Blogging through Holy Week: Friday

Jesus and Pilate

The most interesting and complex person we meet in the story of that terrible Friday (besides Jesus himself) is the Roman governor Pilate. Having decided that Jesus must die, the religious leaders looked to the Romans to come to the same conclusion and/or to carry out their will regardless. Pilate is the man. Though clearly unwilling, he sends Jesus to his death.

What Herod the Great had been unable to accomplish (see Matthew 2), Pilate seems unable to avoid.

It's far too easy to read motives, character, and emotions into the stories of scripture even in places where they are silent about these things. Yet Jesus seems to let him off the hook.

“Don’t you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?”

Jesus answered, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.”

John 19:10-11

King of the Jews

Though tolerant of the Jews, Pilate is not one of them. Even so it is this title “King of the Jews” though which he recognizes Jesus, persistently holding on to this understanding - much to the horror of the Jewish leaders.

Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, "Are you the king of the Jews?"

"Is that your own idea," Jesus asked, "or did others talk to you about me?"

"Am I a Jew?" Pilate replied. "It was your people and your chief priests who handed you over to me. What is it you have done?"

Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place."

"You are a king, then!" said Pilate.

Jesus answered, "You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me."

John 18:33-37

Pilate seems convinced. Unless he's just being sarcastic. That's a possibility. Again, tone of voice is not something the gospel writers provide for us very often. But here's what John says.

From then on, Pilate tried to set Jesus free, but the Jews kept shouting, "If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar."

When Pilate heard this, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judge's seat at a place known as the Stone Pavement (which in Aramaic is Gabbatha). It was the day of Preparation of Passover Week, about the sixth hour.

"Here is your king," Pilate said to the Jews.

But they shouted, "Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!"

"Shall I crucify your king?" Pilate asked.

"We have no king but Caesar," the chief priests answered.

Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified.

John 19:12-16

Pilate had claimed power to make the decision about setting Jesus free or crucifying him, but his decision does not carry the day. He seems to recognize that his own rule and authority are shaky, not absolute.

Even now, Pilate does not give up on this “king of the Jews” idea.

Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS. Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek. The chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, "Do not write 'The King of the Jews,' but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews."

Pilate answered, "What I have written, I have written."

John 19:19-22

I wonder if I behave like Pilate – convinced about Christ and his kingdom, testifying to that truth and working to advance it, yet still accepting that the ways of the world or forces of darkness must have their sway. Is that what Pilate was doing?

What do you make of Pilate? Was he justified in behaving as he did, in a sense, since the crucifixion was something that the Scriptures show us “had to happen”?

In my life, I think I respond to the evil and injustice of others the same way; I treat it as inevitable. About what we should expect in this world we live in. Is that a good response, an acceptable response, or a poor response – or does it depend?

Blogging through Holy Week: Thursday

Thursday Jesus observes a Passover meal with his disciples (Matthew 26:17-29, Mark 14:12-25, Luke 22;7-20, John 13:1-38). He imbues the ritual with another level of meaning so significant that as to suggest that this may have been why God established this in the beginning - not just to give the people a way to remind them that he'd passed over and protected them when the Egyptians were struck down, but also to point the way forward to Jesus. Remarkable. (See 1 Corinthians 11:23-26.)

Jesus does something else that night which is so powerful it, too, becomes a sacrament in some circles in the years to come. He gets down on the floor with a towel and basin and washes their feet. Even when you'd think he'd have other things on his mind, his relationship with these guys is what's really important. So much of what he does this day demonstrates that. They don't understand, now, but later they will remember and understand.

Before this long night is over Jesus will go through agonies of prayer (Matthew 26:35-46, Mark 14:32-42, Luke 22:40-46). He invites his disciples to join in but they do not. (There's a good post on this at 300 Words a Day.)

Then he is turned in for arrest by one of these, his best friends - who when morning comes will commit suicide in remorse (Mathew 27:1-5).

The trials following the arrest will stretch all night and into the morning (Matthew 26:47-27:26, Mark 14:43-15:15, Luke 22:47-23:25, John 18:2-19:6).

