Lenten Desert

Luke 4:1-15 – Gives us the account of Jesus’ temptation by Satan in the wilderness or desert.  This is one of those narratives that we’ve learned since childhood and heard preached repeatedly.  It is the inspiration for the season of lent, that we as the Church, are participating in at the very moment.  However, most of the focus our pulpits make of this story probably miss what may be the actual point of the entire temptation scene.  So much can be drawn from this passage, but as I reflected upon it this week, I found three things I believe everyone should take away from this well known story.

1.  The desert is a place of testing and trial that all of us go through.

We all have those Job moments where we tend to ask God the proverbially “why,” when we find ourselves in those difficult situations.  It may be cavalier and over simplifying to simply label all tribulation a “desert season,” but the connection between wilderness and testing are an essential metaphor throughout Scripture.  Israel finds herself in the wilderness for forty years at the hands of God.  The author of Hebrews compares our time here in this already, but not yet period of God’s salvation with the wilderness experience of Israel, encouraging the community that those who endure will enter into “rest” (another metaphor for the promised land – new creation).  Here in Luke 4, Jesus enters the wilderness like Israel did.  Jesus begins his ministry in victory where Israel failed.

When reading this passage, one should first be stuck by the fact that Jesus is led into the desert by the Holy Spirit.  It is God who leads Jesus into this place, into this dry and thirsty land.  The desert is the place where our lives are tested, where our faith is challenged, where our identity comes into doubt.  It’s where the ugliness of our heart’s rises to the surface.  It is a place of struggle, of loneliness, where temptation rears it’s ugly head in defiance of our life’s purpose and mission.  We find our motives, our will, and our dependence upon God challenged.

Sometimes we may feel like the desert is thrust upon us, that we have no choice.  Maybe like Moses we have fled into the desert because of circumstances, or like Israel we’ve gotten ourselves stuck in this position.  But, like Jesus this may be exactly where the Spirit of God has led us.  The desert may be a dry place, a location where life struggles to be seen, full of briars and hard places, but it is also the place of refinement, preparation, and purification.  It is a process we all need to regularly  submit ourselves to if we are ever to be imitator’s of Christ.

2.  Jesus’ temptations were authentic struggles that he was victorious through and we are invited to stand beside him in them.

Sometimes there is this inclination to minimize the struggle that Jesus faced because the nature of the temptations are for the Son of God.  In fact, Satan’s first temptation begins, “If your the Son of God.”  And maybe for some people, you say,  “See look even Satan recognizes he’s divine, of course he didn’t give in, he is God!”

Obviously this line of thinking foolishly misjudges the entire nature of this story.  It misunderstands the title Son of God and misses what Luke is inviting us to do within this narrative.  We are to be imagine ourselves in Jesus place, a place we have all been and failed.  Jesus has learned great self control and command of his body, but he is not relying on some sort of super power to resist Satan.  In Hebrews we are told that we have a high priest who can sympathize with our struggles.

Most of us know very little of temptation.  In the Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis raises the point that one can only understand temptation if one resists giving in to it.  The more that one resist’s temptation the greater the difficulty.  Someone who has urges to do this or that and immediately gratifies them, has never felt temptation.  This story invites us to imagine Jesus’ struggle.  When we are able to envision the reality of these temptations for sustenance, ambition, prestige, his own security and the great lengths to which Jesus victoriously withstood them, we will find our hearts knit close to his with the strength to rely on his word against the quiet voices trying to pull us to the left and to the right.

3.  The nature of the Jesus’ temptation concerns his identity and mission. 

Lastly, and maybe most importantly, we need to discuss the actual content of the temptations and their responses.  First, it must be said that the nature of all three temptations are connected.  They do not remain isolated temptations that simply address another area of human frailty, as if Satan is running down the list of human weaknesses.  The key to understanding these temptations can be found in the events preceding this pericope.

At Jesus baptism, the Spirit (same one that led him into the desert after this) descends upon him and in very trintarian character, YHWH speaks from heaven saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”  What follows is a genealogy that seems oddly sandwiched between baptism and desert trials.  The secret in understanding this order and the entire temptation scene is this declaration of Jesus as the Son of God.

