals to be just as forgiving as Jesus towards those who hurt us deeply and physically and emotionally and psychologically? “Impossible!” you might say.
I want to tell you three stories. These are true stories about real people. As I tell you these stories, I want you to ask yourself a couple of questions. First, could you have responded as the people in these stories did? You may respond in a quick, knee-jerk way, “No way.” If you do answer that way, my second question is, Why not? What is the power that Jesus tapped into that is available to all believers when evil is loosed upon us, and great harm is done? Is there a power in this forgiveness of Christ on the cross that is way beyond our ability to comprehend? And will we discover that power only when we, similarly to Christ, forgive?
Here’s the first story. In 1960 Adolph Coors (one of Nick’s heroes) founder of Coors Brewery, was kidnapped and held for ransom. He was beaten brutally and shoved in the trunk of a car. During the the kidnap negotiations he was shot and killed. His body was found on a remote area of the Rockies. The kidnapper was found, convicted, and imprisoned.
At the time of the kidnapping and murder, Coors’ son, Adolph, Jr. was 15 years old. His father was his best friend. He created an enormous hatred in his heart for his father’s murderer. The one thought that nagged him was, “If only I could have caught the man before the police did.”
In 1975, Adolph, Jr. became a Christian. He became active with the group, Prison Fellowship, started by Chuck Colson. The leader of Adolph’s group asked him one day, “Have you forgiven the man who killed your father?”
Coors replied, “Yes, in my heart I have forgiven him.”
The leader pressed further. “Have you been to see the man personally and have you forgiven him; and not only that, have you asked him to forgive you?”
With that, Coors became angry and retorted, “Why should he forgive me?”
“Because,” said the group leader, “you have hated him for so long.”
Coors went to the penitentiary to visit the man who brutally killed his father. He took the man a Bible. When he gave it to him, he said, “I’m down here today because, as a Christian, I have been commanded by my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to ask for your forgiveness. I forgive you for the sins you have committed against our family. And I ask you to forgive me for the hatred I have stored in my heart for you.”
In the weeks that followed, Coors told his group leader that an amazing thing had happened. Ever since he had become a Christian, he had trouble praying. But in the days and weeks that followed his meeting with his father’s killer, giving and asking forgiveness, prayer now flowed easily and wonderfully.
So, my question is, Could you have done that?
Here’s another story. A missionary to Korea during the Korean War tells of an incident he witnessed. A South Korean Christian, a civilian, was arrested by the communists and ordered shot. When a young communist officer learned that the prisoner was in charge of an orphanage, caring for small children, he decided to spare the man and execute his son instead. So they shot his 19 year old son in the back of the head and made the father watch his son die.
Later, after the war turned, the young communist officer was captured by United Nations forces. He was tried and condemned to death for his war crimes. Before the death sentence was carried out, the Christian man, whose son had been executed, pled for the life of the communist officer. He testified that the leader had been young, and that he really didn’t know what he was doing. (Sound familiar?) “Give him to me,” begged the father, “and I will train him.”
The United Nations court granted the father’s request. The father took the murderer of his son into his home and began to care for him and teach him about Christ. That once Communist officer became the pastor of one of the largest Christian churches in Korea and the world.
So my question again is, Could you have done that?
The final story is about Goldie Bristol, who wrote a book titled, When It’s Hard to Forgive. The book describes the horror and pain she and her husband, Bob, felt when they were told their 22 year old daughter had been raped and murdered.
After some time, Bob and Goldie decided they wanted to meet the man who had murdered their daughter. Because of their faith in Christ, they decided they would embrace their enemy in love. After a number of attempts to arrange a meeting with their daughter’s murderer, the man finally agreed to meet them. Goldie wrote:
The door opened; the man entered the room. He was about 6 feet tall, a dark-haired, muscular, cleanly dressed person. God’s love welled up within me and overflowed. The man paused, his eyes filling with tears. My husband and I stood and each in turn embraced the man. The three of us wept together.
Bob and Goldie didn’t understand why this man had murdered their daughter. Yet they felt deep within them that they must forgive him. After meeting him that day, they felt free, at peace, purged of anger and resentment. Even though the man refused to accept their forgiveness of him, Goldie and Bob’s pain disappeared.
Could you have done that?
Goldie is often invited to speak at church gatherings. People are intrigued by her experience, and what it means to really forgive someone. She is surprised to find, though, that so many in the audiences where she speaks are hostile to her. She is frequently attacked with questions and accused of being unloving. People say she is naive and disrespectful concerning her daughter’s death. But I wonder what Christ thinks of Goldie and Bob for their act of forgiveness.
