I Am Crucified With Christ

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My old self has been crucified with Christ.  It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.  So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.   Galatians 2:20^(NLT)

This past week there has been a wrecking crew at our house in Thomasville. 

Some trees more than 100-feet tall were less than 60-feet from the house.  We get nervous during windy storms!  Sooo….Timmm-berrr!

Eleven years ago it wasn’t a wrecking crew, but the effect was nearly the same.  It was a building crew adding on to our house.  They worked for 6 months putting two new rooms on the back of our house for Mom and Dad to come live there. 

While they worked they needed a place to toss stuff.  So, next to the house was a dumpster, about 8’ x 25’ and full of scrap wood, shingles, discarded Pepsi bottles and sandwich wrappers. 

Inhabitants in the dumpster included untold millions of fly larvae, mice and roaches, not to mention the odd family or two of black snakes.  (Don’t tell Elizabeth I said that!)

If I had asked Mom and Dad if they preferred to live in the new rooms or the dumpster, the only question would be if I have been drinking.  Nobody in his right mind lives in a dumpster if there’s a new house waiting. 

The apostle Paul tells us about the new life being out of the dumpster of sin and crucified…now living in-Christ.  How do we live like Paul said – in Christ, with Christ living his life through our life?  It’s living together in love, in the faith family.  That’s what Jesus came to die for, that we might have life.  We were born into the deficit of sin.  It separates us from God and each other.  Jesus came to break down the barriers that separate us, so that we can walk together.

So many people make the mistake that they must do this or that – change here and there.  The kind of life Jesus offers is not one where YOU make the changes.  You simply make yourself available; HE makes the changes. 

A preacher put it this way:

“The schoolhouse that I used to attend when a boy was surrounded by a forest of scrubby black oaks.  When the frost came and loosened the grip of the leaves on other trees it seemed only to tighten the hold of these sear leaves upon the oaks.  The ice and the snow and the winter winds were powerless to make these oak trees give up their burden of death.  But by and by there was a new warmth in the atmosphere.  There was a new note in the song of the bird.  Spring came and slipped into the hearts of these oaks.  It stole up through their branches.  And then one day a new leaf said to the old leaf, 'Make room please.'  And life had come and death had gone.  It had been brought about not by a power without, but by a power within.”^[2]

This is being crucified with Christ…letting go of the dead, and receiving new life! 

So, as you come to this table, take the note paper attached to your bulletin and write what needs to be crucified with Christ on it.  You might write your name, or just that one, or 50 things that keep you from being on the cross with him. 

Or you just don’t have that much ink or paper, and you will just write nothing; but bring the paper anyway.  You can nail it to this tree, with Christ, as a statement that Christ is greater than your sin, and you believe nothing can separate you from the love of God that compelled him to die for you.

That’s what this table means.  We, who name the name, give ourselves to be crucified with him.  This is our confession of faith; our trust is in His cross.

Let the church say Amen in the Name of the Father, Because of the Son, Cooperating with the Spirit…Amen!

                                                      

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[1] Title Image Courtesy Pixabay.com.

[2]Clovis G. Chappell, More Sermons On Biblical Characters (New York, George H.                  Doran Company, 1923), 63, 64

This Holy Week - Part 5

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Good Friday of Holy Week, March 30, 2018

See, my servant will prosper; he will be highly exalted. 

But many were amazed when they saw him.
    His face was so disfigured he seemed hardly human,
    and from his appearance, one would scarcely know he was a man.
And he will startle many nations.  Kings will stand speechless in his presence.
For they will see what they had not been told;
    they will understand what they had not heard about.

Who has believed our message?  To whom has the Lord revealed his powerful arm?
My servant grew up in the Lord’s presence like a tender green shoot,
    like a root in dry ground.
There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance,
    nothing to attract us to him.
He was despised and rejected—a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief.
We turned our backs on him and looked the other way.
    He was despised, and we did not care.

Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down.
And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God,
    a punishment for his own sins!
But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins.
He was beaten so we could be whole.  He was whipped so we could be healed.
All of us, like sheep, have strayed away.
    We have left God’s paths to follow our own.
Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all.  He was oppressed and treated harshly,
    yet he never said a word.
He was led like a lamb to the slaughter.  And as a sheep is silent before the shearers,
    he did not open his mouth.
Unjustly condemned, he was led away.
No one cared that he died without descendants, that his life was cut short in midstream.
But he was struck down for the rebellion of my people.
He had done no wrong and had never deceived anyone.
But he was buried like a criminal; he was put in a rich man’s grave.

But it was the Lord’s good plan to crush him and cause him grief.
Yet when his life is made an offering for sin, he will have many descendants.
He will enjoy a long life,
    and the Lord’s good plan will prosper in his hands.
When he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish, he will be satisfied.
And because of his experience, my righteous servant will make it possible for many to be counted righteous, for he will bear all their sins.
I will give him the honors of a victorious soldier,
    because he exposed himself to death.
He was counted among the rebels.
    He bore the sins of many and interceded for rebels.

Isaiah 52:13 – 53:12^(NLT)

For You Today

Isaiah’s report is what is GOOD about Good Friday! 

If somewhere in the reading you did not develop a lump in your throat, or the sting of a tear didn’t form in the corner of your eye, it might be a sign you need to read it again!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[1] Title Image:  Courtesy of Pixabay.com

This Holy Week - Part 4

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Maundy Thursday of Holy Week, March 29, 2018

“These are your instructions for eating this meal:  Be fully dressed, wear your sandals, and carry your walking stick in your hand.  Eat the meal with urgency, for this is the Lord’s Passover.  On that night I will pass through the land of Egypt and strike down every firstborn son and firstborn male animal in the land of Egypt.  I will execute judgment against all the gods of Egypt, for I am the Lord!  But the blood on your doorposts will serve as a sign, marking the houses where you are staying.  When I see the blood, I will pass over you.  This plague of death will not touch you when I strike the land of Egypt.  “This is a day to remember. Each year, from generation to generation, you must celebrate it as a special festival to the Lord.  This is a law for all time.  Exodus 12:11-14^(NLT)

Friday evening Jewish families will be gathered all over the world to celebrate Passover, the moment God’s very special chosen nation was born.  They ate the bread of haste, and marched out of Egypt on their journey to the Land of Canaan.  Now that sounds simple and jubilant, doesn’t it?  It was jubilant; how could the end of 400 years of slavery be other?  But simple is another story.  Passover is a beginning, not a conclusion.

That rest of the story includes many battles, wrong turns in the wilderness, judgment and conquest.  Winning the right to occupy the Promised Land was a snap compared to walking the straight and narrow of keeping it!  The whole record of Israel’s history is spiked like the stock market…up one day, and crashing the next.  Every time you blinked someone was doing evil in the sight of the Lord, getting punished, and the next day the cycle would start all over again.  Rags-to-Riches, Hero-to-Zero, and back.

If that story strikes a familiar chord with our life experience, it’s because Israel’s story is our story too in this way:  Like Israel, we are born into humanity in an instant; the next threescore-and-ten years are a labyrinth of exploration, pain of wrong choices, momentary happy times, and lots of surprises.  It’s not all melancholy, but Life-101 can be a tough teacher! 

If repeating the mistakes of our ancestors isn’t enough, most of us also find new ways to create potholes in navigating our life’s highway.  Trouble, like Job’s sparks flying upward from the fire, is the way of humanity.  If it isn’t a natural disaster, we create enough unnatural ones, wars, terrorists, meddling relatives, greed, lust, envy…and so the minefield continues.  

The people who celebrate the Passover are the same as those who come to the Lord’s Supper table.  We all eat the bread with urgency, with the taste of bitter herbs on our tongues, remembering the acrimonious darkness of sin and how it enslaves us.  And we try to heed the instructions to be fully dressed, wearing sandals of peace, helmet of salvation, belt of truth, and staff/sword of the spirit in hand[2].  All of this signifying we’re ready to move-out, drop it all, leave everything behind at the sound of our Lord’s voice.

Is it any wonder the Christian life is called a pilgrimage?  When you live life as a pilgrim, home is always somewhere else.  As with Augustine[3], how can we be at rest anywhere until our souls are at home with Him?

For You Today

If you celebrate a seder (Passover) meal, or the Lord’s Supper this week, remember this is the mark of a pilgrim; you’re a traveller…you’re not home yet. 

