Archives For Atonement

Good Friday through Nicodemus’ Eyes

Jason Micheli —  March 30, 2013 — Leave a comment

imagesThis Good Friday we broke the worship service and sermon into thirds with each segment narrating a piece of Nicodemus’ story as told by John. An actor in the congregation played Nicodemus, speaking the bolded lines below. The altar table was piled with several dozen loaves of bread which Nicodemus ‘spoke’ to during the first two parts and later wrapped in linen and buried in the final segment.

You can listen to the audio here or in the iTunes Library under ‘Tamed Cynic’ or under the ‘Listen’ widget on this blog- however you may not be able to pick up Nicodemus’ lines.

I. Born from Above: John 3

[Nicodemus enters down center aisle, carrying a lit candle]

     The first time he met him it was Passover about three years ago.

     All that week the man from Nazareth had been performing signs and miracles. He’d even stormed through the Temple courts one day with a whip in hand, shouting that they’d turned his ‘Father’s’ house into a market.

That got people’s attention.

     The city was filled with hundreds of thousands of pilgrims for the Passover Feast. It was easy for the man from Nazareth to attract a crowd. Many of those who listened to him and watched him, believed in him, believed on his name, believed he was from God.

Some had quite opposite reaction. Still others stayed silent- and safe- on the sidelines.

The first time he met him it was Passover, three years ago.

It was long into the night. The streets and the sky were dark. Dried blood still marked the doorposts of the places where the feast was celebrated.

One of those who’d seen Jesus among the crowds, came knocking. At an upper room. Jesus was asleep when he heard the sound at the door- it would be a while yet before his Father’s will kept him up all night.

Nicodemus knocks on the door. The city was filled with travelers and pilgrims; he would’ve had to ask around to find the right address, or he would’ve had to follow Jesus and wait in the shadows.

Nicodemus knocks on the door and waits to step inside the threshold before he pulls his hood down. No one’s awake but why chance it.

     The first thing the man from the shadows says is: ‘Rabbi.’ 

     As in, ‘Teacher.’ 

     As in, ‘you know something I don’t.’ 

     Still standing in the entryway, he says to the groggy-eyed Jesus: ‘Teacher, we know you’re from God. You couldn’t do the signs you do were you not.’

Teacher, we know… We know. He doesn’t say ‘me.’ He doesn’t say ‘Teacher, I know.’ Jesus notices that beneath the cloak his visitor is wearing the robes of the ruling priests. He’s come by candle light, in the dead of night- not an official visit, Jesus guesses.

     ‘Teacher, we know…’

Jesus can see there must be more to it than that. This priest didn’t come all the way out here in the middle of the night just to say that.

So Jesus rubs his eyes more awake and motions to the table for Nicodemus to sit down. He lights some candles and notices how Nicodemus sits in the shadows with his back to the window.

Jesus breaks a piece of leftover bread and pours a cup of wine and offers it to him. Nicodemus says no thank you.

     And Jesus can tell by looking at Nicodemus’ anxious, edge-of-your-seat eyes that there’s something about Jesus that reveals something about Nicodemus.

     Something that is empty.

Incomplete.

Even though Nicodemus has it all.

The truth is, Jesus tells him, it’s one thing to see what I do, to listen to me teach. It’s another thing to see what I point to: the Kingdom of God.

To see that, to experience that- it’s like…being born all over again.

 Something in what Jesus says strikes a threatening chord.

Nicodemus hears the challenge in it: ‘The life I have now isn’t enough? I’ve got to be born again, a second time, from above?’

Nicodemus, he’s a teacher of the law. A Pharisee. He knows what Jesus meant. It’s not that complicated. He just doesn’t want this to be about him so he pretends to not understand. He asks questions, poses qualifications. Clergy are good at that.

How can this be? You can’t mean that… What are you saying? 

    ‘You’re not listening,’ says Jesus. And Jesus tells him that for someone to enter God’s Kingdom, you’ve got to learn how to live all over again.

All Nicodemus can think to say is: How can this be? 

     Jesus goes on to say something about how much God so loved the world and how no one will really believe until the Son is hoisted up for everyone to see.

Nicodemus goes on pretending he doesn’t understand.

Except, he really doesn’t understand. It was still night when Nicodemus went home.

He left without ever asking what he’d come to ask, without ever confessing what it was he secretly believed

II. Let Anyone Who Is Thirsty: John 7 Visit-of-Nicodemus

[Nicodemus enters from behind pulpit, carrying palm leaves and empty pitcher]

     Nicodemus didn’t see him again until later that fall.

     The leaves had turned, the air had cooled and the harvest was in. Once again thousands of pilgrims had returned to Jerusalem, this time for Sukkoth. The Festival of Booths- the holy days when Jews gave thanks for the harvest.

     For the week long festival, make-shift booths were set up all over the Temple grounds and in every nook and cranny of every side street. The pilgrims slept in the booths to remember the forty years Israel had wandered in the wilderness and how the Lord had satisfied their hunger and their thirst.

Every day during Sukkoth, bulls would be sacrificed. Every day prayers for rain offered, and even prayers for the Resurrection of the Dead.

At night, there’d be dancing around fires as worshippers waved palm branches and called upon God to send a Messiah.

‘Hosanna!’

Jesus had just fed the multitudes with a few loaves of bread. He’d just told them that he was Living Bread, Bread from Heaven.

So Jesus comes late that year for Sukkoth, about the fourth day. As soon as he arrives he starts teaching in the Temple.

     Some in the crowds, like Nicodemus, press him by asking: ‘How do we know you’re from God?’ 

     And the man from Nazareth responds bluntly that ‘if you were doing the will of God you’d see that I’m from God.’

Others in the crowd conclude that the Messiah himself could not do more than this Jesus can.

The holiest day of the week long festival is the seventh day.

Day seven comes and inside the Temple priests (priests like Nicodemus) process around the altar, carrying basins filled with water from the well at Siloam.

