Sticking Our Necks Out: Judgement in the Age of COVID Phases

“by SAM BUSH on Jun 25, 2020
https://mbird.com/2020/06/sticking-our-necks-out-judgement-in-the-age-of-phases/”

Life is judged with all the blindness of life itself.

– Santayana

My friend recently admitted that he and his wife had invited people over for dinner. Plenty of qualifiers were set in place—not only did everyone eat outside on their porch, but their guests were mindful enough to bring their own food, their own drinks, their own chairs, and their own face masks. Every box for Phase 2 in the State of Virginia was checked and yet my friend’s story still sounded like a confession. After expressing his litany of quarantine sins, he said, “These days, it sounds like we’re all Christian virgins who are dating. We’re all just trying to figure out what we can get away with.” He’s not wrong!

Days later, my wife and I invited some friends over for a patio picnic of our own. To our horror, it started to rain mid-meal. My wife and I quickly exchanged glances to confirm our mutual decision. We cautiously invited our friends to consider moving inside so we could eat without getting drenched. “Don’t worry! We just cleaned the house. We pretty much wiped down every surface. We can open windows, too.” Our friends, in turn, cautiously accepted our invitation. The words, “Are you sure? We don’t want to pressure you,” were probably mentioned ten times between the four of us. An hour later, as they were getting ready to leave, my wife said it felt like heaven just to have people inside our home. Paranoia returned a moment later when our guests walked out the front door as some of our neighbors were walking by. It was as if we had just hosted a key party.

Oh, the shame!

As all of us enter various phases of reentry, it feels like we are sticking our necks out into a heightened sense of fear, judgement, and uncertainty. The feeling is valid. After all, our actions affect those around us and any carelessness could potentially lead to someone contracting the coronavirus. If you live in New York you are much more aware of the real-life consequences than if you live in Kansas, but there is plenty of reason for everyone to be cautious and to care for others. And yet, now that we’re dipping our toes back in the water of normality, I find myself simultaneously assuming the role of the lifeguard and the two-year-old running around the pool.

Hypocrisy abounds these days when a desire to cut quarantine corners conflicts with the fear that others are doing the exact same thing. With so much still left unknown, every situation is relative—I can hug this friend because he’s a responsible person who has been quarantining, but is that decision solely based on reason? Thanks to asymptomatic transmission, everyone around me is a potential threat to manage, but I still want to be able to go get carry-out ice cream with my family (I’ve earned it, haven’t I?). Now that we are seemingly more free to make our own decisions, all roads point to our own self-justification while mistrusting others who act likewise.

The beginning stages of quarantine felt like we were all part of a bigger cause, but these phases of reentry feel like certain kids are getting out of school early. David Foster Wallace famously said, “We are kings and queens of our skull-sized kingdoms,” and it feels as hard as ever to regulate those beyond the borders of our jurisdiction. In that sense, it feels like our penchant for capricious egotism has been given a boost these days. And with it has come a tendency to loosen my own leash while tightening the leashes of those around me.

For instance, why do I insist that when my family visits from out of town they meet a standard of hygiene that I’m not even meeting myself? Yes, one is more susceptible to being exposed to the virus while traveling, but I don’t think my safety know-how qualifies me to scold my mother when she fails to use enough hand sanitizer. I can imagine Jesus giving the modern version of the speck and the log parable: “Why do you scold your mother for not washing her hands when you took your toddler to the playground yesterday?” Hypocrite, indeed. Despite my excuses—we were the only ones on the monkey bars, we used an entire bottle of sanitizer before and after going down the slide, etc.—all of my attempts to self-justify add up to a guilty verdict.

Last week, CNN published an op-ed about Steve Murray, the headmaster of Lawrenceville School, a prep school in New Jersey, who gave a webinar to anxious parents about the school’s plans to reopen in the fall. During his presentation, Murray made clear that the school was unlikely to be Covid-free, saying things like, “Zero risk tolerance is not realistic,” and, “Coming to school will not be 100% risk free any more than driving a car is risk free.” He didn’t try to sound like a health expert, but, instead, someone who deeply cared about his students.

With profound humility, he assured the parents that the school was doing everything it possibly could do (including pre-arrival protocols, testing and touchless toilets), but Murray didn’t promise perfection. Even when emphasizing the importance of a shared sense of responsibility, he accepted the reality that each bit of protocol was a little bit like Swiss cheese, each slice having its holes. With grace and meekness, Steve Murray helped remind me that, while we live cautiously during these times in order to love our neighbor, our hope and trust is not in sanitation alone.

It is a worthy effort to try to control the coronavirus as a disease, but I am completely unable to control another person any more than I can control myself. As ever before, I am in constant need of the Serenity Prayer to remind me the difference between what is under and what is far beyond my earthly powers. A line in the BCP Evening Prayer service says it best: “Give peace, O Lord, in all the world; for only in thee can we live in safety.” It’s true. While cleanliness may be next to godliness, it is a far cry from the holiness of a sovereign God who is worthy of all our trust.

God Has Made a Decision About You

by ADAM MORTON on Jun 15, 2020 • 3:00 pm

Once upon a time in the 1970s, a midwestern theology professor and his former student sat down to write a guide to Luther’s Small Catechism for teenagers, which sounds the most thankless task ever conceived by mortal mind. Breathtaking beauty is rarely associated with confirmation curriculum. However, these two were rare birds, and as they sat down, the theology professor dictated exactly how he wanted the book to open:

God has made a decision about you. He hasn’t waited to find out how sincere you are, how devout or religious you might be, or how well you understand the Bible and the Catechism. He hasn’t even waited to find out if you are interested or willing to take this decision seriously. He has simply decided.

God made this decision knowing full well the kind of person you are. He knows you better than anyone else could — inside out, upside down, and backwards. He knows where you are strong and where you are weak, what you are most proud of and what you would most like to hide. Be that as it may, God’s decision is made.He comes straight out with it: “I am the Lord your God.” This is the decision: God has decided to be your God. For God wants to be as close to you as your next breath, to be the one who gives you confidence and value, to open a future to you in the freedom of the Word. God wants to be the one to whom you turn for whatever you need.He has said this before, many times. He first announced this decision about you when you were baptized. “You,” God said, as the pastor spoke your name, “are baptized in my name. I am your God and I will never let you go.”He has said it since your Baptism, too, speaking on the lips of those who have loved you, whether they were part of your family, a teacher, or one of your pastors. In fact, God is saying it again in these very words: “You, the one who is reading this, I am your God. How do you like that?”

Maybe you would like to ask a different question: Who is this God, anyway?

It is the God who made you and everything that is, the God who raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead after he had been put to death on a cross, the one whose Spirit came like a mighty wind to drive home a word that gives forgiveness and hope. It is the God who called Abraham and Sarah out of the desert, the God who sent word to Mary that she would be having a baby, the God who covered the apostle Paul’s eyes with scales and then opened his mouth with a word of freedom.

Maybe you’ve got another question then: What’s in it for me? If God has made a decision for me, what do I get out of it?To start with, life itself. God’s decision is the life of you. For God is the one who has given you your mind, body, and all your powers, who has looked after you by night and cared for you by day, giving you all you need. The God who creates is the God of life. When this God says, “I am your God,” you can expect him to give you everything you need to live.There’s more. With God’s decision, you receive the freedom of forgiveness. The God who has decided for you is the God who in Christ refuses to hold your past against you, no matter what shape it has had. The God we know in Jesus is the one who takes you as you are — with your strengths, gifts, talents, and abilities, and also with your bad habits, selfishness, pride, and whatever else you might want to conceal. There are no strings on his decision and so no strings on you, either. You’re free.Still, there’s more. The God who has decided for you is the one who opened the grave the first Easter morning, the God who raises the dead. So when this God says, “I am your God,” the am stands forever. He is, was, and always will be your God. So no grave will ever be able to hold you. In the silence of death, you will hear Jesus’ voice saying, “Rise and shine. I am the Lord your God.” God’s decision opens your future.Does it sound pretty good? God has decided to be your God; the God who has made this decision is the one who has created you, freed you, and assured you of the future. God’s decision grants you life, forgiveness, and resurrection. You are free.

So begins Free to Be, by Gerhard Forde and Jim Nestingen, a theological classic hidden away in a most unlikely shape. Best of all, it’s true.

Groundhog Day Was a Horror Movie All Along

Taken from the Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/04/groundhog-day-horror-movie-quarantine/610867/

MEGAN GARBER

APRIL 30, 2020

In February, during the Super Bowl, Jeep ran an ad doing what Super Bowl ads so often will: It converted a beloved cultural product into a marketing message. This time around, the alchemy on offer involved the 1993 film Groundhog Day. Cheerfully soundtracked with the film’s most memorable song, Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe,” the spot featured Bill Murray reprising the role of Phil Connors, the misanthropic weatherman who relives the same day (and relives it, and relives it, and relives it). Instead of the existential agony posited in the original film, however, the commercial Murray delighted in the repetition. Because this time around, he faced his monotonous eternity as the owner of a Jeep.

A lot has changed since February. This month, acknowledging the shift, Jeep came out with another edit of its ad. In place of scenes of Murray joyfully navigating Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, in a candy-colored four-wheel drive, this version begins with a black screen and sober text: “We understand that every day is starting to seem the same,” it reads, flashing briefly to Murray waking—again—at 6 a.m. The text shifts, abruptly, to the imperative: “Stay home. Stay healthy. When this is all over, the trails will be waiting. Jeep: #StayOffTheRoad.”

At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the movies that were most resonant for many people were ones that directly confronted the calamity: Contagion. The Thing. Safe. Outbreak, for a time, was one of the most popular movies on Netflix. But Jeep understood, with the canny intuition of the advertiser, that as the emergency became more permanent, viewers might be seeking a different kind of catharsis. As the days blend and blur—as the weeks become months and the tidy boxes of the calendar melt into formless liquidity—Groundhog Day, now more than 25 years old, has adopted a new kind of urgency. Earlier this month, the Today show featured a video essay explaining “Why Every Day Feels Like Groundhog Day Lately.” Esquire offered tips on “How to Avoid Groundhog Day During Social Distancing.” On Facebook and Twitter, a meme has been proliferating: an image of Murray, as Phil, announcing, “It’s quarantine day … again.”

The comparisons are signs of privilege; they are typically made by and for the people who have the luxury of doing their jobs remotely, of schooling their children from home, of counting boredom as a hardship. But the comparisons are reminders, too, of how easily quarantine, that act of physical separation, can also cause people to feel distanced from time itself. I’d remembered Groundhog Day, hazily, as a comedy above all, its profundities packaged as a love story, its message hopeful about the giddy possibilities of self-improvement. Watching it again, though—watching it now, in the interstitial space between the Before Times and the After—I was struck by how dark the film is before it gets light again. And I was struck most of all by the film’s suggestion that the true source of Phil’s agonies isn’t repetition alone; it’s the fact that Phil endures the endless days not knowing how, or whether, the repetition will end.

Here is the basic premise of Groundhog Day: Phil, a Pittsburgh-based weatherman, is assigned for the fourth year in a row to report on the Groundhog Day festival in Punxsutawney. He is extremely indignant about the assignment. And so Phil spends his day in Punxsutawney doing a version, the film implies, of what he does pretty much every year: mocking the festivities, belittling the people who partake in them, generally assuming that the celebrations—and their adherents—are beneath him. (Phil refers to himself, at one point, to his cameraman, Larry, and his producer, Rita, as “the talent.”) The pique continues apace, until: A blizzard blows in. Phil, Rita, and Larry have to spend another night in Punxsutawney. And for reasons that Groundhog Day, in a twist of filmmaking genius, leaves unexplained, Phil wakes up the next morning … to realize, slowly, that it is February 2 once more. He is doomed to repeat the day, caught in a loop of unknown origin or duration, until, finally, he is able to live a day of selflessness, of joy, of love—and, therefore, to break through to February 3.