So, travel well, be sure-footed and safe, as you stay close to He who leads the way.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[1] Title Image:  Courtesy of Pixabay.com

[2] Ephesians 6:10-18

[3] Augustine, Confessions

This Holy Week - Part 3

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Wednesday, March 28, 2018

Now Jesus was deeply troubled, and he exclaimed, “I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me!”  The disciples looked at each other, wondering whom he could mean.  The disciple Jesus loved was sitting next to Jesus at the table.  Simon Peter motioned to him to ask, “Who’s he talking about?”  So that disciple leaned over to Jesus and asked, “Lord, who is it?”  Jesus responded, “It is the one to whom I give the bread I dip in the bowl.”  And when he had dipped it, he gave it to Judas, son of Simon Iscariot.  When Judas had eaten the bread, Satan entered into him.  Then Jesus told him, “Hurry and do what you’re going to do.”  None of the others at the table knew what Jesus meant.  Since Judas was their treasurer, some thought Jesus was telling him to go and pay for the food or to give some money to the poor.  So Judas left at once, going out into the night.  As soon as Judas left the room, Jesus said, “The time has come for the Son of Man to enter into his glory, and God will be glorified because of him.  And since God receives glory because of the Son, he will give his own glory to the Son, and he will do so at once.  

John 13:21-32^(NLT)

The mere fact that Judas was at the table with Jesus should tell us volumes about the depth of the kind of love Jesus possesses and offers.  He knew Judas was on the verge of giving-in to his sin-nature; Judas was about to sink into irretrieveable darkness, and yet Jesus shared this momentous and intimate meal with even this betrayer.

I’ve always been intrigued and captivated by the moment of Judas’ fall:

When Judas had eaten the bread, Satan entered into him.  Then Jesus told him, “Hurry and do what you’re going to do.”  John 13:27^(NLT) 

There are so many questions:

·       Was it something about the bread that paved the way for Satan to take Judas’ mind? 

·       Was it Judas’ sinful heart combatting Christ’s blessing on the bread?

·       Is this what Paul meant[2] about eating and drinking damnation to yourself at the Lord’s Table when you haven’t examined your heart for wrong motives, or sin against others?

·       Was there something physically-noticable that happened when Satan entered Judas?

·       Why did Jesus urge Judas to do what he was going to do?

Of course we have questions.  Each of us has spiritual blind spots, but we also have curiosity and a hunger to know this Christ we follow.  Without questions, how will our spirit and soul grow into the likeness of Him?

I’ve always been a little gun-shy of asking questions in public.  I got burned a good bit when I was young and asked some questions that were a little on the dumb side (imagine that)…and the effect silenced my inquisitiveness…at least in public forums.  But the need-to-know still, and always has, boiled beneath the surface.  This is the life of a disciple – to walk with Christ, and find out who we are in Him.  As Paul wrote:

I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death,  Philippians 3:10^(NLT)

For You Today

We are close to this meal Jesus and Judas shared; the cycle of the Christian year is coming to its’ amazing climax with the passion of Christ about to begin.  Get ready to put on the sackcloth and ashes of mourning of Good Friday.  His suffering and death are about to be on bloody display; his suffering because He knew us, and loved us anyway; just like Judas!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[1] Title Image:  Courtesy of Pixabay.com

[2] 1 Corinthians 11:28

This Holy Week - Part 2

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Tuesday, March 27, 2018

The message of the cross is foolish to those who are headed for destruction!  But we who are being saved know it is the very power of God.  As the Scriptures say, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and discard the intelligence of the intelligent.”  So where does this leave the philosophers, the scholars, and the world’s brilliant debaters?  God has made the wisdom of this world look foolish.  Since God in his wisdom saw to it that the world would never know him through human wisdom, he has used our foolish preaching to save those who believe.  It is foolish to the Jews, who ask for signs from heaven.  And it is foolish to the Greeks, who seek human wisdom.  So when we preach that Christ was crucified, the Jews are offended and the Gentiles say it’s all nonsense.  1 Corinthians 1:18-23^(NLT)

Have you heard of Peter Singer?  According to the ranking of the Top 50 Atheists, Singer is the world’s #1.  Here is how The Best Schools describes Singer:

Singer is Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Born in Melbourne, he is one of the world’s most controversial philosophers. A Utilitarian in ethics, he believes that only sentience, not species membership, confers moral value. This leads him to ascribe greater moral value to healthy adult nonhuman mammals than to unborn, newborn, mentally defective, and comatose humans. Singer has written: “The notion that human life is sacred just because it is human life is medieval.”