It has been popular to understand this term in a Western manner as a term of divinity.  Something akin to Hercules, or simply just an emphasis on Jesus being the omnipotent creator of the universe.  I have no desire to question Jesus’ divinity, but it is an easy mistake to immediately assume this is Jesus’ divine side being affirmed.  Go to John’s Gospel for some more outspoken divine christological titles.

The Son of God phrase most assuredly has in mind Psalm 2:7 – “YHWH has said to me, ‘You are my Son.’”  This also includes Isaiah 42:1 – Behold my servant whom I uphold, my elect One (Anointed One) whom my soul delights.  I will put my Spirit upon Him (baptism scene = check^) He will bring justice to the Gentiles.

These references are messianic and royal.  They are both being drawn upon at the Baptism scene.  It is no wonder that when Jesus returns from the desert he quotes Isaiah 61 – “The Spirit of the YHWH is upon me.”  Isaiah 42 helps get a better idea of what it meant in Second Temple Judaism to saying something like Son of God.  It was directly connected to the messianic mission.  Herein lies the secret to the temptations Jesus’ faces, which begins with “If you’re the Son of God.”  The temptations are all ultimately about Jesus vocation and whether he will fulfill the messianic calling of justice via the path of humiliation and denial on the cross.  Don’t believe me, let’s take a look -

Jesus first temptation is to turn stone or stones into bread.  One should know you don’t break a fast with bread.  Even though this temptation is one that includes physical hunger, one should not stop reading into it there.  As Jesus feels the pangs of hunger, his messiahship would require him to provide a banquet for others.  The temptation to feed the crowds will show up again.  The temptation is one concerning all the hungry, all the poor, one with economic consequences.  If Jesus feeds the masses his kingship can be established.  Certainly the images of manna in the wilderness and the role of Moses lie beneath this first temptation scene.

The second temptation is the most noticeably socio-political.  If indeed the Son of God reference has it’s background in Psalm 2, than it would logically bring to mind verse 8 of that Psalm, “Ask of Me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance.”  Satan in the second temptation offers Jesus all the kingdoms of the world, which seems to fit with the promise of being the Son of God.  Here, the idolatrous power of politics and the hunger for nationalism have tried to tug Jesus into their tooth and claw world.

The depth of difficulty in this temptation only comes to light when you consider that if Jesus were to give in and accept the kingship of the world in the manner that Caesars and other Kings did, one could only imagine the war and pain he could prevent.  Would not the ends justify the means?  A little Satan worship and all that he needed to accomplish through the cross could be done without all the mess and pain.  Luke is equating the ends justify the means ethics with Satan worship.  Jesus quotes in response, Deuteronomy 6:13, a passage found in the middle of a discussion concerning the mission and election of Israel.  Jesus is denouncing the worship of any other god, a monotheistic exclamation akin to declaring the salvation and mission of God, but also affirming that he will remain in the river of God’s will flowing toward the cross and making YHWH king as the suffering servant.  Jesus will not be swayed to do God’s mission or establish the Kingdom in a manner that is not God’s will.

The last temptation is not Jesus just toying with the idea of being beyond suicide or desiring some angelic visitation.  Jesus being taken up to the apex of the temple and jumping off only to be saved in dramatic angelic fashion would have elicited responses similar to the transfiguration.  The symbolism would not be unrecognized.  Here is Jesus with the temptation of religious domination.  Regularly in the gospel he chastises those who look for signs and here he is tempted to win the people to his side with exactly that.  Instead he will enter the temple and judge it and lament over its eventual destruction.  When one considers that he could, with such an action, save the religious institution that his entire people and culture was built around, than the weight of rejecting such a method becomes clear.  Moreover, Jesus rejects the challenge to force God’s hand or demand intervention merely to suit his fancy and whim.  Jesus will do only what the Father has sent him to do.

Jesus is being tempted to doubt his identity and mission as the Son of God who will redeem God’s people and creation on a road filled with suffering.  He not tempted with absurd ideas, but with options that even appear like common sense.  However, Jesus is victorious, where all of us have failed.  This lent, what voices are calling you out to you to draw you away.  What struggles has the desert been revealing?  To what Scriptures will you turn to like Jesus.  Remember in these seasons that it may just be God’s Spirit calling you into this season.  Do not let the trials make you forget your identity nor let them co-opt the manner in which, we as God’s children, are to follow after him on the road to the cross.  And do not forget that He was faithful and victorious in the desert.  When Jesus emerged from the desert he went forth in spirit and power proclaiming the gospel all over Judea.  The desert is where we’re prepared to be empowered as his Spirit led imitator’s.

