Good for Nebraska

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This is good news:

The Nebraska legislature has signed off on a bill that Governor Dave Heineman will sign today that could head to the courts and ultimately weaken further the Roe v.Wade Supreme Court decision that has resulted in 52 million abortions. The bill bans abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy based on the well-established concept of fetal pain.

By a vote of 44-5, the Nebraska unicameral legislature this morning gave final passage to the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act introduced by Speaker Mike Flood.

One small step toward a more just and compassionate society.

Michael Spencer, RIP

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If you are going to think about God, go to Jesus and start there, stay there & end there.

—Michael Spencer

I don’t have the time or energy to give this the attention it merits, but Michael Spencer, the iMonk, died this Easter Monday after a four-month battle with cancer. One never agrees with anyone completely, of course, but the iMonk was a powerful and critically important voice calling the church that calls itself evangelical back from the heresy of making Jesus about something else (primarily, us, in one form or another) to the truth that we are supposed to be all about Jesus. I’m grateful that he got his book Mere Churchianity: Finding Your Way Back to Jesus-Shaped Spirituality finished before his death, and leaves that as his valediction to the church; I’m equally grateful that a group of folks who knew and loved him and believed in his work are planning to keep it going. But most of all, for his sake, I’m grateful that he is indeed truly resting in the peace of Christ.

There Is a Resurrection

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(Job 19:23-27; John 20:1-9, 1 Corinthians 15:12-27a)

Some of you are probably familiar with the novelist and memoirist Frederick Buechner; if you’re not and you like good writing, you really ought to check out his work. He’s a luminous writer, whether he’s telling the difficult story of his childhood or recasting the legend of St. Brendan’s voyage to America, which is why he’s so widely praised. He’s also a Presbyterian minister; and of all the things he’s written, I think I value his sermons the most. I appreciate him because he has a wonderful way of sliding his words sideways through our pretensions and our comfortable assumptions, puncturing them before we even see the needle coming; and I appreciate him because while he’s not necessarily straightforward, he’s always unflinchingly honest about our human condition. Take, for instance, this observation from his sermon “The Magnificent Defeat”:

When a minister reads out of the Bible, I am sure that at least nine times out of ten the people who happen to be listening at all hear not what is really being read but only what they expect to hear read. And I think that what most people expect to hear read from the Bible is an edifying story, an uplifting thought, a moral lesson—something elevating, obvious, and boring. So that is exactly what very often they do hear. Only that is too bad because if you really listen—and maybe you have to forget that it is the Bible being read and a minister who is reading it—there is no telling what you might hear.

He’s right: we tend to hear what we expect to hear; and that’s because what we expect to hear is, at some level, what we want to hear. After all, while “something elevating, obvious, and boring” obviously isn’t going to excite us much, it won’t threaten us, either; it’s safe and comfortable and allows us to walk out of here with our spirits raised a little, feeling a little better about ourselves. That’s understandable, given the ways that the world in which we live tends to beat us up and wear us down; a lot of the time, I think that all that many folks really want out of their faith is just to be able to feel a little better.

The problem is, though, that that isn’t all our faith is about, nor is it all God is trying to do with us; to settle for something safe and inoffensive when he’s offering us infinite joy is to do both God and ourselves a vast disservice, because he’s about something far, far bigger. You see, if we unshackle the word of God from our expectations and assumptions about what God is saying to us, there really is no telling what we might hear. We might hear about a God who does things we don’t believe can happen, who explodes all our comfortable certainties and upsettles all our fixed ideas about possible and impossible and how the world works, and how it ought to work. We might even, if we really listen carefully, find that we have to change.

And so instead of listening, we often try not to; and we build defenses against having to. In the case of Jesus’ resurrection, that’s a process that began right at the beginning—look over to Matthew 27, and you can see that, as the Jewish leaders go to Pilate and ask him for a squad of his soldiers to make the tomb secure. Secure against what? Against Jesus’ disciples coming and stealing the body? Well, that’s what they tell Pilate, and I’m sure they meant it, that they were afraid someone would try to hoax the public. But you know, I think Buechner’s right when he suggests in another sermon that in the back of their minds, nagging at them though they refused to think about it, was another fear: the fear that Jesus might actually, somehow, come alive again. He’d done enough other unbelievable things—could they be quite, quite sure he wouldn’t do this one, too? And so I think, at some level, they were trying to make the tomb secure against—miracle. Against being wrong, against losing control—really, against God.