Groundhog Day’s action is structured according to a classic redemptive arc: This is the hero’s journey, set in the small-town wilds of Punxsutawney. But as Phil moves from confusion to resignation to despair, the movie grows darker in tone. Trapped, panicked, desperate, he tries to escape the time loop by alternately jumping from a building, plunging a toaster into his bathwater, and driving himself and the groundhog, Thelma & Louise–style, off a cliff. He uses his compounding knowledge of the people around him to manipulate them. (“I’m a god,” he tells Rita at one point, wearily.) He experiments with consequence-free living: driving on train tracks, mocking a policeman, insulting people so insolently that they slap him. But he never gets any bruises. And so Phil, at once invincible and confined, comes to ask questions such as this one: “What would you do if you were stuck in one place, and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?”

This is comedy that operates, at its edges, as horror. It understands what Phil comes to realize: how easily time itself, when it refuses to move forward, can become monstrous. Groundhog Day has been interpreted as an allegory for ethics, for religion, for psychoanalysis, for self-help, for economic theory; it is also, however, widely recognized as an analogy for the dread of unchanging circumstances. The Oxford Handbook of Military Psychology offers a chapter on the psychic effects of contemporary modes of warfare. It is titled “Boredom: Groundhog Day as Metaphor for Iraq.”

That interpretation does a lot to explain why the film has become a meme in this moment. For those fortunate enough to live a life of easy monotony, time looms. Monday becomes Wednesday becomes Sunday; the activities that differentiated them have largely fallen away. What day is it? has been spiking as a search term on Google. Todd Meany, an anchor at Fox 8 News in Cleveland, has begun hosting a regular “What Day Is It?” reminder during the station’s broadcasts. The segments, which Meany said arose from the very real recognition that “nobody could remember what day it was,” are only partially a joke. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, while providing sober updates about the state’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, often adds reminders such as this one to his slide decks: “Today is Saturday.”

But also: “There’s no such thing as Saturdays anymore,” Tom Hanks, hosting the first quarantine edition of Saturday Night Live, said earlier this month, noting the new irony of the show’s name. “It’s just, every day is today.” In a subsequent episode that aired over the weekend, Pete Davidson performed a song that contained these lyrics: “For like two months I’ve been on my couch / Runnin’ out of things to talk about / It’s quarantine in my house / I’m going crazy, and crazy, and crazy / I’m going crazy, and crazy, and crazy.”

And so, Groundhog Day. Groundhog Days. “At first I was like, ‘This is great—I get to chill out, be in my pajamas, do breakfast whenever, slow and easy,’” Lisa Devlin, a stay-at-home mother, told The Washington Post recently. “And then I realized very quickly that just turns the day into an amorphous mess.” That stark shift in mindset, experts suggest, is a common experience. “Some psychologists,” The New York Times notes, “have compared the coronavirus’s effects to the aftermath of a natural disaster, except the disaster is moving in slow motion, taking place everywhere and has no end in sight.” In mid-April, CBS 4, a local news station in Miami, aired a segment that began, “It’s not February 2, but it sure does feel like Groundhog Day lately.” The reporter, Lauren Pastrana (“reporting from my garage, again”), remotely interviewed the psychologist Raquel Bild-Libbin, who noted how easily unstructured days can give rise to anxiety and depression. The doctor also noted the irony of that twist: “We have gained something that we have always wanted, which is time.”

This is another way that Groundhog Day speaks to this moment. Unstructured time, initially, might seem like a gift. “Let me ask you guys a question,” Phil says to two Punxsutawney residents he meets in a bowling-alley bar: “What if there were no tomorrow?” They consider the question. “No tomorrow,” one answers. “That would mean there would be no consequences. There’d be no hangovers. We could do whatever we wanted!”

But one of the lessons of Groundhog Day is that accountability is its own kind of asset. Without it, Phil is rudderless, and doomed to repeat his unending day. And one of the things that makes Phil’s predicament so unnerving, to him and to viewers, is that its dynamics are so deeply unclear. What happened to make time—Phil’s unique experience of time, at any rate—repeat itself? Why February 2? Why this particular February 2? The current moment brings similar questions. “We Still Don’t Know How the Coronavirus Is Killing Us,” New York magazine announced this week. On Tuesday, Yascha Mounk wrote a piece for The Atlantic that contained the following line: “After weeks in which it made sense to hope that something would happen to end this nightmare, the prospects for deliverance are more remote than ever.” Yesterday, Ed Yong published a sweeping essay headlined “Why the Coronavirus Is So Confusing.” Its sub-headline: “A guide to making sense of a problem that is now too big for any one person to fully comprehend.”

The unknowns, like the disheveled days, loom. The plot trails off. Groundhog Day is a comedy, ultimately, because of its ending: Phil, finally, uses time to become a better person. He learns from the past. He comes to care about people in the present. He breaks his curse. Imagine what Groundhog Day would be if he didn’t. Imagine where we might be, too, if we fail to find a better way forward. There will be a tomorrow, and a tomorrow, and a tomorrow. But will they bring a happy ending? That is one more thing that, in this moment, is profoundly unclear.

The Acquittal of Our Guilty Pleasures

Music is always a near-essential for me when I hit the road. But now, more than ever, having a soundtrack to drive to feels absolutely critical. Typically, I have a playlist cued up to inject some presence into the errand I’m running to offset the Leftovers vibe I pick up everywhere I look around. 

Sometimes, though, someone’s using my Spotify account, and if I haven’t thought ahead and brought CDs (Ron Howard voiceover: He almost never does), my only recourse is the radio which can be a chore. But, when my choice is between listening to the radio or enduring the anxieties and withering self-doubts intruding upon my consciousness in the silence, well, you know what’s going to win out. 

Which is about the only way what I’m about to describe could ever happen. The other day I was surprised to hear the stuttering beat to Dave Matthews Band’s “Ants Marching” stagger out of the radio. Unsettled, I flicked the tuner in no particular direction, fleeing “anywhere but here” in sheer animal panic, reminded uncomfortably of it being my favorite song when I was ten and the subsequent growth in taste I’ve hopefully accumulated since then.

But that hopefulness only continued to be called into question as it went on the duration of my drive: ”Sorry” by Justin Bieber, “Sex Type Thing” by Stone Temple Pilots… Songs that I’m hesitant to admit used to set my heart beating like a defibrillator, and yet—oof, they did. They do.

What was going on? Aren’t I under enough psychic pressure from the cabin fever of sheltering at home already? Do I really need to grapple with why on Earth these songs should pluck some secret lyre in my heart?

I think two things can simultaneously be true: that DMB can be the ideal band for frat guys to get hammered to while assuring themselves they contain multitudes, and “Ants Marching” can excite the nerve endings in the hidden recesses of my soul and set them vibrating with delight in spite of my awareness of the first point. I don’t want that to be true, but it is.

Our guilty pleasures rupture the husk of our confirmation biases. They testify, “You are those things you let on to the world, but you are also these things.” They are acknowledgements that there’s more to us than our carefully curated public images would suggest. They extract and exclude the evidence of a concealed self we don’t want to let on. We suppress those things that make us feel guilty and ashamed, those things that will not let us forget how we fail to measure up to the standards we set in place for ourselves. The guilty pleasure is Exhibit A in our masochistic self-trials whereby we carve out selves we would prefer to be.

Even the label “guilty pleasure” is a way to cloak our attachment to these songs in the shade of a term implying distance. The phrase inoculates the song’s side effects by dismissing its significance and the resonant frequency with which it rings in sympathy with our being. It reassures us that we know better and regularly choose better, but much like catching a cold, can any of us ever be vigilant enough?

It’s an attempt to distance the self we project to the world and, most importantly, the ideal self we imagine and wish we could become from the irrational dilettante we routinely are in our unguarded moments of simply being. This distance is deceptive, however, because in the act of dissociation we end up burying the pleasure deeper within the self we don’t dare allow to see the light of day. 

The problem here is that that excluded self is still us. Georg Simmel emphasizes the uncomfortable point that

[t]he individual does not attain the unity of his personality exclusively by an exhaustive harmonization… of the contents of his personality. On the contrary, contradiction and conflict not only precede this unity but are operative in it at every moment of its existence.

(Georg Simmel, On Individuality and Social Forms: Selected Writings, ed. D. N. Levine [University of Chicago Press], pp. 71-72)

To be an I, in other words, is always to be a contradictory I. There’s no way around it.

“Do I want to be loved in spite of?” Tim Kreider via Donald Barthelme asks us, and the answer surely is, “No!” That sounds too horrifying for words. I want the love others pour into my prim, manufactured self to be imputed to the actual, unedited me silently behind the scenes. If I can’t earn that love, then by God, I want to smuggle in approval for a bogus self and worry about the divide later. Or never. 

Guilty pleasures essentially say, “Others might enjoy such drivel, but not I,” which is only slightly less obnoxious than the classic, “I thank you Lord that I am not like other men” (Luke 18:11). They serve as boundary markers for who we think we need to be, and who we will fight the outside world’s disciplining scrutinies to become. They’re bowling alley bumpers for our actual selves to ricochet within to safely arrive at the destination we assure ourselves is best. Guilty pleasures can be readily surrendered, we think, when the Thought Police break down our door and read us our charges under the Categorical Imperative of Cool. 

But they never actually arrive, do they? Sure, some of us have been embarrassed when we’ve been asked our favorite album and we’ve said, “Kiss’ Dynasty.” It happens. But the music magisterium we fear is really the oppressive voice of our own inner moralist, spoiling the fun by applying real aesthetic criteria beyond their legitimate bounds with no breaks. That’s no way to live, but that doesn’t stop that voice. 

The deepest, most fundamentally good news usually comes cloaked in the form of its opposite. So hear the good news: only phonies need Christ; positively put, inauthenticity is the price of admission. Maybe most of these songs really, truly aren’t good in any critical sense. But if I could be honest with myself for half a moment, I know the deeper issue my guilty pleasures refract back to me is that I’m not all that good, either. But Jesus wants me anyway. And he doesn’t agonize under any scruples that would try to indict him: “You are woefully inconsistent! Are you taking seriously the implications of the moral heart of your being and the objects of your affection? You can’t love Ian—what would that say about you? How can you be the true, the good, and the beautiful, and bring him into the sphere of reconciliation?”

In a way that evades our attempts at comprehensive understanding, God is both just and the justifier of nincompoops like us (Romans 3:26). Our clumsy likes and ill advised favorites won’t count against us at the eschatological tribunal. We’re just not all that good at consistently liking the best stuff. We might as well just own it. But God isn’t ashamed of you for the Bread records you inherited from your parents or your Big Daddy Weave CDs, or because Weird Al was your first concert. You, delighted by questionable tunes, are vastly preferable to him than dour-but-refined-and-checking-your-Top 5-list-“correctly” you. 

So crank that Starship song; get so severely down to Carlie Rae Jepson. Now is a time when we really don’t need yet another Law choking out our attempts to cope. Your guilty pleasures and mine have been acquitted, their questionability annulled by the superabundant righteousness of Christ. Add your favorites—your actual favorites—to his open-sourced mix. For his triumphal procession blasts all manner of music as we are led in the captivity of freedom (2 Corinthians 2:14). 

The Freedom to Do Nothing

Source: https://mbird.com/2020/04/the-freedom-to-do-nothing/

The following was written by Sarah Denley Herrington.

What a time to be alive!

I’ve been comforted and inspired by the frequency of seeing a gracious word here and there on social media. But it gnaws at me, the guilt I feel when I don’t do enough. I recently decided to get on Facebook (which is always a good decision) and respond to this meme that’s been going around saying that if you don’t do all of these things (learn a new skill, start your side hustle, etc.) you’re lazy. Its perspective is absurdly privileged. The truth is, we’re experiencing collective trauma. But I’m convinced that if I don’t take people to task on Facebook, I’ve done a disservice to those around me who are struggling who could be comforted by my hot take. Sigh.

I recently listened to a podcast in which the guest, Celeste Headlee, who wrote a book called Do Nothing shared research about how, when people were asked their hourly rate for their work before listening to a beautiful arrangement of music, they said the piece lasted too long. The piece was three minutes.

I stay at home with my three children and homeschool them, so my hours have no such worth. And yet, I’m constantly thinking about time, work, and what Headlee called the “cult of efficiency“. And more often than not, I’m tying it to my personal worth, in conscious and unconscious ways.

