Mar 17 – Thoughts on Deut. 30-31 & Mark 15:1-25

The blessings pronounced from Mt. Gerizim and the curses pronounced from Mt. Ebal would make a pretty impressive impetus for obedience.  A few chapters ago we hear Moses command the people to divide in half, with 6 tribes standing on the lush and fruitful Mt. Gerizim and pronounce the blessings God has promised for those who are obedient to Him, and 6 tribes standing on bleak and barren Mt. Ebal and pronounce the curses God has promised for those who are disobedient.  The Levites were to stand in the valley between them and shout “Amen!” for each of the blessings and each of the curses:  “So let it be!”

I sometimes think following God would be so much easier if we were to see those blessings shower down upon us when we are obedient and the curses shower down when we are disobedient.  So often I find disobedience in my life unpunished and obedience met with difficulty.  And in those times, I long for the motivation of Gerizim and Ebal.

But in reality, were that to happen, we might live more obediently to God’s law, but we would do so out of selfish ambition or self-preservation, not out of love for God Himself.  We’d obey because it would get us blessed, and we would avoid disobeying because the pain of the curses wouldn’t be worth it.

When my children were young, I knew I could get them to do what I asked with a simple show of force.  “You put your pants back on or it’s a time out in your room!”  But this didn’t teach them the value of what I was trying to teach them, and the obedience seldom lasted long.  Instead, if they saw that I loved them even when I didn’t get them a new toy, and if they saw me comforting them when their bad decisions had caused real pain, or even when their bad decisions didn’t lead to anything bad at all, it was then that they learned obedience.  In the midst of that obedience, love.

I wonder if God thought the same thing.

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Mar 16 – Thoughts on Deut. 28-29 & Mark 14:54-72

“But Jesus remained silent and gave no answer.”

In a victimization society, a person’s rights are of paramount importance.  When we focus on those who have faced victimization, oppression, and individual or systemic marginalizing, public opinion will excessively side with the victimized.  Given that the alternative is society siding with unjust power structures, this may be the best we can do.  Today we see this elevation of the oppressed through movements like Black Lives Matter, MeToo, and a variety of LGBTQ-supportive movements.  We also see it in modern media, which Walt Mueller calls “both map and mirror” of our society, reflecting it and yet guiding it simultaneously.

This means that we focus a lot in making sure we are given “our rights”.  Whatever we feel we deserve, we will fight for.  This is different than many cultures around the world where people recognize that they won’t get their due and so learn to live with it.

But Jesus takes a different stance at His trial.  He neither fights for His rights nor succumbs glumly to being oppressed.  Instead, Jesus remains silent.  He has every right to stand up for Himself at His trial.  Though the charges against Him are accurate – He did call Himself God which was punishable by death for any human – they fall apart when we consider that He was telling the truth!  With the crowds on His side and holding the power elite in check with their numbers again and again, Jesus could have stood for Himself and argued His right to say what He did.  He could also have raised a riot from the crowd – remember, these are Jews oppressed by their Roman overseers, marginalized to the point of revolt and upheaval – proclaiming oppression from the Jewish leaders or even the Romans.  But instead, Jesus stood silent.

This is not a winning tactic in our society, nor was it in His.  But it was the will of God for Him, and so He obeyed.  This poor Jewish carpenter turned Rabbi, oppressed by the Romans and the Jewish elite, gave Himself to be the Passover Lamb for us all while not admitting to crimes He had not committed.  For Jesus, silence was the right response to His own oppression.  Wisdom requires a lot of prayer and thought for us about our application of this principle.

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Mar 15 – Thoughts on Deut. 25-27 & Mark 14:27-53

Perhaps one of the most convicting stories of human sinfulness is today’s story of Jesus in Gethsemane.  As Jesus, the Son of God, the One to whom we’ve pledged not just our lives but our eternities, is wracked with terror, grief, and loneliness, his followers fall asleep.  Now I’ve fallen asleep on people in my life.  Late night talking with friends at a sleepover, watching a really boring movie with an old flame, even in conversation with my wife in the living room.  And I’ve fallen asleep on Jesus before.  It used to be that my prayer time each day was before bed, until I realized that I regularly fell asleep in the middle of my prayer, my conversation with Jesus.  Someone comforted me with the idea that parents love it when kids fall asleep in their arms.  But I could never get over this story.