And of course, it didn’t work; no band of soldiers, however capable, can stop a miracle of God any more than they can stop the sun from rising. The problem was, they were going about it the wrong way. As Buechner goes on to note, “all in all there is a lot one can do in defense against miracle, and, unless I badly miss my guess, there are thousands upon thousands of ministers doing precisely that at any given instant . . . there are at least as many ways of doing this as there are sermons preached on Easter Sunday.” If you don’t believe that, just take a look at history for a while, and you’ll see how many ways people can come up with to try to defuse the resurrection of Jesus, to try to turn it into something safe, something they can live with; the endless creativity of human beings on this point is truly staggering.

Perhaps the most popular approach is to try to spiritualize it in some way. For instance, some people say that the story of the Resurrection means that the teachings of Jesus are immortal, that their wisdom and truth conquered death and will live on forever. This is the same sort of thing we mean when we say “The pen is mightier than the sword,” which is complete balderdash; when it comes to a direct contest of pen vs. sword, the latter wins every time. Others will tell you that the story of the Resurrection means that the spirit of Jesus lives on among us in the lives of all who follow his great example. Which begs the question: why would anyone would follow the example of a failed Messiah who got himself butchered by the authorities? There were a lot of those back then, and nobody follows any of the others; why this one? Yet others have written that the story of the Resurrection is a metaphor, that it means the rebirth of hope in the despairing soul; which still leaves one asking if there’s any actual reason for the rebirth of hope if it’s all just a nice story, not something that actually happened.

These are all attempts to make the Resurrection “an edifying story, an uplifting thought, a moral lesson—something elevating, obvious, and boring”; and the Scriptures just don’t go there. There are lots of stories in the Bible, of which many come with moral lessons attached, and there are lots of metaphors, and lots of poetry of one sort or another, but we find none of them here. What we find, instead, is the Bible proclaiming a brute physical historical fact: this Jesus whom you crucified didn’t stay dead. He lay there in the tomb three days, and then his eyes opened, and he sat up—through the bands of cloth which had been wrapped tightly around him—and he got off the stone slab on which he had been laid, and he walked out of the tomb—through the half-ton stone covering the entrance; Jesus’ resurrected body was a little different from ours—and went on his way, no mere ghost or spirit or metaphor, but alive in the body once again.

Of course, even if you accept that, even if you accept the real miracle of the Resurrection, you can still defuse it, defend yourself against it, make it something safe, without too much trouble; all you have to do is treat it as something that happened long ago—not quite “long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away,” but something of that sort. Yes, Jesus died and rose again, and yes, that’s a good thing, because it means we get to go to heaven when we die, and yes, I believe all that, and can I get on with my life now? It’s something that happened so we could be saved, and so we celebrate and sing songs, but in the last analysis, it’s something that happened 2000 years ago, and not anything that we really need to think about all that much as we go about our daily lives; after all, it is, as we might say, ancient history.

Except that to say that is to miss half the story, because it isn’t just ancient history, it isn’t just something that happened once long ago; it’s not just that one man who was God came back from the dead, but that because he rose from the dead, so we, too, have been raised from the dead and will rise from the dead. The New Testament hammers this point home, that the death and resurrection of Christ isn’t only something that happened to him, it’s something that happened to us, by the power and grace of God. At the point of our conversion, in his death, our old selves died; in his resurrection, we were raised again to new life. Because Christ is risen, when he comes again, we will receive new, perfected bodies, and we will live forever with him; and for now, though we still have the same old bodies, we have new spiritual power, from the Spirit of God. We were enslaved to sin, under the power of death, but no more, for those old selves are gone, and in Christ we have been given new life—his life—the life which triumphed over sin and broke the power of death. We are free from sin, free to live for God, free to be more than we have been, free to be the people we were meant to be. We do still sin, for old habits die hard, but we are no longer bound to it; our chains have been broken.

This is the power of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. It’s not merely something Jesus did so that we could choose to be saved if we wanted to; it’s our resurrection—our re-creation as people. It’s the beginning of our transformation, not into new people, but into the people God created us to be. It’s about being set free, completely free, from all the things that haunt us and weigh us down—free to go forward in the power and the grace of God to live as his new creation, for we are no longer who we once were; we are no longer “only human,” we are no longer bound to what is “only natural,” for that life is dead, and the life we now live, we live by the Spirit of God.

This means that we can’t reduce the Resurrection to merely an edifying story or an uplifting thought; it isn’t a metaphor, or an image, or a poetic expression; indeed, it isn’t about anything else, whether hope, or faith, or how wonderful Jesus was—it simply is, this utterly new thing God has done for the healing and the recreation of the world. The Resurrection isn’t about anything else at all; rather, everything else we do and say and know and live as Christians is about the Resurrection, and if we’re not talking and living that way, we’re missing the point.

