5 April 2012

Maundy Thursday

Psalm 102; Lam. 2:10-18; 1 Cor. 10:14-17, 11:27-32; Mark 14:12-25

Jeremiah encourages the people to give full reign to grief.  He has poured out tears copiously over the destruction and his grief is so great that he cannot bear it.  He speaks of the children wandering the streets looking for sustenance, asking their mothers where to get what had only recently been commonplace, bread and wine.  The enemies laugh and scorn them, mocking the former beauty of the city, deriding the people, their pride in their city and, ultimately, their God who has failed to either protect or deliver them.  Having gone through a situation where we as a church were forced to vacate our building for financial reasons, this is painful and yet faith says that if we are willing to humble ourselves and take responsibility rather than blame God then we will see something yet more glorious. 

Here at the Passover meal Jesus prophesies that one of the men at the feast with Him, one who has been with Him as a disciple, will betray Him.  All the disciples ask, “Is it I?”  It would seem that nothing would have tipped off anyone that Judas was the betrayer, they had no suspect in mind.  Betrayal is a terrible thing and yet we get no hint of what the disciples thought about Judas after the fact.  He judged himself and agreed that it was better that he not continue to live.  During the meal, Jesus re-interprets the symbols as His body and blood of the new covenant.  What did the disciples think as they heard those words, ate the bread and drank the wine?  When we remember this night on Sundays what are we thinking? 

Paul writes about the importance of communion.  What does it mean that we participate in the body and blood of Jesus?  It is a physical reminder of the reality of His life, death, resurrection, and ascension.  The body and blood of Jesus were real, not some phantom that only seemed to be a man.  Christianity is nothing if not about the reality of life.  The incarnation matters but all the details of Jesus’ life matter to us, not just that the Word became flesh.  Jesus imbues all of life with meaning and purpose.  His life tells us that every encounter is fraught with meaning, that God cares about everything.  His life also tells us that the only way we will find meaning in everything is if we give Him our lives to use for His purposes.  To discern the body is to recognize this truth, that Jesus lived to the glory of God and was willing to lay down His life for the sake of others, including us.  When we eat the bread and drink the wine we are identifying with His sacrifice and taking up our crosses just as HE did.

Let this be recorded for a generation to come,
   so that a people yet to be created may praise the LORD:
that he looked down from his holy height;
   from heaven the LORD looked at the earth,
to hear the groans of the prisoners,
   to set free those who were doomed to die.

4 April 2012

Psalm 55; Lam. 2:1-9; 2 Cor. 1:23-2:11; Mark 12:1-11

Jeremiah knows that this devastation is not the work of a human enemy but rather their God has become their enemy.  He is more powerful than any human enemy.  Is there any enemy quite as terrifying as a former friend and confidant, one who knows us intimately and knows where they can hurt us most, not physically but emotionally and spiritually?  Jeremiah looks at the destruction and devastation of Jerusalem and in particular the temple and says the Lord has scorned His altar and disowned His sanctuary and now foreigners go about where the Israelites feared to tread and these foreigners now raise a clamor there as if there were a festival to the Lord but it is simply a party.  The passage ends with a truly sad note, not just ruin of the city but the law is no more and prophets find no vision from the Lord.  There is, then, nothing to hold the people together. 

The prophets always foretold what would happen to the nation, and more importantly, why it would happen.  Jesus stands in line with the prophets.  Here He tells the parable of the tenants who have forgotten that this vineyard is not their possession and that their only job was to tend what was planted by another.  They were beneficiaries of the work of another and their job was relatively simple.  The servants sent to collect the rents due, a portion of the proceeds of the sale of the crop, are beaten and killed.  Ultimately even the son is killed in the belief that the owner is dead and now his son is the remaining heir and if they kill him, they will own the vineyard outright.  Within only a few decades the Jews will indeed see themselves without a temple, the holy place defiled. 

