Sunday 4/17/22

As you prepare to worship the Easter morning, spend some time in quiet worship. He loves you, wanted to adopt you, and offered a costly sacrifice to pay your penalty.

Rest in that love this morning.

Holy Saturday 4/16/22

From noon on, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And about three o’ clock Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” ~Matthew 27:45-46

…continued from yesterday

No, God is who He will be. God is where He will be. The Father loves the Son. The Father abandons the Son to a call, a mission, a vocation that He willingly took up. We seek to figure out why it had to be this way to our own peril. In this act, in the declaration of God forsaking God, we are stunned and scandalized by a God whose glory is beyond our comprehension, whose good sometimes appears as what we would call bad, or dare I say, evil.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” is a declaration that no idol would ever dare make. False powers and manipulative power-mongers cower in fear at being exposed for what they are. They shrink when their impotence is held to the light. But our God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit put on display for the world in this moment on the cross a reality that we might not be smart or brave enough to handle. This is no tribal god, no false god, no failed revolutionary, executed for his brazenness…

It is the singular Christ, the Messiah, with arms outstretched to embrace and bring life to a broken world. And in this Messiah, a broken world sees itself. Broken people at their absolute lowest: strung out, beat down, disappointed or a disappointment themselves. Shivering, shaking, begging, weeping, feeling completely alone…these people can see

hope on that cross because this Christ, this God, has experienced the abandonment that they know so well. And when we see ourselves on that cross, when we see our wounds born by the Son of God, it does something in us. Conversion. New birth. Getting saved. Whatever you call it, it took a God brave enough to forsake and be forsaken. It took a God brave enough to take on the accusations of murder and cruelty from people throughout history.

But we serve a God who was more interested in giving us life than in protecting His own reputation.

That’s right, a God more interested in giving us life than in protecting His reputation. Ours is a God who sacrificed everything, who faced forsakenness Himself so that we might not be forsaken. All praise to this God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

  • As you read this Good Friday and Holy Saturday meditation, how do you feel?
  • Take time to express gratitude to God for the beautiful mystery of Christ’s work on the cross…and the empty tomb.

Good Friday 4/15/22

Read Matthew 27

It’s been said that “Jesus is God’s psalm for the world.” This is why we love the Psalms so much, pray the Psalms, read, recite and memorize the Psalms. Every one of them was written before Jesus ever took an incarnate breath, yet His character drips from them. We could say that we pray Jesus when we pray the Psalms.

When we read the 23rd Psalm, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want…even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.” Who leads us through the valley? Who eases our fears, but Jesus?

But it’s not so comforting to see Jesus in the 22nd Psalm, though it is Jesus we see, and clearly. From the cross, Jesus utters the unthinkable opening line from that gut-wrenching psalm, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

We’ve studied the Trinity, the mystery of the God who exists and has always existed as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We confess and believe that Jesus has just as much claim to the title “God,” as the Father or the Spirit, and yet we hear Jesus uttering this God forsaken plea. It’s too much for us to wrap our minds around that the One who abandons and the One who is abandoned is God.

The One who abandons and the one who is abandoned is God.

This sounds like utter nonsense. We’d like to resolve this tension, give God His armies to reign like a proper king, but that would rob Jesus of His authority. To resolve the tension is to confess a God other than the one we see in the face of Jesus on the cross.

Continued tomorrow…

Maundy Thursday 4/14/22

Read John 13:1-17

Now read this reflection, from Peter’s perspective:

Last night, all of us got together to keep the Passover. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised when Jesus got up from the meal and bowed before each of us and began washing our feet.

But I was. I was quite surprised, and a little offended. What business does the Lord have washing my feet? Jesus is no slave. We’ve come all the way to Jerusalem, to His Father’s temple, to the place where all authority sits, and Jesus wants to act like he doesn’t have any power? It’s just this sort of behavior that makes so many priests and teachers and crowds and authorities want to get rid of him.