Repenting for Stealing Lent

As I write, a cacophony of fireworks continue to surround my apartment building.  It feels altogether strange to spend Ash Wednesday and begin the Lenten season while living in Shanghai during Chinese New Year.  Confronting your own frailty, sinfulness and rediscovering humanity’s need for mercy and grace just seems out-of-place while bright lights and noises canvas the sky.  In any case I won’t let all the celebration ruin sober reflections.  I guess something is always competing for attention, most of the time it’s probably us.

Have you ever met those people who become uncomfortable when they can’t control a conversation?  You know, the same people who try to steer a conversation back to them and their stories as if no one else could have something better to offer.  It’s as if an encounter with other people is an excuse for a performance.  It reminds me of when I was younger and how furious I would get on my birthday when my sister also got a gift.  In my head she was stealing from my day because it was obvious that August 17th existed solely for my praise and self adulation.  How dare my sister try to steal my thunder and co-opt my day.  Whether it’s conversations or birthday’s we as people unfortunately like to turn things into something about ourselves.  Whether we do as an introvert, within the confines of our hearts, or through bombastic loquacious flailing, our outcome is still the same.

While sitting in mass today for Ash Wednesday, I was meditating on my need for God’s mercy and reflecting on the frailty of my life, when I was struck with a thought.  Much like a conversation I wanted to dominate, I had turned this day of repentance and broken surrender to God, into my day.  If this was someone’s birthday, there I was strolling down the aisle looking for my own gift.  This service, this season had become more about my experience than about drawing closer to Him and to his mission.

Honestly, it’s not that hard to turn a day meant for humble reflection, confession, and repentance in to a self-absorbed practice of stealing the spotlight.  It happens not by simply making the day about us, but about making the salvation story just about us.  The way in which we can turn a call to deny ourselves in following the cross example of Christ into a story about our cross is  entirely too easy and frighteningly clandestine.  I do not mean to deny in any way the personal or intimate nature in which we are called to repentance and discipleship, only to hold it in balance with the greater narrative framework of his body and creation.

This season of Lent may include intense moments of solitude and even isolation.  It is after all a season that draws its inspiration from Jesus’ forty days in the desert, but it does not mean that the practice of penitent fasting and intense prayer is simply a privatized religious experience.  As we draw our eyes and reflection inward during this season, we should be mindful to not lose focus.  The season is not to emphasize us, but Him.  As I contemplated how the Lenten season should be balance between personal and corporate understandings I was reminded of a few concepts I believe help us practice this tension.

First, despite salvation being an experience to be endured as an individual, it is also entirely communal.  Repentance (as I wrote in another article ) is not simply an individualistic practice of asking forgiveness and feeling guilt.  The repentance preached by Jesus and by the Prophet John, were about turning one’s life over to the allegiance of God’s messianic judgment.  Jesus is announcing God’s Kingdom being inaugurated through his very vocation.  He is essentially asking all those who would hear his Gospel to deny their prior allegiance and get on board with him.  It’s a call to be the new people of God.  For the Jews it was, in a sense, reconversion.  It cannot be simply boiled down into behavior modification, piety, or holiness in the stringent sense of spirituality.  Repentance in the biblical sense is all about turning toward the Kingdom and being united in allegiance with messiah as well as with his mission.  As a result, we are to turn to a whole new set of behaviors (Kingdom ethics) that set us apart (holiness) as the new humanity (God’s image-bearers).  The paradigm set before us is the cross.  Thus, repentance not only includes a corporate and communal allegiance to God’s messiah and his messianic mission, but also to follow in continuity with that mission.  It is exactly this reason that we cannot keep repentance isolated as a solitary idea of personal guilt alleviation and excessive spirituality.  It is in some sense like getting a new citizenship and passport.  An individual act that only has meaning when understood within the scope of a much larger narrative.  Lent, gives us a chance to renew that citizenship.  Update our passports, if you will.

