Last week, during Palm/Passion Sunday, abandonment was considered in relation to cast off like the guy on the airplane. But Jesus was totally abandoned just a few days after being welcomed with waving palms. What happened? If you believe, what happened was the beginning of the mystery of faith. Part one was that Christ died. Now we discover in the story of the empty tomb that Christ has risen. He lives! But have you ever consider the story in John 20 and how the writer appears to blow his own trumpet. Verse two references the other guy, whom Jesus loved. Verse 3 again refers to the other guy running with Peter to the empty tomb. Then verse 4 gets a bit over the top where the other guy out runs Peter to the tomb. I find this passage fascinating in that the other guy seemed to be on an ego trip. Perhaps, the other guy told his version to his advantage. I do not know nor anyone else I suspect knows why this passage was written this way. All I know is that the real other guy in this story was a woman. I don’t get it. A women in a man’s world got it. Mary Magdalene was first to discover the empty tomb. She then told John (the other guy) and Peter who came running. What happened next? Well the two guys saw an empty tomb, got upset, then went back to where they were staying. (verse 10) Why would they just leave like that? I guess that is what guys do. Perhaps, their faith and compassion did not equal Mary’s. The story may have been different had it been totally up to the men. It took a woman in a man’s world. Believe me she was certainly in a man’s world especially back in ancient times. Mary was grieving and stayed to reveal the second part of the mystery of faith. Christ had risen! The tomb was not empty instead she found Jesus. She then left to spread the good news. (verse 18)
If Mary can spread the good news in a male dominated world approximately 2000 years ago, what is our excuse for not sharing? Every day should be Easter. We all have a mission to share the second part of the mystery of faith so that all of those who will believe will have victory when He returns. Happy Easter to all.
By definition, abandoned means having been deserted or cast off. That definition means a lot if you are the one being deserted or cast off. The rest of us are spectators to the event of abandonment. Just yesterday, I saw a man being dragged off a plane just because he was randomly chosen by the airline to reduce the number of seats filled on the plane. What is sad by this event is that there were so many better options to choose but the authorities chose the most gruesome and graphic option to remove the passenger. By the way, I will not mention the airline but it begins with a “U” and ends with a “d”. Perhaps the best description should be “U” are really “Dumb”. How many people will change their flight plans to avoid this airline in the future?! I am sure that many will remember this event long after the person has been well compensated for his troubles but that is beside the point as the damage has been done. At least this man will live to tell the story of how he was cast off and deserted.
There are events in history that does not end with a mere dragging in humiliation off of a plane. One event that we remember every year is the total abandonment of a complete innocent person who was so misunderstood by an ignorant crowd of people saying “Crucify” him. He entered Jerusalem with shouts of acclamation and waving palms in the air only to be hung on a cross just a few days later. Unlike the man drugged off the plane in humiliation, this man was drugged into a mock court, accused of insulting God, labeled king of the Jews, severely tortured, nailed on a cross and left to die. He was truly abandoned by all. We can say not by me but history proves otherwise when crowds become a mob. (Read Matthew 26 and 27 for the whole story)
The mystery of faith is three parts. One part is that Christ has died. I am writing this message after my Palm Sunday service but today is when we celebrate “Passover”. Jesus knew the significance of this day in the history of Israel and the Jewish community and he knew that he would be betrayed and abandoned. This Thursday is called Maundy Thursday which commemorates the last Supper of Jesus Christ. (Read John 13 for more.) This Friday is called Good Friday. In my opinion, hardly a good day at all as this is the day Jesus was totally abandoned by everyone but just a few. He was crucified and sealed in a tomb which was guarded day and night to prevent further deception of what the authorities thought as one great big hoax. BOY WERE THEY WRONG! The second part of the mystery of faith will be revealed this Sunday so stay tuned for the rest of the story.
There are many ways of defining stability in various sources such as the “property of a body when disturbed from equilibrium to develop forces that will restore the original condition.” That is one definition. Here is another to be “steadfast; constant; as of character or purpose” I like both of these definitions but how about an example of two chairs. One only has 2 legs for support and the other has a third or even a fourth for support. I believe we go through life being unstable as if sitting on a two legged chair where we have to constantly battle within our bodies to keep upright. We can do it but it is so much effort when all we need is more support. A 2 legged chair reminds me of being selfish or self centered where a more supported chair reminds me of our inter-dependence to be in an attitude that comes from the Spirit that leads us to life and peace. (Romans 8:6)
I believe we all have a purpose for our existence. I also believe that we can go through life struggling to “do it our way” or we can be at peace to do it “His way”. It is our choice. We can sit on that 2 legged chair and fight stability within our bodies and soul or we can choose a more stable approach in life by asking for more divine support. There was a US Army medic in WWII that ask for support to save injured soldiers left to die during the battle of Okinawa. He had a choice. Leave the battle or ask God for guidance to save just one more soldier from sure death. At least 75 of those soldiers owed their lives to this one person who’s choice is forever documented in history. I will let you search for the movie and facts of this moment in history. I call this a modern miracle of faith. Likewise, Jesus chose to turn back to the most certain path to a quick demise when he saw an opportunity to perform a miracle of resurrection. (John 11)
I believe we all can live more stable lives to reach our ultimate purpose in this world so we can look forward to the world to come.
According to some definitions when you ask about degrees of blindness, it will immediately go to the medical consideration of legal blindness which starts at 20/200 or worse. I do not want to get into the logic behind this consideration or what it means but I certainly do not want to get into the passenger seat of a person driving with this condition. Would you?