I realized almost immediately when we began streaming church that, for the first time, I could monitor how much longer church would last. I felt an odd sense of control and also an incredible sense of guilt. I told myself that a large part of operating on countdown mode was my anxious personality and my unruly children who unsurprisingly seem to behave less well in the comfort of their own home, watching a screen than in the confines of a pew where some (very small, in their case) amount of decorum is expected. I also reminded myself that this wasn’t specific to a worship service. I often find myself fixated on how many episodes are left in a season of a television show or how many pages are left in a chapter of a novel. I am unquestionably a neurotic person living in a neurotic age. I did feel such satisfaction hearing about the musical piece that, at three minutes, was just too long for folks.

One thing I did manage to catch last Sunday was our pastor asking what we were grieving. I paused the service and asked my children. The first thing my big kids both said was New York. We had a trip scheduled this month. We were going to spend the last part of Holy Week there and I was planning on attending a conference that I’ve missed for the last several years and that, in very real ways, sustains me. The children were mostly going to enjoy revisiting their old favorites in the city they once spent a year and a half growing up in and sharing it with their baby sister who has been to visit once but doesn’t remember anything about it. I had tears in my eyes. What a better use of our time than all the Pinterest and home improvement projects I was scheming about and mentally writing on a list.

This hasn’t sucked entirely. In fact, we’ve been some of the lucky few who have really enjoyed this time. We’ve thrived. Largely, I think because I decided VERY early on that I did not have the energy to erect arbitrary and artificial frameworks in our days. I knew that attempts to block schedule things like “art” and “exercise” would be fruitless with my crew and would result in mutiny.

But it was hard to wrap my mind around at first. So I did the thing — I grieved it, the structure and the tidy, predictable blocks of time we operated in, for however long this would last. You can be damn sure I grieved the three mornings a week I dropped my favorite three year old off at the Methodist church preschool with the pithy, if occasionally preachy, church signage and completely precious director who gives the children lollipops with very little restraint and toddler buddies whose names filled our days. You can also be damn sure I did not grieve the multiple nights a week on the soccer field. And now we mostly just do what we want.

But the thing that has been hard has been feeling like that’s enough. Like it’s enough for me and my children and my husband (when he’s home from his essential job in the health care field that he doesn’t like to be fawned over for) to just be.

I’ve heard a lot of people talk about this “historical moment” and this “current moment in time” and one that sticks out is this “present moment.” It just seems so difficult to be present in this present moment — mentally and emotionally and spiritually. I’m certainly here physically but sometimes that feels like about all. My preteen is experiencing the onset of teenage ennui early and my little boy who is nine but developmentally about seven recently asked, “What even is this life?” And my little one, who has more energy than the other four of us combined, has been missing preschool and the sibling run-around in the afternoon and evening. We are so in our feelings. I feel the tediousness and mundaneness of this vocation on an entirely new level. I so often feel the numbness, the dull ache which I’m terrified is the depression I had finally gotten a hold of in the past year.

When I get sad and lonely and afraid, I am reminded of a great comfort and that is that Jesus is present in this present moment. When I am distracted and impatient and at the very end of my rope (or roll of toilet paper), God is in this mess beside me.

Our pastor reminded us of another fabulous truth on Easter Sunday. She said “In Christ’s resurrection, we experience the liberation from saving ourselves and the liberation from praising ourselves.” But man, do I find myself going back to those chains. I need a daily (hourly?) reminder that my worth is not found in a failed (or unattempted) house project and I also need the reminder that my worth is not found in a successful one.

For the past decade, God has used my children to show me this truth and in 2020, He is using a pandemic to show me.

Praise God for the days when I check everything off my list and for the days when I am unable to accomplish a blessed thing. And praise God that my worth is tied to neither.

The Ministry of Weirdness, Courtesy of The Rev. Alfred Yankovic

Source: https://mbird.com/2020/04/the-ministry-of-weirdness-courtesy-of-the-rev-alfred-yankovic/

by DAVID ZAHL 

“Even as a child, I understood on some intuitive level that Weird Al was not merely the Shakespeare of terrible food puns (“Might as well face it you’re addicted to spuds”) or an icon of anti-style (poodle fro, enormous glasses, questionable mustache, Hawaiian shirts) but a spiritual technician doing important work down in the engine room of the American soul. I could not have said why, but I felt it.”

Thus reads a key passage of the masterful profile of Weird Al Yankovic that Sam Anderson penned for The NY Times Magazine last week. CJ mentioned the article in last Friday’s round-up and we discussed it at length on The Mockingcast, so consider this the full court press to read about America’s favorite pre-Internet pop music parody icon.

Absurd as it sounds, Alfred Yankovic may constitute the final link in the holy trinity of 80s American pop culture alongside Dolly Parton and Fred Rogers. What I mean is he appears to be that rare celebrity who understands–and fulfills–his role as a spiritual calling. A vocation, if you will. Because what Anderson describes in the article is nothing short of a ministry. This is a man whose art and presence, under the auspices of pure ridiculousness, imparts grace to those who come into contact with it. And not a superficial form either.

There’s a clear link here between the unlikelihood of the messenger and the depth of the resonance, something dead serious (and good!) transpiring under the aegis of the absurd. The Nazareth Principle in action, big time.

I’m getting ahead of myself. Like many in my generation, my main exposure to Weird Al was the music videos he made in the 80s, “Eat It,” “Fat”, “Like a Surgeon”–parodies that now seem both incredibly tame and genuinely, well, weird. He was the court jester of that entire MTV scene, and we loved him for it. Then came his movie UHF, which my older brother made us rent from the video store probably ten times the year it came out. We watched it so often, in fact, that it took a full three seasons of Seinfeld before I stopped thinking of Kramer as a faster talking Stanley Spadowski.

No one could have predicted Al’s staying power. When grunge came along, he rose to the occasion with “Smells Like Nirvana” (another amazing video). Then a few years later he brought us “Amish Paradise.” Then a decade later, “White and Nerdy”. The hits somehow kept coming, even after YouTube gave us an army of knock-offs.

What strikes me now about Al, more than the punchlines or even the aesthetic (which has dated better than almost anything of that era!), was the sheer gratuity of it. His stuff was so gloriously unnecessary. What I mean is that if in 1975 you convened a committee to forecast the pop culture landscape of the future, no one would have suggested, “well, we have to make sure we fill the ‘near-sighted accordian-playing parodist who sells millions’ slot.” There was no reason for him to exist as anything more than a cult figure, and yet there he was, a semi-major cultural force for decades. And he made our lives all more colorful as a result. A gift, pure and simple.

Anderson distills Al’s appeal this way:

As his name suggested, Weird Al’s comedy operated right at the hot spot of my childhood agonies: weirdness versus normalcy, insider versus outsider. What a Weird Al parody did was enact a tiny revolution. It took the whole glamorous architecture of American mainstream cool — Michael Jackson’s otherworldly moves, Madonna’s sexual taboos — and extracted all of the coolness. Into that void, Weird Al inserted the least cool person in the world: himself. And by proxy, all the rest of us weirdos, along with our uncool lives.

We want our fantasy and our escape, in other words, but we also want communion and laughter. To, er, have our lunch and eat it too. I guess you could say Al served as a release valve for Me Decade pretensions.

And yet… I don’t think that’s enough to account for his longevity. For a clue about what’s really going on here, you have to go to the fans.

The first inkling I got came after A Mess of Help came out. I had spoken at an event somewhere, and afterward, a middle-aged woman approached me to asked me what I thought about… Weird Al. The gleam in her eye told me it was less of a question and more of a secret handshake. If it was a test, I failed. But I heard from her a few months after the event, saying that she’d put a copy of the book in his hands at a meet-n-greet, and then asking me to pray for him, since he was on the road and far from his… church. Huh, I thought, filing that last tidbit away for a rainy day reddit investigation.

Well, Anderson’s article has officially spared me that investigation. His testimony of what Weird Al meant to him growing up–as well as what Al meant to Andy Samberg, Lin Manuel-Miranda, and Michael Schur (Parks and Rec, The Good Place)–stopped me in my tracks. And Al’s own “origin” only made matters more profound. This wasn’t that cruel subversion known as nerd-cool, nor a novel strand of seculosity. It was something far more beautiful, more akin to a ministry of grace than anything else. That the grace in question might be based in something deeper than human kindness, well, it’s enough to make this grown man feel like a kid at Spatula City.

Do yourself a favor and read the entire article, but don’t miss the end, which reads almost like a living translation of 1 Corinthians 1:27 (“But God chose the foolish weird things of the world to shame the wise normal; God chose the weak things bedwetters of the world to shame the strong cool”). PtL:

One of many incredible pictures from the NY Times profile

The only real exception to Weird Al’s self-isolation [while he was on tour] came late at night, after the shows, when he would interact with fans in elaborate V.I.P. sessions: photos, autographs, chats. Yankovic would do basically anything fans wanted. He would mug for the camera or flex like a bodybuilder or sign people’s arms. He signed posters, cassette tapes, action figures, accordions, spatulas, glow-in-the-dark snorkels. I saw him sign a package of bologna and an exact replica of a “Star Wars” storm trooper helmet. These were not autograph hounds but true devotees, exactly the kinds of people Yankovic placed at the center of his songs: nerds, misfits, weirdos. Many fans seemed to have just emerged, for the first time in forever, from tiny rooms of their own. They were less interested in a photo op than in a sort of spiritual transfer.

Most of all, the fans thanked Weird Al. They thanked him for his music, for not dying of heatstroke onstage, for voicing the character Banana Man on the cartoon “Adventure Time,” for helping them survive cancer, for helping them survive their mother’s cancer.

“I got introduced to your music when I was going through — struggles — in my life,” said a young, balding man wearing a brown suit, and the word struggles was surrounded on all sides by an unfathomable gulf of feeling. “You helped me pull through.”

Weird Al listened with deep eye contact. “Thank you,” he said. “That means a lot to me.”

“Thank you for all the joy you bring to the world,” said a woman in Minnesota.

“Thank you for making my best times brighter with your songs,” said a young man in North Dakota.

“Thank you for letting us all be ourselves.”

“Thank you for being you.”

Weird Al’s bond with his fans is atomic. He will stop and speak with them anywhere — at airports, outside the tour bus — for so long that it becomes a logistical problem. The fans approach him like a guru, and Weird Al responds with sweet, open, validating energy.

Joel Miller, the friend who defended Yankovic from college bullies, said the relationship between Weird Al and his hard-core fans is deeply personal. “He’s giving them validation,” he told me. “They feel a kindred spirit. When they’re at his concerts, they are in a safe space. They are able to be stupid or outlandish or whatever, exactly as they want. And nobody judges them. In fact, it’s the opposite. People appreciate them for what they are, not for what they aren’t.”

The connection is so deep that it is more like a merging, and after a while it struck me that Weird Al has spent basically his whole life making his music for exactly these people, which is to say for his childhood self. For many decades, he has been trying to delight Alfred Yankovic, the bright, painfully shy kid who grew up alone in his tiny bedroom. For the benefit of that lonely boy, he reshaped the whole world of pop culture. His ridiculous music sent out a pulse, a signal, and these were the people it drew: the odd, the left out. A crowd of friends for that lonely kid. As I watched him with his fans, sometimes I felt as if Weird Al was multiplying all around me, multiplying inside of me. We were one crowd, united in isolation, together in a great collective loneliness that — once you recognized it, once you accepted it — felt right on the brink of being healed.

Is God Angry With Us?

Source: https://www.1517.org/articles/is-god-angry-with-us

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR: Daniel Stenberg is married to Karen, and they have 5 boys. He is a graduate of the Lutheran Brethren Seminary in Fergus Falls, MN. Daniel is passionate about proclaiming Christ crucified, music that is harder than the stuff you listen to, video games, and the Seattle Seahawks. Daniel is currently serving as the pastor at Calvary Church in Bergenfield, NJ.

“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” is one of the more popular sermons in American history. British Colonial Christian Theologian Jonathan Edwards, painted the picture of a God with an itchy trigger finger, constantly at the ready to dispense justice on wicked sinners. The God that Edwards describes is so angry at sin, and those that live in it, that he is doling out bits and pieces of Hell to the wicked, that they might understand what their future holds should they continue down the path they are currently on.