I’m the servant. I serve Jesus. I’ve given up my livelihood to follow him, and now he wants to be my servant? Wash my feet? No, I needed to wash his feet. So I offered.

But he said that if he didn’t wash me, then I’d have no part with him. So of course I asked him to wash all of me. If being washed by him draws me closer to him, then I want a full bath! Wash my hair, my hands, all of me!

Then Jesus says that I’ve already bathed. I don’t need a bath. I’m already clean. Which is it? It’s hard to describe how confused I am. He explained something about loving one another and another thing about servants not being greater than their masters. Jesus is being reckless, washing our feet. Somebody around here is going to get a big head if he keeps serving us.

  • What is it like for you to envision this story through Peter’s eyes? How might God be inviting you to respond?

Wednesday 4/13/22

Read Mark 11:12-19

In the 10 Commandments, in Exodus 20:5, the Lord says “…I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God.” This sounds odd to modern ears, but the point is clear—God knows who he is, that he is the only one worthy of worship, allegiance, and obedience, so our constant turns toward idolatry are a violation of reality. God isn’t petty to be jealous, he just understands how reality works!

From age twelve, Jesus “had to be in [his] father’s house,” and in a similar way, is jealous against violations of God’s singular holiness. And Jesus is overwhelmed at the corruption, abuse, and swindling taking place in the temple courts. His words capture it well: “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”

As Jesus makes his way to the cross, the culmination of this Holy Week, he makes a couple things clear: 1) God’s house is for prayer, not commerce, and certainly not robbery 2) God’s house is for all nations, that Israel is not to erect barriers to the nations coming to the temple courts for prayer.

In Mark’s telling of the gospel story, this was an essential act for Jesus establishing his authority and revealing his character and priorities on the way to the cross.

  • How will I elevate God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit through my actions today?

Tuesday 4/12/22

Read Luke 19:28-44; 23:18-23

This week we are at a crossroads: we’ve shouted the “Hosannas” of Palm Sunday, but we know that the “Crucify” of Good Friday is only days away. Praise and palms will give way to pain and passion. This story of our Lord Jesus in this Holy Week invites us to admit the twistedness of our hearts, the fickleness of our decisions, and our tendency to go unthinkingly along with the loudest crowd.

You and I were not there to shout ‘Hosanna,’ and we were not there to shout ‘crucify,’ but we carry both shouts in our hearts. Hosannas ring loud and clear when we proclaim the good news, selflessly care for the poor and the widow, when we forgive, and when we helplessly place ourselves in God’s care. We shout ‘crucify’ in our sin, cowardice, oppression, and our attempts to mold God into our own image.

Thank God that Jesus did not choose between the two crowds, casting lots for precisely whom he would or wouldn’t carry the cross, pour out his blood and empty himself. He doesn’t choose between praise or pain—he receives both. He doesn’t choose between the procession of palms or the passion of the cross—he makes both journeys. God so loved the whole world, and in this act of Jesus, love finds its purest embodiment. Jesus embodies the love of God so that you and I could see it more clearly. We are loved more than we can imagine.

  • Our question today is this—which shout will rise louder from our lives on this day?

Monday 4/11/22

As we learn about the Passover in the book of Exodus on Sunday, this week we will walk through the final week of Jesus’ life on earth as He prepared to be our Passover Lamb.

Read John 12: 1-26

  • Has there been a time in your life where you’ve sacrificed for Jesus in a way that others thought was extravagant?

I think of the sacrifices in my life being like “little deaths.” I read once that the soil is full of death—it has to be in order to bring good life out. It’s such a paradox, how death actually allows for good life to come forth.

  • Looking back, what are some of the hard things, pain, sacrifices, suffering that has happened to you as you’ve followed Jesus?
  • Spend some time praying right now asking Him to show you how He has brought life from those past sacrifices.
  • And ask Him to give you courage to follow Him going forward from today.