For He Lives!

My favorite Easter hymn (and that's saying a lot because I LOVE SO MANY!! I mean, what better topic is there to sing about!?)



"And we are raised with Him/ Death is dead/ Love has won! Christ Has CONQUERED!/ And we shall reign with Him/ For He lives/ Christ has risen from the dead!" AMEN!???

Rejoicing in Christ's literal, bodily, victorious resurrection...that guarantees my freedom from sin right now, and my own resurrection some day!

Sad Saturday

The disciples would all have been confused, terrified, heart-broken, completely disoriented... Their master, their Rabbi, the one they had pledged to follow in every respect (Jewish talmidim even followed their rabbis into the latrine!) was gone.  More, he was condemned, cast out, executed as a criminal, rejected by the religious leaders they trusted to interpret the Scriptures.  His mission had completely, utterly, totally, failed.  And now... they would have to somehow ...do what?  Go home? Get back to fishing?  Start over... if that was even an option.

I'm so glad that Saturday's dark night faded into Sunday's light!

Ryan & I just enjoyed a date (courtesy of visiting grandparents) featuring picking up dessert at PF Chang's -their Flourless Chocolate Dome, of course- and watching The Source Code. I won't really comment on the movie, though i will say I found it quite compelling right up until the ending [for those who've seen it, I would have been fine ending the movie when the "last kiss" scene froze- "He's done enough, let him die (happy)"].  Anyway, the hero has to relive the last 8 minutes before a train explodes, over and over again.  Meaning, he has to die over and over again.  The hero, an American soldier, at one point points out that "most men think dying once for their country is enough.

That reminded me of Hebrews 9:25-28, speaking of Christ's sacrificial death:

Nor did he [Jesus] enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. Otherwise Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.  Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him. 

 Our Savior's ONE sacrifice was enough to deal with ALL the sin of EVERY ONE of His people.  Amen!  And I love how this passage ties His first coming (Advent) with His Second, when He will come as the Victorious Lion instead of the Sacrificial Lamb. "...not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him..."  Maranatha!

(Another much better meditation on the Cross from one who is living it out daily in Uganda)

Good Friday

Do This in Remembrance of Me

Thursday would have been Passover for our Lord Jesus.  A time of incredible joy, of looking back at what amazing deliverance God had wrought for His people before.  A time to renew faith and family ties, to rejoice, to remember.

All day I've had this song fragment in my head, from VBS-

"Pass over, pass over; You must pass over me,

for see the stain that's overhead- the crimson stain-

Passover, passover, You must pass over me,

for, see, the lamb has died instead.

And I will live, I will live,

I will live giving glory to the Eternal One.

I will live, I will live,

I will live, because of what He's done."

Something is supposed to be different when someone dies for you.  You can't just go on like your life was never in danger, like no one loved you so amazingly astoundingly much, like no great mercy spared your life in passing you by, yes, Guilty One- you.  We who live must live on-- in remembrance.

I've been thinking about what Jesus must have been thinking all day as He participated in the preparations for Passover, for what He knew would be His Last Meal on earth, His last night with those He loved-- His last night of the bliss of perfect fellowship with the most delightful being in existence:  God the Father.  Did He slit the lamb's throat Himself?  Did He cry as He did it?  Did His gaze linger long on the blood painted on post & lintel?  Did the bitter herbs stick in His mouth as He pondered just how bitter the separation to come would be?  

Surely, there must have been sadness.  Hours later He would be weeping desperately in the Garden.  Yet, even so, Hebrews 12:2 says He went to the Cross for Joy.  Somehow, He looked around at each face in that room (maybe even supernaturally at faces not even yet born?) and He rejoiced that tonight- tonight!- He would bind them to Himself, forever. That tonight, He would seal their- our- eternal perfect Joy and would finish the work that would bring home every lost child.

"But none of the ransomed ever knew
How deep were the waters crossed;
Nor how dark was the night the Lord passed through
Ere He found His sheep that was lost.
Out in the desert He heard its cry,
Sick and helpless and ready to die.

And all through the mountains, thunder riven
And up from the rocky steep,
There arose a glad cry to the gate of Heaven,
“Rejoice! I have found My sheep!”
And the angels echoed around the throne,
“Rejoice, for the Lord brings back His own!