But John's gospel records these words to his disciples, words of comfort and instruction, putting the whole thing into context.

"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am."

John 14:1-3

But Jesus speaks of more than just heaven. He also tells them about new life on earth.

"I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth.

"I tell you the truth, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy."

John 16:12-13, 20-22

Blogging through Holy Week: Wednesday

We don't know much about what happened on Wednesday of "holy week." More of the same, likely. As Luke says,

Each day Jesus was teaching at the temple, and each evening he went out to spend the night on the hill called the Mount of Olives, and all the people came early in the morning to hear him in the temple. (Luke 21:37-38)

So, let's use our Wednesday post to look ahead, to the bigger significance of what is to come. I think the real hinge of history is not the crucifixion - after all, hundreds or thousands of people have died that awful death. It's shocking that Jesus did as well. But what's more remarkable is the resurrection. (Even then, not unique; others have been risen from the dead.)

But Jesus conquered death and broke its chains. Amazing. It's the beginning of God's "making all things new." New heaven, and a renewed earth, too.

The point of the resurrection, according to N.T. Wright:

"The point of the resurrection…is that the present bodily life is not valueless just because it will die…

"What you do with your body in the present matters because God has a great future in store for it…

"What you do in the present—by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself—will last into God's future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether (as the hymn so mistakenly puts it…). They are part of what we may call building for God's kingdom."

— N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

To better understand where he's coming from on this and for more food for thought, see also:

• N.T. Wright on the Resurrection
• Christians Wrong about Heaven, Says Bishop

Blogging through Holy Week: Tuesday

Tuesday was a busy day for me. That Tuesday was a busy day for Jesus. He was in the temple for part of the day, teaching – responding to his opponents (see Matthew 21:23-22:45), then teaching the crowds (in a rather scathing critique of his opponents; Matthew 23), and teaching his disciples about what is going to happen in the years to come (Matthew 24-25).

At the end of that day there’s that scene where he is anointed with the most costly perfume. It's preparation, he says, for his burial. This is apparently the event that tips things for Judas, who makes his deal to hand Jesus over to the authorities. (Matthew 26:6-13, also in Mark 14:3-9, John 12:2-11)

Each of these passages is full, challenging. Maybe it’s that what he’d predicted when he read from Isaiah, that Saturday in the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4:17-19), was coming to a climax.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
Because he has anointed me
To preach the good news to the poor
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
And recovery of sight for the blind,
To release the oppressed,
To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

By itself, that prophecy sounds like pretty happy stuff. But as Jesus pointed out even then, there’s a cost; this universal cost of following God which all of us, Jews or Gentiles, have a hard time humbling ourselves to accept.

He calls us to repentance, to recognize that our own attempts to justify or reform ourselves, to be good and godly, are not working, are not enough. That is a hard teaching: a stumbling block, as Jesus says (Luke 20:17-18).

At the same time, it’s a relief, isn’t it, to be found out – especially by someone who loves you and will not condemn you for it?

For the first couple years I was trying to live life as a Christian, like the guys at Nazareth, I had heard the good news, but I had an idea that God’s incredible offer of adoption into his family had to do with him making me the kind of person I wanted to be. Like the first disciples, I didn’t really get it, yet.

Only when I reached the end of my rope and turned from that pursuit of becoming a good person did I experience his joy and power at work in my life.

More than 20 years later I regularly fall back into the old way of self-improvement. Though deeply frustrated and disappointed with my flaws and failures, I stubbornly stay on that road for a while.

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. (Matthew 23:37-38)

Blogging through Holy Week: Monday

So, Jesus goes to the temple mount. Looks like it was a Monday, the day after the remarkable “triumphal procession” that we mark as Palm Sunday.

Wasn’t the first time he’d been there, and he’ll go again this week. But this time he causes quite a ruckus. Well, there was already quite a ruckus going on but the people couldn’t see it any more; they’d probably gotten used to the way things were and accepted it. As people do. Assuming their leaders knew what was best.

In this case, they didn’t.