I have found story after story, similar to these of people’s forgiveness in the face of evil and atrocity and deep hurt. I hope you are thinking about any unforgiveness you may be storing in your hearts. What do you have to learn from our Savior’s words from the cross, and the stories I have told, about the power of forgiveness?
Because I think that’s what forgiveness is: it’s a power. It’s a power the forgiver has over the one who is inflicting the pain. Forgiveness is the power to cancel out even the gravest of hurts and harm. Forgiveness is the power to not let that destructive pain become a part of who you are as a person, and define you. Forgiveness is saying to those who are inflicting the pain, “I have power over you that you don’t understand. And this is it: I forgive you.”
Could you do that?
Monday, March 7, 2011
"Bohemian Believers"
"Bohemian Believers"
Matthew 7:7-12
I recently watched the movie version of the musical, “Rent.” I don’t recommend it to everyone. It was disturbing to me for a lot of reasons. But what was disturbing was also thought provoking. What caught me up the most were the characters of the musical: young, 20-somethings, who live, should I say, unconventional, nonconforming lives. There was the Columbia philosophy professor whose questions and searching had to do with trying to find the meaning of life. Suddenly, for him, none of the answers he’d found previously made sense. Therefore, none of his questions made sense. He resigned his teaching position. He began asking himself different questions, not about the meaning of life, but about the meaning and boundaries of love.
There was the rocker, who didn’t begin to question anything until he lost his girlfriend to a drug addicted suicide. He wants to write the one, pure song that will encapsulate all his questions. He’s seeking for answers to why life ends up so tragically. Like the prodigal son, he runs away, not to a life of sin, but a life of conventionality in New Mexico. He finally realizes he must take his old life on, rather than run away from it. Only then does his song start to come to him.
There’s the film maker who wanted to display life in all its rawness and reality, especially for AIDS and HIV patients. In ways films are not normally made, he puts together his movie as a visual montage. Sensitively and poignantly he gives his characters a venue and voice to ask, seek, and knock, as one-by-one they all die. His movie ends up serving as a powerful memorial for those whom “normal” society has deemed to have no voice. He chronicles the outcasts who are told they don’t deserve to have their stories told. His movie asks the question, “Why can’t these people be heard?”
And there’s the 19 year old stripper, addicted to heroin because she feels there are no more questions worth asking. Nothing worth seeking. No doors worth knocking on, except where to get her next fix. She gives up. When her friends finally find her, she is near death. She is cold from the winter outside, and the winter inside her soul. She is hungry, but unwilling to eat. She is poisoned with the drugs of heroin and fatalism. She breathes her last. The rocker, who has fallen in love with her, sings the one, pure song he has finally written to her lifeless body.
What I began to ponder while watching the movie--and continue to ponder--was the way the characters in the movie questioned everything. Nothing was too sacred. Nothing too profane. At one point they sing a song about being young bohemians--people who are trying to look at life differently, who refuse to succumb to conventional viewpoints, who renounce the answers most everyone else just swallow on a daily basis.
I sat there watching the movie, and as I am standing here now, I’m struggling with the approach to life depicted by the young bohemians in the movie. I began to interface that approach to life with the statements Jesus makes about questioning, seeking, and knocking. This sermon is my struggle with what it means to live a Christian, reflective lifestyle that isn’t afraid to ask questions.
It was the questioning, seeking and knocking that gave the characters in the movie their vitality. It wasn’t the answers they found. They even questioned their answers. It was in the process of always being curious, always being inquisitive, always wondering, never being satisfied. All of their questions were being bounced off of Mimi’s life--the drug addicted 19 year old. Mimi never questioned anything. Never wondered “Why?” or “What if?” It was her giving up and giving in to the river and current of an unreflective life that played off the energy of all the other character’s questions.
I began to wonder how many of us are Mimi. Our drug is not heroin. Our drug is conventionality. Only willing to go along with stale questions and even more stale answers. Our drug is the unwillingness to ask, seek, knock. To resist being what I would call “bohemian believers.”
I began to wonder if we are addicted to the same kind of quiet, desperate, traditional, unreflective, escapist life that is afraid to ask ourselves hard questions. Are we unwilling to go down a road, that at first sight, appears to be a dead end? Do we refuse to knock on doors of places that aren’t in the good neighborhood of orthodoxy?