This picture of God being angry at sinners, of God bringing punishment upon those that sin is a pretty common theme in modern evangelical America. How many times have I heard that God would smite the United States because of our current abortion laws? When a natural disaster strikes certain parts of our country or certain areas of the world, I often hear a soft undercurrent in Christian circles about how God was punishing those affected for the sin that they have ignored or accepted. From this perspective, what does COVID-19 tell us about God’s thoughts on the world as a whole? Is he so angry with the sin that runs rampant in our world that he is smiting us for it? Punishing us for it? That he is giving us a taste of hell, venting some of his rage so that we might be scared back into submission? Is this God’s way of letting us know we’ve toed the line one too many times and now we’re getting put in the penalty box for a time out?

Many Christians live with the understanding that if we do something wrong, God will punish us. And so, we must do everything, or at bare minimum as much as we can, right. We must continue to live within God’s laws, we must continue to live lives that are pleasing to God. If we don’t, we risk sickness, or disease, or being laid off, or any number of punishments that God may come up with. Many Christians are walking on eggshells, living as if we are sinners in the hands of an angry God.

Which begs the question: Is he? Is God angry with us?

There are many reasons that I love Easter. Holy Week is by far my favorite week of the year. Because during this week I am informed of God’s feelings about me. This is the week that Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey, victoriously submitting himself to God’s plan. This is the week that there is a dinner in an upper room in which Jesus institutes the Lord’s Supper, which I now get to celebrate while I rest and rejoice in the forgiveness poured out over me by God. And it is during this week that I read about Jesus in the garden asking God to take the cup from him. The cup of wrath. This is the cup of God’s anger at sin. This is the cup of God’s punishment, his divine retribution. Jesus is innocent. He is perfect and pure and blameless. There is no need for him to suffer the wrath of God, and yet: “Not my will but yours be done,” says the voice of my Savior. And from this cup of wrath, Jesus drinks fully. And so on Jesus God’s wrath was poured out perfectly. He did not save a couple of drops to pour out on me for when I cheated on a test. He did not save the swill at the bottom for when I was vulgar in my thought and speech, that he might hit me with some wrath to keep me in line.

No, Jesus drank from the cup fully, drained every last drop. All of God’s anger over my sin directed completely at Jesus. Through faith in Christ, through the faith that has been given me, I am not the recipient of God’s wrath, only Jesus is. And that wrath manifested itself this week when Jesus went to the cross. There he hung, abandoned by God, the cup of wrath was fully poured out, and having finished the drink, he declared: “It is finished.” God’s wrath is spent. The cup is empty. There is nothing left, no drop, for me to lay claim to. And then my Savior, my substitute, died, alone and abandoned.

And it is this week, Sunday morning, Easter, we celebrate Jesus rising again. We celebrate how he defeated sin and conquered death. We celebrate a relationship with God restored on account of Christ’s work on our behalf. We celebrate the outpouring of God’s love for us. His love, not his wrath.

So Christian, are you a sinner in the hands of an angry God? You’re a sinner, yes. But is God angry at you? No. God’s wrath was poured out on Jesus, totally and completely. Rest in the truth that God looks on you with love and favor on account of Jesus. Live in the comfort that when we fail there is forgiveness, not the itchy trigger finger of a ticked off God. Rejoice in the complete work of Christ on the cross.

"Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all." (Isaiah 53:4-6)

(Not a) Lotta Spam (in the Stores Right Now)

This one comes to us from Christine Havens.

Early on in the period of stock-up shopping, before Austin, Texas, imposed its stay-at-home order, I went to my neighborhood Randall’s in the northwest part of town. Rounding the corner into the canned meat/soup aisle, I halted, flabbergasted—there were no cans of Spam on the shelves. Not one. In normal times, stores are stocked full of those unmistakable blue cans with the bright yellow logo. Let me repeat: there were none. No Original, no Hickory Smoke, no Low-sodium, no Hot & Spicy. Not even any generic or competitors’ brands. All gone.
Though my hankering was going to go unsatisfied, my funny bone was being tickled. I burst out laughing. Due to the coronavirus outbreak, that often-reviled, that “deplorable” (to quote a recent conversation with a good friend) foodstuff was now on everyone’s must-have list. Rarely have I met anyone outside of my family who will willing admit that they enjoy eating spam (I’m excepting the state of Hawaii, where around 6 million cans are consumed annually).

For me, it’s not only a comfort food but one also grounded in grace. In eating it, I reconnect myself to who God has formed me to be by way of my Grandpa John. My grandpa learned to love Spam when he served in the Coast Guard, stationed in the Aleutian Islands during World War II. For all the jokes now made about it, Spam sustained both military and civilians around the globe in a very anxious time.

My grandparents owned a small grocery store in rural Iowa—Little John’s Souperette—and each summer, I spent two weeks with them. From an early age, much of those fourteen days involved working at the store, itself a sacred spot for me. Lunch generally consisted of whatever canned goods might be dented, yet often a mysteriously, or should I say, miraculously, dented can of Spam appeared when my grandpa went to check the shelves. This meal was never fancy—just bread for sandwiches, with chips maybe, and a brown-speckled banana (green bananas were for customers)—but they were times of communion. Grace was said if my grandmother joined us, but grace was present no matter, even if the younger me did not yet know to name it that.

My Grandpa John loved Monty Python’s Flying Circus, which was still new to American TV in the 1970s. Staying up late with him to watch it left an imprint on me that remains today. The Spam skit still plays in my head each time I pass it in a grocery aisle, let alone eat it—the late Terry Jones and the late Graham Chapman. God’s work in my later life is linked, I believe, to these Spam-filled moments—even to leading me to a Christ-centered life when well into my mid-life (a story for another time). Suffice it to say that medieval studies took me to Western Michigan’s Medieval Institute in 2011 for a conference where they’d arranged a performance of, you guessed it, Spamalot. That led to Seminary of the Southwest in Austin and a thesis about the Grail Quest and the Tour de France with the Pythonesque working title of “Men Without Coconuts.”

Now, in these strange times, these post-Resurrection times, the passage in John 21, where the risen Christ cooks fish for Peter and the other disciples a couple of weeks after they have seen him crucified, comes to the fore. Standing in the store, I’m amused by imagining that scene now, with slices of the pale pink meat in place of fish, sizzling over the charcoal fire our Savior cooked for his friends. From there it is not difficult to picture Christ standing at a stove, doing a little Spam fried rice in a home where at least one person does not currently have a job. Perhaps that bright blue can came to the home from the food bank. Perhaps it is dinner in a homeless camp.

Whatever the reason, the shelves are being emptied of Spam; my rather smug laughter is tempered by these thoughts of Christ. Since many of us have not experienced a church-based celebration of the Eucharist in what feels like a long time, perhaps we might recognize the presence of Christ in unlooked-for places, as the disciples did on the edge of the Sea of Tiberius. While in nowise the body of our savior, this convenient food still bestows life, despite its reputation as not very nutritious and not the most Earth-friendly. If nothing else, maybe others are (re)discovering the Spam skit online and laughing amid the anxiety. Humor and Spam are where my Grandpa John and I found grace together. “God is great, God is good, and we thank him for this food, Amen.”

Or as I like to say now before meals: “Rub-a-dub-dub, thanks for the grub, yay God!”

https://mbird.com/2020/04/not-a-lotta-spam-in-the-stores-right-now/

The Utter Strangeness of Easter

by DAVID ZAHL on Apr 12, 2020 • 9:27 am

A beautiful summation of this glorious day from the man who would have been addressing us in New York this year (😢), Tom Holland, via an article published on UnHerd, “When Christ Conquered Caesar”:

The utter strangeness of Easter does not lie in the notion that a mortal might become divine. As Nero well knew, the border between the heavenly and the earthly had always been viewed as permeable. Divinity in the Roman world, however, was understood to be for the very greatest of the great: for victors, and heroes, and Caesars. Its measure was the power to torture one’s enemies, not to suffer it oneself; to have a person stabbed in the womb, or gelded and made to live forever as a member of the opposite sex, or smeared in pitch and set to serve as a human torch.

That a man who had himself been crucified might be hailed as a god could not help but be seen by people everywhere across the Roman world as scandalous, obscene, grotesque. Nero, charging the Christians with arson and hatred of humanity, seems not to have undertaken any detailed interrogation of their beliefs — but doubtless, had he done so, he would have been revolted and bewildered.

Radically though Nero had sought to demonstrate to the world that the divine might be interfused with the human, the Christians he had tortured to death believed in something infinitely more radical. There was but the one God, and His Son, by becoming mortal and dying the death of a slave, had redeemed all of humanity. Not as an emperor but as a victim he had come. The message was novel beyond the wildest dreams even of a Nero; and was destined to endure long after all his works, and the works of the Caesars, had crumbled into dust.

This Sunday, when billions of people around the globe celebrate the triumph over death of a man laid in a tomb in a garden, the triumph they celebrate will not be that of an emperor. “For God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.”

https://mbird.com/2020/04/the-utter-strangeness-of-easter/

I Miss Church

I Miss Church

 I miss church, Lord - I miss hearing Your Word and seeing my church family

when we enter this place, see each other face to face, there’s so many smiles to see

the fellowship’s there, with music in the air as we lift our voices to sing

with hymns we all love and inspiration from above and thoughts that the sermons bring

to our heads and our hearts, the spirit helps impart the messages that we learn

as we daily pray from home, feeling quite alone, yet for our church group we yearn

You guide us so true, no matter how blue, we’re reminded to always share

with our community, as Christians in unity, our God is always there

whenever there’s strife in anyone’s life I can’t help but want to pray

with Bible in hand, wherever in this land, it is the light in everyone’s day

Oh, Lord, help us now to see what you want us to be, let us bow our heads wherever we are

No shaking hands for a while, this can be a trial, missing church together from afar

Yet I think how God’s plan, that leaving home is banned, and ponder church for us

it’s not a building, you know, church wherever we go, “guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus”. 

We know it will be alright, for Jesus is the light, as the meaning of church becomes clear

For God’s love is a plus, the Body of Christ is in us, we can get through this together, my dears.

Written by Cheryl Nolte the week of April 7, 2020 (missing the gathering of church due to the COVID-19 pandemic)

John Ch 16:16-Ch19 Read the Passion in Holy Week

All Recordings made possible by the word of promise app.

John 16-19

Sorrow Will Turn to Joy

16 “A little while, and you will not see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me, because I go to the Father.”

17 Then some of His disciples said among themselves, “What is this that He says to us, ‘A little while, and you will not see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me’; and, ‘because I go to the Father’?” 18 They said therefore, “What is this that He says, ‘A little while’? We do not know what He is saying.”

19 Now Jesus knew that they desired to ask Him, and He said to them, “Are you inquiring among yourselves about what I said, ‘A little while, and you will not see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me’? 20 Most assuredly, I say to you that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; and you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned into joy. 21 A woman, when she is in labor, has sorrow because her hour has come; but as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. 22 Therefore you now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you.

23 “And in that day you will ask Me nothing. Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you. 24 Until now you have asked nothing in My name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.

Jesus Christ Has Overcome the World

25 “These things I have spoken to you in figurative language; but the time is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figurative language, but I will tell you plainly about the Father. 26 In that day you will ask in My name, and I do not say to you that I shall pray the Father for you; 27 for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me, and have believed that I came forth from God. 28 I came forth from the Father and have come into the world. Again, I leave the world and go to the Father.”

29 His disciples said to Him, “See, now You are speaking plainly, and using no figure of speech! 30 Now we are sure that You know all things, and have no need that anyone should question You. By this we believe that You came forth from God.”

31 Jesus answered them, “Do you now believe? 32 Indeed the hour is coming, yes, has now come, that you will be scattered, each to his own, and will leave Me alone. And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me. 33 These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”

Jesus Prays for Himself

17 Jesus spoke these words, lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, 2 as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. 4 I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do. 5 And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.

Jesus Prays for His Disciples

6 “I have manifested Your name to the men whom You have given Me out of the world. They were Yours, You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word. 7 Now they have known that all things which You have given Me are from You. 8 For I have given to them the words which You have given Me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came forth from You; and they have believed that You sent Me.

9 “I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours. 10 And all Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine, and I am glorified in them. 11 Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are. 12 While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your name. Those whom You gave Me I have kept; and none of them is lost except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. 13 But now I come to You, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves. 14 I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15 I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth. 18 As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth.

Jesus Prays for All Believers

20 “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; 21 that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. 22 And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: 23 I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.