Secondly, it reminds us that our sinfulness and gross failures are not isolated events in our personal struggle to overcome our animal nature.  It forces us to remember that our sin is a condition of humanity and that even the creation suffers futility.  Sin and the problem of evil demand us to expand our theological windows beyond our isolated mistakes.  Sin remains a cosmic issue as well as a personal one.  When we remember the far-reaching consequences of evil within our world we are more humbly able to come to terms with the mercy, grace and judgment of God displayed by his suffering son.  It also forces us to take ownership of the consequences that our own sins, as individuals and as a society, have upon our neighbors.  We are never the only one’s who suffer for our disobedience.

Thirdly, the realization of our own shortcomings and of the broken nature of our world should burden us as a community to make evident the reality of new creation and the victory found in the cross.  It should stir in us some zeal and excitement when we realize that we are not meant to live in a cyclical world of mistakes with occasional success found in between.  It reminds us that the world is heading somewhere (toward resurrection) and so are we (resurrection).  In a maddeningly humble and bold way it empowers us with hope and evangelistic fervor while prostrating us in broken and reverent service.  It’s fullness, however, is only evident when we regain the greater vision of the community and creation at large to which we are invited to be part of and to whom salvation has been given.  When this cosmic communal vision is held before us we begin to discover the invitation we have within it.  The same goes for our daily lives.  How much would our daily discipleship change how we treat our sin, our prayers, and our charity, if we forever beheld in front of us our portraits fixed within the canvas of God’s salvation history surrounded by the brushstrokes of His people?

So let us have vision this lent that is magnified, but never narrow.  Let us search our hearts, but never forget His.  Let us increase our charity and love, but never disconnected from his ultimate charity on the cross.  Let us receive his grace, hope, and forgiveness while never forgetting to extend it toward others.  This season we remember that from the dust we were created, yet we also remember that word became flesh.

Easter Sunday: Celebrating the Resurrection

HALLELUJAH the Lord is Risen!!!!

Happy Easter.  It’s 7 AM and I am eating a decadent chocolate rabbit because it’s Easter.  It’s a time of lavish celebration.  If your not excited about today and profess faith in Jesus than you haven’t read the Bible well.  Today without question, is the most important day in the Christian calendar.  Remove Christmas and you loose two-four chapters in the Gospels, remove the resurrection and you lose everything.  There is no life, no defeat of sin, no redemption, no hope without today.  This is why, during my Lenten fast, I broke it once a week.  Some people may think I was being weak and looking for a way to make it easier on myself.  No, no.  We spent these forty something days fasting and preparing for Holy Thursday, Good Friday, the awkward Saturday and then we celebrate for one day?  This whole week should be chocolate for breakfast and filled for jubilation.  In an effort to hold the significance of resurrection closer to my heart, I broke part of my fast on those days.  To some degree the way we celebrate this season is an indication that we have, as a Church, marginalized Easter.

The Passion play I did in Mexico in 2008 didn’t even have a resurrection scene.  It ended with the cross.  The resurrection is not just the happy ending to the story with the cross being the real significance.  The cross is nothing without the resurrection.  Without it we have no hope, without it we have no redemption, without it we have no life over sin.  The resurrection is NOT about being promised assurance in heaven, it is NOT proof that the Bible is true or that God does miracles.  Because Jesus is risen, God has begun a new world within the present.  Because Jesus is risen, Israel and the world are redeemed,  Because Jesus is risen, we his people, have a new job to do.  This job is to bring the life of heaven to birth in the actual physical and earthly world now.  It’s more than knowing him in our personal experiences, it’s more than the assurance of heaven after death.

This Sunday morning, sermon after sermon will be tempted to turn this day into thank you for saving my soul from the cruel wicked world around us for the promise of heaven.  You may even hear that Jesus frees us from the burden of our physical reality, to be our real “spiritual” selves.  The resurrection is about God’s embrace of the physical world.  So much emphasis about the resurrection is that Jesus is not a spirit, not a phantom or ghost.  Jesus takes on our flesh in the incarnation, He suffers in his flesh on the cross and rises in his flesh on Easter morning, and he ascends and sits at the right hand of God in the transformed glory of the Word that became flesh.  Easter is the moment that God has truly become King of the World, that the space-time existence has been taken back under the juristication of God.  God is righting the world right in front of our own eyes.  Last year, on Easter Sunday, I listened to a sermon, which was all about how unimportant the flesh was and that faith in Jesus was essentially about an eternal world beyond this one.  The resurrection was boiled down to a death sentence of the present.