This is why Paul says that if Christ hasn’t been raised, if our hope in him is in this life only, that we are of all people most to be pitied; which says something about what our lives ought to look like. If this world and this life are all there is, then we might as well devote our lives to maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain, because there’s really nothing more to life than that; pleasure is the best this world can give, and suffering doesn’t get you anything worth having. For each of us, death comes as the end, and that’s that. From that point of view, living for the hope of another life that isn’t there, giving up pleasures and accepting suffering for the sake of another world that doesn’t exist, is simply pitiable, the dedication of life to a delusion.

But in fact, Paul says, Christ has been raised from the dead; yes, in Adam, all die, but in Christ, we have been made alive. In him, we have been given new life that is stronger than this world and new sight that sees farther than its bounds; we can see beyond death, we can see through this world to the new world coming. We don’t have to settle for what this world has to offer, because we don’t have to bow to the powers that rule it; this world tells us that death is final and pain has no answer, it tells us to come to terms with our sin because we cannot defeat it, and in Jesus Christ we know better.

In Jesus Christ we know that none of these things has the last word—we know that pain doesn’t have the last word, sin doesn’t have the last word, grief doesn’t have the last word, loss doesn’t have the last word, even death itself doesn’t have the last word, because there is a resurrection. If your hopes have failed and your plans gone awry, there is a resurrection. If you’re grieving the death of someone you love, there is a resurrection. If you’re suffering, if you’re in pain, there is a resurrection. If you’re worn down and beaten down by guilt for something you’ve done, there is a resurrection. If you’re alone and lonely, there is a resurrection. If those you love have hurt you and let you down, there is a resurrection. Whatever you have done, whatever this world has done to you, whatever is wrong in your life, take heart, for there is a resurrection.

Christ is risen, and with him we are risen; this world is not all there is. We don’t have to settle for what it can offer, nor do we have to let our circumstances determine our lives. We can rest in the assurance that in the hard times, God is always with us, and that in time, there will come an end to all hard times and all pain; when Jesus returns, all his faithful ones who have died will be raised from the dead, just as he was raised—in resurrection bodies, perfected bodies, free from sin and all its effects, free from the power of death, free from all the things that go wrong—and we will live with him forever in his kingdom, all the heavens and earth made new. “See,” Revelation 21 declares, “the home of God is among human beings. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his people, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” That’s the promise of God to us because Jesus rose from the dead. In his death, we died; in his resurrection, we are risen; in his kingdom, we will live forever.

The Seven Last Words of Jesus from the Cross

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The First Word: Luke 23:26, 32-34a

As they led Jesus away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming from the country, and they laid the cross on him, and made him carry it behind Jesus. . . . Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him. When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.”

“Them”? Who is “them”? The Roman soldiers? Pilate, who gave the order for his crucifixion? The crowd, which howled for his blood? Caiaphas and the priests, who egged on the crowd? His disciples, who scattered?

. . . Everybody? All of them?

. . . Us?

Surely he asked God to forgive all those who took part in his betrayal and death—Pilate, Caiaphas, the crowd which rejected him, the soldiers who flayed him, Judas who sold him, Peter who denied him, Thomas and James and the others who ran—for none of them understood, none knew what was really happening; but the circle of guilt doesn’t stop there, it wasn’t only Roman soldiers and Jewish priests who were responsible for his crucifixion. Rembrandt paints the raising of the cross, and paints himself as one of the soldiers—Mel Gibson films the passion, and it is his hand that drives the first nail—because they understand who killed the Son of God: we did. Our sin, our rebellion, our agony, our despair, our lostness led him to that cross, hung him on it, nailed him there, and broke his heart; and did he rage against us for the evil we do? No; instead, he asked God to forgive us. Forgive us for killing him, because we didn’t understand who he was, who we are, any of it. Forgive us, for in his death, even as we killed him, he paid the price for that sin, and every other.

The first candle extinguished

“The Power of the Cross” v. 1

The Second Word: Luke 23:39-43

One of the criminals hanging there kept mocking him and saying, “Aren’t you supposed to be the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other one rebuked him, saying, “Don’t you fear God, since you’re under the same sentence of condemnation? We’ve been justly condemned, for we’re getting what we deserve for what we’ve done—but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

The first one home is a thief.

Jesus warned his listeners, in his parable of the great banquet, that when the invited guests refused to come, he would throw the doors open to all who had never been invited anywhere—the poor, the lame, the crippled, the blind—but surely no one imagined that the gates of heaven would be open to people like this. This man was a career criminal, and certainly a serious one—or maybe a revolutionary to boot—for Rome to go to the trouble of crucifying him for his crimes. He had done great evil, of that we can be sure; and now, at the end, he had nothing but pain, and fear, and just enough good in him to recognize Jesus for who he was. And so he cries out, not a great confession of faith, but a cry of desperate hope against hope: “Jesus, remember me!” Jesus, please, whatever you can do for me, please . . .

