On a Hill Far Away

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Holy Week

Friday, April 14, 2017

At about three o’clock, Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” which means “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”  Matthew 27:46^(NLT)

Jesus was a human being.  He was also at that moment a brutally tortured human being.  The physical beating had taken its toll, and Jesus only had moments left in the flesh.  But notice that the physical torture was not the emphasis of the Gospel writer.  It was not the brutality of the Roman crucifixion that was the worst thing Jesus endured.  His greatest cross was the rejection of the Creator by His creation. 

Scripture doesn't minimalize or trivialize Jesus’ physical suffering, but it doesn't dwell on the nails or the beating with whips and rods.  It is the desertion of His friends and loved ones; it is the cross of bearing sin all alone.  A number of years ago I had a week where the dentist had me in the chair for 6½ hours.  A few days later another doctor performed surgery on my toe, while in-between I had to go to the eye doctor who shot a puff of air into my eyeballs to test for Glaucoma.  And all this time I'm on a diet!  Beloved, I know physical suffering! 

But nothing is worse than being rejected by those you thought would ride into the valley of the shadow of death side by side with you.  One wise man said that Jesus was rejected by man for His holiness and by God for our sin.  When your physical suffering is more than you think you can stand, remember Jesus has been there, and worse...and He cares.

It says that Jesus cried with a loud voice.  The original language makes it stronger.  You might translate it, He screamed like an animal!  This was a scream of horror.  What was that about?  Many Bible scholars contend that this was the exact moment that God ...laid on Him the iniquity of us all.[ii]  This was the moment when Jesus became a curse for the sins of all time, of all men[iii].  Luther called it the happy exchange, meaning Jesus took our sins, and gave us His holiness. 

Why the scream?  In this moment Jesus first experienced what it was like to be lost and separated from the Father.  He had never before experienced the consequences of sin.  He was the perfect Lamb of God, and he became sin for us.  This is why the cross is lonely; nobody could do that other than the only Son of God. 

And this is why the cross can help you.  Alexander Solzhenitsyn was a political prisoner of the former Communist Soviet Union.  In a dark moment of his prison experience, after much torture and deprivation, he was working a section of road with a shovel, and had reached his end.  He just stopped working.  He knew that could mean instant death from a guard's whip or gun, but he just couldn't go on.  Instantly, another prisoner saw this, and made his way towards Solzhenitsyn.  When he came alongside, he took his cane and made the sign of the cross in the sand.  Seeing this, Alexander looked into the smiling face of his Christian fellow sufferer and found hope to go on.[iv]

For You Today

When the way seems impossible, and you can't go on, look to the cross.  Jesus did; He endured in faith, and God exalted Him. 

Jesus was not the first to say My God. 

·       Isaiah said:  my God shall be my strength."[v] 

·       Zechariah said:  my God shall come...[vi]

Jesus was also not the last to say it. 

·       Paul said:  my God shall supply...[vii]

What’s important when life gets difficult is if YOU are ready to say MY God!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road…have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO

NOTES

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 ^I Title image: By Propiedad de la Agrupación Local de la Pasión Viviente [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

[ii] Isaiah 53.6b (KJV)

[iii] 2 Corinthians 5:21, Deuteronomy 21:23

[iv] James W. Moore, When All Else Fails...Read the Instructions (Nashville, Dimensions For Living,       1993), 35,36

[v] Isaiah 49.5b (KJV)

[vi] Philippians 4:19 (KJV)

[vii] Zechariah 14.5b (KJV)

A Different Time

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Friday, March 17, 2017

Come, let us sing to the Lord!  Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation.  Let us come to him with thanksgiving.  Let us sing psalms of praise to him.  For the Lord is a great God, a great King above all gods.  He holds in his hands the depths of the earth and the mightiest mountains.  The sea belongs to him, for he made it.  His hands formed the dry land, too.  Come, let us worship and bow down.  Let us kneel before the Lord our maker, for he is our God.  We are the people he watches over, the flock under his care.  If only you would listen to his voice today!  Psalm 95:1-7^(NLT)

I got caught in a bit of nostalgia the other day driving through a fast-food place for a cup of coffee on the run.  Waiting in the long line of cars (so much for fast-food), an older couple exited the building with a young girl in pigtails.  She was about 11 and she was holding Grandma’s hand and skipping!  On closer examination her mouth was wide with a smile, her face exuberant, and she held no electronic devices in her hands.  I thought:  How did Grandma and Grandpa get that IPhone away from her…did they just promise to buy her a Mercedes when she turns 15?

Then I took stock of Russell’s mood.  My wife was home sick, I was on my way to run sixty-two errands on a Saturday; none of the errands involved a golf club, but most required me to enter stores certain to be crowded (my favorite!), and the guy behind me just honked to get me to move because the car in front of me had moved three inches.  No matter what, I could not have written Psalm 95 in that moment.

C.S. Lewis seemed to work out a lot of his theology in his writing; I guess those of us who choose (or are compelled) to the written page do so.  In his writings somewhere, as he explained the rationale behind heaven’s actual existence, and why it was so logical that such a place existed, he mused that the mere fact we get thirsty presupposes that somewhere there is water; same for food and a place to lay down our head in sleep.  The deep longing in our souls for our Creator, that God-shaped empty place in our hearts of which Augustine wrote, is evidence-enough that heaven exists. 

