Whiplash

But Jesus too felt distress Lenten question #14

John 12:7, 23-28, 32 [Mary, sister of Lazarus, anointed Jesus with expensive perfume and was criticized for doing so.] Jesus replied, “Leave her alone. She did this in preparation for my burial. … Now the time has come for the Son of Man to enter into his glory. … My soul is deeply troubled. Should I pray, ‘Father, save me from this hour?’ But this is the very reason I came! Father, bring glory to your name. … And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.”

Hebrews 4:7-8 While Jesus was here on earth, he offered prayers and pleadings, with a loud cy and tears, to the one who could rescue him from death. And God heard his prayers because of his deep reverence for God. Even though Jesus was God’s Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered.

Yesterday was “Whiplash Sunday.”

To begin, we waved palms like the crowd welcoming Jesus to Jerusalem, singing hosannas in triumphal procession.

A few minutes later, as performers narrated the events of Holy Week (using Luke’s account this time), we yelled, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

Whiplash.

Imagine what it was like for Jesus, knowing even as the crowd shouted their Hosannas, that soon exuberant acclamation would turn to hostile condemnation and most bitter suffering and death.

And then, in the great Reversal, the glorious resurrection.

Whiplash.

As we walk through this week, we will probably feel the whole range of emotions. Take extra time to go deeper with Jesus in this eventful week. Ask him to help you understand WHY he chose to walk this road.

Via Dolorosa, Sandi Patty

Miracles

But Jesus’ good works foreshadow the greatest miracle of all Lenten question #12

John 10:30-42 [Jesus said] “The Father and I are one.” Once again the people picked up stones to kill him. Jesus said, “At my Father’s direction I have done many good works. For which one are you going to stone me? … Why do you call it blasphemy when I say, ‘I am the Son of God’? … If I do the Father’s work, believe in the evidence of the miraculous works I have done, even if you don’t believe me. Then you will know and understand that the Father is in me, and I am in the Father.” … And many who were there believed in Jesus.

Have you experienced miracles in your life? I have. I wrote about several of them in Karis: All I See Is Grace. And there are many others. God is constantly at work in our world and in our lives.

But all the miracles we have heard about in Scripture or in other people’s lives or experienced ourselves pale before the greatest miracle of all, which we will celebrate in just a few days: the miracle of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. This is the great historical pivot when death was swallowed up in victory (1 Corinthians 15:54), when HOPE became possible, when the joy at the center of the universe broke through despair. We sorrow, yes. But we know that our griefs are not the end of the story. We live in a comedy, not a tragedy.

First, though, we’ll walk with Jesus through the multilayered injustices of slander, rejection, mocking, shame, abuse, cruelty, abandonment by those closest to him, and the horrible suffering of death by crucifixion. We’ll hear Jesus say in the midst of all that, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.”

And because Jesus walked that road, we know there is nothing we experience which he cannot relate to. “He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed” (Isaiah 53:5).

May the Lord give each of us deeper insight these next days into these mysteries of grace and love.

Fresh courage

But Jesus bears our sorrows

Isaiah 53:4-5 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows … upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.

I’m sticking my neck out today, telling a very personal story in case someone out there needs it.

Palm Sunday at Church of the Ascension is full of drama, as are all the Holy Week services. Yesterday, though, my mind fixated on Isaiah 53:4 and 5 and I missed much of what ensued. I didn’t even really hear the words as they were read in the service. When I saw the reading was from Isaiah 53, the KJV leaped to my mind, reflected in the ESV quoted above.

I fought to control my tears, not wanting to disturb the people around me. If you carry our griefs and sorrows, why, Lord, am I still drowning in grief? I’ve tried hard all week to give it to you …

Later in the service, I noticed a precious friend rise to go forward for communion. I heard the Lord say, “Go to her.” So after I received communion, I walked all the way around the nave to where she was sitting and whispered, “Can you pray for me?” She made room, and asked what was wrong.

All I could say through my tears was, “A dear transplant friend died last week while Dave and I were in Ireland. After her beautiful memorial service, others from the transplant community retold their own stories. It ripped me wide open. I feel like I’m drowning in grief. I don’t understand this. It’s been nine years since Karis died.”