And in response to this thief, this man who has done nothing in his life to merit mercy, whose faith barely deserves the word, is barely the size of a mustard seed, Jesus’ answer is staggering: “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” The thief had no good reason for hope, no reason to expect mercy, and yet Jesus gave him everything. This is the love that says, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing”; this is the wideness of God’s mercy, that reaches out even to the last-minute rescue of a worthless thief; this is the grace of Jesus, greater than all our limitations, greater than all our sin, great enough even to deliver us.

The second candle extinguished

“Hallelujah, What a Savior!” v. 2

The Third Word: John 19:25-27

Standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple Jesus loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.

As greatly as Jesus suffered on the cross, Mary’s pain must have been almost as great. Surely she would rather have traded places with her son than have to stand there watching as his enemies tortured him to death. Through his childhood she had cared for him, comforted him, held him, loved him, and tried to understand him; from the time he began his ministry, she had been his first disciple. Sometimes his actions must have baffled her, and his words must have hurt; when they were at the wedding in Cana and the wine ran out, she went to him to ask for help, and all he said was, “Woman, what does that have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” But she believed in him, and so she stepped out in faith and told the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” And now, she had to watch him die. She had to—others had run away, but she couldn’t; she had to be there for him, whatever it cost her.

And as great as Jesus’ pain was, he was there for her, too. He saw her pain and loss at the death of her first-born son, and he also saw John’s pain and loss—John, the disciple with whom he had been closest—at the loss of his Lord and dearest friend; and he gave them the greatest gift he could give: each other. To comfort each other, care for each other, share the burden of their loss, he gave John a new mother, and his mother a new son.

The third candle extinguished

“Were You There?” v. 1

The Fourth Word: Matthew 27:45-46

From the sixth hour until the ninth hour, there was darkness over all the land. About the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani”—which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
     Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry out by day, but you don’t answer,
     and by night, but I find no rest.

Yet you are holy,
     enthroned on the praises of Israel.
Our ancestors trusted in you;
     they trusted, and you delivered them.
They cried out to you and were delivered;
     they trusted in you and weren’t disappointed.

But I am a worm, not a man,
     scorned by all humanity and despised by the people.
All who see me mock me;
     they shake their heads and sneer,
“He trusted in the LORD—let the LORD deliver him!
     Let the LORD rescue him, if he delights in him so much!”

Yet you are the one who brought me out of the womb;
     you made me trust you while I was still on my mother’s breast.
From birth I was cast upon you;
     from my mother’s womb you have been my God.
Don’t be far from me,
     for trouble is near
     and there is no one to help.

Many bulls have surrounded me;
     mighty bulls of Bashan have encircled me.
They have opened their mouths against me
     like lions about to rend and roar.
I am poured out like water,
     and all my bones are out of joint;
my heart is like wax—
     it has melted away within me.
My strength is dried up like a potsherd,
     and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;
     you lay me in the dust of death.

Dogs have surrounded me—
     a band of thugs has encircled me—
they have pierced my hands and feet.
     I can count all my bones;
they stare and gloat over me.
     They divide my garments among themselves
          and cast lots for my clothing.

But you, O LORD, don’t be far off!
     O my Help, come quickly to my aid!
Deliver my soul from the sword,
     my life from the dog’s paw;
     save me from the mouth of the lion, from the horns of the wild ox!

You have answered me!
     I will declare your name to my brothers and sisters;
     I will praise you in the midst of the congregation.
You who fear the Lord, praise him!
     All you descendants of Jacob, honor him,
     and all you descendants of Israel, stand in awe of him!
For he hasn’t despised or disdained
     the suffering of the afflicted;
he hasn’t hidden his face from them,
     but when they cried for help, he heard them.

From you comes my praise in the great congregation;
     I will fulfill my vows before those who fear you.
The afflicted will eat and be satisfied;
     those who seek him shall praise the LORD—
     may your hearts live forever!
All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD,
     and all the families of the nations shall worship before him,
for kingship belongs to the LORD,
     and he rules over the nations.

Indeed, all those about to sleep in the earth shall bow down to him,
     all who go down to the dust will kneel before him.
He who did not keep himself alive—
     his descendants shall serve him.
It shall be told of the LORD to the coming generation,
     and they shall declare his righteousness to a generation yet unborn,
for he has done it.

The fourth candle extinguished

“The Power of the Cross” v. 2

The Fifth Word: John 19:28

After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfill the Scripture), “I thirst.”