Paul spoke the truth in love, he called for church discipline to be exercised in several matters including dealing with division in the church, for sexual misconduct to be dealt with and for the proper celebration of communion.  He was calling for unity around truth and he would rather put that in writing and allow them to deal with it than to visit and deal with it himself.  He expected the church to grow up and take responsibility for itself.  Apparently the discipline has worked and now Paul urges reconciliation and restoration, sometimes the more difficult thing to do.  The purpose of discipline is not to destroy but to correct and restore the person to truth and ultimately to fellowship of the church. All discipline is meant to bring change to our lives, restoring us to right relationships vertically and horizontally.  Love with standards.

I call to God,
   and the LORD will save me.
Evening and morning and at noon
   I utter my complaint and moan,
   and he hears my voice.
He redeems my soul in safety

I will cast my burden on You, O LORD,
   and You will sustain me;
You will never permit
   the righteous to be moved.

3 April 2012

Psalm 6, 12; Lam. 1:17-22; 2 Cor. 1:8-22; Mark 11:27-33

Imagine if all the rest of the United States, Canada and Mexico were aligned as enemies against the state of New Jersey.  That would be something like what Jeremiah is told in the first verse of this passage, all her neighbors are now her enemies and Israel is roughly the same size as New Jersey.  Would there be any hope?  The city has been utterly devastated and has called out to those who had been her lovers and they ignored her cries.  Now they laugh with scorn on her shame.  Jeremiah makes no pretense that God has done something wrong here, it is indeed just judgment against her for her sins.  The prophet does, however, believe in covenant and that the Lord will recompense those who have done this and those who refuse to comfort her.  The covenant relationship is everlasting and the Lord is faithful to the covenant He has made.  This is not final.

What authority would have been acceptable to the chief priests, scribes and elders?  They were the authority.  Jesus can appeal to a higher authority but they won’t accept it as valid to say that the Father has given me all authority in heaven and on earth as He says to the disciples in Matthew 28.  He could say those things but He knows the outcome and the time is not just yet and this isn’t to be the provocation.  Jesus turns the tables on them with his question about the baptism of John.  They know they are between a rock and a hard place on that one since the people received John as a true prophet and they can make no case against that judgment.  Their choice is to say, “We don’t know.”  If they don’t know that John was from God then they can’t know or accept the truth about Jesus, they have no discernment.

Paul’s faith is in the God who raised Christ from the dead who delivered him in Asia from affliction and whom he now trusts to deliver him yet again.  He asks only the prayers of the church in Corinth that they may rejoice in the answer to those prayers.  Apparently there are those in Corinth who believe Paul has reneged on a promise to visit them and yet Paul makes his defense that he wanted to come to them but was prevented by the Spirit from going at that time.  God’s timing isn’t always the same as our own.  Sometimes He allows the situation to go beyond our imagining before coming and His rescue isn’t always what we desire but all this is for His glory.  Our response, no matter the situation is to rest in Him and trust in His lovingkindness. That is the most difficult thing in the world sometimes.  We need to make right judgments and occasionally that means we have to disagree with the world’s judgment on things.

The words of the LORD are pure words,

   like silver refined in a furnace on the ground,

   purified seven times.

You, O LORD, will keep them;

   you will guard us from this generation forever.

On every side the wicked prowl,

   as vileness is exalted among the children of man.

2 April 2012

Psalm 51; Lam. 1:1-2,6-12; 2 Cor. 1:1-7; Mark 11:12-25

Jeremiah laments over Jerusalem, recalling the heights from which she has fallen.  Only those who have seen her glory can truly set up such a lament.  How could this possibly have happened?  Rejection of the Lord explains it all, because she has rejected Him and gone after other gods she has lost His protection.  They are still in covenant but this is the judgment for sin, in particular the sin of apostasy, from leaving the Lord.  The devastation is complete, nothing is left and the sanctuary, the temple is defiled by those who were never allowed in her gates.  Why is it that we have such a difficult time being faithful to Him?  Why do we forget that He is holy and demands righteousness from us?  Jeremiah’s heart was broken over the situation.  Even though he prophesied these things and paid a price in being rejected by the leaders and the people for his prophecy, Jeremiah does not exult over being right, he is devastated by what he sees.  We are not called to rejoice at the difficulties caused by rejecting the Lord, we are called to grieve.