My friend bowed her head for a while, then she said, “I see you surrounded by God’s love. Wherever you turn, his love is there, huge, deep, encompassing. It’s all tied to the blood Jesus shed for you. But I see a hole in your heart. You need to ask him to fill it.”

Only then I realized the congregation was singing, “What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus,” which snapped me back to Isaiah 53:4-5. I asked Jesus to fill the hole in my heart.

Instantly the grief was gone.

Just like that, I could breathe again. I saw myself small, suspended somehow in the center of immense, radiating warmth and light. I reached out to take it in, soaking in the Lord’s comfort and care.

The whole thing took perhaps three minutes. Maybe less.

I told my friend I needed some time alone with Jesus to understand what was happening. I slipped into a chapel near us, off the main sanctuary, where I could be still and alone with the Lord. Engraved on the chapel altar is a carving of the Lamb on the throne “looking as if it had been slain” (Rev. 5:5-6). I’ve been in that chapel countless times but don’t remember noticing before the carving on the altar. Carved angels on each side invited me to join them in worship of the Lamb who allowed me to see him bearing my grief and sorrow, thanks to the spiritual vision and intercession of the friend to whom God had directed me.

I’m relating this because in the economy of the Kingdom, I believe such experiences are given to us not only for our personal benefit, but to encourage others as well. I hope this will be the case for you.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,

The clouds ye so much dread

Are big with mercy, and shall break

In blessings on your head.

From “Light Shining in Darkness” by William Cowper (18th c.). Listen here, at minute 53:03; this verse is at 54:22. Full text here.

What will we choose today?

But Jesus accepted the woman’s gift, and knew what it cost her

Matthew 26:6-16 Meanwhile [while Jewish leaders plotted his death], Jesus was in Bethany at the home of Simon … While he was eating, a woman came in with a beautiful alabaster jar of expensive perfume and poured it over his head. The disciples were indignant when they saw this. “What a waste!” they said. “It could have been sold for a high price and the money given to the poor.” But Jesus, aware of this, replied, “Why criticize this woman for doing such a good thing to me? You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me. She has poured this perfume on me to prepare my body for burial. … Then Judas Iscariot, one of the disciples, went to the leading priests and asked, “How much will you pay me to betray Jesus to you?” And they gave him thirty pieces of silver. From that time on, Judas began looking for an opportunity to betray Jesus.

Hebrews 12:15-16 Look after each other so that none of you fails to receive the grace of God. Watch out that no poisonous root of bitterness grows up to trouble you, corrupting many. Make sure that no one is immoral or godless like Esau, who traded his birthright as the firstborn son for a single meal.

If you’ve been following this blog or have read Karis, All I See Is Grace, you know Karis identified closely with the woman in this story, seeing her life as perfume broken and poured out over the Body of Christ, the church.

But today I want to ask a simple question. Today, what choice will you and I make?

Every day we face the choice to offer ourselves to the Lord, pouring out our time, our talent, our treasure to honor him. Or to try to use our special status with God, as his beloved children, for our own benefit, twisting the Gospel into a tool of manipulation or a means of personal gain.

We see this blatantly on television, in politics, and sadly, in churches. In our own lives it may be more subtle, especially if we value the prestige that goes along with appearing godly or spiritual. What it costs us to actually be godly, following Jesus into places where we may suffer criticism and misunderstanding like the woman in this story, is a choice more difficult to make.

Whose approbation do we value most, Jesus’s or other people’s? Do we each have one or two or three people who know what that struggle looks like for us personally, what our specific vulnerabilities are to the enemy’s wiles? Each of us needs someone with whom we are transparent, who can support us in choosing God’s grace.

Because the choice comes to each one of us, whether in big ways or small.

They didn’t get it. Do we?

But Jesus knew

Matthew 26:1-4 Jesus said to his disciples, “As you know, Passover begins in two days, and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.” At that same time the leading priests and elders were meeting at the residence of Caiaphas, the high priest, plotting how to capture Jesus secretly and kill him. “But not during the Passover celebration,” they agreed, “or the people may riot.”

Hebrews 11:27-28 Moses kept right on going because he kept his eyes on the one who is invisible. It was by faith that he commanded the people of Israel to keep the Passover and to sprinkle blood on the doorposts so that the angel of death would not kill their firstborn sons.