It’s no surprise that he was thirsty; he’d lost half the blood in his body to the flogging, and his body was trying desperately to make up the fluid it had lost—but his last drink had been the wine at dinner the night before. He was fully human, even as he was fully God, and his sufferings were as real as any of ours. He lived our life fully, in every respect; he knows our weaknesses, our temptations, our pains, for he experienced them, and in no place more fully than on the cross, which was designed to kill people by driving them beyond their limits.

There’s also an irony here. Each day of the Feast of Tabernacles, a priest would lead a procession from the Temple to the Pool of Siloam, fill a golden pitcher with water, and then lead the procession back to the Temple, where he would pour the water into a funnel as an offering at the same time as the other priests were making the burnt offering and the drink offering; this was called the “Great Hosanna,” and was marked by the sing-ing of the Hallel, Psalms 113-18. On the last day of the feast, the great day, the priest would circle the altar seven times before pouring out the water. This was a moment of great joy, a remembrance and celebration of God’s provision of life-giving water; and John 7 tells us that on the last day of the feast, presumably as the last strains of the Hallel faded and a hush descended on the Temple, Jesus stood and shouted, “Let anyone who thirsts come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of their heart will flow streams of living water.’” The promise of the feast would be fulfilled in a new way, for through Jesus, God would give his people living water, which is the Spirit of God. And yet, here on the cross, the one who is the source of the living water which quenches our thirsty souls, Jesus, thirsted. By his thirst he satisfied ours.

The fifth candle extinguished

“O Sacred Head, Now Wounded” v. 1

The Sixth Word: John 19:29-30a

A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the wine, he said, “It is finished.”

“It is finished.” Not, “It’s over,” not, “I give up,” not, “I’m finished,” but “It is completed,” the work is done. What Jesus came to do, he had done, and the effects would be felt throughout all time and space. This moment is “the still point of the turning world” without which, as T. S. Eliot says, “there would be no dance, and there is only the dance.” This is the point around which all creation revolves, for in this moment the world is redeemed; in this moment we are saved, all of us through all space and time—we who know the story of Christ, our brothers who worshiped God at the Temple in the time of David, our sisters in the deepest jungles of Asia who know not the name of Christ but feel his Spirit moving in their hearts nonetheless, those rich and poor, powerful and powerless, intelligent and unintelligent, all of us who will gather before the throne of grace in the eternal kingdom: we were saved there, then. All the rest is simply God working out in our lives the victory Jesus had already won on the cross.

Thus Jesus’ cry is a cry of victory in the midst of death; his moment of greatest desolation was also his moment of glorification. It is a strange victory and a strange glory, this glory of the cross; yet because of it, we may say with the hymnwriter, “I boast not of works nor tell of good deeds,/For naught have I done to merit his grace;/All glory and praise shall rest upon him/So willing to die in my place.” Because of it, we affirm, “I will glory in the cross.”

The sixth candle extinguished

“In the Cross of Christ I Glory” v. 1

The Seventh Word: Luke 23:45b-46

But as the curtain of the temple was torn in two, Jesus called out in a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Having said this, he breathed his last.

Jesus said to them, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. . . . I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that don’t belong to this fold, and I must bring them as well, and they will listen to my voice. There will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.”

This last word from the cross is the cry of one who asked, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And what a strange word that is, coming from the throat of God! How could God the Father forsake God the Son? And yet, with the weight of all our sin on his back, Jesus, who had ever been one with the Father and the Spirit, descended into the depths of our damnation, experiencing in full our alienation from the Father—God, “ever Three and ever One,” somehow divided, taking even our lostness, our separation, our isolation onto himself so that it too might be healed—so that we might be healed.

nd yet, despite the physical pain, despite the far greater spiritual pain, he went through with it. No one could have made him; he laid down his life, no one took it from him; and in such desolation, the temptation to call it all off must have been nearly overpowering. Yet God must be who he is, bound together by love, bound by his decision to love us—and so, in defiant trust in that love, trust that no matter how forsaken he may feel, the Father is still there, still faithful, Jesus screams out, “Into your hands I commit my spirit.” And the Father was faithful: at that moment, the curtain in the Temple that separated the Holy of Holies, the small space where the presence of God was, tore in half—from top to bottom; no longer would the presence of God be confined to one small room to keep the rest of the world out. The price had been paid, the victory won.

The seventh candle extinguished

“O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” vv. 2-3

Note: in these reflections, I am indebted to the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus’ book Death on a Friday Afternoon.

The Beginning of the End?

