Happy Easter!!!
C.hrist S.cene I.nvestigation (Num. 21:5-9; Jn. 3:14-21)
Every episode seems to be the same. The crimes against God and humanity differ, but the initial approach by the crime scene investigators to every deeply disturbing scene of death is pretty much the same. And each time Jenny and I watch this unfold on our television screen, we find ourselves asking, usually aloud, the same question – “Why is it they never turn the lights on?”
If you’ve watched any of the popular C.S.I. shows, especially the original, then you know what we are talking about. The very Hollywood looking team of techs arrives on the scene. No matter the time of day or the place of the indoor crime, it seems to always be dark. But instead of flipping on all the lights, they instead choose to use tiny flashlights. Thin beams of illumination slowly survey the site. This, of course, lends itself to very mysterious, dramatic increments of suspense. I suspect this is the answer to our consistent question as to why the scriptwriters don’t have the faux investigators conducting their fictional yet sadly true to life work in full light.
Our asking one another, of course, has become sort of a joke. We never actually posit aloud any answers. Deciphering a T.V. show isn’t exactly important. Yet as I read the Gospel lesson for this fourth Sunday in Lent, the imagery from the show sat with me. It got me wondering if, in real life, we prefer to haltingly seek out the light of God’s truth while remaining in the dark. Are we ever really ready to truly and clearly see the fully exposed and devastating realities of sin and evil? Or do we prefer to just poke around with our penlights?
Generally, I think we pretty much prefer to be penlight investigators. We know that there are many sinful scenes and there is much horrendous evidence of evil in this world, but it’s all too shocking, too deeply disturbing to let our eyes and hearts and minds open wide to take it all in. And I believe we are quite timid about uncovering evidence of our own sin in this context. Talk about dramatic, scary stuff!
At the same time, the words found in the third chapter of the Fourth Gospel are so familiar to most all of us that we might well agree with a fellow pastor who once preached that she was required to memorize John 3:16 while in utero. I say, “at the same time,” because these are words that summon us to flip the Light fully on in our lives; to believe in and stand in the Son; to trust that we need not perish in the presence of darkness. These are not ambiguous words, as if we are to live while only holding onto the thinnest ray of hope and light in our Lord. They are a bold, unequivocal claim that the salvation of every sinful scene and every sinful person, of every evil crime scene, is found through Jesus Christ. The truth of this claim, which we accept by faith through God’s grace, is the Light we are to live by with the full-wattage of eternal faith, hope and love.
As we enter deeper into this passage of Scripture, we need to consider the investigation launched by a man named Nicodemus. He’s quite a character, so let’s pan in on him and see why the Fourth Evangelist scripted Nicodemus’ witness into this dramatic balancing of dark and light, sin and salvation.
As a Pharisee (that is, as a religious leader and judge of the Jewish people) Nicodemus led a life of avoiding, as much as humanly possible, being condemned in the sight of God and others. He was a high authority, a holy standard bearer. When his judgment of others was called upon, he needed to assess them in the light of his own traditional sense of righteousness as well as by solid evidence. To this end, we cannot doubt for a moment that he’d heard all sorts of things about Jesus.
Whatever specifically fell into his head, we are told that he had a favorable opinion of Jesus, that he believed Jesus to be a man of God, indeed, a rabbi. Still, big questions stirred within him that needed a direct explanation from the source. Most likely acting independently of his powerful colleagues, he thus decided one night to set out for a sit down with Jesus. Yes, I said, night. It was an investigation that happened under a veil of darkness.
His primary line of questioning was about a teaching of Jesus having to do with being born again. The way John, with his characteristically strong flair for irony, tells it, the setting of darkness also sets up Nicodemus’ lack of understanding. Silly as it sounds, he spoke of a literal rebirth, questioning how fully grown folks could ever climb back into the womb! This sounds more like a scene from the movie Aliens than from the Gospels!
He had somehow initially failed to realize Jesus was speaking of rebirthing in the spiritual life. It’s this sort of irony that fortified John’s evangelical diet. It also made Nicodemus’ investigation powerfully symbolic. Come to think of it, John’s Gospel sort of reads like it’s a script intent on building drama in the darkness in order to get to the light of truth. Nicodemus just had to be clueless in the dark at the start.