We long for where we belong.

The little girl I saw skipping alongside grandparents struck that kind of chord in my soul, a longing for a different day, absent of the struggle between people, where the joy of thanksgiving, singing to the Lord, shouting joyful praise to our Rock of Salvation stems the tide of in-your-face anger and contention of this new millennial jungle.

It’s a longing for a different day…the kind of day for which we were created.

Just sayin’!

For You Today

Do you ever long for a kinder, gentler way?

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road…have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO

NOTES

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Title image: By D. Sharon Pruitt from Hill Air Force Base, Utah, USA, via Wikimedia Commons

When Children Disagree

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Thursday, December 15, 2016

For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus.  And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes.  There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female.  For you are all one in Christ Jesus.  And now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children of Abraham.  You are his heirs, and God’s promise to Abraham belongs to you.  Galatians 3:26-29^(NLT)

It always started when we were going someplace in the car.  One of my children would tweak the other child’s sense of personal space.  It might be as little as a toe on the other side of the line I set when I told them the last time, this is your side; that is your brother’s side.  A toe on the wrong side meant a shouting/shoving match was sure to follow.  Sometimes it was just a look that hinted a toe was coming over the line.

A conversation that took place once, overheard from the driver’s seat:

Her:  Stop it!     Him:  You stop it!

Her:  You’re on MY side!     Him:  Am not!!!

Her:  This is the line…Dad said!     

Him:  No it isn’t…it starts there!

Her:  You don’t know anything!    

Him:  You’re ugly!

Her:  You stink!     

Him:  Well you….

ENOUGH!  Enough! (said the Mom).  You two argue about everything!  You even argue about what you’re arguing about!!!   

              (10 second pause)

A voice, softly from the back seat…  

   Her:  No we don’t.

Siblings – and other assorted human children – have been arguing since Cain and Able.  And what chance did those brothers have when they heard the story from God how Adam had blamed his wife for that business about getting involved with the apple.

Whether we are born with that seed of rebellion, or learn it from our parents and their siblings, children have been picking fights with other children since the dawn of time. 

We’ve just come through one of the ugliest fights in recent memory that didn’t involve movements of tanks and battleships – the presidential campaign.  While the candidates themselves now have little reason to bludgeon each other daily, the supporters of the candidates haven’t let-up on the ugly…from either side. 

It will be a long four years no matter for whom your vote was cast.  One side wants sanctuary cities to keep the Feds from deporting illegals; the other side wants a wall built along Mexico’s border to keep out the undesireables.  Each side claims to be Abel (the good son), accusing the other of being Cain, (the evil son) sneaking up behind the good guys with rocks in their hands.

And, despite the world leaders in politics, religion and business, like Dads, drawing imaginary lines in the back seat of a Ford station wagon to keep the Cains and Abels separated, still the children disagree.  But, unlike the Dads drawing lines, and the Moms yelling Enough!, nothing presidents, kings or preachers can do will ever really keep the peace. 

And it is an amazing thing that God still keeps his promise to never destroy the earth with another flood.

For You Today

Peace, like electing an unconventional president in a system rife with corruption, is a movement; it’s never a possibility to legislate peace.  It must come from the personal choice of each individual who elects peace to reign in his or her own heart. 

For that there is not a preacher, president or king who can give you what you desire.  For that you need a Prince of Peace!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road…have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO

NOTES

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[i] Title image: By Marines from Arlington, VA, United States (Let's Get Ready to Rumble!!!) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The Thin Line Between Black Friday and Good Friday

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Friday, November 25, 2016

The Lord observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil.  So the Lord was sorry he had ever made them and put them on the earth.  It broke his heart.  And the Lord said, “I will wipe this human race I have created from the face of the earth.  Yes, and I will destroy every living thing—all the people, the large animals, the small animals that scurry along the ground, and even the birds of the sky.  I am sorry I ever made them.”  But Noah found favor with the Lord.  Genesis 6:5-8^(NLT)

I’m always thankful for Thanksgiving.  The atmosphere of family gatherings and a pause from the rat race to catch up with loved ones and take intentional moments to offer thanks to God for blessings…well, it just seems to put me in a good frame of mind. 

Of late that frame has had some of the shine rubbed off its edges.  I have been besieged with an inbox full of Black Friday deals.  Amazon, Cokesbury, Macys, Sears, J.C.Penney, and anyone who ever got my email address want to offer me pre-Black Friday discounts and special, big-time-you-are-special-to-us-our-personal-friend-and-lifelong-buddy, Mr. R. Brownworth, customer #988979734572…shipping and handling separate, of course!

I now know how God felt when he decided to wipe humans off the face of the earth; enough is enough!

But I cannot read Genesis 6 without being caught up by that hopeful tag line:  But Noah found favor with the Lord. 