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(Psalm 118:17-27, Isaiah 43:14-21; Luke 19:28-44)

In John 11:7, after the death of Lazarus, Jesus says to his disciples, “Let’s go back to Judea.” His intention is to comfort Lazarus’ sisters by raising their brother from the dead, and then to go on to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. His disciples, however, don’t think this is such a bright idea. “Rabbi,” they respond, “the last time we were there, they tried to stone you—you don’t really want to go back, do you?” The ensuing conversation makes it plain to the disciples that they aren’t going to change his mind, and they give up the argument, with Thomas saying gloomily, “If he’s going, we might as well go too so that we can die along with him.” And so they went; Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, winning himself a new flock of converts—and, in the process, persuading the Jew-ish leadership that they had to have him killed by whatever means necessary.

Jesus’ disciples weren’t stupid; they knew what was coming. The Sadducees—who were the priestly party in Jewish politics—and the Pharisees—who were sort of a reform movement—didn’t agree on much of anything, but one thing they did agree on was wanting Jesus dead, and Jesus’ disciples knew it. They knew that for Jesus to go to Jerusalem, especially right after ticking his enemies off by raising Lazarus, was just asking for trouble.

The disciples had had high hopes for Jesus; they had even started thinking he might be the Messiah, the promised savior of Israel who would kick the Romans out of Jerusalem, restore Israel to independence and prominence, and in general get things back to where they were when David was king. They had seen some incredible things on the road with him that had really made them think Jesus could pull it off. Now, though—well, they were afraid that going to Jerusalem would be the beginning of the end. Maybe Jesus would escape; he had before, after all . . . but if the chief priests got their hands on him, surely it would all be over. All their dreams, all their hopes, all their plans, all the good they had seen Jesus do, all the good they had done themselves as they walked with him—it would all be over.

And so, as Jesus entered Jerusalem, even as his disciples praised God and shouted, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”—even as they were caught up in the joy of the moment, even as they proclaimed Jesus to be the promised King of Israel—they were no doubt worried what the days ahead might bring. Jesus was entering Jerusalem in triumph, the triumph he deserved, everything announcing him as the king of whom the prophet Zechariah had spoken; but would he leave the city in triumph as well? Would he leave at all, or would he die there? Jesus’ triumphal entry was a provocation the Jewish leaders couldn’t possibly ignore—in fact, it was one that even the Romans might notice; at this point, either he would reveal himself decisively as the Messiah whom God had sent to restore the kingdom to Israel, or he would soon be dead. What other possibility could there be?

In a few short days, the disciples would see their worst fears come to life before their eyes, as one of their own would sell Jesus to his enemies; they would see him die the most horrible, agonizing death Rome could deal out, and they would hear the grinding sound of stone on stone as a multi-ton boulder was rolled in front of his tomb. But in a far different context, the British prime minister Winston Churchill would remark of the Second Battle of El Alamein, “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning”; and his words could just as truly have been spoken beside Jesus’ tomb, had anyone been there who truly understood what was happening. Jesus’ death was not the end, for, unique in human history, he would not stay dead, but would rise again of his own power; rather, it was the end of the beginning—of the beginning of God’s plan to redeem the world. He had begun with Israel, and now he would extend his reach to invite all people in every nation into his eternal kingdom.

And so, though Jesus’ death would seem to deny it, the message of his triumphal entry into Jerusalem was nothing less than the truth: he was indeed a conqueror come to claim his kingdom. The difference was, neither his victory nor his kingdom were the sort the world expected, because God was throwing out all the old patterns and doing some-thing completely new—the sort of thing only he can do. God’s plan didn’t involve any conventional sort of victory because conventional victories can only achieve conventional results; to do the impossible, to redeem the world, it is necessary first to stand the world and its conventional wisdom on its head. For this reason, the cornerstone of God’s work would not be, could not be, anything obvious, like a conquering general, even though such people had had their place in his plan over the years; rather, the cornerstone would be a stone that all earthly builders had rejected—a homeless man, a wanderer, a man of no reputation, a man whose moment of greatest triumph would be quickly followed by his execution as a common criminal.

Except that, for those with eyes to see, his execution would be his moment of greatest triumph, for even death would not be able to hold him. It was for this that he rode into Jerusalem as a king, announcing a victory which none of his enemies would be able to understand. Just as Moses had walked back into Egypt to tell Pharaoh, “Let my people go,” and to lead them on the Exodus through the wilderness to the Promised Land, so Jesus rode into Jerusalem to begin the new Exodus, leading his people—all his people, not just Israel—out of their exile in the wilderness of sin; and just as that first Exodus had begun with the celebration of the first Passover, so would the new Exodus begin with the celebration of the new Passover, the Lord’s Supper. But this time, the exile was not political and physical, but spiritual; it wasn’t one people in bondage to another, but all people in bondage to the power of sin. Therefore, his victory would not be political but spiritual; he would win not by conquering his enemies, but by surrendering to them.