Read Revelation 21, get excited that our hope is not heaven, but heaven and earth being joined together.  Read 1 Corinthians 15 and get excited about sharing in the resurrection.  The resurrection, for too many, is a one-time event instead of an ongoing event in the liberation of humanity and the world.  It is not just a reinvention of the humanistic enlightment project either.  It’s not an affirmation that we can make a utopian society.  The resurrection is the foundation for a renewed way of life, which is both a majestically spiritual and physical event.  When the final resurrection comes, everything done in the present world, in the power of Jesus resurrection, will be celebrated and transformed.

We’re citizens of heaven, which ironically is not about escaping to heaven or a fondness for a homecoming made possible by Jesus, but about colonizing the earth with the life of heaven.  This is the Lord’s prayer being fulfilled.  Today we celebrate life, we celebrate that our Savior is risen, that the entire universe has been reset.  Many people have risen from the dead, but all have died again.  Jesus is the only one to never have perished a second time.  Herein lies our hope, that death has lost it’s sting and the grave has been robbed of power.  Today we celebrate forgiveness, today we celebrate the life of new creation, today we find that heaven and earth have kissed.  I pray you hear a message akin to what N.T. Wright says at the end of Surprised by Hope, a message, “that every act of love, every deed done in Christ and by the Spirit, every work of true creativity – doing justice, making peace, healing families, resisting temptation, seeking and winning true freedom – is an earthly event in a long history of things that implement Jesus’s own resurrection pointing back to the first and on the second (294-95).”

Don’t let the story of your faith marginalize today.  Don’t let your Christian faith mimic that Passion play in Mexico, whose resurrection was insignificant.  Don’t let today be one day, a one time event.  Let it sink into your soul, let it transform how you see the present, how you see the earth, how you see mission and evangelism.  Today is a day to sow new seeds in your life, to celebrate new ventures and dreams.  Celebrate newness of life and being a new creation.  Lent was a time of pruning and fasting, but now Easter is a time of growth, of planting, and celebration.  The cross puts to death that which would produce ugliness in our life, but Easter is about nurturing the beauty that should be flourishing and blossoming in our lives and in our world.  The world was in darkness, but light has come.  The risen Lord speaks to us today that God will tabernacle among us, that he will wipe away every tear, there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying.  There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.  He makes all things new.  Happy Easter.

Hallelujah! Christ is risen!

Blessed Are Those Who Mourn: Experiencing Good Friday

Good Friday: One of those Christian holidays that people aren’t sure how to treat.  Is it sad, is it happy cause I know Jesus rises.  I was always confused how at a Christian university I didn’t get the day off, but in public school it wasn’t even a question.  Moreover, I was even more confused how few churches had Good Friday services in Tulsa.  The name Good Friday is a holy irony because it celebrates how the apparent victory of death over messiah Jesus is actually the winning blow of God who says yes to redemption.  Death = Life, Tragedy = Victory, what sounds awful is truly good for humanity.  Still, if we overlook the sorrow and pain of Friday and Saturday in this holy week than can we truly celebrate the hope and joy of Easter Sunday?

In 2008 I was able to visit Juarez Mexico for the second time in my ORU career.  It was a training trip for the missions leadership done every year.  This particular year, spring break fell on same week as Easter and Good Friday.  One of the churches we were working with was doing a Passion play on Good Friday.  One of my friends Matt Bitner, a drama expert, was chosen as the leader and choose 10 men, along with himself, who would play Jesus disciples.  Two Mexican men were already chosen to play Judas and Jesus.  Somehow I made the cut.  I think I was just standing close when the jobs were being given out.  In any case they needed three to be the inner circle of James, Peter, and John.  Unsure how, but I unofficially became John.  We had no speaking parts in this play, but there were two important scenes for myself.  They included the moments when Jesus calls the three to pray with him in the garden and standing at the cross with the mother of Jesus Mary.