Anyway, John goes on to tell us that Jesus decided the best way to shed light on what he was doing on earth was to remind Nicodemus of the time when the ancient and bitterly complaining Israelites were suffering from a plague of poisonous snakes. What saved them was something Moses did through God’s instruction – he fashioned a snake out of bronze, put it on a pole, and lifted it up high in the air for all to see. He then conveyed to them that upon approaching it, anyone poisoned would be healed. They would be saved.
According to Jesus this was a fore-shadow of his life’s mission. Ultimately, He, God in the flesh, was to be lifted up on a pole (of sorts) in order to save everybody poisoned by sin. That of course, meant the entire human race. To carry out this very dramatic expression of God’s love, he explained to Nicodemus that he was going to have to be the star of a devastatingly dark death scene.
We aren’t really told of Nicodemus’ direct reaction to this. Having introduced him as the lead investigator, John doesn’t speak immediately of him again. We readers and spiritual seekers are thus left to become part of the scene there in the dark with Jesus. We are left needing to decide whether or not we really trust this Jesus, this self-professed Son of God, with cleaning up all crime scenes of sin and evil. Even more poignantly, we are left to decide whether we are they who foremost love the dark, with its ability to conceal our actions and intentions, or whether we are they who “do what is true” by believing in the Son and living unafraid and fully exposed by His eternal Light.
Again, I believe we have a latent tendency to hold fast to our thin penlights when surveying the darkest scenes of the world and within ourselves. Yet I also believe that as those reborn of water and of Spirit, we are indebted to Christ to faithfully choose throwing the switch on so we can live into His full, true Light and redeeming love. We are called to accept the Light of the World hanging high upon a pole, to receive and believe that its radiant, restorative beams pierce the darkness in every heart, expel every sin, eradicate every evil.
As I say this, I know the next investigative question that usually comes to mind. If we do not choose to stand in Christ’s full light, what are we to believe happens? Are we to believe that God then condemns us and consigns us to eternal darkness? Is this the big truth about God to be uncovered in John’s Gospel?
To believe so is to misinterpret — especially this morning’s passage. John only describes the loving intention and action of God. There is no drama about how God is going to get you for your dark deeds. It’s less a crime scene investigation and more a Christ scene investigation, whereby all that God’s love in Jesus has done for us is fully revealed and reported.
The real drama, especially during this season of Lent, is about the judgment we render for ourselves if we choose sin over salvation, dark deeds over Light living, suffering over healing. We can choose self-condemnation and an ultimate verdict of doom for the crimes of the world or we can choose the salvation and ultimate victory of Christ. By our baptisms, we’ve been signed and sealed into the victory! Still, it’s a long walk from where we are to the heavenly podium. So as we scan our spiritual lives in the Light of Christ, we do well to be reminded of one of scholar William Barclay’s descriptions of God. God is, he wrote in his Daily Bible Study commentary on the Gospel of John, “the Father who cannot be happy until his wandering children have come home,” for “God does not smash [us] into submission; he yearns over [us] and woos [us] into love.”
Those C.S.I. television shows are quite compelling to watch. They are gloomy and gory, yet full of a dramatic quest to uncover the evidence and bring about a concluding truth that will bring closure to each case. What is our concluding truth? “Truth in Christianity,” wrote theologian Paul Tillich, “is something which happens, something which is bound to a special place, to a special time, to a special personality. Truth is something new, something which is done by God in history, and, because of this, something which is done in individual life … it is … revelation and decision … a stream … centered in Christ, actualized in everybody who is connected with Him, organized in the assembly of God, the Church.” I pray all our Lenten journeys as Christ scene investigators are uncovering evidence of this eternal truth. Amen.
The Shaking of the Foundations by Paul Tillich, Chapter 14: Doing the Truth
Prayer Poem: Interior Gardening
Hard soil, heavy spade.
Spiritual turning over and over.
Seed-tips situated
in the Center
seek to sprout, even in
drought.
The weeding of woes
is constant work.
The plucking of pain
is persistant.
Receding, re-seeding.
Concerning Questions and Declarations (Job 42:1-9)
I bought this two dollar bottle of cold Green Tea the other day. I was astonished at how much information about the product was crammed onto the label. Clearly, the forces bringing it to the market wanted me to know that it is a healthy choice to buy into.