24 “Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world. 25 O righteous Father! The world has not known You, but I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me. 26 And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”

Betrayal and Arrest in Gethsemane

18 When Jesus had spoken these words, He went out with His disciples over the Brook Kidron, where there was a garden, which He and His disciples entered. 2 And Judas, who betrayed Him, also knew the place; for Jesus often met there with His disciples. 3 Then Judas, having received a detachment of troops, and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees, came there with lanterns, torches, and weapons. 4 Jesus therefore, knowing all things that would come upon Him, went forward and said to them, “Whom are you seeking?”

5 They answered Him, “Jesus of Nazareth.”

Jesus said to them, “I am He.” And Judas, who betrayed Him, also stood with them. 6 Now when He said to them, “I am He,” they drew back and fell to the ground.

7 Then He asked them again, “Whom are you seeking?”

And they said, “Jesus of Nazareth.”

8 Jesus answered, “I have told you that I am He. Therefore, if you seek Me, let these go their way,” 9 that the saying might be fulfilled which He spoke, “Of those whom You gave Me I have lost none.”

10 Then Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s servant, and cut off his right ear. The servant’s name was Malchus.

11 So Jesus said to Peter, “Put your sword into the sheath. Shall I not drink the cup which My Father has given Me?”

Before the High Priest

12 Then the detachment of troops and the captain and the officers of the Jews arrested Jesus and bound Him. 13 And they led Him away to Annas first, for he was the father-in-law of Caiaphas who was high priest that year. 14 Now it was Caiaphas who advised the Jews that it was expedient that one man should die for the people.

Peter Denies Jesus

15 And Simon Peter followed Jesus, and so did another disciple. Now that disciple was known to the high priest, and went with Jesus into the courtyard of the high priest. 16 But Peter stood at the door outside. Then the other disciple, who was known to the high priest, went out and spoke to her who kept the door, and brought Peter in. 17 Then the servant girl who kept the door said to Peter, “You are not also one of this Man’s disciples, are you?”

He said, “I am not.”

18 Now the servants and officers who had made a fire of coals stood there, for it was cold, and they warmed themselves. And Peter stood with them and warmed himself.

Jesus Questioned by the High Priest

19 The high priest then asked Jesus about His disciples and His doctrine.

20 Jesus answered him, “I spoke openly to the world. I always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where the Jews always meet, and in secret I have said nothing. 21 Why do you ask Me? Ask those who have heard Me what I said to them. Indeed they know what I said.”

22 And when He had said these things, one of the officers who stood by struck Jesus with the palm of his hand, saying, “Do You answer the high priest like that?”

23 Jesus answered him, “If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil; but if well, why do you strike Me?”

24 Then Annas sent Him bound to Caiaphas the high priest.

Peter Denies Twice More

25 Now Simon Peter stood and warmed himself. Therefore they said to him, “You are not also one of His disciples, are you?”

He denied it and said, “I am not!”

26 One of the servants of the high priest, a relative of him whose ear Peter cut off, said, “Did I not see you in the garden with Him?” 27 Peter then denied again; and immediately a rooster crowed.

In Pilate’s Court

28 Then they led Jesus from Caiaphas to the Praetorium, and it was early morning. But they themselves did not go into the Praetorium, lest they should be defiled, but that they might eat the Passover. 29 Pilate then went out to them and said, “What accusation do you bring against this Man?”

30 They answered and said to him, “If He were not an evildoer, we would not have delivered Him up to you.”

31 Then Pilate said to them, “You take Him and judge Him according to your law.”

Therefore the Jews said to him, “It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death,” 32 that the saying of Jesus might be fulfilled which He spoke, signifying by what death He would die.

33 Then Pilate entered the Praetorium again, called Jesus, and said to Him, “Are You the King of the Jews?”

34 Jesus answered him, “Are you speaking for yourself about this, or did others tell you this concerning Me?”

35 Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered You to me. What have You done?”

36 Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight, so that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now My kingdom is not from here.”

37 Pilate therefore said to Him, “Are You a king then?”

Jesus answered, “You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.”

38 Pilate said to Him, “What is truth?” And when he had said this, he went out again to the Jews, and said to them, “I find no fault in Him at all.

Taking the Place of Barabbas

39 “But you have a custom that I should release someone to you at the Passover. Do you therefore want me to release to you the King of the Jews?”

40 Then they all cried again, saying, “Not this Man, but Barabbas!” Now Barabbas was a robber.

The Soldiers Mock Jesus

19 So then Pilate took Jesus and scourged Him. 2 And the soldiers twisted a crown of thorns and put it on His head, and they put on Him a purple robe. 3 Then they said, “Hail, King of the Jews!” And they struck Him with their hands.

4 Pilate then went out again, and said to them, “Behold, I am bringing Him out to you, that you may know that I find no fault in Him.”

Pilate’s Decision

5 Then Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. And Pilate said to them, “Behold the Man!”

6 Therefore, when the chief priests and officers saw Him, they cried out, saying, “Crucify Him, crucify Him!”

Pilate said to them, “You take Him and crucify Him, for I find no fault in Him.”

7 The Jews answered him, “We have a law, and according to our law He ought to die, because He made Himself the Son of God.”

8 Therefore, when Pilate heard that saying, he was the more afraid, 9 and went again into the Praetorium, and said to Jesus, “Where are You from?” But Jesus gave him no answer.

10 Then Pilate said to Him, “Are You not speaking to me? Do You not know that I have power to crucify You, and power to release You?”

11 Jesus answered, “You could have no power at all against Me unless it had been given you from above. Therefore the one who delivered Me to you has the greater sin.”

12 From then on Pilate sought to release Him, but the Jews cried out, saying, “If you let this Man go, you are not Caesar’s friend. Whoever makes himself a king speaks against Caesar.”

13 When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he brought Jesus out and sat down in the judgment seat in a place that is called The Pavement, but in Hebrew, Gabbatha. 14 Now it was the Preparation Day of the Passover, and about the sixth hour. And he said to the Jews, “Behold your King!”

15 But they cried out, “Away with Him, away with Him! Crucify Him!”

Pilate said to them, “Shall I crucify your King?”

The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar!”

16 Then he delivered Him to them to be crucified. Then they took Jesus and led Him away.

The King on a Cross

17 And He, bearing His cross, went out to a place called the Place of a Skull, which is called in Hebrew, Golgotha, 18 where they crucified Him, and two others with Him, one on either side, and Jesus in the center. 19 Now Pilate wrote a title and put it on the cross. And the writing was:

JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS.

20 Then many of the Jews read this title, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.

21 Therefore the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews,’ but, ‘He said, “I am the King of the Jews.” ’ ”

22 Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.”

23 Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took His garments and made four parts, to each soldier a part, and also the tunic. Now the tunic was without seam, woven from the top in one piece. 24 They said therefore among themselves, “Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be,” that the Scripture might be fulfilled which says:

“They divided My garments among them,
And for My clothing they cast lots.”

Therefore the soldiers did these things.

Behold Your Mother

25 Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing by, He said to His mother, “Woman, behold your son!” 27 Then He said to the disciple, “Behold your mother!” And from that hour that disciple took her to his own home.

It Is Finished

28 After this, Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, “I thirst!” 29 Now a vessel full of sour wine was sitting there; and they filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on hyssop, and put it to His mouth. 30 So when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit.

Jesus’ Side Is Pierced

31 Therefore, because it was the Preparation Day, that the bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away. 32 Then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who was crucified with Him. 33 But when they came to Jesus and saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs. 34 But one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out. 35 And he who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you may believe. 36 For these things were done that the Scripture should be fulfilled, “Not one of His bones shall be broken.” 37 And again another Scripture says, “They shall look on Him whom they pierced.”

Jesus Buried in Joseph’s Tomb

38 After this, Joseph of Arimathea, being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly, for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus; and Pilate gave him permission. So he came and took the body of Jesus. 39 And Nicodemus, who at first came to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds. 40 Then they took the body of Jesus, and bound it in strips of linen with the spices, as the custom of the Jews is to bury. 41 Now in the place where He was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. 42 So there they laid Jesus, because of the Jews’ Preparation Day, for the tomb was nearby.

Luke Ch 21:29-Ch23 Read the Passion in Holy Week

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The Lesson of the Fig Tree

29 And he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree, and all the trees. 30 As soon as they come out in leaf, you see for yourselves and know that the summer is already near. 31 So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. 32 Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all has taken place. 33 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

Watch Yourselves

34 “But watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a trap. 35 For it will come upon all who dwell on the face of the whole earth. 36 But stay awake at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that are going to take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”

37 And every day he was teaching in the temple, but at night he went out and lodged on the mount called Olivet. 38 And early in the morning all the people came to him in the temple to hear him.

The Plot to Kill Jesus

22 Now the Feast of Unleavened Bread drew near, which is called the Passover. 2 And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to put him to death, for they feared the people.

Judas to Betray Jesus

3 Then Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot, who was of the number of the twelve. 4 He went away and conferred with the chief priests and officers how he might betray him to them. 5 And they were glad, and agreed to give him money. 6 So he consented and sought an opportunity to betray him to them in the absence of a crowd.

The Passover with the Disciples

7 Then came the day of Unleavened Bread, on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. 8 So Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and prepare the Passover for us, that we may eat it.” 9 They said to him, “Where will you have us prepare it?” 10 He said to them, “Behold, when you have entered the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him into the house that he enters 11 and tell the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says to you, Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ 12 And he will show you a large upper room furnished; prepare it there.” 13 And they went and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover.

Institution of the Lord's Supper

14 And when the hour came, he reclined at table, and the apostles with him. 15 And he said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. 16 For I tell you I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” 17 And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he said, “Take this, and divide it among yourselves. 18 For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” 19 And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 20 And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. 21 But behold, the hand of him who betrays me is with me on the table. 22 For the Son of Man goes as it has been determined, but woe to that man by whom he is betrayed!” 23 And they began to question one another, which of them it could be who was going to do this.

Who Is the Greatest?

24 A dispute also arose among them, as to which of them was to be regarded as the greatest. 25 And he said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. 26 But not so with you. Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves. 27 For who is the greater, one who reclines at table or one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at table? But I am among you as the one who serves.

28 “You are those who have stayed with me in my trials, 29 and I assign to you, as my Father assigned to me, a kingdom, 30 that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

Jesus Foretells Peter's Denial

31 “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, 32 but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” 33 Peter said to him, “Lord, I am ready to go with you both to prison and to death.” 34 Jesus said, “I tell you, Peter, the rooster will not crow this day, until you deny three times that you know me.”

Scripture Must Be Fulfilled in Jesus

35 And he said to them, “When I sent you out with no moneybag or knapsack or sandals, did you lack anything?” They said, “Nothing.” 36 He said to them, “But now let the one who has a moneybag take it, and likewise a knapsack. And let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one. 37 For I tell you that this Scripture must be fulfilled in me: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors.’ For what is written about me has its fulfillment.” 38 And they said, “Look, Lord, here are two swords.” And he said to them, “It is enough.”

Jesus Prays on the Mount of Olives

39 And he came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples followed him. 40 And when he came to the place, he said to them, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.” 41 And he withdrew from them about a stone's throw, and knelt down and prayed, 42 saying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” 43 And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. 44 And being in agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. 45 And when he rose from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping for sorrow, 46 and he said to them, “Why are you sleeping? Rise and pray that you may not enter into temptation.”

Betrayal and Arrest of Jesus

47 While he was still speaking, there came a crowd, and the man called Judas, one of the twelve, was leading them. He drew near to Jesus to kiss him, 48 but Jesus said to him, “Judas, would you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?” 49 And when those who were around him saw what would follow, they said, “Lord, shall we strike with the sword?” 50 And one of them struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his right ear. 51 But Jesus said, “No more of this!” And he touched his ear and healed him. 52 Then Jesus said to the chief priests and officers of the temple and elders, who had come out against him, “Have you come out as against a robber, with swords and clubs? 53 When I was with you day after day in the temple, you did not lay hands on me. But this is your hour, and the power of darkness.”

