Category: Lent

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Love, It’s That Simple

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:34-35

Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

A moment ago, the world was ordered. Plans were in place. Victory was at hand. Three years of constant travel to endless towns, encountering people at every turn craving the promise of hope they had waited generations to hear was about to pay off. Adoring crowds had hailed their entrance into the city with an extravagant parade.

The Kingdom … had finally … arrived.

Earlier, the group of brothers had assembled in an upper room away from throngs crowding the city streets below, watching with odd curiosity as their leader stripped off his outer garments, grabbed a nearby basin of water and a towel, and proceeded moving from man to man, gently washing their feet in an astonishing display of humility and service. “Women and slaves do this,” they whispered to one another, “not the Messiah!”

“The Last Supper,” Leonardo da Vinci, 1498

During the ceremonial meal, celebrated each Passover in remembrance of God’s Deliverance of His people from bondage, the man for whom these men had left behind everything and followed shocked them into momentary silence.

“Betrayal?” “Leaving us?” “What about the Kingdom?”

This simply couldn’t be. It was just … wrong.

An Act of Love

Every Christian knows this story from the Last Supper. My high school friend and extraordinary Christian artist, songwriter, and teacher Michael Card penned an amazing song memorializing the moment (“The Basin and the Towel”). The Supreme Savior of the World assumes the lowliest of positions to demonstrate the power of a servant’s heart to his disciples.

Today is known around the Christian world as “Maundy Thursday.” The term comes from the Latin word mandatum in John 13:34 meaning “command.” Jesus instructed his disciples in a new commandment following this episode to “Love one another.” Foot washing, while an ancient custom of hospitality in the Middle East, was redefined by Jesus as an amazing act of service and love.

But it was not the ultimate act of service. That would come later in the evening, foretold during the Passover meal by Jesus. He revealed to his disciples how he would demonstrate an infinitely more meaningful act of love and sacrifice in willingly walking into the hands of the Jewish and Roman authorities to suffer their sham trial, conviction, and execution in atonement for sins of the world.

The last meal Jesus shared with his disciples is described in all four canonical Gospels (Matthew 26:17-30, Mark 14:12-26, Luke 22:7-39 and John 13:1-17:26). In addition to the foot washing episode uniquely depicted in John, the key events in the meal included preparing the apostles for Jesus’ imminent departure, predictions about Judas betraying Jesus, and the foretelling of the upcoming denial of Jesus by Peter. As the evening unfolds, the scales eventually drop from the eyes of the apostles as Jesus calmly, lovingly explains the meaning of all they had seen and heard the prior three years.

He Didn’t Run

He wasn’t running. He wasn’t fighting back. He wasn’t raising an army to storm the Roman garrison housed at the Fortress of Antonia overlooking the Temple. He wasn’t ushering in a sweeping movement of retaliation, or vengeance, or eye-for-eye justice.

Instead, Jesus offered his incredulous apostles an entirely different message. Away from the thousands that followed him wherever he went, Jesus looked into the eyes of his twelve closest friends and brothers and taught them a new meaning of Messiahship: love.

Jesus was blameless. His ministry was built on non-violence, healing, raising the dead, and freeing those held hostage to sin. He brought hope to the hopeless and life to those dying in darkness.

But on this evening, he told his followers the shattering truth: no one would thank him. No one would celebrate his acts of mercy and kindness. In less than 300 minutes, he would be arrested. Within 21 hours he would be dead.

Wrong. Just, wrong!

The smoldering ember Jesus planted in the hearts of his apostles that night in a tiny room a few feet above the streets of Jerusalem was resisted by every man sharing the meal with him. Yet within a few weeks it would erupt in a blazing wildfire that would spread the to the length and breadth of the known world.

The Ultimate Weapon

Because ultimately, Jesus demonstrated how goodness, kindness, and compassion could overpower the oppression and authority of the world more than any weapon or army. He revealed the most overwhelming and radical insurgency movement the world had ever known: a kingdom built on love, not vengeance.

In today’s world filled with sensationalized violence, hatred raised to an art form by endless media and wall-to-wall news coverage, celebrity-inspired self-aggrandizement pouring out of Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, this simple story of love wouldn’t “go viral.” It wouldn’t last an entire news cycle, shouted down by voices more interested in self-promotion and personal agendas than lasting, profound changes of the human heart.

Muslim protestors, credit Walid Shoebat

But ultimately, Jesus’ story of love transcends all of those things. Because this simple story of love is not about one man but is about all of us. It’s the story of what happens when a world gone mad does everything it can to extinguish hope through violence, and hatred, and fear, and yet is overcome by the triumph of sacrificial love. In the words of Reverend Dr. Emily C. Heath, “It’s a story of love that was rejected and buried, and yet was still too strong to stay in the ground.”

What If?

What if the world knew us as Christians not by the Bible we carry, the cross hanging from our neck or the church we attend? What if Christianity was not defined by size of our amphitheaters or the production value of our music-filled services? What if our faith wasn’t identified by what we say we believe about Jesus, or how self-righteously we portray ourselves in blog posts?

What if, instead, we were known as Christians by our love?  What if we could show the world what Jesus showed his disciples that night, a world where we are united in spirit, walking beside each other, working together to build Kingdom-filled communities founded in love rather than dividing lines?