Unlike the Gospels, the last scene was the cross where Jesus dies surrounded by all his disciples watching.  When Jesus died in the play, all the disciples would leave except for Mary and I who would walk away last.  Mary happened to be played by a Mexican woman named Flor who was married to the man playing Pilate.  I was given the task as John to comfort Mary/Maria at the cross.  Comforting another man’s wife who speaks only Spanish was a bit uncomfortable.  Flor was a great actress who cried and wailed exceptionally well.  To play this part I did my best to imagine myself as John, as a young disciple watching his teacher, friend, and master be gruesomely murdered, while simultaneously trying to comfort his mother.  This mental preparation forced me to think of the sorrow and pain the disciples and Mary encountered.  I was reminded of Luke 2:34-35, where Simeon, after baby Jesus is taken to the temple, tells Mary the child will cause the falling and rising of many in Israel and that a sword would pierce her soul.

Here is his mother watching her son, the flesh of her flesh whom she raised and nurtured being beaten, mocked, rejected, abandoned, and brutally murdered.  Indeed a sword had pierced her heart.  As I reflected on that today I couldn’t help but see a similar situation.  There is a certain aspect of motherhood that is akin to God’s character of creator.  God as creator, Father and Mother of the universe and humanity, watches as evil infiltrates and corrupts his love.  His chosen people fall prey to wickedness and kill his prophets. It finally culminates in the death of his own son.  Surely a sword has pierced God’s heart.  There at the cross was in one fashion an illustration of the pain that God had felt for his creation, which certainly captured his heart then.  We shouldn’t overlook it because we know the resurrection was coming or that God knew that.  Jesus wept when Lazarus died even though he raised him back to life.

Jesus knowing the resurrection was to come after his death didn’t mean that he ignored the sorrow, pain, brokenness, of his death.  As Christians bred in a nation and society that preaches eternal happiness we sometimes have a difficult time with tragedy and sorrow.  The American dream is to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Consequently, we do well as a culture to ignore sorrow and deny pain as part of life.  Obviously that means internalizing the reality of Jesus passion is uncomfortable for many of us.  We do a strong disservice to ourselves to make light of the pain, sorrow, and despair of Jesus and his follower’s during this time.  Jesus tells us in the beatitudes that blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.  This doesn’t mean that you should walk around all depressed.  I encourage everyone to relive the events of Jesus death in their heart.  As you worship the crucified God, take to heart the darkness and pain, maybe for a moment feel the sword that pierces the heart of God and Mary.  For a moment as a Mexican woman wailed next to me, I hope I felt a bit of John’s heart as he watched his Lord Jesus die in front of his mother.  I hope for a moment I understood what it meant to gaze upon the Word of God made Flesh nailed to a cross for the sin of the world.  Every Good Friday, I pray that the Holy Spirit can keep my eyes fixed upon the king who made love known from a wooden execution.  What hope of healing and love do we have for those who hurt, who suffer, who find that honest pursuit of happiness full of emptiness and disappointment, if we can’t mourn as his disciples.  From that position of mourning, kneeling before the cross, we can know what it means to be blessed and comforted on Easter Sunday in the presence of the risen Lord.

Washing One Another’s Feet

“Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.  Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.  Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.” -John 13:14-17

Have you ever had your feet washed by another person?  It’s kind of a strange feeling.  We don’t live the world of the disciples for whom this was as common as washing your hands before dinner.  Yesterday I got to hang out and do some rock climbing with old chaplain and college friend, who indeed washed my feet and everyone else on our wing during a floor retreat when I was the resident advisor.  It was a very meaningful moment, a unifying moment.  Today is Holy Thursday, the day which commemorates the Last Supper and when Jesus swashed his disciple feet.

We usually think of the foot washing in terms of how Jesus was so humble and had a servant heart, but the size of the picture tends to remain focused on Jesus heart.  It may be tempting to limit Jesus revolutionary gesture to the effect of a super big hug or a pithy parabolic statement.  How often do we think of it as a command, as a foundation for church relations?  We do the same thing to the sermon on mount.  Rather than being the bedrock of understanding the ethos of the Kingdom of God we condescendingly make it into a list of platitudes.