[Nicodemus processes around the altar table with the pitcher of water]

     Seven times they process around the altar and on the seventh turn around they pour the water over the altar to praise the God who never lets his People go thirsty.

That’s inside the Temple.

     Outside the Temple, on the seventh day, refusing to go away, Jesus declares to the crowds: ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink.’

That gets people’s attention.

The priests and the Pharisees send the Temple police to arrest Jesus, but the police, at least for now, are afraid to touch him. They come back empty-handed, and the Pharisees go through the roof, screaming Jesus is a fraud and anyone who listens to him is accursed.

Nicodemus is there when the police come back empty-handed. Biting his lip and not meeting anyone’s eyes, he just listens to their rage.

     After a few moments, finally and hesitatingly, he speaks up and asks his fellow priests: ‘Doesn’t the Law require us to give this man from Nazareth a fair hearing?’

     All eyes pivot to Nicodemus and they snap at him: ‘Why, are you one of his disciples?’

Standing there in the light of day with all eyes on him, Nicodemus says…nothing.

Not one word.

Whatever he thought about Jesus, whatever he believed about Jesus, he kept it to himself. He kept it private.

He still didn’t understand what Jesus had said about being born again.

[Nicodemus walks away down center aisle, stops and looks back as though filled with regret]

  St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain (fresco)III. I Will Not Be Silent: John 19

[Nicodemus enters down center aisle, stopping middway, just watching, cowardly, recognition gradually coming over him]

     The third and last time he sees Jesus it’s Passover again.

     The city’s filled with the same familiar strangers. This time Nicodemus doesn’t come knocking in the dead of night.

And that week when his fellow Pharisees try to trap Jesus with questions, Nicodemus doesn’t rise to his defense.

When a plot is hatched and Jesus is arrested, Nicodemus is certainly there and presumably says nothing.

When Jesus is put on trial, Nicodemus doesn’t speak up, doesn’t step out, doesn’t risk the life he has for a new one.

     I don’t know where Nicodemus was exactly when they crucified Jesus, but I wonder if he was there.

I wonder if, when they nailed Jesus to his Cross, Nicodemus remembers and suddenly understands what Jesus had meant when he told him that many will believe when the Son of Man is lifted up for all to see.

Or, when Jesus cries out in agony, I wonder if Nicodemus begins to understand what Jesus had meant that God so loved the world that he gave…

Or when the soldier spears Jesus’ side and water rushes out, I wonder if Nicodemus is there and remembers the man from Nazareth saying: Let anyone who is thirsty come to me.

I wonder because when Jesus finally dies, all of his friends have fled in fear or shame. Even his mother is gone.

To do anything but leave Jesus’ body hanging there on his Cross was to out yourself: as a follower, as a believer, as an enemy.

     I wonder because it’s Nicodemus who steps from the safety of the sidelines to bury Jesus in the plain light of day.

[Nicodemus walks up boldly to the altar rail, carrying flask of holy oil] 

 The perfume he purchases to bury Jesus costs the equivalent of seventy-five years’ worth of wages.

And surely when he drained his savings account someone would’ve asked what all the money was for and Nicodemus would’ve said: ‘Jesus. It’s for Jesus the Messiah.’

And the size of the perfume, 100 pounds, would’ve been eye-catching and sensational and would’ve required help to move.

And again, someone would’ve asked ‘What’s all this for?’ and Nicodemus would’ve had to say a second time: ‘For Jesus. I’m doing it for Jesus.’

[Nicodemus starts to form loaves of bread into shape of a body and wrap the body in linen]

     Only a few hours have passed since the trial. The crowds would’ve still been angry and lingering as Nicodemus bore his awkward burden down the same streets and up the same hill that Jesus had carried his Cross.

     It would’ve taken time to bury him, and in the light of day anyone can could have found him out.

Anyone could have watched as he and Joseph pulled the twisted nails out of wood and bone.

Anyone could have seen them as they gently carried his broken body down and, with the attention of midwives, wiped his still raw wounds and cleaned his body and combed his spat upon hair.

Anyone could’ve spotted them anointing his body with a 401K’s worth of perfume and spice.

Anyone could’ve watched as they respectfully wrapped his naked body in linen and then buried him, rock by rock, all the while singing psalms of lament.

 [Nicodemus starts to sing...What Wondrous Love]

     Singing like they didn’t care who heard them or how different this would make their life now.

Singing like they knew faith in this Jesus can be many things but it can’t be PRIVATE.

Singing like they knew faith in this Jesus can be practiced in many ways and in many places but NOT IN SECRET, NOT IN YOUR HEART.

     There in the open, in the light of the fading day, anyone could’ve listened as Nicodemus, this priest, performed the funeral rites over Jesus‘ grave and then prayed, as Pharisees did, for Resurrection.

     That day, Good Friday, is the day Jesus died, but I think it’s also the day Nicodemus is born.

     Again.

[Nicodemus takes a few more minutes to ‘wrap’ the body, then in silence lays it at the foot of the cross]

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Sermon Shout Out from Scot McKnight: Which ‘Son of the Father’ Would You Choose?

Jason Micheli —  March 29, 2013 — 2 Comments

IMG_0593- Matthew 27.15-26

If I could offer you a choice: between a savior who tells you to return hate with love, or a savior who gives you permission to strike back at those who do you evil- if I could give you a choice, which one would you choose?

If you could choose: between a savior who says: ‘those who pick up the sword will die by it,’ or a savior who invites you to take up arms against the world’s villains- which one would you choose?

If you had a choice: between a savior who promises you a better life and the end of suffering, or a savior who promises you a life of cross-bearing- which one would it be?

Who would you bet on?
A savior who refuses to be a victim, or a savior who refuses to be anything but?
A savior who promises to liberate the poor or a savior who becomes poor?
Which one?
A savior who promises to turn the clock back to the time you were most happy, or a

savior who speaks of a future where everything is new and unfamiliar and turned upside down?

Which one would you choose? Which one really?

 

I have a friend; he likes to think of himself as something of a prophet, an activist, an agitator. He’s the sort of guy who can string together words like proletariat, bourgeois and globalization and do so with a straight face.