It had honey, ginseng, natural antioxidants, and an impressive smattering of vitamins. It contended that it contained, I quote, “equal antioxidant capacity as 2 servings of vegetables per bottle.” Just to reassure me of the legitimacy of this claim, it then went on to explain that this has been measured by the USDA developed method called ORAC, the Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity. All this about its antioxidant properties was to let me know that by drinking the cold Green Tea, to quote again, “my cell membranes and cellular DNA” would be protected from “the damaging effects of free radical induced oxidative damage.” Beyond all this, a nice summary of the benefits of each major vitamin was there in print as well. And, they were careful to note, of course, the absence of artificial colors, flavors, and high fructose corn syrup.
All I wanted was a sip of something cool and refreshing. I did indeed get that, plus a miracle elixir and an encyclopedia article! It’s obvious that the marketing worked … I spent the two bucks and enjoyed the product and the sort of peace of mind that comes from choosing an antioxidant buster instead of a sugary cola.
Sometimes stuff like this gets me wishing I could present God to the world the way products get marketed. Something easily assessed, to take hold of and to take in … all packaged with an artistic, informative label. I think it would be easier to answer all the questions about God we tend to have. I’d just point to the label and the answers would be there.
“Is there anything about God that will cause me great harm, give me cancer or something?” Read the label. “Will allowing God into my life really make me healthier?” Read the label. “What’s the fine print about my relationship with God?” Read the label.
Some Christians apparently do believe God can be marketed like a product. A middle of the night televangelist (he found me at 3:30 a.m. when I couldn’t sleep) tried to sell me God by pitching something in a tiny packet labeled “Miracle Water.” There wasn’t enough room on the packet label to describe the essence and benefits of the Almighty, so instead there was a woman seated next to the televangelist reading lengthy, heart warming testimonies. It all sounded really swell. I mean, apparently, the arthritis in my knees can be healed with just a sip of this holy product. That long held heartache about my absentee father can be healed too. All I need to do is call the number on the screen, send some money, receive the package and the product’s benefits.
I’m not one of those Christians. Now, I do believe God works miracles in all sorts of ways, even through televangelism opportunities that I sniff out to be sinful schemes. But I don’t believe God can be so easily packaged, labeled, so simply understood. Truth is, in my experience, and certainly in the experiences of our brothers and sisters in the Bible, many folks look upon God and see signs of healing balm while others see poison. Most of us, I suspect, see a blend of both than can upset as well as sooth our stomachs and our psyches. Just ask Job.
Job really needed an easy to read label, a nice graphic and a few words that would allow him to grasp God in a clear and concise way. Even a complicated sounding scientific explanation about God’s antioxidant properties would have been welcomed. He was, you’ll recall, devastatingly parched and feeling absolutely poisoned to the depths of his being. Health and wealth and the sort of wisdom that can hope to prevent horrendous tragedy had been completely drained from his life. This despite the fact that he’d diligently lived a faithfully upright life. He had been blameless and fearful before God, turning away from evil. But evil had not turned from him. Evil bargained that if it struck him down, he’d break that strong belief in his God. God allowed evil to test its theory out and “Job’s world collapses. In six verses, he loses everything, children, barns, cows.”
Crushed and confused, caught between cursing himself for having ever been born and falling just shy of cursing God, poor Job really could have used a label. He needed to see the ingredient that triggered this terrible toxicity in his life and his belief system.
Three guys who are identified as his “friends” thought they could help him out by labeling God for him. They wanted to package God so the content of God’s character could be firmly grasped and Job could get on with his life. For every cry against the injustice of his circumstances, they offered a time-honored, orthodox “marketing” scheme to help explain away God. What Larry, Moe and Curly, er, Manny, Moe and Jack, er, I mean, what Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar had to say, in sum, was this – “All suffering is caused by sin. You are suffering. Therefore you have sinned. Admit your fault, repent of your sins, and maybe God will put everything right.” For there way of seeing things, the Great Physician’s prescription bottle was clearly marked.
Job, however, would have nothing of this righteous rationalizing. You’ve heard the expression about having “the patience of Job,” haven’t you? It’s bunk. The Job of the Bible absolutely demanded answers. What we read of his honest, heart-wrenching reactions has the power to, as happened to former Duke University Dean of the Chapel, challenge “sophomoric religion” and “little pat religious slogans.”