This place, designed to be one where man and God could meet, had been desecrated. Oh, the whole temple would be destroyed before long and Jesus didn’t seem to mind that. But as long as it was there, it was to be a place where God’s glory and holiness was on display. Not, as it had become… Hear how Matthew tells the story:

Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. "It is written," he said to them, "'My house will be called a house of prayer,' [Isaiah 56:7] but you are making it a 'den of robbers.’ [Jeremiah 7:11]"

– Matthew 21:12-13

The next bit is rather remarkable. The dirty fringes of society press in. Children, usually kept away or under control, were there too. They were shouting out exclamations about this amazing man sent by God, this Jesus. The temple leaders had been able to take the money changers and animal sellers in stride but this they could not handle. You aren’t supposed to let kids come in and run wild in God's house!

The blind and the lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them. But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple area, "Hosanna to the Son of David," they were indignant.

"Do you hear what these children are saying?" they asked him.
"Yes," replied Jesus, "have you never read,
"'From the lips of children and infants
you have ordained praise'?" [Psalm 8:2]

– Matthew 21:14-16

“Tomorrow, Monday of Holy Week,” said my pastor, “I want you to ask yourself: What does God want to do to cleanse his temple, today?”

Uh oh. Paul sums it up most succinctly in his letter to Corinth, “Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16)

As with the temple in Jerusalem, our bodies will be destroyed and this is not the tragedy it might seem. But in the meantime, what happens, it matters.

I know my inner life seems as caught up in consumerism and selfishness and distractions, abusing other people or using them for my own ends, as what Jesus saw that day in the temple. Do you long to see the distraction and desecration in your life destroyed, driven out; to see healing and worship be what are happening, instead?

Psalm 51 comes to mind.

Surely you desire truth in the inner parts;
you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.

– Psalm 51:6

Polarized

The phone call may have been a political ad.

It may have been an opinion survey (as claimed).

Perhaps it was meant to be both.

The voice was a recorded one, but designed to lead something of a conversation. In a way, this was a nice change: rather than instructing me how to think, the caller wanted to engage me in a discussion of sorts.

“[Other politician] plans to [do this]. Blah blah blah, do you support this?” the voice asked.

I had answered half a dozen of these yes-or-no questions with more confidence than perhaps I felt when I was asked one I really couldn’t answer that way. I paused.

“If the listener does not say, ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ or ‘repeat,’ this survey will come to an end,” the voice threatened. Still I hesitated, and the pollster – a well-known politician whom I am inclined to respect – dropped the call. Apparently he was no longer interested in my opinion.

The topic was one about which many have very strong, entrenched opinions. I consider it a gray area, myself – a matter about which ethical and intelligent people may disagree. And even if they identify the same things as problems, they may disagree about what should be done, particularly by a specific entity such as the federal government. But not to take a polarized position was apparently seen as choosing not to be part of the conversation.

I found myself in a similar situation when a religious leader whom I respect wrote asking what I might know about the doctrinal contents of a recent book by a somewhat controversial author on a topic of some significance to us both. I have the book; I went out of my way to have a copy given to me so I could read it. I did not run it through the same grid as my correspondent did, however, and did not know how to answer his question. In fact, I have not answered. I feel caught in the middle.

In both situations – the political one and the religious one – I recognized that I know people who are willing to lay down their lives for these issues. But to me they are not central issues. I found myself unwilling to be dogmatic, reluctant to claim or promote a strong opinion or to give allegiance to one “side” or another in these areas of contention.

Yet I recognize other matters that I =do= hold as more central or essential than other people do. Maybe we all have certain areas about which we have strong opinions. Others may not understand why we think that issue is so important or why our opinion is so strong.

So, we all know what it feels like to be the one with the opinion, and the one without one, or to be in the middle: a moderate. But what do we do with the result, the fact that what's important to me is not as important to you, and vice versa? I don’t want to be ignorant, or cowardly, or ineffective. But I do find the pressure to have an opinion about everything – to take sides – awfully oppressive at times.