Colossians 1:15 Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.

“No one expects the Spanish Inquisition.” Remember that silliness from Monty Python? It’s a wee bit of humor that keeps our family laughing in times of unexpected events. If we only knew what will happen next, we could better prepare for it, right?

It’s normal to feel anxious. Anxiety is fear, dread, and uneasiness about what may happen in the future, which usually resolves along with whatever we’re worrying about. Anxiety disorders, on the other hand, don’t resolve without help and treatment. According to the APA, anxiety disorders increased fourfold in 2020-2021 as compared with pre-Covid 2019:

7.4% – 8.6%

Range of average monthly percentages of U.S. adults reporting symptoms of anxiety, January–December 2019

28.2% – 37.2%

Range of average submonthly percentages of U.S. adults reporting symptoms of anxiety, April 2020–August 2021

Not too surprising, right, that a worldwide pandemic and all its permutations would burst our bubble of optimism about the future? Once something we’re anxious about goes really badly, or when we’re shocked by a completely unexpected traumatic event, we’re more vulnerable to feeling anxious. I’ve had to fight anxiety about the births of each of my youngest children and my grandchildren, worrying that something will go wrong. I didn’t have that problem before Karis surprised us with a life-threatening congenital defect in her digestive tract.

Jesus told the disciples outright many times that he would be crucified. But they just couldn’t get it. If they had been paying better attention, they wouldn’t have been caught so flatfooted. You and I know what will happen to him on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of this week. What we don’t know is how this remembering may affect us.

But Jesus knows. He knows the treasures he has prepared for each one of us in this Holy Week. We can prepare by keeping our eyes on him, God made visible, and following where he leads us. Remember, our Father only gives good gifts to his children, even if we don’t immediately understand.

Walk through this week with Jesus

But Jesus says, “You did it for me” by Ed Fox, from San Andrés Sajcabajá, Guatemala

Matthew 25:34-40 Then the King will say, “Come … For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me. … I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!

As we walk with Jesus through Holy Week, we can experience once again the way he identifies with us in our own much smaller suffering. As so many people are pouring out resources to care for victims of the war in Ukraine and in other places of deep need, Jesus says they are doing it for him. But first, he poured out his life for us.

Ed Fox, a childhood friend from Guatemala, responded to the last post, “Turn toward not away,” illustrating this. Thank you for sharing with us, Eddie.

*Antigua, Guatemala (home of my brother Steve and Elaine) Holy Week sawdust carpets* GettyImages-505656257

“This story and lesson from Karis’s and your experiences has touched me to the core. So many of the thoughts she expressed to you and in her journals are similar to my own.

My own dad experienced terrible physical and emotional suffering and anguish. He turned towards Jesus and not away. Until the day he died, I asked God to put at least some of Dad’s suffering on me, in part so he might finish the tasks God had given him as a Bible translator. He and Mom did indeed finish shortly before he passed away, and I think of your dear parents, as well, and Mary and myself, as we stumble to the finish line.

About six months following Dad’s departure to Heaven, my own chronic sufferings began and have never ended. Many friends in Guatemala consider my physical (and perhaps emotional) suffering to be a result of my own sin and shortcomings. The “health and wealth” gospel is the main thing going in many of the new Guatemalan congregations, both Evangelical and Catholic. On top of that is the reticence in Mayan culture to make public any illness or trouble in one’s own life. That has fed the idea that it is shameful or an embarrassment when one must ask for prayer. Most troubles in this life are considered to be brought on by one’s own failings and shortcomings.

My suffering, though, has drawn me much closer to Jesus. I believe Jesus has chosen me to walk with Him in His and other people’s sufferings. In turn, I have chosen, as Dad and Karis did, to walk with Jesus and do my best to encourage others along the way.

We have a choice. We can choose to suffer and walk with Jesus, or we can choose to suffer and be bitter and angry. As you say, we choose to turn towards, not away. Although God has provided me with many small encouragements and victories along the way, He has chosen not to heal me completely. I’m usually okay with that after 22 years, but not always! Mary hears my complaints nearly every day of our lives, and so does God!

I want to leave you with a song that encourages me in my pain. Thy will be done on earth as in Heaven.“