Noah’s day was not all that different from our Black Friday mentality.  The mood of the day was party, party, and…well, party!  But Noah kept his focus on the calling God had laid on his life.  Frankly that’s hard to do when the noise of a culture says:  Turn up the volume, this party’s just getting started!  The focus of Noah’s life was to get ready for the event that would be a new beginning for the human race.

And so was the other Friday – Good Friday. 

If ever there was a moment of new beginning, the moment that itinerant insurrectionist of love spoke while hanging on a cross, Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing…it opened the flood gates of grace.

It’s a thin line between Black Friday and Good Friday. 

On Black Friday the store floodgates open at Midnight and it’s all heels and elbows running like would-be matadors ahead of the bulls at Pamplona, crashing through the Apple Store entrance to snatch up the merchandise monster’s grace discounts. 

On Good Friday the world stood silent while God died.

It’s somewhat schizophrenic to gather on Thursday, offer humble prayers of Thanksgiving around the table of God’s bountiful blessings, and then spend the afternoon watching football while searching your I-Phone for the best midnight specials.

But that is the picture of Noah’s day and our day; it is the picture of humans-in-need-of-forgiveness-day!  It’s our human-race family picture.

It is the picture of who we are…walking a thin line between the different Fridays.

For You Today

I saw a report on the news of a survey that asked if you were going to participate in the wee-hours shopping craze known as Black Friday.  The report predicted a sharp decrease this year. 

I had two immediate thoughts:  Wall Street must be shaking in their boots, and perhaps God has more Noah-like people than I ever imagined. 

Maybe Black Friday will turn out to be a Good Friday.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road…have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO

NOTES

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[i] Title image: By Powhusku from Laramie, WY, via Wikimedia Commons & By Ambrozd (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons

Dividing-Up Christ - Part 1

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Paul follows up the Apollos-Peter-Christ statement with a question: 

I ask you, “Has the Messiah been chopped up in little pieces so we can each have a relic all our own?  1 Corinthians 1:13a (TMSG)

Paul knew that carving-up Jesus was not a good idea.  

I have first-hand experience in this matter. 

For the next few days I’d love for you to take a little personal journey with me through some past days of Apollos and Peter-following.  Although this might smack of a little “been there, done that,” come with me; it might be worth your time.

I was raised in a Congregational church.  In high school and college years I left that Apollos group, moving-on to the “doubting Thomas” group that was “in” during the 60’s:  agnosticism (nobody knows if there’s a god…and I don’t want to think about it). 

In the 70’s, as a young couple, Elizabeth and I joined a United Methodist Church. Unfortunately, our reason for attending was simply that we had kids, so we figured we should do the right thing and take them.  We developed no roots there; big surprise!     

Drifting from the Methodists, we wandered into a non-denominational church for a while.  This was the “Christ-followers-only” group – no group name, just follow Jesus. 

Migrating south in 1977, we became involved in a Southern Baptist congregation, and this would be our “denominational home” for the next 28 years, including years in seminary and serving as a pastor.

In 2005, after 24 years as an ordained minister, I left the Southern Baptist Convention and began serving a United Methodist Church.  This also began 6 years at Duke Divinity School.  (It takes a good bit of thinking to sort-out what kind of Methodist you’ll be).

Over the past nine years I’ve been asked (at least 62 times per day):  why the switch?  Now, I could give some long, involved, high and holy-sounding tale about visions and spiritual connections that spoke out of the mist:  “METH-o-dist, Russell….ye shall be a METH-o-dist.”

But that would be a lie.

Simply put:  after a number of intense experiences in the Baptist system over the way things are done, I decided I could function better with Methodists. 

But it wasn’t all a walk in the park; there were questions to be answered.  Chief among the questions is:

Was this just my personal carving-up of Jesus?  Did I leave-off following Apollos to follow Peter, and then switch to Jesus-only?  And, now, have I found my “holy-place” in Paul? 

Here’s what I’ve come to understand about this journey:  you never really carve-up Jesus when you hop from group to group, develop factions and sub-groups.  You can’t really do that – He is un-choppable! 

Oh, in all the moving around and switching of loyalty from this group to the next, there was  some chopping-up going on, but it wasn’t Jesus; Russell was the one being sliced like a country ham.  

Think about it:

·        As a Congregationalist we worried about voting for the right things…

·        As non-denominational we fretted over being like the denominational crowd…

·        As a Baptist we worried that everyone was sinning too much…

·        As an agnostic I didn’t worry about anything…

·        And as a Methodist we’re asked to believe that everyone’s alright as long as you don’t rock the boat.  (“I’m OK – You’re OK” warm and fuzzy smile inserted here!)

Can you see a person becoming schizophrenic in this?  Believe this way…no…this is the way…..no, wait….over here.  Aaaargh!  Jesus, where are you in all this?

Now that I’ve described how muddy the water is, our time is up for today.  I hope you will stay-tuned; tomorrow we will look at the damage religious schizophrenia has caused in our culture.  We will also look at how Jesus put “chopped-Russell” back together.  

Granted, this is more like a fireside chat than devotional breakfast, but stick with me.  

We could be onto something here.

Title Photo:  http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2014/01/cardinal-omalleys-methodist.html