 "There were Ninety-and-Nine" (hear my favorite rendition here)

I am struck by the things that our Christ remembered as He put into motion what He asked us to remember-- not just the meal of blood & body itself, but the crucifixion and resurrection it depicts.  He was remembering all of His Father's & His plan, orchestrated throughout history and countless lives, this plan to stomp on the Serpent's head; the plan to be the Truth that would overturn every effort of the Father of Lies; the plan to "get His people back" (as I told my preschoolers every year). The whole of history had been leading up to this night, this night of agony, this night of flawless execution.  And our Lord knew it.  As He reminded His forgetful disciples just a few days later, "How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!  Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?"And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself." (Luke 22:24-27)

I am amazed that somehow, He thought it was worth it.  Yet I know, that because God had bound Himself to it -sworn by His very own name- that His honor would have to be upheld, and that THAT would be worth it.

Lord, help me to remember, not just with my mind and affirming nods as the story is read, but with beating heart and caught breath and flushed cheeks.  Let me live with that memory burning behind my eyes, spurring me to both action and restraint, shaping my will and actions and even my tastes.  Let Your Body and Blood define me.  May we never forget.

Teaching Tuesday

According to this handy little "Harmony of the Events of Holy Week" Chart, Tuesday was a day of teaching:  teaching on the power of faith in an all-powerful God, teaching on Christ's role as Savior and Messiah, teaching on the Resurrection & the Second Coming, teaching on the Great Commandment, and teaching on how Christ's followers live in this non-Christ-following world.  Like yesterday and the day before, Jesus and His disciples walked from Bethany into Jerusalem and out again.  Something drew Jesus into the city He loved, the city for whom He came to die, the city that would kill Him, again and again and again.

It seems like Jesus was trying to pack in as much as He could in His last week.  Or perhaps He always taught that way, but the week's end so burned the events of their Master's final week into His followers' minds that they remembered far more of these teaching sessions than any other week's.

I just started Walt Wangerin Jr's Ragman (so far it is wonderful), and the part of its invocation struck me as perfect for a Holy Week meditation (especially as a city-dweller):

"...where can I look and I do not see You?

The city?  Hot with human enmity, cold with old mortality, the city?  Busy and fatigued; kissing below back alley stairs, lips as limp as rotten violets; and children cursing like their parents, parents careless; parties for wasted wealth on Saturday night, exhausted Sunday morning; cars and lights and sirens; ointments, rouges, polishes, colognes and coin-- the city?  Turning to the city do I turn from You?

No, my Lord, for You are in the city.  In all the affairs of humankind, You are there.  You were not ashamed to be born of a woman, flesh like hers and mine, troubled as she and I by all the bruises of that flesh.  You emptied Yourself to enter the city, and though Your coming may not make it good, it makes You cry, and there You are." 

Post-Palm Sunday Monday

My more liturgically-inclined friends know it as "Holy Monday," and we Baptists think of it as "oh yeah, Easter is next Sunday!"  Regardless of what you call it, Easter --the most celebrated day of the Christian calendar-- will be upon us in 7 days.  One of my goals for this year was to immerse myself more deeply in the Christian calendar, not because it's mandated or prescribed, but because I know it will help me to enjoy far more deeply each season and holiday.  Holiday meant, originally, "holy day," and to be truly 'holy,' a day must be "set apart."  It's hard for me to set apart a day for anything without preparing for it, both physically and mentally.  Especially spiritually.  Christian holy-days are set apart for concentrated, intentional worship.  All the trappings are meant to enhance that central focus, not detract from it!

I've pretty much failed this year at observing Lent.  Somehow it just snuck up on me.  I could blame my non-liturgical church (which doesn't even nod at Palm Sunday-- I'm always a little surprised when they even have a Good Friday service, lol)... but it was really just me being focused elsewhere.  Thankfully, I "randomly" (as in, the Lord prompted me to) decided to listen to a sermon while making a meal today, and turned to Grace Church in Greenville, SC's sermon library.  Lo and behold, my old youth pastor (still a favorite preacher to listen to) had preached yesterday, and the sermon was up.  I clicked the title, "When God Draws Near," and found the sermon to be very encouraging.  It also reminded me that I'd missed Palm Sunday (drat). But at least now I won't miss the rest of Holy Week!!

I'm going to be reading the events of Christ's Passion Week in the Gospels this week, and will try to post a thought or link or quote -SOMETHING- each day to point us all forward to Easter, the day on which Christians around the world say "Halleluiah!! He is risen!  Christ is risen indeed!!"  (But I won't say that yet-- the early church wouldn't say 'halleluiah' for all of Lent excepting Sundays, just so it would rip forth with extra joy on the Anniversary of our Savior's Victory!)

Here's my Holy Monday link:  the sermon "When God Draws Near" by Bill White, preached April 17th, 2011.  You can download or stream it there.