Peter Denies Jesus

54 Then they seized him and led him away, bringing him into the high priest's house, and Peter was following at a distance. 55 And when they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together, Peter sat down among them. 56 Then a servant girl, seeing him as he sat in the light and looking closely at him, said, “This man also was with him.” 57 But he denied it, saying, “Woman, I do not know him.” 58 And a little later someone else saw him and said, “You also are one of them.” But Peter said, “Man, I am not.” 59 And after an interval of about an hour still another insisted, saying, “Certainly this man also was with him, for he too is a Galilean.” 60 But Peter said, “Man, I do not know what you are talking about.” And immediately, while he was still speaking, the rooster crowed. 61 And the Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the saying of the Lord, how he had said to him, “Before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times.” 62 And he went out and wept bitterly.

Jesus Is Mocked

63 Now the men who were holding Jesus in custody were mocking him as they beat him. 64 They also blindfolded him and kept asking him, “Prophesy! Who is it that struck you?” 65 And they said many other things against him, blaspheming him.

Jesus Before the Council

66 When day came, the assembly of the elders of the people gathered together, both chief priests and scribes. And they led him away to their council, and they said, 67 “If you are the Christ, tell us.” But he said to them, “If I tell you, you will not believe, 68 and if I ask you, you will not answer. 69 But from now on the Son of Man shall be seated at the right hand of the power of God.” 70 So they all said, “Are you the Son of God, then?” And he said to them, “You say that I am.” 71 Then they said, “What further testimony do we need? We have heard it ourselves from his own lips.”

Jesus Before Pilate

23 Then the whole company of them arose and brought him before Pilate. 2 And they began to accuse him, saying, “We found this man misleading our nation and forbidding us to give tribute to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ, a king.” 3 And Pilate asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” And he answered him, “You have said so.” 4 Then Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowds, “I find no guilt in this man.” 5 But they were urgent, saying, “He stirs up the people, teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee even to this place.”

Jesus Before Herod

6 When Pilate heard this, he asked whether the man was a Galilean. 7 And when he learned that he belonged to Herod's jurisdiction, he sent him over to Herod, who was himself in Jerusalem at that time. 8 When Herod saw Jesus, he was very glad, for he had long desired to see him, because he had heard about him, and he was hoping to see some sign done by him. 9 So he questioned him at some length, but he made no answer. 10 The chief priests and the scribes stood by, vehemently accusing him. 11 And Herod with his soldiers treated him with contempt and mocked him. Then, arraying him in splendid clothing, he sent him back to Pilate. 12 And Herod and Pilate became friends with each other that very day, for before this they had been at enmity with each other.

13 Pilate then called together the chief priests and the rulers and the people, 14 and said to them, “You brought me this man as one who was misleading the people. And after examining him before you, behold, I did not find this man guilty of any of your charges against him. 15 Neither did Herod, for he sent him back to us. Look, nothing deserving death has been done by him. 16 I will therefore punish and release him.”

Pilate Delivers Jesus to Be Crucified

18 But they all cried out together, “Away with this man, and release to us Barabbas”— 19 a man who had been thrown into prison for an insurrection started in the city and for murder. 20 Pilate addressed them once more, desiring to release Jesus, 21 but they kept shouting, “Crucify, crucify him!” 22 A third time he said to them, “Why? What evil has he done? I have found in him no guilt deserving death. I will therefore punish and release him.” 23 But they were urgent, demanding with loud cries that he should be crucified. And their voices prevailed. 24 So Pilate decided that their demand should be granted. 25 He released the man who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder, for whom they asked, but he delivered Jesus over to their will.

The Crucifixion

26 And as they led him away, they seized one Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, and laid on him the cross, to carry it behind Jesus. 27 And there followed him a great multitude of the people and of women who were mourning and lamenting for him. 28 But turning to them Jesus said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. 29 For behold, the days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ 30 Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us,’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’ 31 For if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?”

32 Two others, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him. 33 And when they came to the place that is called The Skull, there they crucified him, and the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. 34 And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And they cast lots to divide his garments. 35 And the people stood by, watching, but the rulers scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself, if he is the Christ of God, his Chosen One!” 36 The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine 37 and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” 38 There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.”

39 One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!” 40 But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? 41 And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” 42 And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” 43 And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

The Death of Jesus

44 It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, 45 while the sun's light failed. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. 46 Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last. 47 Now when the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God, saying, “Certainly this man was innocent!” 48 And all the crowds that had assembled for this spectacle, when they saw what had taken place, returned home beating their breasts. 49 And all his acquaintances and the women who had followed him from Galilee stood at a distance watching these things.

Jesus Is Buried

50 Now there was a man named Joseph, from the Jewish town of Arimathea. He was a member of the council, a good and righteous man, 51 who had not consented to their decision and action; and he was looking for the kingdom of God. 52 This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. 53 Then he took it down and wrapped it in a linen shroud and laid him in a tomb cut in stone, where no one had ever yet been laid. 54 It was the day of Preparation, and the Sabbath was beginning. 55 The women who had come with him from Galilee followed and saw the tomb and how his body was laid. 56 Then they returned and prepared spices and ointments.

On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment.

Heaven's Not Far Away

Source: https://www.1517.org/articles/heavens-not-far-away

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR
Pete Lange serves as pastor of Bethany Lutheran Church in Eldon, MO. He graduated from Christ College Irvine in 1991, was a DCE in Kansas for 10 years, and then attended Concordia Seminary in St. Louis where he graduated in 2006. He loves Jesus and his family and likes reading, hiking, and golf.

If you ever find yourself in the middle of the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican in Rome, don't forget to look up. What you will see, along with many other depictions of biblical grandeur, is the Creation of Adam by Michelangelo. On the left side of the fresco is Adam, lying on the ground, just about ready to come to life. On the right is God, rushing toward Adam with a divine purpose, surrounded by angels. And at the very center of the picture is a small empty space--the space between man and God, between heaven and earth.

I think it’s safe to say that most people today don’t think the space between heaven and earth is small. Most people think that heaven is a long way away. And that's not just because we don't like to think about our own mortality. It's also because we have been conditioned to think that heaven is a far off place, way out there somewhere, divorced from the earth. This is actually just good old-fashioned Gnosticism creeping back into our thinking as it always does. It's the idea from an ancient heresy, influenced by Greek philosophy, that heavenly spiritual things are good, while earthly physical things are bad. It's a false dichotomy that is antithetical to the Bible and historic Christianity.

The Bible teaches that the natural state of things in this physical world is good. "God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good" (Gen. 1:31). Something went terribly wrong on the earth, of course, due to Adam and Eve’s fall into sin, but it is still God's good world, and we are still part of his good creation.

Maybe heaven is not as far off as we seem to think.

In one sense heaven is just another realm or sphere of reality. When Enoch "walked with God" in Genesis 5, he didn't have to go very far to be in God's eternal presence. He just entered a different dimension. The same goes for Elijah when his time was up, and he was taken up by a chariot of fire into heaven. He didn't have to fly way past Jupiter to the edge of our solar system in order to get to heaven. He was simply taken into God's presence by way of a holy whirlwind. Similarly, when Jesus ascended into heaven forty days after his resurrection, he didn’t shoot like a rocket on his way to the moon. He simply disappeared from view into the cloud of God’s presence.

It's really not distance that is the issue here - it is dimension.

It seems like this idea would be fairly easy for people to grasp these days, with all the talk about the multiverse, alternate realities, and the multiple dimensions that show up in Marvel movies. If actual scientists are seriously considering the possibility of a multiverse, why not investigate the claims of the Bible and the possibility of an alternate spiritual reality?

In the Christian worldview, heaven is right around the corner. When we pray to God, we aren't shooting random thoughts out into the stratosphere, hoping that the universe will hear us somehow. We are praying to our Heavenly Father who loves us, cares about us, and is willing and able to help us in our time of need. When we read the Bible or hear it spoken, it’s not just the dry words of a dead language from a 2000 year old book. It is nothing less than the living and active Word of our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer - the lover of our soul who's as close to us as our next breath.

The ultimate expression of this for Christians is when we go to the altar to receive the Lord's Supper together. What happens there is nothing less than amazing, as we receive the holy communion of Christ's body and blood, given and shed for our forgiveness and salvation. Space and time fall away for a few brief moments. Heaven and earth come together in a wonderful and mystical way as we commune together with our Lord, with one another, and with all the saints who have gone before us in every time and place. It is the closest we can come in this life to “heaven on earth”, until the day when Jesus returns and brings heaven with him, as the heavenly city, the new Jerusalem, descends from on high in the new creation.

Heaven may seem like a long way off right now, but it is as close to you as a gentle word spoken, a splash of water, a bit of bread, and a sip of wine. It may not look like much, but it is indeed the eternal mystery of God’s ultimate reality revealed in His Son, Jesus Christ, for you. Heaven opens up to you when you hear the pastor's words as from Christ Himself, "I forgive you all of your sins in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen."

If you ever make it to the Sistine Chapel in Rome, don’t forget to look up. But in the meantime, remember to look around you to see what God is doing in your very midst. You may be in for a big surprise when you realize that heaven is not as far away as you think.

"Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it. How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven" (Gen. 28:17).

Mark Ch 14-15 Read the Passion in Holy Week.

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The Plot to Kill Jesus

14 After two days it was the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And the chief priests and the scribes sought how they might take Him by trickery and put Him to death. 2 But they said, “Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar of the people.”

The Anointing at Bethany

3 And being in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, as He sat at the table, a woman came having an alabaster flask of very costly oil of spikenard. Then she broke the flask and poured it on His head. 4 But there were some who were indignant among themselves, and said, “Why was this fragrant oil wasted? 5 For it might have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.” And they criticized her sharply.

6 But Jesus said, “Let her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a good work for Me. 7 For you have the poor with you always, and whenever you wish you may do them good; but Me you do not have always. 8 She has done what she could. She has come beforehand to anoint My body for burial. 9 Assuredly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be told as a memorial to her.”

Judas Agrees to Betray Jesus

10 Then Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Him to them. 11 And when they heard it, they were glad, and promised to give him money. So he sought how he might conveniently betray Him.

Jesus Celebrates the Passover with His Disciples

12 Now on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they killed the Passover lamb, His disciples said to Him, “Where do You want us to go and prepare, that You may eat the Passover?”

13 And He sent out two of His disciples and said to them, “Go into the city, and a man will meet you carrying a pitcher of water; follow him. 14 Wherever he goes in, say to the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says, “Where is the guest room in which I may eat the Passover with My disciples?” ’ 15 Then he will show you a large upper room, furnished and prepared; there make ready for us.”

16 So His disciples went out, and came into the city, and found it just as He had said to them; and they prepared the Passover.

17 In the evening He came with the twelve. 18 Now as they sat and ate, Jesus said, “Assuredly, I say to you, one of you who eats with Me will betray Me.”

19 And they began to be sorrowful, and to say to Him one by one, “Is it I?” And another said, “Is it I?”

20 He answered and said to them, “It is one of the twelve, who dips with Me in the dish. 21 The Son of Man indeed goes just as it is written of Him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been good for that man if he had never been born.”

Jesus Institutes the Lord’s Supper

22 And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them and said, “Take, eat; this is My body.”

23 Then He took the cup, and when He had given thanks He gave it to them, and they all drank from it. 24 And He said to them, “This is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many. 25 Assuredly, I say to you, I will no longer drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”

26 And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

Jesus Predicts Peter’s Denial

27 Then Jesus said to them, “All of you will be made to stumble because of Me this night, for it is written:

‘I will strike the Shepherd,
And the sheep will be scattered.’

28 “But after I have been raised, I will go before you to Galilee.”

29 Peter said to Him, “Even if all are made to stumble, yet I will not be.”

30 Jesus said to him, “Assuredly, I say to you that today, even this night, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny Me three times.”

31 But he spoke more vehemently, “If I have to die with You, I will not deny You!”

And they all said likewise.

The Prayer in the Garden

32 Then they came to a place which was named Gethsemane; and He said to His disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” 33 And He took Peter, James, and John with Him, and He began to be troubled and deeply distressed. 34 Then He said to them, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch.”

35 He went a little farther, and fell on the ground, and prayed that if it were possible, the hour might pass from Him. 36 And He said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for You. Take this cup away from Me; nevertheless, not what I will, but what You will.”

37 Then He came and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, “Simon, are you sleeping? Could you not watch one hour? 38 Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

39 Again He went away and prayed, and spoke the same words. 40 And when He returned, He found them asleep again, for their eyes were heavy; and they did not know what to answer Him.