What his friends offered as explanation, no doubt with good and faithful intent, was nowhere near acceptable. It sounded recycled. So his reply, in sum, was something like this – “I have not sinned, thank you very much. So why am I suffering? Therefore suffering cannot be the result of sin. I will not repent of something I haven’t done. And, by the way, you lot are no help whatsoever.”
Have you felt this way towards hopefully well-intended friends, family, fellow Christians? Passionately or perhaps quietly raged against simple solution platitudes at a time of tremendous sorrow and confusion?
Through his laments of loud complaint, his quest of questioning and of demanding truly definitive declarations, Job eventually received a direct audience with the Almighty. Out of the personal storm, God spoke right to his heart and mind and soul. It’s been my experience, both personally and professionally, that God indeed does this. For as one biblical scholar has stated it, when “we speak honestly of what we know, God meets us there.”
I’ll add to this, though, that speaking what we know isn’t an end unto itself; it’s the opening for further revelation. It’s often the gateway to greater questions about God and to gleaning greater truth about God. Having been stripped down to his rawest pain and his rawest sense of righteousness, to everything scratching what he believes and what his friends insist upon, he is able to stop demanding an explanation long enough to enter into the loving, creative mystery of our God. God leads Job to this by reminding him of the glory and ultimate mystery of all creation. What we read of this can sound kind of harsh at times, as if God is really putting Job in his place for puffing up his needs before those of others.
We can also, though, find a good hearted humor of sorts in it. I mean, God basically says, “I created the hippopotamus and the ostrich and you’ll no sooner be able to understand why I fashioned them in such a crazy way than any other mystery confronting you.” Good point. God is God, and while there is much to know, there is much that simply is as it is in God’s providence. More than anything, I take this to mean that we are not to proudly pronounce God and God’s mystery as some kind of product to be mass marketed. We need to instead emphasize the deep, personal relationship God has with each one of us and that God stands lovingly present to all that we are and all we experience. We can react with rage. We can bitterly question. We can demand holy declarations. But we must do so not as if we are at trial with God, but as cherished children trusting that God’s final verdict is forever good and just.
Interestingly enough, Job did recognize this in the midst of his despair. In a delightful, hope-filled interlude to his laments, chapter 19, verses 25 reveals Job saying, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth.” What a statement of great faith! Faith, of course, that found it’s fulfillment through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
For Christians, the love of God in Christ certainly stands as the definitive answer for to all our worldly woes. Still, we are welcomed to keep questioning and to keep lamenting. The hippo Creator understands this need. And in the eighth chapter of his letter to the church in Rome, the apostle Paul reminds us that this is very much part of our faith journeying. There he affirms that we and all of creation have groaned inwardly, with something akin to labor pains, while awaiting final redemption. This is a call to keep our trust foremost centered in God’s living Word, and to understand that we always have an audience with the very Spirit that intercedes for us according to the will of God with sighs too deep for words.
Yeah, some days I still confess how easy it might be if I could just make God a product; especially during weeks like these past two, where I’ve been present to some pretty intense pastoral care moments. But I’m not a vending machine, nor do I believe God mechanically vends one-size-fits-all answers. That said, I trust, and invite you to keep trusting (especially during this season of Lent) that God is present, God is responding, and there is no way in all eternity God in Jesus Christ ever intended or intends to let sin, sorrow and the bargaining of evil break us. Amen.
Prayer Poem: “Heaven Can Wait”
Highway hauling
ahead of me …
hauling caskets,
to be precise.
Semi-conscious of
the semi-trailor,
until I’m suddenly on it
at about seventy-five.
It screamed,
(in logoed letters)
SLOW DOWN
HEAVEN CAN WAIT!
Empty caskets
speed, cruise.
Occupied caskets
do not.
Message received.
Lent
Prayer Poem: “Eclipse”
When all you can do is limp …
when your heart’s black and blue
but still beating …
when all you can be is down …
when your soul’s in the dark
but still stirring …
Look through the pinhole …
see the light outside
of the eclipse.
And wait for movement.
When all of your trust is tied up …
when your hope bursts again
while still inflating …
when all you can feel is fear …
when your back’s in an arch
while not yet breaking ….