This was God’s kind of victory; which is something our politicized American church needs to remember. The Protestant mainline churches got into the lobbying business in a big way in the 1960s, on the liberal side of things; in reaction, the conservative wing of the American church launched itself into politics on a national scale a decade or so later, and has only been getting more and more invested in political issues as time goes on. This has, to be sure, generated a lot of energy in American politics, gotten a lot of laws passed, and increased the number of committed, engaged voters in this country. At the same time, though, it’s meant that many non-Christians now see the church as primarily interested in politics and the success of a given political agenda—and indeed, that many churchgoers would effectively agree. This isn’t good, because what the church is supposed to be about—not primarily about, but in total—is the gospel of Jesus Christ; and too often, with all our political arguments, the gospel gets lost in the noise.

Now, understand me here, I’m not saying the church should ignore politics; I’m not advocating that Christians should cut themselves off from politics—or worse, sepa-rate their politics from their faith. There are Christian leaders who have reacted against the politicization of the American church by going to that opposite extreme, but that’s just the equal and opposite error. Politics is a part of our civil life; as citizens of the kingdom of God, we are called to be good and faithful citizens of this republic. This means that at the very least, we should vote, and we should do so intelligently—and that if God calls us, we should involve ourselves in the political process in other ways as well. Jesus is Lord in every part of life, and we need to act accordingly.

The problem comes when we identify our nation with the kingdom of God, and the political process itself with the work of the kingdom, and conclude that a victory or defeat in a legislative vote or a court decision is a victory or defeat for the church. That is buying in to the power-oriented thinking of the world, and it has given too many churches in this country the mindset that what really matters is that we win, whomever “we” might happen to be. After all, if we are on God’s side on this or that issue, then we are doing God’s work; that being the case, then logically it must mean that we have to win and we will win, because our victory is God’s victory and he never loses.

The problem is, this isn’t the way the gospel works; it isn’t Jesus’ way. His disciples thought they knew what he was on earth to do—win an earthly, political victory over a corrupt establishment and a pagan military power—which is why they worried that his return to Jerusalem might ruin everything; but Jesus had other plans, and so it wasn’t the beginning of the end, it was the end of the beginning. Equating the political victory of our cause with the victory of God’s work on earth—however well-grounded in Scripture our cause might be—presumes far more knowledge of him and his plans than we actually have; as such, it inevitably leads us into grave error. Abraham Lincoln knew this, which is why during his presidency he declared to one questioner, “Sir, my great concern is not that God is on our side, but rather that I am on God’s side.” Unfortunately, too many of his opponents had forgotten this—if they ever knew it at all.

It isn’t our job to win victories for God, because we aren’t even qualified to judge what a victory is. The disciples would look at the cross and see only agonizing defeat, because they lacked the ability to see what God was going to make of it; we can’t see the future, we can’t know what will best serve to accomplish God’s purposes, and it’s not ours to try. Our job, rather, is to be faithful in doing what he has called us to do, to do it to the best of our ability and with all that is in us—because to love him is to obey him, and we are to love him with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength—and to let him worry about the victory. As the great poet T. S. Eliot put it, “For us there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.” This is truth, and it is liberating truth; not only does it release us from carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders, it also frees us from our pride, for the desire to win at all costs has far more to do with the demands of our pride than with the demands of our God.

We are here this morning to celebrate the God who brought us “out of bondage, out of the house of slavery”; as we do that, let’s remember that he did so not by winning a great military battle or political victory, but by suffering death, and bringing victory out of that. Does this mean we shouldn’t care about political issues, about votes and laws and court decisions? Of course not; our call is to live out our faith and seek to follow God’s will in every aspect of life, the political as much as anything else. But it is to say that we shouldn’t get too high about the victories, or too low about the defeats; we should trust God for what he’s doing, and remember that our primary focus ought to be proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ, not of our chosen politician or political party. As Psalm 146 says, put not your trust in princes, for in them there is no salvation. Salvation is in Jesus Christ alone, and in him alone we should put our faith, and him alone we should worship.

Proposing a 28th Amendment (UPDATED)

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On Facebook earlier today, I wrote that I would like to propose the following amendment to the Constitution:

Congress shall make no law exempting its members or their staff from any other law, federal, state, or municipal. All such exemptions are hereby declared null and void.

It was a spur-of-the-moment thing, but the more I think about the basic idea, the more I like it. I’m sure it could be written better, and no doubt would need to be in order to do what it’s intended to do; I think, for instance, that it should probably say that “Congress shall make no law exempting its members or their staff in whole or in part from any other law.” Whether it would be necessary to include sentences or sections applying to the other two branches of the federal government, I’m not sure, but I could see that. And more generally, I’m no constitutional-law scholar, so I expect there are probably other issues with my draft amendment. But I think the basic principle is sound.