Ask, and you will receive. Search, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened for you. Everyone who asks will receive. Everyone who searches will find. And the door will be opened for everyone who knocks.
Did you listen carefully to what Jesus is telling his disciples/us? Knowing what you’re looking for isn’t as important as the looking itself. Jesus doesn’t describe what you’re supposed to be asking about. He doesn’t even tell us what, exactly, we will receive, find, or have opened for us. He doesn’t give us a list or even a hint of the questions we’re supposed to ask. He doesn’t describe what you should be searching for. He doesn’t say which doors we should be knocking on. Jesus didn’t expand with any details because what he is emphasizing is the attitude, not the specifics. It is simply the continual attitude of asking, searching, knocking that Jesus emphasizes.
I think the assumption of Jesus is that as long as we are on that quest, God is going to bring us around to asking the questions we really NEED answered; that God is going to get us searching for that which we really need to find; that God is going to direct us to the doors we should be knocking on. The important thing is that God can’t do that if we don’t have the heart, or the will to ask, search, and knock in the first place. The heart and will and drive has to come first.
I think there’s something else going on for those who refuse to embark on what I’m calling the Bohemian Believers journey. It’s fear. For Mimi, in the movie “Rent,” the fear was that when she went asking there would be no answers. The fear was that when she went searching for something different, all paths would lead to dead ends. The fear was that when she went knocking, all doors would open up to emptiness. That’s one part of the fear.
The other part of that fear, for those of us who have not given into Mimi’s fatalism, is the fear that we will find answers, findings, and openings that will be different than what we want or expect. So, in order to protect ourselves from the unknown or the different, we just don’t ask, search, or knock. We keep ourselves sheltered in the secure and non-threatening questions and answers. We refuse to risk. We refuse to venture out on a journey of faith that may take us who knows where. Because, if we do that, what if we get different answers, discover something we didn’t expect, have a door opened up to a whole new environment? I had a poster once that read, “Ships in the harbor are safe, but that’s not what ships are built for.” What if we find out we’ve just been docked in our own familiar worlds too long, and that it’s time to put out to sea--that is, explore where we are in our faith, and where we need to move out to? To find out “what we’re built for.”
If we follow Jesus’ lead here, what we understand about God is that God is not afraid of our questions, our search, nor our knocking. Jesus is telling us that God wants us to do that. The only ones who are afraid of doing that is not God, but us. Our fear may be that we just might find out we’ve got it all wrong. Anyone who reads the Psalms, or the book of Job, or Ecclesiastes, or Lamentations, can see clearly that asking, searching, and knocking is the attitude God not only allows, but expects:
Job asks God: “Are people mere things to you? Why all this dodging and shuffling? Human life is nothing but a struggle, isn’t it?” (Job 6, 7)
One of the psalmists writes, “God, are you avoiding me?” (Psalm 10:1)
The writer of Ecclesiastes, in wondering about the meaning of life, starts out his book by asking a lot of questions. Questions like, “What’s there to show for a lifetime of work, a lifetime of working your fingers to the bone?” (1:3) And then follows that up with the question, “What has happened before that won’t happen again? Is there nothing new in the whole world?” (1:9)
And in Lamentations, a book of tears about the destruction of Jerusalem, and the awful human atrocities that took place, Jeremiah shouts at God: “Look at us, God. Think it over. Have you ever treated anyone as badly as this? Should women eat their own babies, the very children they have cared for?” (2:20) In that same book, Jeremiah asks so many tough questions about how it is that evil happens, and if God is behind it. He asks, “Do both bad and good things come by the command of the Most High God?” (3:38)
Here, in the Bible, there is page after page of people God allowed to ask some of the toughest questions about life that anyone could ask. Like I said, God doesn’t seem to be afraid of such questions, but desires we pursue them, with Him.
Jesus spoke, in our verses from Matthew 7, about the children who ask for bread and fish. So many of God’s children are asking their questions, searching the ins and outs of their lives, knocking on so many doors, looking for bread and fish, truth and discernment, answers and peace. I want to believe that any of God’s children, who may be asking for bread and fish, even though they don’t realize it, that for all of us, God will not give stones or snakes.