He’s the kind of guy who’s always talking about the Revolution coming.

In terms of appearance, he is equal parts Che Guevara, Rob Reiner and a leprechaun. He’s the kind of righteously angry activist that in earlier generations would’ve been called a hippie, a bohemian, a Red. Today, you’d just say he’s a coffee-shop kind of guy, MoveOn.org/Occupy Wall Street kind of guy.

He likes to hang out in eccentric coffee shops and smokey, out-of-the-way pubs, and between sips and drags- and with his balding white head wrapped up in some sort of scarf- he likes to talk about the Revolution coming.

About the poor rising up. About leaders being ousted.
About the system being taken back.
You all have friends like this too, right?
Every conversation with him is the same. At first you’re impressed by the authors he can quote, by his grasp of issues and by his diversity of knowledge. And always at some later point in the conversation you start to wonder exactly what newspapers this guy reads and exactly what’s in that cup he’s drinking from? What’s he smoking?

He’s eccentric. But once you know him his perspective is easy to understand. He does humanitarian work in the developing world. It’s the kind of vocation that has frustration and tragedy built into it. And that, I think, explains his frequent rants and bull-sessions.

Every day he sees what doesn’t work and every day he’s reminded of who doesn’t care. He works in places where the system is broken, where ideals give way to brute reality and where good intentions don’t go far enough.

One of my conversations with him, not too long ago- the smoke hung heavy in the air between us. Some kind of world music was beating in the background around us. We’d both just been lamenting the many ills in the world, and my we had been ranting about how hard it is to get people’s attention, how hard it is to get people to care.

When suddenly in a critical tone of voice my friend said to me: ‘It must be hard for you…being a pastor.”

And I thought at first he was baiting me to defend my faith or Jesus or all of Christianity but he wasn’t. He was pushing me to defend you. Christians.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

And he said something about how most Christians just want a savior who will bless them or comfort them or answer their prayers. But they don’t want a savior they have to follow very far.

“So you don’t think Jesus is relevant?” I asked.

And with a philosopher’s air he said: “No, the problem’s not with Jesus. The problem’s that so many Christians choose something else.”

 

If you were a Jew in Jesus’ day, the raw reality of Rome’s invasion left you with three political options.

If you wanted to hang on to your wealth and status then you could collaborate with the enemy. Think Herod.

Instead of collaborating, you could turn within and use Rome’s oppression as an opportunity to call people to reform and holiness. This was the route taken by the Pharisees.

A third option, popular with the masses, saw the overthrow of Rome as the only faithful option. Those who chose this option were called Zealots, and they pushed for an armed Revolution that would return Israel to the glory it had known under King David.

Depending upon your point of view, the Zealots were either criminals or freedom fighters. At least one of Jesus’ twelve disciples was a Zealot, Simon.

 

The Zealots believed a time was coming when God would break into history and rid the Promised Land of the Roman invaders. And they believed their violence was in harmony with the violence God was about to wreak very soon.

Barabbas is a Zealot, and the fact that his crimes were famous probably means he was something of a folk hero to the pilgrims gathered for Passover. It’s likely too that Barabbas’ name and deeds were better known in Jerusalem than Jesus’ own. It’s even possible that Barabbas had a larger following than did Jesus of Nazareth.

Every year, at Passover, to keep a lid on any Revolutionary fervor, Pilate had two choices available to him. He could crucify some Jewish insurgents just to remind everyone who was in control. Alternatively, he could release a prisoner in order to appease the crowds. Usually, Pilate did both.

That Pilate even offers to release Barabbas, a known revolutionary, shows that Pilate doesn’t actually expect the chief priests to push the charges against Jesus any further. Zealots like Barabbas wanted to assassinate the Jewish elites too.

Pilate expects the chief priests’ jealousy of Jesus to be outweighed by their fear of violent radicals like Barabbas. That the chief priests refuse to relent on Jesus shows that they understand how Jesus poses a different kind of threat.

So Pilate lines them up, side by side, and gives the crowd a choice.

They’re both named “Jesus,” which means ‘God saves’ or ‘Savior.’

The one’s last name ‘Bar-abbas’ means ‘son of the Father.’ The other, not by name but by origin, claims the same identity. In other words both of them are named ‘Jesus, son of the Father.’

They’re both criminals in the eyes of the chief priests.
They’re both opposed to the Powers that be.
They both ignite within their People the hope that one day soon they will be free. Pilate lines them up, side by side. These two ‘Jesus-es.’
‘Which would you choose?’ Pilate asks them.
Which ‘Savior’ do you want?
Barabbas promises he can change the world by changing who’s in charge of it. Barabbas promises everything will be better if only we get rid of Pilate and the

Priests and Rome.
Barabbas asks his people to take up arms.

Jesus asks his people to take up their cross and follow.

Matthew says that the chief priests ‘persuaded’ the crowds to choose Barabbas over Jesus. The reality is that they probably didn’t have to try very hard.

 

One morning we were sitting down drinking coffee together. My friend was only half paying attention. He was rattling off his litany of the world’s ills while doing some kind of Tai Chi in his chair to music that was playing only in his head.

You all have friends like this, right?

Distracted, he was talking about the need for Revolution, about the need to change the System- to get rid of the people at the Top, to throw out the people in charge. Sensing that we were heading down a familiar rabbit hole- one I didn’t want to venture down that particular morning- I asked him, something that for some reason I hadn’t asked him before.

“Then why do you choose to do what you do?”

His arms didn’t stop their Tai Chi movements back and forth, but he cocked his head to the side, like he didn’t follow my meaning.

“If you’re all about Revolution and changing the System, then why do you do what you do? Small business development, advocacy, community organizing: these things take time. They’re small steps. You spend all your time with people on the bottom.”

And he smiled, like I had just outed the man behind the mask.
And he said: “Because just changing who’s at the top doesn’t really change anything.

If you really want to change the world, people need to be transformed.”