Jesus curses the fig tree for not providing figs when the season was wrong?  Why would He do that?  The cursing of the fig tree is connected with the next scene in the temple.  The nation was to bear fruit, righteous fruit, but they had failed to do what they were designed to do and expected to do and now God’s judgment would be against them.  They had defiled the temple by losing sight of its purpose and meaning, it was just another place for a market.  Jesus drove out those who were buying and selling there and wouldn’t allow anyone to carry anything through it.  They knew this was wrong but they had become so accustomed to it that they no longer gave it any thought.  They had lost their ability to see as God sees.  Jesus uses the fig tree to teach on faith and prayer, particularly forgiveness.  It is truly important that as we pray we forgive others trespasses against us that we might receive forgiveness. 

Paul seems to think it is a good thing to share in Christ’s sufferings, hardly an American Christian idea today.  The reality is that we live in a world full of hurting people, people who have gone through horrible life experiences, and none are exempt from that because we live in a world gone wrong through sin.  One of the truly remarkable things about the incarnation is that Jesus came and suffered rejection and pain, He did not avoid suffering, He embraced it and came through it without sin.  Because He suffered He is our comfort in our own affliction, He is with us as one who has suffered.  We want to be spared suffering but Paul says it serves a mission and ministry purpose for us to suffer.  Jeremiah was with the people in their suffering, not standing apart saying, “I told you so.”  The early church grew in some places quite rapidly because it entered the suffering of plagues to give comfort no matter the cost to themselves.  Where can we enter the pain and suffering of this world for redemptive purpose?

Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God,
   O God of my salvation,
   and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.
O Lord, open my lips,
   and my mouth will declare your praise.
For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;
   you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
   a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

1 April 2012

Palm Sunday

Psalm 24, 29; Zech. 9:9-12; 1 Tim. 6:12-16; Luke 19:41-48

Zechariah promises a king for Israel but it will not be in battle that this king comes, not on a horse but on a donkey.  This king will usher in a reign of peace and it will be peace that this king speaks to the nations roundabout Israel.  He is a king of righteousness and a king of peace, the true king of Jerusalem.  Recall that Melchizedek was the king of Salem, which is to say the king of peace.  Her very name betokens peace and this king will come and establish the kingdom to the ends of the earth, a reign that will itself bring peace.  We have never known and will never know such a world-wide peace until Jesus returns and establishes His kingdom by conquering all who are in rebellion against Him, the battle is spiritual and the enemy is as well.

The time to establish the kingdom Zechariah prophesied could have been 2000 years ago but God’s people rejected the Messiah He had sent, in fact they rejected Him.  Jesus weeps over Jerusalem because He knows that their rejection of Him will mean that they have rejected peace and the eternal kingdom, He weeps over the world, what trouble and affliction this rejection will mean.  In rejecting Jesus we are rejecting everything He came to bring and opting for more of the same from which we pray for deliverance.  The creation, including us, is in subjection to sin and the price is enormous for rejecting Him.  The people were hanging on His words but the leaders were plotting to kill Him.  They thought they were friends of God but they were actually His enemies. 

Paul says to fight the good fight, to keep the commandment unstained until the day of Jesus’ re-appearing when He will make God known.  He is the King of kings and Lord of lords and the day of His coming in judgment will wipe every tear and will bring an eternal reign of peace.  When He taught the disciples to pray they were to begin with hallowing or setting apart the Name of Yahweh and to pray for His kingdom to come and His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven and then move onto the cares and concerns of this world.  Do we desire His kingdom to come beginning in our lives or are we more concerned about this life?

All glory, laud and honor,

To Thee, Redeemer, King,

To Whom the lips of children

Made sweet hosannas ring.

Thou art the King of Israel,

Thou David’s royal Son,

Who in the Lord’s Name comest,

The King and Blessèd One.

Tune