Tonight, as you reflect on what a simple act of feet washing memorializes, as we pause to join in the solemnity of a Passover dinner shared by a condemned Savior and his weary followers 2,000 years ago, take a moment to remember. Take a moment to remember not just what this night or even the coming weekend of Easter means, but what it means to be a Christian in the world of the Fourth Day, the day after the Resurrection, the day when light emerged from darkness.

Remember what it means to be a truly Christ-centered Believer. Remember Christ’s commandment from John 13 – to love each other as he loved us.

Love, it’s really that simple.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Untamed

“They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” (Luke 12:53)

“Trust me – you’ll know when I’m mad!”

Ever hear anyone say that? We sometimes completely misread another person, assuming because they seem soft-spoken they’re easily manipulated or weak. Kind of like Captain McCluskey and Sollozzo thought Michael Corleone was just some “young punk.” We know how that turned out…

“It’s not personal, it’s strictly business…”

Every Lenten season, I’m bewildered by modern revisionist Christians (including pastors and pseudo-pastors like former minister turned political commentator John Pavlovitz) attempting to recast the Jesus and God of scripture into something more easily digested by today’s “delicate” or “enlightened” spiritual palettes with “woke” politically correct awareness.

As though an authentic Jesus, the acknowledged son of the Living God, Lion of Judah, Alpha and Omega, the very Word that spoke creation into being has mellowed with time, reconsidering the commandments he embodied.

A Different Jesus

Unlike the milk toast, lukewarm, tolerant-of-any-and-all-behaviors-as-long-as-you-mean-well Jesus popularized by scriptural-lite churches seeking ever-larger audiences and appeasing and increasingly secularized world, the real Jesus was convicted, fully “sold out” for the essential message of God to love Him and turn from all forms of sin.

Even in his quiet moments, Jesus was clear. Every encounter he had with a fallen soul ended with some form of instruction to repent. When challenged, he never retreated to meek and shy platitudes but rather reiterated the central role God and God’s Law must play in our lives. He lived out the words of Joshua when as a dying patriarch he told all of Israel “As for me and my house, I will follow the Lord.” (Joshua 24:15)

If read with a discerning eye, Jesus’ words often plainly cut through the lackadaisical or deceitful attitudes of his listeners. Sometimes, bordering on the fiery and harsh.

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild. Cecco del Caravaggio’s “Christ expulses the money changers out of the temple,” 1610

In Luke 12:49-53, Jesus is recorded having a lengthy discussion with both his disciples and a “crowd of many thousands.” Near the end of this episode he offers these words: “I have come to bring fire on earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.” Earlier, he described the faithless and unwise manager being “cut to pieces” by his master, and those not doing their master’s will being “beaten with many blows.”

Not exactly the weak-kneed pacifist popular with the Richard Rohr crowd. In fact, neither Jesus nor God are ever described in Scripture as being “meek and mild,” tamed like house pets for our amusement.

Fear of God is a Real Thing

Instead, from Genesis to Revelation what you find is a God who is to be loved, but also respected in fear, worship, and yes, sometimes dread:

  • Leviticus 19:14 – “You shall fear your God, I am the Lord.”
  • Psalm 19:9 – “The fear of the Lord is pure”
  • Psalm 111:10 – “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”
  • Proverbs 1:7 – “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.”
  • Proverbs 14:27 – “The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, turning a man from the snares of death.”
  • 1 Peter 2:17 – “Show proper respect to everyone: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honor the king.
  • Romans 3:18 – In Paul’s indictment of fallen mankind separated from God by sin he says, “there is no fear of God before their eyes.”

And what of the reactions Jesus’ own disciples had to his amazing works? In Mark 4 after Jesus spent the day teaching crowds beside a lake, he and his disciples cross the lake to find a bit of calm and piece. As they crossed, a terrible storm arose, threatening to capsize their boats and drown the men.

Roused from a sound sleep in the front of the boat, Jesus rebukes and calms the storm, scolding his disciples for having so little faith. Terrified, they asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”

Hardly timid.

Biblical Truth

Somewhere along the way, we lost sight of Biblical truth. Encouraged by trendy terms such as “tolerance” and “inclusion” – which in and of themselves are worthy ideals and in the proper context wholly scriptural – we’ve somehow transformed God into a deity that looks very much like us, a kind and grandfatherly soul who tolerates our every transgression and gives us all the things we ask for.

This new God accepts our modern secularized morality, agreeing with our redacted and reinterpreted scripture to fit the whims and desires of the moment. This God has no standard we must meet, as long as we consider ourselves “good people.” This God is a God taken for granted.

Pastor Steven “God Broke the Law for Sin” Furtick and Pastor Rick “Works First, Faith Second” Warren

The true God – the God of Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus, Paul, you and me – that God is not to be taken lightly. That God allows us the follies of our own will but holds us accountable. That God “has authority to throw you into hell,” as Jesus warned in Luke 12:5.

Yet underlying this awesome and omniscient power over our lives is a God of love, a God filled with kindness, a God faithful in all He promises for those who fear and love Him. He desires our hearts but will ultimately destroy those who harden their hearts and minds to His will.

God Won’t be Tamed

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Simply put, there’s no way to “tame” or “tone down” God. We can’t redefine Him to fit our modern tastes any more than we can change the law of gravity to soften our fall if we accidentally step off a 20 story building. We can’t negotiate with His eternal and perfect nature. And we can’t avoid the consequences when we try to do these things.

Yet God is also gracious, loving, overflowing with kindness and mercy, willing to forgive us and welcome us home when we remember that in the end everything is about Him, and never about us.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17