Look through the pinhole …
see the light outside
of the eclipse.
And wait for movement.
Victory Everywhere (Ps. 25, Mark 1:9-15)
On this first Sunday in the deeply spiritually season of Lent, I have but one question to put before us – when is the Holy Spirit with us?
There is a true story I learned from a fellow preacher that concerns the life of Admiral James Bond Stockdale. Yes, this hero’s middle name is Bond! You may more recently remember General Stockdale, who died in 2005, as Ross Perot’s presidential running mate back in 1992. Unfortunately, that led to some unflattering satire at his expense. The time I want to take you to instead is in tribute to him, as it has to do with his 2,714 days as prisoner of war in Vietnam. He was at that time the highest ranking naval officer to be held captive, having served as the Commander of Carrier Air Wing 16 aboard the USS Oriskany when he was shot down on September 9, 1965.
According to the story, the following is a brief portrait of what the Admiral endured while in that disconsolate environment. His hands were shackled behind his back, his legs in unbending irons. On one particular occasion, he was painfully dragged from his prison cell and forced to sit in an unshaded courtyard. He was there for three days straight, withering unto great weakness through the oppressive heat, through being kept awake by the guards, and through repeated beatings at their whim. He was at that time being made an example of what happens to people who do not cooperate.
I do not know what Admiral Stockdale’s exact religious outlook was. I’ve gleaned that he was more of a Stoic than a Christian. This said, it is well to note that both of these outlooks, in their own ways, advocate inner freedom in the face of the external world, our innate human kinship with God, and our human tendency toward evil inclinations. Perhaps all this helps us understand one of his most widely known quotes that says, “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end – which you can never afford to lose – with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality.”
Was the Holy Spirit — the very same power that brooded over chaos at the beginning of time, who descended like a dove upon Jesus, who we believe flamed mysteriously and majestically through the community of disciples after Jesus’ death and resurrection – with Admiral Stockdale in the scorching field of torment he endured outside the Hanoi Hilton?
Well, back to the story. Apparently, following one of his beatings in that three day stretch, he heard the angelic wing flapping sound of towels snapping. He knew immediately what it was – prisoner code. He deciphered the letters being sent his way – GBUJS. It was a message that remained alighted on his heart, above his many worldly medals, for many years after. GBUJS, the letters that stood at the intersection of his hellish reality and his hope of freedom, stood for “God Bless You Jim Stockdale.”
Our text this morning finds Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12), also at the intersection of hellish reality and human freedom. The way the Gospel writer Mark tells it, we see Jesus, his body and clothes still soaked with baptismal blessing, being immediately driven out into a desolate wilderness. Not by an angry mob, but by the very same Spirit that had just fluttered peacefully down upon him in a beautiful, communal affirmation of his identity.
For heaven’s sake, why? Why this horrible, harsh shift from being glorified and celebrated as God’s Son to being cast out into the company of wild beasts and the great adversarial embodiment of all things unholy whom the Scriptures call Satan?
One good answer comes from the biblical scholar N.T. Wright, who rightly affirms for us that “precisely because he [was] God’s precious Son,” the road Jesus had to tread, “[was] the road that lead through dry and dusty paths, through temptation and apparent failure.” This all was not just a test of his mental, emotional, and above all spiritual toughness. It was not all about his being a colorful contestant on the television show Survivor for us to admire. Far from it, actually. That terrible time in the wilderness was, instead, the way God the Father let the world know that the Holy Spirit would abide by Jesus come what may. And not only abide by him — to grant him blessed assurance and inner peace — but to lead him through to victory over all obstacles and every adversarial reality trying to block the redeeming grace and love of the Almighty. The angel wings waiting on Jesus while he endured this experience just might have sounded like the whip snapping of a secret towel code. However it was, Jesus had divine ambassadors in that desolate place to “assure him that his beloved Father was watching over him, was there with him, was loving him, acting through him, pouring out his Spirit all the time in and through him.”