41 Then He came the third time and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? It is enough! The hour has come; behold, the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners. 42 Rise, let us be going. See, My betrayer is at hand.”

Betrayal and Arrest in Gethsemane

43 And immediately, while He was still speaking, Judas, one of the twelve, with a great multitude with swords and clubs, came from the chief priests and the scribes and the elders. 44 Now His betrayer had given them a signal, saying, “Whomever I kiss, He is the One; seize Him and lead Him away safely.”

45 As soon as he had come, immediately he went up to Him and said to Him, “Rabbi, Rabbi!” and kissed Him.

46 Then they laid their hands on Him and took Him. 47 And one of those who stood by drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest, and cut off his ear.

48 Then Jesus answered and said to them, “Have you come out, as against a robber, with swords and clubs to take Me? 49 I was daily with you in the temple teaching, and you did not seize Me. But the Scriptures must be fulfilled.”

50 Then they all forsook Him and fled.

A Young Man Flees Naked

51 Now a certain young man followed Him, having a linen cloth thrown around his naked body. And the young men laid hold of him, 52 and he left the linen cloth and fled from them naked.

Jesus Faces the Sanhedrin

53 And they led Jesus away to the high priest; and with him were assembled all the chief priests, the elders, and the scribes. 54 But Peter followed Him at a distance, right into the courtyard of the high priest. And he sat with the servants and warmed himself at the fire.

55 Now the chief priests and all the council sought testimony against Jesus to put Him to death, but found none. 56 For many bore false witness against Him, but their testimonies did not agree.

57 Then some rose up and bore false witness against Him, saying, 58 “We heard Him say, ‘I will destroy this temple made with hands, and within three days I will build another made without hands.’ ” 59 But not even then did their testimony agree.

60 And the high priest stood up in the midst and asked Jesus, saying, “Do You answer nothing? What is it these men testify against You?” 61 But He kept silent and answered nothing.

Again the high priest asked Him, saying to Him, “Are You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?”

62 Jesus said, “I am. And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.”

63 Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, “What further need do we have of witnesses? 64 You have heard the blasphemy! What do you think?”

And they all condemned Him to be deserving of death.

65 Then some began to spit on Him, and to blindfold Him, and to beat Him, and to say to Him, “Prophesy!” And the officers struck Him with the palms of their hands.

Peter Denies Jesus, and Weeps

66 Now as Peter was below in the courtyard, one of the servant girls of the high priest came. 67 And when she saw Peter warming himself, she looked at him and said, “You also were with Jesus of Nazareth.”

68 But he denied it, saying, “I neither know nor understand what you are saying.” And he went out on the porch, and a rooster crowed.

69 And the servant girl saw him again, and began to say to those who stood by, “This is one of them.” 70 But he denied it again.

And a little later those who stood by said to Peter again, “Surely you are one of them; for you are a Galilean, and your speech shows it.”

71 Then he began to curse and swear, “I do not know this Man of whom you speak!”

72 A second time the rooster crowed. Then Peter called to mind the word that Jesus had said to him, “Before the rooster crows twice, you will deny Me three times.” And when he thought about it, he wept.

Jesus Faces Pilate

15 Immediately, in the morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council; and they bound Jesus, led Him away, and delivered Him to Pilate. 2 Then Pilate asked Him, “Are You the King of the Jews?”

He answered and said to him, “It is as you say.”

3 And the chief priests accused Him of many things, but He answered nothing. 4 Then Pilate asked Him again, saying, “Do You answer nothing? See how many things they testify against You!” 5 But Jesus still answered nothing, so that Pilate marveled.

Taking the Place of Barabbas

6 Now at the feast he was accustomed to releasing one prisoner to them, whomever they requested. 7 And there was one named Barabbas, who was chained with his fellow rebels; they had committed murder in the rebellion. 8 Then the multitude, crying aloud, began to ask him to do just as he had always done for them. 9 But Pilate answered them, saying, “Do you want me to release to you the King of the Jews?” 10 For he knew that the chief priests had handed Him over because of envy.

11 But the chief priests stirred up the crowd, so that he should rather release Barabbas to them. 12 Pilate answered and said to them again, “What then do you want me to do with Him whom you call the King of the Jews?”

13 So they cried out again, “Crucify Him!”

14 Then Pilate said to them, “Why, what evil has He done?”

But they cried out all the more, “Crucify Him!”

15 So Pilate, wanting to gratify the crowd, released Barabbas to them; and he delivered Jesus, after he had scourged Him, to be crucified.

The Soldiers Mock Jesus

16 Then the soldiers led Him away into the hall called Praetorium, and they called together the whole garrison. 17 And they clothed Him with purple; and they twisted a crown of thorns, put it on His head, 18 and began to salute Him, “Hail, King of the Jews!” 19 Then they struck Him on the head with a reed and spat on Him; and bowing the knee, they worshiped Him. 20 And when they had mocked Him, they took the purple off Him, put His own clothes on Him, and led Him out to crucify Him.

The King on a Cross

21 Then they compelled a certain man, Simon a Cyrenian, the father of Alexander and Rufus, as he was coming out of the country and passing by, to bear His cross. 22 And they brought Him to the place Golgotha, which is translated, Place of a Skull. 23 Then they gave Him wine mingled with myrrh to drink, but He did not take it. 24 And when they crucified Him, they divided His garments, casting lots for them to determine what every man should take.

25 Now it was the third hour, and they crucified Him. 26 And the inscription of His accusation was written above:

THE KING OF THE JEWS.

27 With Him they also crucified two robbers, one on His right and the other on His left. 28 So the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “And He was numbered with the transgressors.”

29 And those who passed by blasphemed Him, wagging their heads and saying, “Aha! You who destroy the temple and build it in three days, 30 save Yourself, and come down from the cross!”

31 Likewise the chief priests also, mocking among themselves with the scribes, said, “He saved others; Himself He cannot save. 32 Let the Christ, the King of Israel, descend now from the cross, that we may see and believe.”

Even those who were crucified with Him reviled Him.

Jesus Dies on the Cross

33 Now when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. 34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which is translated, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”

35 Some of those who stood by, when they heard that, said, “Look, He is calling for Elijah!” 36 Then someone ran and filled a sponge full of sour wine, put it on a reed, and offered it to Him to drink, saying, “Let Him alone; let us see if Elijah will come to take Him down.”

37 And Jesus cried out with a loud voice, and breathed His last.

38 Then the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. 39 So when the centurion, who stood opposite Him, saw that He cried out like this and breathed His last, he said, “Truly this Man was the Son of God!”

40 There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the Less and of Joses, and Salome, 41 who also followed Him and ministered to Him when He was in Galilee, and many other women who came up with Him to Jerusalem.

Jesus Buried in Joseph’s Tomb

42 Now when evening had come, because it was the Preparation Day, that is, the day before the Sabbath, 43 Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent council member, who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God, coming and taking courage, went in to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. 44 Pilate marveled that He was already dead; and summoning the centurion, he asked him if He had been dead for some time. 45 So when he found out from the centurion, he granted the body to Joseph. 46 Then he bought fine linen, took Him down, and wrapped Him in the linen. And he laid Him in a tomb which had been hewn out of the rock, and rolled a stone against the door of the tomb. 47 And Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses observed where He was laid.

To the Ends of the House

source: https://mbird.com/2020/03/to-the-ends-of-the-house/

by JULIETTE ALVEY

“Ends of the Earth”

I think about travelingTo the ends of the earthAcross a sea,To another state,Or at least to a different city

To share your loveYour redemption storyIsn’t that what you desire from me?

Before I pack my bags to leaveIn search of excitement and gloryYou gently end the daydreamAnd direct my eyesTo my newborn baby

The ends of the earthBegin right hereAt the breakfast table this morning

I wrote this poem 9 years ago and have never shared it with anyone. It is as if it had been waiting in my file for this precise morning. Because whether you have a newborn or not, today, for most people, “the ends of the earth” truly do begin at your breakfast table and go no further. This is challenging for people like my husband and me, who sometimes suffer from wanderlust and enjoy the thrill of experiencing a new place. Jesus even says, “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…” (Matt. 28:19) We are supposed to go! So all of this staying feels counter to God’s mission of sharing his good news with the world. But the thing about God’s mission is that it is God’s, not ours. We don’t know what He will accomplish through all of this staying home, but He works in mysterious ways.

Since that morning 9 years ago when I was fighting the urge to run out the door and do something “exciting,” there have been seasons of going and seasons of staying, and all of it was used by God, even when it did not make sense to me. This may feel like one of those times when we are waiting and waiting and waiting until we can finally go do something useful again. But there is no such thing as wasted time with God. Even the apostle, Paul’s time in prison was not wasted (I am not comparing our homes to prison, but I’m sure for some it does not feel too far off). In the book Godspeed: Making Christ’s Mission Your Own, Britt Merrick says, “Wherever you are now, wherever you spend the majority of your time–that is your mission field. This is what it means to recapture our sense of sent-ness. Wherever you are and whatever you are doing–you were sent there.”

God be with you this day as you carry out his mission wherever you go, or stay.

Also from about 9 years ago:

Will God Forgive Me… Again?

Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit." (Psalm 32:1–2)

There is a man I know who fought in the Vietnam War. I have tried to get him to come to church many times, but each time he refuses because he says that his crimes are so great that God could not forgive him. Though I press him with the good news of the gospel that covers over all his sins, he refuses to believe that his record of wrongdoing can be erased by merely believing in Christ.

What my friend finds difficult to accept is a notion the psalmist wants to teach us. There is a way of thinking about a person who receives forgiveness, namely, that such a person is blessed. We do well to ask what it means to be blessed. Simply, to be blessed is to be favored.

Sometimes when our guilt sticks heavily upon us, we can wonder if God's forgiveness really applies to us. We do that certain sin, again and again, we surprise ourselves with some out-of-character action, we find ourselves feeling less guilty for certain trespasses, etc. In the midst of such rhythms, we are to take the psalmist’s prayer to heart. For we are reminded here that we are favored by God. God has taken our sins away because God wants to!

It is hard to believe this because there seems an inherent injustice in it. “If I keep sinning and doing bad, won’t God punish me? Isn’t his job to keep order? I know he is patient, but I keep repeating the same mistakes. At some point God is going to drop the hammer on me, isn’t he?”

This sense of dreadful anticipation at God’s coming wrath is real because guilty people know that justice must eventually come. God can’t keep turning a blind eye. And he doesn’t. We must put away a whitewashed Christianity that says that God simply forgives because He is nice, kind, loving, gentle, etc. That is not how forgiveness works. God does not simply ignore our sins, turn a blind eye to them, and perpetuate injustice. No. God has forgiven you for Christ’s sake. It was because Jesus paid your debt, took your penalty, and ransomed you from sin and death that you are forgiven. St. Paul has a special word to describe the new, objective reality of your forgiveness: justification. Notice the word “justice” embedded within it. Justification is God’s work, at Christ’s expense, to free you from sin, death, and hell. It is justice done to sin and grace given to you. And God wanted to do this for you.

When God forgives you for the sins you commit over and over, he does so because Christ has paid for their trespass and received the justice of the crime. God does not turn a blind eye to sin but instead issues justice upon his Son, for your sake.

This means you are blessed or favored because God loves you enough, because Jesus loves you enough, to hold no record of your wrongs. Now, if we are so favored by God that he would not spare his only Son, how much more so will he then help us in the midst of our troubles? You see, the cross teaches us the dedication to which God will go to show his favor for you. He wants to forgive you! So now, as you struggle through various trials, do not be downtrodden. The God who never abandoned you to your own sin will not abandon you now. And though you sin ten times ten thousand times, you can never out-sin the work of the cross. Let us live in this promise.

Christianity Offers No Answers About the Coronavirus | Time

BY N.T. WRIGHT

 UPDATED: MARCH 29, 2020 3:47 PM EDT | ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: MARCH 29, 2020 8:00 AM EDT

N. T. Wright is the Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of St Andrews, a Senior Research Fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University and the author of over 80 books, including The New Testament in Its World.

For many Christians, the coronavirus-induced limitations on life have arrived at the same time as Lent, the traditional season of doing without. But the sharp new regulations—no theater, schools shutting, virtual house arrest for us over-70s—make a mockery of our little Lenten disciplines. Doing without whiskey, or chocolate, is child’s play compared with not seeing friends or grandchildren, or going to the pub, the library or church.