 

If I gave you a choice…

Would you choose a savior who butts in on your marriage and your money, who forces you to look into the mirror and own up to your own brokenness, who says you have to try and understand those you don’t like, who says you’ve got to love those who don’t like you, who says you’ve got to forgive and forgive and forgive.

Or, would you choose a savior who promises to leave the rest of your life alone and just answer the one prayer you have in your life?

Which would you choose?

A savior who will change only the pain in your life and leave the “good” alone, or a savior determined to change everything?

Which?

Pilate lines them up, side by side. Two different Jesus-es. Pick one, Pilate says.

Barabbas says ‘I can give you the life you want.’
But Jesus says ‘I can show you the life God wants.’
Barabbas believes governments and their armies are the tiller of history.
But Jesus believes the future can be moved by a Cross and the hearts that are

changed by it.

Had Pilate known the crowds would choose Barabbas, he probably never would have given them a choice.

But the choice is with us all the time.

 

 

 

 

 

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Sorry, Jesus. They Knew What They Were Doing

Jason Micheli —  March 29, 2013 — 7 Comments

imagesForgive them- that sounds like Jesus, alright.

But: ʻThey donʼt know what theyʼre doing?ʼ Really?
Itʼs not like Jesus to get something so wrong.

Maybe it would help it all go down a bit easier. Maybe it would help us hear Lukeʼs Gospel with a little less dis-ease.

Asking ʻwhere am I in the story?ʼ would be a lot less incriminating if we could just say:

ʻThey didnʼt know.ʼ
ʻThey didnʼt know what they were doing.ʼ

But they knew exactly what they were doing.

Judas knew.
He was selling a friend out for money.
For thirty pieces of silver.
You canʼt get more straightforward than that. He waited to do it. He bided his time.

He chose the day and the time to walk out on the people whoʼd been his family.

And betray the person he loved.
Donʼt tell me he didnʼt know what he was doing.

Peter knew.
He was afraid.
So he turned his back on all the promises heʼd ever made.
Maybe he didnʼt mean it the first time.
But it wasnʼt just the first time.
It was three times: ʻJesus? Whoʼs that? I donʼt know him.ʼ
Maybe it adds insult to injury, Jesus. Maybe it hurts you to think so, but Peter knew. He knew what he was doing. He was saving himself.

You canʼt tell me the religious leaders- the scribes and the elders and the Pharisees and the chief priests- didnʼt know.

Didnʼt know they were smearing another for their own gain.
Theyʼd been after him since he first sat down at the wrong dinner table. Since he first touched the wrong kind of person.

Since he first spoke to the wrong kind of woman.
Since he first healed on the wrong day of the week.
Theyʼd plotted for just this sort of thing. This is what they wanted. Theyʼd orchestrated the entire event.
They contrived the indictments against him.
They whipped the crowd into a lynch mob.
Surely, of all people, Jesus knows that.
Knows that they know what theyʼre doing, that they have no alibi and no excuses.
No right to forgiveness.

 

The soldiers knew.
They canʼt hide behind their uniform.
They canʼt say ʻwe were just following orders.ʼ
No one ordered them to blindfold him and punch him and tease: ʻYouʼre a prophet, guess who just hit you?ʼ
No one ordered them to put a Kingʼs robe on him and mock him.
No one told them to take the time to fashion a crown of thorns for his head, or

to roll dice for his bloodied clothes, or to carve and nail a contemptuously ironic sign above his head that said ʻKing of the Jews.ʼ

 

They just did it for laughs.
They knew what they were doing.

And certainly Pilate knew.
He was choosing expediency over responsibility.
He even washed his hands of the whole sordid matter.
Literally.
Jesusʼ crucifixion was just a matter of course for him.
Jesus, for him, was just another peasant to make an example of.
His cross just one of hundreds that stood along the roadsides of Jerusalem. As a warning.
A deterrent.
He knew.

And so did the crowds gathered there that day to listen to his trial and watch him die.

Of all those gathered at his Cross only Mary and Mary and 1/12 of his disciples are weeping.

Everyone else is there to exult in his suffering.

To stare at the wreckage and feel a bit better about their own lives when compared to his fate.

Thereʼs no other reason for them to be there except that they know exactly what theyʼre doing.

Do you still want forgiveness for them, Jesus?

Everything Iʼve ever done, I knew what I was doing.
Every lie and half-truth ever told.
Every betrayal.
Every time Iʼve compromised my convictions just because that was the easier

thing to do.
Every person Iʼve hurt.
Every word spoken in anger.
Every good Iʼve taken for granted.
Every grudge Iʼve clung to and every decision Iʼve made based solely on

whatʼs best for me. Sure I knew.

Maybe I didnʼt always know what the outcome would be. Maybe I didnʼt always understand the consequences. Maybe I didnʼt always intend the damage done.

But I still knew what I was doing.

And yet-
Jesus says to the Father: ʻ…forgive them, they donʼt know what theyʼre doing.ʼ

Last summer I spent a week with a group of Aldersgateʼs college students at a monastery in the French countryside. The monastery weekly welcomes thousands of Christians from around the world.

In many ways, the monastery is just what youʼd expect: monks in oatmeal- colored robes, chanting, simplicity and silence. We worshipped four times a day at the monastery, and most of the services were nearly identical in structure.

Except on Friday night, every week of every year, the monks celebrate Good Friday, the day of Jesusʼ death on the Cross.

Worship at the monastery is different in that the brothers donʼt explain or introduce anything- at best theyʼll flash a digitized song number on the wall.

Itʼs not like Christmas or Easter at Aldersgate where our instructions for communion take longer than the sacrament itself. The brothers just expect you to stumble along until you eventually fall into the rhythm of their worship.

That was true of their Good Friday service as well.

Most of the service was the same as all the others that week. We chanted songs like ʻIn the Lord Iʼll be Ever Thankfulʼ and ʻCome and Fill Our Hearts with Your Peace.ʼ There was 20-30 minutes of absolute, unguided silence.