The foot washing pericope is found in John 13.  The same gospel that tells us that they will know us by our love for one another.  The story also records that Jesus’ motivation to wash his disciples feet arises following Judas’ decision to betray Jesus.  Here in this story we are being commanded to love each other as Jesus loves.  We are being commanded to love as slaves to one another, willing to be called blessed because of meekness and persecution.  Here we are being shown how to and commanded to love our enemies.  It’s easy to forget how difficult it must have been to wash not only his disciple’s feet, but also the feet of the man who would betray him.  Prior to this event, Jesus has his feet washed by woman with the alabaster flask.  We usually get this picture.  Somewhat ironically, it’s Judas who complains about this woman wasting her funds on Jesus feet, and then it’s Jesus responding by washing his very feet.  To us, it is a challenge to love and serve those who we hate and who persecute and hurt us.  It is a challenge to love our nationalistic enemies because this extension of the Sermon on the Mount is charge to see every social interaction and relationship in light of God’s Kingdom.

The command to wash one another’s feet is to embrace unity through the means of sacrificial love and service.  It is a service empowered by our love and through his Spirit.  It is a proclamation of God’s heart for his people and thus is as much about the Church as it is the good news of the Kingdom.

Tempted to Wear the Crown

According to the Gospels, this week, which we call holy week, celebrates the last week of Jesus life leading up to the crucifixion.  The event that set in motion the passion, according to most scholars, was the temple cleansing.  This event follows Palm Sunday, where Jesus enters Jerusalem to the thronging crowds chanting hosanna in the highest.  Jesus had the people on his side and in one week’s time the same crowds would be calling for his death.  Jesus enters the temple and he makes a statement.  It is a statement that threatens the entire social order of the ruling religious leaders.  It is both a statement against the economic practices of the day since people were extorted through the prices of the sacrifices and a racial issue since it was being done in the court of the Gentiles.  To most Jews, this zealousness for YHWH’s house would represent a messianic move.  The next logical step for the followers of Jesus would to be to follow him to the Roman garrison and make war.  This is the moment when Jesus has the momentum of the people and he instead weeps for the city of Jerusalem.

It’s easy to forget that Jesus temptation to establish God’s Kingdom in a different way continued to follow him even beyond the 40 days in the wilderness.  It would have been so tempting to embrace the will and love of the masses and to lead Israel as her hero.  Julius Caesar has a similar moment when he crossed the Rubicon and they went to give him the crown as Emperor, but he denied it.  The Roman senate still murdered him because Caesar’s rejection of the crown was a political move, not a true rejection of power.  Jesus in a similar way enters Jerusalem on a donkey, cross his own Rubicon and as he cleanses the temple the crowds must have been ready to anoint him king.  They must have wondered if he’d raise an army or retreat to Qumran to regroup.  Jesus denies the crown that the people want to give to him.  He heart is broken because he knows the hardness of the people.  He weeps because his city and nation will see destruction.

What I find remarkable among this narrative is the way in which Jesus accepts the very messianic claims everyone seems to want to give him, but refuses the manner in which they want to see them fulfilled.  The temptation of Satan in wilderness to have all the kingdoms of the world resurfaces.  His heart among a thousand loving cheers is broken with the reality of the future, of the road he will take.  I can think of a lot of Christian leaders today whose fame creates similar moments where people want to crown them the next Paul or what not.  Whether we admit it or not, we live in a Corinthian situation where we follow this or that guy.  Our response has to be to deny every crown except that of thorns.

Jesus action at the temple is a commitment to his messianic vocation.  It is a prophetic announcement of God’s Kingdom and it could have gone many different ways.  It could have led to a golden crown, but Jesus chooses the one of thorns.  He chooses the road of persecution, of sorrow.  His will, his mission is not dependent on the affection of others, or the publicity of himself, but only by being faithful.  Jesus renouncing Caesar’s crown, resisting Satan’s temptation, wasn’t an apolitical response.  It was a very political one.  It was a politic of charity, a politic of love.  Jesus never refuses Pilates claim to be King of the Jews.  We misinterpret that interaction to think Jesus kingdom is just spiritual while Caesar’s is material.  Jesus kingdom will not be like Caesar’s but the kingdom of the meek servant of God is a kingdom on this earth to be inherited.

As Christians we will experience tests in life, tests of passion.  These tests of passion will present themselves with option to do God’s will in what looks like the easy and hard way.  Honestly it is a choice being faithful to his way or not.  Jesus could have done God’s will, brought the Kingdom in very way Satan had tempted Him.  It would have brought a lot of good, but it would have been at the expense of being faithful to his Father.  There are a million examples in all our lives where we experience similar temptations.  This week is a lesson in making the passionate choice, the choice to be faithful rather than accepting the easier way, or majority opinion.  As individuals and families, as communities and as a Church we will be tempted to wear the golden crown.  However, when the world would love to shove the golden crown on our heads and a scepter in our hand we will not reject it’s call to lead and serve, only that our crown is the same crown of our savior.