If you were to take the time (and only if you have a strong stomach) to read through the list of the top-50 on that page, it reads like the Who’s Who of worldwide education.  With a platform that extends worldwide, Singer is an activist who tells us nonhuman mamals hold greater moral value than the unborn, newborn, mentally defective and comatose humans. 

If I get that correctly (poor, humbly-minded Christian thinker that I am), Singer says that if it came to a choice between a newborn – say a three-day-old child – and a healthy duck-billed platypus…well, pull the plug on the human created in the image of God!

Trust me – I get it that people have different ideas on what constitutes the pecking-order of life here on planet earth; what I never used to get is how those, like Singer, who apparently despise humanity, find themselves at the head of the revered institutions of higher learning around the world.  It would almost lead one to conclude the existence of a supernatural conspiracy against the very possibility that humans as a species will continue much longer.

The Apostle Paul understood this when he wrote to the church at Corininth.  Those who are wise in the eyes of the world, and those who are entrenched in their religious straight-jackets, holding the form of religion, but denying the power of God seen in the cross, are perishing…headed for destruction.  And they are taking multitudes with them right into the pit of hell.

The ancestors of our modern day thinkers, along with the ancestors of the ungodly-but-very-religious “big-wigs” were delighted to put Jesus on a cross.  It was a great relief to not have him going around the countryside healing the sick, lame and blind while telling people to love each other. 

Yeah – that’s profund; hang the healer and release the killer.

For You Today

Before you take too many breaths on any given day it is a smart thing to determine whether your faith will fall on the side of worldly wisdom or Godly wisdom; that’s always a choice you cannot, and should not ignore.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[1] Title Image:  Courtesy of Pixabay.com

This Holy Week - Part 1

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Monday, March 26, 2018

Under the old system, the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer could cleanse people’s bodies from ceremonial impurity.  Just think how much more the blood of Christ will purify our consciences from sinful deeds so that we can worship the living God.  For by the power of the eternal Spirit, Christ offered himself to God as a perfect sacrifice for our sins.  That is why he is the one who mediates a new covenant between God and people, so that all who are called can receive the eternal inheritance God has promised them.  For Christ died to set them free from the penalty of the sins they had committed under that first covenant.  

Hebrews 9:13-15^(NLT)

If you tried to explain the faith we hold in Jesus, and the extreme gratitude we must have for his gift of atoning for our sins on the cross, you would be hard-pressed to do better than these few sentences.  Christ offered himself as a perfect sacrifice…a new covenant…we can receive eternal inheritance…set free!

I read a quote attributed to Nadia Bolz-Weber last week about our faith:

The Christian faith, while wildly misrepresented in so much of American culture, is really about how God continues to reach into the graves we dig for ourselves and pull us out, giving us new life, in ways both dramatic and small.

Nadia was trapped in that kind of grave-life that was angry at everything, and yet offered no hope.  Miraculously touched by God’s grace in Christ, she has become a refreshingly honest voice for the younger generation (and, truthfully ALL generations) as she does-away with religious trappings and the pomposity that normally accompanies the stuffiness of religion.  And she does it in favor of blowing the clouds of religious smoke away from a clear understanding of life at the foot of the cross.

Holy week can be that for us.  Holy week should be intense in many ways:

·       Anticipating Easter

·       Dreading the crush of extra activities

·       Wishing for more than egg hunts and bunny appearances and dull services and sermons that touch nothing.

Holy week should be more than these;

·       it ought to blow the doors off minivan religion in favor of a bloody Corvette cross that washes our lives every whit clean. 

·       it ought to be the nervousness of a six year-old waiting for his first big birthday party, or a ride on the roller coaster. 

·       it ought to be Christmas, Easter and birthday party all rolled into one. 