But on Friday near the end of the service, as we were singing, the monks all stood up off their knees and shuffled down the aisle, stepping over all the people who were sitting on the floor. And for moment or two the brothers disappeared into a little room near the front of the sanctuary.

Just as everyone began to sing ʻJesus Remember Meʼ in French, the brothers reentered the sanctuary carrying a large cross on their shoulders. The cross was flat, about 6 feet tall and painted like a Medieval icon.

Because there were so many people crowded into the church and because we were sitting on the floor, I couldnʼt really see what they were doing with the cross. I saw them carry it into the middle of the sanctuary but then they dropped from my line of sight.

We kept singing ʻJesus Remember Meʼ over and over; the chanting was a constant ebb and flow, like the sanctuary itself was breathing in and out. After a few minutes I could see groups of people near the front of the sanctuary getting up off their knees and walking towards the middle of the room and forming a line.

It went on like that for a while. We must have sung 3 or 4 songs while a steady stream of people stood up and lined up, and still I didnʼt know and I couldnʼt see what it was they were doing.

Eventually the people around us started getting up and stepping over towards the line and so our group did too. I was only standing in line for a minute when everyone in line in front of me dropped down to their knees.

I still couldnʼt see what was going on. The aisle was twice as long as the one here at Aldersgate, and there were hundreds of people in front of me, all on their knees, inching forward on their knees every half-minute or so.

We were singing ʻWith God There is Fullness, Fullness and Joyʼ but we were singing it in German and I was tripping over the awkward melody and my knees were starting to ache and my back was cramping up and then after a very long time I could see.

The brothers had laid the cross flat on top of four terra cotta blocks so that it was about a foot off the floor. A dozen or so people were kneeling around the cross, bent over it with their foreheads pressed down against it. They were praying.

I crawled up to the cross when it was my turn.

I fit my shoulders in between two other people and I leaned over and I laid my forehead down on the cross, just about on the spot where Jesusʼ wounded side wouldʼve been.

The woman next me was praying ʻFather, Father Fatherʼ in desperate, pleading German.

A teenage boy on my left was sniffing and whispering ʻIʼm sorryʼ over and over in Spanish, and, with my shoulders touching his, I could feel his back heaving as he cried.

Everything Iʼve ever done, I knew what I was doing.

You know what I thought about that night, with my forehead pressed down against the cross? You know what hit me like a wound somewhere deep inside me?

That every lie Iʼd ever told, every insult or injury Iʼd ever done to someone I loved, every resentment, every angry word, every sin…that I hadnʼt just done it to the people I love, the people in my life…Iʼd done it to Him too. To God.

That every time I make a mess of my life, the person I hurt the most is the One who gave me that life.

And suffered for it.

Maybe it sounds strange for a pastor to confess, but I donʼt often think that way.

ʻForgive them,ʼ Jesus prays.
ʻThey donʼt know what theyʼre doing.ʼ
No, they know, but they donʼt GRASP what it is theyʼre doing.
Judas doesnʼt grasp that itʼs not just a friend heʼs betraying. Itʼs God. In the lesh.
Peter doesnʼt grasp thatʼs itʼs not just his rabbi heʼs denying. Itʼs his Lord. Pilate doesnʼt grasp that in the lowly criminal heʼs condemning all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. Every one of them.
They know.

But they donʼt grasp-

That all the lies weʼre willing to tell.
All the betrayals weʼre willing to make.
All the promises weʼre willing to forget.
All the hypocrisy and violence and shame and cruelty weʼre willing to tolerate. That, when all is said and done, our true victim is God.

And heʼs the One praying for our forgiveness.

The woman at my right was pleading ʻFather, Father, Fatherʼ and the boy on my left was praying ʻIʼm sorry.ʼ

Meanwhile the words that came to me were Davidʼs words: ʻAgainst you, you only only Lord, have I sinned.ʼ

Words we pray on Ash Wednesday.

Words I donʼt think I ever really understood until I said them on my knees with my head pressed against Godʼs wounded side.

And the feelings those words conjured in me: Smallness. Shame. Guilt

But you know- when I got up off my knees, not one of those feelings came with me.

They stayed there. At the cross.

And I think thatʼs the paradox of the cross that only Christians can truly understand: that as much as the cross is confirmation of the very worst about us, itʼs that much more a sign of the goodness of God.

When I left the cross and found my place back on the sanctuary floor, the monks and the weekʼs pilgrims were all singing ʻWithin Our Darkest Night You Kindle a Fire that Never Dies.ʼ

And I can tell you- if I hadnʼt been a Christian already, I wouldʼve become one that night.

 

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Did Christ Labor in Vain?

Jason Micheli —  March 28, 2013 — Leave a comment

 

The Lord says it is too light a thing that you should be my servant.  You will be a light to the nations that my salvation may reach to the end, reach to the end, reach to the end of the earth.  I have labored in vain.

The Lord says kings shall see and stand because of the Lord, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel.  Sing for joy, 

O heaven and earth for the Lord has comforted his people, has comforted his people.

Bring Jacob back, bring Jacob back.  Bring Jacob back.  I have labored in vain.

Bring Jacob back.  My Lord has forsaken me.  Bring Jacob back.  My Lord has forgotten me.

Isaiah 49:  1-13

Thursday night of Holy Week ends where Jesus’ last week began: at the Mt of Olives, where the prophets promised the Messiah would appear. The story of salvation begins where the story of creation began: in a garden.

Peter- and probably the other disciples too- brings a sword with him to the garden. Even now Peter expects Jesus to turn out to be the sort of Messiah they’d all wanted. A Messiah worthy of palm branches. A Messiah who provokes and leads a war. A Messiah who deposes Caesar as handily as God disposed of Pharaoh.

Peter wants to sing a victory song as badly as the Israelites had wanted to sing.

Peter brings a sword and Jesus rebukes him: ‘Do you think I couldn’t appeal to the Father and he will at once send me twelve armies of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled?’

In the garden Jesus prays: ‘Let this cup pass from me.’