The Danger of Competition

If you ever want to test how deep the sermon on the mount runs in a man, then observe how well they lose.  I don’t lose well, I don’t like losing because I am competitive, but I realize how unhealthy this can be in my life.  Watch Christians play each other in sports, you’ll see some great examples of our carnal nature.  Most of us think of competition as a good and healthy thing.  It helps us perform better, we rise to the occasion in the face of competition.  It can be argued that you get the most quality and effective work out of people under the inspired diligence of competitiveness.  Our whole society works off this premise.  Our American churches breed this culture without thinking twice.  We love Proverbs 27:17, “iron sharpens iron,”  as a motto for why God endorses competition within the community.  We use it as ammunition to justify the jibes, rebukes, and barbs we throw at each other in the name of healthy growth.

The metaphor of iron sharpening iron is not a cause for competition.  Competition is driven by the desire to beat, to defeat, to conqueror, to overcome someone else.  It’s a rival for supremacy fueled by survival, success, greed and a plethora of other virtues manipulated for personal gain.  It’s not about working together for a mutual benefit, but about winning.  Even in the greatest rivalry, the most virtuous outcome is respect for the other competitor, but not love and compassion.  When Christians adopt this kind of competitive license in the fashion of iron sharpening iron, it grossly misrepresents God’s heart toward his community and toward society.

As Americans, I think we can safely assume that as a nation and a culture, we’re addicted to sports.  We’re raised in a culture of gladiatorial heroism and bred on the ideals capitalism.  The success of our superpower owes its glory to the driven competitiveness of our people.  We see no harm in our competitive instincts.  We love people like Derek Jeter and Kobe Bryant because they’re winner’s, they rise to the occasion and the pressure of the moment.  They’re our modern-day gladiator’s.  We talk of football games as if war is being fought on the field.  Our athletic images are iconic, heroic, and legendary.  Good Americans cast aside socialism because we say without competition people won’t work their hardest.  What would Bill Russel be without Wilt Chamberlain, what would the Yankees be without the Red Sox?

Honestly, society might be right to operate under the scheme of darwinian competitiveness for all it’s version of worldly success.  The results speak for themselves, but as a Church, God’s alternative prophetic community, should we do the same?  I have to reply with a harsh NO!  How I wish, we were much more guarded against the values of the empire.  If we held up a barrier as thick as the one we do for “sinners” against the cultural norms of our superpower we’d be so much better off and effective as kingdom people.  In Mark 10:35-45 we find an interesting conversation between Jesus and the two brothers, John and James.  They both ask Jesus if they can sit as his right and left hand when Jesus is in glory.  Obviously the brothers didn’t see the glory as being in heaven or involving Jesus literal crucifixion, otherwise they’d have dealt with the passion and with Easter with a lot less surprise and sorrow.  This glory was probably in terms of when Jesus led Israel back to political freedom from the exile of its current slavery.

Jesus asks them, if they can drink his cup, be baptized with the same baptism he will be.  The other ten hear about James and John’s bold power play and grumble.  Jesus responds again,

“You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Jesus might say the same thing to us except it might more like, throw down your business models, your capitalistic competitive practices, your democratized gospel, your arenas you call churches, for it shall not be so among you.  Jesus emphasizes in contrast to the competing power plays that the world operates under, they his disciples, shall serve like him, drink his cup and share his baptism.  The values of the Kingdom are sacrifice, service, and love.  In the kingdom the last shall be first, the least shall be greatest.  Whenever we create a culture of competition, of praising the individual, or systems based on earning approval, than we’ve turned brotherly love into something grotesque.

Encouragement, empowerment, compassion, sacrifice, love at the cost one’s own competitive success are the values of iron sharpening iron.  It’s not the desire to prove oneself, to be better than another, or to be the greatest.  Every act of aggression in our heart’s should be crucified with every model of success built on rank and selfish gain.  Henceforth, we need to be vigilant to not absorb the culture of the arena, of the stadium, of the gladiator, of the free market, or the free world and confuse it for the ethos of the Kingdom.