March Reading

Nonfiction

Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell – Another exciting work from Gladwell; I'm definitely a groupie by this point. As you may know, this one deals with how people make snap decisions - for better or for worse. When we ask people to explain why, they may try but generally cannot. But that doesn't mean we can't understand how these things work, and, when appropriate, train our responses. Great book! Couple things I'm considering from this one, in terms of area for personal growth... maybe write more later.

Living with Questions, by Dale Fincher – I appreciate Dale’s thoughtful, engaging approach to re-framing the great questions of life. Great book for teens. Published by Youth Specialties. I didn't realize that when I asked my library to get it. Book design and examples used reflect the youth focus, and often reminded me how much older I am than the intended audience. I suspect they will help the book sell now but limit its shelf life. But the basic contents were pretty timeless, intelligent, and helpful; as Dale says, "a new kind of apologetics."

A History of the United States, by Philip Jenkins - I'd placed a library hold on Jenkins' latest history-of-religion work, but it both came in and expired while I was in Louisiana. So I consoled myself with this, the only Jenkins book on the shelves. It's good, it's really good. He weaves together a chronological look at the nation's history, politically, culturally, economically, religiously, demographically, and racially. Well recommended.

Jenkins aims to be fair and balanced, but is not above inserting droll comments like this:

"The headlong dash to build a continental empire was accomplished with little consideration for the existing residents, whether Mexican or Native American. As the area of white settlement grew, Americans of European descent were brought into contact with native groups who had hitherto avoided the blessings of civilization, and this contact was generally disastrous for the latter population..."

Couple more books I'm still reading:

• Reaching Out, by Henri Nouwen. He writes about personal growth, in our inner self, our relationship with others, our relationship with God: moving from loneliness to solitude, from hostility to hospitality, from illusion to prayer. Good stuff.
  
  
• Prayer, by Philip Yancey. I've already written about this extensively; I may have bored my blog audience. But I've really enjoyed Yancey and have saved part of this book to read for later.
  

Fiction

The Five People You Meet in Heaven, by Mitch Albom - Sorry, can't give this one a gold star. Is the best the author can do to make sense of life and death? I don't expect everyone to agree about these things but I found myself feeling sorry for the guy - Albom I mean. Abundant life is on offer, and he settles for... this?

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, by J.K Rowling - Yes, a re-read for me, of course. But it’s nice to have a familiar tale - with just the right mix of heft and readability to bring along when flying!

The More the Merrier, by Lenora Mattingly Weber; and The Pink Rose, by Ellspeth Woodward - I wrote about these two fun but silly novels of the 1950s, here.

Uneasy Relations, and Tiny Little Teeth, by Aaron Elkins - Two more good mysteries featuring physical anthropology professor Gideon Oliver. The first is set at the site of a dig in Gibraltar celebrated for the controversial discovery of a human woman clutching a part-Neanderthal child. The second takes Gideon on a cruise down the Amazon river with a group of ethnobotanists and explores, to some extent, the pharmacopoeia and cultures of that region.

The God Cookie, by Geoffrey Wood - A group of 20-somethings talking, fairly casually, about the meaning of life; and since it was written by an actor, with an editor was in the room (albeit invisibly), the dialogue was pretty funny. One thing that stood out was the vocabulary. For a light, contemporary book it had a lot of terms that seemed archaic to me but are probably regional. Deb and I are thinking, Ohio/Pennsylvania, but I'd appreciate any tips from students of culture. The words include: toboggan (referring to a hat), housecoat (bathrobe), stromboli, and fritter. None of which would come up in the everyday chatter of MY 20-something-year-old friends. What do you think?

Mr. Darwin's Shooter by Roger McDonald - Bit of historical fiction, about another member of the "Beagle" expedition. This one was a bit too artsy and hard to follow for me.

And I'm not quite done with these:

• Lincoln's Dreams, by Connie Willis - I breezed through it, skipping sections, but intend to reread it in anticipation of a trip to Gettysburg (among other places) in May.
  
  
• Patriot Games, by Tom Clancy - Had never read any of his and one reason is I couldn't figure out where the series began. Although it has a prequel, this appears the place to start. As thrillers go, a good one. I like the characters. I don't know that I necessarily want to spend too much time in the world of international espionage and terrorism, though.