John Howard Yoder says this is Jesus wrestling with his final temptation. This is Jesus struggling to believe that the only way to defeat the power Sin is to suffer the very worst it can do.

“I have labored in vain” Isaiah foreshadows.

Here’s a question for tonight: 

Does Isaiah imagine Jesus speaking those words, as the darkness creeps all around him and defeat seems certain. 

     “I have labored in vain” is this Jesus speaking?

     Or does Isaiah imagine those words spoken by you and me? 

     Those of us who’ve given years to Jesus and brought swords with us only to discover he’s not the sort of Messiah we had wanted. 

 

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Jesus’ Mandate

Jason Micheli —  March 28, 2013 — Leave a comment

Who has believed what we have heard?  And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

He had no form or majesty.

Nowhere did we see that we should desire him; He was despised and rejected by others.

He had no form or majesty.

And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?  He was despised and rejected by others.

He had no form or majesty.  He had no form or majesty.

- Isaiah 53:  1-3

Today is known as Maundy Thursday. ‘Maundy’ from the Latin for ‘mandate’ refers to the scene where Jesus washes his disciples’ feet and then mandates that they ‘love one another as I have loved you.‘ images

     The Foot-Washing is found only in the Gospel of John.

     In John’s Gospel Jesus always means more than the obvious. In John’s Gospel Jesus never leaves a miracle or a teaching moment at its literal level. Rather, they are always occasions to reveal more about his identity.

In John’s Gospel, when Jesus feeds the multitudes he announces that he’s the ‘Bread of Heaven’ and tells the confused crowds: ‘feed on me.’

In John’s Gospel, when Jesus meets the woman at Jacob’s well and she asks about water, Jesus tells her he’s ‘Living Water’ that can quench her thirst forever.

In John’s Gospel, after Jesus heals the man born blind he turns the conversation to the blindness of those who can see and declares that he’s the ‘Light of the World’ that no darkness can overcome.

So when Jesus washes his friends’ feet in John’s Gospel we should read it as more than an obvious object lesson about our love and service to others. In fact, in the years following Christ’s death and resurrection, the first Christians recalled the Foot-Washing and they interpreted it as a parable of Isaiah’s Suffering Servant.

When Jesus removes his outer robe, he’s emptying himself of his divinity. And when Jesus lays his robe down, he’s laying down his life. When he puts on a loincloth, a slave’s garment, he’s putting on our sinful nature. When he kneels down at his friends’ feet, its God stooping down from his throne as the incarnate Son. And when Jesus washes their feet it’s him washing us of our transgressions. 

     “I’ve given you an example,” Jesus says. 

And because this is John’s Gospel, Jesus means more than the obvious.

He’s given them an example of the meaning of his death; so that, they will know:

even though has no form or majesty,

even though there’s nothing about him others might desire,

even though in less than a day he will be despised and rejected,

in his suffering and humiliation is the power to annul the wages of Sin.

 

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Jesus the Disappointing Messiah

Jason Micheli —  March 27, 2013 — Leave a comment

Pharoah and his army he cast into the sea, they went down, down, down like a stone. By your right hand, by your mighty right hand they were shattered; Lord, you shattered them all. Sing to the Lord; the Lord has won, he has won.  Sing to the Lord; the Lord has won, he has won.

- Exodus 15

Moses is referred to as a servant thirty-six times in the scripture Jesus learned on Mary’s lap.

Only, there’s another understanding of servant that courses through the Hebrew Bible. It’s not a memory of one God has sent to his People. It’s the promise of a servant God will send to rescue his People.

The prophet Isaiah was called after the Chosen People had been invaded, defeated and plundered by Babylon. Israel’s best and brightest were exiled into captivity. Those not exiled had it worse; they had to live among ruins, the promises of God reduced to ash and rubble. images

Isaiah looked for a day when God would restore his People by way of another Servant.

And maybe because of all the violence Isaiah had witnessed, maybe because Isaiah knew firsthand that violence doesn’t always end in victory songs, Isaiah anticipated a servant unlike Moses. Isaiah envisioned a deliverance different than the Exodus.

After Jesus enters Jerusalem, on Monday of Holy Week, Jesus goes to the Temple as though he’d been deputized and it’s his jurisdiction.

     Not content to ‘teach’ he drives them out:

The merchants who’ve set up shop in the narthex.

The money changers, looking to make a buck off atonement. The venders who sold doves to those too poor (like Mary and Joseph) to purchase a proper animal for sacrificing.

Jesus drives them out along with all the thousands of sheep and oxen waiting to be sold to the holiday travelers.

Tradition refers to this as Jesus ‘cleansing’ the Temple, but it’s really a stampede. In a city already filled with 200,000 pilgrims and the 20,000 lambs required for their Passover meals Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple creates chaos in the streets. It leaves the crowds spellbound.

     It puts Jesus firmly in control of events.

If he truly is a Messiah like they expect then his coup d’etat is nearly complete: the Temple’s been taken, the crowds are on his side and the Roman fortress is literally just next door.

But Jesus doesn’t take up arms.

Instead, Matthew says that after he’s driven out the merchants and money changers, Jesus welcomes the blind and the lame and the children to come up to him in the Temple, a place where they were forbidden.

     Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple becomes yet another example of how he’s taught all along.  

As though God had sent this messiah to teach.

     As if deliverance could be accomplished with just words.

     Or with the Word.

 

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How Does Jesus Save Us: Satisfaction

Jason Micheli —  March 27, 2013 — Leave a comment

IMG_0593The Satisfaction or Substitutionary theory of the atonement is what many Christians take to be the only understanding. It’s the perspective you hear before altar calls or read in religious tracts.

This metaphor is rooted in biblical passages that suggest vicarious suffering as the way in which human sin is redeemed (Isaiah 53); that is, Jesus suffers in our place and we benefit from it. 

Paul writes using this metaphor, especially in 2 Corinthians and Romans. This theory, despite its omnipresence today, wasn’t that widespread in Christianity until it was popularized by St Anselm in his book, Why Did God Become Human? 