I think Jesus is telling us something really important, not just about what it means to be a disciple Jesus’ way here, but also about who God is. Jesus is telling us that God is a God who loves to direct people to the right questions, and then answer those questions. Our God is a God who loves to find people who are searching for something, even if they have no idea what it is, and then help them find it. Like the parable Jesus told, saying the Kingdom of God is like a man who happens to find a treasure in a field. The man didn’t know he was searching for a treasure. He just happened to be walking in a field. But God puts a treasure right in his path, helping him find what he’d been looking for all along, without knowing it. Our God is a God who loves to open doors people are drawn to, without really knowing why. Then God challenges them to find the courage within themselves to walk up the steps and knock on the door anyway.
I’ve been talking (emailing) with my somewhat bohemian son and daughter about all this. They are both accomplished questioners, searchers, and knockers. They are both struggling with their faith right now, and asking some fairly tough questions. For example, Ryan wrote to me:
I think we are all talking about questions of faith: What does faith mean? Who is God? Where does God fit into my life? Does God really have plans for us? Is God the church? Does the church know God? Are there any answers to these questions, or just interpretations? ... And then when you’ve asked all of those questions, you can question whether the “answers” you arrived at are still valid based on questions you’ve asked since you found your previous “answer.”
He’s asking questions and dealing with stuff I never did at his age (he’s 27). I love his question, “Is God the church?” What an amazing question, because for him, if God is the church, what he’s seeing in the church right now, he doesn’t want to have anything to do with God--especially with church’s like Fred Phelps in Topeka, who the Supreme Court, this week, allowed to continue their ranting and craziness. And the converse question is the same: Is the church God? If that is so, Ryan doesn’t want anything to do with the church, because to him, it’s make a very poor God. And he’s absolutely right.
Ryan and Kristin are preacher’s kids. Aren’t they supposed to have it all together? Another tough, and maybe unfair question. And what about their minister father? But, even though they are questioning their basic beliefs, can we not, by Jesus’ statement, be sure that God will honor their questions and search? That we can trust God to bring them around to where God wants them to be?
The point here, for me, according to Jesus’ words, is to keep asking, keep searching, keep knocking, because that’s where God is. It’s a lifelong process. And, as Ryan wrote in his email to me, the answers you get at one point in your life may not make sense at another time. So we have to be willing to ask those same basic questions all over again, at different times in our lives, even though we assume we already know the answer.
The worst thing in life is not to have a bad faith-quest, but to give up the search all together. The worst thing is to think you’ve asked enough questions, searched enough dead ends, knocked on enough doors. The sad people are those who just sit, and search no further, who slip their ships into the harbor, and then into the dock, and never untie again, to go out in the risky seas. To become the Mimi’s who have decided life is not worth asking about, that life’s troubling ins and outs are not worth searching, that closed doors are just better left closed. The sad people are those who have given up the quest, and by so doing, have given up on God, who is out where the asking, searching, and the knocking is going on.
Matthew 7:7-12
I recently watched the movie version of the musical, “Rent.” I don’t recommend it to everyone. It was disturbing to me for a lot of reasons. But what was disturbing was also thought provoking. What caught me up the most were the characters of the musical: young, 20-somethings, who live, should I say, unconventional, nonconforming lives. There was the Columbia philosophy professor whose questions and searching had to do with trying to find the meaning of life. Suddenly, for him, none of the answers he’d found previously made sense. Therefore, none of his questions made sense. He resigned his teaching position. He began asking himself different questions, not about the meaning of life, but about the meaning and boundaries of love.
There was the rocker, who didn’t begin to question anything until he lost his girlfriend to a drug addicted suicide. He wants to write the one, pure song that will encapsulate all his questions. He’s seeking for answers to why life ends up so tragically. Like the prodigal son, he runs away, not to a life of sin, but a life of conventionality in New Mexico. He finally realizes he must take his old life on, rather than run away from it. Only then does his song start to come to him.
There’s the film maker who wanted to display life in all its rawness and reality, especially for AIDS and HIV patients. In ways films are not normally made, he puts together his movie as a visual montage. Sensitively and poignantly he gives his characters a venue and voice to ask, seek, and knock, as one-by-one they all die. His movie ends up serving as a powerful memorial for those whom “normal” society has deemed to have no voice. He chronicles the outcasts who are told they don’t deserve to have their stories told. His movie asks the question, “Why can’t these people be heard?”
And there’s the 19 year old stripper, addicted to heroin because she feels there are no more questions worth asking. Nothing worth seeking. No doors worth knocking on, except where to get her next fix. She gives up. When her friends finally find her, she is near death. She is cold from the winter outside, and the winter inside her soul. She is hungry, but unwilling to eat. She is poisoned with the drugs of heroin and fatalism. She breathes her last. The rocker, who has fallen in love with her, sings the one, pure song he has finally written to her lifeless body.