I prefer just to talk generally that we are all subject to degrees of blindness. The absence of energy which produces heat yields degrees of coldness. Likewise, the absence of light yields degrees of darkness. If you close your eyes very tightly to block out light, you may have a very brief glimpse of what a blind person sees with his other abilities. Is a blind person different than anyone else? No! Do they have a different perspective to the world around us? Yes! Consider the story in John 9. The teachers of the law or Pharisees accused a blind man as being a sinner and certainly not as informed about the world according to their perspective. He was cured by Jesus on the Sabbath. That was against the laws as understood by the Pharisees so therefore he was a sinner. Let me try to understand this logic. The blind man or his parents were sinners because he was born blind. Jesus was considered a sinner because he performed a miracle on a Sunday. The Pharisees were disciples of Moses because they knew God spoke to Moses. So does that make the Pharisees right? The blind man was questioned repeatedly how he received his sight as they refused to believe the miracle. Verse 25 says it all. The blind man said all he knew was that he was blind and now he can see. He went on to say this is incredible that the so call intelligent people can be so blind. How did they react? He was expelled from their society. Does any of this story run very close to our own current so called modern day society?
I believe that we all have degrees of blindness. Our vision is too narrow to see the world from other’s perspectives. Perhaps, we should see more with our heart and soul and less with our limited logic of the world.
Let’s look for the miracles of faith around to see the true light.
Led Zeppelin wrote and performed a beautiful song called “Stairway To Heaven”. The lyrics begins with “…and she’s buying a stairway to heaven” then ends with the same words. I do not profess to be an expert in the story behind the music but I do appreciate the symbolism in that we all use steps to advance into a higher level. Perhaps, it is just getting up a flight of stairs to another level of a house or store. It could be a simple routine we do each and every day but I like to also use the step analogy as our journey in faith. I believe in work. If a person does not work then there should not be a reward. Most of us work for a pay check. If we do not, I believe we better have a very good reason why. The work ethic is fundamental to our way of life. In my opinion, there are too many people living off the blood, sweat and tears of others. So my basic belief hear is that we all work for pay. If no pay, no work and visa versa. As a professional for many years in my career, I learned that sometimes the amount spent in work yielded very little pay because I was building an investment with the belief that eventually the money would come. You might call that sweat equity. My respect towards the medical profession for example has gone up tremendously watching my Dr. daughter pay a huge price in sweat equity knowing the payoff will be further down the road. Now, there are some who work just enough to avoid being fired to earn a small living from someone who will pay just enough to keep them from quitting. I call that employee-employer mentality.
We take steps in our career to hopefully advance to the point where our work equals to our pay and then strive to compound our expertise to yield less work for more pay. There are many ways in which we can make our pay turn into investments that pay off huge dividends. I will stop here and say read more about how you can improve your chances of success in the future. Just go to any site or self help book on the shelf and learn more. It is never too late to become a student of investments for your future.
We work for pay but we pray for faith. What is the difference in faith versus work? From Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology, “Faith is a belief, trust and loyalty to a person or thing. Christians find their security and hope in God as revealed in Jesus Christ, and say “amen” to that unique relationship to God in the Holy Spirit through love and obedience as expressed in lives of discipleship and service.” In Romans 4, Abraham was made righteous not because of his actions of work on the basis of an employer’s grace but rather on faith credited as righteousness not by work but by his faith in God who makes the ungodly righteous. I consider Abraham at the top of the stairway to heaven because of his great faith.
Imagine steps leading to a door to heaven. Most of us wander around the house trying to figure out how to get into the house. Do we work to earn a ticket into the great door or do we submit to another way that may be somewhat different to our human nature? As a young Engineer, I was trained to perform my task a certain way to get favorable results. Deviations could lead to disaster. When I first began to question my own mortality having witnessed a few deaths, I began to wander is their a hereafter? I was walking around that door that seemed so far up. Try as I may I could not reach the entrance. Within the Wesleyan heritage and the Methodists to whom he founded, Grace can be defined as “the love and mercy given to us by God because God wants us to have it, not because of anything we have done to earn it.” In other words, we cannot work to earn His Grace. John Wesley described God’s grace as threefold. First is prevenient grace which in my words is the grace that we did not even know existed. The story of Nicodemus in John 3 to me is about our own journeys where we are stuck in one paradigm and need to shift into a new understanding. Nicodemus was a Jewish leader, a teacher of the law, who was searching for a new understanding through Jesus. He said how can an adult be born again? I encourage you to read more to find out what he discovered. Nicodemus was given a gift of God’s prevenient grace which is the grace that comes before our understanding. Like Nicodemus, so was I standing at the house looking up at the door. I took a leap of faith and made that first step towards the door. We do not know much more about Nicodemus after learning more about being born again but I suspect he went on to the next step of grace Wesley called justifying grace where we become aware of our fruits of the spirit or born again spirit. The first step was all about God’s pull because of his love for us where the second step is discovery of our newness. We may stay on this step of justifying grace for a long time before truly recognizing our gifts of grace to serve a higher calling. We then can take the third step to sanctifying grace where we are used to lead others to the stairway to heaven. Our time is well spent at this level before we enter the door ourselves. I believe none of us quite reach perfection but it is all about the journey to reach the highest level we can achieve in our very short period of time here in the flesh. After-all whatever is born of the flesh is flesh and whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit. May we all look forward to our spiritual lives according to His time.