Wilderness experiences are a part of life. Whether we are in the midst of one right now, in the aftermath of one that still haunts us, or anticipating being cast into one before long, these weeks in the season of Lent are a very good time to intentionally examine when the Holy Spirit is with us. According to countless biblical witnesses (starting with Jesus!) and the score of sacred-centered people who followed them, the Holy Spirit is with us every day, everywhere, leading us on through to victory. It is the victory of eternal love over worldly loss, of innate trust in the one true God over the fleeting temptations of every false god, of the positive spiritual pulse and presence alive in our hearts and in our communities over the deadening lure of sin and all evil.
There isn’t a just-add-water-to-powder solution for how to sense this victory while enduring your own or someone else’s wilderness experience. There is, though, our ability to focus our attention inward.
We toss so much time and inner energy outward — projecting it on what we want and need from other people, casting demands to the sky, cursing the ground, and so forth and so on. It’s always easier to deflect than to accept. Yet, oddly enough, don’t we all know that our greatest strength to make choices and changes in every circumstance is that which rises from within us? It’s just that often times we leave this go to the last desperate minute. Perhaps we tell ourselves that this is not God at work, that God only works from “on high” and therefore must descend to our lots in the low life this side of eternity. We tell ourselves to distrust our intuitions in favor of outward divine signs. So we search for the angels, for the Big Voice from behind a cloud, for rainbows and water from rocks.
I’m not at all dismissing that God works in wondrously outward ways. I am, however, saying that God, through the ever-present indwelling of the Spirit, strengthens us inside-out. So strengthened, we can ward off the most subtle, sinful self-centered ways as well as all of the awful evil temptations that bombard us like torturing captors. We just need to commit to being present to this process.
We strengthen our inward attention to the Spirit when we talk to God with praises and questions, when we read the Scriptures for inspiration and challenge, when we worship alone and with loved ones, when we thank the Lord for even the smallest signs of life and renewal.
I’m a visual person. I like to picture Jesus warding off temptation by closing his eyes and recalling the holy promises to Israel. I like to see him paying attention to his breathing as he does so. I see a figure whose exact face I do not need to know but who frustrates Satan by just being still and not taking any bait. I see a small smile, but not a condescending one. It’s a smile betraying an inner joy born of being companioned, released, and led on by the Spirit.
Lent has begun. Each of us can choose to casually count down days until Jelly bean and marshmallow chicks take over our lives. Or we can choose to discipline ourselves to pay very close attention to the Holy Spirit dwelling within and through us, inching us ever closer to the Cross with Jesus and then, praise God, beyond it to the first Easter morning which dawned victory everywhere and forevermore. On our journeys of wilderness and faithfulness, may we know and grow in our sacred centeredness and in our spiritual community. Amen.
March FPC Newsletter Article …
Please allow me to be personal and direct – is there someone in your life whom you cannot forgive, even if, deep down and faithfully speaking, you sense you should?
Are you someone who wants to be forgiven, even if, deep down and faithfully speaking, you do not feel you deserve to be?
Such questions are tough, soul-searching, heart-wrangling stuff. We don’t really want to discuss possible answers. Yet I know we all already have answers … we all have a need to forgive and be forgiven. It’s figuring out how to live with them and, hopefully, make peace with them that is such an emotional and spiritual challenge.
This season of Lent is a time for us to very personally consider the meaning of repentance from sin. To “repent” means to “turn away” from sin and turn toward God. Sin is a broad category, but, truly, the issue of forgiveness is quite central to it.
Deep down and faithfully speaking, we need to feel forgiven of sin, of our subtle and not so subtle stubborn rebellions against God and neighbor. So, Lent is very much a season to explore the theological and practical meanings of forgiveness.
A recent journal article by John Patton frames it this way – “The religious life as the Christian tradition describes it is an ongoing communal activity of learning to live into the forgiveness that characterizes our relation to God … it is a discovery in the process of living in spite of the brokenness that I, or another, have created or have been responsible for. Like God’s kingdom, forgiveness is something that is discovered to be ‘in the midst of us,” as part of our ‘neighbor-hood’ with each other.”
Through our worship and Bible studies and overall fellowship, take time this season of Lent to ask yourself, and ask God, about the tough, soul-searching, heart wrangling meaning of forgiveness. I pray that as you do, you will all the more prepare your heart for the blessed Good News that we will once again herald in fullness and joy on Easter morning. If I can be a prayerful, companioning ear to you as you experience this process, please know that as ever, I am here for you.