What I began to ponder while watching the movie--and continue to ponder--was the way the characters in the movie questioned everything. Nothing was too sacred. Nothing too profane. At one point they sing a song about being young bohemians--people who are trying to look at life differently, who refuse to succumb to conventional viewpoints, who renounce the answers most everyone else just swallow on a daily basis.
I sat there watching the movie, and as I am standing here now, I’m struggling with the approach to life depicted by the young bohemians in the movie. I began to interface that approach to life with the statements Jesus makes about questioning, seeking, and knocking. This sermon is my struggle with what it means to live a Christian, reflective lifestyle that isn’t afraid to ask questions.
It was the questioning, seeking and knocking that gave the characters in the movie their vitality. It wasn’t the answers they found. They even questioned their answers. It was in the process of always being curious, always being inquisitive, always wondering, never being satisfied. All of their questions were being bounced off of Mimi’s life--the drug addicted 19 year old. Mimi never questioned anything. Never wondered “Why?” or “What if?” It was her giving up and giving in to the river and current of an unreflective life that played off the energy of all the other character’s questions.
I began to wonder how many of us are Mimi. Our drug is not heroin. Our drug is conventionality. Only willing to go along with stale questions and even more stale answers. Our drug is the unwillingness to ask, seek, knock. To resist being what I would call “bohemian believers.”
I began to wonder if we are addicted to the same kind of quiet, desperate, traditional, unreflective, escapist life that is afraid to ask ourselves hard questions. Are we unwilling to go down a road, that at first sight, appears to be a dead end? Do we refuse to knock on doors of places that aren’t in the good neighborhood of orthodoxy?
Ask, and you will receive. Search, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened for you. Everyone who asks will receive. Everyone who searches will find. And the door will be opened for everyone who knocks.
Did you listen carefully to what Jesus is telling his disciples/us? Knowing what you’re looking for isn’t as important as the looking itself. Jesus doesn’t describe what you’re supposed to be asking about. He doesn’t even tell us what, exactly, we will receive, find, or have opened for us. He doesn’t give us a list or even a hint of the questions we’re supposed to ask. He doesn’t describe what you should be searching for. He doesn’t say which doors we should be knocking on. Jesus didn’t expand with any details because what he is emphasizing is the attitude, not the specifics. It is simply the continual attitude of asking, searching, knocking that Jesus emphasizes.
I think the assumption of Jesus is that as long as we are on that quest, God is going to bring us around to asking the questions we really NEED answered; that God is going to get us searching for that which we really need to find; that God is going to direct us to the doors we should be knocking on. The important thing is that God can’t do that if we don’t have the heart, or the will to ask, search, and knock in the first place. The heart and will and drive has to come first.
I think there’s something else going on for those who refuse to embark on what I’m calling the Bohemian Believers journey. It’s fear. For Mimi, in the movie “Rent,” the fear was that when she went asking there would be no answers. The fear was that when she went searching for something different, all paths would lead to dead ends. The fear was that when she went knocking, all doors would open up to emptiness. That’s one part of the fear.
The other part of that fear, for those of us who have not given into Mimi’s fatalism, is the fear that we will find answers, findings, and openings that will be different than what we want or expect. So, in order to protect ourselves from the unknown or the different, we just don’t ask, search, or knock. We keep ourselves sheltered in the secure and non-threatening questions and answers. We refuse to risk. We refuse to venture out on a journey of faith that may take us who knows where. Because, if we do that, what if we get different answers, discover something we didn’t expect, have a door opened up to a whole new environment? I had a poster once that read, “Ships in the harbor are safe, but that’s not what ships are built for.” What if we find out we’ve just been docked in our own familiar worlds too long, and that it’s time to put out to sea--that is, explore where we are in our faith, and where we need to move out to? To find out “what we’re built for.”