We argue about what is sin and what isn’t all the time.  Is homosexuality a sin?  Is drinking a sin?  Is having wealth a sin?  But we seldom argue about the smaller things that can still be sinful.  Is falling asleep on God a sin?  Was falling asleep on Jesus in the garden sinful?  I guess we have to ask what sin is.

“Sin is all in thought, word, and deed contrary to the will of God,” we recite in Confirmation.  Prof. Neill Plantinga defines sin as “anything that is not the way it’s supposed to be”.  If something is not fulfilling it’s original purpose as determined by God, then it is sinful.  This is an awfully wide span of what is sinful and what isn’t.  Sometimes we get worried or touchy about placing so much, even falling asleep, in the sin category.  But while the span of sin is large, the good news is that the span of grace is even larger!  To hold such a vast view of sin requires us to hold an even vaster view of grace, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be!

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Mar 14 – Thoughts on Deut. 22-24 & Mark 14:1-26

“…when it was customary to sacrifice the Passover Lamb…”

Mark makes no bones about what Jesus is about to do.  He has told us numerous times from Jesus’ own mouth that He is about to die, to be killed in fact, but also to rise again.  And here, he tells us why.

On the night of the first Passover, the Jews were huddling in Egypt in their homes awaiting the final plague of God.  He had turned the Nile River to blood, brought flies, gnats, locust, boils, and frogs to cover the land, the land of the Egyptians had been in complete darkness (though not the land of the Israelites) and now came the last and worst plague of all.  Since the firstborn son carried on the family name, got the inheritance, and ascended the throne, this final plague in essence wiped out the future of the entire nation of Egypt.  With the death of the firstborn sons, the plagues were complete, Pharaoh’s heart was finally broken of its hardness, and God’s people were free.

But the angel of death sent for the firstborn of Egypt didn’t distinguish between Egyptian and Israelite.  So God gave them a way out.  A perfect, spotless lamb was to die, to be killed in fact, and it’s blood put on the side posts and top of the door of every Israelite home.  When the angel of death saw the blood, it would pass over that house, not killing the firstborn.  Hence, the practice and remembrance of the Passover Lamb was born.  A perfect, spotless lamb was sacrificed so that it’s blood would rescue the family from death.

And so, thousands of years later, when it was customary to sacrifice the Passover Lamb in remembrance of God’s salvation from death in Egypt, Jesus shared the bread and wine, the body and blood of the Lamb, with His disciples.  And through His sacrifice, His blood rescued them all from death.  And that blood still rescues us from death today.  For those who put their faith, their trust, in Jesus, death is averted and eternal life begins.  Will you let Jesus be your Passover Lamb?

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Mar 13 – Thoughts on Deut. 19-21 & Mark 13:21-37

Waiting is hard, and waiting a long time is harder.  As a kid, waiting for Christmas was always hard, as proven by the fact that most of our teachers seemed to just give up the week before Christmas break and show movies.  They knew none of us had the attention for a lesson when we were waiting for Christmas to come.  Today, waiting for the weekend, or a day off, or even a paycheck can be hard.

If waiting for a week for the weekend is hard, and waiting for two weeks for a much-needed paycheck is harder, imagine how hard it is on us that we have waited 2000 years for Christ’s return!  For a very long time people were sitting outside on hilltops watching the sky and waiting for Jesus.  This is what prompted the Apostle Paul to command Christians to get to work and do something rather than spending all day sitting on a hill waiting for Jesus and all night mooching off of family and friends for food and a bed.

Eventually, people gave up watching the sky and got back to business as usual, but with the assurance that He would return soon.  Then it became a theological dogma that Christ would return, and everyone believed it would be during their lifetime, just not this week.  And eventually we came along, the first generation to NOT believe that Christ was returning in our lifetimes.

So today we proclaim that Christ is coming again, but we don’t believe we’ll see it.  We raise our hands in despair at the world around us and cry, “come, Lord Jesus!” but it’s not a prayer we believe will be answered on the spot.  So what do we do with teachings like this from Jesus, who says, “wait expectantly”?  Waiting is hard, and long waiting is harder.

The bad news is that we must be disciplines to continue waiting expectantly regardless of how we feel or even believe.  The good news is that Jesus has promised His return, and when He does return, He will bring redemption with Him.  We will see this world redeemed into the New Earth of Revelation.

And I for one can’t wait.

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