     Though many Christians assume this is the only biblical model for atonement, it’s critical to note that Anselm bases his understanding in the vassal-lord relationship of Medieval feudalism. Anselm draws a parallel between judicial and legal imagery used by Paul to the relationship of serfs and lords.

Sin, according to Anselm, is like the social disobedience shown to a lord. Just as satisfaction for the ‘debt of honor’ must be a paid to a serf’s lord, so too does God demand satisfaction for our sin. Like a Medieval lord, Anselm believes our sin offends God and God’s honor.

We’re guilty of offending God.

Sin is a debt that needs to be forgiven.

As Paul says, the punishment our offense merits is death.

     This theory focuses on Jesus’ suffering on the way to and on the Cross. In this understanding, Good Friday is the day that changes history.

It’s called the substitution theory for reasons that will be obvious.

Substitution imagines salvation as a law court in which you and me and all of humanity stand in the dock as the accused, on trial for the evil we do to one another and to God’s creation.

     God is the Judge.

The angry, wrathful Judge.

These are charges that we’re guilty of and our guilt is so severe that there’s no recompense we could ever make. What we deserve is eternal punishment, for God to just wipe his hands of us and be done with this thing called creation.

But Jesus suffers in our place.

      This is also called the objective theory because Jesus’ suffering changes how God sees us whether we believe or not.

The Protestant Reformers used the term ‘double imputation’ in reference to this theory of the atonement.

Human sin is ‘imputed’ to Christ, who had no sin himself, and Christ’s righteousness in turn is imputed to us, who have no righteousness on our own. Double Imputation recalls Paul’s letter to the Corinthians when he writes that ‘God made Jesus to be sin.’ Christ’s death objectively imputes Jesus’ righteousness to it. It objectively, once for all time, how God regards us. It reconciles, literally it sets things right.

This theory takes seriously the sin in the world. After all, who could look at the newspaper or travel to a third world country and not think God has ample reason to be ticked off at us. 

This theory also takes seriously the nature of Jesus’ death. Why is it, after all, that Jesus dies on a cross and seems to foreshadow from the beginning that this is what would happen to him? According to this theory, Jesus dies on a cross because its the lowliest, more forsaken death we can experience. Jesus dies the sort of death we deserve. It’s not the extent of suffering Jesus endures, it’s the lowly, abandoned nature of his death.

On the other hand, this theory can focus so much on the necessity of Jesus’ suffering and the severity of his suffering that God can seem more determined by his wrath than by his grace.

Does God, for example, really need to have his wrath satisfied?

The notion that our sin can offend God seems to put our sin in the driver’s seat. 

Most importantly, this theory seems to put God in contradiction with God’s self. God’s mercy is at odds with God’s righteousness. Grace seems conditional on Christ’s act of sacrifice. It seems to imply that incarnation is a last ditch effort to save humanity, that prior to Christmas and Cross God was not inclined to forgive humanity.

     What emerges therefore is a depiction of God that is at times distasteful. It presents a God who seems to need to be reconciled with us rather than a God we need to be reconciled to.

Think again of the tracts passed out by evangelists, the ones that describe God’s wrath, how death is what we deserve in God’s eyes, how God made Jesus die in our place. To someone with no other knowledge of Christianity, do you really this rendering would lead them to think God is a God of infinite love and peace?

 

 Karl Barth, a 20th century theologian, addressed some of these troubles while trying to recover the power of the substitutionary understanding of the atonement. Primarily Barth did it by more explicitly grounding the atonement in an act of the Trinity. It’s not, therefore, that God makes Jesus in our place; it’s that God-in-Christ suffers in our place.

     To say God is a wrathful Judge is not incorrect but it is incomplete. God, as Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, is the Judge Judged in Our Place. Whatever wrath God feels towards us for our sin, God assumes and suffers for us. In this way, God has always been, eternally, the God ready to die for us. God’s wrath is subordinate, even on the cross, to God’s love and mercy. 

     The cross, the sign of abject humiliation, is actually exaltation. It’s the complete and final disclosure of who this God really is. 

 

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How Does Jesus Save Us: Christus Victor

Jason Micheli —  March 26, 2013 — Leave a comment

      Patristic theologians, those theologians in the Church’s first generations, understood the work of atonement primarily in battle imagery.

For them, the Son’s work is a dramatic struggle Jesus wages with Sin and Death. Death in this perspective is a malevolent power, synonymous with Sin, which looms over God’s creation and frustrates God’s intentions for us. Paul, in Colossians 2.15, speaks of the Cross in this way and the effects Jesus’ cross have over the natural world in the Gospels suggest it too: the earthquake, the graves exploding open, the sky darkening, the temple veil torn in two. Jesus in Mark 10.45 speaks of his life being a ransom.

The Palm Sunday allusions to a military parade echo such a battle metaphor too. Jesus rides into Jerusalem just like Pilate, the crowds wave palm leaves, a messianic symbol, and Jesus is tried for claiming to be a rival king and he dies a revolutionary’s death. IMG_0593

For the early Church, Easter- much more so than the Cross- is the day that changes everything and the significance of the Cross is that it’s empty.

In the Gospel narrative, Pilate and the chief priests represent the power of Death and Sin in the world. They represent us, who enamored of ‘power’ such that we cannot recognize or accept that Jesus’ self-giving form of love is the true power that moves the universe.

Jesus saves us by breaking Death’s power, by defeating the lure that Sin has over us and by making possible a life lived in anticipation of God’s New Creation. This metaphor sees atonement has happening primarily through Easter’s Empty Tomb.

The strengths of the Victor theory include its recognition of the reality and power of Sin in the world; Jesus comes to defeat Sin on a cosmic level not simply forgive my personal sin and Jesus does this objectively and decisively.

According to this way of thinking, Sin really was defeated by Jesus once and for all. As Paul says in Ephesians, he has brought down the principalities and powers. All that’s left in our world, all the sin and evil we see in our world, is just the last gasp of an enemy that’s already been defeated.