If we follow Jesus’ lead here, what we understand about God is that God is not afraid of our questions, our search, nor our knocking. Jesus is telling us that God wants us to do that. The only ones who are afraid of doing that is not God, but us. Our fear may be that we just might find out we’ve got it all wrong. Anyone who reads the Psalms, or the book of Job, or Ecclesiastes, or Lamentations, can see clearly that asking, searching, and knocking is the attitude God not only allows, but expects:
Job asks God: “Are people mere things to you? Why all this dodging and shuffling? Human life is nothing but a struggle, isn’t it?” (Job 6, 7)
One of the psalmists writes, “God, are you avoiding me?” (Psalm 10:1)
The writer of Ecclesiastes, in wondering about the meaning of life, starts out his book by asking a lot of questions. Questions like, “What’s there to show for a lifetime of work, a lifetime of working your fingers to the bone?” (1:3) And then follows that up with the question, “What has happened before that won’t happen again? Is there nothing new in the whole world?” (1:9)
And in Lamentations, a book of tears about the destruction of Jerusalem, and the awful human atrocities that took place, Jeremiah shouts at God: “Look at us, God. Think it over. Have you ever treated anyone as badly as this? Should women eat their own babies, the very children they have cared for?” (2:20) In that same book, Jeremiah asks so many tough questions about how it is that evil happens, and if God is behind it. He asks, “Do both bad and good things come by the command of the Most High God?” (3:38)
Here, in the Bible, there is page after page of people God allowed to ask some of the toughest questions about life that anyone could ask. Like I said, God doesn’t seem to be afraid of such questions, but desires we pursue them, with Him.
Jesus spoke, in our verses from Matthew 7, about the children who ask for bread and fish. So many of God’s children are asking their questions, searching the ins and outs of their lives, knocking on so many doors, looking for bread and fish, truth and discernment, answers and peace. I want to believe that any of God’s children, who may be asking for bread and fish, even though they don’t realize it, that for all of us, God will not give stones or snakes.
I think Jesus is telling us something really important, not just about what it means to be a disciple Jesus’ way here, but also about who God is. Jesus is telling us that God is a God who loves to direct people to the right questions, and then answer those questions. Our God is a God who loves to find people who are searching for something, even if they have no idea what it is, and then help them find it. Like the parable Jesus told, saying the Kingdom of God is like a man who happens to find a treasure in a field. The man didn’t know he was searching for a treasure. He just happened to be walking in a field. But God puts a treasure right in his path, helping him find what he’d been looking for all along, without knowing it. Our God is a God who loves to open doors people are drawn to, without really knowing why. Then God challenges them to find the courage within themselves to walk up the steps and knock on the door anyway.
I’ve been talking (emailing) with my somewhat bohemian son and daughter about all this. They are both accomplished questioners, searchers, and knockers. They are both struggling with their faith right now, and asking some fairly tough questions. For example, Ryan wrote to me:
I think we are all talking about questions of faith: What does faith mean? Who is God? Where does God fit into my life? Does God really have plans for us? Is God the church? Does the church know God? Are there any answers to these questions, or just interpretations? ... And then when you’ve asked all of those questions, you can question whether the “answers” you arrived at are still valid based on questions you’ve asked since you found your previous “answer.”
He’s asking questions and dealing with stuff I never did at his age (he’s 27). I love his question, “Is God the church?” What an amazing question, because for him, if God is the church, what he’s seeing in the church right now, he doesn’t want to have anything to do with God--especially with church’s like Fred Phelps in Topeka, who the Supreme Court, this week, allowed to continue their ranting and craziness. And the converse question is the same: Is the church God? If that is so, Ryan doesn’t want anything to do with the church, because to him, it’s make a very poor God. And he’s absolutely right.
Ryan and Kristin are preacher’s kids. Aren’t they supposed to have it all together? Another tough, and maybe unfair question. And what about their minister father? But, even though they are questioning their basic beliefs, can we not, by Jesus’ statement, be sure that God will honor their questions and search? That we can trust God to bring them around to where God wants them to be?
The point here, for me, according to Jesus’ words, is to keep asking, keep searching, keep knocking, because that’s where God is. It’s a lifelong process. And, as Ryan wrote in his email to me, the answers you get at one point in your life may not make sense at another time. So we have to be willing to ask those same basic questions all over again, at different times in our lives, even though we assume we already know the answer.
The worst thing in life is not to have a bad faith-quest, but to give up the search all together. The worst thing is to think you’ve asked enough questions, searched enough dead ends, knocked on enough doors. The sad people are those who just sit, and search no further, who slip their ships into the harbor, and then into the dock, and never untie again, to go out in the risky seas. To become the Mimi’s who have decided life is not worth asking about, that life’s troubling ins and outs are not worth searching, that closed doors are just better left closed. The sad people are those who have given up the quest, and by so doing, have given up on God, who is out where the asking, searching, and the knocking is going on.
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