More than that, I think this is important. I think Congress’ habit of exempting itself from the laws it passes, seen most recently with ObamaPelosiCare (if this is such a wonderful thing, why don’t they want to live under it?), is profoundly undemocratic, and utterly opposed to the spirit of the Constitution which our representatives are sworn to uphold. I think correcting this absolutely rises to the level of a proper constitutional concern.

The biggest thing that I believe justifies addressing this issue with a constitutional amendment, though, is that Congress will never voluntarily restrain itself. Indeed, it would be impossible to get this amendment to the states for ratification by the normal process, because Congress would never pass it; they’d never admit they were deliberately scuttling it, but that’s exactly what they’d do—and it would be a completely bipartisan effort, make no mistake about it. If we the people want this added to the Constitution, we’ll have to do it by the other process specified in Article V: two-thirds of our state legislatures will have to request that Congress call a national constitutional convention to propose this amendment to the states. (Should a serious effort be made to do so, Congress might capitulate and pass the amendment to prevent a full-out constitutional convention, but that would be fine, too.)

Trying to amend the Constitution is no small thing under any circumstances. Trying to do so as a grassroots effort would be to attempt a very great mountain indeed. But I think it’s worth doing, and I’m going to start talking to people, and writing about this wherever I can, to see if we can make this happen. I believe this is an important issue, and would be a change for the better for our nation; I believe it’s worth the trouble.

Thoughts?

Update: I’ve had someone pass on to me another version of the same idea:

Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and/or Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and/or Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States.

In some respects, I think that wording is better; the kicker, I think, is that any such amendment should make clear that not only is Congress forbidden in future from exempting itself from the laws it passes, but that all such provisions currently on the books are no longer operative, and thus that going forward, all the laws of the land apply to them, even those which previously did not.

A lyrical reaction to Sunday’s vote

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I have yet to find anything that better expresses my reaction to the passage of ObamaPelosiCare, and to the whole process leading up to it, than this. (Click on the title to see the video, which is the best part; courtesy of EMI, embedding is disabled.)

Here it Goes Again

It could be ten, but then again, I can’t remember
Half an hour since a quarter to four.
Throw on your clothes, the second side of Surfer Rosa,
And you leave me with my jaw on the floor.

Chorus:
Just when you think that you’re in control,
Just when you think that you’ve got a hold,
Just when you get on a roll,
Here it goes, here it goes, here it goes again.
Oh, here it goes again.
I should have known, should have known, should have known again,
But here it goes again.
Oh, here it goes again.

It starts out easy, something simple, something sleazy,
Something inching past the edge of reserve.
Now through the lines of the cheap venetian blinds
Your car is pulling off of the curb.

Chorus

I guess there’s got to be a break in the monotony,
But *****, when it rains how it pours.
Throw on your clothes, the second side of Surfer Rosa,
And you leave me, yeah, you leave me.

Chorus

Words and music: Damien Kulash Jr.
© 2005 OK Go Publishing
From the album Oh No, by OK Go

Put not your trust in princes

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Praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord, O my soul!
I will praise the Lord as long as I live;
I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.

Put not your trust in princes,
in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.
When his breath departs, he returns to the earth;
on that very day his plans perish.

Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the Lord his God,
who made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that is in them,
who keeps faith forever;
who executes justice for the oppressed,
who gives food to the hungry.

The Lord sets the prisoners free;
the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.
The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;
the Lord loves the righteous.
The Lord watches over the sojourners;
he upholds the widow and the fatherless,
but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

The Lord will reign forever,
your God, O Zion, to all generations.
Praise the Lord!

—Psalm 146 (ESV)

The proof of the pudding

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There are many on both sides of the political divide who believe that the passage of ObamaPelosiCare is basically final, pointing to other great entitlement programs of the past such as Social Security and Medicare. They could very well be right; it’s very hard to get rid of government bureaucracies once founded, as they have a way of creating their own constituencies. I remember Republicans campaigning on abolishing the Departments of Energy and Education; once they had the chance, they never even tried to follow through.

And yet . . . the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the health care “reform” package was sold on the promise that it would improve health care and reduce health care costs. Our president went around declaring that once the bill was passed, Americans would find out that we actually like it after all. Therefore, it seems to me that if it fails to deliver on those promises, there will be a sufficient political constituency to repeal this law (if one can refer to anything so bloated by a term which suggests organization and coherence).

As such, I’m guessing that if Robert Samuelson is right to declare that “Obama’s proposal is the illusion of ‘reform,’ not the real thing,” it won’t last long. If I’m wrong and it improves our health care system, then the public will accept the significant new government intrusion into our privacy and autonomy, and it will stick around. This situation has at least this potential merit: ideas will be judged by their consequences. That, if nothing else, is as it should be.