The Right Rev. Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde holds Sunday Mass as it is live-webcast to its parishioners due to the Coronavirus at an empty Washington National Cathedral on March 22, 2020 in Washington, DC. Patrick Smith—Getty Images

There is a reason we normally try to meet in the flesh. There is a reason solitary confinement is such a severe punishment. And this Lent has no fixed Easter to look forward to. We can’t tick off the days. This is a stillness, not of rest, but of poised, anxious sorrow.

No doubt the usual silly suspects will tell us why God is doing this to us. A punishment? A warning? A sign? These are knee-jerk would-be Christian reactions in a culture which, generations back, embraced rationalism: everything must have an explanation. But supposing it doesn’t? Supposing real human wisdom doesn’t mean being able to string together some dodgy speculations and say, “So that’s all right then?” What if, after all, there are moments such as T. S. Eliot recognized in the early 1940s, when the only advice is to wait without hope, because we’d be hoping for the wrong thing?

Rationalists (including Christian rationalists) want explanations; Romantics (including Christian romantics) want to be given a sigh of relief. But perhaps what we need more than either is to recover the biblical tradition of lament. Lament is what happens when people ask, “Why?” and don’t get an answer. It’s where we get to when we move beyond our self-centered worry about our sins and failings and look more broadly at the suffering of the world. It’s bad enough facing a pandemic in New York City or London. What about a crowded refugee camp on a Greek island? What about Gaza? Or South Sudan?

At this point the Psalms, the Bible’s own hymnbook, come back into their own, just when some churches seem to have given them up. “Be gracious to me, Lord,” prays the sixth Psalm, “for I am languishing; O Lord, heal me, for my bones are shaking with terror.” “Why do you stand far off, O Lord?” asks the 10th Psalm plaintively. “Why do you hide yourself in time of trouble?” And so it goes on: “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me for ever?” (Psalm 13). And, all the more terrifying because Jesus himself quoted it in his agony on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22).

Yes, these poems often come out into the light by the end, with a fresh sense of God’s presence and hope, not to explain the trouble but to provide reassurance within it. But sometimes they go the other way. Psalm 89 starts off by celebrating God’s goodness and promises, and then suddenly switches and declares that it’s all gone horribly wrong. And Psalm 88 starts in misery and ends in darkness: “You have caused friend and neighbor to shun me; my companions are in darkness.” A word for our self-isolated times.

It is no part of the Christian vocation, then, to be able to explain what’s happening and why. In fact, it is part of the Christian vocation not to be able to explain—and to lament instead. As the Spirit laments within us, so we become, even in our self-isolation, small shrines where the presence and healing love of God can dwell. And out of that there can emerge new possibilities, new acts of kindness, new scientific understanding, new hope. New wisdom for our leaders? Now there’s a thought.

Source: https://time.com/5808495/coronavirus-christianity/

Temptation’s Green Pastures: The Sixth Petition of the Lord’s Prayer

by Ken Sundet Jones, Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa,

Temptation’s Green Pastures: The Sixth Petition of the Lord’s Prayer

areful now! If you read the Sixth Petition hastily, you’ll come away thinking that God is the source of temptations. One modern translation of the Lord’s Prayers phrases it this way: “Save us from the time of trial.” It’s not a better option. Either way, we face temptations because God sets up trials and tribulations as divine AP exams to see if we have what it takes to get heavenly course credit. Or God is some cruel and arbitrary taskmaster on the front porch swing watching us attempt forward motion in the face of gale-force winds – all for the sake of his own eternal pleasure. But the Lord’s Prayer is a primer on the Christian life. There ought to be more to “lead us not…” than such a paltry picture of God.

Petition by petition, the Lord’s Prayer teaches how we live faithfully – both through its implicit faith in God as the bearer of all good things, and through the one who taught us these words in the first place. With the Sixth Petition, God’s goodness, that’s assumed throughout the prayer, puts the lie to any notion of God inflicting temptation on his human children. Christ’s gift undergirds this petition with his own victory over Old Nick’s temptations in the wilderness.

A biblical scholar could tell you about the history of temptation in the Scriptures and how its focus shifted from the Old to the New Testament. A systematic theologian could present a learned disquisition on theodicy – what responsibility God has for evil. But for my money, the best interpretation of the Sixth Petition of the Lord’s Prayer came when I first heard Emmylou Harris, Ricky Skaggs, and Dolly Parton sing the old-timey gospel song “Green Pastures” on Harris’ Roses in the Snow album.

Troubles and trials often betray those
On in the weary body to stray
But we shall walk beside the still waters
With the Good Shepherd leading the way

Those who have strayed were sought by the Master
He who once gave His life for the sheep
Out on the mountain still He is searching
Bringing them in forever to keep

Going up home to live in green pastures
Where we shall live and die nevermore
Even the Lord will be in that number
When we shall reach that heavenly shore

We will not heed the voice of the stranger
For he would lead us on to despair
Following on with Jesus our Savior
We shall all reach that country so fair

“Green Pastures” is an honest appraisal both of our lifelong adversaries — the devil, the world, and our sinful self — and of the Lord’s incessant quest to pull us back from all snares. “Troubles and trials often betray” us. They are ever-present. “The voice of the stranger” keeps speaking, luring us into the traps of self-sufficiency, status, and even piety to keep us from looking to God who provides everything needed for this life. At the same time, the song literally repents us, in the sense of the biblical word metanoia. It turns our eyes back to Christ and slathers us with the promise of the one who calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies lost sheep.

This same view is present in Luther’s explanation of the Sixth Petition in his Small Catechism: “God tempts no one. We pray in this petition that God would guard and keep us so that the devil, the world, and our sinful nature may not deceive us or mislead us into false belief, despair, and other great shame and vice. Although we are attacked by these things, we pray that we may finally overcome them and win the victory.”

Temptation doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. It’s in the structure of this broken and sinful world. In the Large Catechism, Luther saw its source as the flesh, the world, and the devil. The flesh tempts us with our internal urges (think of deadly sins like envy, lust, sloth, and gluttony). The world comes after us with the siren songs of glory or vengeance. And the devil instills doubt about matters that Christ has already mastered on the cross. In his Reflections on the Psalms, C.S. Lewis pointed to “those gratifying invitations, those highly interesting contacts, that participation in the brilliant movements of our age, which I so often, at such risk, desire.” He says that to pray this petition is to ask that God might even deny us these things.

Luther argued in the Large Catechism that the goal of temptation, “is to make us scorn and despise both the Word and the works of God, to tear us away from faith, hope, and love, to draw us into unbelief, false security, and stubbornness, or, on the contrary, to drive us into despair, denial of God, blasphemy, and countless other abominable sins.” Oddly, the Sixth Petition doesn’t ask that such temptations be eliminated. Instead, it asks God to be active in the face of temptation. Luther went on to say we’re spared from temptation, “when God gives us power and strength to resist, even though the attack is not removed or ended. For no one can escape temptations and allurements as long as we live in the flesh and have the devil prowling around us.”

Such strength to resist comes only with faith, and, as Paul says in Romans 10, faith comes by hearing the gospel. The faith that endures temptation is created when the Word connects you to the one who endured the attacks of the flesh, the world, and the devil. In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis said that “Christ, because he was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means.” The gospel promise is that God in Christ knows exactly what your temptations are and still bids you find protection from them in him.

“Green Pastures” is a reminder that still waters are to be found walking with your Good Shepherd. Even if you’ve succumbed to temptation Jesus is prowling around, calling and calling, until you hear his voice. When you do, the best possible thing is to prick up your ears and head in his direction. You’ll find only verdant meadows in the fair country of his acreage and a Lord who can provide what no temptation ever can.

https://www.1517.org/articles/temptations-green-pastures-the-sixth-petition-of-the-lords-prayer

Lutheran Hour Course on Stress and Worry.

https://www.lhm.org/learn/course-stressworry2020/index.html

This course explores stress and worry: the causes, effects, and strategies to manage them. It will equip you through God’s Word to look to Him as the source of strength.

Your Call to Action: Carry out intentional actions to manage your own stress or worry and also reach out with Christian support to someone who is dealing with stress or worry.

By the end of Stress & Worry in the Life of a Christian, you will develop action plans support yourself and support others dealing with stress and worry. To equip you, this course will help you:

• discover the consequences of stress: physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

• acknowledge your own stress level.

• discover the importance of self-care.

• develop a specific action plan to support yourself: physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

• develop an action plan to offer acts of Christian support to someone dealing with stress and worry.

Take the Course Now.

Faith of Our Mothers

Faith of Our Mothers

by CARRIE WILLARD

We’re living in unprecedented times. At least that’s what everyone is saying. And it’s true. There’s never been a time in our history when this many people have been using Zoom to make conference calls. But this is not the only time that people have faced catastrophic circumstances. The world has been a scary place since time began and repeatedly through the generations until the current day.

Before any of us had heard of COVID-19, my family hosted a lady from church at our house on Christmas evening. After dinner, we sat around the table and exchanged stories, and we learned that our friend had been quarantined during a polio outbreak, just as the school year was wrapping up and World War II was ending. She was a young person then, and she spent her summer break indoors that year. She told us that, at different times, when she received a diagnosis for other childhood diseases, like chicken pox or measles, the doctor would come to her home for a house call and would place a sign on the door that would indicate how many days she needed to stay in quarantine. Those weren’t widespread global pandemics, but our elders know quarantine.

Our elders also know fear, uncertainty, illness, and deprivation. My great-grandmother, who gave birth to three huge babies at home and nursed one on one breast after the other breast was taken by cancer, said, “You can stand any time but the good times.” She meant that we do better when we can take care of each other and when we can face adversity. Easy living was not her thing. After she buried her son, she came home, took a swig out of the RC cola bottle she kept in the refrigerator, and went into the backyard to stoke the smoldering pile of a literal garbage fire. If that’s not a metaphor for all of us right now, I don’t know what is. Our elders know suffering.

We’re lucky enough to have my parents living nearby. My mom is taking great delight in teaching my children some of the things that my great-grandmother taught her as a young bride. My children are getting lessons in cleaning, gardening, and thrift, and alongside that, they’re learning (again) that our elders have valuable lessons to teach us. We’ve filled a basket with old towels and rags that is known as “These are your paper towels now.” These are things we should have been doing all along, but we didn’t. My great-grandmother knew how to stretch cellar ingredients in lean times, and chances are, yours did, too. Our elders know survival.

The Bible is a book about human suffering and God’s faithfulness in the face of that suffering. Plagues, pestilence, and famine are its theme songs. Human cruelty is practically on every page. But we don’t need to go that far back to find stories of God’s faithfulness in times of adversity. We can make our grandmother’s dumplings and hum the tune to her favorite hymn, if we’re lucky enough to know what it was. (If you don’t, just assign one to her. God won’t mind.) I’ll be thinking about my grandpa’s black thumb when we plant a small garden this spring, as a sign of hope and practicality. He would be mystified that I ordered topsoil online, but I’d like to think he’d be proud of my growing compost pile. If you don’t have these kind of memories in your family, pick up an old cookbook or an old hymnal, and remember the faith of your spiritual fathers and grandmothers. I take a lot of comfort that people have survived in times such as these, and have prayed and sung the same prayers and hymns that we still use today.

If your grandparents didn’t have a favorite hymn, or you don’t know anything about their faith, take a few from me:

Faith of our Fathers! living still
In spite of dungeon, fire, and sword,
O how our hearts beat high with joy
Whene’er we hear that glorious word:
Faith of our fathers, holy faith!
We will be truth to thee till death.

From my favorite hymn that we sing on All Saints’ Sunday, “For All the Saints:”

O blest communion, fellowship divine,
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine.
Yet All are One in Thee, for All are Thine.
Alleluia! Alleluia!

If these don’t bolster your spirit, that’s ok, too. These are unprecedented times. Your forebears knew suffering, but that doesn’t mean that you’re not suffering now, too. Maybe your prayer looks more like taking a swig from the flat soda in the refrigerator and tending your garbage fire in the backyard, like my great-grandmother’s was. It’s not pretty, but God sees you, God loves you, and God is with you in garbage fires, in fear, and in faith.