·       it ought to be execution day, and we are the guest of honor.  The repentance of the holding cell on death row should have prepared us in the last 6 weeks for the piercing sting of nails in our hands and feet.  The idea of being crucified with Christ should have sunk-in by now, and our whole nervous system must needs be set on edge with anticipation of the cross.

It ought to be this and more as we awaken from the bleak darkness of midwinter.

For You Today

Do we get the idea that preparing for Easter involves much more than shopping for a new outfit and laying-in a fresh supply of Cadbury eggs?

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[1] Title Image:  Courtesy of Pixabay.com

Lenten Walk - Part 27

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Friday, March 23, 2018

While Jeremiah was still confined in the courtyard of the guard, the Lord gave him this second message:  “This is what the Lord says—the Lord who made the earth, who formed and established it, whose name is the Lord:  Ask me and I will tell you remarkable secrets you do not know about things to come.  For this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says:  You have torn down the houses of this city and even the king’s palace to get materials to strengthen the walls against the siege ramps and swords of the enemy.  You expect to fight the Babylonians, but the men of this city are already as good as dead, for I have determined to destroy them in my terrible anger.  I have abandoned them because of all their wickedness.  “Nevertheless, the time will come when I will heal Jerusalem’s wounds and give it prosperity and true peace.  I will restore the fortunes of Judah and Israel and rebuild their towns.  I will cleanse them of their sins against me and forgive all their sins of rebellion.  Then this city will bring me joy, glory, and honor before all the nations of the earth!  The people of the world will see all the good I do for my people, and they will tremble with awe at the peace and prosperity I provide for them.  Jeremiah 33:1-9^(NLT)

It’s always a danger to take a single verse out of the context in which it is set, and proceed to build a life’s philosophy – or worse, a theology of God’s character – on that single, isolated verse.  You can, for instance, take John 3:16 and assume that all there is to the Christian life is belief – just acknowledge God loves you, and that’s all God requires.  And in one sense you’d be right; you went forward in church, responding to the invitation of the preacher at the end of the sermon…or at a Billy Graham crusade.  On the strength of God’s promise you were saved.  But now what?  Did walking the aisle conclude your responsibility to God?  Of course not…there’s much, much more ahead.

So, think clearly, and a little more thoroughly here about Jeremiah 33:3, where God says call unto me and I will show you great and mighty things you didn’t know.  So many people quote that as if it is their life’s theme…to rub the magic bottle of God’s promises and suddenly all the universe stops for them as God unfolds mysteries and pours out Cadillacs and stock dividends from above.  It’s the ultimate God as vending machine concept – prosperity theology on steroids!

How does that hold up when you read the rest of the chapter?  That single verse is more a challenge to peel back the bandaid you’ve used to cover up the tumorous cancer in your body, and take an accurate look at how much trouble you’re really in.  That one verse isn’t a panacea against trouble, whether it be financial, family, fatalities, friends, or forecasts…it was an announcement to Jerusalem that because of the peoples’ wickedness, no matter what they chose to do, the judgment of God was about to fall.  This was a wake-up call, not a magic, get-out-of-jail-free card!

Such is the whole temperature and purpose of Lent; we dwell in a fallen world, and judgment is all around us.  The religious-minded among us who want to make sure they’ve covered every angle might hunt for a few verses that sound good if isolated from their context, so we can quote Bible and have the peace we crave.  But it is like whistling in the dark – doesn’t change anything in heaven, or the outcome of God’s will on earth. 

Lent is our reminder that we are part of our fallen world, and there is the blackness of sin to face like an indellible stain.  Lent is also our reminder that, like Lady MacBeth, we cannot get that stain off our record.  Lady Mac had manipulated her husband into killing the King of Scotland, and, tortured, she now sleepwalks the castle feverishly rubbing her hands to get the blood off – out, damned spot, she cries…and the blood remains…as does our guilt.

But Lent is also our reminder that forgiveness is ever in abundant supply in the heart of God.  For those who practice the hard work of repentance, restoration is God’s loving response.  The lenten walk is not without its’ menacing, brutal, reality of the darkness of humanity’s love of sin; neither is it devoid of the promise of light!

For You Today

If you want to walk in the light you must know enough to turn from the darkness.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[1] Title Image:  Courtesy of Pixabay.com