Think of the Ring of Power in the Lord of the Rings and how it exercises power and evil long after Sauron had been defeated. It was, in fact, this model of the atonement that informed Tolkien.

Another attribute of the theory is how it understands that God works liberation and reconciliation not through violence but by letting Sin do its worst to him and thus demonstrating its ultimate finitude and weakness.

The Cross, then, shows God exhausting Sin’s power.

There’s literally nothing else Sin can do to him and its still not enough to destroy God’s condescending love. 

The Victor metaphor also pays due attention to Jesus’ life. The content of Jesus’ life, his teaching, is the same power that defeats Sin at the end of the story. His teaching isn’t extraneous or optional for us. It’s Jesus training us to do battle in the world today.

Christians committed to the efficacy of Jesus’ teaching aren’t being naive or idealistic, as critics often charge; in fact, they are being more realistic than anyone else.

Sin has been defeated by Jesus.

We shouldn’t act as though Christians must resort to non-Christians means to do battle. Sin should be taken seriously but the only way to defeat it is through Christ’s way of life.

It may even kill us as it killed him but ultimately Easter shows it to be the only winning strategy.

 

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The Atonement Doesn’t = The Gospel

Jason Micheli —  March 25, 2013 — 1 Comment

IMG_0593     The biblical concept of ‘salvation’ spans past, present and future.

     Salvation isn’t just what Jesus did; it’s what God does.

When it comes to Christ specifically, salvation, meaning ‘healing’ or ‘rescue,’ is a word that functions with two complementary but different meanings.

Understood against a large canvas, ‘salvation’ refers to what Jesus does (or did) through his life, death and resurrection. More particularly, ‘salvation’ also refers to what God does today to heal us of Sin; that is, ‘salvation’ refers to how God extends the benefits of Christ’s work to us in the present.

I would argue the only way to avoid such confusion is construing salvation as a work, not of God or Jesus in isolation from one another, of the entire Trinity.

     As Trinity, God worked salvation for us through incarnation, cross and resurrection.

     As Trinity, God works salvation (healing, rescue) for us through the Holy Spirit. 

 

Put in trinitarian terms, salvation is both past and present. It’s a work of both the Son and the Spirit.

As a work of the Son, salvation can be defined in terms of Christ’s act of atonement and refers to the way in which Jesus‘ birth, life, death and resurrection reconciles a sinful humanity to God.

While this work of the Son properly encompasses the breadth of Jesus‘ story, oftentimes atonement more narrowly refers exclusively to the Cross.

When Christians say ‘Jesus saves,‘ for instance, they usually mean ‘Jesus atoned.‘

Atonement is a sacrificial term owing to the Levitical holiness codes in the Old Testament. In Christian terms, it denotes the way in which Jesus (his life or death or both) is an expiation, an expungement, for humanity’s sin. As I tell the confirmation students each year, atonement refers to how Jesus makes us ‘at-one‘ with God, a God we’d estranged through our sin.

Christ achieves this at-onement irrespective of the rest of the course of human history. As the darkening skies, the torn temple veil and the quaking earth in the Gospels‘ Good Friday scenes suggest, there is an objective status to Christ’s work on the Cross. In some real way, the obedience and faithfulness of Jesus all the way to the Cross determines how God henceforth regards humanity.

     That the penalty of humanity’s sin is reconciled, however, does not mean that humanity is fully restored to the life God originally intended.

     It may be the 1 Cross + 3 Nails = 4-giveness

but that does not mean you are a transformed person.

Forgiveness alone does not make you who God made you to be. Forgiveness instead makes it possible- it frees you- for the work of the Spirit (grace) to restore you so that, over time, you may resemble Christ.

The work of the Son is objective, true, and perfect. It is continued and perfected in us by the work of the Spirit. The Spirit makes available in the present the work of the Son in the past.

You can see this Trinitarian flow in the chronology of the Gospels themselves. After Good Friday and Easter, the Risen Christ appears to the disciples (to whom all is clearly forgiven) and breathes his Spirit upon them.

Soon, having received the Spirit, the disciples, heretofore dim-witted, sinful and cowardly, bear a striking resemblance to Jesus himself.

Having been reconciled they’ve been restored to lead Jesus‘ life for themselves.

As a present work of the Spirit, salvation can be defined in the very terms Jesus used the word: as healing, rescue, restoration from sin. This is the way Jesus speaks in Luke 19 when Christ invites himself to Zaccheus‘ house. Jesus‘ hospitality and welcome of a dreaded tax collector and Roman collaborator changes Zaccheus‘ heart such that Zaccheus willingly gives up his ill-gotten fortune. In response, Jesus declares ‘salvation has come to this house today.‘ In other words, Zaccheus right then and there has experienced healing.

Salvation as a work of the Son refers to what Jesus says ‘is accomplished’ on his cross. It’s the work that is true regardless of my own belief or faith. Salvation as a work of the Spirit refers to how I access and appropriate the Son’s work in my present life. If the work of the Son is what is objective about salvation then the work of the Spirit is that part of salvation that requires my response.

 Already you may be asking: If the work of the Son (on the Cross) is definitive, perfect and objective once for all, then what of those who don’t believe? Who never come to the faith or who do not take it with sincerity?

That specific question is best answered later but understanding salvation as a work of the Spirit allows you to answer part of the question now.

Namely, if one does not appropriate salvation in their present life then- no matter the question of how God will ultimately judge them- they are living an impoverished life. They are living (settling for) a life less than what God desires for them.

 

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Vampire Christians: Q/A on the Cross

Jason Micheli —  March 25, 2013 — 1 Comment

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This weekend for my sermon I answered questions people submitted about the Cross, the Atonement and the Passion Story.

I pulled the questions at random from a bingo tumbler and answered as many as possible.

Dennis Perry, my assistant pastor, joined me at 3 of the services and a friend and divinity student, Andrew DiAntonio joined me at 2 of the services. 

You can listen and/or download them by clicking here or going to ‘Tamed Cynic’ in the iTunes store.

I will add them to the ‘Listen’ widget on this blog by the end of this week.

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